#and i read something a while back about how the us originally used puerto rican women as guinea pigs for bc and essentially sterilized them

[diamonddoll]

Does the whole concept of hormonal birth control not make anyone else angry?? Yes I can acknowledge it has done a lot of good for women’s rights but it’s a temporary solution to a wider problem. You can’t ignore the negative side effects it has on womens bodies. And IUD is absolutely barbaric. Every woman I’ve met who has one told me insertion is unbearably painful. My stepmom had one and still got pregnant and ended up having to have a hysterectomy when her child was born. Yet every man expects women to be on it so he can get his 3 min of raw sex and nut inside. It’s ENTIRELY for them. I really don’t believe it feels much different for women. It doesn’t help women orgasm. Yet it’s entirely on us to cater to mens desires. But men can’t be bothered with condoms or vasectomies.

[dimemasazucar]

This time around I want to focus on an idea that became more sentient as we continued to read and watch these documentaries of history shared with mambo. What became a passing focus that was intended to receive idle time mentioning is now at the forefront of my thoughts because of how influential it is to the rest of the genre within Latin music. What's so cool is how recognizable similar ideas of expression by necessity and congregation lead to cultural evolution through time, and that was within the world of dance. See, as somebody who would consider dance a large aspect of his life, I learned transitively through an early age both the importance of keeping a rhythm and the transformative power of music. Powerful movements and a confident fluidity could both capture an audience and send the dancers to another space amongst their peers while harmonizing with live instrumentation in a way that has since evolved but can easily be traced back to the heart of our roots. While it is the beauty of blended cultures from Africa and Cuba that are the most obvious representations of mambo's original forms, it was the ingenuity of releasing the tempo over time that lead to the genre becoming as prolific as it was. The irony is not lost on me that it was a Nuyorican and a large part of the cultural transition between the community was adapted by the African Americans and the local Jewish & Italian communities freely participating in the evolution of a new tempo together. While the world may have experienced Bad Bunny's Después de la Playa at the end of the first week of Coachella, the song itself represents very clear connections to the roots BB pays homage to in their opening on Latin music. What do I mean? Well, it's kind of like getting a multi-course meal so I'll break it down into a few categories. In no particular order we'll start with the savory part, those drums. - that tamablle, there's something about the evolution of traditionally African sounds translated through Cuban culture and then sped up capturing the New York essence and the spirit of a Latin people both from the heart of Cuba translating their sound into a New York atmosphere and the Puerto Ricans of The Bronx (and Brooklyn) that contributed to the essence the genre is known for today and its eventual translation into hip-hop (and beyond). There's something about a good drum beat alongside the clave that keep us moving. While I could attempt to explain it using sociocultural terms and psychology buzzwords I'd be doing the experience a disservice. The essence of salsa, and mambo (as well as guaguachero, cha cha, and any of the contemporaries) is the essence, the spirit. That is held up by the drums, it is no secret that they are the heart of many genres, but to be in syncopation with the drum is to be in a different level of rhythmic understanding. That's a whole lot of savory though, let's get to the sweet part, those horns. Man, the influence of jazz on the latin people (and vice versa) is something else. Once the cultural Mecca became the rhythm Mecca it was all over. Having the horns not only getting their own time to shine but also acting as a percussive link between the dancers and the drummers? Truly something special to experience. Rounding everything out I want to focus on the seasoning of this rhythmic dish, because without this anything you have is going to be bland. It may seem funny to speak about it in this way, but much like how you may cook at home, dance and rhythm is expressed on an incredibly personal level. While we could wax poetic on a Tale of Two Titos all day I will instead keep it brief and make a suggestion on how to listen to their music.

[editorauthoranna]

THE LAST SURVIVORS: THE DEAD AND THE GONE (Book 2) Review

The Dead and the Gone

By Susan Beth Pfeffer

So far, The Dead and the Gone is my favorite of the Life as We Knew It series. It was marketed as a companion book, but I feel it surpasses the original story Pfeffer wrote. Remember when I compared Life as We Knew It to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road? I take it back; this book is much more similar—but still for a younger audience.

The Dead and the Gone features the same premise as Life as We Knew It, but there are some big changes that have a powerful pull: the setting is New York City, a place which suffers immediate, direct, and deadly consequences after the moon disaster. Your narrator is still a teenager—Alex, a boy this time. However, he suddenly finds himself alone with two younger sisters to care for. Alex is constantly pitted against morality versus survival. What is he willing to do to survive in a city ravaged by tragedy with no help coming? The stakes in The Dead and the Gone are much, much higher.

Religion comes back full force in The Dead and the Gone. This time, it’s devout Catholicism. It fits into the story pretty well as Alex and his family are all of Puerto Rican descent. (The majority of Puerto Rico identifies as Catholic.) While religion of any type isn’t necessary to wrestle with morality, I do think Catholicism was a good choice to frame the story from. The three characters we see the most in The Dead and the Gone are each Catholic, but one is extremely devout, one is somewhere in the middle, and one struggles with their faith. (You can find out who’s who if you read the book!) The good framework comes from the dependencies and concessions Alex is shown to have with the church, confession, and education. Science versus religion isn’t really a problem in this book.

There are, of course, some plot points that I wish had been better formed. One point was why Alex didn’t break into more homes—because he does enter other people’s deserted homes to search for food, blankets, and items to trade. After months, Alex knows with something very close to certainty that he and his sisters are alone in their apartment building. Yes, yes, stealing is wrong, and that does come up, but possible starvation should overrule the fear of being found out when 90% of New York City has already been looted for the food sources it may be hiding.

Another was the fact a few schools stayed open under the pretense of education when it was really to feed the few kids left some lunch. I’m not saying this was a bad thing, but in a major United States city that’s been flooded, has no power, and millions of people living in it with no food trucks coming in and a single, weekly government handout that is unreliable and dangerous to be in line for—how do these two little schools find the resources to feed twenty or so kids lunch every day for months? Are adults starving so the children can eat? I’d believe it, but the answer the book gives us was no less than an unsatisfactory, “The church provides” or “God provides.” Annoying explanation, to be frank. Not actually an explanation at all.

That said, The Dead and the Gone still functions as a great book. It’s heart-wrenching, and can be scary, and, fantastical apocalypse aside, quite realistic in its portrayal of a broken humanity.

There’s two more books in this series, and I’m very curious about where Pfeffer plans to go next. Personally, I’m hoping for a continuation of events as the first two books quite thoroughly covered the immediate consequences of the moon disaster. Fingers crossed! Next up: This World We Live In.

~ Anna

[sapphirewolf1122]

¡¿Por Qué Eres tan Flaco?! (Why Are You So Skinny)

Request/Summary: Fatgum/Reader fic where Reader owns a Latin restaurant that Fatgum frequents and reader sees him in skinny form and pretty much yanks him into her restaurant and holds him captive at a table that she fills with food for him and she pretty much mother hens him and by the end of it he's just like "marry me"

Word Count: 1,268

A/N: So this was a request by @gemstoneconstellations that I finally got around to; sorry for the long wait, hermana. Thank you to @crazythypoon for helping me with the translation, as well as your patience and encouragement. Also, this takes place in the Vigilante timeline; idk why I chose to do that, it just felt right. 

~~~~~~~~

Propping open your restaurant door, you started setting up the sign that listed your special of the day. Today, you were offering pernil relleno con mofongo with a choice of either maduros or arroz con gandules for a side. 

When you’d first decided to move to Japan and open a borinquen restaurant, most of your family had had their doubts and strongly discouraged you. Even you half-expected to be returning home after barely a year with your tail between your legs. But the response had been a lot better than anybody thought it could be; it helped that you had no problems learning the language. You had to admit though, your success wouldn’t have been half as great if it weren’t for your star customer. 

Right now, you were working on getting your liquor license. When it came time for the holidays this year, you wanted to be able to sell some coquito. You were even looking into getting some moonshine from home...God, you missed Puerto Rican moonshine. 

You also had some recipes you wanted to try out, but those you would run by your favorite customer. He’s been your biggest supporter since coming here and you liked to test dishes on him. But you hadn’t seen him in a while…

As a hero, it wasn’t abnormal for Fat Gum to seemingly disappear for days at a time. But you still worry, him being the brawler that he is. Last you heard, he was helping with some sort of investigation. Something about the instant-villain drug that had been circulating recently.

Sighing, you stood outside your shop, hands on your hips. Scanning the crowd, you started wondering whether to send out the cart today. The weather was good for it. Plus, it might be a good way to check up on Fat...ugh, perhaps you were obsessing too much. It’s not like you were his girlfriend…

Shaking your head at yourself, you turned to go back inside and tell your employees to prep the cart but the sight of someone stopped you.

Walking towards the shop was a man covered in bandages in a yellow hoodie, reminiscent of Fat Gum’s; it even had the signature black F and G on the bottom. In fact, with the mask, hair color, and the fact that he was currently munching on takoyaki, you almost thought it was Fat. 

Except he was too skinny. Everyone knew that Fat Gum’s quirk was fat absorption, so he had to keep his body fat percentage high. This also meant he had a pretty big appetite. The amount of times he had caused you to sell out from just a single visit…

Yes, there was no way this was Fat...he would have had to expel a great deal of energy in order to reveal his skinny form...but he was known to be a brawler…

The man had caught sight of you and, with a large smile, waved at you. Your eyes widened in horror.

Before you knew what was happening, you were running towards the hero, yelling at the top of your lungs.

"¡¿Que carajaro le paso a tu goldura bello! ¡¿Quien te hizo esto?! ¡Estas tan desperdiciado! Como pudiste ser tan inconsiderado de ti mismo. Tenias que venir directo a donde mi, te hubiera volvido a tu ser usual en menos nada! Esto es lo que te pasa cuando te pones a peliar en vez de defender, idiota. Ven te voy a dar tanta comida que nunca mas vas a poder volver flaco otra vez! Como pudiste dejar que esto pasara... " 

As you approached, Fat froze, out of shock or fear, you weren’t sure. “___, you okay? I can’t understand you, you’re not speaking Japanese. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you using your quirk?”

Your quirk was languages. After listening to a native speaker only a few times, you were able to speak the language perfectly yourself. It’s how you managed to get by in a whole new country. But when you got angry, you lost control and reverted to your own native language.

Once you’d reached the hero, you started inspecting him, poking at the large hoodie. Not a bit of fat left...in fact it was all muscle...shaking your head, you glared up at Fat Gum, momentarily regaining control of your quirk. “What happened?”

He shrugged, which only infuriated you more. “I told you I had a mission and the situation called for the full extent of my quirk. And before you say anything about brawling, there was a bomb; I had to absorb the explosion before people got hurt.”

The next part came out with a chuckle. “Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard your accent so thickly before…your quirk normally masks it so well.”

Scowling, you replied, “That’s because you’ve never seen me angry before. ¡Vamos!”

With that, you grabbed him and started dragging him into your restaurant, grumbling the whole time.

"Idiota, te tienes que cuidar mas. ¡¿Y si un villano te encuentra asi! AHH!?, estarias indefenso ."

You ignored the bystanders gaping at you; they seemed to know better than to interfere though. There was something about an angry boricua that made others cringe in fear. Even Fat Gum accepted what was happening and stopped struggling. 

Once inside, you started barking orders at your employees. 

“Start preparing everything on the menu. And I mean everything! I want alcapurrias, todas las empanadas, sorullitos, emparedados, bacalaitos, tostones, las entradas y postres también! ¡Ahora!”

Knowing better than to argue with you, your staff got to it. Placing Fat Gum at a table in the back, you told him to stay, whether in Japanese or Spanish, you weren’t sure. But he seemed to get the message. With a stern nod, you waved one of your waiters over to get his drink order. While they did that, you went and closed the door, locking it. No one was coming in until you got this sorted. 

With that, you rushed into the kitchen, putting up your hair and grabbing your apron. You were going to make sure your gordo precioso was going to get the best there was out of this restaurant. 

You served him all of his favorites and more. You started with the aperitivos, then onto las entradas. You swelled with pride at the look on his face when you brought out the pernil relleno con mofongo. This wasn’t a special you served normally. You also went all out with arroz con gandules and arroz amarillo con habichuelas. 

After that, you moved onto desserts. Guava cakes, bizcocho de batata borinquen, flan in almost every flavor, tembleque, arroz con coco; even guava empanadas. 

It was hours before you finally stopped bringing out food. Watching as he finished the last of the desserts, you nodded in approval. He was finally looking like his proper self. 

“Feeling better, Fat Gum?” Though still kind of thick, your accent had lessened considerably now that you’d managed to regain full control of your quirk.

The BMI hero looked up at you, his usual large grin back on his face. “Greatly. And please ___, call me Taishiro, even Toshi.”

Your mouth dropped open. “B-but I thought first names were reserved for those close to you in Japanese culture. Forget nicknames.”

“Yes. And you have definitely earned that right. In fact, ___,  I have a very important question to ask you.” The grin suddenly disappeared from his face as he stood up, towering over you. But you didn’t have time to process the look before he suddenly dropped to one knee, his big hands grabbing hold of one of yours, practically making it disappear. .

“Will you marry me?”

Wait...what?!

~~~~~~~

A/N2: Please note that I though I was able to do the foods and such on my own, I had help with the large translations. Here are the English translations as I originally wrote them; the foods you can either ask me or Google. 

-  What the hell happened to your beautiful fat? Who did this to you?! You look wasted away! How could you be so reckless?! You should have come straight to me, I would have gotten you back to your normal self in no time...this is what you get for being a brawler...you’re coming with me, you idiot. I’m going to feed you and make it so you’ll never be skinny again. That you could let such a thing happen…

-  Idiot, you need to take care of yourself. What if a villain caught you like this, huh? You’d be defenseless…

Thank you for reading!

[imaginationintowords]

Folklore [song series]

the 1

Modern Day AU! Bucky Barnes x OC!Reader

Plot: Inspired by Taylor Swift’s new album Folklore. The story follows the timeline of Bucky and Elizabeth’s relationship throughout the years.

Word count: 2404

Warnings: smut implied, loss of virginity implied, mention of alcohol abuse, mention of abandonment

Previous part

Series Masterlist

Age: 26

Year: 2020

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Elizabeth sat on the floor of her mostly empty childhood bedroom. She hasn't been back since Christmas, and that was almost 8 months ago. Her parents called her last month letting her know they are putting the house up for sale, deciding to move to a cottage upstate where it's much quieter.

They had asked if she wanted them to pack up her old bedroom for her, but she told them she would make the trip out to them to spare any storage space the stuff might take up, knowing that only a few special items would need to be kept.

She was sat on the floor going through old photos, the last thing she had to do before she would be done.

Photos from the time she spent here. A pile for which photos she will take back home, and a pile that her parents will keep. She was finally down to the last three photos, all flipped over on their back.

The first one scribbled in her mother's handwriting read:

Steve, Betty, & James. Halloween 2001.

She shakes her head at the nickname, she hasn't been called Betty in almost a decade. The nickname was tarnished, no longer having any special meaning.

She really should've kept it only for family.

She flipped the photo over. There was seven year-old Elizabeth, standing in between a young Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes both had their arms draped around her shoulders. All dressed up as pirates.

She smiled at the memory.

So young. So innocent. So unknowing of what the future held.

She focuses mostly on the boy to her right.

James Buchanan Barnes.

Her first friend here. Her first best friend. Her first kiss.

Her first boyfriend. Her first time having sex. Her first heartbreak.

The boy at the time she didn't know would completely change not only her life, but who she was.

Her first best friend here, she immediately thinks of their first meeting. So kind. Him insisting on teaching her how to ride a bike. Took him two weeks but he did it. That halloween was a memorable one, for both good and bad reasons.

She saw a different side of Bucky after seeing first-hand how his father behaved, due to his alcoholism.

Years later Elizabeth had learned Bucky's father's deepest secret, he had struggled with alcoholism, starting two years before her family moved across the street. It was a secret his family had kept until that Halloween weekend in 2001.

Bucky and his family had spent the weekend with Elizabeth's family, while his uncles came to take his dad away. His father went to go live with Bucky's grandmother and uncles to try and get sober. He returned home after three months, but sadly the disease was a lot stronger than that. His father was fighting a long battle that he was sadly losing.

After a grueling year his mother made the ultimate decision to divorce his father, not wanting to put herself or her children through the dangers once again. Bucky's maternal grandparents moved in to help his now single mother out, seeing as his father was no longer in the picture.

His dad would pop in from time to time never consistent with his visits, after Bucky turned 13 and Becca 10, his dad stopped coming around all together.

His father ended up meeting a woman who helped him get sober, they later on got married and started a new family of their own. Forgetting about the one he had abandoned.

The next photo was dated:

Summer of 2008.

The summer right before they started high school. That was the summer that they all reached peak puberty. Bucky and Steve shot up like weeds, while Elizabeth grew slightly in height. They no longer looked like the pre-pubescent tweens, and officially looked teenagers embarking on their first year of high school.

It was a candid photo of Bucky and Elizabeth at an end of summer party Steve had at his house.

The night of their first kiss together, and Elizabeth's first kiss in general.

It wasn't a cliche kiss that happened because a game of spin the bottle. It was a little more private than that.

Bucky and Elizabeth made their way back home on that cool summer night. The nights had just started to get cooler as the months made the transition from August to September.

"Do you think Steve knows how obvious he's making his crush on Peggy is?" Elizabeth asks breaking the silence of the walk.

"Probably not, I mean the punk is way to oblivious to notice that Peggy also has a crush on him," Bucky laughs, "Plus he's too chicken to even make a move."

"He's just shy," Elizabeth smiles, trying to defend her other best friend.

"Well he isn't going to get the girl by being shy," Bucky says.

"That's what you think," she winks at him.

"What do you know?" he asks her with an accusatory tone.

"That Peggy is going to ask him to go to the movies tomorrow night," Elizabeth recalled from her earlier conversation with Peggy, "That's why she stayed to help cleanup."

"Well then, I stand corrected," he bows his head.

"We should do that," Bucky says after a few moments of silence as they round the corner their houses now in sight.

"Help clean Steve's house?" Elizabeth asked confused.

"No, go to the movies."

"We already do that."

"I meant just us two, no Steve or Rebecca to tag along," Bucky reiterates.

"Like a date," he quietly says looking at his hands.

"Oh," it dawns on Elizabeth.

