#and came back to blow it up 3 months later so january?
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well we may as well take the low-hanging fruit:
We are eight days away from THE BRIDE OF DRACULA, our finale.
Anyone got any predictions for what’s coming our way with Episode 4? 👀
#but actually i have no idea#with it being only mina and dracula in this episode as well i'm truly like bruhhhhhhh the fuck's gonna happen#like i guess i'm guessing we'll end up back at Castle Dracula?#what with Drac being fresh out of dirt for his dirt naps#and that being where the novel ends up#and i've been wondering if that's where the frame story is#from that one line in episode 2 when mina's like#'you really are in awe of the nobility around these parts' or something#i mean that probably could mean anywhere in the heart of the smack of the dab of Europe but#we're getting close-ish to the year for the frame story too#i think it was '97 in the script?#and if i'm following the math right we should be in like#late january of '96?#if she went in end of august in '93#and spent two years one month three weeks and six days there#she'd have escaped end of October '95#and came back to blow it up 3 months later so january?#right?#[insert pepe silvia gif]#so what in the fuuck is going to happen here in '96 that leads to Mina and Dracula having a semi-cordial chit-chat about the last four year#i am not what the scholars would call... smart. and have never been able to predict anything accurately so uh#who knows#i will say i have some concerns about mina having drunk dracula's blood that time#gurl are u ok
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Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The Life of the Party
*Played in August 2022, Written in January 2023. This is too long and probably impenetrable if you haven't played these games, you probably shouldn't read it.
My History With Xenoblade
The first Xenoblade Chronicles is probably the latest gaming experience I can count as truly formative. I feel like within a year after I beat it, my gamer brain finished incubation. Games have had a large impact on me afterwards of course. I didn't even play Dark Souls until 4 years later. My taste were not set in stone afterwards. That's not what I mean. I consider it formative because it's a game I strongly connect to childhood. Sure, I feel nostalgia for stuff I played a few years ago, but it's not the same type of nostalgia. It's a bit more integral in molding who I am as a video game enthusiast and as a person to an extent. It sits among the likes of Sonic Adventure 2, Super Mario Bros 3, Pokémon Silver, Kingdom Hearts 1, and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons as a load bearing game. Basically, it's important to me.
I remember the E3 in which Xenoblade 1 was announced. I remember seeing Bowser's Inside Story and being intrigued. I remember the trailer for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and being surprised they just slapped a 2 on it for the title. I remember being tricked into thinking Metroid Other M might be a good game. Yet, this Monado: Beginning of the World game? No recollection. Not even back then did I remember it. If they showed a trailer at the conference, I definitely saw it. But looking back at it now I can definitely see why I forgot it instantly. This is a profoundly xeric trailer with no flavor or conveyance of anything interesting. This game feels like it was being sent out to die.
I never thought about this Monado game until two years later when a buzz about untranslated Wii games started up. This was back when I was frequenting the Screwattack.com forums, and everyday I'd see a post about Operation Rainfall. Operation Rainfall was a campaign ran by JRPG fans who were determined to get 3 well received games on the Nintendo Wii localized and distributed to the US. These games were The Last Story (a game made by a former Final Fantasy director. But I wasn't interested in at the time), Pandora's Tower (an action RPG that I remember having a grappling hook), and Xenoblade Chronicles. Xenoblade ended up being a re-title of Monado, but I didn't make the connection. I wasn't interested in any of these games. But I did want to participate in this campaign. I just felt like contributing to a cause, and I generally believed games should be as accessible as possible. I didn't go so far to pre-order the games on amazon or anything, but I did sign petitions and bitch about it online. So I didn't do anything, but I felt like I did.
Eventually, rain did fall, and all 3 games got localized. And the first of these was Xenoblade. It was summer of 2012, and I just completed my second year of high school. I had A LOT more free time on my hands and needed something to keep me busy. And that something would inevitably be video games. But which video game would I chose? Nothing really stood out to me at the time. But I did remember that one Operation Rainfall game that came out 2 months earlier and decided to check it out. I looked at the combat footage and it appeared super weird to me. But the comment section just kept riding this game's junk to the stratosphere. Eventually I decided to trust the populace and buy the game. My birthday just happened. I had money to blow. So I bought it. And I was hooked immediately.
Back then, and somewhat still now, I was a Nintendo baby. Sure I had a Playstation 2, but for as great as that console was, it wasn't enough to conceal the stench of Nintendo fanboyism emanating from my gamer sweat glands. I reeked of it. When the 7th generation of gaming hit, I was only concerned with the Wii for the first few years. And thus had lower expectations as far as fidelity was concerned. This is why Xenoblade stood out. I never expected a game as gigantic as this on a Wii. I always had some interest in MMO games, but never had a PC that could realistically run one. Large RPGs like Skyrim and Fallout I’d occasionally want to try out, but those were only available on consoles that ran on moderately modern hardware. I was used to small games. I was used to old games. A large new game like Xenoblade was the first time I took off the Nintendo blinders and saw the Wii for the suped up Gamecube slim model it really was. No other game was like this on the console because it didn't seem possible. But Monolith Software made it possible because they are wizards. The second I got through the opening chapters and set foot onto Gaur Plains, I knew I was embarking on an epic journey.
The world was brilliant from the jump. Two continents surrounded by boundless ocean, but the continents aren't land masses, but two titans locked in combat for eternity. Every aspect of these titan's anatomy was a new region to explore with a unique ecosystem, more people to meet and cultures to experience. Bionis and Mechonis were the World Turtle concept turned up to 11, and it was the coolest thing I'd seen in my life up to that point. This setting acted as the perfect back drop to a story I still find extremely engaging and that story conveyed themes that I really needed to experience at the time. I was a bit younger than the cast of the game and was at a point where I started to question the things I was taught and that maybe you shouldn't just accept things the way they are. I won't go into it, this isn't a thematic and narrative break down of Xenoblade’s story. I will say though, that shortly after beating it I became considerably more resistant to going to church.
There were so many things about Xenoblade 1 that just hit right. The scope, The tone, the voice acting, the music, the pacing, even the busy work side quest which are objectively boring, but I was fine with because I wanted to stay in that world. I played Xenoblade in the right place at the right time. I wouldn't be so impressed with it nowadays and I wouldn't appreciate it enough if i played it earlier. Everything fell into place. In the decade since playing it, there was one thing that still sticks out to me as exceptional. Well, maybe one is understating it. Seven seems a bit more accurate.
My perception of JRPG Party Structure
Til then, I had mainly interacted with Pokémon and Mario to get my fill for Role Playing Games. With the occasional Megaman Battle Network game here and there. Didn't get to playing Golden Suns, Fire Emblems, and Final Fantasies until later but I did and still do classify them as a different type of RPG. Not because of the mechanics. Megaman Battle Network, the Mario RPGs, and Pokemon all feel very different to play. The thing these games truly had in common is that there was no classic RPG party you follow throughout the game.
In the Battle Network games you play as 2 characters and not even at the same time. Even in Pokémon where you are playing as a 1000 characters, every Pokémon is basically the same, so you are playing as 2 characters. There are few relevant bonds in these games put at the fore front because your interactions are so limited. The relational structure allows for more gameplay and variety regarding the limited cast, but it also limits character interactions heavily.
All 3 Mario RPG series embody these types of relational structures. The Mario and Luigi games work on a one to one relationship. Only the brothers matter. You are following two dueteragonist on a journey and seeing how their personalities bounce off each other. The Paper Mario games work on a one to many relationship, where only Mario's relationships with his party matter. Your party members have personality, but you can only have one out at a time so they can only bounce off of Mario, who kinda doesn't have a personality. As much as I’d like Captain Bombery and Koops to form a meaningful brotherly friendship in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the game is not build for that kind of thing to happen. In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars though, you have 3 party slots and thus you are technically fighting as a team the whole game. There are also scenes where more than one party member is present. It's not the best example, but it is a many to many relationship. Peach interacts with Bowser. Bowser interacts with Mario. Mario interacts with Geno. Mario is still the main character, but he’s not as central as he usually is.
These are my favorite type. I didn't realize how important this aspect of the adventure was to me until I played Chrono Trigger about a year before I played Xenoblade. Nearly every party member in that game had a their own dynamic with the others. And this made them feel more like real characters than any of their individual backstories did. It was even reflected not just in discussions the team would have but in the gameplay by having unique team attacks for every combination of 2 or 3 characters. I stand by that you really can’t say you are close to another person unless you have a name for your tag action finisher. It feels like a well composed party melding together their strengths to make up for their weaknesses. I felt the same way about Xenoblade when I played it, only stronger.
The cast of Xenoblade was at the time, my favorite JRPG cast. Even now I'd say they stack up pretty well. They all had their own pronounced roles in the plot and grew closer to each other as they ventured as a group. Some were better than others of course. Shulk, as the main character, clearly has the most going on and is the best character, but Melia ends up have about as much meat to her journey as well. The other cast members have either small moments of growth; had no growth due to their characters already being complete; or had big breast. So back then, the crew gave me everything I could ask for.
The writing of the characters was great, but I wouldn't call it one of the strong points of the game. The character interactions are where it truly shines. Like Chrono Trigger, there are in battle mechanics that make your party truly feel like a team. This is achieved with tactics, the help action and chain attacks. You only control the leading party member, but that only places you in a role where you have to interact with your AI teammates rather than play god and control their every action. You need to trust your friends. You need to give up attacking for a second and help shake them out of a status effect, and trust that they'll do the same for you. You need to trust that they'll heal you. You need to trust that they'll revive you. They trust you enough to follow your tactical commands so you have to trust that they'll follow through. And that moment when you use a chain attack and do get control of your party member's actions, it doesn't feel like you’re lording over your subordinates, it feels like you're a unit.
Even outside of battle there are plenty of bells and whistles that bring the party closer together. There's the affinity system, which is this game's version of socials links (I think (I haven’t played a single Persona game (man I really should have played one of those Persona games before making a long ass essay about RPG party members))). The more affinity the party members have between each other, the more passive skills they can learn which will greatly aid you in battle. And you build affinity by having those characters fight together in your party. Many RPGs have more characters than available slots for characters to fight. So you can basically ignore the others for most of the game and just use your go-to 3 or 4 members the whole time. Xenoblade certainly has this issue, but it's alleviated by incentivizing swapping members in and out. If you want your favorite characters to truly be at their strongest, you need to vary your party. And the benefit of this isn't just mechanical. Small Heart to Heart discussions between characters are unlocked once they reach a certain location and achieve a level of affinity with each other. These dialogues bring the team together and builds a believable kinship that doesn't just feel earned through story beats, but is objectively earned through gameplay.
And what would Xenoblade be without the live banter? Sure it's been memed to the ends of the Bionis and lines can repeat too much, but there is an underrated value to it. The camaraderie between these characters is electric. Hyping themselves up before fights, showing struggle and concern during, and audibly basking in victory afterwards. It is a staple in the franchise for a reason and I'm so glad More games are doing it. It’s one of my favorite aspects of Final Fantasy 7: Remake. There was just something about all these elements which melded together to make the perfect RPG party and allowed for Xenoblade to become one of my all time favorites. It genuinely had a profound impact on me and raised the bar for what I wanted from RPGs. Hell, it even got my ass to go back and play Xenogears because at that point there were no other Xenoblade games and Xenosaga was still impossibly hard to find even back then. I knew they weren’t technically the same franchise, but they had the same director, apparently had similar motifs, and had similar titles, so I was onboard.
Xenogears rules and provided me with some much needed context. Probably too much context. Xenogears was both too much and not enough game for me. There was a lot more plot and themes going on compared to Xenoblade and I never really got a good handle on the mech combat. There was a lot I wasn't really grasping to be honest and most of it was probably not explained very well. Especially at the end where it became a rushed slide show because they couldn’t finish the game in time. One thing that does stick with me was how cool the party of that game was. It was a delight seeing them show off their personality through their slick attack animations. And that's basically all I remember about them outside of the two leads. Xenoblade has this issue to an extent as well, but it's minute compared to it’s progenitor. A lot of characters have a single moment in the story around the time they join the party and fall off immediately afterwards. It's the Fei and Elly show for the most part. This criticism might be baseless and I'm just remembering wrong, but that's what I recall.
And here should be a paragraph of my experience with Xenoblade Chronicles X, but I've never played it. I never owned a Bigger Wii. I really thought it would be a system seller for me, but I saw the direction it was going and it didn't really grab me. After being such a big fan of the protags from other xeno games, having a player avatar felt off. So I wasn't pressed to play it. And I also wasn't pressed to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 either when it was released. I wasn't alone in this. A lot of people's initial impressions on Xenoblade 2 was that it was cringe anime trash. And the initial consensus upon release was that it was worse than the first game. I put it on the back burner. I was certainly going to play it, but I don't start 100+ hour games on a whim. I needed the right time to start. So thanks Covid. You eroded my social skills and killed my Uncle, but at least you gave me more time to play video games, so I’m definitely not bitter.
My Apology to Xenoblade Chronicles 2
I hated Xenoblade 2 at first. I ended up liking it by the end, but that first 20 hours was grueling for me. The combat doesn't shine until mid way through the game and you still don't really understand what's going on until much later. And the story just did nothing for me at the time. It got good eventually, but the bitterness of those first 20 hours will always stick with me. When I played it two years ago, I dismissed it as cringe. And now I’d like to walk that back. I mean I made it clear that I liked it a lot, just not as much as the first game, and that remains true. But that really just came down to pacing and the general vibes of the game. I did say the story was garbage and I don't stand by that claim anymore. Now that Xenoblade 3 is out and I don't have to worry about the franchise being embarrassing in the future and I can look at the game in a more fair light. The story and tone of the game isn't trash. It's a bit trashy at points, but it's not trash.
There's themes and story beats that have undeniably value. I gained little from them myself, but I can see others gleaning a lot from them. It took far too long to get interesting for me and I was annoyed by the villains too much to give a single fuck about the actual stakes of the story. I cared about the lore. I cared about the character arcs of individuals I liked. I knew they'd be fine though, so whenever any opposition appeared I checked out because Torna, the villain team, were a bunch of losers. And I still have this view of them honestly. 60% of the team come off as whiny brats and don’t do much to feel more than that. Even Jin, the cool morally grey character who gives off the illusion of being based. It's a hard sell for me to get invested in sympathetic crest fallen characters who resort to genocide. I’m kinda over that archetype. When Jin was going on about liberation of his people I was intrigued, but then that went in the background in favor of a generic sad backstory, so I lost a bit of interest. Liberation at all cost is a raw motive, simply losing hope isn't. The only member of Torna who is unequivocally a good villain for me is Malos. Because he's just so earnestly and matter of factly a jerk. I love that guy actually. I wish I was as comfortable with myself as Malos is with himself and his inexplicable desire to destroy everything. That’s a self actualized dude if I’ve ever seen one.
Also I've calmed down a bit on Amalthus, and realized that he would be a great villain if he had any charisma at all or a backstory where more than 3 bad things happen to explain being the biggest doomer of all time. If Xenoblade 2 took place in a cyber punk setting, I probably would have been far more engaged. It instead has a Dangan Ronpa air about it where I never really felt hopeless as a player so the theme of hope isn't super strong. Also I played it at a time where all the things it had to say we're of little use to me. I don't need a protagonist like Rex, because I was already Rex at that point in my life. I'm not nearly as much of an Absolute Chad as he is, but I have an adequate amount of hope and faith in others. So the whole central theme being about that was kind of a miss for me. If I played it in 2019, I would have gelled with the game way better. It's still a good central theme to have though and it was wrong of me to begrudge the game over it. And it was wrong to begrudge Rex too. He’s pretty much the perfect protagonist for this game and he shouldn’t be given a demerit for not being Shulk.
But like I said. It's trashy. And I'm even more resistant to that shit than I was 2 years ago. Get this creepy anime shit out of my game please. It's off putting and I think it’s wild that I just kinda brush it off in the past. It’s mainly the material involving Poppy, the child robot character. Someone please call child protective services. The degenerate energy definitely detracts from this game because it creates a tone that doesn't really match the setting and also allows for sleezy scenes that aren't funny at all.
Despite this, I'd say Xenoblade 2 has just as much merit as the first. Timing matters. You aren't going to get as much out of media depending on when you play it in your life. That's just the way it is sometimes. Besides, while I didn't gel with the villains initially, I've always been a fan of the heroes. The party in Xenoblade 2 is just as good as the party in Xenoblade 1. I don't like anyone as much as the better characters in the first game, but 2 does a much better job in spreading the love. I feel like among the main cast only like 2 or 3 get nothing substantial. And I say main cast because this game separates its party a bit differently than the first. You can have up to 12 characters in battle at once and there are around 235 party members at most.
That sounds like too much. And it is. But it's not too bad. I hate how they implement parts, but I can bear with it. Xenoblade 2 separates the party into 4 tiers. Drivers, Canon Blades, Non-Canon Blades, and Super Special Non-Canon Blades. There are only 5 characters you can play as and those are the drivers. But each driver has 1-2 supporting characters that help them fight called Blades. But each driver can have up to 3 blades associated with them. And that's where things get weird. You can get faceless, Non-Canon blades to join your party which have no impact on the story at all and only act to make battle and exploration easier. But some of those non-canon ones are super special and have optional story content you can unlock with them. So canonically there are around 12 actual party members, but if you include the special non canon ones, there are over 30. We are veering into Chrono Cross territory here. Because the special ones get their own quest, they make a bigger impression than the optionals in Cross. It's done way better, but I sort of despise it because of how it's implemented. 20 of these blades you can only get by random chance. I think this is included this way to make each play through a bit special. I do not care. I want all the story content and I don't like replaying these games a bunch. If there was a random way to get them early, I'd be on board. The way it is just ticks me off. I oppose gatcha with every cell of my very being, so to see it implemented for non monetary reasons both confuses and infuriates me. And the way Xenoblade 2 handles its cast is brilliant aside from that. Not all of these individual quest are interesting or worth it, but even when they don't do a ton for characterization, they do well to inform you about the world.
Xenoblade 2 has a team that feels very close. Heart to Hearts return in this game, but instead of them being scenes between two characters that have grown affection for each other throughout the campaign, they are group scenes where they all bond as a team. It's a different flavor, but works better given how much larger the canon party is. You aren't gonna know what the dynamic between Tora and fucking Aeon is, but you know that they get along because the Xenoblade 2 party is a collective that vibes with each other naturally.
Xenoblade 1 is a team that trust each other and that's why helping and commanding your party is a large part of the battles. Xenoblade 2 is a close group of peers. There is no hierarchy, no one is bossing anyone around. Thus there are no tactical options available. That's how I justify the exclusion of the feature anyway. Instead the game kinda wants you to play them all at once in a way, giving you prompts to use their special attacks when they are ready. I don't think it gives off the unity vibes it potentially could be giving off, because it's not enough to make it feel like you are all working together.
Hilarious voice clips are back and I feel they are even more important here. Because of the far larger number of party members, there needs to be ways for them to stand out and feel like they are part of the world. Each character should have their own voice and the persistent mid battle banter makes sure you hear them. And it blows my mind a bit how some banter is between specific members. There are so many permutations of party compositions. It's insane that they made voice clips for only certain selections.
Xenoblade 2 has a lot of great ideas when it comes to managing its party members. It could have been done better and since then, I couldn't help but imagine what it would be like if they took this philosophy and applied it in a way I would call: Sane. There were aspects of the first game that I missed while I played the sequel I wish were implemented, but know it couldn’t due to the scope of it being so much larger. It would be nice if we could get the best of both worlds somehow.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the best of both worlds
I walked into the intimidating winding alley of 2022 expecting to get my clock cleaned by Elden Ring. And I did. I got laid the fuck out. But I did not foresee Xenoblade Chronicles 3 jumping out of a dumpster and shanking me in the back; Piercing an organ that is probably important, as I hobble my way towards futile refuge. Xenoblade 3 came out of nowhere and hit me in a weak spot I didn't know I had. But I'm glad it did. It is an excellent game. And much like the first, it came at the right time for me.
I'm really glad I played Chrono Cross this year because now I know exactly what Xenoblade 3 avoided being. A sequel to a game that already feels complete and slightly tarnishes its legacy by association. Xenoblade 2 could have become the Chrono Cross of this franchise, but platinum dodged its fate by not being a real sequel to Xenoblade 1. It's what I wanted Chrono Cross to actually be. But now you have Xenoblade 3 which is a sequel to Xenoblade 1...AND Xenoblade 2. It has the burden of being the Chrono Cross of 2 games at once. And a lesser game would buckle under that pressure and plead with it’s makers for a lighter load. But the mass of these two RPG juggernauts lay comfortably upon Xenoblade 3's broad and bold shoulders. It does the impossible and merges the best of both worlds.
The story takes the best of both worlds.
I was far more a fan of the tone of the story in Xenoblade 1. There were moments of levity and inherently goofy aspects of the world (looking at you. Immovable Gonzalez). But the gravity of the events transpiring was also treated with respect. 2 had a tone I wasn't a fan of. It had Saturday morning cartoon moments and trashy fan service that felt fairly obtrusive. It made it hard to take anything seriously which didn't help considering how slow of a start 2 has. I still couldn’t take it completely seriously by the end, even though the world of 2 is just as dower as the previous one. But while its main story isn't handled to my liking, it's side stories more than make up for it. The quest lines in 2 have earnest effort placed in them with plot beats, direction, and occasionally voice acting. They aren't just a check list of fetch quest, they are vignettes of engaging world building. There were points in two where I cared more about the side quest than the main one.
3 handles its plot with a tone similar to the first. From the jump, you are presented a grim world that has poisoned the well being of its inhabitants. There are funny characters. It's not doom and gloom constantly. But you feel the plight of the main characters you follow and are left just as in the dark as they are. You feel their confusion. You feel their bitterness. And you cheer for their resolve. And this extends to characters outside of the main party. It is very easy to get invested in the side quest in this game. Even more so than in 2. There are side stories which feel like they should be main content. It honestly feels wild. There are meaningful character arcs which can only be closed off through completion of the major side quest. The main plot of Xenoblade 3 is good. It's not exactly lacking, but it's probably the shortest of the three games and possibly the weakest on its own. But its themes and characters are bolstered by its side quest. It's up to the player to decide if the story is an 8/10 or a 10/10 based on how invested they decide to get into the game. The side quest in 2 are additive, but there are none I would call must plays. The game doesn't expect you to do them still. 3 takes this a step further. Xenoblade 3 is a 52 episode Anime with an episodic structure. Not every chapter is necessary to understand the plot and its not a big deal if you don't catch it when it airs. But it will only come together if you watch every episode and see every concept slowly build upon one another. I like this approach. It's somehow more accessible. People who don't have time play all the side quest can still get a good story. But in order to experience the best Xenoblade plot, you need to earn it. You need to become immersed in Aionios and absorb the culture so you feel the true weight of everything the story has to offer.
The mechanics take the best of both worlds
There's not really a lot of interesting actions you can do during combat in Xenoblade 1. There's strategy to it for sure, but a lot of it comes down to waiting for your arts to cool down. It's built around managing your resources and using them when the time is right. It's not built around chain attacks being the end all be all. It's a simple loop and the challenge comes from trying to maintain it. Visions, encouragement, and party tactics are all things you need to do to keep the battle in your control. It is a reactive battle system.
2 is a bit more complex. You Attack and position correctly to build arts. Cancel attacks and arts with the right timing to build specials. Use specials to build affinity (this is different from the affinity in 1, don’t worry about it). Use arts to do driver combos to extend affinity building. Complete affinity flow to build orbs. Use chain attack to destroy orbs and wipe out the enemy in hilarious fashion. It's far more complicated and only feasible 1/3 of the way through the game. And the game does a poor job of explaining it too. You also need to do a lot of party set up to make it happen. It can be a pain, but when it works it feels great. There's less focus on what the enemy and rest of your party are doing and more about just executing the plan and getting to the chain. It’s a linear path with a lot of steps you need to complete. If you're doing your job correctly, to can steam roll anything in your way. It is a proactive battle system.
Xenoblade 3 gives you options. You Attack and position correctly to build arts. Cancel attacks, arts, and fusion arts to build meter for your chain attack and interlink transformations. From there you can use these options however you want. You can use lv3 interlink to get a guaranteed quality chain attack, or you can use it outright and do more damage at the cost of consistency. You can chain mid combo or set up the combo in the chain. You can use interlink before level 3 to survive or wait to maximize effectiveness of arts. You can do a smash combo to do ridiculous damage or a burst combo to keep the enemy more docile. I’m not going to explain all these terms because I don’t think I need to. The point is, there are a lot of mechanics here, but they don’t lead to one location like in 2. If Xenoblade 1 is defensive and reactive and Xenoblade 2 is offense and proactive, Xenoblade 3 is a perfect fusion of both. You still have tactics you can use to switch up party behavior and you can even switch between party members. It maintains The leader/follower dynamic of the first game while also making sure that hierarchy is fluid and thus everyone feels like equals. Chain attacks are important, and are more meaty than ever, but they aren't the centerpiece end all be all of combat. There are arts that require being aggressive while there are ones that benefit from disengaging. Arts that recharge by waiting and arts that recharge by attacking. There's no one way to play and that's why this is best combat the series has. And best of all, they explain it to you in a manner meant for humans to comprehend.
