#anyway… I spend too much time thinking about those computer commercials

[fredbydawn]

So I’ve been thinking about the IBM office au again (I’m obsessed what can I say 😛) and I was thinking about how they would refer to each other in that scenario, cuz obviously they’re not in the military so they wouldn’t have titles and they probably wouldn’t use their nicknames, so they’d probably just use their first names, and I realized that not only does MASH have two women named Margaret and two women named Louise, but that depending on what you think Father Mulcahy’s name is, there are either two men named Frank or two men named John

[just-another-blog-of-fluff]

Can't Keep a Secret

Word count: 4300

Warnings: tickling, fluff, reader with an inability to keep secrets, reader with a crush on a certain god of mischief

I'm so excited for 100 followers!! I didn't expect so many people to actually be interested in my writing when I started posting 🥰

This one is based on @atlas-of-the-universe's request here for a fic where Loki tickles the reader to get information of some kind 😉 I hope this is what you were looking for!

This one also has a little more crushing/romantic fluff than some of my other fics at the end, so if you're not into that just skip that part. As always, completely SFW!

* * *

No one ever seemed to do anything nice for Loki. So, when Thor approached you to ask if you’d help him and the others plan a surprise birthday party for his brother, you wholeheartedly agreed to assist. As the Avengers’ best party planner, you jumped at the chance to start brainstorming ideas to make this party the best Loki had ever experienced – including on Asgard. And, if it meant he’d pay a little extra attention to you, well… that was an added bonus.

The only problem was – you were terrible at keeping secrets.

It wasn’t as if you went around spilling the details when someone asked you not to tell the others about something. You knew enough not to just blurt out the fact that you were planning a party. Unfortunately, though, you had a tendency to let your feelings show in your facial expressions. Trying to keep secrets made you anxious, knowing you’d been the one to accidentally say just a little bit too much in the past and ruined other surprises.

The fact that you were the worst secret keeper was no… secret, for lack of a better word. Your teammates frequently exploited this fact when they wanted to know what you were hiding from them. Tony, especially, loved to talk circles around you until he could get you to trip up and give some detail away. On the other hand, they also tried not to let you in on too many details when they were planning a surprise for one of the other team members.

This time, you were determined not to give anything away. You were thrilled that the team was finally going to do something special for Loki, and you were NOT going to ruin it by spilling the beans to the trickster. Thor was probably one of the more trusting members of the Avengers, and he assured you when he asked you to help with the party that he had faith you wouldn’t screw up (quite literally in those words).

You started researching online to get some ideas. This party had to live up to the standards of an Asgardian prince, so you couldn’t just order a few pizzas and beer and call it a party. Plus, Tony had offered to pay for the whole thing (you suspected he felt guilty for having accidentally blasted Loki through a wall in the training room with his new Ironman suit the week prior) so your funds were basically limitless.

Inevitably, though, you were bound to run into situations where you had to spend time with the raven-haired god without allowing yourself to let any details slip.

The moment Loki first started to suspect you were hiding something was when he walked in on a conversation you were having with Thor in the kitchen. You had been asking him about the Asgardian mead his brother loved so much and wanted to know if he could manage to get some here on Midgard for the party.

“What is it about the Asgardian mead that you like so much better than standard alcohol?” you inquired curiously.

“Ha! That is a very funny question, Lady Y/N,” Thor laughed heartily. “As if any Midgardian liquor could so much as hold a candle to the spirits we drink on Asgard.”

“Hey! I enjoy my tequila! Margaritas are arguably a delicious alcoholic beverage,” you bantered.

“You truly believe this ‘margarita’ as you call it could compare to the smooth, sophisticated taste of an Asgardian mead?” Thor countered.

“I must agree with my brother on this one – I have seen this ‘margarita’ drink you speak of, and it is highly unlikely to be superior to Asgardian spirits.”

You gasped involuntarily when you heard Loki’s voice in the doorway, spinning around to face him with a look of bewilderment on your face. He cocked his head to the side, raising an eyebrow as he scrutinized your expression.

“Oh, hey Loki! Didn’t see you there,” you greeted, trying to lean casually against the counter you were standing beside.

“Yes… it appears you didn’t. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Loki folded his arms across his chest, eyeing you intently. “What was it that brought you to the subject of Asgardian liquor?”

“Oh, that? Well…”

“I was just informing Lady Y/N that I have been feeling a bit nostalgic thinking about the celebrations we had on Asgard, when we would drink heartily with Lady Sif and the Warriors Three,” Thor cut in, quickly interrupting you mid-sentence. “Brother, you must recall the time you had a bit too much while drinking with us and…”

“I believe that’s quite enough nostalgia for one evening, dear brother,” Loki cut in, appearing almost frantic as he glanced quickly at you before turning back to glare at the elder Asgardian. “Stark asked me to inform you he requires your assistance in the laboratory. You’ll need to continue this conversation another time.”

“Ah, yes, alright then. Another time,” Thor agreed, winking at you before he exited the kitchen. Loki followed close behind, but not before giving you one last calculating glance before he crossed through the doorway and out of sight. You let out a breath of relief, hoping he hadn’t thought much of the conversation.

You noticed, though, that Loki started conveniently popping up around you more often after that incident. Maybe he didn’t want Thor to have the opportunity to tell you about whatever embarrassing story had occurred when they were younger, you thought. Regardless, it meant that you had to be extremely cautious about doing any planning for the party in any of the common areas.

The second time you nearly let something slip was during a hushed conversation in the training room with Peter after one of your sparring matches. He had pulled you aside after training to ask your opinion about whether he should ask his friend MJ to attend the party with him. He’d had a crush on the girl for quite some time, and now that she knew his secret identity he thought it might be time to introduce her to his Avengers family.

“I’m nervous she might not want to come, but I think it would be a great chance for her to meet everyone when the focus would be on someone else,” he explained. You hiked your backpack up onto your shoulder with your training gear and made your way toward the door to the training room with Peter by your side.

“Why wouldn’t she want to come? From what you’ve told me, she seems to be more of a social butterfly than you are, even,” you asked.

“Yeah… you’re right, I’m probably overthinking this, aren’t I?” he chuckled. “I just don’t want to screw things up!”

“What are you screwing up this time, spiderling?”

You stopped short as you heard Loki’s voice from behind you, making your heart leap into your throat. You turned around, trying not to look startled.

“Oh, Peter wants his friend MJ to attend… a training session with us!” you fibbed, trying to think quickly. “You know, so he can show her his Spider-Man moves!”

“Yeah! That’s right,” Peter agreed, nodding vigorously. “I’m going to go call her right now, thanks Y/N!” Peter scurried off down the hallway, leaving you standing with a somewhat skeptical looking god of mischief.

“Why was Peter asking you about inviting a friend to his training? Would he not have asked Stark?” Loki inquired. You shrugged in a non-committal way.

“Who knows? Anyway, uh, it was nice talking to you, but I’ve got to get going… big assignment to finish up tonight, can’t really stop and chat. See you later!” you blurted, not waiting for a response as you hurried toward your room. Phew, that was close, you thought to yourself, hoping he hadn’t been standing behind you for too long.

Later that week, you found yourself alone in the common room while watching television. You pulled out your laptop during one of the commercials and started searching the internet for caterers, hoping to find something fancy enough to appeal to an Asgardian god. You had thought that everyone else was out for the day, so you weren’t overly concerned about anyone seeing what you were doing.

“What mindless reality television show are you watching today?” The smooth, baritone voice caused you to jerk your head up from your laptop screen and instinctively slam it shut. He hadn’t even been standing behind you to see what you were searching – it was purely on reflex that you closed the computer. Loki raised his eyebrows at you. “I see you aren’t really watching anything, are you? What is it you were viewing on your computer?”

“Nothing! I mean, nothing exciting, really. Just some old photos that I was trying to sort through,” you stammered, standing up with the laptop clutched to your chest. “You can have the TV if you want, though. I have to go… work on that assignment some more. I was just taking a break. It’s almost done!” Loki opened his mouth as if to say something, but you didn’t wait around to let him ask any more questions that might make you give away something you shouldn’t. You spent the rest of the evening in your room, avoiding the trickster at all costs.

The next morning, after getting ready for the day, you grabbed some breakfast before heading back to your room to continue to do some additional party planning research where Loki wouldn’t walk in on you unexpectedly. You shoved the last bite of one of Thor’s pop-tarts that you’d stolen into your mouth as you approached your door, opening it and walking toward your desk where your laptop sat. You always left the door slightly ajar when you were in your room, and so you were quite surprised when you heard the door thump shut behind you, the lock clicking into place.

“You’ve been hiding something from me.”

You stopped dead in your tracks, your heart pounding in your chest. You turned around slowly, staring wide-eyed at the god of mischief now standing in your bedroom between you and your only exit. His hands were clasped behind his back, his blue-green eyes gleaming ominously as he stared you down.

“Oh, hey Loki! What brings you to my room?” you asked, trying to sound casual.

“Let’s end this little charade, hmm?” He took a few slow paces forward into the room, closing the distance between the two of you. “It’s become clear to me over the last week that you have knowledge of some information that you do not want me to become aware of. I’d like you to tell me what it is.” His tone was calm; low, but dangerous. You swallowed hard.

“Loki, I-I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t have any secrets.” You took a step back from the advancing Asgardian, your back meeting the cold, hard wood of your desk behind you.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The choice is up to you,” he threatened, stepping even closer so he was only a foot away from where you stood trapped against your desk. “Tell me what it is you’re hiding, or I will… coerce you into talking.”

“Coerce me? Heh, what’s that supposed to mean?” you asked nervously, your hands gripping the desk behind you.

“I have my ways. I am the god of mischief, after all.” Loki stood in front of you unmoving, a barrier holding you hostage against your desk.

“Even if I did have something to hide, you wouldn’t hurt me. Your brother would kill you,” you warned.

“I never suggested I would hurt you, darling. I would never do such a thing.” He took the slightest step closer. “You seem tense. Am I making you nervous?”

“Very.”

“Good.” A smirk tugged at the corners of his lips. “Have you decided, then? Will we be doing this the easy way or the hard way?”

“I told you, I have nothing to hide,” you insisted.

“Very well then. We’ll do this the hard way.” Quickly, you darted around Loki toward the door, trying to make your escape. He was faster, though, catching you with an arm around your waist and dragging you back so your back was against his chest. “Tell me, darling…” he growled in your ear, making you shiver, “… are you… ticklish?”

“Wha-“ you opened your mouth to protest but stopped speaking as you felt gentle scratching on your side. You shook your head quickly, suppressing the giggles that were threatening to rise out of your throat. If you stood still long enough, maybe he would give up.

“Do you think you’re fooling me by not allowing yourself to laugh? I felt you tense up immediately the moment I touched you.” He tightened his grip, wrapping both arms around your waist and digging his fingers into your sides. You snorted at the sudden sensation, doubling over to try to fight your way out of his grasp. “As I suspected. You are extraordinarily ticklish.”

“S-shut up, Loki!” you demanded, your muscles relaxing as his fingers stilled against your sides. He released you, allowing you to turn and face him but still standing in between you and the door.