She felt a blush creep on her cheeks. The cool breeze not helping the warmth spreading throughout her face.

Elizabeth has had a crush on Bucky for as long as she can remember. She just always thought he would never see her in that light. Compared to the girls he's used to liking, she was the polar opposite. Her skin wasn't as pale as their's, she had what her mother called a "Puerto Rican" tan due to where her family lineage is originally from. Her dark curls were always everywhere, even when she had them contained. It's not like she stood out per se, they were surrounded by diversity. She just didn't look like the girls Bucky had a crush on.

"You want to go out on a date, with me?" she hesitantly asks.

"Yeah, I do," he smiles finally looking up to meet her eyes.

"Why?"

"Because I like you," he says confused why she would ask that.

"It's okay if you don't want to, I understand," he quickly says when she doesn't say anything. He goes back to looking down and kicking at invisible rocks.

"No," she says grabbing his hand, making them both stop in front of her house, "I do want that."

Bucky looks back up taken back by her response, "Really?"

"Yeah, I would love to go on a date with you," she smiled so big.

"Okay, wow. Cool," Bucky stumbles over his words, his smile matching her's.

"Tomorrow, you and I will go to the movies," he says, squeezing his hand that was still being held by her.

"Perfect."

"Perfect," he whispered staring in her eyes, he glanced down to her lips then back to her eyes.

Elizabeth noticed bucking glancing at her lips, she couldn't help herself and do the same thing.

Bucky grabbed her other hand as he slowly pulled her closer to his body. Leaning his head slightly down. Both closed their eyes and slowly met each other half way, their lips touching in a soft kiss.

What felt like hours, but was only seconds they pulled away slowly. Smiles gracing their faces.

"I'll call you tomorrow for the details," Bucky says.

"Okay. Goodnight," Elizabeth says, still holding onto Bucky's hands.

"Goodnight," Bucky smiles, letting go of her hands before jogging across the street.

Elizabeth had walked up to her porch and turned around to see Bucky turning around from his own porch. She waved and he waved back, their final goodbye for the night.

That was the perfect end to the summer before they had started high school. It was the start of something new and beautiful.

The last photo read:

Winnie and Keith's wedding. 11 Aug. 2010.

She flipped it over to see her and Bucky smiling dressed in formal attire, next to Steve and Peggy.

Bucky's mom did later remarry while they were in high school. She had met a lovely man named Keith, who loved her deeply and her children as if they were his own. He was a good man, someone Bucky really needed in his life.

The photo was taken during the reception. Bright smiles across all of their 16 year old faces.

Both couples had been dating for two years at that point and things were going great.

The smiles showcased how happy they all were. Probably had to do with what they all had planned after the wedding.

They had all convinced their parents into letting them stay at the hotel the reception was at that night, and Bucky would drive them all back home the following day. Their parents had agreed, the only rule is that the girls would stay in a room separately from the boys.

What they know wouldn't hurt them, right?

It was the night they were all planning on losing their virginity. Their hormones were racing, trying to keep it contained as to not draw attention to themselves:

After the wedding they all walked up to the floor they would be staying at. Bucky waited outside the girls' door as Elizabeth gathered her overnight bag, and Steve doing the same from the boys' room.

She walked out with her bag on her shoulder, and a smile on her face.

"Ready?" he asked, grabbing her bag from her shoulder.

"Yeah," she nodded, feeling the nerves start.

Steve walked up to them with his own bag, "See you guys in the morning," he smiled before walking into the room, closing the door behind him.

Elizabeth could remember that night clearly. She had done a lot of prep beforehand, being an overachiever she needed to know what she was getting herself into. But nothing could prepare her for what had really happened.

It was filled with a lot of stumbling, awkward touches here and there. Both new to this sex thing. She's not going to lie and said it didn't hurt, she had prepared herself for it hurting. It wasn't the best sex she's had, but it was a moment she wouldn't forget.

After they were done they were cuddled in bed, Elizabeth's head resting on Bucky's chest as he smoothly raked his fingers across her arm.

"11:11, make a wish," Elizabeth whispered, closing her eyes.

"What'd you wish for?" Bucky asked.

"How many times do I have to tell you," she said, turning her body to lean on his chest to come face to face with him, "I can't tell you what I wish for, otherwise it won't come true."

"And how many times do I have to tell you, that that's not true," he teased.

"Well, you have yet to prove me wrong," she smiled.

"Come on, just this once."

"You," she stated, feeling the blush creep on her cheeks.

"What about me?"

"I wished for you," she says, "You and I. For us to have many more moments like this."

"Well doll, your wish is my command," he joked.

"I'm serious Bucky."

"So am I," his tone getting serious, "I love you Betty. It's you and me. Forever."

"Promise?" she held up her pinky.

"Promise." he linked his with hers.

They trusted each other. They were comfortable with each other. They had loved each other. And honestly that's all that mattered.

Now as an adult she realized how important your first time was. It was important that her first time was with Bucky, because she never regretted until she had.

She had really thought Bucky was the one. They would always talk about their futures together. What college they would attend together. When they would get married. Where they would live. How many kids they would have. All of it they had planned together. A future that didn't seem like just a dream.

Sadly with every first love comes every first heartbreak.

Her grandmother once told her that the greatest loves of all time were over now.

She had thought that when her relationship with Bucky had ended.

It truly felt like the end of the world. Like any breakup at that age felt like. She had sworn she would never feel love again. Her mother, Caterina telling her to just wait and see.

Caterina didn't believe in her own mother's words about greatest loves being over, because she was experiencing her's. She promised Elizabeth that she would experience her greatest love story when the time was right.

At the time Elizabeth didn't believe her mother. How could she when her heart was aching.

But like all the times before, her mother would be right.

She looked at  the last three photos in her hands. Without a second thought she placed the Halloween photo in the take pile and the other two in the parents' pile.

A soft knock on the door frame startled her, she looked behind to find the man she has called her's for the last few years. Her greatest love.

She couldn't help the smile that came across her face whenever she would see him.

"Ready?" he asks, a smile upon his face, as he leans up against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest.

"Yeah, let me just put these back in the box for my parents," she tells him cleaning up the photos and taking the ones she kept for herself.

"Look at this one I found," she says showing him the Halloween photo.

"Oh my gosh, we were so little," he smiles and laughs lightly raising his arm for her to go under, "Gosh I was such a dork."

"Was?" she playfully jokes, wrapping her arm around his waist and snuggling into his side as they head towards the stairs in each other's arms.

"Hey you fell in love with this dork," he jokes back.

"And I wouldn't have it any other way Steve," she smiles leaning up to kiss his lips.

[chiseler]

The Silva Screen

Howard Da Silva 

Am I the only one who constantly gets character actors Howard Da Silva and Henry Silva confused? 

Howard Da Silva was born in Cleveland in 1909 and was working as a steelworker when he decided to go to drama school. He first appeared on Broadway at age 20, and made a name for himself playing Jud in the original production of Oklahoma!.

Da Silva (born Silvablatt) was a burly, jowly man with a boxer’s face, thinning hair and an unmistakable voice, half-midwest, half Lower East Side. He made the move to Hollywood in the mid-thirties and, over the next decade and a half established himself as a familiar screen presence playing gruff but ultimately understanding characters. He was the tough but fatherly criminal mentor in They Drive By Night, and Nat, Ray Milland’s wise but increasingly frustrated bartender in The Lost Weekend. He played opposite Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield in The Sea Wolf, and portrayed Wilson in the 1949 adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

After actor and fink Robert Taylor, while testifying as a friendly witness before HUAC in 1947, described Da Silva as a troublemaker “who always has something to say at the wrong time,” Da Silva himself was called to testify about his supposed communist sympathies. When brought before the committee in 1951, Da Silva became the first of over three hundred writers, actors and directors to refuse to answer questions, citing the Fifth Amendment. He was promptly blacklisted and for much of the next decade vanished from movie and television screens, though he continued to work in theater.

When he reappeared in the early Sixties, older, balder, and jowlier, he found himself playing an array of historical figures from Ben Franklin to Franklin Roosevelt to Boss Tweed to, ironically, Nikita Kruschev in The Missiles of October and Louis B. Mayer in Mommy Dearest. He also appeared in the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, this time around playing Meyer Wolfsheim. He made his final screen appearance in 1984’s Garbo Talks, and died of cancer two years later.

Henry Silva

Henry Silva, meanwhile, was born in Brooklyn in 1928. Although often accused of being Puerto Rican, he insisted his mother was Spanish and his father Sicilian. His father walked out on the family when Henry was three months old, at which point he and his mother moved to Harlem.

Silva, who had decided early on to become an actor, dropped out of public school at age 13 and enrolled in acting classes, taking a dishwashing job in a local hotel restaurant to help support him and his mother. Fourteen years later, he’d finally worked his way up the ranks to become a waiter in that same hotel.

Then twenty-seven, Silva, having grown into a darkly handsome young man standing six-foot-two, decided to apply to the Actor’s Studio, and was accepted. He soon made his Broadway debut in in 1956 in A Hatful of Rain, with classmates Shelley Winters and Ben Gazzara. The play became such a hit it soon landed Silva in Hollywood, where he co-starred in the 1957 film adaptation.

His commanding stature and sharp, angular, swarthy good looks not only made Silva an easy choice for producers looking for a suave but sinister villain, they also allowed him to play everything from Mexicans to Russians to Italians to Middle Easterners to Asians to Native Americans with very little extra makeup. He was a chameleon without even trying.

In the Fifties and early Sixties he played a string of suave and sinister gangsters, killers and thieves on TV series like The Untouchables, Climax and The Outer Limits and in films ranging from Green Mansions to Ride a Crooked Trail. He became a regular Rat Pack satellite, appearing in Ocean’s 11, Sergeants 3, and making guest spots on The Joey Bishop Show, as well as playing one of the evil stepbrothers in Jerry Lewis’ Cinderfella. In what may have been his breakthrough role, he again co-starred with Sinatra in 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate as the double-crossing Korean guide who delivers Sinatra’s company into the hands of those dirty commies. 

He earned his first starring role the next year as the titular Mob assassin Johnny Cool (co-starring fellow Rat Pack alumni Joey Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr.), after which he accepted an invitation from an Italian producer and moved his family to Rome. Over the next decade he would become a star throughout Europe, appearing in dozens of Spaghetti Westerns, occasionally even playing the hero.

He returned to the States in the mid-Seventies to once again co-star with Sinatra in 1977’s Contract on Cherry Street. Following that, he would spend much of the Eighties playing cartoon villains in comic strip movies (Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy) and and endless string of cheap jingoistic action films (Megaforce, Code of Silence), as well as a few sub-lowbrow comedies (Cannonball Run II, Lust in the Dust). He was admittedly spectacular  in his brief turn as Brock, the would-be Great White hunter out to kill a monstrous alligator roaming the Chicago sewer system in Lewis Teague’s 1980 darkly comic monster movie Alligator.

After co-starring in Jim Jarmusch’s 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and a quick cameo in the 2001 remake of Ocean’s 11, Silva retired from acting at age 73.

But back to where all this started—namely, am I the only one who gets Howard Da Silva and Henry Silva confused?

Yes, Howard Da Silva was some twenty years older than Henry Silva. And yes, Howard was born in Cleveland to Jewish parents while Henry was a Spanish-Italian kid from Brooklyn. And yes, Howard was a steel woorker while Henry washed dishes in a hotel restaurant. And yes, Henry was some four inches taller than Howard, and had thick black hair to boot. Yes, Henry tended to play suave and sinister villains while Howard tended to play gruff but lovable types. Yes, Henry played everything from Italians to Mexicans to Asians while Howard was as decidedly American as they come, and yes, Henry is still alive while Howard died in 1986. But if you’re going to say “Yes, you dunce, you’re the only one who gets them confused, because you’re stupid,” consider the following.

First, Henry Silva’s official biography is suspiciously inconsistent. Despite repeated claims about his heritage, a 1930 U.S. Census entry states that both of Silva’s parents were from Puerto Rico. But I guess being half Spanish and half Sicillian is much more Romantic than being just another Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn. That same form also lists Henry’s given name as “Harry.” What’s more, after supposedly working at the same hotel for fourteen years, shouldn’t he have worked his way up to something more than waiter? You’d think he’d at least be night manager or something, right? And despite his claims he made his film debut only after the 1956 Broadway  premiere of A Hatful of Rain, his first screen appearance was actually in 1952’s Viva Zapata!.

Now, given we can clearly not trust a thing Henry Silva says, or has ever said, about himself, ask yourself the following questions:

Is it mere coincidence that Howard Da Silva and Henry Silva, as prolific as both were, never appeared onscreen together? Their careers overlapped for some thirty years! What are the odds of that? I mean, Sinatra co-starred with Groucho Marx, for godsakes! 

 And is it sheer coincidence that Henry Silva’s film debut in Viva Zapata! occurred at the precise moment Howard Da Silva had been blacklisted? Think about it—Howard vanishes and Henry steps in. Hmm, right? Plenty of other blacklisted artists worked under the radar by using pseudonyms. Maybe Howard, given his troublemaking reputation, decided to take the idea of thumbing his nose at HUAC a few steps further.  I mean, take a look at the two of them side by side. Give Howard some lifts, a little swarthy makeup and a black toupee and BOOM! He’s Henry Silva.

And what better way to throw off the scent than to play a completely opposite character type from the one you were known for? And how better to flip the bird, just for fun, than by playing a bunch of evil communists and revolutionaries?

After the blacklist ended, Howard was faced with a dilemma. He could work again, which was great, but what to do about Henry? Kill him off? Retire him? His career had just taken off and was going great guns in the early Sixties. Then it struck him—with Henry still around, he had two solid income streams flowing. Why give that up? Both Howard and his alter-ego Henry were character actors, after all, meaning they were rarely needed on set for more than a couple days on each picture. Easy as pie to do a Howard role one day, then a Henry role at the end of the week.

My god, it’s all so perfect! What an ingenious scheme! And what better way to throw everyone off the scent for good than to have Howard “die” in 1986? At that point, after all, Henry was awfully busy with those stupid action movies that paid so well, while Howard’s own jobs were becoming more sporadic and low-profile.

So there you have it, and remember you read it here first—Howard Da Silva and Henry Silva WERE THE SAME PERSON! I likely never would have figured it out for myself had Howard just put another minute’s worth of work into choosing a name for his alter ego back in 1952.

By Jim Knipfel

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

12 Angry Men: A Product of the Times

Despite what shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best would have you believe, the 1950s in America were not a ‘simpler’ time.

The soldiers came home from World War II, the economy expanded, and the nation’s population grew and thrived, all seeming like absolute wins in our nation’s history.  The suburbs grew, and the ideal nuclear families began popping up.  Everyone dressed to the nines, the War was over, and so was the Depression that preceded it.  America was prosperous again.

At the same time, the Korean War began.  McCarthyism kicked off a terrified hysteria about the invasion of Communism.  Sputnik was launched, the Cold War was off and running, and Americans lived in fear behind their white picket fences.  Men went back to work, women went back to the home.  Rock and roll was born, and the young people, now called teenagers, started rebelling against the conformity of their parents.  Racial tensions began rising.  Oppressed people across America began looking to the future for change.

This was the world when 12 Angry Men made its debut in theaters.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Simple.

In order to truly understand and analyze any work of fiction, we must first contextualize it.  To do that, we have to know what the culture was like at the time.

Why?

As I’ve mentioned many times on this blog, no piece of media is an island.  Everything we watch, read, or listen to is a direct product of the culture it was created in.  The creators were influenced by things around them, be they other pieces of media or simply events and attitudes of the time, and as a result, the film, television show, or book is a reflection of the culture, be it critical of it or embracing of it.

Such is the case with 12 Angry Men.

The premise of a jury made up entirely of middle-to-late aged, middle-class white men passing a decision on a Puerto Rican boy from the slums seems, by its very nature, firmly set in the era of the 1950s.  The attitudes of multiple jurors seems to emphasize this fact with plenty of prejudice against the defendant for his background, ethnic and otherwise, his age, and even his relationship with his father.  12 Angry Men is definitely a film that is discernibly made in an era that is behind us.  To some, that would be enough to seal its doom with the ultimate stamp of disapproval any ‘old’ movie can get: the verdict of ‘Dated’.

As those of us who indulge in older films are more than aware of, sometimes, older movies just don’t hold up quite so well.  When that happens, oftentimes the film is referred to as ‘dated’.  Oftentimes, the things that people consider ‘outdated’ are things that can’t be helped: slang, clothing, hairstyles, special effects, technology, or even styles of storytelling that were popular at the time of the film’s release.

Therein lies the problem.

By that logic, that definition of the term dated, every single piece of media ever made is ‘dated’ and therefore, nothing is ‘timeless’.  This is bad news for every creator of art who desires to make something that will outlast them.  If everything is connected to the culture, the times it was created in, then nothing is worth watching outside of the era it was created in.  This would lead to many classic films, television shows, and books becoming long-forgotten.  Even now, there are many who don’t like watching things made before the date of their birth, claiming they are ‘cringey’ and ‘dated’.

Again, by that definition, they’re right.

Here, though, we have a different definition.

The term ‘dated’, the idea of being directly connected to the era and culture of a piece of media’s creation, is easy to forgive when the ‘datedness’ extends to a mullet, a mixtape, or a money-shot that looks a little cheesy by modern standards.  However, that form of dated is not the problem.

‘Dated’ is really only used in a negative context when the movie or show it is describing is not as enjoyable to modern audiences as it was when it was released, suggesting that the passage of time has done more to damage the film than credit it.  This definition of the term ‘dated’ exonerates films that have not lost the enjoyability of their core story in the years that have followed.

Being ‘dated’ is far more damaging when it is attached to outdated ideas.  It is there that we have our problem.

An outdated idea can damage a film ten times more than any pop-culture reference therein.  These are the films based around inherently problematic elements, that never address (and in some cases seem to promote) ideas that we now know are problems.  It is this definition of ‘dated’ that we need to apply in order to tell how well 12 Angry Men has held up.

Looking past the clothes and the hair is the glaring problem of the all-white, all-male jury.  Definitely an effective reminder that this film was made in the 1950s, for sure, but that could be as much a reminder of the times as it was an effect of them, for as the film tells us, there’s quite a lot of bigotry going on in 1950s America.