Xenoblade 3 learns from the problem 2 had with explaining mechanics and gets pretty close to over correcting. This game has an abundance of tutorials which you can access at anytime and are forced to do at many points. It gets a bit overbearing, but it is appreciated. Xenoblade 3 is complex, but it’s begging you to comprehend it. 3 doesn’t just sit in the corner of the classroom and expect everyone in the room to just understand it. 3 does not try to act aloof. It wants to be perceived and will go out of its way to make that happen. And that’s what happened. I clicked with this combat more than either of its predecessors because it combined what they did right, and avoided what they did wrong.
Most importantly, its Party Structure is the best of both worlds
Xenoblade 3 has the best party of any game I've played. I was astounded at how they’re written and implemented. Previous games only had 3 characters on the field at once. 2 cheats by having partner party members you can swap in, so there are technically 6 slots. Xenoblade 3 has 1 slot. Slot implies you can switch things in and out of it. Xenoblade has 6 permanent party members and 1 slot available for placing an undetermined character in. This might mean there's less variety as to who appears on the battle field, but it also means more people appear on the field. 7 characters at a time is an insane feat.
There are 6 main characters in Xenoblade and this the perfect amount of main characters. They are all integral in their contributions to the plot and there is no way the player can mistake that, as they are on screen at all times. I look back at all the other RPGs I've played where the main party is on screen the whole time and they all cap out at 4. I like the cast of Bug Fables more than any cast in any Paper Mario game, because they are always there. The party is small, but they are always present and you buy them growing as a team throughout the game. The down side is that you only get 3 main characters for your dozens of hours spanning adventure. Anymore than 4 playable characters at once has the potential for things to get slow and messy. If Earthbound had 1.5 times as many decisions I had to make for any given battle, I would not have gotten through it. The thing about these games is that they are turn based. Xenoblade games are not. You aren't making every single decision, so the only downside to having more party members is that there can sometimes be more to react to than you are comfortable with.
Xenoblade 3 manages to get away with the exact amount of characters a human being can be comfortable with on screen. 7 is the lucky number, and 6 of those 7 are the ones you're following the whole time. There is no abstraction anymore. This is the crew. This is Ouroboros. You will not get to a point at the end of the game where they all stand together triumphant, recounting all the adventures they had together despite only half of them actually doing anything. That doesn't happen. They were all there for everything. No one is left out. Every battle hard fought, every inch of the map explored, every weird conversation with an NPC. Those were all moments they experienced together and there are no gaps for your brain to fill in because you saw it.
So already you have the makings for a stand out RPG party on that concept alone. But here's how they take it further. The love isn't equally divided between the party in JUST combat. While Noah is clearly the main character, every member of Ouroboros has about as much to do in the plot. This is an ensemble. Characters just don't have one moment and then sit on the sidelines to watch the male and female leads take the reigns when anything important happens. Xenoblade 3 is free from the curse that has plagued the franchise since Xenogears. If a single one of the 6 just left the story for a chapter, they would have eaten shit and there would be no game to play. They are all imperative and treated as such. This does not become the Noah and Mio show. Every piece is integral to the well oiled machine that is Ouroboros. Each character is lovable and multilayered and they are brought together through the perfect ludo-narrative device: Fusion.
Hey! Who remembers Digimon Adventure 02? I know I do. I probably remember far too much in fact. And a lot of what I remember about it is mid. But one good thing I remember is that Black War Greymon vs War Greymon was a raw as fuck fight. But another good thing I remember is DNA Digivolution. The gimmick here is that the Digimon can fuse together to achieve exponential power. But they can't do that unless the two tamers can get along and find common ground. I love this because it's a way to solve issues by facilitating not just character growth, but character bonds. 02 would have episodes where two tamers are butting heads, but are forced to work together, find common ground, and combine their Digimon into a cool new Digimon that they can market the new toys for.
This isn't just a ploy for me to go off about how cool Digimon is. If it was, I would just talk about Digimon Tamers, which is an unmistakable masterpiece even by today’s standards. I bring it up because Xenoblade 3 applied this exact same concept. Party members are forced to set aside their differences in order to unlock their interlinked forms: weird eva unit looking abominations that can change the game when used effectively. It's a beautiful thing to set aside your ego and become part of a collective with someone you don't see eye to eye with. There's fighting together, and then there's this. It’s like the next level of Dual Techs from Chrono Trigger. I once thought that tag team attacks were the deepest form of intimacy. And in regards to real life, I still do. But in fiction, there’s no better bonding experience than literally bonding together, activating a chain attack, and cuing a sick as hell 45 second stock animation for your attack finisher. If that isn’t the rawest form of kinship to you, I don’t know what else to tell you.
The true beauty of these interlinked pairings is how being saddle together through their roles in story and gameplay affects their dynamics. There is a truly resonate bond formed in each of these pairings and it's genuine because they show it. Xenoblade 3 is not interested in telling. Only showing. You see each step of their relationships grow in and out of battle and it feels earned. But the interlinked pairs are far from the only ones who have great dynamics. Much like Xenoblade 1, 3 gives you a pretty good idea of what it's like when two characters interact and makes it clear how they feel about each other. 1 did it using Heart to Hearts. I'm not gonna knock Heart to Hearts, as the dialogue they provide has value. But Xenoblade 3 has out grown them. Any important dialogue you'd like to hear between two characters, you'll hear during a cutscene from a side quest. Xenoblade 3 has you covered on that end. If there was any analogue for them in 3, I’d say the camping scenes are a valid replacement.
When you rest at a camping spot, you are meant to cook food to raise your stats, level up, craft gems, and chat about side quest. But in the background while selecting these options, is the party, hanging out with each other. You are shown scenes of them during their down time, showing how they act at their most vulnerable. And this is where the dynamics which aren't focused on shine the brightest. Look at Mio and Lanz. They don't have too much discussion in the main story and not a lot during side quest either. But what is there, is a scene of them washing dishes together, smiling and having a pleasant conversation. No dialogue because that's not necessary. Their dynamic is pronounced through this one activity. They are the Mom and Dad of the group. It makes perfect sense given their backgrounds. Mio is the oldest one there, and as such, feels the most responsibility and slides into the den mother role with ease. Lanz is the strongest guy in the party and has trauma regarding not being able to take care of people he cares about, and as such is extremely protective. They are the care takers of ouroboros. While the rest of them are relaxing and goofing off, they are doing the chores no one feels like doing and are doing it gladly. And it makes sense for them to have this dynamic given their game play roles. They are both tanks. It's their job to make sure no one gets hurt at the cost of their own safety. They put themselves last and everyone else first. So them just doing chores while keeping an eye on the rest of the gang makes perfect sense. There’s so much you can extract from this one scene.
And that's why Heart to Hearts are obsolete. 3 gives you this kind of content so regularly, that the entire game is one big heart to heart. You are shown how they interact with each other in the most relaxed and the most tense situations. And while there's no affinity you need to build to earn these moments, there are mechanics which are still founded upon building bonds. Every party member has a signature class with it's own unique role and abilities. But it's not exclusive to them. By interacting with characters in battle any main party member can learn any class from another member. And once a character learns that class they can master it, which leads to permanent skills being learned for them. As the characters fight together and bond, they learn from one another and it leads to permanent growth. It's the evolution of the affinity system in 1, but has far larger gameplay ramifications. This does wonders for making the main 6 feel closer, but really shines in regards to that 7th party member slot I've neglected thus far.
Xenoblade 3 implements a Scooby Doo approach to its party design. By that, I mean you have a party slot available for a guest character. The only slot you can swap characters in and out of. There are heroes you meet throughout your journey that have the option of venturing with you. These people are fixtures of the world that represent a culture. They have responsibilities, which is why they aren't with the party in the same way the other 6 are. Whichever hero you have selected is the one with free time to help you guys out. And while this hero is in the party, any of Ouroboros can learn their class. So while in terms of character you only have 1 slot, in terms of classes you have 7 for the 26 classes you can choose. Given that you can repeat classes, that's hundreds of thousands of potential party compositions. The guest party member slot allows for the modularity and variety available in Xenoblade 2, while also keeping the same close knit aspect of Xenoblade 1. The guest party member will never eclipse or get more screen time than a main character. The Scooby Doo frame work is the culmination of what the previous games were working towards.
This should come as no surprise, but the party banter is back. And it’s implemented in about the same way as the other games. But I would say this is the one aspect that it drops the ball in reference to it’s predecessors. Xenoblade 1 has a wider variety of voice lines when it comes to its primary cast and 2 has a wider variety for its secondary cast. Xenoblade 3 has probably the most aggressive voice clip repetition in the franchise and it can get grating at times. But there is one area where I think it shines. And that’s during chain attacks. Chain attacks are different for every game, but they all converge in that it pretty much turns the game into a turn based RPG for a duration. And in 3, each time it’s a character’s time to attack, they get a voice clip. This adds a level of predictability to the voice lines that I ended up really appreciating. Because some of these voice lines are delightful, and to be able to have some control over when they say them, rather than it being completely random, is a blessing. Some of these voice lines I will never tire of. I have selected Sena to start off a chain attack, just so I can hear her say “Yippie”. It brings a pure light to my callous caliginous soul every time I hear it. I am physically unable to hear Mio say “Your Fate Was Sealed When You Rose Against Us!” and not compulsively whisper under my breath “god, that shit is so raw”. I don’t really have a point as to how this adds to the party building, I just wanted to mention this before I finish this behemoth of a write up.
Xenoblade 3 is a near perfect synthesis of what came before it. Almost to a fault. The game lacks a bit of identity in some areas because it's a clear combination of the other two games. That’s why most of this is me musing about those games. But if that's the sacrifice it had to make in order to be what I believe is the definitive blue print for future Action RPG party structure, I'll fuckin take it. There is so much more of this game I could have written about, but this is the aspect that I found most interesting to dissect.
Parties might be the main aspect of JRPGs I’m drawn towards. I like the mechanics of course. I like roleplaying. But seeing a group of characters journey together and overcome is kind of what I need sometimes. That’s probably why I keep bouncing off Fallout. Because it feels like I’m just playing as dude wandering about. And I can already do that whenever I want. We may not always have people around to go on adventures with. I know I don’t. So it’s comforting to experience that through video games when you can’t outside of them. And that’s why I appreciate Xenoblade 3 so much. It did everything it could to breathe life into its party. I think through how it handled its party mechanics I was able to feel a level of investment that allowed me to really pick up what the game was putting down. A lot of people have issues with the nitty gritty of Xenoblade 3’s story and honestly I would have those same issues if I wasn't vibing with it so hard for the 140 hours I played it. Because I was resonant with its characters, I was resonant with its core essence. There are a lot of issues I have with Xenoblade 3 that I didn't go over. Those aren't important right now. For the time being I am interlinked with Xenoblade 3, and I think I am better for it.
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The last move
It's been 2 months since the last blog, so time for an update on the highlights. We have moved in and settled into our new rental house provided by a miracle. It is located in the exact neighborhood we had wanted, close to Naomi's family but usually an expensive one to rent. However, the landlord was very generous and made a deal that if we took good care of the property the rent would be lower. After unpacking 104 cardboard boxes and a few weeks of minor repairs around the house we were finally ready to settle in and enjoy. Besides living close to Naomi's family (who love to cook, and guess where most leftovers end up 😏), it is also within walking distance of a huge supermarket (think like Albert Heijn XXXL) and church. I had given up all hope to be able to walk to places from home!
While clearing out the house, Hoydi, Naomi's brother and I did a trip to the dump. Going to the dump always was an exciting day out back when I was young, but this was on a different level. Whereas I'm used to dumping my couch in a container, here they have ''landfills''. Massive pits on the outskirts of the city where 1.2 million people literally can dump their trash. Not sure how I felt about dumping 3 couches into mother nature, but I was assured that the nice neighborhood next to it was built on one of these full landfills and in a few years a new neighborhood would be built on my 3 couches.
A few weeks later we hosted our first guests at our place. Jacqueline, an old university friend of mine and her husband Mark came over. We went on my first snowshoeing hike up to Chester Lake through fresh powder which must feel as outdoorsy as it can get. We witnessed a decent sized avalanche from fairly nearby, and the powder it spewed up blowing through the trees. The next day we spent playing boardgames, where Mark beat me at my home game Everdell after I made a shameful mistake, but redeemed my board gaming career with a surprise Scythe win. Both great games if you're into board games!
A week later Naomi and I took a 1 week breather in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, where my highlight was seeing unhuggable trees. The largest being 9m in circumference! We also revisited Naomi's memories of camping on the island, catching crabs and clam digging on the beach. We caught 19 crabs in total, unfortunately non were big enough to be eaten.
Initially, I thought we were going for the views, but soon it became apparent that Naomi had a different to-do list. Apparently, Vancouver is the place to be to eat Asian food outside of Asia. I should've known that marrying a foodie means travel destinations aren't based on scenes but on food. I'm glad they didn't charge me 2 seats on the flight back after that week... Anyway, the climate reminded me of home. Wet and humid. Ideal for someone whose nose had been clogged for the past 2 months to be able to breathe again, but also reminded me of what I did not like about Dutch weather. The wetness and gray skies. Believe it or not, while writing this the temperature is -31 C here, but it is dry and I will bet a Timbit on a clear blue sky later today, just like the past week. I'll deal with the congested nose.
Last 2 highlights were our Christmas dinner with turkey and ham prepared by Hoydi which I could help carve (and take home many leftovers). Secondly, a beautiful easy hike through Johnstone Canyon to view the frozen waterfalls and its dare devil ice climbers. It's a tourist attraction which always makes for fun viewings of unprepared tourists with no cleats slipping and sliding down the trail. The second part of the hike to the mud pots was very quiet and allowed for some Disney Wonderland like views in the valley.
Studying is going well, I'm still on track with my schedule to finish by the end of January and use February to revise. Looking forward to put the exam behind me and start working!
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As I'm writing this marks my 5th full day in Taiwan. Its been good, its also been a lot. But yk, any big life change will come with these sort of feelings. Before I came here a lot of people said (rather ignorantly) I was basically asian anyways, so I'll fit right in. They had a very narrow idea of what asia was like and thought, oh you tick some of the stereotype boxes, you’ll fit in and stay there forever. I always knew that wasn't true, and people were saying it in bad faith. I’m indian, I like a lot of things about Asian culture and I know more than the average westerner but I was born and raised in the West. Now matter what, I will always be a Westerner, ya know.
This is incredibly apparent to me as I have been living with 3 Japanese people. Now 4 since one just moved in. I find it incredibly funny, I was originally going to go to Japan back in 2020 and now I’m here in Taiwan getting the Japanese roommate experience. And I must say, it sure is something. I must preface, my roommates are incredibly nice. But that’s the thing, they’re too nice. They’re nice, polite, unobtrusive, and considerate to a fault. It makes me feel very uneasy. Like I can’t even make a sound. They’re so pleasant, have such inoffensive likes and interests that it feels so hard to be different even in the smallest things. For example, we clean a lot. Like they sweep up the hair on the floor around once or twice a day. And I shed farrrr more hair than they do and t’s just, i don’t know, strange. Or like they refuse to keep their belongings out, even if it’s neat. Like we always bring our toiletries and and out of the bathroom and leave nothing there. Even the floor mat gets put away after a shower. That blows my fucking mind. Like!?!?!? Why can’t I keep my shampoo inside the bathroom where its easy to access, why can’t the bathroom mat just, always be down. What’s the need to constantly put away and take things out. I don’t think this is reflective of Japan as a whole but moreso of these girls but, oh my god. It’s great that they are so clean. But as a very forgetful person, it makes me feel Veryyyyy on edge. But I have a feeling that sooner or later it will become less of an issue. It’s not a big deal, but yea. I’m just really not used to living in the same room as others. Also it doesn’t help that I can’t communicate effectively bc of the language barrier. We both try so hard but it just, doesn’t work out. It’s no ones fault though. It just is what it is. If we all shared an apartment with separate rooms, that’d be ideal. I could very easily do that. But this… it’s gonna a very interesting 3 months. My cousin offered for me to live with her if it gets too much, and i think I will take her up on it when my 3 month lease is up. Bc i’m NOT losing that money.
But tbh, i am also very different from my cousin. There are aspects of asian culture that I’ve always lived by that she will never like. But I feel like she’s more accepting than my roommates are. We coexist better. It feels no matter what, i will never fully mesh with anyone else. My existence has always been caught between two different paths of thoughts and people rarely consider a third path. But that’s okay, I’ve long accepted this about myself and made peace with it. It’s honestly funny how my cousin is different, but with my roommates our differences are a bit suffocating. Nevertheless I’ll never get tired of how mad my cousin gets when her bf and i talk to each other in chinese. It’s HILARIOUS. She’s like “BOTH OF YALL ARE NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS.. OH MY GOD” we enjoy to piss her off, it’s a love language. But for now I want to stay in the dorms. The next semester I’ll probably stay with her. Plus, my friends are coming back to Taiwan in january so i’ll have more than enough people to speak to in Chinese.
Honestly, this is living arrangement is the only challenging thing about living in Taiwan right now. Classes are a bit tough right now but I will easily catch up once my books come in. Taking public transport is getting easier by the day, and my chinese will no doubt improve but even at its current state, I can easily get around. I can order food, talk to cashiers, and even have a simple conversation with strangers. I’m overall doing great!! I’m just too introverted to be around people so often. Like the US is very different. The US is built off of solitary time. People commute all alone, live in separate rooms, it’s very easy to be alone and take up space. Well at least for me. Many cannot do that. But here, I’m always around others -- on the bus, on the train, at shops, at the dorms, on my walk to class, at the bus stop. Everywhere, I’m so lonely sometimes yet I am also surrounded. There are so many random times I want to cry but I kinda can’t. I always feel like others are staring at me but also averting their gaze. It’s a very unique sort of struggle. Of course, I choose this and I will never regret the decision, but there is a special sort of loneliness that comes with studying abroad, especially so far from home.
I tried to explain it to my roommates but my Japanese isn’t good enough. But their foreignness is different than mine. Sure, more people speak english here, and my chinese is better than theirs. But there are so many Japanese people here too. On the street people don’t stare at them. They pass for Taiwanese on a first glance, the culture isn’t all that different from theirs: they can buy food that they’re used to, They can call their friends and family at almost any time bc there’s barely any time difference, if something happened, it’d be easy to go home or have someone visit, they’re used to this sort of city. But for me, its completely different. Which I chose, I understand I chose it, but I still need some time to get used to it. It’s a big change. I didn’t understand how big of a change it’d be. I don’t think anyone can fully understand until they are there. It’s an experience for sure.
But I think all of this is forcing myself to become much louder about the way I am. I used to hate the way western culture was So loud about individualism. I thought, isn’t it good to be considerate of others.. Why must it always be about what I want. But now I’m like… yea there’s a level of consideration i can give but I refuse to live my whole life trying to be palatable to others and take up as little space as possible. I will find my own way that’s a fusion of every culture I’ve encountered. There are no arbitrary societal rules I want to follow, only my own judgement. I follow my rules and I need to be louder about that.
I think a lot of people, regardless of ethnicity want to be like that and cannot bring themselves to do it. Like comparing the nightlife of taiwan with the daytime, I can tell there are so many repressed people out here looking for escape. This is true everywhere, but I just realized it here in Taipei. These next few months will be about me learning how to do that and be okay with it. I’m excited to see what kind of person I’ll be at the end of these 6 months. It’s day 5 and I feel like I’ve reached so many realizations about the world outside of my bubble of existence and it’s lovely. I can only imagine what the future will bring.
#heres a longer version of all my feelings at the current moment. also unrelated to any sorta societal thing. I just wanna cut my hair. this#humidity is soooo mean to my hair... I also hate how much it sheds bc of the thing I mention but yea... immma live in a pixie cut and a wid#grey hat for the next 3 weeks#🐌.txt
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A Statement Through Horror: BDG and YouTube
In his video announcing his departure from Polygon Bryan David Gilbert [BDG] stated, “I want to make things that one day people will make a show like unraveled about.” [Paraphrasing here]. Since that announcement he has made some of the most interesting and engaging comedy videos on the platform. On Bryan’s channel, there is a section called “bdg’s scaries” that contains three videos. The first how to make jorts was released April 27, 2019 and will not be part of this analysis, as we are focused on the other two videos. These two videos are Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss which was released on October 25, 2020 (two months before his final Unraveled video and departure from Polygon) and Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97 which was posted March 3, 2021. If you have not seen these videos yet you should stop reading immediately and go watch them both (honestly everything on his channel is amazing, especially the surprisingly compelling and personal Dances Moving! series) before continuing to read this as I will be spoiling both of them. The position of YouTube celebrity has been the source of a good bit of commentary as short form online media has become more and more central in our culture. Bryan has created two videos that I feel do an excellent job of exploring the relationship between youtuber and audience. I should also point out that this is merely my interpretation of these videos and is in no way BDG’s intended message. I’ll start by going over the first video. Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss opens with BDG outside an apartment building, standing in front of a black car. BDG points up at one of the windows and says, “Three years ago I was living in that apartment right there. Third floor, leaky windows, cockroaches, the worst.” I do not know if the real life BDG actually lived in that building, but the 3 years timeframe does line up neatly with his beginning to work at Polygon. BDG continues to bad mouth his old apartment and mentions how he has turned it all around stating, “But just last week I paid off my very first Subaru Impreza. And I own my own house in Nebraska.” This radical change in life-style he credits to, “. . . [working] from home, [making] my own hours, and [being] my own boss. And you can do it too.” I think that it is interesting that BDG’s career up to that point mirrors that of his character, going from newly graduated content creator making small videos in his apartment to one of the most popular creators on Polygon. And all that being accomplished through work that many (rightly or wrongly) would not see as fitting into the mold of the traditional 9 to 5. The idea of making millions working from home, at your own pace, and with no boss is intrinsically tied to the mystique of the YouTube celebrity. Moving into BDG’s office he explains that he makes $20k a month working on spreadsheets. A massive spreadsheet appears behind him that is dated, 01.12.88 (nothing of note happened on January 12, 1988 and the only thing that happened on December 1, 1988 is a large cyclone that struck Bangladesh, January 12, 1888 is the day of the Schoolhouse Blizzard which struck the midwestern US and killed 235 people (remember this for later)) and is filled, seemingly randomly, with garbled nonsense symbols. Many of the cells are the same as other cells and there are empty cells scattered haphazardly throughout the spreadsheet. BDG explains that he got this strategy from Dorian Smiles. In exchange for working on these spreadsheets BDG receives $10k - $20k a month (an amount that lines up pretty damn well with the amount he should be getting through his Patreon page currently, I don’t know if this was true when the video was made though) from Dorian. Wanting to know where the money is coming from BDG asks his bank and they explain that he is wiring the money to himself from another account he has. He grows confused as to the nature of this work and the disproportionately large amount of money it brings in, explicitly mentioning his confusion as to how the money is coming from someone with, “. . . my name and my voice.” and sets about to find and confront Dorian Smiles. BDG sets off for Center Nebraska, which is close to where Dorian lives (a small town in the northeast corner of Nebraska). He states that Dorian’s address hasn’t existed since 1888 (that’s a familiar year isn’t it?) when it was supposedly condemned during an enormous blizzard and is, “. . . just woods now.��� The video then transitions to BDG walking through dark woods while his narration talking up the Dorian Smiles program continues becoming increasingly broken. He comes across a figure sitting in the woods that is convulsing strangely, when he calls out to it the figure turns and is him (heretofore named Dorian). Dorian slowly puts his hands over his nose and mouth while staring at BDG at which point the narration cuts out. BDG copies Dorian and when Dorian removes his hands in a flourish, BDG does the same to reveal that he no longer has a mouth. The video quickly cuts back to BDG in his office talking about the program, he asks the viewer, “Why don’t you join me?” and then sits back and smiles while that line repeats without him moving his mouth. The most pressing mystery is who Dorian Smiles is. I think the most likely answer (and one I know I am not the progenitor of) is that Dorian is a reference to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, the story of a young man that has a portrait that ages and takes on the ravages of the debauched life its subject lives while Dorian himself does not. BDG would therefore be the unwitting recipient of that blessing, reaping massive rewards while his double, Dorian, lives in poverty and solitude. I like this explanation for Dorian, but I find it to be far more mechanical than thematic. On a metatextual level you could read that Dorian represents the character of BDG. The person that is in all of BDG’s videos, and the one with whom so much of the audience forms a parasocial relationship. In this lens the parallels with BDG’s own life make more sense. By this point in BDG’s career it is not difficult to imagine him feeling stifled creatively at work (I feel comfortable saying this given how soon after this video came out that he departed Polygon). His character had grown too large, potentially becoming alien to him, no longer reflecting the art he wanted to make and so he made a video about a distorted version of himself stealing his voice. In this way the video becomes a statement on his artistic integrity and his desire to test new boundaries and go in different directions. In hindsight, with the knowledge of his departure and then success after leaving Polygon, the video becomes almost heartwarming (if it weren’t terrifying) in the same way that a before and after picture of someone improving themselves can be. We will return to the Dorian Smiles system, but now we must move to the second video, Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97. I’ll save you the blow by blow breakdown and aim for a quick summary instead. This video is a simple stationary shot of an old CRT tv. A VHS tape is inserted and a video of a man teaching his, evidently young, son how to use a camcorder plays. It is relatively wholesome and corny in that way that all home movies are and when it ends the tape rewinds and the segment plays again, this time with a few deviations. Over replays the father becomes aware of what is happening and begins trying to reason with Jake through the camcorder begging him to stop watching the tape and move on. The father is menaced by a large shadowy figure that does not speak or move when confronted. Eventually the father resorts to simply taking the camera and recording his own screams of pain. On the final rewind the father simply says, “Attaboy.” before calmly walking out the room and into the dark hallway, a doorway opens at the other end, filled with orange light, and the father walks through and down stairs. The final shot of the video is of the television, showing the hallway, as orange light begins to flicker in the background of the left side of the TV. The sound of the father descending the stairs transitions from the TV to diegetic and a shadow appears briefly in the light. On one level the video is clearly a statement about loss and about trauma. Jake is losing himself by watching these videos on repeat, trying in vain to relive a happier time. In that desperate desire to regain what was lost he is distorting it, making it into something it isn’t, hurting it. At the beginning the father says, “Never ever press the rewind button, otherwise you might record over a precious memory. We always keep the recording going forward . . .“ I think there is an additional, and more personal for BDG, reading however. The father is the modern character of BDG, and we, the audience, are Jake. He is pleading with us to leave the past behind and move on. This was only his 3rd video that he posted after leaving Polygon. It is a plea from him to leave the old character behind and stop trying to make one into the other. To stop obsessively comparing the new videos to the old. To let the future be the future and let the past be the past. He is telling us that his new work will not be like the old, that he has progressed past that and that now his viewers need to as well. The detachment and confusion of Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss has transformed into a desire to move forward. But he needed to ensure that his audience was ready to come with him, and so he made a video about loss and the dangers of sinking too far into it. I know that there are some of you that feel I am reading too much of what I assume to be BDG’s thoughts and emotions into these interpretations, and I am the first to admit that I might be. In no way am I trying to say these are the only interpretations of these videos or even that they are correct. I think there is so much more of an artist that they put into their work than they realise. I do not know the mind of BDG, only he does, but these videos made me feel that I had a glimpse into the feelings of a man whose work I admire. These videos are either longer or a drastically different tone to the material he has put on his own channel and as such they stood out to me. They felt different, and they seemed to ask for a different level of scrutiny. On some level maybe BDGs videos can not be divorced from the story of BDG as a content creator, the same as any modern internet semi-celebrity, or indeed any artist. I guess there was also a part of me that wanted to answer the call to action I heard when BDG left Polygon, to unravel his work. I hope in some small way I’ve been able to do that.