“Now then – are you going to tell me what it is you’re hiding? Or do I need to tickle you until you are begging for mercy?”

You felt your face flush with heat. You’d been tickled before, certainly, but only for a few seconds at a time, and never as a means to pry information from you. Truthfully, though, you were enjoying this playful side of Loki. You were also determined not to tell him about the party – it would be so much more fun if it were a surprise, and he deserved to have fun. You braced yourself, folding your arms defiantly across your chest.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Before you could react, Loki had tackled you, and you found yourself flat on the floor with your wrists pinned over your head. Your heart hammered against your ribcage as the dark-haired Asgardian loomed over you, his smirk growing wider.

“I see you’ve made your choice, then. But I should warn you – I don’t do mercy.” The fingertips of his free hand connected with your belly, lightly tracing the soft skin through your shirt. You turned your head so you wouldn’t have to look at him, his knowing stare making it more difficult to prevent yourself from laughing. Slowly, he applied more pressure until he was clawing at your belly with all five fingers, varying between the center and sides and analyzing your expression to evaluate your response.

“I-I’m telling y-you, t-there’s nothing to t-tell,” you insisted, jolting a little each time his fingers found a particularly sensitive spot.

“Unfortunately, I don’t believe you.” He shifted his attack to your side, his fingers spidering gradually up your ribcage. Your nerves were alight with ticklish shocks, helpless giggles now bubbling out of your chest.

“W-whyhyhy don’t you believe mehehe?” you asked, your tone starting to sound more desperate.

“You’re not exactly subtle. It’s rather obvious when you’re trying to keep a secret.” Loki was now scratching in between your upper ribs, and your giggles were evolving into desperate laughter. “I see this is becoming more challenging for you. I wonder – should I try to identify all of your weak spots? Surely one of them will get you talking.”

“NOHOHO LOKI!” you pleaded, thrashing to try to free your wrists from his grasp.

“You’ll need to provide me some information, then. What was it you were really discussing with my brother the other night?”

“HE TOHOHOLD YOU!!” You shrieked as Loki’s fingers found purchase under one of your arms, your feet pounding against the floor in desperation.

“Honestly, Y/N, I didn’t believe a word either of you said.” His fingertips grazed the underside of your upper arm, tracing from your elbow down to your underarm and back up again. You hadn’t realized how ticklish the soft skin of your arm could be, but his maddeningly light touch had you writhing to try to evade his fingers.

“STAHAHAP THAT!” you begged, yanking at your restrained wrists to try to lower your arms. Even before you were in this weakened state, the god of mischief was stronger than you.

“Then talk.”

“NEVER!”

“Aha!” he exclaimed suddenly, lifting his fingers away from your arm. You sucked in air desperately, letting out the residual giggles as he allowed you a moment to recover. “You ARE hiding something! You’ve given yourself away.”

“I… but… no I didn’t!” you pouted. He chuckled, a genuine grin spreading across his face at your adorable, disappointed frown.

“It’s too late now. You may as well tell me your secret.”

“I won’t tell! I’ll never tell!” you barked, a sudden surge of bravery rushing through you.

“I’m afraid I must continue, then,” he stated, feigning pity. “Why don’t you tell me where else you are ticklish instead?”

“What? No! I won’t tell you that either!”

“Fine. It’s much more amusing for me to locate your weak spots myself anyway.” Loki released your wrists and in the same motion reached behind him to squeeze above your knees with both hands. You yelped at the unexpected touch, trying with difficulty to sit up now that your arms were free. You reached toward Loki’s sides to try to retaliate but he was too perceptive, grabbing a wrist in each hand using his cat-like reflexes. “You don’t want to do that, darling,” he warned.

“Oh, but I think I do,” you argued, trying your hardest to break free of his grip. He wrestled with you for a moment, successfully forcing you onto your stomach so you could no longer sit up and try to counterattack.

“Now then – where were we?” he huffed as he sat himself down on the back of your legs, pinning you in place. You lifted your upper body up onto your elbows and turned to look at him, keeping a close eye on his hands. “Ah, that’s right. You were about to tell me what you were discussing with the spiderling the other day.”

“No I was-“ your retort died in your mouth as Loki’s fingertips touched down on the backs of your knees. “L-Loki, hold on, don’t you even think about it.”

“Why? Too sensitive?” he teased, tracing one finger along the tendon in the back of your knee. You let out a squeal, only egging him on as he began to flutter his fingers against the thin skin there.

“LOKI I WILL KIHIHILL YOHOHOU!”

“You hardly sound threatening when you’re giggling like a child,” he taunted, tracing along the skin on the inner sides of your knees. You reached back desperately with one hand while holding yourself up with the other elbow, trying to grab hold of his tickling fingers. He snickered at your feeble attempts, reaching up quickly to slide his fingers under your arm so your elbow would buckle beneath your torso before returning his attention to your knees. “This could all stop if you’d just tell me what your secret is.”

At this point, you’d come to the embarrassing realization that you were actually having fun, despite your abdominal muscles aching from laughing so hard. You were also still determined to keep the party a secret, if not for you then for Loki’s own good. You picked yourself back up onto your elbows so you could turn and look back at him defiantly.

“No!” you declared.

“No? I see I must not be trying hard enough, then. Let’s try somewhere else, shall we?” Loki shifted his weight so he could pin your legs down with his shin, his gaze turning down toward your socked feet.

“Don’t… you… dare!” you warned, noticing where his line of sight was directed. He placed his fingertips teasingly against the soles of your feet, maintaining eye contact with you, eyes glowing with mischief.

“I’ll give you one final chance. Spill,” he ordered. You merely smirked back at him.

“Make me.”

Without another word, Loki sprang back into action, his torturous fingertips skimming along the soles of your feet. Frantic giggles spilled from your lips as you tried jerking your feet away from his touch without success.

“I’d wager you’re regretting what you said now, aren’t you?” he goaded, scratching under your toes with one finger on each foot. Your giggles pitched up as you curled your toes to prevent him from reaching the sensitive skin. “Are you prepared to talk now?”

“NEHEHEVER!!” you screeched, still determined to win. Eventually he’d get tired of this and give up, right?

“Then I’m afraid you leave me no choice.” You practically screamed in ticklish agony as his fingers once again connected with your ribs, darting rapidly up and down your sides and under your arms, scribbling into the small of your back, fluttering against the sides of your neck and behind your ears, never staying in one place long enough to grow accustomed to the sensation. Your laughter fell silent as you tapped your hand hard on the floor, signaling you were giving up. Seeing your signal, Loki’s fingers stilled against you, still pressed gently into your sides as a warning that he could start right back up again at any moment. “Talk.”

“I will… alright… just… just give me a sec,” you huffed, your chest heaving with exertion. Your mind was racing, trying to come up with a plausible lie that would satisfy the god of lies. Your heart sank as you realized you couldn’t possibly come up with something in the next ten seconds that would fool him. It had to be the truth. “I’ll tell you, but you have to swear to me you won’t tell your brother that I told you.”

“That depends on what it is you’re about to tell me,” Loki bantered.

“No, I’m serious!” Loki shifted so his weight was no longer pressed on your legs, and you turned over into a seated position on the floor. “Promise me you won’t tell.”

“Fine. I promise. Now tell me.” You took a deep breath.

“We’re planning a party. For you. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Loki was silent for a moment, his expression unreadable. His blue-green eyes searched yours as if trying to find any hint of a lie in your face. His face softened a bit as he began to realize you were actually telling the truth.

“What for?” he asked, his tone flat.

“For your birthday.”

“We don’t celebrate birthdays on Asgard, we have far too many of them to be excited for them.”

“Ugh, Loki, don’t you get it? Thor wanted to do something nice for you! I wanted to do something nice for you!” You held his gaze, trying to prove to him you still weren’t lying.

“You wanted to do something for me?” His voice was low, but there was something different about his tone; something you hadn’t heard before. Hope? Excitement? You averted your gaze down to the floor, poking at the fibers in the carpet with your finger.

“Yeah, I did. You deserve something nice. You’ve come a long way since New York. And you’re… a good friend.” You felt heat rush to your face. You’d nearly revealed another secret, one you had no intention of telling him today. Or ever. Unfortunately, Loki was perceptive.

“That sounded like another lie, Y/N,” he stated ominously. You risked a glance up at him, seeing a smirk slowly spreading across his face.

“What?! No, it’s not!” you argued, the warmth in your face spreading to your ears.

“Haven’t you learned not to lie to me by now?” Loki suddenly grabbed hold of your waist, dragging you closer to him. “Or do I need to repeat the lesson?” His fingers latched onto your ribcage, squeezing and kneading with maddening precision. Still exhausted from the previous attack, you immediately caved.

“ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! I like you, ok??” Loki stopped tickling you, not yet releasing you from his grasp. You covered your flushed face with your hands. “Happy now?”

Loki pried your hands gently away from your face, tilting your chin up with his finger. His eyes were softer than you’d ever seen them before as he gazed at you, a small smile on his face. With a surge of confidence, you closed the gap between your faces, pressing your lips to his. He kissed you back, gently but passionately all at once. When he finally pulled away, he grinned at you.

“Yes, I am happy,” he said simply. You smiled shyly back at him.

“Good.” You hardened your expression a bit, although admittedly it was hard to wipe the smile off your face. “You still have to act surprised. I can’t have people thinking I can’t keep a secret.” Loki laughed at that, his voice rumbling in his chest.

“But you can’t, darling.” He gave you one last poke in the side, eliciting a whine from you. “I’ll do my best to act surprised. I am the god of lies, after all. I should be able to put on a convincing display.”

“Good.” You allowed him to help you to your feet before shooing him out the door. “Now, get out of my room. I still have planning to do.”

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled, stopping in the doorway to look at you. “I’ll go, but only if you’ll have dinner with me tonight.”

“Only if you don’t tickle me,” you countered.

“Sorry, love, but I can’t make any promises,” he replied, winking. You sighed, smiling at him.

“I guess I’ll take my chances then.”

[citylighten]

List 5 facts about a favorite sim of yours, and send this to 10 simblrs whose sims you adore ♥♥♥

This is so late! I thought to myself, "let me do this real quick and then I'll get to building in the Sims" ...only to spend all this time writing. Anyway! Here we go!

Growing up, Sal didn't have cable or access to luxury items like a computer, Gamecube, Xbox, or Playstation 2. There were moments when his dad got together with a friend who worked for a company and could give them bootleg cable, but those were ultimately like small intervals in his life. So as a kid, Sal didn't grow up watching widely known cartoons unless they came on Saturday Mornings. For example, he watched Recess, Talespin, Lloyd In Space, Pokemon, and the 90s X-Men Animated series to name a few but if you talk to him about DBZ or Naruto he has no memories or emotional attachment to the franchises.

One of the happiest moments he can recall (involving his father) involves it being the summer of 2005. Things were pretty boring, nothing was going on at the apartment when suddenly Franco came in with a Playstation complete with games like The Legend of Dragoon, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Spyro The Dragon. Sure, the Playstation 2 was out then, but Sal was hyped like nobody's business. Prior to this he and Rosaria only owned a Nintendo 64 that was on its last leg due to numerous damaging falls. Looking back on it, Sal thinks it was a good summer, but he's also 80% sure that this Playstation and the numerous titles that accompanied it were stolen.