The only character in the film who is not explicitly Caucasian is the unnamed defendant, the Puerto Rican boy from the slums.  It is his fate in the hands of the twelve men, and unfortunately, to some, his fate doesn’t seem to matter.  Juror #10 notably holds the opinion that he is one of ‘them’, displaying superiority and prejudice that cannot be overlooked as ‘harmless’.  During his rant on the subject at the end, he is ignored, abandoned, shut down by his fellow jurors, who are more fair-minded.  As Juror #9 (Curiously, the oldest of the bunch) points out early in the film:

“Only an ignorant man can believe that…Do you think you were born with a monopoly on the truth?”

An important idea in this film is that of open-mindedness, of fairness to our fellow men.  The movie stands as a jarring mirror to some of the bigoted ideas held by many in the 1950s, in more ways than one.  While the film definitely has a biting opinion of those who look down on people from other backgrounds (ethnic or otherwise), there’s also an interesting look at the youth of the 1950s in the film.

The defendant is a young man, basically a boy, accused of killing his father after a fight.  In the first age of teenage rebellion, Juror #3 speaks the words of parents who feel wronged by their children, while simultaneously carrying the guilt of spurning them to rebellion in the first place.  The idea of making your sons into ‘men’ at age nine is treated as being a problem, driving a wedge between both father and son, a possibly irreparable one.

These themes alone would seem to date the film right away, with the heavy emphasis on ideas that were prevalent at the time, if it weren’t for the context with which the ideas are viewed.

Rather than glorify either idea, or present them as being acceptable in the culture, both of these elements are viewed critically by the narrative and the characters within it.  The film, while not exonerating the rebellion of the children, acknowledges the part that parents play in it, and outright views racial prejudice with disdain.  Not only was this a demonstration of progressive thinking, it’s also still relevant today.

In fact, there isn’t a whole lot about this movie that isn’t relevant today.  The idea of ensuring that our justice system works is one that will likely never go out of style, and the critical mirror the film holds up to some of the ideas of 1957 holds up very well in an era where some haven’t moved too far beyond the same thinking.  The film, and the ideas it was based around, still resonate with audiences who see it today, managing to leave an impression over sixty years since it’s original release.

On the other hand, there is a total lack of female characters entirely, (hence the title), leading to some remakes to add a female judge (to keep the name) or change it to 12 Angry Jurors or in some cases, 12 Angry Men and Women (In other cases, the title has been changed to 12 Angry Women.)  This would seem to be the response directed at the one issue the film never addresses, that is, the lack of female representation.  If anything, the lack of it makes the critical reflection all the sharper, the world of the 1950s being dominated by men in general.  The absence of female presence is telling, leaving the twelve men as the focus, all with ideas that (for the most part) are familiar with one another, if not shared by each other.

In short?

12 Angry Men loses some of its enjoyability only if one has no concept of our society’s history and current climate.  It was relevant in 1957, and it remains relevant today, in a culture not so far removed as we might think.  As we continue to progress, 12 Angry Men will stand forever as a landmark and a reminder, no less moving now than it was over sixty years ago.

Thanks so much for reading!  Remember the ask box is always open if you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or just want to say hi, and I hope to see you in the next article.

[stereogeekspodcast]

[Transcript] Season 1, Episode 10. Flashback Favourite – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is always a ton of fun to watch. Repeatedly! But what makes it such a great film? Is it the characters, the design, the score, or the story? How about all of the above? In this Flashback Favourite episode on Stereo Geeks, we discuss our love for this film and why we keep returning to it.

Listen to the episode on Anchor. 

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Ron: Hello and welcome to another Flashback Favourites episode of Stereo Geeks. I'm Ron.

Mon: And I'm Mon.

Ron: Today, we’re talking about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Mon: This episode is going to be full of spoilers. So, if you haven't watched this movie, why not?

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Ron: What is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse about?

The story follows Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore as he becomes a new Spider-Man. Parallel to this plot, is Wilson Fisk voiced by Liev Schreiber, opening up portals into other dimensions, which brings in other Spider-People from alternate universes. All the Spider-People have to work together to stop Wilson Fisk, save the world and return to their own dimension.

Mon: We’ve seen Into the Spider-Verse four times, which, for us, is a lot.

It's a great combination of bringing a comic book property which a lot of people aren't familiar with, but also bringing in that ethos, that Expanded Universe feel that we all love. And the best thing is that this Spider-Man is so different but also similar to all other Spider-Men that we have had before.

Ron: Miles Morales is really relatable. We’re introduced to him humming/singing a song—which is so much fun—Sunflower by Post Malone. And that's something that everybody does. We’ve all done it! It immediately makes that connection between the audience and Miles, and that carries throughout the entire film.

Mon: Yeah! When we meet Miles in the film, he's just been enrolled in this prestigious academy. He's convinced that he's just the diversity hire, but in fact, he is a genius. He's very smart, but he really needs to apply himself in this new place and it's work, work, work all the time. It's very different from his old life.

There's a part of him that, obviously, wants to go back to how things used to be, which is natural. He's a teenager, he probably misses his friends. And he doesn't get to be at home that often. So, the film really pulls us into Miles’ universe, as well makes him this very relatable kind of character. And we can all sort of see parts of ourselves in him, even though we are across different ages.

And then Miles sees something that, well, it's scarring. He basically sees the death of his universe’s Spider-Man. Around the same time, he's bitten by a radioactive spider, and he's just discovering his own path. So, we've got these classic, heroic Spider-Man elements, but they're on Miles.

Ron: Yeah, I love that we get this origin story for Miles, while we're also getting to know all these other Spider-People. And then we get the mentor-mentee relationship with Peter B. Parker and Miles.

There are these really sweet moments between Miles and the Spider-People, but also more importantly, between Miles and his own family. A lot of the time—and this is probably one of the biggest failings of Peter Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—we don't really get that much of Peter and his own family. We see that he's really fond of his Aunt May, but it's more like a protective kind of thing. She's a bit of a quirky, kookie aunt. We get very little idea of his bond with his Uncle Benjamin. It’s kind of riding on people's past knowledge of the character from the films and the comic books. If you're coming in as a brand-new person who hasn't got that knowledge, it's putting a lot of pressure on you to find that information out.

Whereas, with Miles, you see that his parents are fond of him. His mom dotes on him, his dad is crazy about him. That hilarious opening scene where Miles’ dad picks him up in his cop car and drops him off at his school and then insists, using the loudspeaker, that Miles proclaim that he loves his dad. It is so so cringe. But you’re like… you totally get it. His parents love him.

Mon: When we recently re-watched this film, remember I was telling you that Miles is cringing now, but 20 years later Miles is going to look back at this moment and he's gonna love it. And he's gonna be so happy that his dad really, really wanted to show how much they love each other. It’s just so cute.

Ron: And you can see that, you know, everybody in his school has noticed this particular event. People keep teasing him about it throughout the day. Yeah, right now, Miles is feeling a bit like ‘oh gosh, why?’. But as you said, he will love this moment later on. And by the end of the film, it's something that he does come back to, and he tells his father that he loves him.

But there’s another relationship that we get to see which is really, really sweet, and that is between Miles and his Uncle Aaron, voiced by Mahershala Ali, who is soon going to be playing Blade. Not sure when that's gonna happen, but we'll wait. And that's a really cute bond in the movie.

We’re used to the Peter Parker-Ben Parker relationship, and it’s great to see a different character have that kind of bond with his uncle. And Aaron gets a whole arc of his own. He's great as Miles’ uncle—he loves Miles, he lets him do all the crazy stuff. He takes him to graffiti this particular area that he’s found. We can assume that he found it while scoping the joint for Wilson Fisk, who we learn Aaron is actually working for, as the Prowler. But it's a really sweet bond and it's something different from what Miles has with his parents.

Mon: With Uncle Aaron, he's this doting uncle who really lets Miles be himself and do whatever he wants. But Aaron isn't there as a foil to Miles’ parents. He's there to encourage Miles to think outside the box. So, I like that Aaron is a really positive influence in Miles’ life, even though he turns out to be a bad guy.

Ron: You can see how Aaron and Miles’ dad, Jefferson, probably were always destined for different paths. When we see their phone screens, you see that both Jefferson and Aaron have pictures of themselves together—you realize that that bond is there, it's just that because their paths have diverged so drastically that they can't have that relationship. But they're still being able to have something of a bond because of Miles.

Mon: There are a lot elements in Miles’ story which are similar or throwbacks to Peter Parker’s. But, at the same time they have their own angle. And the fact that Miles is half-Black-half-Puerto Rican, it gives us a hero story for a wider audience.

Ron: This is always going to be an issue with the comics universe. It has been very largely white and male. When we get any kind of representation that's outside of that very narrow focus, we're excited. We see ourselves in Miles even though we're not sharing the same kind of heritage.

Mon: It's because Miles goes beyond just being a few labels. He's a very relatable character and that's exactly what Spider-Man is meant to be.

In the comics, Spider-Man was always the little guy. He was the underdog who was fighting for everyone. I would say that all adaptations of Spider-Man continue in the same vein. For a lot of people what they find with the MCU Spider-Man is that he has the backing of Tony Stark—he has all that tech and the entire Avengers behind him, so he doesn't seem relatable in the way that the comics do.

Miles brings that in. He brings it in exactly the way that people who grew up reading Spider-Man will feel when they're watching him.

Ron: Yeah, that's definitely what makes Miles so memorable in this film and makes us want to see even more of this particular Miles and the universe they've created.

But let's move away from Miles, which is hard. With such a great protagonist, you want to focus on him. We get a lot of other Spider-People—we get Gwen Stacy from another universe and she's Spider-Woman in her dimension. Voiced by Hailee Steinfeld, this Spider-Woman is sadder, she’is lonely.

She got the spider-bite two years ago and she's been Spider-Woman ever since, but she also lost her friend in the past. So, for her, finding other Spider-People is an enormous relief. Just having other people around her who understand what it means to get that spider-bite, to become a hero, to fight for the city, and more importantly, to keep that duality of their actual identity and their spider-persona, that's a huge boon for her.

And the relationship between Gwen and Miles is really quite sweet. They end up in the same school because Gwen’s Spider-Sense tells her that this is the place to be. And she obviously forms a bond with him, which is not the best way to meet somebody, but hey, we take our Spider-Friends as we get them.

But yeah, it’s a sweet relationship and I like that it doesn't become romantic immediately. I always find that so frustrating because if you shoehorn in a romance, the problem is that it adds a different level to a relationship within a story. And when you have a story like this which is quite densely packed, there's a lot happening, adding a romantic encounter becomes just too much. I like that they decide to be friends.

Mon: At the end of the day, Gwen's journey is to come out of her shell and accept friendship again, which is something that she's closed herself off from, because of what happened in her dimension.

And I agree with you that adding a romantic element would be too much, too soon, especially in a plot-heavy story like this one.

Ron: And when there's so much at stake. Gwen can't stay in this universe. Her entire goal here is to get back to her own dimension, even though it will continue to be a lonely existence, but at least she's opened herself up to the possibility of finding new friends. She didn't have that when she was still on her Earth. A romance really wouldn't have worked.

We saw that on the The Flash. Kid-Flash on Earth One with Jessie Quick from Earth Two, they do try to have that relationship but eventually it does fizzle out.

Mon: Let's talk about the Spider-People. There’s Spider Noir, voiced by Nicolas Cage.

Ron: What a resurgence!

Mon: When we first saw this film, I remember I was like, ‘who is this? This such a familiar voice.’ But he really works in this character, because it's actually quite subdued. Because Spider Noir is so different from the rest of the Spider-People who are human, but yet he brings this gravitas and credibility to it. I really like the character.

Ron: I love Spider Noir. They've actually got comic book spin-off for him and yeah, definitely check it out.

Mon: So, there’s Spider-Ham who is voiced by John Mulaney. I would say that he's probably the strangest incarnation in this film. But the creators realized it and definitely used him to the minimal.

Ron: But they make the quirky work, which I liked. There's not too much hamminess, pardon the pun, but it's funny.

Mon: We also have Peni Parker, voiced by Kimiko Glenn. She doesn't have spider-powers, but she has a robot created by her father which is powered by radioactive spider. So her abilities are completely different but very integral to the plot.

So, let's talk about the main Spider-Man in this film, which is Peter B. Parker voiced by Jake Johnson. He's basically the Spider-Man we know, but different. He’s been Spider-Man for 22 years.

Spider-Man on Miles’ Earth has been in action for 10 years. He's voiced by Chris Pine and he's blond.

So, Peter B. is closer to the Spider-Man that we’re used to, but he's older. He's semi-retired because he's suffering from a heartbreak. He and Mary Jane Watson have broken up and he's really, really struggling with that.

Ron: We also learn that Peter B. Parker has lost his Aunt May. So, he's pretty much alone. Being Spider-Man has kind of lost its charm. He's saved people, and he's helped people but he still had to face these losses on his own. He's still hiding his identity. It's not been an easy life and he seems kind of depressed but unable to get any help for it. Which is not surprising—how are you going to tell your therapist that you’re depressed because you’re Spider-Man?

Mon: Yeah. So when he's drawn into this world, all he wants to do is get back. He's not interested in helping Miles with his goal, which is taking down Wilson Fisk.

Ron: He's also not as capable. He realizes very soon that Miles needs a mentor. He's lost his own Spider-Man, so he needs somebody with Peter B.’s experience to teach him the way. That's not what he wants to do. He just wants to get out of here. He definitely does not want somebody looking up to him.

Mon: Especially not a kid. As we soon realize, Peter B. and his relationship with Mary Jane dissolved because she wanted kids and he didn’t it. This is a subplot that happens with a lot of superheroes because given their lifestyle, it doesn't seem safe. So, we can understand that maybe that's why Peter B. did not want to start a family.

But at the same time, Miles is kind of a reminder of what he could do and could be and he does change his mind by the end of it, because Miles can do that to people.

Ron: I mean, it is a lot of responsibility. Peter B. does not seem in the right place for that kind of responsibility, so this particular mission ends up changing his mind because he realizes what he doesn't have and what he could have with somebody like Miles.

Mon: When I first watched this film,I felt like the biggest chink in the armor was Johnson's voicing of Peter B. Parker. I felt like he didn't bring that much gravitas to the role. And while his voice and Chris Pine’s voice [sic] are both very similar in the film, I just found that the OG-Peter had more of a punch when he was speaking, whereas with Jake Johnson, it's not that much.

That being said, three watches later, I'm fine with it.

Ron: I also felt the same way. But having seen it more times now, I feel like Jake Johnson's voice kind of works with Peter B. because it sounds older, it sounds jaded. He sounds like a mellow man.

Chris Pine’s Peter is more hopeful and younger.

Mon: He’s excitable because he's only 10 years into this and he’s only 26, so he has the world at his feet. And he's in a happy relationship and everything. But yeah, I can understand where we originally came from and why we’ve changed our minds now.

And especially because when you listen to Peter B. in conversation with Miles, it's so different because Shameik Moore is bringing so much emotion and levity to the voice. Miles is so alive and he's an animated character, but he’s popping off that screen. But, it makes more sense when you've watched it a few times.

Ron: Absolutely.

Mon: The entire voice cast is brilliant. It is not only full of these known names but they really add their own dimension to all these characters. We haven't even mentioned Doc Ock yet!

Who doesn’t love a world which has a gender-bent Doc Ock? Kathryn Hahn as Olivia Octavius, she's scary. She's scary good, but she's scary scary too. I just love this character, she's amazing.

Ron: I also love that when she's revealed as Doc Ock, she says that only her friends call her Liv. And later on, when we meet Peter’s Aunt May, she says, ‘Oh, it's Liv’. [both laugh] Are these two friends? I need to know more about this story.

Mon: Speaking of Aunt May, she’s voiced by Lily Tomlin. I really like this Aunt May, because it seems like she’s really apart of Spider-Man’s universe. We're so used to seeing Aunt May as being this frail, old Auntie who really needs help and protecting, but here, Peter Parker has an arsenal of suits and gadgets and it looks like it's basically because Aunt May is Peter's Q.

Ron: Yeah, because she makes up the suit for Miles. So, she's obviously been helping Peter for a long time now.

Mon: And she's got this edge to her, which I like, I’m totally digging.

Ron: She's amazing.

I think the only thing that I would change in Into the Spider-Verse is the way they kind of fat shame Peter B. Parker. I mean, the guy is depressed, he is lonely. Yeah, he eats a few more pizzas and he’s got a gut, do we have to keep bugging him about it?

Mon: Yeah, I think one joke, maybe Miles is like ‘oh, what’s that?’ But then it happens three or four times, so it was a little too much.

Ron: And considering that Hollywood as a whole, and especially superhero films, are so nasty about people's body sizes, I really feel like we could have done without it in this world.

Mon: Yeah, I agree with you. That's probably the biggest issue and criticism that we can have about this film.

Ron: Because the rest of the film is great and the characterizations are great! There are some moments when you’re just like, ‘wow these characters are so well thought out’.

Like when Peter B., Miles and Gwen Stacy go to see Aunt May, for Peter B. he's lost his Aunt for a long, long time. He can't wait to get out of there. He barely even waits for her to answer the door, because he just needs to leave. And he finally says, ‘I'm not ready for this’. And we understand how Aunt May is shocked when she sees a version of her Peter standing in front of her, but for him, it's just as devastating to see somebody who he’s lost.

At the same time we got a more quirky scene later on where Peter B. sees this world’s Mary Jane. And yes, she's younger, she's different from the Mary Jane of his world, but he cannot get over the fact that this is Mary Jane and he really needs to speak to her.

Mon: He, sort of, uses this Mary Jane as a proxy for venting all the feelings and emotions that he has for his own one. And it's so funny because she's essentially asking for bread…

Ron: And he's a waiter.

Mon: And he's just going on and on about how he's failed her, he's disappointed her. And she's like, ‘what?’.

Ron: ‘It's only bread’.

Mon: It's just so funny. It's like these moments which are so tinged with emotion but also levity and they just do it perfectly time and time again.

Ron: And there are so many laugh out loud moments in this film and that really helps, because there are some devastating moments as well.