#bdg#brian david gilbert#analysis#youtube#scary#When the dad screams towards the end of Teaching Jake I felt that in my soul.
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Hello. I am, as you know, an American. I turned eighteen in 2014, voted in my first presidential election in 2016, and voted in my second presidential election last week via early voting in the state of Texas.
I’m reflecting right now on the difference between those experiences. This is going to be a very self-indulgent essay.
The 2016 election was in my third and final year of undergrad at Texas A&M University. At the time, I was living with a roommate who grew up in a town of 2,000, all of them members of her church. I loved her very much, but she was the most sheltered person I’ve ever met.
I was only a few years ahead of her. My home growing up was deeply liberal about many of the things that counted, but deeply conservative on equally important things. For me, leaving for college was a radicalization speed-run.
I, a good Memphis girl, moved to Texas and encountered for the first time in my life white homogeny and everything that comes with it. I made most of my friends at A&M through a Christian orientation camp that I attended, then worked at. I went to school at a history department that was overwhelmingly male and war-obsessed.
My second semester, I was randomly sorted into a writing seminar on the American Civil War and Reconstruction. There were eight other students in that class, all of them Texans. By day two I had gotten into a open fight with one of my classmates after he used the phrases “one of the humane parts of slavery” and “the secession declarations are moving and beautiful appeals, if you read them,” and “well I’m not going to criticize my own state.”
We got into at least one yelling match per week from that point forward. It was a formative experience for me-- not just him but the seven other students that took his side every time because they just couldn’t conceptualize anything outside of their own experiences, and frankly, I couldn’t either.
It rocked my world to be surrounded by people who told me, among other things, that their high schools flew the Confederate battle flag or Lee was their all time role-model (because he actually didn’t want to secede! He didn’t believe in it, but Virginia did, so he put his own qualms aside and served his country, and that’s what we all have to do). I ran a survey once by knocking on every door in a dorm hall and asking the two people inside why the Civil War happened.
I feel like you can guess the most common answer I got. Only two said slavery. Six didn’t know what the Civil War was.
The last week of the semester, my class read a collection of recorded oral accounts of freed slaves during Reconstruction. My nemesis told me that he “didn’t realize black people actually had it bad.” At the same time, I was struggling with my sexuality, my relationship to my religion, my relationship with my parents, and a handful of newly-diagnosed but long-existing mental illnesses. I wasn’t having fun.
Over the next three years, I tried my hardest to humanize the people that said disgusting things about minorities, poverty, and me personally. I barely won on that one, and I’m actually really proud that I did, even if it took me a few years. I can trace the biggest change in me directly to my nemesis from the history department, the kid that made me so mad that I started arguing back. I was too scared to do that before.
By 2016, I was in full existential spin-out-- a very suddenly liberal kid fighting my whole family, all of my classmates, and most of my friends in an explosive political climate, the first I had ever participated in.
I voted by Tennessee absentee ballot in 2016. On election night, I ordered takeout for me and my roommate, who I knew had voted red. Confident, like pretty much everybody, that Clinton would win, I was trying to show her that I didn’t hate her. She went to bed after dinner, also so certain that Clinton would win that she didn’t bother to stay up.
I sat in front of my laptop sewing a birthday present for a friend (Kenza, actually), while the votes came in. I wasn’t super alarmed when the map turned red. I just figured the blue states hadn’t finished counting yet.
The map didn’t get any bluer. By 1am, I knew what was about to happen. They called it an hour later, while I was sobbing on my floor. I threw up in the bathroom out of pure anxiety. I got two anonymous messages telling me the asker was going to commit suicide. Neither of them responded to my replies. I don’t actually know what happened to them.
I remember riding the bus to class the next morning and distinctly seeing that most of the racial minorities there had swollen eyes from crying. The girl with the pride stickers all over her laptop didn’t show up that day, and I’m kind of glad she didn’t, considering the way some of our classmates in the back were loudly talking about “the gays.” Hope she’s okay.
My roommate came home completely unaware that Clinton lost. I was crying in my room when that happened. I remember showing her a demographic map of who voted which way. She got visibly upset when she figured out what races how. I think she really did feel guilty.
That Thanksgiving, one of my cousins tweeted, “I can’t wait to go argue with my liberal cousin today. The wins. Keep. Coming,” an hour before he walked into my house. Inauguration day was January 20, 2017. I decided to go to law school a week later, the day the president signed the Muslim ban. That’s when I figured out for the first time just how much power the courts have. The last three years have only enforced that.
I got angrier and angrier during law school, egged on by a few friends but more than anything just... finally conscious of exactly how the American system works and exactly who’s behind it. I still live in Texas, farther west now, and I’m working my first legal job. I’m going to be a licensed attorney next week.
I went back and forth for months about how this election was going to shake out. I knew there wasn’t going to be an overwhelming red majority this time, but my big fear was an election close enough that the Supreme Court could take it. That fear doubled last month, at RBG’s death.
I was hoping for a blue enough victory on election night that there wouldn’t be a week of uncertainty, but that was unlikely, and it didn’t happen. I obsessively refreshed my election map all of Wednesday and Thursday, aware that at least some states would flip after mail-in ballots came in, but unsure which would.
Again, my great fear was a blue victory held down by only one state. Given (I would say “any” chance here, but I don’t mean “any” chance because genuinely jurisdiction or facts or legal merit don’t matter to the Supreme Court) an opportunity to make one (1) decision that hands over a red election, please know that a conservative supermajority would take it. I cannot emphasize enough how true that is and how important it is for all of us to grasp that.
Watching Georgia flip was one of the best experiences of my life, and it’s a little hard for me to articulate why, but I’m going to give it a shot here. I’m southern. I’m from the South, and for this conversation it’s really important that I’m from Memphis, a black city and a center of black music and culture.
When people think about the South, they think of the white South, and on some level, they should. It is absolutely essential to understand the white South in order to understand American history. Let me be 100% clear here. That is not a good thing. American majority history is not good. We are not a good country.
It’s near-impossible to understand why that’s true without knowing exactly what happened in the white South and exactly what is still happening there now. With that, however, is another truth that most folks don’t get.
The SouthTM is white and needs to die. The South as it actually exists is partially white yes, but it is also everyone else that lives here, particularly black folks. Southern culture is black, not white. Georgia flipped because the people that have always, always been there finally got to crack apart the conservative machine holding the South hostage.
That’s amazing. It’s fucking mind-blowing. I watched it happen at 3:30 in the morning days after Election Day, and holy shit holy shit, Georgia flipped. Atlanta won. Holy fucking shit.
I would be terrified right now if only Georgia flipped, because SCOTUS would have found a way to throw out a few thousand votes. Inevitable. Absolutely certain on that one.
With a few states of buffer, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I really do think it’s over.
I came home after work on Friday and immediately went to sleep because I hadn’t really done that since Tuesday. I woke up at noon today, checked the map, checked my messages, and saw what happened while I was gone. After that, I went back to bed until 5:30pm. I’m really just getting up now, after most of 24 hours asleep.
I don’t know if I would say that I’m happy right now, but I am overwhelmingly relieved. I’m under no illusions that a Biden victory will solve everything, but I also do think this is a real thing to celebrate. I’ll take suggestions on how to celebrate right now, actually, since I’m finally awake.
I’ll be angry forever, I think, but this is a good thing, and I’d like to enjoy it. If you’re happy right now, hey, tell me about it. I’ll be thrilled with you. I want to hear it. Congrats to all of us. Love y’all.
#that's me rambling thanks and gig em#there are some things to tag here huh#uspol#politics#suicide#this would be a good time to remind everybody that i am white#so take that into account re: Georgia#personal i guess#not comics sorry
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2020 Fanfiction Round-Up
I do one of these every year! And have since I think 2016. Can’t break a tradition even if it’s been a clusterfuck of a time and filling this out was in some ways an exercise in remembering the ways I have failed myself as a writer this year.
But oh well!
Total Year-Long Wordcount: I’ll post the final final number tonight after I finish the writing I want to do this afternoon (and plan to do this afternoon), but it’s currently 451,803 words written this year. Guessing I’m going to land somewhere around 453,000ish. (AO3 claims a higher number than that but that’s because it is counting the entirety of fics where I posted chapters this year.
This year I wrote and posted: I wrote a fair number more than I posted (there are five fics finished but for various reasons unposted on my hard drive) but based on Tumblr I posted 78 posts in my fic tag, which, not including chapter specific updates and three sentence meme answers (but including at least two Tumblr-only longer fics), probably comes out to about 60 or so “full length” fics that saw the light of day in 2020.
Overall Thoughts
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?
Well, I wrote more than I did last year, which is sort of a surprise to me (all things considered) but also maybe not, because I was doing a lot less of most other things that could’ve been occupying my time, including two hours daily of commuting.
But still less than I did in 2018. Which is fine.
What’s your own favorite story of the year?
Lord, I don’t know. It depends on when you ask me. Lately I’ve been in a bit of a “I hate everything I’ve written ever” state of mind, so that makes it sort of hard to do any kind of...reasonable assessment.
I know I’m proud of With Absolute Splendor but I have all these reservations about it and I can’t reread it for the most part because I always notice new things I wish I’d done differently. I feel pretty good about efforts in a common cause but something about it still makes me cringe, which I suspect has to do with my general self-consciousness. I have a hard time feeling unreservedly proud about...anything I wrote this year, really.
I feel like the closest I get is maybe nor autumn falter which I am pretty pleased with and also which does hurt me a lot personally. Or I did end up overall pretty pleased with what came out of By Proxy.
But also the more I look at this question the more I start hating all my own work, so...guess this is kind of coming at a bad time.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I mean, I started writing in my first non-English fandom in many years, and specifically one where I was trying to engage more with the cultural background of the setting (in a way I wasn’t with, say, Death Note, when I was writing Death Note fic). So that was a risk. And I learned that it’s very stressful and there’s so many ways to make mistakes and I am, in many ways, a coward. But also I think I’ve learned a fair amount thanks to a lot of very patient people on the internet, so...there’s that.
Otherwise...I mean, I got ambitious with a few projects this year (the Big Bang fic and With Absolute Splendor stand out), but I’m not sure how much I really tried new things.
I feel like I had to fight myself a little on writing straight up bad sex for By Proxy - I planned on it being hot, and it really wasn’t. It was mostly just miserable. Which made for a better fic, but was a new experience for me as far as ‘I thought I was going to write porn and that isn’t what I wrote.’
From my past year of writing, what was….
My most popular story of this year:
By far, With Absolute Splendor. In fact, it has now become my second most kudosed fic of all time, behind only fuckin Life in Reverse. So like. That’s a thing.
(It is still less than half as many as Life in Reverse, but for context Life in Reverse has been around for going on eight years.)
Most fun story to write:
Most fics where I feel like “I’m having so much fun writing this!” also go through a “oh god I hate this it’s terrible” phase which makes this sort of hard to assess. But I did have overall a lot of fun writing Mutual Friends despite all my frustration with the canon-wrangling I had to do to make it work in my head.
But also I feel like both Retributive Justice and Embedded were in different ways deeply iddy fics that were just fun to write. That actually goes for a lot of the Whumptober fics. That was a very self-indulgent month. Excited to do it again in February (hopefully, if I can write things in a timely manner at all).
Story with the single sexiest moment:
I feel like the beauty of your repair might be my personal favorite smut I posted this year, but I think my personal favorite that I wrote is in the big bang fic nobody will see until January.
I feel like most of the sexiest moments I’ve written this year are in the porn fics I’m going to start posting in January also. But just generally I feel like the beauty of your repair is the sexiest thing I wrote and posted.
Most “Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story:
I mean, I Come With Knives is definitely up there. It’s not that wrong or anything, but it got pretty intense in some ways I wasn’t expecting. Mostly in how much blood got involved, which was actually more than I’d had it involved in a sex thing before! Kind of surprises me that I haven’t previously done more with bloodplay stuff but. Well. First time for everything!
I don’t think this was a year that really had any “wow, what the fuck, Lise” things in it. Nothing on the level of last year’s winner. I’m almost disappointed in myself.
Abattoir was definitely the story that generated the weirdest conversation and creepiest search questions, though, so it does get points for that.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I feel like the writing of everyone else is spring bound was a lot of...me thinking through my Jiang Cheng feelings and specifically my Jiang Cheng post-canon feelings.
the martyr, the victim was pretty formative in shaping how I think about both Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji and their relationship with each other. It was the first fic I wrote that really dug into them in any way, I think, and definitely one that informed how I thought about writing Lan Xichen later.
Hardest story to write:
I was thinking it was the one that I haven’t posted yet but I did technically finish, aka my Big Bang fic, the terrible threesome fic, the massive “I’m gonna keep everyone in the Yi City arc alive” AU that I started shortly after finishing The Untamed and finished in December. So I spent most of the year writing it.
But then I was like - no, I’m going to have to go with we live until we die even though it’s technically been ‘in progress’ for five years and really kicked into gear in 2019 and I just finished it and posted it this year, because that fic was like. The culmination of a big arc in an enormous verse dealing with a whole lot of balls in the air and trying to tie up a whole lot of threads. It was ambitious and the stakes were high and it was full of plot and action which are not two of my strengths...frankly I’m still amazed I pulled the damn thing off.
Biggest Disappointment:
I think it is better if I refrain from going too in depth on this because it would just end up as me listing a bunch of my perceived failings. But I think off the top of my head I’m frustrated by the fact that I still haven’t really managed to write a XueXiao smut fic that quite hits the spot for me, myself. I’ve written two and for various reasons I don’t really like either of them.
Biggest Surprise:
The fact that my Jiang Cheng fic took off the way it did. Legitimately did not see that coming! At all! I mean, I’m delighted by it but it wasn’t what I saw happening as far as “niche I’d find in this fandom” or “thing I’d write that people would really enjoy reading.”
Particularly with By Proxy. That fic got a lot more attention than I would’ve expected.
Most Unintentionally Telling Story:
I feel like every fic I write with Xue Yang in it tells you something about me and most of those things are things that make me, on some level, deeply self-conscious, but I try not to think about that too much.
I feel like the most telling story is maybe we all drift sometimes because I literally wrote it out of a depressive episode about a bad brain day but that wasn’t unintentional.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
1. So it turned out that if you touched the tendons of a dead person’s wrist and channeled a little bit of spiritual energy just right, it made the fingers twitch and curl like they were still alive. (Abattoir)
2. Here’s the thing: your Daozhang is glorious when he kills. (tear out all your tenderness)
3. Turned out that a sect leader’s head came off like anyone else’s. (Unnatural Selection)
4. The first hint that anything had gone awry was the letter from Lan Wangji (His Excellency Hanguang-jun, pardon me) that simply said have you heard from Wei Ying? (some good mistakes)
5. What Jiang Cheng wanted to do, more than anything, was to go home and take a nap. (everyone else is spring bound)
Favorite Line(s) from Anywhere:
I usually keep this to 10 but because I’ve been in such a :| place about my own writing I indulged myself this once.
1. Sometimes it felt like all he had done since descending the mountain was shatter his own dreams and accumulate regrets. (nor autumn falter)
**
2. It felt like she was holding all the components of a bomb in her hands, half assembled. If she moved the right way they would stay just that: components. But if she moved the wrong way… (til my judgment day)
**
3. He should have killed him. Should have been the one to strike that blow, in revenge for Jin Zixuan and their sister and everyone else dead for Wei Wuxian’s pride. Maybe then there would not be this gnawing, aching thing embedded in his chest; this itching, unfinished feeling. Maybe then he would not feel torn in two, sometimes like he should have reached out with his other hand and sometimes like he should have struck truer and sometimes both, in the same moment. (Interstitial)
**
4. He owed Wei Wuxian more than he could ever give back in this lifetime. Forgiving him felt like betraying his sister’s memory. Not forgiving him felt like trying to walk with a thorn in his foot. He was just - stuck, caught like a demon in a spiritual net.
Jiang Cheng thought of the way Wei Wuxian looked at Lan Wangji, with warmth and trust and love, and the aching, sick jealousy he had no right to feel returned. He felt a little like a child watching someone pick up a toy he’d abandoned and suddenly realizing that he wanted it back. (everyone else is spring bound)
**
5. You close your eyes and think about how he looked back in that town, Shuanghua slicing clean through a man’s neck, opening it to the spine, and think dizzily that he could open you like that and it’d be good, as long as it lasted. (tear out all your tenderness)
**
6. When Wangji loved, he loved with his whole being, without reserve. And now he had been placed between the rock of his convictions and the hard place of his devotion to Wei Wuxian. (the martyr, the victim)
**
7. He spent a week turning the idea over in his head. Studying it like a corpse he was going to dissect, poking at it, cutting it open and examining its insides. (dead reckoning)
**
8. When the world hurt you, that was the only thing to do, after all. Hurt it back, harder, worse. Spill rivers of blood for every drop it squeezed from you.
And when the end came, never go quietly. (the blood in your mouth)
**
9. I would stand with you through the end of the world, said Loki’s voice in his head, and Steve’s heart wasn’t in his chest anymore, was somewhere off on another planet where Loki was lying dead in a ruined city. (we live until we die)
**
10. Was it always going to be like this? Stumbling into traps, tripping over familiar skeletons, slicing himself open on the edges of old hurts. Was there really such a thing as leaving the past behind? He still felt stuck in it, unable to move, and every time he thought he might be finally dragging himself free something pulled him back. (With Absolute Splendor)
**
11. His chest was full of poison. His throat was full of grief. And he was still a little drunk.
Jiang Cheng went to his room, sat down on his bed, put his face in his hands, and cried until he couldn’t breathe. (By Proxy)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
I think the scene from nor autumn falter of Xiao Xingchen just crying his heart out over Xue Yang’s dead body would be up there.
The Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian hug from the end of With Absolute Splendor.
Okay, just gonna say it: Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao having sex by the table with Nie Mingjue’s headless corpse on it. So sue me.
The scene in the blood in your mouth where Song Lan has stabbed Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen is following the line of Fuxue to the latter. I have a very clear visual of it in my head and if I could art I’d art it.
Xue Yang with the hallucinatory Xiao Xingchen from liberate spirits, liberate souls.
Fic-writing goals for 2021:
Finish Walking Far From Home.
Maybe I’ll finish some of these MCU WIPs? I’d kind of like to, on an abstract level if nothing else.
Become a more well-adjusted human being about the relationship between my productivity and my self-worth.
#fanfiction round up#confessions of a frustrated writer#you'll get my fun statistical analysis nonsense later
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days go by and seasons change (lets try again next winter)
julie's ready for a year away from home, studying and trying to refind the magic in music. luke's about to start on a summer tour around europe opening for a band. they meet one night, sparks fly and emotions run hight. now they've just got to try and see if they can maintain a long distance friendship.
ok hello hi so this is my wild ride of a fic that i’m working on, a scene (much later on) came to me in a dream, and much like how smeyer wrote twilight, i just had to find out how they got there fhbdj there’s some drinking which would be classed as underage in the us but is legal in the uk which is where it’s set so
trigger warnings!! alcohol and swearing
also on ao3 –– [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | extras 1 & 2 ]
winter
There was a line almost outside the door for the coffee shop, people wanting something to warm them up or just to avoid the sudden downpour of rain. Julie had been in England for just over a month now and she still wasn’t used to the randomly changing weather, how were you supposed to plan an outfit for the day if it started mildly sunny and ended in a thunderstorm? It was January! She had come prepared for snow, not rain, damn it.
From her table in the back corner of the cafe, hands wrapped around a mug and headphones blaring music, Julie people watched. Sure, she was supposed to be working on an essay, but she’d been there for half an hour already. She deserved a little break.
Even through her music she can hear the sounds of the cafe around her. Customers placing orders and rain on the windows and cups hitting tables and people laughing and it’s comforting. The sounds of life going on around her while she pretends to be doing work.
Pretends, because she’s been trying to work on this essay for a week now and getting nowhere with it.
When she’d signed up for the study abroad scheme her mind had been on experiencing a new country, on the places she could visit, the new friends she could make, the thoughtful looks she could escape.
She hadn’t thought much about the work she would have to do, the essays that would need to be written, the awkwardness of settling into a new place, the strangeness of hearing new accents.
The actual creative side of her course she found easy enough, but when it came to writing about her stylistic choices and her themes and her influences and how they all tied back with what they’d been reading about? She was drawing a blank.
Blowing on her drink, Julie let her eyes wander around the coffee shop. It was a fairly small place with an extensive collection of teas and fresh baked cakes and free wifi. She’d found it by mistake while looking for a music shop her first week in the city, they’d lured her in with carrot cake and coffee and she’d been coming back at least once a week ever since. A group of boys push through the door, shaking off hoods and laughing at something as they join the queue.
Something about them seemed vaguely familiar, like she’d seen them from a distance in a dark club, or scrolled past a group photo of them on her instagram suggested posts. Or maybe it was because they just looked like every other group of young adults she’d come across, both back home and in Liverpool. One thing she had learnt pretty quickly was that boys were the same everywhere.
She was saved from mulling it over by her phone vibrating on the table with a text, Carrie’s name popping up on the screen and Julie swapped her cup for her phone, a small smile already tugging at her lips as she read the series of texts on her screen.
Julie’s attention is dragged away from her phone by something – someone – knocking into her table, sending her pen rolling off and her cup to shake. Pulling her headphones out of her ears she looks up as the culprits eyes widen, mouth pulling into a grimace as he stares at the coffee now running down the back of her jacket that had been happily sitting in the spare chair.
“Shit,” he mutters, already pulling a napkin out of his back pocket and dabbing at the mess. “I’m so sorry, I uh– wasn’t looking and the chair leg and fuck I’m so sorry about your jacket, can it be dry cleaned?”
And he looks so sincere in his apology, all wide sad eyes and words stumbling out too quickly and messy brown hair curling out from under a beanie and accent that sounds like home, that Julie swallows back the annoyed retort she had ready to go.
It was just an accident. Accidents happened. At least it wasn’t over her laptop. Blowing out a breath, Julie shakes her head at him once, pushing back her chair to inspect the damage.
“It’s fine, honestly. Don’t–” she pauses, holding up the denim on either side of the collar and frowning at the pretty large brown stain. “Worry about it.”
Can she wash it? She’s never tried, but well. She bites her lip as she looks at it, the stranger awkwardly standing just a short distance away with a wad of used napkins and his half spilt drink, and yeah, she definitely won't be able to wear it tonight.
“I’m so sorry.” He says again and someone must catch his attention over her shoulder because his eyes dart away from her, eyebrows shooting up and shrugging his shoulders and, it’s kinda cute. The way he seems to be hovering, unsure if she’s going to shout at him.