His favorite MCU film is Ant-Man - which you can see a poster for in his apartment in Dear Diary. Sal likes that it's basically a comedy heist film. He also likes the first Venom installment because of what it is, not in spite of what it is. His favorite Anti-Hero is The Punisher, but he hasn't been impressed with any recent depiction of Frank Castle. Jon Bernthal is great, but he’s giving the series a - 👎 As a kid, his least favorite hero of all time is Spider-Man (unless he's merged with Venom) because Peter Parker was too much of a goody-two-shoes.

Sal has never been to Porto Luminoso, instead if he's in Tartosa he's in Terra Amorosa. Honestly, he hates Porto Luminoso because of how its matrimonial services have brought in high waves of tourism as well as reality shows! As a result of this, much of Porto Luminoso has been scrubbed clean of its historical rawness for the sake of commercialization. Many historical buildings have been reconstructed to be modern while maintaining just a little bit of the Tartosan aesthetic. He's heavily bothered at the concept of Terra Amorosa becoming this way because more young people are interested in how the region is untouched but still romantic. Meanwhile, his grandmother doesn't mind, she will sell her local vegetables to tourists and claim that she put a love spell on them for extra money.

Sal's honest day job involves him being a security guard at an internet gambling cafe. His job is to reload people's cards so they can keep gambling, choose what music plays in the building, and keep things from getting disorderly. First and foremost, it's a boring job and he'll wind up spending a few dollars of his own on the work computers on slow days. Rosaria tells him to go to community college for the culinary arts every two months, but he ignores her.

[cryptidmads]

good evening nsr community, i went through the ama from today and came back with an armful or two of lore. there’s a bunch more than last time, and i included bbj as well as the npcs. cozy up, check under the cut, and prepare for a long read. enjoy!

today's ama featured wan hazmer and daim dziauddin again, as well as concept artist ellie and animator ben fong.

BUNK BED JUNCTION (FT. DK WEST)

- mayday and zuke live in the sewers because they're an underground band. it's a pun - there were originally two variations of bbj leaving the sewers - one with mayday hi-fiving gigi (which had a 95% chance of happening), and one with zuke awkwardly fumbling and attempting to hi-five gigi (which had a 5% chance) - one of the inspirations for mayday and zuke were the two main characters of samurai champloo (zuke was jin, mayday was mugen) - someone asked about if the rest of the cast had their own shadow puppets. ben suggested a lemur for mayday, while ellie suggested a zucchini for zuke. she may have been joking. - mayday's guitar solos were done by different people, but zuke's drum solos were all done by bruno valverde. - zuke was the one who implemented the canister thing into mayday's guitar. - someone asked who of the cast are the introverts and who are the extroverts. mayday is an extrovert, zuke is an introvert. - the team does have a bit of lore for mayday and zuke and how they met, but they want to save it in case of a future project. - mayday was inspired by both genevieve from company of thieves and the unbreakable kimmy schmidt. - ben did the animation for mayday swinging the hammer in the workshop. - haz recalls seeing some fanart of mayday being brought up as a rich girl. he doesn't remember the artist, but he does like the idea. - the japanese version has zuke say he has a phd rather than a master's degree. this is apparently a mistake. - the pattern on zuke's pants was inspired by jolyne cujoh and prosciutto from jojo's bizarre adventure. - zuke's toilet seat collection came partially from a story from one of the environmental artists where one of their high school friends pranked another friend with a toilet seat. - zuke does a lot of reading and is naturally inquisitive about things like tech and mechanics. - dk west's shadow puppet abilities might run in the family, and zuke may have it as well. - both zuke and dk west are connected by percussion (zuke with the drums, west with the hand claps) - zuke and west weren't always designed to be related -- west was originally designed as "some guy who comes and goes," but was made into zuke's brother later on in production - dk west is an extrovert.

DJ SUBATOMIC SUPERNOVA

- djss' dj name is obviously a stage name, but the team didn't have a real name for him in the script or anything. - haz joked that his name is bob salad. that's not canon but from what i seen the chat loved it lol - haz brings up the symbolism of djss spinning the planets around himself and how it represents that he thinks of himself as the center of the universe. - ellie helped design the districts, and something she noted about dj's is that it's supposed to look the "slummiest" because he cares more about himself and less about things like blackouts. - dj had some lines cut from his boss fight. those lines? mini lectures towards bbj during every phase. they were cut because the team felt like they were too much for the game, but they want to share them one day. - daim says that dj could be either introverted or extroverted becuase of how much time he spends alone looking at the stars. - dj was never planned to have an approach segment, but funk fiction wasn't told that, so he made him an approach theme anyway. - dodo ice pops are traffic light flavoured, which is a popular ice cream in malaysia. it's strawberry, pineapple, and lime flavored.

SAYU AND THE NERD SQUAD

- three of sayu's creators were based on staff members at metronomik. remi (voiced by ben) was based on one of the programmers and one of the environmental artists (ellie calls him "the lovechild of two dudes"), tila was based on (and voiced by) ellie herself, and dodo was based on danish mak (another environmental artist who also voices him). - sofa wasn't based on anyone in particular, he was more of a "general otaku guy" according to ellie (though haz joked that ellie could just say he was based on him). - dodo is daim's favorite npc -- he also designed him! - sayu was ellie's favorite character to design. she loves drawing mermaids. - the progression in sayu's fight where you go deeper into the "ocean" is supposed to be a metaphor for going deeper into the internet/the deep web. - ellie suggested that if sayu were to have a shadow puppet, it would be a cat. - as for the introvert/extrovert debate, daim says sayu is technically comprised of 4 introverts. sayu herself is the extrovert mask they wear. - sayu's ahoge is a submarine periscope. remi looks through it in one of the cutscenes. - sayu's not a mech. she's remotely controlled by her creators from their computer room. - the backstory between remi and tila is meant to show that artists can come from all sorts of backgrounds.

YINU AND MAMA

- yinu's promotional video was one of the first ones done before they brought in lzbros, so it originally looked different from how it looks in the game now. - yinu's mother's eyes are yellow because she spends most of the fight focusing on yinu (who is mainly yellow). when her eyes go blank white, it represents that she's momentarily forgotten what she loves the most. when her eyes become yellow again after the fight, it means she's remembered yinu and her piano playing. - the way ellie describes natura is that yinu is a plant and her mother is very protective of her, and one of the distinctive features is that there are a lot of domes with plants inside, particularly on the roofs of the houses. - yinu's commercial was not intended to reference little miss fortune. the commercial was shown in 2018, while LMF came out a year later. - yinu's mom turning into a giant tree monster isn't exclusive to her just being angry at bbj. apparently the whole plant thing runs in the yinu family.

1010

- 1010's concept as a boy band had been around since before the team started production, but they were the last to be fully designed -- their designs weren't finalized until way later on. - 1010 were ellie’s least favorite characters to design. she doesn't like drawing guys OR robots. - 1010's early designs had them wearing tuxedos. - 1010 do have memories. - the inspiration for the butt plates came from one of ben's gundam figures from his collection in the metronomik office. thanks ben. - ellie's favorite member of 1010 is purl-hew/blue. - eloni/green is apparently the rapper of the group. - the jingle you hear from the carousel in metro division is a carnival remix of 1010's boss theme. - the numbers underneath 1010's names on the autographs are completely random.

NEON J

- neon j is a dancer. daim explains that in addition to being in the navy, dance has always been his true passion. - in the final phase of 1010's fight, he was originally supposed to control the dance moves of the factory as he was fighting you, but it was cut due to limited resources. - daim designed neon j based on ellie's designs for 1010. - neon j's factory's dance moves were all animated by ben -- no mocap needed. the factory was also his favorite thing to animate. - daim says that "neon j is to tatiana as soundwave is to megatron." basically he is extremely loyal to tatiana. - neon j was one of earliest members of nsr. - neon j seeing 1010 as his sons wasn't planned, but daim loves the concept so much that he could see it being canon. - daim says neon j's brain is "probably" still inside the monitor head. somehow. - neon j is an extrovert. - haz likes the idea of neon j being blind and using his sonar to "see" things. ben joked that the screen worked like giant glasses. - neon j originally had red dots that would pop up on his face when the sonar moved by that were meant to represent acne, and that would've been the reason why he's mostly behind the scenes.

EVE

- in mayday's side of the room when eve splits up bbj, the hands all over the walls are meant to be there to show how eve is angrier at mayday than she is at zuke. - the time signature for the music in mayday's room during the fight is 6/8, whereas in zuke's room it's 4/4. - ellie suggested a platypus shadow puppet for eve. the rest of the team seems to be on board. - eve was ben's least favorite character to animate. he said he struggled with animating her dance moves because it was something he'd never done before, and he still doesn't think he did a good enough job. - eve was born with her split skin tone. - apparently eve's near scrapping had something to do with costs. haz was the one who stopped it from happening. - eve's outfit was partly inspired by beyonce, while her jacket was partly inspired by ariana grande. the team took some inspiration from bjork, as well. - the sleeves on eve's jacket were apparently limbs at one point. - eve is an introvert.

NPCS/OTHER CHARACTERS

- part of tatiana's symbolism is how she used to be a rock star, but her flame/passion slowly burned away, and now she's just a rock, referencing how she was literally on fire as the rock star kul fyra, but now looks burnt out. - daim thinks kliff is older than tatiana, probably over 50. - in addition to the neon j dance lore mentioned above, kayane rambling about neon j after the 1010 fight was supposed to be connected to her watching neon j dance. - ben and haz's favorite npc is mia, and ellie's is dj zam. - dj zam was inspired by one of ellie's college friends, who she says "makes you feel comfortable to be around". - ellie thinks dj zam's neck tattoo says "i love mom". - amal the unicorn was inspired by lady amalthea from the 80's animated film "the last unicorn". he was originally written to be a real talking unicorn, but it was changed partially because his horn wasn't in the right spot on his head. - zed was based on game designer dzaid and has hyperacusis, a hearing disorder that makes it difficult to deal with everyday sounds. - yiruk's name is an anagram of kiryu, the protagonist of the yakuza games. - chef sunshine's design is a homage to julia child. she originally had a bigger physique, but was changed to match lylia's bubbly performance.

[lloydskywalkers]

any port in a storm

Pixal and Lloyd and the evolving nature of friendship, as highlighted by the regular burning down of your city. 

(desperately trying to break through writer’s block and classes again, this was supposed to be under 2k and it is...very much not hdfjkgh but! i’ve been meaning to write for Pixal and Lloyd for a while so here are a whole bunch of feelings about the two of them and s8)

Pixal meets — truly meets — Lloyd Garmadon shortly after his brother’s been blown to pieces.

She says truly, because if you ask her, Pixal will tell you she met Lloyd Garmadon at exactly 8:48 in the evening outside his father’s monastery, moments before a horde of nindroids led there by Pixal herself descended upon them.