Like, we’ve already mentioned Peter B. meeting Aunt May, but Miles loses his Uncle right in front of him. And that entire sequence is so so sad, because we've already seen how much Miles loves his Uncle Aaron, and he also obviously loves his nephew as much. For them to be on opposite sides, and for Aaron to be killed just as he is realizing that Miles has become Spider-Man and that the two of them need to figure this out, it’s just an awful way for that entire sequence to go down.

And then when Jefferson comes to tell Miles, he can't really speak to Miles because Miles has been tied up by the Spider-People so that he does not get into any more trouble. So, Jefferson kind of goes about it very differently and he doesn't come out with what happens but he just tries to tell Miles that they're there for him, because they don't want Miles to end up going down the same pathway that Aaron did, which ended up in Aaron dying. It's a really touching scene.

And the two of them on the two different sides of the door, feeling this particular loss so strongly but not be able to communicate it, it just gets me every time I see it.

Mon: Yeah, this entire film is quite a rollercoaster ride, but it never feels like anything is too contrived.

Which is funny because this is an animated film with a whole bunch of Spider-People. But yeah, it just really understands the human condition.

Ron: When you're invested in the characters, you become more interested in everything that's happening in the film. And we haven't even talked about Wilson Fisk yet.

Yeah, he's the bad guy. But why is he doing what he's doing? We figure out that Wilson Fisk as strong and powerful and scary as he is, he had a family. And he lost that family because of the person he was. He's conducting these experiments with Doc Ock in the hopes that he will be able to get a version of his family from another universe.

And as I was watching this for the fourth time, I realized that Fisk is never going to get what he wants, not because the Spider-People are going to stop him—which they do—but because even if he does succeed, the version of his wife and son that he will get are never going to be his wife and son. They're going to be another Wilson Fisk's wife and son. And also, as we figure out, the alternative dimension Spider-people, they can't actually stay here, they start glitching. And the longer they stay, the more dangerous it becomes. And they finally figure out that if they stay too long, they will die. So, Fisk is never going to get what he wants, but he's so desperate. And what I realized was that it's not just desperation to have a family again, it’s desperation for that redemption that he's never gonna get.

Mon: So, with Fisk, the reason he lost his family is because they caught him fighting Spider-Man, and they rushed out and were in a car accident. The thing is, his need for redemption comes from the fact that he knows that he's responsible. It’s that guilt that is driving him to do these experiments over and over again, even though it is harmful for his city.

I think that, that just makes such a great character, because it's not just fridging the dead wife. It’s the fact that we know that he's a bad guy, he knows he's a bad guy and this is the one thing that he's lost and he needs it back. And the layers of knowing that he's never gonna get what he wants, makes the story even more powerful.

Ron: Every character is so well thought out in this film that you just can't not watch it again and again, because every time I've watched this film I found a new layer to another character. That's great! Because that's what you want in a superhero film, that rewatchability and to spend more time with people that you’ve ended up really caring about.

Mon: It's so easy, especially with genre films, to get wrapped up in spectacle and for far too long genre films only relied on spectacle. But in this film, you know from the very instance that it begins that you're going to be invested in the characters. And the story comes second, the gimmicks come third.

Ron: Gimmickry could have easily been the leading force for this film. There are so many different animation styles working in this film because of all the different universes. You've got Miles’ universe, You’ve got Peter B.'s universe; you've got Gwen Stacy's universe. You've got Spider Noir’s black and white world; you've got Spider-Ham’s 2D animation; you’ve got Peni Parker, who's from the anime universe. That's a lot and that's why it took this film so long to be made.

But all these different animation styles make it even more beautiful to watch. It doesn’t take away from the actual story or the characters. That’s what I love.

Mon: The combination of all these animation techniques add layers to the story and the plot, while the writing has added layers to each of the characters.

What I really loved about the animation is that it brings this vibrancy that we are so not used to seeing, even in animation. I mean, you can understand why it took them, what, four years to bring this movie to life. Every time we look there's something else that you find in the corner here or the corner there, because it's so artistic, and these aesthetics are from the comic book world, but for the screen. So, this is poetry in motion, quite literally.

Ron: Absolutely.

Mon: I mean I just love looking at this film; each frame can be a canvas that you can hang on your walls. It's amazing.

And it's no wonder that this film ended up getting the Oscar for Best Animated Film, it would have been an absolute travesty had it not.

Ron: Because Into the Spider-Verse brings together everything that we love about genre films, superhero films, and animation films, but it also does this amazing thing of appealing to a variety of audiences. It doesn't matter what age you are, you're going to love this film, and that's great.

Mon: Every time you see these Twitter watch parties or something, people are just going out of their minds with new things that they’ve found or new little Easter Eggs, and that’s why everybody loves this film. It's hard not to, because it's just such an incredible world full of incredible characters.

And we haven’t even come to the music and the songs.

Ron: So good, so good. I have listened to this soundtrack and score so much since I first watched the movie. I think my Spotify is bored of me.

Mon: What I like about the soundtrack is that it leans into the fact that Miles has mixed heritage, so there's a lot of songs by hip hop, rap R&B stars, and they really definitely add to Miles’ story. It’s incredible.

Especially the ‘leap of faith’ scene, and the ‘shoulder touch’ scene. Both of them, they’re incredible scenes, but the music and the score just add a whole new dimension to how you feel about those scenes.

Ron: Everything works so synchronously in this film. It's a masterpiece honestly.

Mon: And we don't use that word lightly, but I can't argue with that. Having watched it four times in two years, and to really enjoy it every time we watch it, that's what surprises me.

The last scene of the film definitely suggest that there's going to be a sequel. Now, we do know that there is a sequel planned for 2022. We're not entirely sure which angle they're gonna go with. It seems that they're going to bring in the Spider-People again. Let's just hope that it lives up to the layers of storytelling and characterization that it does in this film.

I'm looking forward to seeing these characters again, for sure. And I'm curious to know if Spider-Man 2099 is also going to be there.

Ron: We do get to see him, and it does seem to suggest that he has a dimension-hopping device with him. Whether that means that he's going to appear in the next film, we don't know. Voiced by Oscar Isaac, this is a character we definitely want to see. It will be fun to see the Spider-People that we already know make some new friends and add some new abilities to their arsenal.

Mon: I'm just glad that we got this film, and that it was received so well, not only was it critically appraised, but fans loved it, it was big in the box office. It's so rewatchable that I'm pretty sure Sony is making lots of money. Because stories like this, they need to be told, because they're a completely different perspective, completely different audience, and it expands who can watch,s enjoy and see themselves in these superhero films.

What I will say is that given the kind of strobe lighting and animation, for some people you might enjoy this film more as a home viewing experience, rather than on the big screen.

When we first saw it on the big screen, there's so much coming at you, it's a little too much stimulus. When you watch it in the comfort of your own home, you might be able to enjoy it even more.

Ron: I agree with you. The first time I watched it, I found it a bit too much. I wasn't able to concentrate on everything that was happening. But when I watched it again on a smaller screen, I felt like I could really appreciate the details.

Mon: Yeah, it’s not so overwhelming.

Ron: But this has been such a great film to go back to. And every time I've watched it, it's just been like meeting old friends, but also finding new characteristics and new details. It's been a wonderful experience, and I can't wait for the sequel.

What did you love about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? We'd love to hear from you.

Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email stereogeekspodcast@gmail.com. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!

Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Transcription by Otter.ai and Mon.

[hardeepcox]

Working and Sitting Next to an Actual Psychopath

Yes, you read that title correctly. That actually happened.

Once again I will not reveal the name of the company I worked at, only that its name rhymes with Ee Em Gee. So I had been working at this place for about 3 months just having a blast with my bro Huong and my Uncle Corey from the southside of Chicago. And one day we had a new guy in our office, and he sat right behind me. I was doing some work on my computer when I heard two people having a conversation behind me, one American voice and one English voice. The English voice was introducing the American voice to the office and showing him how the schedule worked. I then heard the English voice ask the American voice “so where are you from?” The American voice replies, “I’m originally from Puerto Rico but I grew up in the states.” Instantly I thought, cool! I love Puerto Rican music and now I’ll get to sit next to another minority person or whatever! The English voice left, so now I could say hi to the new guy. I was like, “so you’re Boricua huh?” I knew that Puerto Ricans identify with the native Boricua of the Puerto Rican island, so I was just showing off my history and geography knowledge at this point.  We hit it off right away. Even my Irish manager liked him so much he said, “this is gonna be a fun year!” I asked the Puerto Rican guy for his name, but for now let’s just call him Satan. A couple of days go by and all is great.

I think it was on day 3, a girl from another office happens to be sitting in Satan’s seat while she chatted with her boyfriend chilling at the desk directly to the left of Satan’s. Satan stands right in-between them while they are talking and makes a loud sound of clearing his throat. The atmosphere at this point feels a little bit weird. He asks for his seat back in a way that would sound rude, to literally anyone. There are so many ways to say the same thing, but he chose the most uncomfortable passive-aggressive way. I think hmm, this is odd.

Day 4, the same girl is sitting in Satan’s seat as he comes back into the office. The same exact scenario as the day before. This time he goes up to her and says something like, “are you going to be in my seat every day?” I didn’t quite hear her response but eventually she got up and left. Her boyfriend was understandably pissed off. Keep in mind that her boyfriend is tall as fuck and trains in MMA every other day. Let’s call him Skywalker.

Day 5, it’s 8:00am in the morning. I had just sat at my desk. Suddenly. The door opens and Satan is aggressively yelling at Skywalker about something. I’m barely awake so I’m just confused as hell. Satan yells something like, “don’t touch me bro!” Skywalker’s body language is saying something like, what did I do? Our shift had LITERALLY just started and this drama was happening right in our faces, keep in mind that our office had about 45 people. After about the longest 30 seconds ever, the scene is done. Satan goes back to his desk. Keep in mind that his desk directly behind mine, and directly to the right of Skywalker’s. At this point, Satan decides that I am the person that he wants to tell all his drama to. He tells me that he didn’t realize that he was yelling because he had his headphones on. At this point I saw the red flag, this dude has the symptoms of a psycho. Last time I heard someone make an excuse like this was from my drug-dealing Colombian ex-girlfriend who is also a psychopath. Anyways, apparently Skywalker had bumped into Satan and almost made him drop his phone, and this is what had ultimately triggered this scene early in the morning. I figured, this reaction from Satan should be unacceptable in any workplace so I’m sure he’ll be fired soon. I’ll just wait this out. The days go by. Satan has not been fired. The complaints against him have accumulated from other teachers outside of our office. He has been rude to teachers and even to our cab drivers that drive us to the schools where we teach at. Our head manager, let’s call her Pippy Longstocking, has had multiple talks with him one-on-one and she believes every excuse that Satan comes up with. More and more people start to dislike him, and this makes him think that I am his only and best friend in the world. I keep thinking, okay he’ll be fired any time now so I’ll just keep playing it cool. I’ve dealt with a psychopath before so I’ll just be chill and wait this out. No point in adding another complaint against him, plenty of people have already complained so he should be fired soon, right?

Over a month has gone by, and this dude is still working here! A few times, I give him the benefit of the doubt and actually invite him to hang out outside of work. The first time was to sing karaoke with his landlord and my bro Huong. Huong sang the song, I’m in Love with the Coco, and it was tight. I went with one my go-to songs, the Armageddon song by Aerosmith. You know the one I’m referring to. Satan sang some 10 minute long song from the 70’s, oh yeah this dude is apparently like 40 something. Another time, I invited Satan to have lunch at the famous banh mi lady’s place and Satan was extremely rude to her because according to him the food had taken “over an hour”. It had actually been like ten minutes. That was the last time that I ever invited him out.

A month and a half go by, and I try my best to avoid even being in the office. Now, Satan thinks that everyone is plotting against him. He thinks that Huong is angry with him and he is jealous of my friendship with my Uncle Corey. I of course am extremely fucking uncomfortable. I figure that at this point, the company is gonna let him finish his 2 month probation instead of actually firing him. One day. Satan tells me that he has a meeting with HR in the afternoon. I figure, thank you god they are finally going to fire this guy. Later that afternoon he tells me, “HR says I didn’t pass probation!” I try my best to look shocked. I think, oh my god finally. Then he says, “they’re going to let me work for two more weeks.” I think, what in the actual fucking shit is this fucking fuckery. HR is going to actually let him work until the very last second of his probation, when he should have been fired in week 1. And worst of all… now he has nothing to lose. The last week is here. I try to not even be in the office at all, I don’t wanna be there when that ticking time bomb explodes. Apparently, when I was out, another dramatic scene featuring Satan ensued. While Satan was clocking in, our Vietnamese-American co-worker had coughed. Let’s call him Dragon. Satan thought that Dragon had purposefully coughed on him, so Satan then coughs in Dragon’s face. As they go back to their respective desks, I heard that Satan challenged Dragon to a fight and Dragon called him out to brawl outside. Satan didn’t go for it. This dude was all bark and no bite. I think Skywalker called him a fat fuck, and that made me giggle like the demonic possessed girl from the Exorcist after killing Merrin. If we were in America, I think Satan would have been one of those mass-murdering shooters. Luckily, we were in Vietnam and the ‘gun-shops’ here only sell condoms. He wasn’t gonna lube us to death.

Satan had a couple days left before he was officially done working with us, and every afternoon he asked me to have lunch with him, and every afternoon I found an excuse not to. On his last day of work I almost didn’t even go into the office, I could imagine this dude coming into work with a backpack full of anthrax. Fortunately, nothing happened that day. At the end of the workday as he was leaving the office for the last time he said to me, “we have to hang out soon!”

The nightmare was finally over, and Satan’s desk was replaced with my bro Niall’s actually brother, Big Dog. I never saw Satan again, I only heard his voice at a bar once and I got the fuck out of there faster than you can say “perrea papi perrea.” Feel free to Google image that previously quoted expression. Enjoy.

With Satan gone, our little neighborhood of desk buddies could finally enjoy some peace. It consisted of: Skywalker, Big Dog, Mr.Bean, Draco Malfoy, and I. Good times. Eventually corona appeared in the form of a virus instead of beer, and our office has been closed ever since. Once again, fuck you corona.

[artificialqueens]

Four Times You Read My Mind (branjie) - writworm42

A/N: For the lovely pinkgrapefruit, who asked me to write a soft fic where Brooke & Vanessa knew each other’s thoughts. Thank you 3000 to Meggie for reading this over for me <3

TW for alcohol and smoking mentions.

Brooke woke up to the smell of blueberry pancakes, and instantly knew it was that day.

Shit. It was that day.

The day she and Vanjie would have to get in drag, go to work, and watch themselves lip sync against each other.

“Hey, babe.” Vanessa smiled weakly, looking up from the grill she had been intently dropping perfect, round lakes of batter onto, when Brooke wandered out into the kitchen. She was wearing one of Brooke’s t-shirts, a fan-made gift with We stan tea sis on the front and Step on my neck written in bold lettering on the back. Brooke chuckled a little; she couldn’t tell whether Vanessa was wearing it because she liked the feeling of the fabric hitting her knees, Brooke’s size enveloping her even when she wasn’t actually there, or because she knew her cologne would rub off on it, giving Brooke something to burrow into later that night when they would finally collapse into bed together, wanting desperately to sleep the night off but staring up at the ceiling, unable to.

“The pancakes are almost ready,” Vanessa added, and Brooke nodded. She had expected this; Vanessa loved to cook when she was anxious, and right now the kitchen was choked in a fragile, hyperactive energy that betrayed how fast Vanessa’s nerves were building. Brooke stifled the urge to go and help the younger queen, instead opting to go and sit at the table; right now, Vanessa needed the win, needed the sense of accomplishment. Needed to feel like she could do things on her own.

She slid Brooke her plate in silence before sitting down in the chair opposite, stony-faced and lost in thought.

The first time Vanessa had ever made Brooke blueberry pancakes was the morning after a particularly bad performance for Brooke, one where she’d landed wrong coming out of a shoulder stand and sprained something in her neck, the pain bad enough that she’d been afraid she would be out of the game for weeks. And she wasn’t in Toronto any more; there would be bills to pay without insurance, and if she didn’t work, she didn’t have a safety net to fall back on. So she’d sat in bed with a heat pack slung onto herself, scouring YouTube for the least sketchy DIY-massage tutorials she could find, when Vanessa slid into bed beside her, a tray of pancakes with a side-bowl of maple syrup in her hands.

“This is real Canadian syrup?” Brooke remembered how wide her eyes had gotten when she poured the syrup over her food, the slow, sticky pace of its crawl down from the bowl betraying its origins.

“Just like mama used to make.” Vanessa had smiled softly while her warm hands replaced the heat-pack and gently worked the muscles underneath.

To this day, Brooke had no idea where Vanessa had gotten the maple syrup, or how she’d known that blueberry pancakes had always been her favourite comfort food.

What she did know, coming back to reality, though, was that Vanessa wouldn’t talk first, not in her current state; so Brooke filled the silence for her.

“So you’ll never guess what happened on Real Housewives last night.”

–

They had to be at work for seven o’clock that night, which meant their day had to start at two, gathering their outfits and rehearsing their numbers, trying to get themselves into the headspace for the viewing party, thinking up back-up one-liners to say in case they got caught off guard by the crowd, by what they knew they were going to see. Brooke had written out her cue cards last night, and had slidden the back-ups for Vanessa into her garment bag, cards that only read you’re one funny bitch and we all love you no matter what and when all else fails, hold my hand.

You couldn’t plan out Vanjie; Brooke had made Vanessa try, back in the early days of their relationship, when the manifestations of their anxieties had clashed and Brooke had become desperate for control. But the results had been disastrous, and she had long since accepted that Vanessa was best when she was free, affirmed rather than controlled. So affirm she did, with a couple of extra makeup-remover wipes thrown in just in case Vanessa cried during commercial breaks.

–

“It’s not your fault, Brock.”

Brooke didn’t ask what Vanessa meant. They had been driving along in silence, the early-summer sun only just beginning to wane, each of them dreading their destination more intensely with every passing block.

“I’m serious. You wasn’t the one who put me in the bottom. And it was your job to send me home. I’m glad you did.”

“You’re glad I stopped you from being able to have your dream?” Brooke didn’t mean to snap, and regretted it instantly, taking her eyes off the road only for a second to see Vanessa’s stricken face.

But the small queen recovered quickly, her voice even as she continued, “I lip synced twice before we did. I wanted to fight to stay. I was ready to fight to stay. You fought me. I wasn’t gonna accept any other losin’ than that.”