“Seriously, it’s fine. Accidents happen, right?” She shoots him a quick smile – though not missing the way his cheeks turn slightly pink – before turning back to her jacket, carefully laying it out on the chair to hopefully dry out enough for her to stuff it in her bag before she needs to leave. She really hopes it stops raining.
“I uh– shit I’m sorry. Again. I gotta–” He gestures to the door where Julie can see his friends waiting for him, barely contained grins on all their faces that has Julie rolling her eyes. Boys. She looks back at him, raising an eyebrow even as her lips tick up into a small smile, she’s rewarded by his cheeks going red, the hand still holding the napkins rubbing at the back of his neck and a stuttered ‘goodbye’.
Sitting back down, Julie rolls her eyes again, muttering under her breath about ‘annoying cute boys’ and ‘favourite jackets’. Leaning down to pick up her fallen pen with one hand while the other tapped out a reply to Carrie. An hour more of sitting here, attempting to do her essay and then she’d have to go if she wanted enough time to get ready.
\\
“So where are you?”
Julie couldn’t hear what was being said on the other side of the phone, but judging by the way Carrie was rolling her eyes the answer wasn’t correct. Flynn leans her head on Julie’s shoulder, their linked arms drawing them closer as they walk, it’s not the most comfortable way to walk, but they’ve already had a few drinks and Flynn gets a little clingy after one. Julie puts her head on top of Flynns as they stumble along cracked stone streets.
“She actually might end up killing Bobby at this rate,” Julie mutters and is rewarded with Flynn letting out a laugh that has Carrie looking over her shoulder at them, eyes softening for a moment before she’s rolling them again. If she hadn’t known the other girl as long as she had, Julie would be worried about permanent eye damage.
“Fucking hell. Okay. Yeah, okay we’ll be like, ten minutes then. Yeah, yeah, okay bye.”
Sliding her phone into her back pocket Carrie took a half step back so she was walking with them again, linking her arm on Flynns other side.
“They’re at the Cavern Club,” Carrie looks at Julie over the top of Flynn’s head and lets out a loud sigh, “I know. That’s where we were going to go anyway. They’re so annoying.”
But she says it in a fond sort of way. Like how you talk about your neighbour's dog that barks too early in the morning and wakes you up, but always runs over to say hello to you through the fence when you walk past and brightens up your day. Annoying, but sweet.
Julie’s only met Carrie’s cousin Bobby once, it had been a short ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ type interaction as he ran into Carrie’s house to pick up his bag and then run straight back out again.
She’s never met the other three members of the band at all, but she knows, after doing a little bit of internet searching, that their band isn’t half bad. They’ve got some pretty good songs and a small following that she is sure is bound to get bigger by the time they’ve finished being the opener for whoever they’re touring with and their first album is out in the world.
The three of them flash their id’s to the security on the door, slightly giddy smiles on all their faces even now, still not used to it all being legal for them to drink under the age of twenty-one. But the security guy doesn’t even blink and then they’re walking down a flight of stairs, the air getting warmer and the sound of drums and guitars reaching them.
Carrie grabs hold of Flynn's hand and Flynn grabs a hold of Julies and then they’re weaving through people and avoiding knocking drinks out of hands.
Her attention is pulled from the crowd to the stage at the back of the room, a band playing a cover of something she can’t name, they don’t sound too bad, and the part of her that used to fall in love with music every time she heard it wants to stop and listen. But that part of her is small and quiet and shy now, so she keeps her grip on Flynn’s hand and follows along.
Julie doesn’t know how Carrie knows where she’s going but all of a sudden they’re coming to a stop, her free hand reaching out to balance herself on Flynn’s shoulder even as a small part of her is still trying to work out what the song is.
Turning her eyes away from the stage she looks at the five boys sitting at the table, a collection of bottles scattered across the wood, and Julie smiles at Bobby who’s standing up to hug Carrie, opens her mouth to say hello before stopping. Her brows furrow as she locks eyes with a shaggy haired brunette who’s own eyes are widening in realisation.
“You!” She blurts out before she can stop herself, and if anyone asks she would blame it on the three drinks she had before leaving the dorms, detangling her fingers from Flynn’s to point at him. With the music blaring so loud only the boys still sat at the table and Flynn heard her, the latter turning to raise her brows while Julie can see the boys trying not to laugh.
“He’s the guy who spilt coffee on my jacket earlier,” she shouts over the music, hand gesturing wildly at the table and Flynn follows her hand, eyes resting on the culprit.
“That was her favourite jacket!” Flynn props one hand on her hip and almost glares at him, but it loses part of its ‘scare factor’ when she starts swaying a little in place to the music. Well, Julie thinks it should lose some of it’s scaring power, but the guy still looks kinda worried, so who’s Julie to know?
“I said I was sorry!” He puts his hands up, shoulder raising to almost his ears, and with his eyes already open so wide and his hair curling slightly at the ends, Julie has to wonder how much trouble that look has gotten him out of over the years.
“You guys have already met?” Bobby jumps into the conversation before Julie has a chance to reply and Carrie is looking between them, lips pursed.
“This is the girl whose jacket Luke ruined earlier,” the blonde one says and Julie vaguely recognises him as being one of the boys from the cafe.
“Dude,” Bobby raises his eyebrows at the jacket ruiner – Luke, Julie reminds herself – shaking his head in disappointment.
“It was an accident!” Luke turns his sad kicked puppy look on Bobby before looking back at Julie, his hands lowering but his eyes still drastically wide, “I really am sorry about it.”
Julie tries, she really does, to hold on to that small kindle of annoyance that she’d felt upon seeing him again. But well, the jacket is already ruined and she’s come out to avoid doing an essay and she’s finding it really hard to be mad at someone so cute. Blowing out a breath she shakes her head at him.
“It’s fine, I’ll forgive and forget the whole thing if you buy me a drink.”
“That I can do,” the furrow in his brows smooths out and his shoulders relax and suddenly there’s a smile spreading across his face that seems to light up his eyes.
“So, you’ve met Luke. That’s Reggie, he’s our bassist,” Bobby nods at the dark haired guy sitting next to Luke who grins and waves, and it’s such an infectiously happy wave that Julie can't help but wave back. “Alex, kickass drummer,” the blonde who spoke earlier ducks his head a little, an almost shy smile on his face as he nods at them, “And Willie. Officially he’s one of our roadies, unofficially he’s just here to hype us up and do cool tricks in empty arenas.” Willie, who’s sat pressed against Alex’s side, raises his hand in a wave.
“This is Julie and this is Flynn,” Carrie points at them each before claiming the seat next to Alex and looking at Luke, “We’ll take 3 vodka lemonades. Please.” She only adds the please on the end after Flynn sits next to her, nudging her elbow into her side, Julie notices with a smile.
There’s a moment of bodies moving as Luke gets up from his side of the table, pulling Bobby along with him towards the bar and Reggie is waving his hand at her, nodding at the empty space along the bench next to him that she slides into gratefully.
They can’t really see the stage set up from here, but the music is still just as loud and Julie starts nodding her head along to the beat, trying to focus on the conversation happening on the other side of the table. Something about Carrie’s group and choreography and convincing someone to add in a dance break to a song. She’s laughing at something Willie said when a glass is slid across the table in front of her, a bottle of something passing over her to Reggie and she looks up in time to see Luke sliding into the space next to her, a small smile on his face.
“Forgiven and forgotten?” He asks, eyebrow quirked as he lifts his own drink, tilting it towards her in invitation.
“Forgiven and forgotten,” she agrees picking her glass up and tapping it against his beer bottle, shooting him a smile of her own before chasing the straw of her drink to take a sip, trying hard not to blush at the intensity of his stare.
//
It’s two hours later, three drinks and a deeply regrettable shot later, happily on the precipice of truly drunk but hanging out in tipsy land, when Julie shakes her head at Luke who’s standing on the bench. Tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration as he writes on the curved brick of the ceiling.
“Dude no ones gonna be able to even read that!” Reggie complains from next to her, his eyes squinting as if it will help him to read their names better. It doesn’t, Julie’s already tried.
“Why did we let the one with the worst handwriting do this?” Alex tilts his head to look up at Luke, who waves the hand not holding the pen in his face, almost hitting him but missing by several inches to the left and it sets them all off giggling.
“Because the rest of you are cowards!” He wobbles a little as he shuffles his feet to change angle, and Julie reaches out on instinct to hold his leg, fingers wrapping around his calf as if it will stop him from falling. His head drops down to look at her, teeth biting his bottom lip as he smiles at her quickly before going back to the ceiling.
To leave his – their – mark on a legendary musical site. Luke's words, the rest of them hadn’t been able to talk him out of it so they’d gone right into encouraging.
“I think you’re getting cowards and idiots mixed up,” Carrie mutters, head propped up on her hands, elbows resting on the table. Well, Reggie and Julie and Willie had gone straight to encouraging, the others were still on teasing.
“Do you want your name added or not?” Luke grumbles but Julie can see his pen moving, going over the letters of what she assumes is meant to be Dirty Candi, and bites her cheek to not laugh.
“Don’t forget it’s an ‘i’ instead of ‘y’ for candy!” Flynn leans forward, eyes on the ceiling as she shouts up at him and Luke says something, but it’s too quiet for any of them to hear.
It isn’t until he moves to get off the bench that Julie realises she still has her hand wrapped around his calf, her fingers idly tapping along to the song some guy with a guitar is playing behind them. Heat fills her cheeks (that she’ll blame on how warm it is in the club and the alcohol in her system thank you very much) as she lets go, pulling her hand back into her lap, watching from the corner of her eye as he jumps down and back into his seat, a proud smile on his face.
“Now when we’re big and famous people can come and hunt our names down.”
“And finally realise that you have awful writing and question how any of our songs get written,” Bobby grins at him, elbow nudging his side which sends Luke leaning into her to try and avoid it, sliding along the bench until there’s no space between them, and she can’t find it in herself to be too mad about it. He smells like tequila and mint and aftershave all mixed together, not really a good combination, but one she finds herself liking anyway.
“Well why don’t you start writing the songs, huh?” Luke retorts, and starts a back and forth with Bobby, Alex chiming in and Flynn watching it all like a tennis match, and Juile tries to follow it, but all she can think about is how Luke hasn’t moved back. How his thigh is pressed against her leg and his arm is resting around her back, hand near her hip and how if she wanted to, she could rest her chin on his shoulder and kiss his neck.
Not that she wants to kiss his neck. Does she?
Julie furrows her brows, biting her lip as she examines those thoughts, tries to decide if it’s the alcohol or the music or her lack of sleep or if she just wants to kiss him.
Flynn says something and it makes him laugh, loud and bright and unrestrained, head thrown back and eyes closed. And yeah, she just wants to kiss him. Fuck.
//
Reggie slings an arm around her shoulders, the other going over Flynns and tugging them together until their cheeks are all pushing together and Julie giggles, poking at his side with her partially trapped arm.
“What do we think chocolate tequila is like?” He asks, eyes glued to the chalkboard menu above them.
“Not as nice as the summer fruits one,” Julie says back, wrinkling her nose a little at the memory of when she’d tried it. If you liked chocolate, it was a bitter disappointment in her opinion. But she was also drunk enough now not to mind.
“Alex says we can’t get the coffee one. Thinks we’ll have a repeat of the red bull incident.” Luke appears on her other side, pushing his body into the small gap between her side and the next group of people. He’s stood so he’s facing her – them – and rests one arm on the counter top.
“Man he’s gotta get over that, it was one time,” Reggie mutters and Julie wants to ask what the ‘red bull incident’ is, but then Flynn is sliding three shot glasses towards them, salt and limes following, apparently having ordered without any of them noticing.
“We’re standing with mango!” Flynn shouts, shot already in one hand and salt on the other, clearly waiting for the three of them to catch up. Reggie lowers his arms and Julie can feel Luke’s hand brush past her arm as he moves to lick the back of his hand, she can feel herself flushing as she watches him do it. And is happy to note that he flushes just the same as he watches her lick her hand in turn.
Idly, Julie notices that Reggie counts them down, that Luke inclines his head at her before he lifts his shot to his lips, that Julie lifts her own, the liquid sliding down her throat with a slight burn that’s not eased at all by the lime she bites into. She squeezes her eyes shut against it and when she opens them sees Luke grinning at her, eyes full of something she can’t name but makes her want to blush again.
“Y’know what? Screw Alex, four of the coffee my good man!” Reggie shouts next to her, waving a hand at the bartender in front of them who just rolls their eyes but puts out four more shot glasses.
“Okay, you gotta tell us about the red bull incident,” Flynn finally asks what had been nibbling at the back of her mind from the moment Luke had spoken so she pulls her attention away from him and back to her friends as Reggie launches into his story that even grabs the attention of the bartender for a moment.
But Luke is a warm presence at her side, leaning into her space and breath ghosting against her neck as he chimes in the story. If she stepped back, just a little, she could lean her back against his chest. She wonders if he’d wrap an arm around her waist to hold her steady? Julie blinks and blows out a breath, raising an eyebrow as Reggie talks.
“Wait, how’d you get onto the roof?”
//
“So why Liverpool?” Luke asks, hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat as they aimlessly walk through almost empty streets, faint music coming from clubs and other drunk people giggling in doorways. The fresh air has helped a little to sober her up, but not enough for her to know where they’re going. But they’re following Carrie, who has a plan for the night and they’ve no option but to follow it.
Julie wraps one arm around herself, the other pushing hair over one shoulder as she thinks about it. There isn’t really a big fancy answer, no special reason for her choice, she shrugs at Luke, lips ticking up into a smile.
“It was the only place still with spots open,” she can see the slight confusion on his face and explains more, “I wasn’t going to take the study abroad year, but I changed majors and I needed to get away from home for a while. Carrie and Flynn had already signed up and the internet said the train didn’t take too long to get to Manchester or Glasgow.”
“You changed majors?”
Of all the things she’s said that hadn’t been the part she’d thought Luke would zone in on. It wasn’t really something she liked to talk about much, her fall away from music. She still loved it, still listened and wrote and sang, but the passion she’d once had, the magic she’d once felt whenever she sat at a piano? It had gone away. Had been gone for a long time. Had been gone for four years and she’d only been pretending she still felt the magic.
Everything she played or wrote was missing something and no one had seemed to notice but here.
It hadn’t been until one of her teachers in first year had pointed something out that Julie had finally confessed. And changed course and major the next week.
Everyone had tried to understand, had listened as she explained why she couldn’t do it. How her mom and music were so intertwined together in her head and her heart that it felt impossible to detangle them, to love and play music without always feeling like there was something missing. But she knew they didn’t really get it
So she’d signed up for the study abroad, and picked Liverpool because they had a good English Lit course and was close enough to her friends if she needed them. Okay, so maybe she’d lied a little, there was a fancy answer for why she’d moved, but picking Liverpool had just been random.
“Yup,” she pops the ‘p’ and glances ahead of them, where Willie has Alex clinging on to his back, running through a puddle and laughing loud and clear. She can’t help but smile at them, at the carefree way Willie spins around and Alex holds tighter, face red with whatever he’s trying to say between laughs. Luke must follow her gaze because he lets out a soft snort of laughter, and she can see him shake his head from the corner of her eye.
“I’d hate them if they weren’t so adorable together,” he muttered, but his gaze is soft as they both watch the couple; Willie lets Alex off his back and grabs hold of his hand before he had a chance to get too far away. They’re all soft eyes and teasing smiles and vibes that scream about being in love, you’d have to be blind not to see it. Julie looks away, feeling like she’s intruding on a private moment as they share a kiss.
“Tell me about the tour,” Julie says, drawing Lukes attention back to her and it’s the right thing to say because his face lights up with a smile that she’s sure is going to drive girls wild one day soon.
//
Julie nods along with the song blaring through the speakers, mouthing the words so herself as she scrolls through her phone, ignoring the press of bodies crowding the smoking area as best she can. From her spot near the wall, opposite the door, she can see Carrie and Willie and Alex dancing together, wide smiles and heads thrown back.
Flynn and Reggie are talking to a group of people off to the side and Julie can see the way Flynn has pulled her braids over one shoulder and is gesturing to Reggie every few words the way she does when she’s trying to hype someone up (she knows, from having been on the receiving end of it, many times). Bobby, standing with them, seems to find the whole thing hilarious, grinning around the cigarette hanging from his lips.
“Okay, favourite book?” Luke asks, leaning in close to be heard over the noise and if he doesn’t move back, well Julie’s not about to complain. The little space heaters on the wall don’t provide much warmth, and it’s January and she’s cold and someone ruined her jacket.
“Currently or of all time?” She asks, raising an eyebrow as she turns her head a little to look at him. Her heart stutters for a second at how close his face is to hers, she can see the small flecks of green in his eyes, can feel his breath ghost across her cheeks.
“Current,” he says and she can see as his eyes flicker down to her lips quickly before back up to her eyes and Julie really hopes she’s not blushing right now.
“Stardust. By Neil Gaiman. I’m reading it for one of my classes and it hits all the boxes for a fairytale.” She likes fairy tales, likes the idea of them, likes the message of true love and pure of heart and happily ever afters. This one just happened to involve lightning pirates which was a bonus. Okay, so maybe the lightning pirates were mostly a film detail, but still. “Favourite food?”
“There’s this little hole in the wall place down by the strip? They do the best cheeseburgers. If I could have one for every meal, I would.”
They’re still standing close together, eyes staring too intensely for a game of twenty questions and comments about cheeseburgers and Julie’s eyes flicker to his lips, can see the way they’re pulling up a little on one side. She wants to lean forwards, close the gap between them and press her lips against his. But then she shivers, shoulders hunching up around her ears as she rubs her bare arms, conscious of how close they’re sitting and how much she just kind of wants to steal his body heat.
“Are you cold?” He’s biting his lip, pulling back out of her personal space and Julie almost whines at the loss of contact and body heat and – well maybe she’s too drunk to be making smart choices right now if she’s five seconds away from whining.
“Well someone ruined my jacket,” she points out, eyebrows raised at him and is rewarded with his cheeks flushing and one hand rubbing at the back of his neck which she’s quickly coming to realise means he’s embarrassed or just a little flustered.
“I thought we’d agreed to forgive and forget about that?” He mumbles and before she can come up with a response Luke is standing up, shrugging his jacket off his shoulders and then he’s carefully draping it over her shoulders, fingers tapping lightly on her arm until she holds it out for him to slip through one arm hole, doing the same on the other side and then pulling her hair out from under the collar.
It’s too big on her, but the faux fur inside is soft on her skin and still warm from Luke and she can stick her thumbs through the little gaps created by the fastened buttons and if she turned her head a little she could smell his aftershave clinging to the collar. Julie can’t help the little smile that graces her face, rotating her shoulders to let the coat settle better on her body.
Looking up at him her brows furrow a little at the look on his face (if she wasn’t so drunk and giddy and tired she’d say it was something like awe but that made no sense. Why would Luke be looking at her in awe while she wore his jacket?), but it’s gone just as quickly as it appeared and he’s smiling at her, that wide smile from back at the start of the night when he’d handed her her drink and she’d tapped it against his.
“Thanks,” she tilts her head to the side, loose curls falling across her cheeks as she looks at him, a wide smile of her own and she opens her mouth to say something else – though she’s not sure what she’s going to say – when another voice cuts through and pops the little bubble they’ve created.
When did they even create their private conversation bubble? Julie doesn’t know, and from the way Luke’s head whips around to land on Flynn and Reggie and Bobby with wide eyes, he probably doesn’t know either. But it’s nice to know that he’d been enjoying their conversation as much as she had.
“We’re gonna get food, come on!”
//
“I wanted to be wrapped up in bed an hour ago,” Julie sighed but there’s no real annoyance in her tone as she hugs Luke’s jacket closed tight across her chest, shoulder brushing against his arm as they walk.
“But you also wanted pizza instead of McDonalds like everyone else.” And Luke has a point but she still pulls a face, sticking her tongue out at him and getting a laugh in return. She couldn’t even be annoyed at it, he had a nice laugh.
Plus, when she’d said she wanted pizza Luke was the only one who’d wanted to come with her, the rest of their friends going back to their hotels. He’d walked all the way to the takeaway with her, shared half of his chips and then started walking her back to her dorm, insisting on carrying her half eaten pizza too. It was all very sweet and kind and not helping her not want to kiss him.
“Where’s your first stop?” She asks, because he was about to start a tour and she had school and maybe if they were both back home they might have been able to give something a go, but they weren’t and Julie wasn’t really a one night stand kind of person.
“We’re heading up to Newcastle on Sunday to kick it all off,” there was a slight bounce in his step, his excitement almost palpable and Julie could tell that this was all he’d ever wanted. To play music to as many people as he could. A small part of her remembered what that was like, to want to share your songs with the world.
“Sing something!” She pulled him to a stop in the middle of the street, bouncing a little on the balls on her feet and grinning at him. Because she was still a little drunk and she missed feeling excited about playing music and here was this sweet charming guy who loved it so much and felt it with everything he had and Julie wanted to be like that again too. She wanted to think about music without it being tinged with sadness.
“What?” He laughed, eyes a little wide and glassy and with his hair looking more wild then it had when they’d started the night, but Julie was pretty sure she looked the same so she didn’t comment.
“Sing! Anything! Please?” Julie tried pouting at him, doing her best impression of Carlos and his puppy dog eyes and something about it must have worked because Luke huffs out a laugh as he looks at her, biting his lip in thought for a moment before he nods his head for them to keep walking before he starts singing.
His voice is a little rough, from screaming lyrics in the clubs and shouting to be heard in the bars, and his words are a little slurred because he’s a little drunk and a lot tired, but Julie’s sober enough to decide it’s one of the best versions of Mamma Mia she’s ever heard. As he gets to the first chorus she joins in.
They were just two slightly drunk young adults, singing in the street and if nothing else comes of his night she’ll always have this memory of unadulterated joy.
“You can sing,” he whispers and now it’s Luke’s turn to pull her to a stop with a hand on her arm and a look of wonder on his face. Julie shrugs a little and can feel her cheeks heating, but she keeps their eye contact and smiles at him.
“Only drunk in the streets.” Which is more true then he’ll ever know.
Luke opens his mouth to say something but she cuts him off by pointing over his shoulder at the building behind them.
“This is me.” She’s not sure what to do now, take her pizza and run? That seems a little rude, and unsafe. Julie’s not sure she can actually run in these shoes without falling. Luke looks over his shoulder quickly before looking back at her, blowing out a breath and nodding.
“Right, right.” He seems just as unsure as she is about what to do now, which makes Julie feel a little better about it.
“I should–”
“Can I–”
They both start at the same time and then Julie is laughing and Luke is huffing out a breath while a smile grows on his face. The only thing between them is a pizza box and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes keep flickering down to her lips.
“I can’t kiss you!” She blurts out, a hand quickly going up to cover her mouth and Luke’s eyes widen, taking a half step back, retracting his hand like he’d been burnt.
“That wasn’t– I– this–” Luke started stuttering, face going red and Julie quickly shook her head at him.
“That came out wrong! Fuck. I–” She curled her hands into fists at her sides, squeezing her eyes shut before opening them, “I want to kiss you, but I can’t.”
The shock on his face had softened at the start of her sentence only to morph into confusion at the end.
“You’re gonna have to explain this to me, Molina.” Luke still looks confused, but he’s still standing in front of her and that’s enough for her.
“I like you,” she dips her head as she says it, because Julie’s pretty sure she could really like him if given the chance, “but I’m no good at one night...things and you’re about to go on a tour and I’m stuck here and I just, I think– I think I’d like us to be friends. I think we could be really good friends actually.”
Because they’d only spent a few hours together and she’d laughed and smiled more in that time then she had in awhile. Luke was sweet and funny and had something to say about every song the DJ picked to play but sang along anyway. Which is why she doesn’t want to risk a friendship for one night in bed. The confusion on Luke’s face turns into understanding and the soft, slightly sad smile that he gives her tells Julie that she’s right. A friendship with him would be better than one really fun night.
“I get it,” and he carefully puts his hand back on her arm, squeezing slightly before pulling away. “And, for the record, I’m not very good at one night things either.”
Her heart beat sounds loud in her ears and it takes Julie a moment to refocus her thoughts. Friendship. No kissing. Friendship.
“Well, maybe if we can keep a friendship going until we next see each other we can try this moment again,” she waves her hand around them with a small laugh. They could probably keep a friendship going long distance, but Julie isn’t so sure that they’ll ever get a moment like this again.
“Deal,” Luke grins down at her and pulls his phone out of his back pocket and unlocks it, Julie raises her eyebrows at him when he holds it out for her, “In order to keep in touch we’re gonna need to exchange numbers.”
“You make a point,” she agrees, putting in her information and handing it back to him in exchange for her pizza box. “Text me when you get back to your hotel, okay? So I know you didn’t get lost.”
“Yes, boss.” His smile is a little teasing now and Julie shakes her head at him as she brushes past him to walk into her dorm. She’s half way across the road when stops in her tracks to turn back at him.
“Wait, I’m still wearing your jacket.” Julie stars to shrug the item off when Luke shakes his head, already starting to walking backwards down the street.
“No, keep it!” He shouts with a smile, “Means we’ll have a reason to see each other again and have another go at this.”