But Lloyd argues that since they said about two words total to each other, it doesn’t really count as meeting, and by the time Pixal’s spending the better part of her day with him running high and low around Ninjago City, she’s learned that it’s easier not to press the point.

Lloyd can be stubborn, like that.

She’d first learned that when she’d met him, just after they’d lost Zane. That loss hadn’t lasted long, especially for Pixal, but the immediate aftermath of it had been devastating. She’d watched with blank eyes as the team had fractured, splitting at the seams as they all fled their separate ways, too heartsore and dizzy with grief to do much otherwise.

All of them had fled, save Lloyd. She hadn’t paid him much attention before that point, the surprisingly small bearer of the Golden Power. Of course, he wasn’t the bearer of that power anymore, but his eyes alone had shown the experience of it. There’d been a brief, lost look that had crossed his face as the others had mentioned leaving, before it had been swept under a mask of stubborn, determined blankness. He wouldn’t be leaving. Someone had to stay behind and watch out for things, he’d claimed, even as the loss had bled through his voice.

Pixal hadn’t quite grasped the concept of empathy at that point, but she’d felt something dangerously close to it.

At any rate, the only interaction they’d had alone was brief. In fact, the only one Pixal can truly remember — and her memory never fails — is the quick exchange they’d had in the hospital lobby directly after the battle. The hospital was for Mr. Borg, and for the ninja’s minor injuries.

There was nothing any hospital on earth could do for Zane.

Pixal had found herself next to Lloyd in the waiting room, trying to distract herself from those thoughts while Lloyd stared at the stark white tiling with dull eyes.

“They never mentioned what your power was,” she’d asked him, almost absently. Collecting data, processing information — anything she could do to distract from the crushing grief.

“Oh.” Lloyd had blinked, startling back into awareness. He’d suddenly looked painfully young. “It’s, ah, I guess it’s just green, now.”

It had been Pixal’s turn to blink. “Green.”

“Yeah.” Lloyd had bit his lip, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, two habits he’ll never quite lose. “I mean — it’s more than that, but it’s like — energy, I guess, is the best way to put it?”

“Interesting,” Pixal had remarked.

“Yeah.”

They’d stared at each other in silence after that, before they’d both been called off to other errands — and then they were having Zane’s funeral and then Pixal was making realizations she never got to tell anyone, and that had been that in her early introductions to Lloyd Garmadon. Quiet, awkward, and possessing an incredible power he hardly even knew the name of.

Looking back, Pixal figures her introduction hadn’t gone much better.

They’d continued as passing acquaintances as time went on, separated by danger and the confines of Zane’s head, and Pixal had figured that’s all they’d ever be. But then their Sensei goes missing and, despite Pixal’s increasing disappearances on Zane as she rebuilds her own body, she’s been given the role of watching out for Ninjago city along with Lloyd.

She quickly learns that quiet is not a term fit for Lloyd Garmadon when you’re trapped alone with him.

************

“How is there not a single station playing actual music?” Lloyd seethes, flicking through the channels almost manically. “It’s two am, who’s gonna be listening to your stupid commercial for toothpaste now, are you kidding me?”

“Statistically speaking, this is the prime time for long-distance driving near Ninjago City,” Pixal supplies, her voice a hint scratchy where it comes through the his car’s radio speakers. “Or, if you factor in the construction in the east district, there could still be traffic from late-night bars.”

Lloyd groans, thunking his head against the steering wheel as another ad screeches through the small space. “Wonderful.”

“Your vocal tones suggest you find it otherwise.”

“Dont trust ‘em, my vocal tones are traitors.” As if to solidify his point, Lloyd’s voice cracks in the middle of his sentence, shooting up an octave higher. Lloyd goes bright red, and thunks his head against the steering wheel again.

Taking pity on him, Pixal aims for reassurance. “It is normal for your voice to break, Lloyd. It shouldn’t last too long.” She pauses, momentarily scanning through another article. “On second thought, this one suggests it could also take two to three years for your voice to stabilize.”

Lloyd gives a strangled moan. “End me.”

“Unfortunately, that would defeat the purpose of why I’m here in the first place.”

Lloyd tilts his head, cracking an eye open as he glances at the camera feed he knows she’s watching him from. “Unfortunately, huh,” he muses. “So you’re saying if Zane hadn’t made you promise to look out for me, you would end me?”

“That — no, that is not — of course I wouldn’t end you,” Pixal backtracks. An odd feeling flickers through her, almost as if she’s lost her place, floundering.

Or embarrassed might be more accurate, she thinks wryly. She briefly considers projecting a a glaring face at Lloyd from the monitor. This is his fault. She rarely stuttered before Lloyd started teasing her at all hours of the morning.

“I mean, you wouldn’t be the first,” Lloyd continues, conversationally. “And if we’re being honest, I’d definitely rather you be the one to off me, instead of like, random bad guy number eighty-five—”

“I know you think you are funny,” Pixal cuts over him. “But casually planning for your death is something Kai listed I was not to let you do. Also, it is not nearly as funny as you think it is.”

“Ouch,” Lloyd mutters, though he looks chastised. “Never mind, you just took me out in one sentence.”

Chastised might be the wrong term.

Pixal studies him through the monitor, then sighs. “I am, however, honored you think highly enough of me to offer the right to murder you,” she gives in.

She’s rewarded as Lloyd breaks into a bright grin.

He still looks painfully young these days, but it’s less obvious. His voice is pitching lower and he wears his hair different, and he’s gained a whip-like tendency to quip at people, as Pixal’s experienced firsthand. Kai calls it sass in grumbling but fond tones, and Nya calls it snark somewhere between the fourth book series she’s sent for Pixal to try.

The ninja have been kind like that, sharing the interests they have in an attempt to make her feel…well, more human, she supposes. Less confined to a voice in a computer. Of course, Pixal isn’t confined to a voice in a computer anymore, but they don’t know that yet. She’ll tell them someday soon, she promises herself. Any day now.

In the meantime, it’s easy enough to keep up with Lloyd by lurking in his car radio, as he spends half his time in there anyways.

************

“You’d think we’d have found their hideout by now,” Lloyd notes, as they wait in a darkened alleyway again. It gives them an excellent view of the major highways, so if the rumored biker gang does show up, they won’t miss it.

If they show up being the key point.

“Whoever their leader is, they certainly know how to keep a low profile,” Pixal answers, closing out another dead end police report in frustration.

“It’s weird,” Lloyd says, propping the notebook he’s sketching in on his knee as he squints at the paper. “Normally the boss types aren’t this quiet. They like to show off, y’know? Make a big scene, dramatic speeches and all.”

“Are you referring to the villains, or yourselves?”

“Touché,” Lloyd snorts. “But still, you gotta admit it’s weird they haven’t even made any demands. What’s their end game here, elaborate advertising for motorcycle design?”

“I would hope not,” Pixal says. “Their color coordination is lacking.”

Lloyd fights back a smile, his pencil scratching as he shifts his notebook again. “I don’t know, I kinda like the punk look.”

“I noticed that, when you tried to redecorate the car.”

“Hey, skulls are cool.”

“They are also conspicuous, especially when they come in acid green colors.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Lloyd sighs, making a face as he scrubs the eraser across the paper. Pixal tries to tilt the camera further, to see what he’s drawing tonight, but the angle he’s holding it at remains just out of sight.

She could probably guess what he’s drawing, if she tried. The notebook is one they’ve been steadily working their way through on these late-night patrols, the pages filled with little hangman games and Lloyd’s sketches of animals and his teammates. He’s drawn her a few times from memory, and she’s been tempted to ask him to draw her in the new Samurai X armor more than once.

Soon, she tells herself.

“What are you drawing?” she finally asks, curiosity getting the better of her.

Lloyd’s cheeks tinge pink, and he quickly plasters the notebook to his chest, hiding it entirely from view. “Nothing.”

Pixal waits, letting the silence fill with her judgement. “Lloyd, I have seen your drawings before.”

He doesn’t reply, and Pixal tries again. “It gets boring, being stuck with the car monitors for eyes.”

“I know you can hack other cameras,” Lloyd mutters, but he sighs, relenting as he turns the notebook over. Pixal’s eyes rake over the detailed sketch — it’s a comical little thing of her and Lloyd, jammed together on a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a darkening ocean. She can spot the smudges where he’s redrawn her head several times, and the numerous attempts he’s made at his own hair. Pixal studies Lloyd’s portrayal of himself, which is noticeably lacking in facial features. While Lloyd draws the others plenty, it’s a rare occasion that he draws himself, and she can’t help but be curious.

“I thought you were drawing the others again,” she admits.

“They’re on the ship,” Lloyd says, absently. “I’ll draw them when they remember to pull us back in.”

There’s nothing bitter in his tone to suggest it has any bearing on their actual lives, but the lost expressions Lloyd ends up giving their tiny caricatures feel familiar nonetheless.

“Zane has assured me they will be back as soon as they can,” Pixal speaks ups quietly.

Lloyd finally looks up fully, and flashes the monitor a smile. “I know,” he says. “So we better have this thing busted by the time they do, or they’ll never let us run a city on our own again.”

“If only we were truly running the city,” Pixal grumbles. “I could do a better job in two days than the current leaders could do in a year.”

“I’d vote for you,” Lloyd says, sincerely.

It’s a sweet gesture, but Pixal is unable to resist. “You don’t know how to vote.”

“Yes I do, it’s not hard!”

“Really? Then why are you not currently registered in the Ninjago voting system?”

Lloyd makes a strangled noise. “That’s a thing?”

She’s unable to keep the smugness from her voice. “I make my point.” Lloyd scowls, and scribbles a mustache on his drawing of her in revenge.

Pixal thinks it looks nice nonetheless.

************

She can’t really hold it against Lloyd for talking as much as he does, considering she does the same. It gets dull, sitting on patrol for hours on end, and there are only so many hours of light reading they can do before the silence begins to drive them both insane.

Pixal finds herself talking about more useless things with Lloyd than she has in her existence, pointless conversations in circles with each other. She also finds she doesn’t entirely mind. She’s become quite good at quipping back and forth with him, at least. It’s different than the kind of talk she has with Zane, lacking in the depth of feeling with the love they share. Her exchanges with Lloyd are lighter, though that’s not to say they’re less sincere.

For example, Zane hasn’t tried to teach her how to redesign a gi in poor lighting in the early hours of the morning because he’s bored out of his mind, that’s for sure.

“I’m teaching you how to sew,” Lloyd corrects, wincing as he accidentally stabs himself with the needle. “And I’m not redesigning the whole thing, I’m just adding some designs to spice it up.”

“I did not know you were allowed to wear colors other than green,” Pixal comments.

Lloyd pauses, squinting at the monitor. “You’re teasing me,” he finally says. “You’re making fun of how much green this gi has in it.”

“I would never,” Pixal replies, her tone flat and even. “The intricacies of your human humor evade me—”

“Human humor, nice—”

“—unlike the unusually bright shade of green you’ve chosen will fail to evade any eyes of your enemies.”

“I knew you were making fun of me!” Lloyd accuses, then flinches as he stabs his finger again trying to point at her. “And bright colors are our thing. Being subtle is, uh…not. Usually.”