“But you didn’t have to fight–”

“You wasn’t the one who made that choice. We both knew it was gonna happen. Mama Ru ain’t stupid. Tonight’s gonna make the ratings go wild.” Vanessa sighed. “I’m serious, baby. I didn’t wanna go home, but I know you didn’t wanna send me neither. I’m not mad that you did. If it wasn’t me it was gonna be you, then I’d be feelin’ the same way.”

“God, I don’t want to do this.” the car rumbled to a slow stop, this last red light and a left turn the only thing that separated them from the point of no return. Not for the first time since getting into the car, Brooke wondered how many free tequilas she could sneak from the bar tonight before Vanessa would cut her off; Vanessa was taking her turn designated-driving home tonight anyway, so it wasn’t like Brooke had any reason not to get smashed.

Of course, she knew that Vanessa would think differently.

“We gotta.” Vanessa’s voice was hollow, but Brooke knew she was right. The light turned green, and Brooke rolled into the intersection cautiously but automatically, anxious to get it over with.

They pulled up towards the bar.

Brooke kept driving.

Vanessa was already jamming numbers into her phone.

“Hey, Silk? I need a favour.”

–

They were incredibly lucky that Silky was in town that night, and even luckier that she was able to wrangle a local queen into subbing for Brooke and Vanessa with her, too. The fans would be disappointed, and there would be plenty of them who would clock their cover-story about Brooke having the stomach flu, but they had both logged out of social media for the night, setting their phones to ‘do not disturb’ to ward off any concerned texts from the other queens.

It was funny; the last time Vanessa had been sent home from the show, Brooke had been the one to message her and make sure she was okay. This time around, she was sitting on their couch with the Vanessa’s head on her lap, running gentle fingers through her hair and humming one of the Puerto Rican queen’s favourite songs under her breath. Vanessa had always been surprised that Brooke knew the lyrics to Sea of Love, let alone that it was a song that always calmed her down. For some reason, Brooke had never wanted to tell Vanessa that she knew because she had walked in on Vanessa after a loud fight with her mom, looping the song off of the Juno soundtrack from underneath a pile of blankets, her phone tossed to the other side of the couch and a box of tissues beside her, every fibre of her being exuding the need to be alone for a little while. Maybe it was because she didn’t want Vanessa to be embarrassed; maybe she just liked the feeling of having her own secret knowledge, too.

“Your hands are shakin’,” Vanessa pushed herself up off of Brooke’s lap, her face level with the taller queen’s, the smell her cologne spicy and heavy, “You need a cigarette?”

Vanessa hated that Brooke smoked. Always told her she tasted gross after coming back inside with the tobacco lingering on her tongue, always half-joked that she was already dating an old man and that she didn’t need one who was also on oxygen by the time he hit forty.

Brooke supposed that on nights like this one, Vanessa knew when to back off. Brooke nodded, and Vanessa followed her out onto the balcony.

“You’re not a failure, you know.” Brooke yanked the carton out of Vanessa’s grabbing reach, noticing the look that Vanessa was giving her as she slipped a cigarette into her mouth, one of a man looking for easy comfort. Far better to give it to her with the words she actually needed to hear, even if she didn’t think she deserved to.

“I failed twice. Mama Ru gave me two chances, and I ain’t even win no challenges before I blew ‘em.” Vanessa snorted, frowning. Brooke lit her cigarette and, in a flash of stupidity or genius, she wasn’t sure which, passed it down to Vanessa. Just like she thought, Vanessa screwed up her nose instinctively and refused to take it. Brooke smiled.

“See, you haven’t given up on yourself yet. You know it, too.”

“Know what?” Vanessa rolled her eyes.

“That you’re not a failure.” Brooke shrugged. “I wouldn’t have messaged you that first time if I thought that was true. Hell, I wouldn’t have even given you the time of day if I did, let alone be standing here with you.”

Despite herself, Vanessa began to laugh, low and breathy. “You really do always know what to say, don’t you?”

“Only when it comes to you.” Brooke smiled, bringing the cigarette away from herself long enough to pull Vanessa close and kiss her, laughing a little against the sour pucker Vanessa’s lips formed at the taste.

“Now,” she turned to put the cig out, still holding Vanessa lightly around the waist, “Should we Ubereats in some Popeye’s, get into bed, and watch The Notebook?”

“Shit.” Vanessa laughed, already dragging Brooke inside. “It’s like you know how to read my mind.”

[purplesurveys]

507

Name everyone you know who... is Jewish: I don’t think I know anyone who is. Do people I don’t know personally count? ‘Cause the first Jewish person I thought about was Colt Cabana lmfao. is Christian: 92% of this entire country. is Atheist: Me. JM is also atheist I think. is of another religion: I had a classmate in high school who I heard quietly converted to Buddhism, but I was never close with her so I don’t know if that is true, and if she still is. I haven’t seen her since we graduated. has brown eyes: My sister probably has the brownest eyes out of all of us, but it’s still quite a dark shade.

has blue eyes: I doubt there’s anyone in my circle with this eye color. has green eyes: CM Punk? LMAO has another colored eyes: Almost everyone I know has black eyes. is between the ages of zero and five: My youngest cousin is turning 6 in December, but until then, he is 5. is between the ages of six and ten: My cousin Sam is definitely in that age range, I’m just not so sure what the exact age is. is between the ages of eleven and fifteen: Gabie’s sister is 14, turning 15 this November. is between the ages of sixteen and twenty: My sister (18, turning 19), Gabie’s other sister (16), my old busmates Yanna (18) and Lex (17). is between the ages of twenty-one and thirty: Me and almost all of my friends. A bunch of us were born in 1998, making us 21 years old; a handful are 1-3 years older, like JM (22), Jum and Aya (23). is older than thirty: Other than my parents, my internship supervisor. Not sure how old she is but she’s definitely between 30-40. is a morning person: My mom. It drives me crazy when she wants to get soooo much stuff done within the day since I’m more of a night owl and like it’s just not my schedule lol. is a night person: Me, and just about everyone in UP. is employed: One of the more senior members in my org, Toby, has a job. is unemployed: Everyone else I go to college with. works at the same place as you: I don’t work yet. is single: Laurice. Although we’re counting on her to get a boyfriend before she graduates, so she still has around two years to go. :)) is in a relationship: Jo, who is seeing Aya. is engaged: I have a high school classmate who posted a status about her boyfriend proposing to her many months ago. She hasn’t said anything about it since then so I dunno if they broke it off or nah.

is married: Uh...my parents. is widowed/divorced: The mom of one of my childhood friends is widowed. Her husband died from cancer a few years ago when their daughter and I were in high school, if I remember right. is pregnant: My class adviser from senior year in high school. I know she’s in her 40s, so it was a really pleasant surprise when she announced her pregnancy. has kids: My dog, hahaha. has no kids: My friends in college. has brown hair: Agatha dyed her hair brown a while back.  has blonde hair: Gabie had blonde tips until just recently. She had them cut off last week, so now she’s back to having black hair. has natural red hair: No one I know. has black hair: Aya. has their hair dyed an unnatural color: Everyone I know who has unnaturally-colored hair had it dyed, because Filipinos only have black hair unless they’re half-something. is good at singing: Hannah is a born superstar tbh. I know Ed and Laurice sing too. is good at dancing: Dianne. She’s a high school batchmate who was always the best dancer from our class. She’s a member of the Streetdance Club in my uni now. is good at drawing: Aya! She’s our go-to editorial cartoonist in the org. Angela too, and my sister. is good at painting: Gabie and her youngest sister. My sister’s really good too. She also has a classmate I follow on Twitter, and she’ll post her paintings from time to time, all of which are amazing. is good at acting: Gabie. She was president of the theatre club in high school. is good at writing: Me? Hahahaha gotta flex my own talent too :(( is good at guitar: Gabie’s younger sister. I swear those siblings have the most amazing set of talents. is good at piano: My cousin Luke has been playing the piano for as long as I can remember. His grandma (my great-aunt) also knows how to play and they have a grand piano in their house, so he must have picked it up from her. is good at drums: Denise, a classmate from high school. She was the drummer for my batch’s band. is good in another instrument: JM plays the violin. He’s still a rusty here and there, but can play a tune nonetheless. is athletic/sporty: Hans, Angela’s boyfriend. He plays basketball with his friends all the time. is into fitness and going to the gym: Gabie has a gym membership, but she’s not super obsessed with fitness. smokes cigarettes: Mik, an orgmate of mine. He has always extremely smelled like cigarettes the few times I’ve seen him and I honestly have to step away from him every time :/ smokes weed: I know Danika has had weed brownies. does shrooms: Not anyone I know in real life...I think. does other drugs: Can’t name anyone I know, buddy. drinks often: JM will have moods where he will buy a whole bottle of gin or whatever alcohol he’s feeling at the moment for himself and drink it all in his room, but he’s not an alcoholic hahahaha. doesn't drink: My eldest cousin from my mom’s side. His dad is a horrible alcoholic, so it’s understandable why he avoids it at all costs. doesn't do drugs [not even weed]: Me. is emo/goth/scene/alternative: I uhh...don’t know anyone who identifies as this since probably 2011 at the latest... is preppy/popular: KATE without a shadow of a damn doubt. doesn't fall in either of those stereotypes: Aya. has cats: My tita has multiple cats. It’s her business, but she also loves those cats to death and pampers them. has dogs: Gabie’s family has four dogs, but I only get to see Harley since the other three aren’t behaved all that well. JM has two dogs, Mika and Alley. has other animals: Michelle has a bird named Moonmoon, but I don’t know what kind of bird it is. A girl I used to be friends with in high school (she was from a different school) had a pet snake. has no pets: Jo. is vegan: @badsurveyshit​! is vegetarian: Not sure if I know someone. Filipinos are obsessed with their meat. is on some other diet: The same tita with a bunch of cats is on a keto diet. has no diet/dietary restrictions: ME is lactose intolerant: Also me. But I still have milk and other dairy stuff because yum haha. has/had cancer: My great-aunt died from cancer. My old Filipino teacher had thyroid cancer, but she beat it. is bipolar: Edi, a friend of mine. is depressed: Me, I guess. plays videogames: My sister, my dad, my kuya, Gabie. loves to read: LAURICE. It’d be such a shame if I went with someone other than Laurice. got a GED: We don’t use that here. never graduated highschool: One of my friends’ mom. graduated college/got a degree: Both my parents, and all of my friends who graduated before me, e.g. Kate, Aya, Luisa, Jane. is or has been enrolled in beauty school: I don’t know anyone. makes YouTube videos: Ricel, my sister’s classmate from high school. She seems like such a sweet and nice person so when she started her channel a few weeks ago, I was more than happy to support her. is white: My uncle from New Zealand (unrelated; he married my mom’s cousin / my aunt). is black: I have a mutual friend from high school who’s half-black, half-brown. His dad, if I remember correctly, is from Nigeria. is Asian: Literally everyone I know!!!!!!!!!! is Hispanic: I don’t know anyone in real life but one of my favorite wrestlers, AJ, is Puerto Rican. is of another race: Everyone I follow on this Tumblr :)) is into photography: Reiven. likes rock: Rick, I think? The few times his earphones were blaring his music too loud it was always hard rock. likes metal: I dunno if I still know any metal fans nowadays. likes pop: Hannah. likes hiphop/rap/R&B: Hans. And all the other kids in uni who think they’re white. likes KPop: JM and Jum. likes country music: No one I know. likes jazz: Gabie and me. likes classical music: Sofie. When I was driving us to Batangas a few weeks ago for a beach getaway, she was in control of the car music and she briefly played stuff from her classical music playlist :(((( I was shookt at first but I liked the music anyway, so I didn’t tell her to change it. is a male: My dad. is a female: Me. is non-binary: Gabie’s editor from this website she’s a part of. is trans: Mac, from high school. He was formerly Maica, but he started going by Mac once he graduated. is straight: Laurice. is gay: Gabie. is bi: Patrice. lives on the eastern half of the USA: My Tito Rocky, who lives in New York. My Tito Raffy is also from New York.  lives on the western half of the USA: Aubrey, Rielle, Norielle, Margeauxe. All originally from elementary/high school, but eventually migrated. lives in a different country: My Tita Pia and her husband, who is the one I listed under the “is white” portion of this survey. They live in Vietnam, but they used to live in New Zealand. is blind/visually impaired: I had a classmate from my History of Southeast Asia class who is legally blind. He has this device he puts on his eye to be able to read our professor’s slides. is deaf/hearing impaired: I don’t know anyone IRL. is in a wheelchair or disabled: One of my orgmates’ mom is in a wheelchair. is austitic/retarded/has learning disbilities: My Tita Bianca. is very thin: Aya. is overweight: Gabie is a few pounds overweight.

[smallpressdistribution]

8 SPD Books Regarding Undercurrent

IN THIS MONTH'S SPD CLICKHOLE

By Lizzy Lemieux

Although I do not believe in ghosts, I often find myself among people who do. I am a weak link at a seance. A terrible ghost-hunter. How can I look for something which I don't believe is there? But whether I believe or not, ghosts are a regular feature of my life. My best friend used to sit outside our dorm room to commune (by telephone) with her psychic who communed (by mind) with the dead. When another friend and I checked in at a classic New York City hotel, the first activity on her agenda was hunting down a presumably prohibition-era spook. 

For believers, one of the signs of a supernatural presence is a particularly strong electric current. I imagine that this is a sign that ghost-hunters, whether they be the Bill Murray or the Buzzfeed kind, detect on their gadgets. They indicate that spirits live just below the surface of our reality, and with the right tools, we can get in touch with them. 

Which reveals this month's HANDPICKED theme: UNDERCURRENT. These 8 books look for what lurks under the surface and haunts the recesses of our mind. They are our EMF meter and our medium, alerting us that something else lives here and showing us how to commune with it. 

Nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon (Metonymy Press) Lindsay Nixon's "groundbreaking memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories" draws on "Nixon's Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis ancestral teachings." A seamless blend of "academic discourse" and "internet speak" chronicles Nixon's life as they examine the underlying power dynamics which tinge their relationships, whether they be with a mother, a partner, or with us, the reader. It is a narrative of undoing "customs of refined yt femininity" and actively remembering. "My body holds memories I would could forget," Nixon writes, "because, while sweet, they bring with them moments of regret." 

Wet Land by Lucas De Lima (Action Books) Wet Land is a memorial for what the undercurrent has taken away, in this case, Lucas De Lima's dear friend Ana Maria who was killed by an alligator in Central Florida. As Lucas De Lima mourns loudly, his poems written in ALL CAPS, he mythologizes the alligator. He finds kinship with the creature that lurks in the depths. As he states at the beginning of Wet Land, "[t]o write this book--to inscribe myself into its bloodstained ecology--I have to become a bird.//I transform into the airborne body that shares a dinosaur ancestry with alligators and remains their closest kin.//I do this as if the evolution of scales into feathers were an adaptation to grief."

Sympathetic Little Monster by Cameron Rich (Ricochet Editions) "& have you ever known a body not to be haunted?" asks Cameron Awkward-Rich in his debut poetry collection, Sympathetic Little Monster. We are well acquainted with our own haunts. In this collection, the speaker invites us to intimately know theirs. We come face to face with the monster, only to find the face is ever changing. The face goes by she, he, is queer, trans, biracial. It gives new meaning to "transition", moving from self to self, from body to body. 

Liar: A Memoir by Rob Roberge (Future Tense Books) Memory is often presented nonlinearly. For Rob Roberge, this nonlinearity is essential in his mission to "preserve his identity" when he "learns that he's likely to have developed a progressive memory-eroding disease". Through a series of interconnected vignettes titled only by their year, Roberge traces his life and youth through addiction, death, and mental illness, exploring the memories which lie beneath the constructed self. 

Nightmare Scenarios by Matt Barrell (Impress Books) Drawing from his own experiences as a schizophrenic, Matt Barrel presents a brief graphic memoir, revealing the secrets and fears of a cast of characters with varying diagnoses. Mental illness are often invisible to onlookers, whether or not the blindness voluntarily. Yet they live beneath the surface. In Nightmare Scenarios, Barrel brings us face to face with mental illness through humor so we no longer can- or want to- ignore it. A large cast of characters ensures it is not a singular narrative, but a collective one. As the "deliberately naive" vignettes divulge the characters' deepest secrets which seem to seperate them from society, Barrel counters isolation often associated with mental illness. 

I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody by Sinan Antoon, translated by Sinan Antoon and Rebecca C. Johnson (City Lights Publishers) In arabic, I'Jaam refers to the borrowed dots which were added to arabic script to "eliminate ambiguous readings". In this fictional prison manuscript, which follows a young man growing up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the "elucidating" I'jaam are missing, allowing the speaker to languish in ambiguity not so unlike his imprisonment. Presented within a report from the Ministry of Interior, the novella gives voice to a silenced population and rebels against censorship by using I'jaam to present dissent. This remarkable translation by Rebecca C. Johnson and Antoon himself allows english-speakers to enter the extraordinary possibilities of the original Arabic, which deftly, tenderly, and comically comments on the reality of regime and imprisonment. 

How to Write Stunning Sentences by Nina Schuyler (Fiction Advocate) Sentences are the bones of writing. They uphold structure, give shape. Nina Schuyler in "How to Write Stunning Sentences" is out to uncover their beauty and demystify them. In 25 essays, Schuyler strips sentences by famous authors, sometimes with the help of the writer themself,  down to their component parts and shows you how to put it back together again. And she provides prompts for you to create your own. It's like rediscovering your favorite authors and going to office hours with your favorite creative writing professor. 

The Tertiary by Raquel Salas Rivera (Noemi Press) Philadelphia's Poet Laureate and Puerto Rican activist, Raquel Salas Rivera, presents the Marxist idea that "two powers need to come together to create a third commodity" as a poetic exploration of "the binary of colony and empire, and what it’s like to be that third thing that gives value—the tertiary." Rivera's writes that her poetry, like her mother's (as debt is passed down) is "all about the debt, even if I never even say these words out loud".  Through fantastical equivalences and conditional statements in both English and Spanish, Rivera speaks in the language of economists and philosophers to reveal both the monetary and mental burden of debt imposed on those in the so-called "third world" by colonial powers, which so often goes unvoiced. 

This month’s #SPDhandpicked books are 20% off all month w/ code HANDPICKED!