Julie just shakes her head at him with a laugh, watching as he walks away before tightening her grip on the box and finally making it into her dorm. She’s still got an essay to write and a pile of laundry to put away and magic in music is still missing, but she’s gotten herself a new jacket and a friend who she thinks could make her life a little brighter. So she’ll forgive and forget that she's home an hour later than promised.
#julie and the phantoms#jatp#julie molina#luke patterson#alex mercer#reggie peters#carrie wilson#willie#flynn#rosie vs writing#i just. really like making fake texts and igs and tweets lmoa#*fics
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I don’t even know what to say. Not that anyone was waiting for me to say anything, or that anything more needs to be said - I’ve seen others put this far more eloquently than I will - but I feel like I need to get some of these emotions out (even though writing it out and posting it makes it feel even more real and more awful).
My love for this book, this movie, this fandom has been unprecedented. I’ve always loved fiction, always loved movies and books, always loved losing myself in them. But the feelings this story brought out of me were like nothing before or since. I finished the book on a Saturday night, a few days before seeing the movie for the first time. It was winter, but until I stepped outside that evening - running to get an unnecessary coffee, just to shake myself out of my post-book haze - I could have sworn it was a summer’s night in the 80s. (I know how maudlin that sounds, but I genuinely mean it.) I was bereft upon finishing it. I felt so deeply entwined with these characters, with their emotions, with their story. I went to see the movie for the first time with one of my best friends a few days later and we were transported. We walked out of the theater into a cold January night, onto a crowded subway car, and felt so deeply the loss of a summer in the beautiful Italian countryside that was never even ours. I went on to see it six more times in theaters during it’s traditional run (twice with other people, four times on my own) - it became a kind of joke with those who knew me best, the way New York was eventually going to have stop showing it (after about SIX MONTHS), for my own good, since I was unable to resist. But I’d never felt that way before. There were movies that I’d loved, devoured, thought about after watching them. But nothing had ever been a siren’s call like this. I’d check the movie listings and when I saw that it was still playing, and knew I had the free time, it felt like I was unable to resist going back again and again. It was the first movie I saw even close to this many times. (And I’d see it on at least another three occasions, at special showings and Q&As.) It was the first movie I ever went to by myself. (Again, and again, and again. And again.) I can still remember the theaters, remember the showings (like the one in the village that I went to on my own at around midnight, not getting home until around 3 in the morning, still floating on that warm, Crema air), remember the anticipation in the pit of my stomach every time it started. It’s like it put me under a spell, one that went unbroken for years. I don’t know if I’ll ever know exactly what resonated so much. Maybe it’s just that it filled up an emptiness that had started to develop in me by that time. Maybe it was a glimpse into a world of emotions I hadn’t ever really known myself. My copy of the book, signed by several and something I don’t dare look at at this moment, is highlighted throughout, something I hadn’t felt compelled to do in years, maybe since before I studied literature in college. I read every review, watched every interview, tried to absorb every mention of or allusion to it anywhere. It was too much and never enough and that never really went away.
With this deep obsession, came my first foray into real fandom. I’d read fic for my favorite pairings since I first discovered it, as a way-too-young fan of Buffy in elementary school. I’d joined tumblr during my Gossip Girl years to ogle over beautiful gifsets of beautiful people and gorgeous tributes to my favorite pairing. But it wasn’t until this fandom that I ever actually interacted with people. Took the chance when I saw a link to a Discord (something I’d never even heard of before) and became part of a community. Interacted with people who wrote stories I loved and made gifs I looked at over and over, but also people who just became friends. We got to know each other, and each other’s lives. I’d never had something like this before - people who became friends over a shared obsession, this thing we were all nuts for, together - and it was intoxicating. People who never got tired of talking about this movie and these people I never got tired of talking about? It was like a dream. Some of these people I chatted with online. Some I met in real life. (A huge, crazy first for me - I grew up in the time of internet stranger danger, after all.) We talked endlessly about everything to do with this fandom over brunches and dinners and drinks. We talked about other things too. We laughed and cried and spent evenings at each other’s apartments and took loud car rides home together from the city. I did things, and experienced moments, with them that I never would have without them. It’s this, all of this, that I hope I’ll be able to remember fondly some day. (And writing it all out, in this moment, is making me feel slightly lighter and brighter about it all, in this moment - which is unexpected, but lovely.)
This fandom has held some of my highest highs and lowest lows over the last couple of years. I made friends (as an adult, with cool people - something I never could have predicted), I lost friends (something more expected, but still, a devastating blow, especially during a pandemic), reached something close to friendship with some of them again (an unsteady but nice surprise). I had experiences I never would have imagined. And I depended on it way too much over these last three years, as my own personal issues increased, something I was aware of, but not aware of the extent of until this last week or so.
I don’t know how to move past this in this moment. I’m devastated. I’m wrecked. I’ve been stick to my stomach. I haven’t slept. I’ve overslept. I’ve cried (not much, not enough probably, but even a few tears is a somewhat shocking amount for me). My mental health is, quite simply, not what it used to be. That’s a problem that is separate from this, that started before any of this came into my life. But it’s tied to all of this in an uncomfortable way, and it’s making this emptiness, this sadness, this hopelessness feel unbearable. And there’s a lot of shame thrown into all of this as well - shame for being so deep into and obsessed with a fandom, shame for being so deeply affected by something and some people who have no actual bearing on my real life (or shouldn’t, anyway). Of anything I could have tried to predict, having this comfort movie/book/actor/fandom destroyed so ultimately was beyond my wildest nightmares. I thought the spell might be broken on my end at some point, that eventually it wouldn’t mean as much to me, but now I’m afraid I’m doomed to feel too much, in every way, in terrible ways, forever. I can only hope in this moment that I will move past this all one day. That it won’t hang over me forever. That I’ll, at the very least, be able to separate the good from the bad. That some things will remain unforgettable, but in a good way again.
Thank you to everyone I ever interacted with in this fandom. Thank you to the mutuals who brightened my day. The friends who became such a part of my life. The creators who filled up the good days and especially the bad days with their beautiful works. I won’t be deleting at the moment, and anyone who sees this is always free to reach out and chat, as long as this blog is around (and via other social media of mine if you have it). I’m heartbroken, and seeing tumblrs disappear, seeing all of the posts similar to this one - it all makes it so much more real and awful. But there were good times and good things and good people. And I hope with everything in me, that people can appreciate the goodness that came from this (and that I can one day too).
#cmbyn#call me by your name#(wondering if this is the last time i'll ever use those tags and oh look now i'm about to cry again)#fandom#ramblings
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here’s my rant about why Nathan MacKinnon should have won the hart trophy
(i don’t mean this in a way to diminish either Leon or Artemi but like... i wanted Nate to win)
so first off mackinnon got snubbed AGAIN. this is like his second time getting nominated for the Hart but not receiving it. So he’s consistently good.
But let’s focus on this season.
After a tumultuous four years and a WOW 2019 Stanley Cup Playoff appearance where NO ONE expected them to get far, the Avs were rolling at the start of the regular season with five straight wins. (thanks a LOT crosby)
While the Avs finally had depth with recently acquired players like Kadri, Burakovsky, and Bellemare, a lot of this was due to the amazing top line of Landeskog - MacKinnon - Rantanen, a line forged over several years with amazing goal scoring capabilities and chemistry.
During that time, the depth is shining, and at least partially because of MacKinnon. After studying his stats, MacKinnon told Burakovsky to shoot the puck more and, taking that advice, Burakovsky went on to have his first 20-goal season, beating his previous high of 17 (and that’s with several massive injuries and the season being cut short).
But then in November, both Landeskog and Rantanen fall due to injury, and MacKinnon pulls the whole team to many great wins after a lot of people thought the Avs would crumble. But no, MacKinnon (with Johnson) lead the team well in his captain’s absence and ended up winning one of the stars of the month, without his iconic linemates.
And those weren’t the only devastating injuries. Their biggest defenseman took a puck to the face in a Nashville game, and then a week later, Calvert got hit in the head with a puck during gameplay and went down on the ice bleeding. The refs didn’t blow it down and the Canucks scored a goal, forcing overtime. And less than fifteen seconds into that overtime, MacKinnon scored, ending the game.
But it was more than his GWG there. In the postgame, MacKinnon barely talked about his goal and was focused on Calvert. He said that while he understood the refs made the call they had to, he accused the league of being unsafe, defending his teammate and calling for more safe practices.
In January, there’s an amazing article by Ryan S Clark where Calvert talked about MacKinnon inspired him to make better eating choices, and how he does that with all his teammates. This is a team that eats turkey burgers and sweet potato fries at the bar together, while Calvert was used to greasy beef.
When he heard the Calvert credited him with his amazing season, MacKinnon said, “I think Calvy since last season has grown so much. He’s already got 10 goals and he’s such a good player and he’s such a huge part of our team in the locker room, on the ice and he’s such an effective player. I am not going to take credit for that. He’s doing that out there.”
Later on in February, more injuries plagued the Avalanche offense. Kadri, Rantanen, Burakovsky, Calvert, and more were out. But the Avs were doing amazing, both due to their defense pulling through and because of MacKinnon pushing his team.
And then, in one of the last games before the pause, MacKinnon got injured and was gonna be out. Another forward gone. But the Avs pulled through and won against the Rangers.
Their season was amazing. Number 2 in the Western Conference, only getting shutout twice over 70 games, fourth most goals scored in the league.
MacKinnon got 93 points, best on the team. Makar was second with 50.
During return to play, with the Avs all healthy, the Avs dominated in the round robin and again in the their series against the Coyotes (who were awesome). Then the St*rs...
In Round 2 against that southern green team, the Avs were down 3-1 and came back to force game 7. And that game 7 went to overtime WITHOUT key players: Landeskog, Johnson, Grubauer, Francouz, Calvert, Donskoi and Timmins.
MacKinnon had the longest playoff point streak in Avs history. He beat a Gretzky record. And, unlike Draisaitl and Panarin, actually made the playoffs this year, not just the play-in.
the only game in return to play where MacKinnon didn’t score a point, and they lost it, losing the whole thing and sending them home.
Even though I was devastated and righteously angry, I was so proud of the Avs, and MacKinnon. and i know they were sad but they’re gonna be so great next year.
But when you asked MacKinnon, it was about the other players. When he’s asked about their offense, he highlights their blueline, and how much better it had gotten over the season. He celebrated Kadri’s buzzer beater in the first game back just as hard as he would for his own amazing goal (maybe harder). He fought for Cale to join him at the All-Star game. He compliments his teammates when they do well, and when he’s getting all the questions he asks the media to direct some to his teammates. And when asked about what changes he made, he said he wouldn’t change a thing. And when Yote went after his rookie, he threw that guy around like a fucking rag doll.
He could ask for over ten million dollars AAV (or 8 mil like Draisaitl) but no he gets 6.3mil a year, and said he’d take less if it would help the Avs. This guy cares about his team. This guy leads his team. This guy fights for his team. I really just don’t think u can say the same about Draisaitl or Panarin, no disrespect to either.
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The Morning After
I am so fucking sorry, I didn’t think it would take over 3 months (??wtf, what happened to January and February??) but here you guys go!🤧 Also, I’m dedicating this chapter to @eisukevint and @i-loves-2dguys, you guys stuck through so thanks! (P.S. I’ll be sure to do the games you tagged me in tag buddy, I haven’t forgotten!) Enjoy!
Chapter V: A Cup of Tea and Coffee
Bright flames reflected off his face, but he didn’t feel the smothering heat. Screams of both men and women alike were heard throughout the night sky, a chill blowing through the dense woods. He watched the destruction happen, unmoved by the howling shrieks and the smell of burning flesh.
‘Another dream then.’ He thought, still feeling nothing as he looked on. The fire still blazing on, black smoke rising high in the air, almost obstructing the sky and its stars. The shrill screaming slowly coming to a halt and he turned his back towards it, walking into the woods.
He glanced around as he steadily walked forward, knowing this particular forest held secrets and dangers, waiting for something to throw itself at him.
He didn't have to wait long.
He heard a snarl before feeling a heavy weight on top of him, white teeth flashing towards his face, saliva dripping down its muzzle. Grabbing the wolf's neck, he held it back, trying to keep its teeth away from his vulnerable neck. Kicking his feet to its chest, he threw the wolf off of him, quickly standing.
What he didn't expect was another wolf bearing down on him as it landed on his back.
The wolf lunged for his neck as he-
A gasp tore from his mouth as Hunter shot awake, a hand coming to clasp the nape of his neck. He could almost feel the tearing of his flesh, the heavy blood flow that should have been there.
There was nothing.
Slowly, his breathing became steady, feeling no sensation of pain or blood. His trembling hands slowly came to a halt and he closed his eyes before falling backwards onto his bed.
‘Fuckin’ hell. Not this bullshit again.’
Nightmares like these weren’t strange to him, just unwelcomed, as they came and went, sometimes ruining mornings for him.
Like now.
Reaching towards the hotel’s bedside table, he grabbed his phone and checked the time.
11:07
With a grimace, he got up and began to undress, planning to take a shower as a start for today. Walking up towards the bathroom, he began to play with the shower’s dials and found the perfect temperature. Tugging off his black boxers, he jumped in and began to wash himself from yesterday and this morning’s grime.
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Running the towel through his chocolate brown hair one more time, Hunter threw it into the hamper, knowing that the maids would be here to pick up the dirty laundry and clean the room once he was gone for the day. Letting go of the towel around his waist, he began to dress, hoping to leave the hotel and find somewhere to relax.
‘Maybe a restaurant? Nah, too loud. The park? Too many people and it’ll be hot. A cafe then? Maybe somewhere far-’ Hunter continued to think as he put on a white dress shirt before putting on a black crewneck sweatshirt. Wiggling into black skinny jeans, he placed on some converse and as he was picking up his phone, he noticed a text sent from his sister.
Hunt! You’re probably still sleeping or IDK but! Wanted to tell you that Cooner and I are out for today. We’ll see you later on tonight! K, bye love you!
*Cooner
**Cooner
***CONNER fucking autocorrect!!
Smiling a bit, Hunter put his phone away and began to walk towards the door, not before grabbing his wallet and a notepad with a pen. Stuffing the items into a shoulder bag, he began to arrive at the elevator and as he waited, Hunter took out a coin and tossed it into the air. Before it could land on the floor, he snatched it from the air and slammed it into the back of his hand.
‘Heads means I go right. Tails means left.’
Just as the elevator arrived, he uncovered the coin and his decision was made. Walking into the elevator, he pressed for the lobby and the elevator doors closed.
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ローグタイタンカフェ
‘Rogue Titan Cafe? Gotta say, that’s kind of- it’s cute in its own little weird kind of way.’
Looking at the sign once more, he shrugged and walked in. He was met with a swirl of teal, gray, and some gold touches here and there. It wasn’t overwhelming like the other cafes he’s visited before now and more importantly, it was quiet and not crowded. Stepping up to the register, he pulled out his notepad and pen. He was then greeted by a male, although shorter than him, who had a commanding aura surrounding him, hinting at power he had in him. Bored slanted eyes filled with a mixture of gray and cobalt blue met his eyes and the shorter male spoke.
“Good afternoon. What would you like?”
Looking up to the blackboard menu, he quickly wrote down his order and placed it in view of the worker.
Warm butter croissant + a cup of chamomile tea please
With a raised brow, the worker put down his order and told him his amount. Fishing out the correct payment, Hunter gave it to the worker and proceeded to take a seat near the windows and waited for his order. Pulling out his phone, he checked the time before putting it away, and looked towards the windows. Watching people was interesting at times, something which Hunter didn’t do often unless it was necessary, but as of now, it was the only interesting thing to do. Placing the notepad in front of him on the table, he just watched as crowds of people walked by, not paying him any mind as they went on their day. Hearing a clatter besides him, he saw the shorter man set down his order onto the table, before leaving, nodding at Hunter once, who nodded back. Blowing before taking a sip, Hunter hummed a little at the mixture of apple and honey taste. Looking out towards the window again, he saw a slick limousine drive past the cafe, before disregarding it as anything important. Picking up the warm croissant, he took a bite and hummed again. The cafe door swung open and someone entered just as he was taking another bite. Not paying the other customer any attention, Hunter sipped at his tea again. Hearing the low murmuring, he looked straight at the windows again, until he was interrupted as someone walked towards him and a voice spoke up.
“Good afternoon Hunter.”
Looking up, he was greeted by Eisuke Ichinomiya, dressed in a brown leather jacket and white t-shirt. He looked normal, but still oozed an aurora of being someone big and rich. Someone important. He nodded back in greeting and Eisuke spoke again.
“May I have a seat?” Ichinomiya asked as he smiled, gesturing at the seat in front of Hunter. He nodded and Ichinomiya sat down. It was quiet for a while as Hunter looked out the window and the man in front of him waited for his drink. The silence was interrupted as the worker gently set down Ichinomiya’s drink, the bitter aroma drifting towards Hunter.
‘Coffee.’ He thought as he turned away from the window and towards the other two men.
“Will that be all?” The worker asked and both males nodded and Ichinomiya thanked him. He nodded back and left, going back to his station and leaving them. It was quiet again until Ichinomiya spoke up.
“I hope I’m not intruding. I saw you from my car and I wanted to say hello.” He explained in a soft tone of voice, aware of quietness surrounding both of them. Sipping his coffee, he waited for any response as he grimaced slightly from the taste.
Glancing at Ichinomiya, Hunter grasped his notepad and quickly wrote down his response.
No, you're fine. May I ask where you were planning to go? Hunter questioned, wanting to be polite, even though he didn’t like talking. He didn’t dislike Ichinomiya or even consider him an acquaintance, but he would still be considerate and contribute to the conversation.
“I was planning to go shopping until I saw you from the limo’s window. What are you doing here?”
I wanted to enjoy a warm snack and beverage, just to relax.
“And your siblings? Where are they?”
Hunter shrugged.
Somewhere, probably shopping for stuff for our other siblings.
Ichinomiya smirked before tilting his head towards the window.
“And why were you looking out the window? Something interesting going on out there?”
Hunter blinked at him, before writing down his answer.
It’s interesting to see people and try to guess what they do for a living or what they might be going through. Looking towards Ichinomiya, he quirked an eyebrow. Would you like an example?
Ichinomiya’s smirk grew bigger and he nodded. Both looked towards the window and Hunter scouted his victim. Gazing at each person rushing past the window, he settled on a woman who was dressed rather expensively, showing jewelry and cleavage at the same time. Pointing towards her, he looked back at Ichinomiya and nodded his head towards the lady walking by. He waited until Ichinomiya had a good glimpse of her and as she slowed her pace, Hunter jolted down his observations.
She’s married. She has a white gold wedding ring with three diamond rings. Her spouse is rich, but she constantly cheats on her husband. He doesn’t know. With the way she dresses, she displays herself and likes the attention she gains, especially from the rich and or handsome. She chooses her prey from those categories. Hunter points to a business man across the street who was ogling the female as she stops in front of the window, not paying attention to him. You’re handsome enough to gain her attention though. Ichinomiya’s eyes widened a bit as he read Hunter’s comment. Hunter continued writing. She might like you enough to come in. She probably has prior commitments though. As Hunter finished writing, the woman looked towards them, but zeroed in on Ichinomiya and she smirked as she walked away, swaying her hips. The two were quiet as Ichinomiya blinked a couple of times, before smirking again.
“How do you know she’s cheating? She probably likes the attention, that’s all.”
Sipping his tea, Hunter pointed across the street as he closed his eyes. Following his finger, Ichinomiya saw the woman lean into a window, which was cracked open slightly and saw her speak to someone, her breast pushed up as she crossed her arms before entering the car and driving off.
“I see.” Eisuke hummed as he looked at Hunter, amazed at how quick was to figure the woman out. “What did you think of me when you first saw me?” He questioned, starting at Hunter who slowly opened his eyes.
Hunter looked at Ichinomiya for a moment, deciding on whether or not he should say what he first thought when he saw him on that morning he was leaving Oh behind, before writing down his answer.
Someone who was stern and important. Had a certain level of self confidence. You’re powerful and you know it. You take what you want and you’re brave.
Hunter stopped writing before taking a bite from his croissant, finishing it after a couple of bits, drinking his tea as Ichinomiya read his comment. He hummed as he looked at Hunter before sipping his own coffee. It was quiet as they both dwelled in silence, Ichinomiya smiling towards Hunter, behind his cup.
Setting it down, Ichinomiya folded his arms on the table as he smirked and looked towards Hunter.
“Would you like to come with me? To shop, of course. I’ve overheard during dinner that your other brothers might want some souvenirs from here. There might be a store that might interest you?” Ichinomiya questioned, seeing Hunter savoring the last bit of his tea. Glancing up, Hunter tilted his head slightly as he looked at him emotionless before looking out the window. Sipping the last of his tea, Hunter looked back at Ichinomiya and nodded, who smiled in response. Getting up, they proceeded to leave, Hunter staying back to clean up after himself and placed a tip on the table before leaving with Ichinomiya.
With Ichinomiya in the lead, Hunter followed him into his limo, the one he saw earlier, and seated himself far enough to be considered more than polite. Putting his notepad onto his lap, he looked towards Ichinomiya who looked as though he was about to speak until he was interrupted by a phone ringing. Apologizing to Hunter, who waved him off, Ichinomiya picked up the call and proceeded to talk business all the way until they almost arrived at what seemed like a parking lot. Ending the call Ichinomiya, with a frown on his face, began to apologize to Hunter.
“I’m sorry about the inconvenience. It won’t happen again.” He sighed as he put away his phone. Waving him off, Hunter started to write in his notepad again.
Don’t worry about it. You’re a businessman, so I understand. Where are we anyways? Hunter asked, looking out the window as the car started to slow down as it came to a stop in front of a large expensive building. A mall that was mostly likely for the rich it seemed. Opening the door, the chauffeur bowed and kept silent as Eisuke exited the vehicle first, followed by Hunter. Looking up towards the building, Hunter kept up with Ichinomiya’s pace as he answered the question.
“This is the Ruby Plaza, a mall I frequent if I’m available and somewhere I thought you might enjoy.” He responded as he smiled towards Hunter who only nodded, expressionless. Entering the building, Ichinomiya took the lead again as Hunters’ eyes wandered as they passed through the grand entrance and finally into the plaza. Stores lined up and displayed expensive goods from clothes to jewelry and other things. People walked by wearing expensive looking clothes and if not that, then they displayed their wealth with the amount of shopping bags they had or the jewelry that sometimes flashed. Walking with Ichinomiya, Hunter watched for any stores of interest that might hold something for his little brothers or sister. Unaware of the man besides him looking at him from the corner of his eye, he looked on and kept pace with Ichinomiya.
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Dust Volume 7, Number 3
Black Country, New Road
One of the funniest parts of Martin Amis’ Inside Story concerns an up-and-coming novelist, constantly asked at literary festivals to differentiate between his short stories and novels and just as consistently coming up with new ways to say that the short stories are, well, shorter. Same deal with Dust. These abbreviated reviews are, indeed, shorter than the full-lengths, but otherwise well worth reading. And, hoo boy, are there a lot of them this time. Contributors include Ian Mathers, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Tim Clarke, Patrick Masterson, Arthur Krumins, Eric McDowell, Justin Cober-Lake, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Jonathan Shaw and Bryon Hayes.
Aarktica and Black Tape for a Blue Girl — Eating Rose Petals (Projekt: Archive)
Eating Rose Petals by Aarktica and Black Tape for a Blue Girl
Aarktica’s Jon DeRosa and Black Tape for a Blue Girl’s Sam Rosenthal have known each other for a long time, but this release is the first time they’ve actually worked together. Rosenthal was so struck by the title song, one of the few from Aarktica’s 2019 release Mareación to feature DeRosa’s vocals, that with the latter’s permission and participation he created the almost 19-minute “Fleeting Rose Petals”, which features the original track backwards with wordless additional vocals from DeRosa, plus additional material by Rosenthal before and after it. The original (also included here, along with the closing “Valley of the Roses” which features Rosenthal further reworking the additional material from “Fleeting Rose Petals”) already felt like a single lambent moment in time suspended and held, and by reworking and reconfiguring that material over a full 37-minute span that effect is only intensified.
Ian Mathers
Altaat & Euter — Split (Ikuisuus)
split by Altaat / Euter
Two experimental drone outfits from Finland play extended abstract compositions on this split LP. Altaat’s sidelong “Palava Palaava” sounds like an orchestra tuning up in a wind tunnel as it splices long bowed tones with the rush and whir of large machinery. But however, chaotic that may sound, the actual effect is quite serene, the om of dissonant overtones melting into a white noise background of rattling, humming, whooshing mechanical sounds. Altaat’s Niko Karlsson and Miki Brunou, along with Jari Koho, subsume the noisy clatter of the post-industrial era into a dream-like, beckoning hiss. Euter, also a duo but not willing to give up personal names, works a less organically grounded sound, filling an expansive, echoey space with chortling, wobbling synth cadences, metallic clangs and staticky, between-stations blare. The long “Slowly Underwater,” unfolds in chilly surreality. You get the sense of vast metal furnaces blowing out corrosive chemical clouds, of mechanical sensors picking up and sending signals and of chittering, hurrying life amid ruins. (No, I’m not hearing anything especially watery.) “Magnetic Mammals,” which follows, is similarly machine-like and ominous, picking up vast, sirening sounds as if from a distance with bubbling bursts of radio interference in the foreground. Altaat’s side is certainly closer to conventional Western classical music, but Euter finds some intriguing, disquieting spaces. Makes you wonder what they’re putting in the water up there in reindeer land.