Pixal is losing the battle to laugh at his expression by the minute. “I am shocked.”

Lloyd glares at the monitor, shifting his sewing to rest on his knees as he slouches in the car seat. “How’d you even get so good at sarcasm, anyways,” he mutters. “Zane still doesn’t get it half the time.”

“Perhaps it is part of my glowing personality,” Pixal says. Lloyd gives a huff of laughter, relenting.

“Fair enough,” he says, shifting in his seat again. “Fine, you win. The green is probably too bright, but that’s not the point. I’m gonna show you how to do a backstitch."

Pixal falls quiet, letting Lloyd gesture with the needle as he explains. There are a hundred, a thousand tutorials she could pull up online, digitized knowledge instantly learned on all the countless types of stitches she could use, sorted and categorized in neat columns of use and effectiveness. All of them more detailed, more easily understood than Lloyd’s absent rambling and unsteady hands as he struggles with the end of a knot.

Not one of them will care whether or not Pixal learns the odd way Zane likes to loop his stitches, or will quietly add which stitches knit skin back together quickest.

So Pixal ignores her programming, and does her best to follow Lloyd’s rambling instructions, watching as his scarred fingers tug another thread of dull gold through the green mess of fabric, the city quiet around them.

“You never did tell me where you learned how to sew,” Pixal says, as Lloyd starts up a new thread of black on the other side of the gi. “Was that something the others taught you in training?”

“They’d have to know how to be able to teach it,” Lloyd snickers. “And, uh, no. I taught myself to back at Darkley’s.”

“Oh,” Pixal falters. She’s heard about Darkley’s, both from Zane and the legal reports she’s read online. Neither gave a positive impression of the place. Her mind is suddenly filled with images of a younger Lloyd trying to give himself stitches, and her heart twists.

Lloyd starts, seemingly having picked up on her train of thought. “I mean, I did it for fun, mostly. I like sewing,” he explains. “It’s useful. You can pull things back together, and fix ‘em.”

Pixal is quiet, but she hopes Lloyd takes her silence as agreement with his motive. She likes to think he knows her well enough for that, by now.

************

Pixal finds, somewhere during their fourth month alone, that she’s glad the team elected to stick her and Lloyd together. Not because she doesn’t want to be with Zane — there’s never a moment she doesn’t miss him, and with every day that passes her resolve to keep her secret from him grows weaker, as the longing for actual connection grows stronger.

But there are conversations she can have with Lloyd that she can never have with Zane, and the dangerous thing about spending time with Lloyd, Pixal finds, is that they’re more similar than she’s realized.

“Sometimes I think I’m jealous,” Lloyd whispers to her one night. It’s one of the bad ones, the ones where their enemies struck too sudden to stop, and the mission ends in the hospital. “I think I’m jealous of Zane, and I hate myself for it.”

Pixal is quiet, trying to pick apart the tone of his voice in the words he’s just spoken, and factors in the victims they’ve just left behind at the hospital. She finds herself no closer to an answer.

“Is it the metal skin part?” she finally asks, though she knows that’s wrong. “The, what was it, technical immortality?”

“No,” Lloyd shakes his head. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he says emphatically, his fingers fluttering at over the steering wheel, tapping incessantly with unspent energy. “I don’t want to, but that’s — it’s not what I’m scared of. I’m more scared of how I go out.”

He swallows, and his fingers move to dance over the woven bracelet on his wrist instead, twisting at the tiny beads and tracing senseless designs in constant, steady movement. It’s a motion he does often, and it had puzzled Pixal at first. She’d decided to write it off as an odd tick, a way to spend excess energy.

Now, she recognizes the desperate kind of reassurance that movement gives. She understands too well the need to remind yourself that you can move — that your body will obey you and you alone.

Pixal thinks back to the other factors in tonight’s accident, of the way the drugged man’s eyes had cleared when they’d finally turned him over to the police, the way he’d sworn he’d never do such a thing in his right mind. She thinks of the way the first victim had thrown themselves over their companion.

That victim hadn’t made it to the hospital.

“Ah,” Pixal says, quietly.

She’s silent again, and she thinks back to when she’d met him, the very first time. She recalls the way her programming had rebelled against her in favor of the Overlord, corrupting her body and forcing it against her, twisting everything she was and wanted to be into something different.

She thinks back again, to the searing-hot anger, the terror, the despair as she was torn apart, piece by piece like a machine, burning out at the whims of another. Her end purposeless, her demise belonging to someone else, just like every other part of her.

She thinks of the last glimpse she’d caught of Zane, bright and beautiful as a supernova. Burning with the terrible brilliance of his own, determined choice. Terrible, because the death of something always is. Beautiful, because it was his own. Zane died, not a machine, not a weapon, not a tool of anyone or anything, but as himself. Zane died to save the ones he loves. Pixal could’ve died for spare parts.

Never again, she promises herself. If she goes out, she goes out on her own terms. This time, they choose the end of their own destiny themselves.

In hindsight, it’s the kind of promise they’re both too young to make, but neither of them have ever seen themselves as such, and promises like that are easy.

“Love can be terrible, sometimes,” Lloyd murmurs. Pixal watches him scrub at the blood on his uniform, and thinks how ironically well-timed it is that he finished the stitching on his new gi this morning. “Sometimes I forget how ugly it can be.”

************

The end of their nighttime stakeouts begins with a break-in at Mr. Borg’s tower. Lloyd argues that she should get to call it her father’s tower, if she wants, but the ninja aren’t the only ones Pixal’s hiding herself from.

And then Lloyd gets very tense at the thought of fathers very fast, and they never finish the conversation.

They stay at the edge of the bridge long after the parachute, emblazoned with the unmistakable visage of Lloyd’s father, disappears from sight. Pixal wonders if it’s burned into Lloyd’s eyes, like the way she’s read black spots linger in humans’ vision after they’ve looked at something too bright. The way Lloyd stares at the river, his shoulders tense and his teeth worrying at his lip, she thinks she might be right.

They’re waiting on the report from the commissioner —they’re waiting for anything, anyone who can offer them any explanation of what’s going on. Pixal’s reminded of how much she loathes this kind of waiting.

“It could be—” Lloyd begins, then breaks off, his voice wavering. He swallows, and Pixal can see the way his fists clench tightly from the cameras they’ve put in his car. There’s a fierce part of her that longs to reveal herself, to meet his eyes herself and offer some semblance of comfort. But there’s a time and place for things, and Pixal isn’t ready.

“It could be anything,” Lloyd finally continues, his voice small. “It could — it doesn’t mean anything. It could mean nothing, right?”

Pixal is silent, her mind racing. She’s run the calculations over and over in her head already, scouring the internet for anything related to the bikers. She’s been foolish, she realizes — they both have. Letting the gang go unnamed for so long, thinking nothing of it. Now, with the name flashing vibrant across Pixal’s vision, a part of her wants to let them go nameless just a bit longer.

Before she can answer, Lloyds phone goes off with a sharp ping, just as Pixal’s sensors alert her to the message from the commissioner. Lloyd snatches for his phone like it’s on fire, and Pixal’s already scanning the message frantically, as if she can salvage this if she’s fast enough, save Lloyd from this one pain.

Lloyd’s gotten much better at reading quickly though, these days.

She can pinpoint the moment he reaches the last paragraph, because his breath hitches. There’s a long, pressing pause of silence, Lloyd’s hands trembling as they clutch weakly at his phone. Then it’s punctured by a reedy, wheezing gasp, and Pixal’s suddenly wishing she’d revealed herself after all.

Instead, all she has is her voice as Lloyd crumples, crouching over in visible distress. Pixal’s mind races, recalling everything Zane’s ever told her about his team, the way their panic manifests in different shades. Lloyd’s is quiet but desperate, rapid breathes that stutter as his eyes slide more and more into a frightening kind of blankness.

“Lloyd, please, listen to my voice,” she begs, trying to reach him in the only way she can. “Please, you have to breathe—”

“He’s gone,” Lloyd rasps, unhearing of her words. “He’s s’posed to be gone, it’s supposed to be over, I’m supposed to be done—”

Pixal fights back the sense of overwhelming helplessness. She knows loss. She knows how to finish his sentence. He’s supposed to be done grieving, done mourning, done clinging to false scraps of hope that his father isn’t lost forever only to be met with heartbreak.

And now, to be met with the possibility of something so much worse.

“We’ll stop them,” she tells him, unflinching. “We won’t let it happen.”

Lloyd’s eyes are a vivid green where they stare at her through the monitor, almost ghostly in the misting light reflecting from the river.

He’s silent, but Pixal is, too.

Pixal remembers the way her head had spun when she’d first picked up the traces of Zane in the system, how the world had rushed then steadied, flooding with color as she’d realized he might not be lost after all. She remembers the surging, overwhelming flood of joy, that someone she’d thought she lost might live after all. She remembers being so happy, at even the smallest chance to get him back, because the voice was Zane’s, without a doubt.

She watches the color seep from Lloyd’s expression as his shoulders shudder, the words from the commissioner’s message almost echoing through the air. Watches the terror as the both of them fill the silence.

Will we?  

The radio scratches, as if echoing Pixal’s anxiety. Love can be terrible, sometimes. She’s underestimated how it also be so cruel.

************

She’s also, apparently, underestimated how the universe on the whole could be so cruel.

She should’ve revealed herself to them from day one. That way, when Harumi’s corrupted programming suddenly ravages through her like an electric shock, she could be reassured they’d at least be familiar with the person they were fighting.

Instead, she doesn’t even get to scream. Pixal’s only able to force out a desperate, broken warning before she’s lost again, drowning in her own body as she’s forced under. Furious panic grips her as she screams without lungs, bashing herself against the overwhelming helplessness that’s taken over her.

Not again, not again, not again—

Her limbs creak and jolt against her will, lashing out at the people she cares most about, and Pixal can’t even rage back in her own voice. She’s sworn, she’s promised herself she’d never let anyone do this to her again — she’s sworn she’d die before she let someone reach into her head and snatch control away, and yet here she is, frozen as her body’s used to target her friends.

If she could cry, she might.

There’s not much more to say than that. She breaks free, her body her own once again, but by then it’s too late.

************

If Pixal had the same gift of foresight that Zane did, maybe she would have seen it coming. Maybe she’d have remembered how similar her and Lloyd are, and that this kind of pained desperation always yields impulsiveness and mistakes.

She doesn’t, though. She barely even manages to do what she’s trying to, which is convincing Lloyd to join the others while they celebrate their victory. Their off-key singing is something he normally wouldn’t hesitate to join in on, she thinks, and she hates Harumi a little more.

Maybe she’ll try his mother next. The expression on Lloyd’s face screams unapproachable, and remains fixedly sullen.

Almost to her surprise, he meets her eyes as she draws near— it’s odd, being able to meet his back — and his own eyes are dark, from despair over Harumi or despair over his father, Pixal isn’t sure. She’s thinking it might be both, when his eyebrows crease, and a flicker of concern cuts through them instead.

“You good?”

It takes her a moment to realize why he’s asking, but the answer is obvious. Her head tilts downward, and she watches as her fingers curl and uncurl. Her movements, her choices. She lets out an even breath.