[thesportssoundoff]

“No but seriously, he has one eye” The Brawl For All Combatants Ordered Out!

So a few weeks ago, I presented you with a beginning outline of what I'm aiming to do here. A chance to take a long look at the Brawl For All; a concept so insiduous that I imagine even Vince McMahon has aimed to bury it in the deepest recesses of his mind. The first time out we looked at its genesis, the concepts and the back stories beyond the concepts:

http://thesportssoundoff.tumblr.com/post/183395306465/what-happens-when-you-take-a-bad-idea-and-make-it

NOW let's take a long look at who participated, who didn't participate and the fallacy behind the entire project IF rumors are to be believed.

A Hot Take To Lead Us Off

This is something I long theorized but a long look at the people involved in the Brawl For All confirmed it for me. So by and large, the Brawl For All was a stupid dumb concept. Agreed, right? Well what if it could've worked elsewhere? Now again the rules are dumb, the genesis behind it was dumb, everything about it from stem to stern is full of stupidity. Allow me to argue that it COULD have worked; just not in the WWF. When you see the roster the WWF was working with here, it's not going to blow you away on paper and we obviously have a mighty fine idea of how the execution went. What about a different Brawl For All roster? Saaay (in 1998 when this happened):

Rick or Scott Steiner- Decorated All American wrestlers for the University of Michigan Scott Norton- Legitimate tough guy bad ass professional arm wrestler, former bodyguard of Prince Jerry Flynn- Taekwando practitioner, former mixed martial artist Earnest Miller- Three time karate champion Glacier- Professional karate man dude prior to pro wrestling Brian Knobbs/Jerry Saggs- The JBL's of WCW in more ways than one seemingly Meng- All time legendary tough guy and bar room savage Barbarian- Genuine tough guy El Dandy- Jam Up Guy Serious Professional All Around Good Man

Plus the other litany of guys who were noted shooters or tough guys on the undercard. Let's also be fair and note that the South was a touch more receptive to the UFC at this point in time than say the East Coast as well. Perhaps it could've worked with a better roster and perhaps WCW, with its glut of shooters and tough guys respected in the industry, would've been better suited for a Brawl For All.

Or maybe it's just a stupid fucking idea with no merit. That too.

So who DIDN'T participate?

Well let's start with the very beginning and work our way back. Let's talk about some of the guys who just opted NOT to participate. For starters, the big stars were obviously not going to partake in this. Right off the jump you have to assume Undertaker, Austin, DX, The Rock, Kane, Mankind, Vader and the like are not going to be participating. This was about giving a bunch of guys they kind of didn't give a shit about something to do so that meant no sacrificing top stars. It was filler programming and obviously everybody doing important shit was busy doing important shit. Also of note was that the WWF did not want originally the likes of Dan Severn, Steve Blackman and Ken Shamrock in it. Ken apparently wasn't interested and made the argument that it didn't benefit him given the fact that he was a genuine UFC star still to take a pit stop in pro wrestling. At the same time, Dan Severn was asked not to participate at first and then had to be coerced into taking a spot when injuries happened. The same goes for Steve Blackman who was signed up after a few drop outs occurred, primarily due to the promise of Blackman being allowed to throw kicks in the tournament. The dropouts are hard to pinpoint but Tiger Ali Singh is one of the more notorious ones per Bob Holly. I've also read around that Ahmed Johnson was at one point supposed to be in it but I've never been able to confirm that (or remember the shoot interview that it was mentioned in). The point is that on its face, the Brawl For All was going to be a shoot fighting tournament without the two genuine proven shoot fighters in case you're curious about the true idea behind it.

Also as an MMA fan, I can't help but notice the # of "I was a last minute addition" stories these guys have. Lord knows that has to be a common thing said by guys like Sean Shelby and Mick Maynerd to get some of these fights done. I'd imagine that "We need a guy and you're going to help us out!" sweet talk happens to this day. My immediate thought is that they were either a) having a tough time filling spots in the Brawl For All and started telling people they were in need of last minute additions or b) most of these guys regret doing it and figure saying they were last minute replacements helps take the edge off.

So who WAS in?

We got sixteen names so buckle up and pour a drink or two.

8-Ball- Ron Harris aka 1/2 of The Blu Brothers aka Vince Russo's Creative Control. Vince Russo has never been a master of subtlety and so I suppose it's no surprise that one of his top angles was "Gang Warz" pitting an all white stable (The DOA) vs an all Puerto Rican tag team (Los Boricuas) vs a mostly all black tag team (the Nation Of Domination). Needless to say, Vince Russo makes it hard to defend him sometimes. To my knowledge neither Ron nor brother Don have any sort of proven fighting experience and the less said about them (and their tattoos), the better off we'll be. Ron (and Don) were rumored to have threatened Shawn Michaels on their last night in the WWF in the 90s, a rumor that seems to be corroborated by at least a few folks.

Steve Blackman- Most of the dudes who talk about the Brawl For All admit that this guy probably wins it all things being equal. Blackman had a legit karate background with some muay thai and amateur wrestling mixed in. Besides Blackman somehow overcame being bedridden for two years with malaria to become a legitimate pro wrestler so needless to say if it's a "Who wants it more?" shoot type deal, he's going to cover the grit and grind department well. Blackman is also rumored to have once taken down The Big Show and held him down until Show begged him to let him up which is akin to Bob Backlund apparently getting the Iron Sheik down and sitting on him until he either lost interest or was asked to let him up. Steve Blackman is by all intents and purposes a badass.

Bradshaw- Apparently the inspiration behind this atrocity depending upon who you ask. Bradshaw's reputation is marred now with incidents of bullying (real or fabricated), pro wrasslin' racism (goosestepping in Germany to get heat, some other old school heel shenanigans) and borderline dangerous behavior like blindsiding the Blue Meanie and beating the shit out of him when Meanie thought it was a working brawl. At this point though, none of that is really widespread and Bradshaw is just a fake Stan Hansen who looks tough and stiffs the hell out of people. He's about to eventually turn into a mute member of the Undertaker's industry before he comes a heel mercenary for hire before they turn into FUN beer drinking cigar smoking mercenaries for hire before turning into a Wall Street rich Texan chasing Mexicans "at the border" to get heat for a feud with Eddie Guerrero. I suppose you cant say Bradshaw didn't earn it at least.

Brakkus- Wooof. Brakkus was a massive German bodybuilder who apparently didn't quite understand that the Brawl For All wasn't worked. The WWF had big plans for Brakkus (if they send you to Memphis to work for Lawler in the USWA, it probably means they had a long term vision for him) but he sucked and no matter where they sent him, he continued to suck. He was bad in Memphis, was bad in ECW and ultimately this feels like an attempt to just do something with him. Again though, how good you are as a pro wrestler doesn't matter in the Brawl For All. It was about legit fighting----and Brakkus apparently according to Savio Vega had no idea he was in a real fight. Keep that in mind.

Mark Canterbury- I have NO idea why Henry O. Godwinn is listed on wikipedia by his real name but fuck it, here he is! So full blindspot up front, I LOVED Henry O' Godwinn as a kid. He carried around a slop bucket, poured what looked like puke on people, wrestled in overalls which helped him stand out and it sort of gets lost in the fact that he was given a dumb gimmick (In the mid 90s, it felt like the WWE was acknowledging how big of a slide it was in because every human being had a side hustle) that Godwinn could absolutely work. Here's Godwinn vs Bret Hart in a killer match btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9vihPkNmLM. This was before Vince Russo and company turned them from a fun midcard act into a gross-ish play on Vince McMahon's distaste for southerners. Oh and also! Henry Godwin PROBABLY is doing this with a  still kinda broken neck. He broke it in 1997, was told to take three months or more off (Godwinn gives numbers ranging from ten weeks to sixteen weeks) and he just showed back up in less than two months to work through it. Keep that in mind.

Droz- A tragic story all in all which we'll get to eventually. Droz at this point is basically coming out of a dead angle with the LOD where he was written in storyline to be feeding drugs (and whatever else) to Road Warrior Hawk in an attempt to take his place in the Legion Of Doom. If it sounds awful it's because it was and while MAYBE a good writer can make that work, we're talking about the WWF in 1998 trying to soap opera a drug pusher/drug abuse victim angle. It ultimately ended with Droz shoving Road Warrior Hawk off the titantron while Hawk was attempting to commit suicide. Again, it's as bad as you'd believe. Droz had a college football background but that's about it unless I missed some boxing or kickboxing background.

The Godfather- By all accounts the Godfather is a badass. He was hip to MMA before the UFC really caught on, was a freakishly devoted bodybuilder and he just looks like the sort of guy who would take very little shit from anybody. The Godfather is about to become THE Godfather as he's transitioning from Kama Mustafa and the Nation Of Domination's actually good muscle enforcer (Mark Henry is bad around this time and would continue to be such until about 2009 or so) but at this point I'd imagine the writing is on the wall for most of the NOD guys that the Rock is about to leave them in the dust and this group is going to theoretically die a death. The Godfather is about to take a seriously big turn but FIRST, the Brawl For All!

Bart Gunn- At this point, Bart Gunn is doing nothing. Basically nothing. One could even say less than nothing. Bart Gunn is in The New Midnight Express, an angle that Vince Russo has claimed was apparently a way to shut up Jim Cornette and prove to him that old style wrestling couldn't work in 1998. Bart Gunn was apart of the Smoking Gunns and according to him, he had toughman contest experience. Apparently Bart Gunn got brought into the Brawl For All because Kevin Kelly had seen him wear out big guys in Tampa and per Billy Gunn, Bart was the sort of dude who could wipe out a bar room full of people if need be. That said it's not like Bart had any boxing experience or what have you.

Hawk- Another noted tough dude and one of pro wrestling's weirdest mysteries. Every old school dude be it Kevin Sullivan, Jim Cornette or Paul Heyman raves about Hawk as a talent and claims he could've been a major marquee attraction as a singles wrestler. Kevin Sullivan in particular claims that had he had the opportunity to work with Hawk and freshen him up as a singles wrestler, he could've been an Undertaker-esque attraction who drew money across multiple character iterations. Hawk is coming off his personal demons storyline which I mentioned before that sucked. At this point, he and Animal have broken down and are in serious need of repairs from a physical and character standpoint.

Bob Holly- Bradshaw and Bob Holly in the same tournament and somehow they didn't face off? In 2019, I imagine people would be rooting for a double KO (although Bob's image has softened with fans since leaving the WWE) but at this point Bob Holly is just trying to figure shit out in his career. He's teaming with Bart Gunn in the New Midnight Express after sputtering out (HA HA) as a race car driver. Bob Holly is another dude who by in large is just known as a tough guy with a bit of a bully streak tendency behind that reputation. Owner of the wrestling world famous "YOU GOT TWENTY FOUR HOURS TO LEARN HOW TO FIGHT, BITCH!" threat to Rene Dupree before he kicked the shit out of him over parking tickets.

Marc Mero- The story of Marc Mero is a rough one with a happy ending. Marc Mero was really over in WCW as Johnny B. Badd, a Little Richard knock off with a Badd Blaster that shot confetti. Johnny B. Badd was so over that Vince paid him big money to be Johnny B. Badd----only for someone to smarten him up that Johnny B. Badd was a WCW trademark so he had paid for a guy who was trained from jump to do ONE role his whole career. Marc Mero was pretty over and underrated as a wrestler (I SWEAR BY THIS) before his knees gave in. Making matters worse for him was that his wife, Rena, was the women's face of the Attitude Era as Sable. According to Jim Cornette, Marc Mero was trying to be a good husband and help get his super over wife even MORE over---so he took a powerbomb from her on TV. Mero's future big money opponent was Stone Cold who happened to be  watching the show at the time from home. Apparently Austin called up Vince McMahon and immediately asked who he would be working with on next week's Raw since he wasn't going to do any business with Mero after eating a powerbomb on TV from his wife. I don't know if this was before or after the Brawl For All though so take that for what it's worth. Either way, Mero is doing a boxing gimmick now (he is apparently a reputable legit golden gloves champion) and so it makes sense he'd be in the Brawl For All.

Pierre- This is a real shootfight tournament. Actual punches are being thrown and takedowns are implemented. This is, again, a legitimate shoot fight----and so of course one of the dudes involved in the shoot fight is missing an eye. Quebeccer Pierre/Pierre Carl Oulette/Jon Pierre Lefitte is missing an eye and was competing in a shoot tournament WITH one eye. We're not talking Michael Bisping fighting with a damaged eye for years on end, we're talking about an actual lack of an eye. This happened, people. We'll talk more about Pierre (and his amazing story in 2019) but right now in 1998, he's JAG who is bouncing between WCW and WWF looking for something to do. He's also at this point known as the guy who refused to put Kevin Nash over in 1995 despite Nash being the face of the company. PCO is the original Bret Hart, refusing to job in Canada.

Scorpio- I gotta admit I have no idea what Scorpio is doing here. I bet he doesn't know either if we're being truthful. Scorpio is one of those guys who was ahead of his time but seemed incapable of staying on the right path (whatever that means in wrestling) to get what he was due. He had come into the WWF in 1997 as Flash Funk and so I imagine Flash Funk was over and he's just killing time until the Job Squad angle.  Scorpio is apparently a legit tough guy (or madman depending on who you ask) and held a 1-0 unofficial record over Hawk after he beat the shit out of him in WCW.

Dan Severn- Dan Severn was told he wouldn't even be allowed to participate and then was told the day OF the taping that he was needed to take a spot. Severn is not too far removed from being a UFC everything (champion, tournament winner etc etc) and so he's for the most part a prospective favorite. That's probably why he wasn't asked to compete at first I'd imagine since the plan was PERHAPS to get somebody else over. Another rumor is that Severn is such a boring plain dude with a boring plain style (Severn admits his plan was to never throw a punch and just grapple people) that if he had won, there would've been no payoff in it.

Savio Vega- I have NO idea if Savio Vegas has a professional sports background or what the deal was. Apparently Savio Vegas asked to be in it and was also the unofficial official matchmaker (he drew the names out of a hat) and he's Puerto Rican so he's got my rooting interest right away. I think Los Boricuas at this point were in full swing and Savio was obviously the head of said stable. Gang Warz was dumb as hell.

Steve Williams- And we reach the FINAL name. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Steve Williams was a former football player at the University of Oklahoma and one of the more decorated wrestlers in Oklahoma history. He had carved out a niche in Japan by this point after establishing himself as a star in Mid South with the occasional stop off in the NWA/Jim Crockett Promotions/various regional feds and start ups. Williams didn't have any official fighting background but he was a crazy good wrestler and by all accounts a ridiculous bad ass. Jim Cornette tells stories of Dr. Death fighting fans and laying bodies to waste with little to no effort. He was also extremely popular with people in the WWF office, namely Jim Ross and Jim Cornette. Bruce Prichard doesn't QUITE say that the WWF thought Dr. Death would win the Brawl For All but he does a damn good enough impression of Jim Ross advocating for Steve Williams that I have to believe it. Vince Russo has spoken in the past about Steve Williams being Jim Ross' "boy" and how this was basically his way of seeing whether Jim Ross was right. Bob Holly has said that they were already doing vignettes with Barry Switzer and interviews as if Dr. Death won the Brawl For All. Dr. Death claims that the Triple H push of 1999 was the one Vince had promised him before the Brawl For All.

All of this brings me to my final point.....

Dr. Death was never going to be a big star in the WWF

I truly hate to speak ill of the dead and I'm trying hard no to either. Let's just speak from a more realistic pragmatic grounded stance. The kind of talent that was getting over in 1999 falls into three distinct categories. The first were talkers, guys and gals who could rap so to speak and had tremendous presence. Promo guys could carry the day and even IF you gave Dr. Death a Jim Ross to do the talking for him, let's not forget that by 1998 at this point in July there's basically just one manager actually doing anything as a talker and that's Paul Bearer. "Dr. Death" Steve Williams was not a talker and even if he was, he's certainly not the kind of talker who would fit in Vince McMahon's WWF. The second were guys who were big with "the look" according to Vince McMahon. Pull up a picture of every top star in 1998 for the WWF and then slide Dr. Death in there and ask if he fits the mold. He's unique for sure and there's the Mick Foley outlier----but imagine how long it took Mick Foley to be seen as legitimate by Vince McMahon. Even if Dr. Death is the definition of a Jim Ross style Hoss, he looks woefully out of date by 1998 standards. He in many ways, like a lot of guys who frequently toured Japan and basically were behind on the times, looked like he had been left in 1988. Lastly there were the gimmick guys; the Undertaker, Kane, The Rock, DX, Austin etc etc. Dr. Death's gimmick was that he was an ass kicker which is great but AGAIN we are to believe every human being in the WWF at this time is an ass kicker. Maybe Vince and company would've found a way to get something out of him but the chances are that Dr. Death would've never been a big star. Could he have feuded with Stone Cold? Surely! A big money draw? A multi million dollar hit? I just don't see it. Can't imagine it. Also let's be fair here, how toned down would his style have been for the WWF at the time as well? Is he going to suplex Steve Austin around after Stone Cold broke his neck? I'm not quite buying that either.

So there's your sixteen. You got a few amateur wrestlers ten years beyond their competitive days, a boxer or two, a toughman contest guy, a few dudes who dabbled in kickboxing and a man with legitimately one eye. You've got the guy who the company thinks SHOULD win it. So who won the fuckin' thing? How did they win it?

That's for next time.

[freshdotdaily]

I wrote this blog post in 2012 but tumblr deleted it.  It was called sumn like, “My main critique w/ Talib Kweli” I wasn't allowed to listen to rap or any secular music growing up. My mom did me a grave disservice in that regard. So appropriately when I came into age I began sneaking all the music I could. I liked hip-hop and wanted as much of it as possible. The first record that I got that informally changed everything for me was Arrested Development's "Arrested Development 3 years 5 months 2 days". Probably because A) It was non-violent hip-hop I could RELATE to & B) After being raised by a Puerto Rican mother I had little to no real Knowledge of Cultural self.The next albums that followed after I devoured that album were Fugees "The Score" and Busta Rhymes "When Disaster Strikes" it'd be a little while before I was able to get my hands on any new cd after those two, so I had those 3 albums for a good year or two in heavy rotation along w/ Future Flavors on Hot 97 to keep me current. I was writing my raps pretty regularly around this time and I'd graduated from performing gospel raps at my churches Youth Night to  nervously performing at little local open mic spoken word poetry nights w/ my friend Jason.The next album I got my hands on was "Mos Def & Talib Kweli are BlackStar".