Jennifer Kelly
Rrill Bell — Ballad of the External Life (Elevator Bath)
ballad of the external life by Rrill Bell ////// aka The Preterite
One of the challenges of early electronic music was its labor intensity; it could take months of recording, processing, card-punching and pondering to come up with a few minutes of music. But tools change, and with them, opportunities for access open up. The music of Rrill Bell, a German-based American musician, makes that lengthy process shake hands with instant performance. Originally trained as a percussionist, he works mainly with tapes, which he records, uses in performance, and in the course of performance, records over and re-uses again. But in concert, he tends to improvise with these materials, making split-second decisions that occasionally get preserved for potential re-visiting.
If that sounds like a recipe for frenetic sonic action, it’s not. Mr. Bell’s tastes in original sounds tend towards bells and environmental captures, and he rarely crowds the mix. Tones squiggle and unspool, unidentifiable bumps appear and disappear, and birds chirp at the periphery. It’s easy to characterize this as ambient music, since a low-volume listen is pleasant but undemanding. But keep in mind that successful ambient music must be interesting as well as ignorable, and the dream-like sound walk of Ballad of the External Life still delivers.
Bill Meyer
Black Country, New Road — For the First Time (Ninja Tune)
For the first time by Black Country, New Road
“Sunglasses” erupts out of a blare of feedback, a roar of guitar noise that splinters and disintegrates as you trace its melody. Synths sound like police sirens. It’s all very slow and ominous, and for a minute, all those Slint comparisons make sense. And then it resolves into something like an indie rock song, spoke-sung over thunderous drums by one Isaac Wood, he of the tremulous voice and the unreliable narrative, whose art song proclivities may bring bands like Wild Beasts to mind, though without the fey falsetto. The song is a marvel of bravado and doubt, working the soft seam between ordinary male adolescence and mental illness, and the sunglasses play a key part. Says Wood, “I am looking at you with my best eyes and I wish you could tell/I wish all my kids would stop dressing up like Richard Hell/I am locked away in a high-tech/Wraparound, translucent, blue-tinted fortress/And you cannot touch me.” (Also, later, “I am more than adequate/Leave Kanye out of it,” which strikes me as brilliant for reasons I can’t fathom.) The point is that there are startling, riveting lyrics here, of the sort that you could make a case for leaving it unadorned, but Black Country, New Road is not interested in simplicity. The rather large ensemble includes not just the regular rock instruments but saxophone, violin and synths, all knotted up in proggy complexities and paced by a drummer (Charlie Wayne) good enough to give Black Midi’s Morgan Simpson a run for his money (the two bands are aligned and friends and Black Midi gets a name check in one of the songs). Indeed, the opening track of this six-cut collection is aptly titled “Instrumental,” a whirling gypsy klezmer cubist fantasy that is, if anything, nervier and more complicated than the vocal tracks. This is exciting, volatile stuff that could go anywhere from here.
Jennifer Kelly
Deniz Cuylan — No Such Thing As Free Will (Hush Hush)
No Such Thing As Free Will by Deniz Cuylan
Everything about Deniz Cuylan’s solo debut is understated. Six instrumental tracks running to just 27 minutes, released on the fittingly named Hush Hush Records, No Such Thing As Free Will seeks to evoke something subtle and universal out of minimal ingredients. There’s a robust architecture to this music, generating a sober, contemplative mood. Arpeggios on nylon-string classical guitar cycle around in precise arcs, gently bolstered by piano, clarinet and cello. The space in opener “Clearing” shyly invites the listener in; the record reaches a modest peak in the bright harmonics of “She Was Always Here” and the almost joyful elegance of “Flaneurs in Hakone”; then the music recedes into a melancholic fog on the closing title track. It’s telling, therefore, that Cuylan has worked as a soundtrack composer — his music feels complementary, receding modestly into life’s scenery rather than commanding the spotlight.
Tim Clarke
Arnold de Boer — Minimal Guitar (Makkum)
MINIMAL GUITAR by arnolddeboer
Somedays you just don’t do what you’re supposed to do. At the end of the last summer, Arnold de Boer decided to extend his holiday by a day and take a walk around town. When he got back home, he sat down, picked up an instrument and listened to the music that came out of his fingers. The music was no more expected than the activity that preceded it. Instead of the rough, voltage-enhanced intricacy of the music he plays with The Ex or his one-man band, Zea, de Boer played a set of acoustic guitar solos. Neither ostentatious nor self-consciously rustic, de Boer’s playing tends to zero in on an idea and see where it wants to go. Each rhythmic pattern, decaying harmonic, or rap on the body proposes an idea, which de Boer either explores or restates with minimal variation. Ah, there’s that word. This isn’t a study in minimalism, but an appreciation of how little you need to do if the original idea is sound.
Bill Meyer
Dusk + Blackdown — Rinse FM Mix January 28, 2021 (Rinse FM)
Rinse FM · Keysound (100% Keysound Production Mix) - 28 January 2021
I’m not sure there’s a place left on the internet better suited to explaining the rise of grime, dubstep and its attendant mutations than Martin Clark’s aging Blogspot under his Blackdown alias. From ground zero in London, Clark has been documenter, eyewitness and participant alike, a true lifer fully evidenced by his longtime partnership with Dan Frampton, aka Dusk, showcasing new music on their monthly Rinse radio show and Keysound Recordings record label. They’re an essential part of the culture, so it’s especially pleasant when they serve up some of their own riches. After the traditional December year-end roundup show, Dusk and Blackdown came roaring out of the gates in January with an all-Keysound broadcast in the middle of the night that features gobs of unreleased rollage over its two hours. It’s a nice reminder that though time may pass, URLs may cut out and memories may dim, some are still putting in the work one release, one radio show, one listen at a time. The sound is the key is right.
Patrick Masterson
EKG — 200 Years Of Electricals (Bandcamp)
200 Years of Electricals by EKG (Ernst Karel & Kyle Bruckmann)
Most things don’t hold their value. Why should time be any different? So, if Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote 100 Years of Solitude in the 1960s, EKG might as well proclaim 200 Years Of Electricals in 2021. EKG is Kyle Bruckmann (double reeds, analog electronics, organ) and Ernst Karel (analog electronics, microphones). The duo first convened in the mid-1990s, when both men lived in Chicago, and Karel was mainly known as a trumpeter. They’ve carried on in sporadic fashion ever since, playing increasingly rare concerts as each man moved away from his original home base. They’ve turned snippets from these shows into subdued musical constructions, which they’ve issued on a number of compact discs over the years. For their first release in over a decade, the duo, who currently both live in the Bay area, have ditched the trumpet and the physical album format, and incorporated some of the field recordings that have become Karel’s main sound material in his solo work. But in other respects, this effort is every bit as concerned with iteration and inevitability as Marquez’ book. When you flip a switch, something hums. When you layer quiet sounds, they don’t necessarily get louder, but they do exert a stronger magnetism upon your ear. And you when spread your quietness over a vast stretch of silence, efforts to follow the sound inevitably do strange things to your sense of time. Wait, how many years have we been listening to that crackle? Why stop now?
Bill Meyer
Michael Feuerstack — Harmonize the Moon (Forward Music Group)
Harmonize the Moon by Michael Feuerstack
Montreal-based singer-songwriter Michael Feuerstack sweeps aside all extraneous fluff on his new album, Harmonize the Moon, zeroing in on precise finger-picked guitar parts, vivid lyrical imagery and a stark, affecting tone. He has a knack for smuggling blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments of understated wonder into traditional-sounding folk songs you’ll imagine you’ve heard somewhere before. Indeed, he wryly admits to recycling the past in the opening song: “I used to be a singer, bumping around in the astral plane / Picking up astral trash, to polish it up again.” Though the foundation of guitar and vocals carries most of the weight, there’s tasteful reinforcement from vocal harmonies, electric guitar, lap steel, bass and drums. Amid these clean, spare arrangements, some of the lines stop you in your tracks, like the following from “Too Kind”: “The world is broken mirrors, traps and triggers / And cold blood pools in the kindest eyes.” With 10 finely honed songs running to just over half an hour, everything is measured and rather lovely. (Beautiful cover art, too.)
Tim Clarke
Michael and Peter Formanek — Dyads (Out Of Your Head Records)
Dyads by Michael and Peter Formanek
Virtuoso bassist, stalwart sideman, solid bandleader, fearless improviser, intriguing composer — Michael Formanek is all of those things, but he’s also a cool dad. At least that’s what it looks like from the outside. Not only did he include his son, Peter, in his musical activities from an early age, giving the youngster a chance to sit in with the likes of Tim Berne and Jim Black. Upon Peter’s return home from college, he joined him in a working duo. Dyads is their first recording, and it is testimony to the merits of giving the kid first-hand experience in the family business. Peter, who plays tenor saxophone and clarinet, has learned the merits of having a bold tone, a flexible improvisational approach and a way with a tune. Their performances unfold with a combination of patience and pith, which permits the listener to savor the elegance with which each musician supports the other.
Bill Meyer
Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band — Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18 (No Quarter)
Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18 by Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band
Chris Forsyth teams with Sunwatchers Peter Kerlin and Jason Robira at London’s Café OTO for expansive, incendiary jams that will remind you like a physical ache of what you’ve been missing in live music this awful year. “Dream in the Non-Dream” is a wide-horizon, endless vamp, driven ever forward by Kerlin and Robira in lock-sync, while Forsyth ratchets up tension with a car jack, then spins it off in wreckless, fiery abandon. “The First Ten Minutes of Cocksucker Blues” similarly balances rigor and open-ended-ness, marking off the measures with a hammering, repetitive cadence that becomes a mantra over time. There are also two Neil Young covers, both tending towards the electrified, Crazy Horse side of things, a slow by blistering “Don’t Be Denied” and a raucous “Barstool Blues” from Zuma. It’s all great stuff, and it might hold you for a month or two until we can all crowd up to the stage again.
Jennifer Kelly
Alexander Hawkins — Togetherness Music (Intakt)
Togetherness Music by Alexander Hawkins
Whether you listen to him in duos with Evan Parker or Tomeka Reid, small bands like the Chicago/London Underground or Decoy, or leading his own ensembles, English keyboardist Alexander Hawkins accompanies and improvises with an astute perception of the situation’s requirements. The title Togetherness Music can be taken several ways. The six-part suite combines parts from two different commissioned pieces, and it brings together elements of free and conducted improvisation, scored chamber music, and some discrete electronic interventions. Passages showcasing Evan Parker’s intricate soprano saxophone lines and Mark Sanders’ kinetic percussion contrast and coexist with rich and patiently evolving string passages executed by the Riot Ensemble. This music feels less like a sum of differing approaches than the expression of a cohesive in which all Hawkins’ good ideas fit together.
Bill Meyer
Russell Hoke — The Melancholy Traveller (Round Bale Recordings)
The Melancholy Traveler by Russell Hoke
This release follows up on the archival compilation A Voice From the Lonesome Playground from 2016 of Hoke’s material from small run releases of the 1980’s. With the new material here, Hoke delves into the unadulterated sound of voice and guitar or banjo, with mainly his own songs of loneliness and also the singularly bittersweet moments of existing as yourself, free and detached from society. Also covering two beautiful takes on Sandy Denny songs, which fit into the UK/US traditional direction of the rest. The album rests in the same delicate territory as other folkies such as Connie Converse, Jackson C. Frank, or even the more sedate songs of Daniel Johnston. What brings the album together is the expressiveness in any given moment of a song. The tact and execution consistently bring the emotion of the songwriting home.
Arthur Krumins
In Layers — Pliable (FMR)
Pliable by In Layers
In Layers puts up a middle finger against anyone who thinks that European unity is a passed fancy. The quartet’s members come from Portugal, Iceland and Holland, and their collective experience encompasses Nordic music theatre, lyric free jazz and the tooth-powderingly loud trio, Cactus Truck. But the music they make doesn’t really sound like any of that. Guitarist Marcelo Dos Reis, drummer Onno Govaert, pianist Kristján Martinsson and trumpeter Luís Vicente improvise music that is spacious enough to frustrate viral transmission, but composed of elements hefty enough to tip a scale. There’s plenty of bravura playing, but the displays are subordinate to the music’s abstract cohesion. You won’t hum it, but you won’t forget it, either.
Bill Meyer
Just For the Record: Conversations With and About “Blue” Gene Tyranny
Composer, writer and pianist Robert Sheff, better known as “Blue” Gene Tyranny, collaborator with everyone from Iggy Pop to Robert Ashley, passed away at the end of 2020. Just before that, David Bernabo’s documentary about Tyranny’s life and work, and more generally about the avant garde world Tyranny was a vital part of, how much of it almost vanished and the ways it continues to be vibrant even today, was released. For a while Just For the Record was available to rent, but this year Bernabo made it available for free on UbuWeb Film. It’s a wonderful watch for anyone who’s a fan of “Blue” Gene’s work, for sure. The conversations with him are near the end of his life, but his evident joy in music and art and people shines through, and the conversations with Joan La Barbara, David Grubbs, Kyle Gann and others cast new light on both his history and work and importance and the group of artists that he worked with and around. There’s so much here you almost wish for a miniseries instead (one episode on reissue labels and blogs, one on Robert Ashley’s operas, one on Tyranny’s time as a Stooge…), but given how overlooked artists like “Blue” Gene Tyranny often are, it still feels like a gift to have what’s here.
Ian Mathers
Kariu Kenji — Sekai (Bruit Direct Disques)
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Sekai is a COVID-era exercise in circumstantial lemonade-making. Kariu Kenji’s band, OWKMJ, executes intricate, quick-changing jazz rock with aplomb. Stuck alone at home, he has made a solo record that never betrays his prodigious dexterity as a guitarist. Instead, Kenji has fashioned an album of low-key, keyboard-heavy bedroom pop. It is low key, almost to a fault, since you could easily miss the subtle fault lines between clean and distorted sounds, let alone the moments when he unobtrusively pulls the rhythmic rug out from under a song. The songs poetically render small memories and quietly absurd scenarios, which are considerately translated for the benefit of people who won’t understand Kenji’s all-Japanese crooning.
Bill Meyer
Kid Congo and the Pink Monkeybirds — Swing from the Sean Delear (In the Red)
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Kid Congo Powers has been in more great bands than anyone I can think of — The Cramps and The Gun Club to start with, but also Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, Divine Horsemen and, just last year, the Wolfmanhattan Project with Mick Collins and Bob Bert. That’s exalted company all round, and his latest, with Pink Monkeybirds, is no slouch alongside any of them. It begins with a vamping, churning, soul-funk-psychedelic “Sean DeLear,” which commemorates the recently deceased Bay Area punk-fashion icon in exultant, chandelier-swinging style. All three side one cuts are bangers, spinning out Sam & Dave bass-and-drum foundations into dayglow garage extravaganzas, but the 14-minute b-side “He Walked In” takes things in another direction, slowing the pace down and letting the music smoulder, a trippy hippy flute weaving through heat-shimmered desert psychedelia. Like the opener, it’s an elegy, this time to Gun Club front man, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, a haunted surf rock dreamscape where spirits dwell.
Jennifer Kelly
Katy Kirby — Cool Dry Place (Keeled Scales)
Cool Dry Place by Katy Kirby
Katy Kirby makes a stripped down, lofi pop that aspires to bigger things. Even low-key, acoustic strummed, bedroom ballads like “Eyelids” are always on the verge of busting out into flute-y, melismatic diva choruses. Even the tender “Cool Dry Place,” dreams of a big pop payoff and gets there in the end. And the single “Traffic!” is strung through with the tension between its muted, all-natural melody and the crescendoing climax that waits at the end. Here Kirby’s plain, wholesome voice gets threaded with fluttering autotune, not because she can’t hit the notes, but because that’s how big pop songs sound. This is the opposite of Katy Perry doing carpool karaoke. It’s acoustic, unadorned versions of songs that long for mainstream gloss and glamor.
Jennifer Kelly
The Koreatown Oddity — “Breastmilk” b/w “My Name Is Dominique” (Stones Throw)
Breastmilk by The Koreatown Oddity
“I got the hook-up from my baby mama / While you fetish freaks get it off the black market.” If the cover art left any room for doubt, the lyrics soon make it clear that Dominique Purdy’s approach to the subject of his latest single is every bit as literal as it is cartoonish. While albums like last year’s Little Dominiques Nosebleed put the Koreatown Oddity’s powers as a storyteller on full display, the rapper’s rhetorical mode here is ostensibly argumentative, with appeals to the all-naturalness — and deliciousness — of his preferred “regimen”:“You looking at me like I’m a strange human / But you drinking cow’s milk — fuck is you doing?” In the space of just two and a half minutes, he also achieves a hilarious upending of a range of hip-hop tropes, from the objectification of women to the glorification of illicit substances, not to mention MC braggadocio. There may even be a comment on fatherhood in there, too, for anyone who really wants to go looking.
The b-side of the 7” offers something different altogether, a stiff-legged but hypnotic beat beset by periodic electronic splatters and the somewhat manic refrain: “My name is Dominique and I’m a fresh musician.” Indeed.
Eric McDowell
Bobby Lee — Origin Myths (Tompkins Square)
Origin Myths by Bobby Lee
A swamp-gassed shimmer hangs over Bobby Lee’s electric blues, as notes bloom and waver and subside like ghostly lights in a humid dusk. Bobby Lee, the man, lives in Sheffield, England, but his music dwells in some lysergic delta, in the south but not entirely of it or anywhere else. Listen to the way that notes flicker in the steady runs of “Broken Prayer Stick,” a regular cadence of them left to warp and wander in steamy sunshine. Or the way that sustained tones drift like seaweed in “Looking for Pine and Obsidian,” losing themselves in thickets of overtone and echo. Bobby Lee would likely find a kindred spirit in Tarotplane’s PJ Dorsey or in William Tyler in a transcendental mood. Like them, his blues drift towards revelation but very, very slowly.
Jennifer Kelly
Nashville Ambient Ensemble — Cerulean (Centripetal Force)
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Thinking of Nashville doesn't typically bring to mind ambient music, nor does the image of pedal steel guitar typically suggest the work of an electronic composer. Nashville Ambient Ensemble, though, mixes those elements. What makes the group's debut album Cerulean feel special isn't its oddness — other acts, of course, do this sort of dreamy work — but that the Nashville elements remain so present. Pedal steel player Luke Schneider does much of the work to create that feel. The instrument itself has long since moved out of its traditional settings (a quick dip into the music of Susan Alcorn, for example, can prompt a fun rabbit trail of the guitar far removed from Western swing), but composer Michael Hix and this group enjoyably maintain the country signifiers even while moving into far spacier terrain. Some of the album pushes toward psychedelic swirls, but the ensemble restrains these gestures. As they head west out of Nashville, they resist simply playing a given genre with a gimmick. Cerulean isn't spaced out country, and it isn't twanged-up ambient. Instead, the group develops its own curious space.
Justin Cober-Lake
Neutrals — "Personal Computing” b/w “In the Future” (Slumberland)
Personal Computing by neutrals
The clever punk lifers in Neutrals upload two incisive songs about technology here. The a-side, “Personal Technology,” bashes antically through a tale of a young man with an, ahem, very committed relationship with computer paraphernalia, amid crashing, Clash-like chords and rumbling bass and drums. As noted when Neutrals’ 2020 EP Rent/Your House pried Dusted’s Jonathan Shaw away from black metal mid-last year, the front-person Allan McNaughton retains a Glaswegian accent, despite decades stateside, which gives these two cuts a rough Northern post-punk glamor. But the obsession with last year’s state-of-the-art, the excruciating torture of “loading,” is all Silicon Valley, enjoying BDSM with its peripherals. The b-side takes a somewhat more expansive view of technology, asking a la Dan Melchior what happened to the flying cars we were promised. Both are sharp and stinging and utterly catchy. I’d call it old school except for its fascination with the new.
Jennifer Kelly
Nun Gun — Mondo Decay (Algiers Recordings/Witty Books)
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Mondo Decay is the audio component of a recent collaboration between Algiers’ multi-instrumentalist Lee Tesche and visual artist Brad Feuerheim (who drums on four of the tracks). The two bonded over a mutual love of 1970s Italian cannibal zombie films and their soundtracks. Joined by fellow Algiers member Ryan Mahan and a roster of guest vocalists including Mark Stewart (The Pop Group), ONO and Mourning [A] BLKstar, Tesche reconfigures the soundtracks to make explicit the connections between present conditions and the socio-political turmoil that informed the original films. Musically that means claustrophobic dub inflected industrial grind, hip-hop influenced cut-ups, mutant disco and plenty of noirish saxophone. Nun Gun emphasizes atmospheric atrophy and deliberate decay with great and pointed effect to create a terrifically dark soundtrack to accompany the book of Feuerheim’s bleak photographs of post-industrial malaise.
Andrew Forell
Oui Ennui — Virga/Recrudescence (self-released)
Virga/Recrudescence by Oui Ennui
In the words that accompany the release of Jonn Wallen’s second album of 2021, he says that “when rationalizing yet another synthesizer purchase, I've often remarked to myself, ‘Well why wouldn't I want that color? I'll have it.’” It’s that attachment to messing around with new toys, a mass of streaks of rain appearing to hang under a cloud and evaporating before reaching the ground (“Virga”), the recurrence of an undesirable condition (“Recrudescence”), and what seems to be a whole lot of Brian Eno (“Oblique Strategies”) that informs these two extended avant-garde digressions. “Virga” is a roaring 24-minute star birth that veers into plinking helicopter rotaries without warning at one point, while “Recrudescence” covers more ground both literal (it’s 39 minutes) and figurative (woodland creatures, Space Age percolations and various rhythms sprout up throughout). Likely better experienced at high volume in a small club setting, we’ll have to settle instead for our headphones barely handling another intriguing development in the ongoing Oui Ennui experiment. How long before DFA co-founder Jonathan Galkin stops lurking in his Bandcamp buys and starts offering him a deal, I wonder?
Patrick Masterson
Payroll Giovanni \ Cardo — Another Day Another Dollar (BYLUG Entertainment)
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At some point in his career, Payroll Giovanni switched from worker to boss. His new album with the producer Cardo is another chapter in the Boss of All Bosses saga. Songs on the CD approximate the language of business manuals and the cheap sloganeering of workers union reps. Work harder, save more, invest, save again — the usual tips handed down to the unfortunate few who didn’t make it like Payroll did. By the middle of the album, you start to feel like you are at a stakeholders meeting where the CEO went for rapping instead of a PowerPoint presentation. When the rapper fails, it’s hardly the producer’s fault, so Cardo just plays up to Payroll with lazy, muzak-ish beats.
Ray Garraty
Rio da Yung Og \ Nuez — Life of a Yung Og (Southern Giants/Ghetto Boyz)
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Rio da Yung Og has been working with a lot of producers (and quite a few of them later got their fame because of it), but up until now he hasn’t released a collaboration with a single producer. His EP with Nuez came out of nowhere but it is a nice change of beats. Up to now, Rio has mostly recorded his raps with very bassy beats. Nuez provides a Southern vibe, more relaxed and less heavy on the bass, which allows to Rio shine. At this point it’s evident that Rio da Yung Og saves his best lines for his solo work (just compare this EP with simultaneously released Heatcheck EP, a collaborative work with artists of varying degrees of talent). In fact, the whole 21 minutes seem to be recorded in one single sleepless studio session with Rio freestyling his way through under the heavy influence of lean. This is Rio at his most desperate, just before his five-year bid in the federal pen. On “Whatchu Need” and “Last Call” (thanks to Nuez’s production) he sounds close to the early Scarface in a paranoid mode.
Ray Garraty
Ben Roidl-Ward and Zachary Good — arb (Carrier)
arb by Zachary Good and Ben Roidl-Ward
A decade back, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward and clarinetist Zachary Good were students at Oberlin College. The two friends formed a duo, The Arboretum, which performed new works. Nowadays they teach and perform separately, but share an apartment in Chicago. When the city got locked down and their gigs dried up, they revived the band, after a fashion. The six pieces on arb (named after that first project), which clocks in at just under half an hour, focus on a single musical phenomenon. Each musician plays sustained multiphonics (a technique whereby a horn player sings or hums a note while playing another) that are pitched close enough that their sounds interfere as well as blend with one another. The interactions can be dramatic; on “Guby,” the clarinet sounds like it is keying morse code into the fabric of the bassoon’s timbres. Listening to this music is a bit like staring at a heat mirage; the harder and longer you focus, the less certain you are of your own perceptions.
Bill Meyer.