“As I can be,” she replies. Lloyd nods, and his eyes are understanding. His lips twist in a scowl.

“She shouldn’t have done that to you. That was a low blow.”

Pixal’s mouth curves into a humorless smile. “That it was. She’s rather good at those, isn’t she.”

Lloyd’s eyes shadow again, and he looks away, crossing his arms. “This isn’t supposed to be about me,” he mutters.

“Yes, it is,” Pixal counters. “It is why I came over here, in the first place. She hurt—”

“All of us, and who’s fault is that,” Lloyd snaps, his arms crossing tighter.

“I would hope you know it’s hers,” she says, holding firm.

Lloyd looks away again, biting his lip, and Pixal shifts anxiously, rolling her wrists. The sensation of control sliding away still haunts her, worse than it had the first time. She should be better than this, she tells herself hotly. She’s lived without a body long enough that losing it so briefly shouldn’t effect her this much.

Curse her programming, she thinks, tapping agitatedly at the banister. She knew she should have reinforce it sooner.

“Hey, um.” Lloyd is looking at her again, hesitant. He twists at his bracelet, and his eyes lose a fraction of that darkness. “Kai made this for me, after Morro,” he says. “I kept shredding the sleeves of my uniform, so he told me to mess with this instead, when I needed to remember that…that I was in control.”

He shrugs, hesitant. “We could make you one too, if you wanted. It helps, having something.”

Pixal lets out a steady breath, despite not actually needing to. The action is grounding, she’s found. “I would like that.”

Lloyd gives her a ghost of a smile in return. “Soon as this is over, then.”

There’s a heavy weight to his words, and Pixal’s eyes narrow.

“Lloyd,” she says. He looks at her, his eyes dark. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

He’s quiet, not meeting her eyes, and this is where Pixal should stop him. This is when she should see the end of the road they’ve been on since they started this, and force him to turn before it’s too late.

“I know what I’m doing.”

She doesn’t.

************

Lloyd is battered and bleeding by the time they drag him onto the ship, a gruesome portrait of cruelty. Pixal is frozen as she watches him writhe in Kai’s hold, his screams cracked and wet as he thrashes erratically like a broken thing.

Nya is already barking orders before they’ve even gotten Lloyd fully on the ship, and Zane is running scans with a horrified, wavering focus. Pixal follows Cole as he carries Lloyd to the medbay with a blank numbness, the rush of wind streaming past the Bounty sails thunderously loud in her ears.

This isn’t Lloyd, she thinks, staring at his crumpled form. Lloyd isn’t this battered, broken shell of a person. Lloyd isn’t hazy eyes that fail to recognize them and frantic murmuring through bloody lips. Lloyd is bright-eyed and gentle and would rather die before he screams the way he does when Cole moves him to the table.

Lloyd is her friend, and this is where that promise they made has led them. She knows why Lloyd set out for the prison, hot on the collapse of his own star. She also knows he wouldn’t have chosen to burn out like this.

Cole calls out for Zane, his voice ringing in panic as Lloyd screeches in pain again. Pixal thinks of quiet words in the safety of his car, and she feels sick. This is the ugliness of love, the terrible, hideous side of it.

And Lloyd would hate it, if he could see himself, if he were any semblance of lucid. He’d hate to know just how much better he was at breaking himself than Morro ever was.

Zane is gentle as he pushes past her, but Pixal can feel the tremble in his hands. He’s every bit as rattled as she is, if not more so — Zane’s heart is larger and softer than hers has ever been, and he cares about each and every one of them with a painful intensity. It’s a cruel thing, to have to pull those same people back together with your own hands.

Kai’s eyes are streaming as he clutches at Lloyd’s wrists, pinning him in place. Zane’s hands waver again over one of the jagged wounds near Lloyd’s ribcage, the green of his uniform already dyed dark in blood, soaking over the careful stitches Pixal watched him put in himself.

Pixal finally finds her footing, reminding herself of the solid wood beneath her feet. She recalls the steady, smooth stitch Lloyd’s scarred fingers traced out for her.

“Here.” She takes the needle from Zane’s hands, squeezing his briefly before letting go. “I can do it.”

She sets the needle against Lloyd’s skin and wonders what kind of stitch it’d take to pull your heart back together.  

************

Pixal cannot cry. It’s one of the features Mr. Borg spent hours debating, weighing the pros and cons of giving her the ability before he was truly sure how rust-proof she was. He’d never gotten the chance to, as the Overlord had interrupted him, then Pixal had lost any body to give the ability to cry to, which had eliminated the need entirely.

She cannot cry, but she can hurt, and the rain that streams through her hair, dripping down her forehead spotting raindrops on her cheeks, could be tears if she pretended.

She doesn’t, though, because tears are a waste of water and overall useless in the grand scheme of things. She doubts they’d have helped her fare any better in the battle with Colossi, either.

Tears won’t bring anyone back.

Lloyd cries anyways. She can’t see him, but she can hear it in his voice, the way it wavers and breaks over the radio, nasally tones pronounced.

He’s barely able to gasp a few coordinates to her before he cuts the radio off abruptly. Pixal’s spent enough time with him to envision his scarred fingers snapping it off with a particular desperation, green sparking from his hands in distress.

She reminds herself those sparks are gone, now, bled away into nothing like the vivid green of Lloyd’s eyes had. The thought makes her sadder than she’d expected. She had a joke, about his eyes, she had wanted to make. Now that she has a body, and her own set of glowing green eyes, she’d — there was something he would’ve laughed at, she thought —

It doesn’t matter, now. Neither of them are likely to laugh anytime soon.

The coordinates blink brightly in her vision, and she’s almost surprised she managed to key them in. She’s running on autopilot, she supposes. It could be ironic — she’s been so desperate for control, it’s been so important that she’s the one feeling. Now, she’d give anything not to feel at all.

She lets out a shaky breath, dispelling the mist in her vision left from the rain. She leans forward, just over the edge of the building she’s crouched on, and her loose hair falls forward, silvery and synthetic and horribly tangled. Irritated, she reaches for another hair tie, and her hands falter around her wrist.

Lloyd had promised her a bracelet there. But he’d promised Kai would make the bracelet, hadn’t he, and Kai couldn’t make the bracelet if he was dead, could he.

Pixal blinks, her breath hitching. She’s been so numb to the pain of Zane’s loss, it hasn’t yet occurred to her that she’s losing Kai, too. And Jay, and Cole, and—

She sucks in the same shuddery kind of breath she’s seen Lloyd do, and carefully fists her hand in the area of her uniform above her chest. Her fingers dig in tightly, clutching in a hopeless attempt to feel some sort of comfort she knows she’ll never find.

But perhaps, for these few seconds, she can pretend the action is holding her together.

************

“It was inevitable,” Pixal tells Lloyd blankly, as he rasps out his third apology in the dark cover of their small hideout. “That one of us would fall, eventually. It had nothing to do with you.”

Lloyd swallows thickly. “It could’ve — it should’ve been—”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Pixal’s hand shoots out, clamping tightly around his wrist, and there’s a beat of gratitude that she doesn’t need to rely on her voice alone anymore.

“Don’t.” Her voice is strung tighter than the tension in their shoulders. “You cannot change anything. You can’t, Lloyd, and you should not wish to — to change it that way.”

Lloyd jerks his hand free, wiping miserably at his eyes. He sets it back down within her reach, though, and if Pixal were any different, she’d take it.

But Pixal isn’t that different from Lloyd at all in the end, and neither of them reach for the other’s hand, no matter how desperately they crave the contact. Fear is more familiar, and it’s easier to give into it than it is the clawing need for comfort in your chest, after all.

“Still,” Lloyd finally whispers. “Still.”

Pixal swallows. She doesn’t disagree. If one of them had to fall, she knows she gladly would have taken it upon herself. She knows the others care for her, certainly, but she also knows her place in the grand scheme of things. They were six before she came along, and even now she’s kept far too many secrets to be fully counted among them.

She listens to Lloyd’s quiet, cracked voice, and she wonders if he’s thinking that they were five before he came along, younger than Pixal got to know him as.

Now they’re three, hollow and heartbroken. Though counting herself as one whole feels like cheating, right now.

Pixal squeezes her eyes shut, and wonders what it’s like to cry. Perhaps it helps, though Lloyd doesn’t look any less miserable.

************

“I was thinking,” Lloyd tells her, during one of the precious few quiet moments they have while trying to overthrow Garmadon and Harumi. Pixal’s turning the tiny tea flower he’d given her over in her hands, a part of her mind already marking articles about flower-pressing, another part wondering if it’s already too late to save the blossom. “About that promise we made, before all this.”

Pixal finally tucks the flower into the pocket of her uniform, pressed close to her chest. If anything, it can be a reminder of the lives that are safe — the life that’s coming back to her, if she has to drag him back from another realm herself. “And?”

Lloyd’s hands twist together. “Maybe we should focus more on staying alive.”

Pixal coughs out a laugh, breathless and startled. Lloyd wrinkles his nose at her, but his eyes are amused, even with their light lost. “I mean, the emphasis would be on keeping everyone else alive, but it’s kinda hard to do that if we’re dead, so…yeah. Priorities.”

“Staying alive should always be a priority,” Pixal corrects him, but she tugs the edge of his armor out of place with a smile.

“Why didn’t you teach me how to graffiti?” she nods at the designs on the green leather. “Or was this another Darkley’s tradition.”

“This is a refined art, called whatever I had on me that showed up on dark green,” Lloyd grumbles, fixing his armor. “I’ll teach it to you when we get out of this.”

“Another reason why staying alive would be a more productive focus,” Pixal points out. “I’ve heard teaching is easier when you’re alive.”

“And I’ve heard you’re a real riot,” Lloyd mutters. “It’s a promise, okay? I promise to teach you how to do cool armor design if you promise not to disappear into another realm on me.”

Pixal nods, adjusting her own armor tighter as screams ring out from a street nearby. “A promise, then.”

She keeps both the promise and the flower, the tiny blossom dried and faded by the time she’s escaped from the prison, heart racing with leftover adrenaline as Zane sweeps her into his arms. She clutches back every bit as tight, listening to his breathless laughter as cheers rise from the streets behind them, the smoke drifting across the early morning sky above them pale against the lightening blue. Pixal buries her face in his shoulder and breathes, tucking the moment away in her heart where it won’t fade. There’s a future stretching out before her, and she’s got the limbs to walk her path on her own, but all she wants right now is the steady ground beneath her feet and the bright laughter of what she’s managed to keep.  

Lloyd meets them shortly after, his own promise kept as he tears his gaze from his father, handing him off to the authorities before sprinting for the others. Pixal barely snags a moment alone with him, and even then no one’s particularly keen on letting him out of their sights.

He meets her eyes as they pick their way through the wrecked streets, the city more alive around them than it’s been in weeks. In the dark of the early morning, Pixal’s eyes glow a bright green, reflecting oddly in the windows they pass. It’s always been her preferred color, in contrast to Zane’s bright blue. Lloyd glances at her, his own eerily green eyes glowing back. He bites his lip, but it’s to hold back real laughter this time.

“My eyes were green first,” she tells him.