That album changed EVERYTHING for me. As far as I was concerned I never needed another rap album. This was the penultimate affirmation of all the things I'd come to feel were true about myself and hip-hop and my culture. Mos was the Charismatic emcee who was forever on beat and in pocket w/ his flow and Talib was the well-read, technical lyricist. I immediate began trying to become an amalgam of them both in one emcee since I felt they so aptly represented what I felt. Reflection Eternal's "Train of Thought" album dropped and blew my head clean off my shoulders. The beats, man. Kweli was at his apex w/ that album. Raps + beats + Brooklyn being well represented. Oh, and let us not forget the Ecko advertisements. I wore Ecko exclusively for about a year and change. I mean footwear to underwear at one point. Talk about artists being brands and marketing alignment & etc.  I bought Triple 5 Soul because that's apparently what Mos Def wore, right? I bought & read Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" because Kweli made a reference to it. I read Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" because Kweli made a reference to it. I mean, this is what hip-hop, good hip-hop anyway is supposed to do, right? Spark discussion, open minds, create thought and growth, etc. I felt like I was a part of that MOVEMENT. Rawkus. The Okayplayer board. The Spitkicker site. SoulQuarians. I had all the albums from everybody. Probably TMI, but I lost my virginity in 1999, while Pharoahe Monche's "The Light" was playing in the background for some reason. smh. For crying out loud, Black Star's "Respiration" is the top song in my top five favorite songs of all time.

It gets deep, nigga. (c) Kendrick Lamar

As my writing progressed and evolved and I found my own voice eventually through trial and error, Mos Def's "Black on Both Sides" dropped. While "Train of Thought" was still my favorite of the two albums, Mos's charisma eclipsed Kweli  and he became my favorite of the two emcees. I judge rappers work against their own previous work instead of their peers, because that's fair to do artistically. So I'd never pit Mos & Kwelis work against each other because that's like arguing about which is more delicious of a fruit, apples or oranges? Two different fruits altogether, bruh. Also, at this point, I'd moved out my moms house, put out my 1st album, discovered early Eminem and Canibus and had a blossoming cd collection. Not to mention my attention was being held by a burgeoning Kanye.When Kweli's solo project "Quality" dropped, it hit me kinda like "meh". Gone was the signature Hi-Tek sound. I mean, Tek had joints on there but it wasn't the same. Dj Quick? Dj Quick is a mothafuckin' legend, sure. But his relevance at the time? Nah. Especially to a n00b EAST COAST hip-hopper as myself, it was baffling. The general consensus was Kweli used his first truly solo debut to attempt a move toward a more mainstream sound. It received some mainstream attention thanks to the West-produced single "Get By" which peaked at #77 on the Billboard Hot 100. That was Kweli's lifesaver. That album would've drowned otherwise. I did like the Kweli/Kanye connection that seemed mutually beneficial for both of them. It seemed to be going well even got him a Hov shout out on "The Black Album", in which Jay-Z rapped: "If skills sold, truth be told/I'd probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli". Then the Strugglesome "The Beautiful Struggle" album dropped and I wanted to like it, but it too, hit me like "meh". The Neptunes, Just Blaze and Kanye couldn't save that album. The album failed to cross over into the mainstream and suffered a critical backlash. For example, Britt Robson of The Washington Post  said: "Struggle" was a "frequently awkward, too-obvious bid to exploit the commercial buzz Jay-Z created." Mos was trying his hand at rock music w/ Black Jack Johnson and dropped "The New Danger" to my disappointment. By this point I'd bought Common's "Like Water For Chocolate" and it made him instantly my new favorite emcee. I went and bought "Resurrection" and "One day it'll all make sense" in the same day and consumed those albums daily.In listening, I noticed Kweli's aging. His attempts to remain relevant by looking around him and seeing what was popular and trying to compete. I was willing to overlook his stuffing a thousand syllables into a bar and over usage of the word "like" in every rap song w/ semi-obscure literary references (that I dug, actually). I was willing to overlook the preachy tone his raps somewhat took. I was still BUYING Kweli's music. Brooklyn. over. everything, my nigga. I downloaded '"Liberation" and wasn't mad at that at all. Kweli and Madlib? Dope. I stopped there. There was too much disappointment for me to continue. I wished he'd maintained his aesthetic. Emcees like Kweli and Fat Joe will always look around and try to emulate to maintain relevance. I'm sure there's more money and more opportunity in it, but you lose that core fanbase for the possibility of a bigger, newer fanbase who's not familiar with your older work and doesn't love you the same as a fan. Whereas an artist like Ghostface or DOOM will continue to do what they do in their lane and gain cult followings. Mos learned this the hard way. It wasn't until "The Ecstatic" (and stepping the live show up by giving people what they came to see) that heads began fucking w/ him again.Eardrum? Nope. Finally, a new Reflection Eternal album? With post G-Unit Hi-Tek? It was a little too late. I bought it & reluctantly handed my money over. I'd lost my will to be be a Kweli fan. Gutter Rainbows? Nope. Idle Warship? Hell no. 

Did Kweli become wack? nah, he's still nice. I feel like it's the same problem Nas had with putting out 2 great albums out the gate and then trying to maintain relevance in a changing musical environment where the consumers are getting younger and the music is warping to accommodate. It took Nas about 10 albums to figure out how to get BACK to his original formula.I ask myself often if my critiques on Kweli came about because I rap and hold him in my influences. You know how you get older and realize your parents weren't the geniuses you thought them to be as a child? Once I figured out my stride and perfected how I wanted to rap and write, I think I began flaw finding. Flaw finding is both my nature as a virgo and my right as a consumer & fan. The power to critique constructively is also my right as a fellow artist. The biggest iniquities were the syllable cramming at the expense of flowing on-beat to get a point out as well as beat choices. But overall, I wanted that vibe back. I wanted that hi-Tek, Geology and Shawn J. Period vibe back from when I found myself as a young man and emcee. In 2013 Kweli is dropping "Prisoner of Conscious" a title derived from Talib's constant labeling as a "conscious rapper" and based on Nigerian reggae artist Majek Fashek's album "Prisoner of Conscience." I plan on purchasing it via an experiment. I'm gonna download all the albums of his I missed and see if there's been any hints or glimmers of what I've been missing that could lead up to this being his "Life is Good" album. Based on that, hopefully I can "experience dedication" and "move something", before it's "too late" for him to "get by".-F.Daily

It’s 2019 and I think Kweli is super important to raps annals and history.  Albeit his hubris and righteous stances especially on social media mixed w/ distasteful personal stories I’ve heard + how he handled ReS’s music issues have rubbed me all the wrong way. I still think there’s really some slivers of relevancy for Kweli in the current hip-hop climate. I think he’s in tune with the culture and good for hip-hop and an important voice in socio-political justice for the advancement of people of color. Ionno how good the music is for me personally anymore, but I’ll always have Reflection Eternal. 

content sourced from Talib Kweli's wiki page

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Alex

Today I have the delight of introducing Alex, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @arotaro and @mutant-jojos!

Alex is a bisexual, half-Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary aromantic artist and creative with severe ADHD. You’ll find her prolific fanworks on AO3 as EmeraldTrash666, writing primarily for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fandom. Her bold, colourful art for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hetalia, Pokemon and Vocaloid fandoms is also available on Redbubble under the name StellaHagane.

She writes, she creates digital art and she dabbles in music, sewing and fashion design, single-handedly proving that there’s no such thing as too much creative awesome for any one aromantic!

With us Alex talks about finding the word aro, the power of fandom and creative fanworks, her love of aro Jotaro, the challenges of creating with ADHD, the struggles of being an aro gen writer in fandom and the importance of expressing our aro headcanons. Everything she says is absolutely on point, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I guess in some ways my “story” starts out pretty typical. Got older, kept waiting for my First Crush™, never got it, started worrying and trying to force myself to develop crushes. I actually was in a relationship with another girl on a forum I was part of as a teenager, but eventually I realized that I didn’t really like her romantically, and the relationship started to become really unpleasant for me. I eventually felt so miserable that I didn’t even want to talk at her at all, even though we were close friends, but I didn’t want to break up with her - partly because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, partly because we were everyone’s “OTP” and I didn’t want my friends to hate me for ruining that. But eventually I did break up with her, and I’m happy to say she took it with grace and we’re still close friends today! (She’s ace and a great writer/artist herself, too!)

I was part of a very nice LGBTQ+ group as a teenager, but I could never figure out my identity. I felt really ashamed and alone. Whenever I brought up how messed up I felt because I’d never had a crush on anyone, everyone was like, “Oh, sounds like you must be asexual!”, but I knew I wasn’t, and that was the worst part. Even though I knew aromanticism was a thing, nobody ever talked about it. It was only ever in the context of aroaces, so I didn’t know I was aro. I thought I must have had some sort of mental illness or something, but certainly not a legitimate orientation, nothing to be proud of like everyone else.

During that time, I found myself connecting on a deep emotional level to characters like Alphonse Elric, Fujiwara no Sai, the X-Men in general (although I’ve been an X-Men fan since I was literally a baby), basically anyone who was somehow “different” from the rest of humanity, even though I never understood why, since I was a fairly privileged kid who had never experienced much bullying or anything. Weirdly enough, it was Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure that helped me realize I was aro and come to terms with it; I saw an interview with Hirohiko Araki, the author of JJBA, where he was asked what type of girls Jotaro Kujo likes, and replied that he didn’t think Jotaro liked girls. The obvious interpretation would be that Jotaro’s gay, but somehow, one way or another, I decided to go with the idea that Jotaro’s aromantic. Jotaro also happened to be a character I really related to for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, so around the time I was 18 I put two and two together and was like ... oh shit…

Please click keep reading to continue Alex’s story!

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’ve always been weird in the way I’m very creative, but tend to kinda bounce around from hobby to hobby. Other people draw, or write, or sing, while I draw for a month, and then write for a month and sew for a week and play video games for a week, and then I draw some more, and then I try out something completely new, and then I write again. I think it must be an ADHD thing, idk. In any case, I’ve just always been really passionate about making stuff, whatever that stuff happens to be.

I’ve also always been very much fandom-oriented. Ever since I was a toddler, I used to dictate fanfiction to my mom (back then it usually involved Winnie the Pooh, the Powerpuff Girls, Godzilla, and my dog). I mostly draw fanart. I find that I’m not really capable of writing original stories, but I’m great at getting fanfics in character, and I love writing them. I love taking stories I already love and reinterpreting them, seeing what it would be like if the characters were put into different situations, etc.

Because of my ADHD, I really struggle with actually finishing things. I try really really hard, I really do, and I’ve been trying to push myself even harder these past few years. I’ve made progress, but it’s still extremely difficult, so I’m very sorry for all the projects I’ve abandoned over the years. Sorry I still haven’t finished the fic that was supposed to be done in early March. I’m trying, really. I promise I’m working on the next chapter of BLaD, too.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

Of course, pretty much everything I write is gen. Even if I include romantic relationships in my fics, I never write about romance, just stories which also happen to include some characters who might be dating someone. And obviously I always write Jotaro as aro! That’s really important to me. No matter which AU I’m writing, he’s always aro. (And autistic, but that’s off topic.)

I’m also not really into shipping because of my romance repulsion, but I ship Joseph Joestar and Caesar Zeppeli. The thing is … I’ve always viewed it as a unique relationship, sort of difficult to define as being strictly romantic or platonic or sexual, just kind of their own thing that defies words. That’s how I’ve always written it. I had the sudden realization recently that this strange view on the only ship I really actually like (at the moment, anyway) is probably due to my being aro, lmao.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

People don’t read gen fics, and people aren’t interested in aro stories. That’s just the way it is. I do have some dedicated readers, whom I love deeply, but in general… I could post something with a deep plot, something funny and dramatic and witty and touching, something I poured my heart and soul into for months, and it’ll get very few hits/comments/kudos, while someone else could post the same generic 2,000-word romance fic everyone’s seen a dozen times over, with no editing or anything, and get twice the amount of traffic my fics do in half the time. It’s really crushing.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I dunno… The aro community feels so small. Online, I have a small circle of aro mutuals who all kind of vent collectively, and I’m part of Arocalypse and a few aro/aspec Discord servers, but I still feel like there isn’t really much of a larger community to be part of in the same way that there is for other orientations. Offline, I’ve never met another aro, or even anyone who actually knows what aromanticism is prior to me explaining it to them.

I also don’t feel like there’s a very unified “aspec community”. As an allo aro, I feel very rejected by the ace community - not to say that I feel like I should be part of the ace community, since I’m not ace, but I feel like they throw aros under the bus a lot. I mean, we’ve all seen the “asexuals can feel love, just like anybody else! … oh, except for aroaces, I guess. But the rest of us are normal, so you should accept us!” rhetoric. Both within and outside the aspec communities, aros are rarely treated with the same priority as aces, even though we’re arguably in a much more difficult position than your average allo ace.

That being said, I’m glad there is an aro community at all. I don’t know where I’d be now if I were still questioning. Probably not in a very good place.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

As I mentioned, there’s a general lack of interest in gen fics or sympathy for romance-repulsed people in general. It’s really difficult being romance repulsed in fandom spaces, because nobody cares about anything other than ships. There are very few gen fics, and even less that are a decent length, not abandoned, or cater to my specific interests, so I have to write my own. I don’t often have anything good to read; most of the big fics, the ones with cool plots and long word counts and ongoing updates, are ship fics. If I’m lucky, maybe two gen fics will be posted in one week, and maybe one of them will be longer than a few thousand words. Maybe one might even have my favorite characters. But usually genfics are few and far between, and kind of random in terms of what you’ll get. Sometimes I get so bored that I read ship fics anyway, and then I always wind up feeling really awful afterwards.

I’ve written, over the course of the past two years alone, over 20 gen fics. But whenever I vent that sometimes I’d like to actually get to read something, I always get someone telling me, “Well if you want gen fics, write some yourself! You have to make the change! You can’t demand people write stuff for you!” And of course, at the same time it’s totally acceptable to request ship fics from your favorite author, and if you complain that there aren’t enough fics for your rarepair, it’s seen as relatable and totally valid.

Fandom is just … really, really amatonormative, tbh. I hate it. I’m trying to make a difference (I did organize Gen Jojo Week along with my friend Rachel last year, and hopefully will again this year), but there’s only so much I can do.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Aside from reblogging my art and promoting my fics? Talk about stuff. Talk about aro stuff in fandom. Seriously! I know it seems obvious that aro people would like aro headcanons and gen fics and all that, but we need to talk about them more. Nobody outside the community gives enough of a shit about us to have aro headcanons, so let’s get them popular. Talk about your favorite aro headcanons. Talk about your favorite gen fics. Talk about how such-and-such character is totally aro; talk about how excited you are to see aro characters in fics. My dream is for aro headcanons to become just as common and popular as any other type of headcanon.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

This is old news to most of the people who already know me, but my current big project that I’ve been working on for several years now is Between Life and Death, a drama/horror/supernatural JJBA fic.

(WARNING: PHANTOM BLOOD AND STARDUST CRUSADERS SPOILERS BELOW.)

The plot of the fic is that Dio wins at the end of Stardust Crusaders, and after realizing that he has no hobbies other than harassing the Joestars, he decides to bring Jonathan back by sticking his head (which… we’ll just assume Dio preserved for plot purposes) onto Jotaro’s body. Obviously, Jonathan is NOT happy with this arrangement, but it also turns out that Jotaro’s still alive, just not in control of his body. He can still use his stand, so he essentially uses Star Platinum as a sort of proxy for interacting with the environment around him, even though he only comes out when Jonathan’s alone since he doesn’t want Dio to know he’s alive.

Basically, it’s the story of a depressed vampire and a traumatized ghost. It’s a very introspective fic; most of the story consists of conflicts between Dio and Jonathan, and Jonathan and Jotaro struggling to come to terms with their new existences - Jonathan being unable to reconcile vampirism with his personal morals, and Jotaro having one hell of an identity crisis while also mourning the deaths of his friends and family. The plot is picking up, though, and there is an end goal in mind, as well as an eventual sequel!

As for where the story-in-progress is at right now … well, the next “stage” of the plot is hamon training for Kakyoin and Avdol, which will be fun. This chapter also includes several dream sequences, including an extended appearance by Mary Joestar (Jonathan’s mom), and a very serious and dark scene which I almost ruined by having dream!Will Zeppeli refer to Jonathan as his padawan. Yeah.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

As mentioned, I’m working on chapter 9 of Between Life and Death! And working on and off on some stuff for the mutants AU. Most recently, on a whim I rewrote the lyrics to Handbeat Clocktower by MOTHY to be about Jonathan Joestar. Somehow this went far enough that I’m making an actual UTAU rendition of this “parody”, and hopefully it’ll be done sometime in the next few weeks. I’m really having fun with it and I hope people like it!

[fourteenacross]

prompt response: fake dating

Well, someone sent me a fake dating ask and somewhere between the drafts folder and hitting “post,” the entire thing just poofed out of existence. THANKS, TUMBLR. Luckily, I had the response saved in a google doc. So, sorry to the original asker, your exact request is lost to the whims of tumblr, but the general jist of it was Ham/Laurens fake-dating.

The idea that I had for this was immediately bigger than just a ficlet, cause for fake dating to be done to my satisfaction, it needs time to properly DEVELOP. So this is more along the lines of a “I’ll tell you about a fic I’m not writing” sort of thing than an actual ficlet--my apologies.

*

Alex and John are part of the same friends group in New York, a mish-mash of folks who went to college together, their friends who moved to the city after graduation, and other people who have been assimilated into the group over time. John was an early member of the group, one of the core folks who went to the same college, and Alex came along later, and even though they have the same sense of humor and attitude and interests, they've never been the closest of friends. They tend to have standalone crazy adventures in between seeing each other at group gatherings and talking on Twitter, but they don't go out regularly as friends.

They do, however, go out regularly as fake boyfriends.