Rotura — Estamos Fracasando (Self-released)
Estamos fracasando by Rotura
This new EP of melodic anarcho-punk from Barcelona is deceptively breezy stuff. Rotura’s guitars have some crunch and the rhythm section is tight — think Subhumans c. Rats meets Orange County in 1982. But the alto vocals of Silvia (no last names provided) are clean and tuneful, and there are seductive hooks galore. All the musical excitements and pleasures contrast with the intense reports of misery and struggle in the lyrics. “Pisadas (Confinament)” sounds like a COVID-period song, documenting the sound of footsteps resounding through a network of deserted streets and abandoned shops; “Sobrevivir”engages the manifold alienations and inhumanities that attend the refugee crisis in Europe’s Mediterranean nations. Upbeats subjects, those ain’t. But the music keeps your hips shaking and your head nodding. Rotura constructs lively sonic spaces in which to encounter some sharply political punk discourse. One of the EP’s best songs is “Palabras,” which sets to music a poem included in Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War (1987); like much of that book, “Palabras” speaks in the voice of a female combat veteran of the Soviet Army, one who served in World War II. It’s a terrific song, from a very good punk record.
Jonathan Shaw
Sahara — The Curse (Regain Records)
The Curse by Sahara
Argentine miscreants Sahara bill themselves as a “stoner doom” band, and one wonders why anybody would willingly self-apply a label so surpassingly stupid to music they made and presumably care about. The middle-schooler-with-a-magic-marker degree of technical polish on the art for the cassette’s j-card doubles down on the crispy-fried semiotics — but sort of lovably so. This reviewer was rather charmed. If you can penetrate the choking layers of weed smoke and unironic hesherdom to press play, you may be pleasantly surprised. Sahara’s songs don’t evoke Kyuss or Acid Witch nearly so much as Blue Cheer, and that’s a really good thing. It’s power-trio, bluesy-boogie music, played by dudes who cut their teeth on Master of Reality and No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith (with just a little Physical Graffiti in the mix, for the boogie). While no wheels are being reinvented (or competently balanced, for that matter), there’s a winning rawker quality to the enterprise, kicked up a notch or three by the unambiguously great time these guys are having playing the tunes. It won’t be for everyone: it sounds like it was recorded in someone’s Dad’s garage, and the songs have titles like “Altar of Sacrifice” and “The Curse (instrumental).” But if you love the fact that they included “(instrumental)” in parens, it could be for you. Buyer beware: when listening, you may find yourself suddenly craving a sheet of brownies. The entire sheet.
Jonathan Shaw
Bernard Santacruz / Michael Zerang — Cardinal Point (Fundacja Sluchaj)
Cardinal Point by Bernard Santacruz & Michael Zerang
French bassist Bernard Santacruz and Assyrian-American percussionist Michael Zerang have encountered each other in larger ensembles on either side of the ocean since the turn of the century, but it took them until the autumn of 2019 to record a distillation of their musical concord. Beyond their shared history, they are matched in depth of experience. Both were born in the latter half of the 1950s, and each has passed through a myriad of improvisational settings on their way to developing their respective styles. Santacruz is an economical player with a beautiful, rounded tone. Zerang can supply whatever rhythm you need, but whenever freed from time-keeping requirements, he gravitates to sounds that project the movement and friction required to make them. So, while this is a record made with drums and a double bass, it’s by no means a groove-bound affair; melodic fragments confront seething ruptures, and strings and skins knot together into thickets of texture. Each man maintains his individuality while they jointly solve the problems of collaborative music-making.
Bill Meyer
Ignaz Schick & Oliver Steidle — ILOG2 (Zarek)
ILOG2 by Ignaz Schick & Oliver Steidle
These two German gentlemen lay down a bizarre yet intriguing hybrid of free jazz, hip hop and musique concrète on their sophomore effort as a duo. Schick is a serial collaborator who divides his time between turntablism and saxophone skronk. Steidle, on the other hand, is rooted in the free jazz world as a drummer. Together they conjure two distinct modes: ADHD-inspired percussion-and-noise workouts and atmospheric electronics-forward soundscapes. Between these two disparate personalities, the more aggressive one tends to dominate. It’s in this high-energy state that the duo dwells in the worlds of hip hop, jungle and free jazz. Steidle’s drumming is out in front, as he deftly throws himself around the kit with the enthusiasm of Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale. Schick takes an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to noise-making. His Bomb Squad-meets-Pierre Schaeffer method of weaving snippets of speech, instrumental passages, drones, and blasts of noise is the perfect foil for Steidle’s frenetic skin-pounding. Schick and Steidle tug at the outer limits of beat-making with their unusual blend of electro-acoustic sound, and while they let a slight touch of the ethereal temper their blaze, the sparks still fly.
Bryon Hayes
John Tejada — Year Of The Living Dead (Kompakt)
Year Of The Living Dead by John Tejada
On Year Of The Living Dead, John Tejada chases the human through machines, seeking the traces of connection and shadows of loss blurred by the conditions we continue to live through. His minimal dub-inflected techno is immaculately produced and composed rather than constructed. Suffused with warmth and emotional depth, Tejada employs a sonic palette the elasticity of which makes his music generously expansive and resonant. Melancholy chord progressions, heartbeat percussion, a bottom end in turns ominous and cocooning. The 4X4 structure provides a framework in which Tejada is free to focus on the granular aspects of tone, pitch, ebb and flow so that while on the surface his brand of microhouse may sound “all the same” there is both plenty of interest for home listeners and danceable beats for the more active. There’s no abrasion here, no confrontation, little to challenge but Tejada’s music moves along with the relentless soft power of molten molasses.
Andrew Forell
Tree — Soul Trap (self-released)
SOUL TRAP by TREE
Tremaine Johnson is one of those heads who’s been around the block. He’s gotten that MTV airtime, he’s done records with Chris Crack and Vic Spencer, he’s outlasted a car company that sponsored one of his EPs, he’s performed at Pitchfork. But maybe more than anything, the Chicago rapper and producer wants to make sure he doesn’t forget his roots as the father of “soul trap” — and you don’t, either. Following steadily on from 2020’s abbreviated The Blue Tape and nearly two years on from his last proper full-length We Grown Now, Tree has lost none of his step as he rounds 40 years aboard this tainted orb exuding the confidence of a relaxed auteur rowing through verses and songs at his own pace; his sandpaper vocals sound at ease with his beats as he addresses negotiating parenthood, bills, the creation and maintenance of his art. Though these tracks had reportedly been sitting around for years before Soul Trap’s release, listening to this album only goes to serve the greater point that the man has a style out of step and time with his contemporaries. That’s worth more than remembering; it’s worth celebrating.
Patrick Masterson
Dave Tucker / Pat Thomas / Thurston Moore / Mark Sanders — Educated Guess (577 Records)
youtube
Hale, hearty, and steeped in the lore of a multitude of American underground art movements, Thurston Moore always seemed like a guy who was creatively rooted in his native soil. But he seems to have found solid footing since moving to England. On this record, he fits right into an improvising ensemble that is composed of Café Oto regulars. Keyboardist Pat Thomas, drummer Mark Sanders and guitarist and electronic musician Dave Tucker, who convened the quartet, are all long-standing members of London’s improvised music scene. But Moore, a punk from way back when, was probably quite tickled that Tucker played with the Fall for a brief spell in 1981. The sound they develop over the course of this set is pleasingly unbounded, with fragments of monster movie sound design and some jungle-style drum machine beats that could have been pulled from a pirate radio broadcast in 1994 sharing space with cavernous prepared piano, restless percussive exploration, and Moore sounding just like himself, but respectfully restrained when the moment demands.
Bill Meyer
Karima Walker — Waking the Dreaming Body (Keeled Scales)
Waking the Dreaming Body by Karima Walker
Karima Walker’s second album considers the full-ness of empty space. Her songs, if that’s what they are, arise out of soft, slow drones that fluctuate in a natural way, like tides or winds or aurora borealis. They incorporate natural desert sounds captured from near at hand as she locked down in Arizona, and they unfold in a sublimely gradual way as if, like the growth of plants, the movement of continents, the melting of snow, they cannot be rushed but must proceed on their own terms. She sings, a bit, in brief, dream-haunted phrases that seem as distant and unknowable as the organ tones that swell around her. “Reconstellated” best represents her eerie blend of human and electronic sounds, internal dialogue and the wide spaces of the natural world. She murmurs, “Sonoran sky plays a movie/Draw a line to the stars inside of me/Write it down, tell your friends/I know where I am but I can’t tell where I started,” against a blipping, percolating atmosphere. The title track is, by contrast, several orders folkier and more conventional, a gentle conjunction of acoustic guitar and Walker’s clear, trilling soprano, as she considers the way the ineffable intersects with the mundane. “Seems every morning starts the same way, waking the dreaming body,” she croons in this track near the end of the album, coming up into the daylight after a long nocturnal exploration.
Jennifer Kelly
Whisker — Moon Mood (Husky Pants)
Moon Mood by Whisker
Bassist Andrew Scott Young and multi-instrumentalist Ben Billington are luminaries of Chicago’s experimental jazz and electronic scenes as members of Tiger Hatchery, soloists and collaborators with a range of local groups. In Moon Mood the duo performs two lengthy improvisations for double bass and electronics. Young’s bass is to the fore, and his bow work is particularly expressive as he explores the registers of his instrument. Billington works a number of patches to interpolate all nature of blips and plinks and squelchy runs that respond to and interrogate the bass. The workouts are as much an investigation of sonic limits as a demonstration of the sympathetic interaction between natural and artificial sounds, if that is even a worthwhile dichotomy these days. Moon Mood is a fascinating conversation well worth eavesdropping on.
Andrew Forell
Wode — Burn in Many Mirrors (20 Buck Spin)
Burn In Many Mirrors by Wode
The guys in Manchester-based band Wode play black metal, but they don’t wear corpsepaint or futz around with severed goat’s heads and candelabras. That’s a good thing, because their music has bombast aplenty. Any additional theatrics might send the project over into a species of irritating kitsch. When Wode’s music works — as it does on “Lunar Madness,” the first track on the band’s latest LP, Burn in Many Mirrors — it’s muscular stuff, with terrific momentum and gut-thudding energy. Throughout the song, vocalist Michael Czerwoniuk does his usual stuff, chewing the sonic scenery, plentiful groans and gurgles punctuating all his shouting. Even in the maximalist context of black metal vocals, he’s a handful. But on “Lunar Madness,” there’s enough interest and excitement generated by the rhythms and riffs to offset his histrionics. A couple songs on the record are shaped by oft-handled forms, and rely overmuch on Czerwoniuk’s outsized presence; upon listening to “Fire in the Hills,” you may find yourself flashing on the self-parodic antics of Jim Dandy Mangrum, or on metal heroics that were already tired on records like Bark at the Moon. That’s too bad. When Wode clicks as a unit, they can make compelling sounds. “Sulphuric Glow” moves at a dead run for nearly the entirety of its five minutes, and while Czerwoniuk’s vocal stylings are still a bit much, the riffs are fluid and furious. If he could just dial stuff back to 11, folks might be able hear the rest of the band. They’re pretty good.
Jonathan Shaw
#dust#dusted magazine#aartika#black tape for a blue girl#ian mathers#altaat#euter#jennifer kelly#rrill bell#bill meyer#black country new road#deniz cuylan#tim clarke#arnold de boer#dusk#blackdown#patrick masterson#ekg#michael feuerstack#michael and peter formanek#chris forsyth#alexander hawkins#russell hoke#arthur krumins#in layers#blue gene tyranny#kariu kenji#kid congo and the pink monkeybirds#katy kirby#the koreatown oddity
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Every Time You Leave, I Hit Rock Bottom
A/N: Written in celebration for Angelina! @atc74 A while ago she celebrated 4,000 followers and 4 years on tumblr! Can you believe it?! Congratulations girl!! If you aren’t following her, do it now! You won’t be disappointed. For the duet challenge, I chose Rock Bottom (Hailee Steinfeld & DNCE) for inspiration. Give it a listen to get in the mood and let me know how I did.
Word Count: 2050
Summary: Scenes from the up and downs of Dean and Y/N’s relationship as they struggle to balance his life as a hunter.
Warnings: arguing, swearing, a hint of smut, implied cheating
****
***November 5***
“Do you love me?” You cooed in the aftermath of a passionate heat.
He chuckled, as if your question was absurd. He swam through the tangle of sheets to kiss your lips. “Of course I do.”
Though you doubted his faithfulness, he had sworn it to you. He laid his head against your chest. His hand found yours. The ring he had given you months earlier twirled gently as his fingers danced over it.
“I’m gonna miss you.” You admitted stroking your fingers through his hair.
You felt him hum in delight.
“I always miss you.”
*** November 30***
White flecks fell outside the window, joining a hefty covering on the ground. The snow muffled the sounds of the night, making the world seem at peace. Your arms held you tight, waiting for him to finish shoveling the drive. The flyer clenched in your fist crinkled as you contemplated the best way to bring it up with Dean.
He came in, a burling heap of wool and snow, his cheeks red from the blistering cold. You hustled back to the kitchen, pretending not to have lingered. The hot toddies you prepared were still steaming. You whisked in a drizzle of honey.
Dean made his way over to you, brushing snowflakes out of his hair. Your heart warmed seeing a boyish look to him.
“What?” He matched your smile.
“Nothing.” You smirked and pushed his mug closer to him. You pressed your own to your lips. “You’re cute.”
“You’re cute.” He repeated, gently kissing your forehead before taking the hot drink. He set his drink back down, the flyer on the counter catching his eye. “What’s this?”
You took another sip, concealing the flush to your cheeks. “Hmm.”
His eyes darted back and forth, scanning the paper. “It looks like Dan’s Auto is hiring.”
“Oh.” You set your mug down, moving closer to him, wrapping your arm around his waist, pretending to read with him though you already knew the words. “You’d be good at something like that.”
If he knew what you were doing, he didn’t hint at it. “Yeah, I guess.” He rubbed the back of his neck, setting the flyer back down and went back to the tea.
“It wouldn’t hurt to get more information.” You nudged.
He smiled and leaned into you. “Right now, I just want to get warm.” He nipped at your neck.
You chuckled, as heat and desire spread through you. You let the conversation end for now.
*** December 12 ***
Dean stumbled into the bedroom late at night. He’d been gone a week and a half. At first you thought he was drunk, but when your eyes adjusted to the dark, panic rose up into your chest. You scrambled out of bed and followed him into the bathroom.
“You’re hurt.” Your eyes went wide with fear.
He balled up his flannel and threw it in the sink, the water turning red with blood. Three long slashes ran from his shoulder down his arm. “It's fine.” “We need to get you to a hospital.” You stammered.
Before you could run for the keys he caught your wrist, stopping you. “With what insurance?” “God. I don’t know, we’ll figure it out later.” You pulled your arm away from his grip.
“It’s fine.” He assured, sitting down on the edge of the bath.
You closed your eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Okay.” Somehow you managed to force the panic down. “Okay.” You repeated, going for the medicine cabinet, looking for gauze, alcohol, anything that could help.
*** December 19 ***
“You’re not going back out!” You stomped your foot on the ground like a toddler who had no chance at winning an argument.
He shook his head and chuckled as if to contain his anger. “Your arm was nearly ripped off a week ago!” You continued, attempting to make him see logic. “You're in no condition to hunt.”
He threw his duffel bag over his shoulder. “I’ve had worse Y/N. Anyways, it's recovering just fine.”
Fine. You hated that word. It was if he used it to cover up any indifference growing in your relationship. You went to strike him, only to prove him wrong. His hand caught you before you could. “Are you fucking serious?” He accused you, disdain seething out of his eyes. He pushed you aside and went for the door.
The worry balled up, forming a pit in your stomach. Staying with you until he returned.
*** January 3 ***
“Don’t give me that look Y/N.” Dean could feel your scorn through the dark bedroom, dimly lit by the full moon’s beam.
“What look?” You huffed. You had woken to rustling and the spot next to you cold. He was planning to leave you. Again. You had stayed silent, watching him pack, waiting for him to realize you were awake.
“Y/N.” He groaned. “Don’t do this, not now.”
“I’m not doing anything Dean.” You argued back.
He sighed, knowing he wouldn’t be able to reason with you with anger. Releasing his own, he gently crawled onto the bed, creeping towards you. You flipped over, avoiding his gaze and pulled the blankets into a shield around you.
His breath was on the back of your neck. He spoke in a whisper. “You’re resenting me.” He kissed the back of your head. “You’re pouting.” Another kiss. He paused hearing a whimper. “And now you are crying.” He laid down and pulled you tight against his chest, a tear sliding down his own cheek.
When you finally found courage to speak, your voice shook. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Babe… you know I have to.”
You turned around to meet him. “No, you don’t.”
His thumb wiped away a trailing tear against your skin. “Who else is going to do it?”
“... Sam.” “He’s across the country. ‘Sides, it’s only a state over. I’ll be a week, tops.” He kissed your forehead before getting up to finish packing.
You didn’t turn to watch him leave. You only stared at the empty pillow next to yours. He left the door cracked open. It wasn’t until you heard the front door shut and the rumble of his car coming to life when the anger surfaced again.
Gently grabbing for his pillow, wrapping your arms around it and burying your face in his scent, you whispered,“Fuck you.”
*** Valentine’s ***
Traditionally, the holiday hadn’t meant much to you. A way to push over priced Hallmark cards with clashing colors. But Dean was home, and so recently he hadn’t been. You fussed around the kitchen in a little black dress, concealing something skimpy and lacy underneath. Filet mignon sizzled against hot cast iron and a cherry pie bubbled in the oven. Dean shuffled behind you. You turned around hoping to be met with a kiss. Instead you saw that dreaded duffel bag.
“No.” Your heart sank. “Not today.”
He gave you that look. The look that said, this is what you sign up for.
“Can it at least be after dinner?” You pleaded.
He sighed, running his hand through his hair, contemplating it for a second. “The longer I wait, the more someone could get hurt.”
You’re hurting me, you thought to yourself. It was selfish though. You closed your eyes and hung your head in defeat.
He strided closer to you, planted a kiss onto your forehead and pulled you close to him.
“We’ll celebrate when I get home. K?”
You nodded into his chest.
*** February 25 ***
“You just got home. And you’re already leaving again!” You fumed.
“What choice do I have!?” Dean clenched his jaw, attempting to control his temper.
The nearest object to you was his phone. You picked it up and threw it at him. He easily caught it, avoiding any blow you intended. “Call someone else to take it. Don’t go. Take that job at the shop. Those are your choices Dean!”
“This is my job Y/N! This is the only life I know. I can’t sit around here, with a white picket fence, knowing people are out there are dying on my watch.”
“Then take me with you!” You pleaded. “I can’t keep watching you leave, not knowing if you’ll come back or not.” Tears threatened to spill out.
“Like hell!” He firmly protested. “I won’t put you in harm’s way.”
You rolled your eyes. “God, I wish you realized how hypocritical you sound right now. Can’t you realize that's how I feel every single time.”
“I can take care of myself.” He thumped against his chest. “I always have. And I don’t need your whiny, nagging ass causing extra stress on a hunt.”
A feral scream escaped from your throat. You slid off the ring he had given to you months earlier and chucked it across the room at him. He didn’t bother to catch it. “Fuck off Dean. You might as well not bother coming home.”
“Maybe I won’t then!” He grabbed his bag, slamming the door shut with a bang.
*** March 4 ***
“I’m so sorry baby.” Dean’s gasped. His mouth buried into the crook of your neck. Your fingers ran down his bare torso as he rocked into you. “I’ll never leave you again.”
You moaned as your bodies clashed against each other, moving together, beads of sweat outlining each muscle. He groaned, his kisses growing more hungry and desperate as he neared a climax. A whimper escaped your lips and sent him over the edge. He buried his face into your shoulder, panting for air.
With a final grunt, he was satisfied, leaving you empty and craving for more. He rolled over on his back catching his breath.
“God. I needed that.” He ran his fingers through his hair before getting up for a water break.
You turned over to your side, pulling up a sheet to cover yourself. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’
*** April 10 ***
To be fair, he did stay longer than usual. But the itch got to him. One he couldn’t help but scratch. You knew it was coming. He became more antsy. Pacing around, working on mundane house projects, spending more time outside. Honestly, it was making you anxious.
You began searching for cold cases in the area, drawing out farther until something seemed to fit. Over dinner, you handed him the phone to look over the articles. He kept his expression as blank as he could.
“What do you think?” You prompted.
He set the phone down and searched your eyes, treading lightly. “Could be a case.” He went back pushing food around his plate but not eating.
You dabbed your mouth with a napkin, and then cleared your plate, washing it in the sink. “Maybe…” You sighed. “Maybe, you should look into it.”
He came up behind you, turning off the water, and wrapping his arms around you. You both stood there for several minutes, your heartbeats matching in rhythm.
His whisper barely broke the silence. “Are you sure?”
You only nodded.
He gently kissed the side of your temple. “Love you.” He slipped away.
“Love you too.” *** May 8 ***
“Who the fuck was that Dean?!”
“Nobody!” He yelled back into his cell. “Like Hell!” A scoff made it through your seething anger.
“It was just the TV, Y/N.” He calmed his voice, to try and reason with you. “Bullshit!” Your blood began to boil. “She was right fucking next to you!”
“Stop being so fucking paranoid. You’re my one and only.” You heard the rustling of sheets.
You made your way through the dark hall to the medicine cabinet, looking for something to cool a rising migraine. “Then prove it.” “What?” He stuttered.
“Prove it! Give me a face-time tour of your hotel room.” You popped the bottle and swallowed a few pills.
His voice lowered to a rigid growl. “I don’t have to prove anything to you. If you love me, you’ll trust me.”
You slammed your phone shut and threw it across the room.
*** May 11 ***
Dean entered the home, ready for a fight. He slammed the door on the way in and tossed his key’s onto the kitchen counter.
“Why haven’t you been taking my calls?” He called out, waiting a few moments before going to look for you. “Y/N?” His voice echoed through the empty house. “What the hell?” He muttered to himself.
He paced down the hallway, calling your name again. Upon entering the bedroom, it became abundantly clear. He ripped open the closet door, and stood back. Only his items remained.
***
Tags:
Forever Lovelies: @nanie5 @sea040561 @crushing83 @mogaruke@deanwinchesterforpromqueen @ginamsmith @jotink78 @blushingokoye@sup3r-pott3r-lock3d @dancingalone21 @li-ssu @highonpastries @daddy-kink-confirmed @weewooweewoo1212 @carryonmyswansong @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @atc74 @superapplepie @coolness22 @cassieraider@winchesternco @adaliamalfoy @spnbaby-67 @iwriteaboutdean @cigsandpie @curedean @monkeymcpoopoo @adoptdontshoppets @maddiepants @thisismysecrethappyplace @onceuponathreetwoone
DeanxReader Tags: @akshi8278 @mywillfulwinchester @dainty-hibiscus @boxywrites @its-not-a-tulpa @mrsbatesmotel53 @tacklesackles@creepykatftw @aubreystilinski @iamabeautifulperson18 @jerkbitchidjitassbutt@gloriousartisanfancreator
#angelina’s duets reboot challenge#dean winchester#supernatural#spn#spnfandom#spn fanfiction#dean x you#dean x reader#dean x y/n
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The marriage pact - Reality strikes
Henry Cavill x OC Alice - multi-chapter
< Part 20 | Part 21 Reality strikes | Part 22 >
Disclaimer: Some angst
Author’s note: No idea what to write here today other than it’s 7.52 AM, so: good morning!
Word count: 2.723
(Link to my Masterlist)
Dear readers,
Another year reaches its end and I’m sitting here with mixed emotions. Tonight I’ll be celebrating with friends. Meaning a house filled with a whole horde of kids and a few slightly boozed up adults.
I’ll be the only childless adult. I’ll be the only unmarried adult. And with my dear chocolate cake right now working abroad, I’ll also be the only adult that will show up alone.
It is what it is. Life’s reality. But I must admit that it sets a tiny sad note to an otherwise quite lovely year. I lost one love, but gained a far better one in return. I now know my parents better than I probably ever have - and what joy it has been to share my life with them again. Also, I am writing my first novel and that is truly a dream come true.
Looking at this from the bright side; it does give me some new goals for the next year and I can’t wait to smash next year out of the park. Do you have any new years resolutions, dear readers?
Ali
‘9..8..7…’
*BBZZZZTT-BZZZZTTTT*
With hasty fingers I grasped for my phone, hearing the count down quickly proceed. Henry bear. It was silly to feel relieved to see his name.
He didn’t forget.
‘5..4..3..’
Putting him on speakers I laughed as my friends had bottles of champagne in hand, thumbs on the ready-to-pop corks. Around us excited, albeit slightly sleepy, children were watching with expectant eyes, their arms hugging their favourite stuffies. It was special for them to be allowed to stay up so late, which only added onto the magic of New Years eve.
‘2..1!!!’
PffffPOP - ’Oh fuck..!!’
A cork shot out in a wild direction and near hit Gisele in the face, everyone gasping as the poor woman blinked in silent terror. Ooph..that could have gone wrong.
‘HANKK..come on!’ She laughed after recapitulating a bit, her shocked lips turning up in amused smile. And just like that the mood was good again, everyone starting to give each other kisses and hugs. After clinking my glass with a few friends I quickly walked off to the quiet of the hallway, bringing my ear back to my phone, Henry expectantly waiting for my voice.
‘Hen..’ My voice was cracking.
‘ALI, YOU OKAY? DID SOMETHING HAPPEN?’
‘Haha..’ I sniffled back a little tear. ‘No no. Just Hendrik being a fool..*sniff* with the champagne. Nobody’s hurt though.’