“Sue me,” he shoots back, before Kai’s throwing an arm over his shoulders again, tucking Lloyd neatly in between him and Nya. Pixal smothers a laugh at the look on his face, and tightens her own arm further where it’s linked firmly in Zane’s.  

It’s going to be an easy promise to keep, she thinks.  

[charlenetung]

2021.09.24 YOUNTH

Hi there it’s been a long time, typing down these words and making nonsense.

Listening to cloud Monet, pretending to be all artistic I guess this is where I want to be.

I can hear the cough and TV sound from the other room of the person I’m staying with, you see how I can be multi tasking haha

Oh life is such an irony. 

Currently dating a boy who is from Texas, and he is the most humorous guy I have met, suits me well cuz of my laziness. 

Not many words or vocabularies I can write down due to the busy work and laziness that I haven’t been reading much.

Line and words are just moments of strength of my fingers that press down to my computer key board, again trying to think I’m on an old typer. 

Where should I begin my past now? Haha just a few things to share, I am not doing well, or I would say being lazy in life. 

Boy and I rescued a kity.... Youtube commercial just came in so I had to stop my typing. KITTY, yes we rescued right after my dog Choco passed away.  I haven’t really talked about this here, but yeah... He passed away in May, he didn’t get a chance to spend his 17th birthday with us, and I miss him so much.

I really miss him a lot, I was working at CAGES that time, hanging out with friends and living in the city, sharing a house with 6 people. Choco was one of them that made me so happy.... I miss him so much, I miss you Choco...

Choco, 16 years of friendship that is wild and warm but cold at last. I guess this is what life is, you find a friend and you lose them. You find a love one and you make so many good memories and they leave in bad/good ways.

It was a holiday he passed away.

Moved back to my mom’s place in QINGPU SH, worked at a new place then left after 4 months for some bullshit reason. Sorry for saying things so RUDE but true, it’s SHRIMP!

I don’t really like typing down the worse of my life but I don’t know why I feel like I have lost my path and my dreams in someway, stage by stage...

A dream of being a famous Holly Wood actor to now, life sucks.

Vape and breathing in smoke in my lungs, is this a bad habit or part of growing up?

I assume to be a good and happy girl all the time but I am sad NOW, I want to let you know I am not ok. I am not ok..... 

I wish I could do more and be more cuz I see all the famous people on-line and I want to be like them I want to be famous and be glam so I have money and a car a house a grande casa...

It’s funny that I am saying what I want cuz I want them in my dreams, and I dream so much with music... I want people to feel the same way as I do and I wish that my life can be broadcast everywhere and I can be seen in some way, but the thing is I feel like I am not doing any thing to make that happen and It sucks....It’s depressing to see the people who I care a lot beside me and I just wanna say “ I don’t care about your life, let me focus on myself just for once! Go away!!” Can we even do that nowadays? Just I don’t give a fu** about your feelings I just want everything for ME.

Where should I spend my YOUTH on? MYSELF OR OTHERS? Is there a balanced place? To be honest I don’t believe that middle ground excists, I know I’m being a little dark here but it’s the truth... Why can’t people be more true to themselves and to others? 

Sparkles in across the building when I look out of the window, I am not happy NOW.

I should read more.

I’m in a bubble where I’m about to burst but elegantly floating in the sky and under water....

Anyways... I’m not busy at work now nor I am growing, I shall rest but not too long... True relaxation can then bring true beauty from ones person.

Focusing on myself is a good start, not with my talents or with my knowledge, it’s with my inner peace and do the heck what I want with no pressure. Will that take me to where I want or to another direction?’

Another holiday is coming, boy and I traveling to Beijing. 

I’m gonna f*** hard 

Feels good to be free 

I really do appreciate people who makes chill out music, It just brings me to a place where it’s so quit and peace where it belongs to just where I am suppose to be.

What’s my next step? 

Let’s keep things simple shall we?

I have changed, I miss my passed away dog, I have learned some truth, I have been lazy, I have been sad, I have been happy and I will take things one day at a time. 

Truly saying Hi to you, my pass my history my friend myself.

What will the future be like? I want to see those technologies from the movies that boy and I have watched. Sci-fi, cyber punk world and all those crazy scenes from the movie.

Dune is coming out. I am so excited, Timothee is truly my love fever.

Will i someday be someone’s fever?

chapter by chapter of my 26 years, where am I now?

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #221: ... New Blood!

July, 1982

A semi-famous somewhat imitated cover!

Can you guess ahead of time which two will be joining the Avengers?

No cheating.

Actually, what’s funny is that I can imagine a Young Bendis looking at this cover, seeing Luke Cage, Spider-Man, and Wolverine all in a row like that and whispering to himself ‘one day... one day...’

Spider-Woman is even on this! This is almost the roster meme that Bendis would have selected his team out of.

Just as soon as he cleared the way by killing off Ant-Man and Hawkeye.

Anyway, I like the cute touch that there’s just a completely blank square for Sue Storm. And is she really still going by Invisible Girl at this point?

-google- Ah, Invisible Woman is still a few years off.

And at risk of spoiling, I like the cover pretending that Rom (Space Knight) could feasibly join the Avengers. Although that would have made a hilarious mess when the rights lapsed. A whole swathe of Avengers comics unavailable.

So, where are we at?

Last times on Avengers: Captain America decided that the Avengers had become too unwieldy. They’d settled into a filler rut and Cap wanted them to be lean and mean.

So the old order changeith’d! And Moondragon meddled, causing half of the old team to quit. But Cap got his lean team of himself, Thor, Iron Man, Wasp, Yellowjacket, and Tigra.

And then Yellowjacket Hank Pym had an ‘attempted murder out of insecurity’ breakdown and tried to murder his friends and was a very bad husband to Wasp as well.

So Yellowjacket was out and Wasp took some personal time.

It was just Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and Tigra. And then Tigra quit.

Wasp rejoined but the trim team of six had become anemic at four and after some space mishaps, its finally time to try to do something about that.

As Iron Man declares in title-of-the-issue font they need some ... NEW BLOOD!

And Wasp declares ‘yes we all know that already we’ve just been putting it off.’

(And they finally got the big meeting table back from the cleaners or wherever its been. Thank goodness)

But the question that Chairperson Wasp poses the team is should they re-induct some ex-members or go looking for some truly new blood?

Thor is brooding on the recent events, where Moondragon manipulated the Avengers previous roster shakeup and later when Moondragon took over a planet and got Thor to fight his friends.

So Thor’s point, by way of dwelling, is that they should be careful with who they choose.

Thor: “Thus can no action, no thought made by any of us in the last weeks be truly, absolutely claimed as our own. Not even... mine.”

There we go. There’s that good Moondragon induced paranoia I was hoping for.

And character wise, I do like that there’s fallout from the Ba-Bani misadventure. Whether being forced to fight his friends or being made to fall in love with Moondragon or being convinced to side with her plan to bring mandatory peace to the universe. Thor has been affected by what happened.

Cap suggests that they clear the slate and just judge potential members on their current qualifications.

So what qualifications should potential Avengers have?

Captain America: “Compatibility. Someone who can work in a team.”

Iron Man: “And technical expertise. Perhaps someone good with weaponry.”

Thor: “We’ve enough strength, methinks. But courage is important. Aye, and a noble heart.”

Wasp: “Well, I know exactly what this group needs. More girls!”

Good suggestions. All good suggestions. But very good suggestion from Wasp.

I know that two women on one team is the low bar that Avengers tends to reach but you know what’s worse? One women on one team. And you know what’s better? Three.

Think about it.

The meeting gets cut short because Jan has to go do Jan things like show off fashion at the Tavern on the Green but she tells the others to figure out who they’d like as new Avengers and then they’ll all decide at their meeting next week.

As the Avengers all head off, Captain America mentions to Iron Man that hey remember how Hawkeye used to be an Avenger all the time? Weren’t those good times? He worked well on the team, was real into being an Avenger.

Iron Man agrees that sure is a Thought but flies off thinking more about Jan’s suggestion to have more women on the team, albeit probably for less than pure reasons.

Thor meanwhile doesn’t have anywhere to be so sits down in the sitting room and reads a Time magazine.

Jarvis brings Thor some mead and Thor asks who Jarvis would enlist for the Avengers if Jarvis was given the choice.

Jarvis is surprised to be asked but does his best to speak off the cuff.

Jarvis: “Why, I - I really hadn’t given it much thought! But since you ask, I feel that some of the best Avengers have started as the most unlikely candidates. For example, those with strongly individual, independent natures seem to have worked out surprisingly well.”

You’re a good guy, Jarvis.

And you’ve got a good point. Since the Avengers were pretty much everyone who wasn’t on a team jammed onto a team together, the Avengers kind of have as foundation strongly individual independent superheroes managing to do a teamwork anyway.

And Thor just so happens to be reading the Time magazine that has a picture of Spider-Man on the front (along with “Friend or Menace?”) and thinks huh individual and independent??

Oh boy!

Spider-Man going to be offered a spot on the Avengers? Is it 2005 already?

Goofs aside, this is an interesting callback maybe.

All the way back in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3 (November, 1966) which I didn’t cover but probably should have if this was a more comprehensive Avengers blog but then I may have died under the enormity of the task.

Uh, that sentence got away from me.

Anyway, in that Spider-Man Annual, the Avengers debate whether to recruit Spider-Man for their team. Thor is the one there to find Spider-Man and bring him to the mansion. The Avengers decide to test him and (after Spider-Man tries to beat up the entire team because that’s what Spider-Man thinks proving himself is) they send him to bring the Hulk back with him.

He finds the Hulk and fights the Hulk but Hulk turns back to Bruce Banner and Spider-Man feels bad for Bruce and doesn’t want to turn him over to the Avengers (not knowing that they want to help Hulk). So he comes back and says welp couldn’t find him guess I’m not Avengers material byyyyyye.

The other Avengers go huh I guess he wasn’t Avengers material but Thor seemed to suspect what had really happened.

So my rambling point is that its appropriate that Thor again thinks to recruit Spider-Man for the Avengers because of that previous story.

Later in the day, Iron Man calls Captain America.

Although as Cap points out they know each other’s civilian name now so why be formal?

Iron Man: “Captain America? This is Iron Man.”

Captain America: “Hey, Tony, let’s make it ‘Steve,’ okay? I’m off duty.”

So Tony “Iron Man” Stark has managed to stop thinking about more woman on the Avengers and has actually started to think about having Hawkeye back on the Avengers and has to admit, it sounds good to him!

So Captain Steve says they should go together tomorrow and see what Hawkeye thinks.

This is a nice sequence.

Its nice to see how the two learning each other’s identity plays out like this. Tony trying to stick to how they’ve known each other and Steve making a not subtle overture for them to become more familiar.

This is probably good shipping fodder, I realize!

But it is also good friendshipping fodder. It can be both.

Elsewhere and meanwhile, at the Van Dyne residence, Janet puts her own recruitment drive into... drive?

She’s invited every super-heroine in the country she can think of to brunch but she has no idea how to get a hold of She-Hulk.