The nature of Alex's job sometimes has him going semi-undercover to report on...I don't even know, this is a fantasy world where this is a regular thing that happens, okay? So he usually wants to bring a date, so there's someone else around to help him out if he gets in over his head or cause a distraction so he can do some snooping. Plus, he's much more inconspicuous with a date--no one brings a rando undercover with them and a couple wandering around and chatting with people looks much less odd than a single dude nosing around.

Anyway. John is usually his go-to for these occasions because a) he's one of their only friends who encourages these plans, b) he grew up very wealthy, so he knows the ins and outs of navigating the social mores of events like the ones Alex is usually trying to get into, but c) his dad, who would be known in these circles, is white, and people mistake the surname "Laurens" for "Lawrence" when spoken out loud often enough that he doesn't send up any red flags with folks who might know his family. And while John's not single, he's in a long distance relationship, so it's unlikely that someone will see him with someone else around town and think that something's up.

So this starts as just another one of those events--Alex is working on some political story and scores tickets to a big charity gala that's going to draw a lot of the folks he's investigating. He calls up John, who agrees to come with him, and they go to the party, just like any other evening. They're eating canapés and making small talk and then, someone to the right of them says, "John?!"

And John turns around and it's his fucking father.

And it's not UNREASONABLE that his father, a moderately high ranking member of the House of Representatives, would be present, but his dad usually only goes to things in Washington or South Carolina, and when he is in New York, he almost always gives John a call so they can have lunch or something.

So John's staring dumbfounded and Alex looks like a deer in headlights as the person they're chatting with says, "Oh, Laurens! Are you related?"

And Henry says, low-key offended-like, "Of course we're related, he's my son."

And the person gets all awkward about it--because they never in a million years would have pegged this Latino kid as Henry Laurens' son, despite knowing the back of their mind that he had married a Puerto Rican woman who passed away several years prior--and manages to stammer, "Well, I was just having a lovely conversation with him and his young man, Alexander, was it?"

And Henry raises an eyebrow and says, "Your 'young man'?"

And John says, "Uh...."

And Henry says, "Well, I must say, it's something of a relief. I tried not to comment on it--" A lie, he totally commented on it all the time. "--because I know you cared for him, but I never liked that Francis boy and your siblings and I all knew that he'd never actually emigrate to be with you."

Which is an uncomfortable moment because, obviously, John is still with Francis, though he's been starting to suspect the same thing after five years of long distance and vague promises that Francis is looking into moving, really, and also...well, he's not actually dating Alex.

But he can't give up the game, so he forces a smile and says, "Yeah, Francis and I ended things and, uh, this thing with Alex is pretty new."

Alex is doing complicated math in his head and manages to read the situation well enough to put on his best self-deprecating smile and offer his hand to Henry. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir, if a little earlier than expected." 

They make semi-awkward small talk for a few minutes while John is internally screaming, until Henry sees someone waving him down and excuses himself. But before he leaves, he says, "I imagine we'll talk more at Martha's wedding."

And John says, "Uh."

But Alex says, "I imagine we will. I look forward to it, Congressman Laurens."

And then he's gone and John quickly excuses them from the other poor soul stuck in conversation with them to drag Alex to the bar.

"That could have gone worse," Alex says.

"Alex, I cannot lie to my father," John says gravely as the bartender pours him a whiskey. "And I don't mean because of my moral character or something, I mean because he always finds out. He has a sixth sense for it. I'm surprised he hasn't already called me out on it. Fuck."

"Well, it's not like, long-term lying," Alex says. "He'll be back in South Carolina soon and then it'll just be the weekend of your sister's wedding. Which is, what, like, two months away?"

"I'm going for a long weekend!" John says. "Thursday to Sunday!"

"It'll be fine," Alex insists. "We'll get through the weekend and then a couple weeks later you can tell him we've broken up and then we can move on with our lives. It's not like we're not good at acting coupley." He takes John's already half-finished glass from him and drinks from it, as if to illustrate his point. John snatches it back.

"This is going to explode in our faces," John warns him. "I should just go alone and say we broke up."

"You wanted to bring one of us anyway because you got a plus one and Francis wouldn't come and you didn't want to go alone," Alex reminds him. "You were just bitching about it in the group chat. Mattie and I both volunteered. I'll go, it'll be fine."

John is pretty sure it won't be fine, but he also knows that this isn't the time to have this argument. Alex is here for work reasons and this is all just a distraction, so he muscles up and downs the rest of his drink and sighs and says, "We can talk about it later. Let's get back to your thing."

They don't exactly get back to it later. Alex heads home after the party to write and they don't get a chance to see each other again until Mattie's birthday brunch the next weekend, when Alex gleefully tells the story to all their friends. Mattie, who knows John's family, finds the whole thing fucking hilarious and everyone else is pretty amused as well. John brings up that they need to figure out what to do about the whole mess, and their friends high-key pressure them into going to the wedding and pretending to be a couple. Some of them because they think it's hilarious, but Mattie and Ned and a couple others are of the mind that they would make a really good couple and Francis is fucking toxic and maybe this will give them a little push towards each other.

At this point, there are seven weeks left until the wedding, which seems like forever, but they figure the best way to play this game is to make it as close to the truth as possible, so they start hanging out together a little more than usual. John keeps going to Alex's work shit with him, but they also hang out on the weekends and go to shows together and do other dumb coupley things. Alex takes John to a lecture that he sleeps through and John takes Alex on a bike ride outside of the city that nearly kills him. They text a lot more too, making up elaborate stories for how they got together. They've already decided to essentially tell the truth once removed--that they were friends and John kept being Alex's plus-one to work things and they realized they liked each other--but making up crazy stories has become a dumb game they play with each other, each playing off an element of the previous story to make a new one. So Alex will send John a message that says, "I used to be a lion tamer on the weekends and one of the lions got out and cornered you and I had to sweet talk it away from you, forever earning your love" and John will crack up and send back, "You fell into the lion enclosure at the zoo over a stupid dare and I helped fish you out right before the lions made a meal of you."

John's dad calls him a couple times during these seven weeks and it's surprisingly easy to lie to him, possibly because most of it isn't lies. He really did go to a concert this week and Alex really is taking him out to dinner tomorrow night and he really is looking forward to it. A lot, actually.

Which is something that John has been thinking about pretty seriously throughout this. He knows most of their friends and all of his family think Francis is a jerk. They met during John's study abroad during the fall semester of his senior year of college and started dating while he was over there. And then Francis came over and did a semester just outside of the city about a year later, after John had already graduated, meeting the proto-version of the gang for the first time. They were largely unimpressed, and get more and more unimpressed as time goes on and Francis visits less and less and his excuses for not coming back get weaker and weaker. And, honestly? Part of him already knows and has already accepted that this isn't going to work out. Despite all of Francis' promises in the first year and a half they were together, he's never going to move to New York. He's never going to prioritize John. And that's something that John has to think about. 

Alex, meanwhile, has always had kind of a thing for John. A friend-crush. He never thought about it hard or seriously--he wasn't pining--because John was already in a relationship when they met, so the idea to think about John as a potential partner literally never occurred to him. It's hard not to think about it now, though. They're doing all this dumb couple stuff together and the dispassionate, logical part of his mind is pointing out that they are extremely compatible as a couple. Schedule-wise, temperament-wise, personality-wise, they work on a lot of levels. John is also hot and funny and just...it feels good. It feels good to be around him.

Which is kind of a bummer. Because, odds are, it'll stop after the wedding. They'll still be friends, sure, but Alex will miss all this extra-curricular hanging out they've been doing. Even the stupid shit like hiking and bike rides--he has to admit that the middle part, the part between hiking to a spot and hiking back, was kind of nice. Alex doesn't get out of the city much, and hanging out on the top of a mountain, sprawled in the sun and talking to John about nothing much in particular, had been the first time in a long time that his brain felt really...quiet.

But they'll still be friends. And maybe they can still have the occasional, intentional one-on-one friend hangout, instead of just the shenanigans that they accidentally get up to when they're the only two people interested in one local event or another.

He resolves to take advantage of this last week and have as much fun as possible, a resolution that John is also making. One of two, actually. The other one is that John is gonna sit down next weekend, after the craziness of the wedding is behind them, and figure out what to do about Francis--what he wants to do about Francis, how to approach Francis about his desires, and what to do if (when) Francis' own desires are in direct conflict with them. He's not looking forward to it, thus the decision to enjoy himself and not think about it for a few days.

They get to South Carolina and John introduces Alex to everyone. He and Martha immediately get on like a house on fire, which is potentially going to be an issue in the future, but John tries to ignore it. They spend a couple days doing all sorts of pre-wedding stuff, Laurens-Ramsay family bonding activities that Martha and David have come up with. John and Alex score two definitive victories for the Laurens Family by dominating first at pub trivia and then at paintball. John is genuinely enjoying himself, catching up with his siblings and chatting with David's family. He and Alex have completely abandoned the concept of personal space, which he figures makes them look pretty coupley until Martha pulls him aside as he heads to change for the rehearsal dinner.

"I know I told you that David's family is old school Southern," she says, "but I didn't mean--they're not like...homophobic. David has a couple gay cousins. It's cool."

"I...didn't think they were?" John says, which is not strictly true--some of the Ramsays have certainly made some under-their-breath comments, but some of John's extended family does the same thing. He's used to it.

"I just mean, you and Alex don't have to be chaste around them or anything."

John blinks at her. "We...what?"

Martha is blushing a little. "You can kiss him! Is what I mean! You don't have to, like...hide it or anything."

Kissing Alex hadn't occurred to him.

"Oh," John says. "Uh. Good to know."

He's still thinking about the conversation as he wanders upstairs. It must be clear on his face, because the first thing Alex does when he walks into their room is ask what's wrong.

"Nothing," John says. "Just...Martha pulled me aside to say none of the relatives will make a big fuss, so it's okay for us to kiss."

"Is it?" Alex asks seriously. He's half in his dress shirt, a curious expression on his face. "I just mean, I don't want to get you into trouble with Francis."

John considers it for a moment as he pulls off his t-shirt and looks through his garment bag for a shirt.

"I think it's fine," he concludes. "I mean, nothing that happens in front of my family at a wedding reception is gonna be too intense and I kiss Mattie all the time and Francis doesn't care." Mattie is, of course, both a girl and a lesbian, but in theory that shouldn't matter.

"Good to know," Alex says, and moves into the bathroom to do his hair.

And the rehearsal dinner is fine and the morning of the ceremony is fine. It becomes second nature to lead Alex around with a hand on the small of his back or let himself be led with a hand on his elbow. They rib each other affectionately and socialize with family and even kiss a few times. They're chaste kisses, sweet and quick, the kind of comfortable kisses you give someone you've known forever. They're good kisses, too, quick as they are, and even though he's not supposed to think about it until next weekend, he can't help compare them to Francis, who never kisses him casually because he's never casually around.

John cries all through the ceremony and Alex only makes fun of him a little. And at the reception, they dance together and with everyone else. When Martha is dancing with John, she says, "You know, I really like Alex. I tried to be chill about Francis, but he always seemed like kind of a jerk, and I hated that he kept stringing you along with promises of moving to New York. Plus, I only saw you guys together that one time, but it seemed so stilted. You and Alex are already so comfortable, it just makes me happy to see it."

"Thanks," John says. "I like him a lot."

He's not surprised at all, at this point, to realize he's telling the truth.

Towards the end of the reception, the two of them end up out on a balcony, the pounding music of the dance floor making their ears ring the moment it's muffled behind the french doors. Alex collapses onto a bench and John sits next to him.

"Man, your family knows how to party," Alex says. "I've never been to a wedding like this before."

"Yeah, it's pretty typical of heterosexual weddings where money is involved," John says. "I'd almost forgotten that not everyone has hipster DIY queer weddings in botanical gardens and apple orchards."

"Well, it's a good thing we're not really dating because I don't know if I could survive planning a wedding like this," Alex says.

John tilts his head up, staring up at the sky. There are so many more stars here than in New York. "Is it, though?"

"Is what?" Alex asks.

"Is it good we're not dating?" He looks away from the sky and over at Alex. "Sorry, I just keep thinking about how much I like you and it sucks that I'm dating someone else."

Alex is quiet for a moment. "It does suck that you're dating someone else," he agrees. "I like you too."

"I don't want to be the type of guy who dumps someone because he's met someone else," John says. "But our relationship is already pretty garbage. But it's also possible I'm just looking for excuses to justify it to myself, you know?"

"In my experience," Alex says, "if you're actively looking for reasons to justify breaking up with someone, you probably want to break up with them either way. No one wants to be in a relationship with someone who's only with them because they can't come up with a good reason not to be."

"I'm not really like that, I swear," John says, flushing with guilt. 

"No, I know," Alex says. He looks over at John and grins. "And I can't pretend I'm being objective when I offer you that advice, so."

And John thinks about meeting Francis and those first tentative days together, feeling each other out. He thinks about how the giddy rush of a new relationship faded almost instantly into the nagging anxiety that John would be leaving the country soon. He's never felt comfortable with Francis the way he already feels comfortable with Alex. He never had this easy intimacy. And it's no one's fault--maybe if he stayed in the UK or Francis made good on his promises to come to New York, things would have been different, but it's hard to build that comfort over text and skype, and these days they barely manage that.

He makes a decision a week earlier than he intended, and he kisses Alex.

It's not a chaste kiss. It's not lewd, but there's intent. There's passion and affection, it's a kiss that's a kiss, not a greeting or farewell or absent moment of acknowledgement. John kisses Alex the way he would have if this had been a normal date, if they had been out together and had this much fun and mutually expressed an intent to do it again. He kisses Alex like he wants it to be the start of something more.

And Alex kisses back.

They pull back, both of them grinning, though Alex is a bit dazed. John pulls out his phone and checks the time and swears under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Alex asks.

"It's the middle of the night in London, I can't call Francis and break up with him."

"Just to be clear," Alex says. "That means we're gonna date, right?"

"Yes, genius, that means we're gonna date," John says, grinning, and Alex just leans forward and kisses him again.

John should probably feel worse about the kissing, but so far it's just kissing and it's hard to feel connected to Francis and the tattered remains of their relationship when Alex is here with him, having spent weeks showing more interest in John's life than Francis has since they were twenty-three.

And John doesn't intend for them to just full-on make out at his sister's wedding, but the next thing he knows, his little brother Harry is saying, "John, are you--oh shit!"

John pulls away from Alex, guilty for half a dozen reasons, only some of which make sense.

"Um," he says. 

"Sorry," Harry says. "I just--um. Martha wants a cousins picture with Nana before Aunt C takes her home?"

"Right," John says. "Um--"

"I'll be here when you're done," Alex tells him, and then lifts his hand off of John's upper thigh--and when had that happened--and John stumbles back into the party.

They take the cousins picture and then they take a dozen more family pictures, even though they did posed paragraphs before and after the ceremony. And when John goes to find Alex, he's not out on the balcony, but waiting at the table with a drink.

"I know we should talk more," he half-shouts over the music, "but I figure we came here to enjoy the party, so we might as well do that while we can."

Which seems like a good plan, so they toast and dance some more and flood the wedding hashtag with stupid pictures and dance the last dance and then stumble onto the hotel shuttle, arm and arm. They're tipsy when they get back to their room and half-undress before collapsing onto the bed, lying side-by-side and staring at each other.

"We should talk," John says.

"Yeah," Alex says. "Totally."

"We can't have sex until I break up with Francis," John says.

"I'm 100% with you," Alex says. 

"I don't cheat," John says.

"I wouldn't never think that," Alex says.

"But is it really cheating if the only reason we haven't broken up yet is that he's asleep?"

"I mean, I'm staying neutral in this decision, but it's just a few hours."

They're both quiet for a moment.

"Maybe we can just make out for a while?" John suggests. "I'm pretty tired anyway. And I haven't had sex with another person in two years, so that feels like a lot to process tonight anyway."

"I am definitely on board with this plan," Alex says.

So they do that. And it gets maybe a little heavier than either of them intend, but their hands stay above the waist, John's arbitrary definition of what's acceptable and what isn't, and they eventually fall asleep.

John gets up super early the next morning, first because he's in a weird place and he has to pee, but once he's up and takes his phone and goes out into the hallway and calls Francis. And they have a very short, awkward conversation where Francis first thinks that John is breaking up with him because he saw on social media he's been hanging out a lot with some guy, but John clarifies that he met someone else. Francis tries to be indignant about this for approximately five seconds before John reminds him that he literally just basically admitted to doing the same thing, and Francis concedes.

When John goes back into the hotel room, Alex is half awake and watching him from the very inviting looking bed. John holds his phone up for Alex to see.

"I broke up with Francis," he says.

"Then take off your pants," Alex says, and John bursts out laughing and pounces on him.

And John thinks a lot about growing up and relationships and figuring out who you are. He can't help but keep comparing his relationship to Francis to this new thing with Alexander--it's the only other relationship of his adult life--but it's not the same thing, not at all. He's not sure if the physical distance caused the emotional distance or just kept them mired in a false sense of intimacy, but it was never like this. It was never this easy and fun, because when it started John was twenty-three and a nervous mess trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. Now that he's older and settled and confident, it's easier to put his guard down around Alex. It's easy to let himself have this, fun and simple and freeing.

Of course, he doesn't really think about all of that until later, because first they have sex. Twice. And when they go down for brunch later that morning, he's positive they look entirely fucked out and overly pleased with themselves, but they're hardly the only couple with that glow, so the comments are raised eyebrows are minimal.

They spend their last couple days in South Carolina alternately hanging out with John's family and stealing time away because they can't keep their hands off of each other. Which is also a problem the next day on the flight back to New York and then on the cab ride to John's apartment. It's less of a problem once they're inside John's apartment, for the most part--the gentleman forced to ride the elevator with them, for example, might not agree. 

Later in the afternoon, when they've graduated to the cuddling and take-out portion of the day, talking endlessly about themselves and their lives and their hopes for the future, John gets a text from his dad. It says, It was pleasant to meet Alexander. He has potential. I hope we'll be seeing more of him.

("Wow," John says, "I think you might already be my dad's favorite of the various siblings' partners. You might even give me enough clout to knock me up from last place on the list of his favorite kids, even."

"I'm irresistible," Alex says, and John doesn't give him the pleasure of admitting that yes, he is.)

You definitely will, he types back to his dad, filled with a breathless sort of joy that it's no longer a lie.

***

Will this ever be a full story? Who knows. I contain multitudes.