‘Hey baby.’ He said, still mildly concerned, hearing me sniffling back tears. ‘Hi.’ I mumbled, looking over my shoulder to see the party getting in full swing, glasses refilled and kids jumping with excitement, everyone dancing on the music that was playing on the tv.
‘Happy new year.’ I whispered, hiding another quiet sob.
‘Happy new year baby.’ He sighed. ‘Gosh I wish I could be there. I miss you terribly.’
‘Same..*sniff* sorry about this. It’s just the wine I think.’
‘Hmm..it’s okay baby. I’m going to kiss allll those tears away when I get back, okay?’ His promise sounded extra bitter, because that would take another three weeks. Three long weeks before he’d get back here for two days, only to fly back again immediately after. But then again, trying to see it on a more positive note; that gave me three weeks to put some pressure on getting that hiatus approved. And that was do-able, right?
—
‘Hi Ali.’ Mrs. Mulligan smiled, lighting up another cigarette, the office building quiet as most employees were out running reports. It was mid January and though I hoped there would be good news, I never could be quite so sure with Mrs. Mulligan. The bad ass Chief editor was hard for me to read. Was she happy? Enthused? Taking the piss? Or being for real? Sinking down in the seat opposite of her desk I gave her a pensive look.
‘Hi Mrs. Mulligan.’ I said, trying my best at returning the smile she offered me. She chuckled. ‘You worry too much Ali. Really.’ She sucked on her cigarette, the tip burning bright orange. Licking her lips she shifted forward a bit. ‘So how is Henry?’
Of course, small talk. I sighed and shrugged. ‘Bit difficult to tell with his busy schedule and the time zone issue, but, I think he’s doing alright. At least they haven’t gotten any delays thus far.’
Mrs. Mulligan turned in her chair, nodding. ‘Well let’s hope that you won’t distract him, when you join him.’ She quickly took another inhale, smiling as the realisation of her words hit me. ‘Really?!’ I sat up a bit in my chair, looking at her with widened eyes. ‘Really really. Though of course we still want to get plenty of updates. You’re one of our best reporters and..as you know..we islanders are close-knit. Even Superman can’t steal you away from us for good.’ She winked, blowing the smoke out high above her head.
I gasped quietly and I couldn’t help but laugh, the relief this news brought being just what I needed.
‘Thank you so much Mrs. Mulligan.’ I smiled.
‘You’re welcome Ali.’ She winked, then pressed her burned up cigarette down in her ash tray. Her way of saying; this meeting is over. Quickly I got up and fumbled through my jean pocket to retrieve my phone; I had to tell him! I had to tell him!
—
But I couldn’t tell him. He didn’t have reception, again. And when I tried once more later that night all I got was a quick message from him, sent from an unknown number, telling me they had some technical difficulties now they were out in the wilderness. He’d try to get a moment to call later that week, but he couldn’t promise anything. And that he missed me. Terribly.
I hated it. This. The distance. The time zones. The difficulty to reach him. The fact I couldn’t share the happy news with him. At least the good thing was that it was just one more week till I’d see him. And we’d better find a way to tackle this problem once and for all..and quickly..because with every lonely night in my bed the unease in my mind grew; like this, it simply couldn’t work. No matter how hard we both tried. If we couldn’t be together, then this relationship was doomed.
—
Once more I was standing here at the airport, looking through the arriving crowd, their suitcases rolling over the grey tiles of the hall as the cold draft made me huddle closer in my thick wool jacket. I couldn’t wait to be back in Henry’s warm embrace again, especially after being almost a month apart. It had been simply too long.
More and more people flooded the airport, loved ones embracing one another, business men back on their phones, their faces stuck in expressions of true importance. But no Henry.
*BZZZ BZZZZ*
Henry bear: Sweetheart, running a little late. Issue with my baggage.
Seeing the message on my phone, made me all the more frustrated. He was here! In this darn building! And what was up with this baggage? He really didn’t need to bring any hold luggage for just the few days he was going to be here right? Groaning in silent frustration I saw an old lady in the corner of my eye, her small blue eyes also looking over the crowd with a sense of worry. As if she couldn’t find the person she was waiting for.
Using some passersby as an excuse to move in her direction, I smiled at her, attracting her attention. ‘Picking someone up?’ I asked, finding her worried look melt in a friendly smile. ‘Hello dear. Eh..yes..my son..he was supposed to be on this flight, but I don’t see him..’ She furrowed her thin eyebrows and looked back at the sliding door, the flood of passengers slowly becoming thinner and thinner.
‘Well that makes two of us. Though I am not waiting for my son, but my boyfriend. He just texted me there’s some issues with the baggage, so maybe your son has similar problems.’ I also looked back at the sliding door, the door now sliding fully closed.
No more people coming through.
It shouldn’t have hurt so. But it did all the same. After weeks of hoping, wishing, waiting, it was all the more frustrating to have to wait even more because of something silly like an issue with the luggage. And it was especially frustrating to think that I only had so few hours with him before he had to head back again to continue shooting.
The woman turned back towards me and looked me up and down. ‘Aren’t you…’ She squinted her eyes slightly, then beamed up as recognition hit. ‘..Henry’s girl?’ I looked at her, seeing those small but warm blue eyes peering at me, her wrinkly face lined with years of many smiles and few frowns. I laughed. ‘Correct. I’m Alice. From the west side of town, work for the local newspaper.’
The woman nodded, then near jumped on her feet when the door opened and two men came strolling in. First a man who probably was her son. And then Henry. A very tired to the bone Henry, his day old beard unshaven and hair slightly disheveled. It was a silver lining that most people had long left the hall, making the odds of someone snapping a picture of him in this state just that bit smaller.
As the two men strode over towards us it became apparent that there was some mutual recognition.
‘Mrs. Penny?’ Henry blinked at the woman who was giving her son a quick but big hug. Pulling back she tilted her head slightly, taking in his disheveled look. ‘Little Henry. Look at you dear boy! All grown up! And you need a shave!’ She winked then directed at me: ‘I was his drama teacher.’
I wished to smile at her, but before I could I felt two large arms wrap around me, a head dipping down in the crook of my neck.
Henry.
Home at last.
Running my hands over his back I looked through the confines of his big embrace at the lady called Mrs. Penny, her son checking his watch as if he wasn’t quite willing to wait a moment longer. I felt Henry pull back and for the briefest of moments his lips brushed over mine.
‘Hi.’ He breathed, smiling at me warmly, albeit with great tiredness.
‘Hi bear.’ I smiled, stroking a thumb over his cheek.
Turning back towards his drama teacher Henry reached out his arms, wishing to receive a hug from her as well. She gladly accepted, snickering a bit as Henry was near twice her height and triple her weight. The tiny lady and the huge bear of a man.
‘Mom, it’s time to go. We need to get eh…’ The son licked his lip as he looked at Henry, a glint of jealousy or distaste lingering in his eyes. Thankfully his mom was quick to agree. ‘Yes yes. Time is fleeting! It is good to see you Henry and I love your work. Though gotta practise that smile talking a little.’ She tutted, pinching his cheek with some motherly affection. Henry laughed and shook his head. ‘It’s good to see you Mrs. Penny and..please..let us not hold you up.’ Henry nodded at the other man, who was practically sneering at him.
—
‘Something happened with that guy?’ I asked, driving us home in his dad’s car - anything better than my mom’s car. Henry sighed. ‘Got our bags mixed up and he just kept saying my bag was his, refusing to open it and compare the contents.’
He sounded so done with it all, voice low and dry, eyes peering out over the icy cold waves hitting the frosty shoreline. ‘Sounds like a pain in the ass.’ I frowned, looking at him a bit better. ‘How are you Hen?’ A question that I could easily answer myself; awful. Because he sure as hell looked awful, his whole aura dark and gloomy, perfectly fitting the weather outside.
‘Could use a nap.’ He yawned, looking back over at me and trying his best to offer me a smile, the joy not reaching his eyes.
Oh my poor bear.
‘Then let’s nap and talk later.’
‘Yea..’ He reached out a hand and squeezed the hand I kept at the gear stick. ‘I’m terribly glad to be with you again. I am. Just..tired..’s all. Sorry if I..-’
‘Hen..it’s okay. Relax. Close your eyes for a bit and I’ll tell you when we’ve arrived.’
‘Okay.’ He slowly nodded, immediately closing his eyes, settling more comfortably in his seat.
‘Okay.’ I whispered.
—
Running my hand through his curls, his head resting on my lap, I folded over another page of the book I was reading. We were sitting / sleeping on his parents couch, his father upstairs going about his business, his mom out for tea with a friend. The house was nice and quiet, all sound reaching my ears being Henry’s slow breathing and the buzz of the dishwasher running in the kitchen.
He looked tired even while sleeping.
Oh poor, poor bear.
It was then he shifted a little, heavy eyelids slowly blinking open and his lip curling up in a tiny smile. ‘MMmmmm…’ He hummed, nuzzling his nose in my thighs, making me giggle. ‘Hennn! Cheeky!’ He chuckled in turn, his voice deep with sleep. ‘Am I still dreaming?’ ‘No, you’re not. I’m here. And you’re home. And it’s 11.30, in case you wonder.’
He sighed deeply and nodded, shifting so he was laying flat on his back, his ocean blue eyes looking up at me. ‘Hi.’ He rumbled. ‘Hi.’ I sniffled, tracing my fingers through his curls again, massaging his scalp ever so slightly. ‘Mmm..I missed you. Your hands..’ He slowly sat up, moving his nose into my chest, sniffing a long line up into my neck. ‘..your smell.’
I giggled again. ‘Okay then Geralt.’ He smiled and sat back a little, cupping my cheek. ‘It was worth every delay, every sleepless hour, every luggage swap annoyance.’ And then he placed the first proper kiss on my lips. Soft and loving, as if testing again how I feel like. How our lips can slot together perfectly.
And what a good kisser he was. Hmm.
Humming gladly I didn’t wish the kiss to end, but he eventually did break it, chuckling softly when I leaned into him a little more. ’How are you sweet one?’ He asked, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, looking studiously at my face. As if relearning what I looked like.
Gosh we had really been apart for too long. If anything this had to be prevented from here on at any cost. At any..
‘OH! I have news actually.’ I smiled at him, my worried face turning up with pure joy. He also started to smile. ‘Does this mean that..?’ - ‘Yes. Or well. I don’t know what you’re assuming here. But eh..yea..I received green light for my hiatus. So..’
‘AAAHH YES!’ He let out an excited cheer and quickly pulled me in for another kiss. Deeper this time. And longer. Until both of us had to pull apart for the simple fact of requiring fresh air in our lungs. He was properly beaming. ‘Oh baby..oh…so..when and..?’ He babbled, keeping my face close to his. ‘Now, right now.’ I laughed, feeling his aura lighten up, the dark storm clouds pulling away, his eyes finally starting to shine with happiness.
—
The next morning we had our usual morning walk and it almost felt like it had for all those months before he left. Albeit that there was no happy Akita trodding ahead of us - Kal was still in Canada. With gloved hands interlinked we stepped in steady rhythm, small clouds coming from our mouths as we talked and laughed into the cold morning air.
‘You better pack real warm. It’s really, really cold over there.’ He smiled, pulling me closer and kissing my cold red nose. ‘Mmpff can’t wait.’ I grumbled - hating the cold, but accepting it if that meant I could finally be with Henry. ‘Hahaha. Oh sweetheart. Now...’ He halted us before a large blue slatted house. ‘Are you ready to move in with me?’ He raised a teasing eyebrow and I poked him playfully in the ribs.
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
--
General tagsquad: @harrysthiccthighss @tumblnewby @magdelen69 @thereisa8ella @mary-ann84 @darkbooksarwin @summersong69 @madbaddic7ed
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#henry cavill fanfiction#henry cavill fanfic#henry cavill fluff#long distance#romcom#the marriage pact#henry cavill x oc#henry cavill x author#henry bear#jersey#winter#fluff
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HOW I BUILT THE INTERNET
1982: i took a 7th grade introduction to computers class. all i remember is dos and 'run'
1995 (september): my friend in tech college gifted me a desktop computer he built for class. we secured a membership to a local software club (imagine blockbuster but with 3" floppies instead of vhs tapes.) we signed an agreement that we would uninstall any programs we rented by their due date.. but we lied! we had as many programs as our machines could run. my favorites were a game called 'pac in time' (starring pacman) and a beginner typing game called 'kids typing'
1995 (december): tech friend introduced me to the internet. it was before aol and windows so it was dos. white text on a black screen.. but there were *people* in there. interesting people. amazing people
1996 (january): tech friend introduces me to aol. it looked more like what we see now. black text on bright white screen. it was a pay by the hour service. he paid for the basic subscription as a requirement for class but he didnt use it so he gave the basic set of hours to me. i think it was $50 for 50 hours/month. after the first month i was hooked and required MORE so paid for an extra 50 hours/month bc INTERNET IS MAGICC. Spent most of my time in chat rooms with artists and musicians. my favorite chat friend back then was the lead singer for a SoCA band named Gren. a few months later I heard their first single play on the radio in VA.
1996 (august): i think by now aol offered unlimited hours.. and i was the master of dial up.. chat rooms.. all things aol.. and had researched every question that had gone unanswered for all of my life. i spent most of my time in a twenty-something private club chat room that we named 'nosex'. i also loved the spin magazine chat a lot. and my favorite was the Janes Addiction Digest which I wrote for every day. these were all high quality humans. i am still friends with many of them and am grateful to know them
i was no longer limited to the people of my small va town. i now had friends with shared interests.. mostly writing art music and anarchyyy. interesting fascinating talented funny genius friends who came to talk to me every day. i had friends around the world. my brain changed. my life changed. i traveled the country to meet friends. they traveled to meet me. i had a place to funnel all of the love and passion i had been burying for 25 years. i felt free and loved and appreciated for the first time in my life.
after aol i tried myspace. learned a bit of html in order to build a beautiful blog. then facebook. it was 90% personality quizzes then. when it became what it is now i quit. that was 2010.
i joined g+ and tumblr around that time.. end of 2011 - early 2012
i had 10K followers on g+ and actual fans there. its dead now.. and i got locked out of my original tumblr blog (littlerandomrabbit and later wanderingpinkrabbit) which hurt bc i only had maybe 900 followers but i had worked on it daily for 8 years and i miss the people i lost with it
and here i am.. at 50
ive taken some blows along the way. people can be mean as hell. and i continue to take blows.. but i was here first dammit.. so i learn.. i grow.. and i rally. i dont let anyone push me out.
i have been in love with the internet since 1996.. and looking back now i know that *i built the internet*.. so come at me babies. im not going anywhere
and youre welcome
⌨💾📧📀🌐
#op#i built the internet#dos#aol#myspace#facebook#google+#tumblr#nostalgia#spin magazine#floppy discs#gen x
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Today in History
On January 26, 1984, Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial.
UPI:
JAN. 28, 1984
Michael Jackson hospitalized after fireworks mishap on set of Pepsi commercial
ByJEFF HASEN
LOS ANGELES -- Superstar Michael Jackson, hospitalized with burns from fireworks that ignited his hair during filming of a commercial, was quietly discharged from a hospital Saturday against his doctor's recommendation.
Dr. Steve Hoefflin said he believed it was best for Jackson to stay at Brotman Memorial Hospital, but reluctantly agreed to his release at 12:30 p.m. PST (3:30 p.m. EST). Hours earlier, he had told reporters Jackson would be hospitalized 'for several days.'
'We recommended that Michael stay, but we determined this could be done as well out of the hospital as in the hospital,' Hoefflin said. 'Despite our recommendation, he felt he did want to be treated as an outpatient.
'He was quite happy. He felt better after a good night's sleep. He's in excellent health and was showing very rapid signs of recovery. He's very pleased it was not more of a severe burn.'
Hoefflin said he did not know where Jackson planned to go.
Jackson, 25, was dancing down a stairway at the Shrine Auditorium Friday night in a scene for a multi-million dollar Pepsi commercial when a special effects smoke bomb apparently misfired and set his pomade-slicked hair ablaze.
Nurse Pat Lavalas, the burn unit supervisor, said Jackson was in good spirits Saturday morning and he received many telephone calls, including get-well wishes from singers Teddy Pendergrass and Stephanie Mills.
'He left in good spirits and his condition is good,' she said. 'He didn't speak about the accident to us. He watched 'American Bandstand' this morning and people were getting his autograph.
He sang a Stephanie Mills song in the bathroom. He stayed in bed and opened telegrams, and he got a big kick out of one from a fan that said, 'I know you're hot, but this is ridiculous,'' the nurse said.
Just hours before Jackson's secretive departure, Hoefflin told reporters the singer was in satisfactory condition with second-degree burns and a small third-degree burn on the back of his head.
'He's in moderate pain, he's much more tired than we anticipated. He needs sleep at this time,' Hoefflin told reporters at a hospital news conference.
He said Jackson may require reconstructive surgery.
Jackson, the country's top singer, won seven American Music Awards earlier this month and picked up a record 12 Grammy nominations. Hoefflin said Jackson will be able to attend the Feb. 28 Grammy presentations at the Shrine 'if he feels up to it.'
A spokesman for Jackson said the singer requested that a tape of the accident be made public as soon as the film can be processed.
'Michael wants to make certain that his fans know exactly what happened,' Larry Larson told reporters at the hospital.
Asked if Jackson was contemplating a lawsuit, he said, 'There's no indication at this point.'
Hospital officials said the medical center had been inundated with thousands of phone calls since Jackson arrived and a spokesman pleaded with the public to stop calling, saying emergency calls could not get through.
The singer's 'Thriller' album topped the music charts last year, placing an unprecedented six singles -- including 'Billie Jean' and 'Beat It' -- in the top 10 and spawning several popular videos.
The accident Friday night occurred before a horrified audience of about 3,000 people who won tickets to the taping from a local radio station.
One witness told United Press International that Jackson removed his jacket without breaking stride and tried to put out the fire.
'There was supposed to be an explosion for his big entrance,' Daryoush Maze, 25, an extra in the cast, said. 'As he went off, an explosion went off and there was blue smoke all around his head and neck. There were no flames, just blue smoke from the stuff he had in his hair.
'It seemed like it was part of the show. He was doing it very professionally, still dancing. He's a good trouper.'
About a block from Jackson's boyhood home, nearly 1,000 people clad in their Sunday best jammed into a small, stuffy basketball gym to hear the candidate speak.
After a church choir sang a few hymns, Jackson's mother, wearing a deep blue dress and a 'Jackson in '84' button, triumphantly introduced her son to the throng.
Jackson took the stage and led the audience in his familiar 'I am somebody' chant.
'Our mission is justice at home and peace abroad,' he told the townspeople. 'I've watched the growth of this city and this state and I see the need for more growth.
'We have the need this day to have a spirit of redemption and reconciliation -- to rise above historic divisions that have stunted our growth. This is a period for us to beat our swords into plowshares.'
Jackson spoke of Greenville as once being the textile capital of the world, and noted the slump in the industry today that has put thousands out of work.
He called for an end to the 'dislocation of the textile industry.'
'This generation must realize when a plant closes, it closes without notice. Men cannot feed their families; mothers cannot nourish their children. That kind of reckless economic conduct must challenge us to open a new economic order.'
Jackson also visited a small bar that sponsors a softball team Jackson played on during the 1960s.
The presidential hopeful was the team's starting first baseman.
'He's a long-ball hitter,' said Charles Chiles, a patron of the establishment who remembers Jackson's days on the softball field.
Jackson also climbed onto the fender of a brown Cadillac parked near the bar during the afternoon and urged about 200 onlookers to register to vote.
'You can help me and you can help yourself,' he said. 'If we register to vote our children will not have to grow up as we did. They can get jobs. They can develop and grow.
'We can not only hang around on the corner, we can own the corner.'
Moonwalk book page 235-238:
Later one of the doctors told me that it was a miracle I was alive. One of the firemen had mentioned that in most cases your clothes catch on fire in which case the whole face can be disfigured or you can die. That’s it. I third-degree burns On the back of my head that’s Almost went through to my skull, so we had a lot of the problems with it, But I was very lucky.
What we now know is that the incident created a lot of publicity for the commercial. They sold more Pepsi than ever before. And they came back to me later and offered me the biggest commercial endorsement Fee in history. It was so unprecedented But it went into The Guinness Book of World Records. Pepsi and I worked together on another Commercial called” The Kid”, And I gave them problems by limiting the shots of me because I felt the shots they were asking for didn’t work well. Later, when the commercial was a success, he told me I had been right.
I still remember how scared those Pepsi excuses looked the night of the fire. They thought that my getting burned would leave a bad taste in the mouth every kid in America who drank Pepsi. They knew I could have sued him and I could have. But I was real nice about it. Real nice. They gave me $1,500,000 Which I immediately donated to the Michael Jackson Burn Center. I wanted to do something because I was so moved By the other burn patient I met while I was in the hospital.
“ I have a plan to spend most of 1984 working on some movie ideas we had, But those plans got sidetracked. First, in January, I Was burned On the set of a Pepsi commercial I was shooting with my brothers.
The reason for the fire stupidity, pure and simple. We were shooting tonight and I Wassupposed To come down a staircase yes magnesium flash bombs Going off on either side of me and just behind me. It seemed so simple. I wanted to walk down the stairs and these bombs Would blow up. We did several takes that were wonderfully timed. The lighting effects from the bombs were great. Only later did I find out that these bombs Were only two feet away from either side of my head, which was a total Disregard of the safety regulations. I was supposed to stand in the middle of a magnesium explosion, two feet on either side.
Then Bob Giraldi, the director, Came to me and said, “ Michael, you are going down too early. We want To see you up there, up on the stairs. When the lights come on, we want to reveal that you’re there, so wait”
So I waited, the bombs went off on either side of my head, and the sparks set My hair on fire. I was dancing down the ramp and turning around, spinning not knowing I was on fire. Suddenly I filled my hands reflexively going to my head In an attempt to smother the flames. Are you feeling down and just tried to shake the Flames out. Jermaine Turned around and saw me on the ground, Just after the explosions had gone off, and he thought I was shot be someone In the crowd — because we were shooting In front of a big audience. That what I looked like to him.
Miko Brando , Who works for me, was the first person to reach me. After that, it was clhaos. It was crazy. No for me could probably capture The drama of what went on That night. The crowd was screaming. Someone shouted, “ Get some ice! “ There were fantic running sounds. People were yelling,” Oh no!”. The emergency truck came up And before they Put me in Isow the Pepsi excutives huddled together in a corner, looking terrified. I remember the medical people putting me on a cot And the guys from Pepsi were so scared They couldn’t
even bring themselves to check on me.
Meanwhile, I was kind of detached, despite the terrible pain, I was watching all the drama unfold. Later they told me, I was in shock, but I remember enjoying the ride to the hospital because I never thought I’d ride in an ambulance with the sirens wailing. It was one of those things I had always wanted to do when I was growing up. We got there, They told me there news crews Outside, so I asked for my glove. There’s a famous shot one waving from the stretcher with my glove on. hooting tonight and I Wassupposed To come down a staircase yes magnesium flash bombs Going off on either side of me and just behind me. It seemed so simple. I wanted to walk down the stairs and these bombs Would blow up. We did several takes that were wonderfully timed. The lighting effects from the bombs were great. Only later did I find out that these bombs Were only two feet away from either side of my head, which was a total Disregard of the safety regulations. I was supposed to stand in the middle of a magnesium explosion, two feet on either side.
Then Bob Giraldi, the director, Came to me and said, “ Michael, you are going down too early. We want To see you up there, up on the stairs. When the lights come on, we want to reveal that you’re there, so wait”
So I waited, the bombs went off on either side of my head, and the sparks set My hair on fire. I was dancing down the ramp and turning around, spinning not knowing I was on fire. Suddenly I filled my hands reflexively going to my head In an attempt to smother the flames. Are you feeling down and just tried to shake the Flames out. Jermaine Turned around and saw me on the ground, Just after the explosions had gone off, and he thought I was shot be someone In the crowd — because we were shooting In front of a big audience. That what I looked like to him.
Miko Brando , Who works for me, was the first person to reach me. After that, it was clhaos. It was crazy. No for me could probably capture The drama of what went on That night. The crowd was screaming. Someone shouted, “ Get some ice! “ There were fantic running sounds. People were yelling,” Oh no!”. The emergency truck came up And before they Put me in Isow the Pepsi excutives huddled together in a corner, looking terrified. I remember the medical people putting me on a cot And the guys from Pepsi were so scared They couldn’t
even bring themselves to check on me.
Meanwhile, I was kind of detached, despite the terrible pain, I was watching all the drama unfold. Later they told me, I was in shock, but I remember enjoying the ride to the hospital because I never thought I’d ride in an ambulance with the sirens wailing. It was one of those things I had always wanted to do when I was growing up. We got there, They told me there news crews Outside, so I asked for my glove. There’s a famous shot one waving from the stretcher with my glove on.
https://youtu.be/DkMNn7TA0pg
youtube
#mj mjj mjlegacy mjisthebestofthebest michaeljackson bahamas#moonwalker#mjfanandproudofit#neverland#pepsico#pepsiad#commercial#hair#realking#royalty#kingofpop#mjthehusband#applehead#mjisinnocent#Youtube
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