Not even her state of the art computer system can find her! Granted, the state of the art computer system is for analyzing fashion forecasts and not news reports about She-Hulk sightings.

So Jan decides that if you want a She-Hulk you’ve got to spend a little green.

She has her assistant take out a bunch of full-page ads in all of the major west coast newspapers. And heck, buy a bunch of commercial time too!

Jan is going to do some I Want You (to Join the Avengers) ads!

She is ludicrously wealthy.

I went and checked and her original inheritance was ‘only’ three million dollars but the way that she throws around money I’m pretty sure she has managed to get some lucrative investments. That or she’s just super good at being a fashionista.

Granted, blowing a bunch of money for a chance to have brunch with She-Hulk is a pretty good reason to blow a bunch of money.

Later, as twilight comes, Thor is flying around Central Park because he has no idea how to find Spider-Man but hears that he’s often around “the meadow-lands called Central Park” and happens upon three goofuses who just robbed a pawnshop.

These goofuses are such goofuses that one of them is wearing groucho glasses as a disguise. Another one is wearing a clown mask.

Which, like a moth to fire, aggros Spider-Man just to mock the guy.

I’m pretty sure rather than flying around aimlessly, the best way to find Spider-Man is to create the perfect quip opportunity.

A clown: “I’m gonna kiss every dime o’ my share -- just as soon as we get to the hideout so’s I can take off this stupid mask!”

Spider-Man, suddenly: “Aw, c’mon, Bunky, leave it on! I’ve always wanted to bust a bozo who looks like a bozo!”

Groucho: “S-s-spider-Man!”

S-s-spider-Man: “But enough of this clowning! Wanna give up?”

Dangit, Peter. Good wordplay.

But before can catch these thieves just like flies, down came the rain and washed the spider out.

A sudden, inexplicable (cough cough Thor) localized storm tosses around the thieves until they surrender.

After the police lead away the goofus thieves, Spider-Man comes dripping wet and with a bone to pick.

Spider-Man: “Do you have any idea what it’s like running around in wet tights?”

Thor is like sorry bro but I’ve come to talk so Spider-Man agrees but they’ll need to go off somewhere private because the press is honing in on him to ask him bonkers questions about whether he came in a flying saucer.

I think they’re thinking of a certain emissary of hell.

That darn press!

Spider-Man and Thor relocate to a high rooftop for their talk.

Spider-Man: “Now, Goldilocks, what’s your beef?”

Thor: “Thy protective demeanor is unneeded, my friend. I have no ‘beef’ -- only a proposal. The Avengers are seeking new members, and I wouldst offer thee such position.”

Spider-Man: “You... Thor... want me as an Avenger?

Spider-Man is still not sure if it would work out (reflecting on Spider-Man Annual #3) but he’s also really flattered by the offer. And presumably how the offer wasn’t accompanied by “BUT FIRST YOU MUST PASS OUR TEST!”

So he can’t just accept the offer off-hand but he’s definitely going to think about it.

Even if you don’t join the team, even just being considered is an honor.

The twilight turns into night turns into day, and Cap and Iron Man show up in Hawkeye’s place of business to bug him.

Don’t know if you remember but Hawkeye has a cushy job as head of security for Cross Technological Enterprises. And he actually does take the job seriously which is why he’s a little concerned, at least for his professional pride, that Cap and Iron Man got past his guards.

Cap: “Avengers priority -- never leave home without it. In fact, we’ve come to offer it to you.”

Smooth. Smooth, Cap.

Although I do like that they can just march up to the guards of this company and go ‘hey let us in we’re avengers’ and its not even a ‘ok i’ll clear it with head of security hawkeye’ its ‘yeah sure go right in and do you want any paperclips?’

Anyway, Hawkeye has his pride so he tells Cap not to expect him to come crawling back after the Avengers booted him out (actually Gyrich because Gyrich wanted the Avengers to have some ding dang diversity. Its weirdly the least assholeish thing he’s ever done although he approached it very much in an asshole way).

Point being, they kicked Hawkeye out and he has a new super cool job now.

Iron Man takes this show of wounded pride in wounded stride, just asking that Hawkeye consider it and let them know when he makes a decision.

But Hawkeye doubts he’ll decide to come back to the Avengers because he’s got a good thing in this steady, respectable paying job which comes with job security and respect!

And then, suddenly struck by the realization that he, Hawkeye, is turning down a drama implosion like the Avengers to do the adult thing?? Hawkeye doesn’t like what he’s become.

And he stares in horror at the trappings of power and respectability. The sex and the drugs.

Or a Playboy magazine and a personalized coffee cup, at least.

And he decides to give Iron Man his answer right then and there.

Which, of course, involves shooting arrows. This is Hawkeye we’re talking about.

What’s amazing is that we’ll learn later this issue that he’s going to keep his security job and do Avengers on top of that (and in fairness most of the Avengers don’t have Avengers as their only thing). But he just shot an arrow through a glass door in his place of employment.

But you don’t hire Hawkeye if you don’t expect that kind of thing so I can see why it wouldn’t impact his job.

So that’s Hawkeye as a YES and Spider-Man as a ‘I’ll get back to you.’ And as the weekend arrives, it’s time for Janet van Dyne’s superheroine brunch.

And on the hill above the van Dyne house, its our old pal Fabian Stankowicz.

Remember? The Mechano-Marauder? Built a robot suit to beat up the Avengers, none of them took him that seriously? Iron Man beat him up solo without trying very hard and then got angry about Hank Pym?

Anyway, he’s back, somehow, and he’s salty about the less than dignified experience he had in issue 217. But this time, he has a new plan!

Fabian Stankowicz: “They laughed at me! Mocked me! But I’ll show the Avengers that the Mechano-Marauder is not to be toyed with! I’ll attack their weakest member when the others aren’t around! She’ll be helpless! *Heh-heh-heh*”

Well. Good luck with that, my dude.

Sue Storm-Richards, the Invisible Girl, arrives and Jan introduces her to the other prospective Avengers: Dazzler, Spider-Woman, and Black Widow.

All good candidates, really.

Especially Dazzler.

Well, Beast left and Tigra left so somebody needs to be the new funny person.

Apparently, Spider-Woman doesn’t like puns because she immediately starts getting catty with Dazzler.

Spider-Woman: “Nice going, Blaire! You’re showing all the polish and poise of a real pro!”

Dazzler: “Oh? And I suppose crawling on walls like some yucky insect is ‘professional’?”

Spider-Woman: “I sting, too”

I guess, they have some history in Dazzler’s own book that didn’t go over well. Black Widow has to lean over and tell them to cut the shit out for Jan’s sake.

But then the last invited guest shows up.

ITS A SHE-HULK!

She saw the ads and she’s come for the free food!

Relatable.

Outside, Jan’s chauffeur Mr. Carrothers sits on the limo taking a smoke break and reflecting how good he has it working for the Wasp. Good pay, casual hours. The most he can complain about is that it gets a little boring sometimes.

That’s probably tempting fate because the All-New All-Different Mechano-Marauder stomps up to the house. Remember how Fabian threw the limo last time? Mr. Carrothers remembers.

He panics and runs into the house and tries to warn the assembled heroes.

And yet.

They didn’t really leap to action, huh? I mean, I get it. Brunch.

Even after the robot fist has punched through Wasp’s frankly ludicrous window and kidnapped Dazzler, Wasp is more annoyed than anything.

Wasp: “Fabian Stankowicz, you get that thing out of my living room!”

And then has to explain to her guests that Fabian is some chump that Iron Man beat up and that he wants to make a name for himself by defeating the Avengers. And Sue is like ah yes I understand completely.

But chump or not, Black Widow decides that they should rescue Dazzler.

Dazzler: “I don’t think I need saving, folks! This guy’s just holding, not squeezing!”

And so much for the brunch bunch taking this any amount of serious.

Sue just puts up a quick invisible dome to keep Fabian from getting to the rest of them which the Mechano-Marauder instantly bonks into and bangs on impotently demanding that they let him in.

Careful, Fabian.

You’re memeing yourself.

Dazzler saves herself when she gets tired of being carried around. She does her Dazzler thing with the bright pulse of light, blinding Fabian.

He drops Dazzler but she’s caught by She-Hulk.

The blinded Mechano-Marauder drives around blindly, thinking “These women aren’t even Avengers! They can’t beat me!”

Alas, Dazzler decides the same decision she decided in #211, that she’s a singer, not a fighter.

And Sue also decides to head off, saying that she’s too busy with the Fantastic Four anyway.

Shame.

But can we talk about the sheer audacity that Jan had of trying to poach Sue from the Fantastic Four to the Avengers? The nerve! The verve!

So that’s two of her candidates declining but that still leaves Spider-Woman, Black Widow, and She-Hulk.

And unfortunately for Mechano-Marauder, the first two are the two that have decided to kick his ass a little for entertainment reasons.

Spider-Woman’s venom blast damages one of the giant robot fists and Black Widow swings around Hoth-style and trips the Mechano-Marauder into the ornamental pond.

Alas, after literally dunking a giant robot into a pond, both Spider-Woman and Black Widow turn down the offer to join the Avengers.

Black Widow has private business that are keeping her busy. And Spider-Woman doesn’t even offer an excuse.

In fairness, she has her own solo book over in California and that’s a heck of a commute. I’m actually impressed that she came all this way for brunch.

Fabian is fed up with being treated as an after-thought in his own fight scene and bursts out of the pond, yelling how he’s going to destroy them all!

All.... uh, two that’s left at this point. Yup, he sure is going to destroy all two of them.

She-Hulk has been fairly low-key this whole story, especially for She-Hulk. I’m pretty sure she came to the brunch just for the food and she hasn’t reacted much to Fabian, even when the others were. She caught Dazzler but she hasn’t had much to say since arriving. She’s mostly been standing with her hands on her hips, watching things play out.

But I guess she’s gotten tired of Fabian. Or maybe it falls to her as the last guest.

She tells him to shut up and breaks his robot suit with one punch.

Fabian has one last trick up his Mechano-Marauder sleeve but its a dumb one.

His ejector seat is actually a backup robot suit. Annnd, its so heavy that it sinks into the ground. Trapping him.

Good job, Fabian.

She-Hulk goes to give him one more punch but Wasp stops her. Because she wants a shot at him.

And wow! What a shot!

At full not small size she crosses the streams to focus her bio-power stings into one concentrated beam and blows a hole in Fabian’s escape suit.

I’ve talked before about how Wasp’s pew pew stings have seemingly gotten souped up under Shooter and I think this is another good example. I mean, she’s not blowing up a house but combining the blasts to do precision boring is another cool application we haven’t seen before.

Anyway, now Wasp goes teeny and flies into the hole she made and up into the helmet to blast Fabian in the face. So hard his helmet flies off.

Wasp: “That’ll teach ‘im for ruining my party!”

And that’s that for brunch.

Days later, Jarvis calls the State Department to request official clearance for two new members.

And we see part of the process of that. Interesting if you’re interested in the logistics of an officially recognized superhero team.

I guess what’s interesting is that Henry Peter Gyrich is still part of the process.

You’d think he’d have been replaced or something after the Avengers very publicly embarrassed him and got emancipated from him. I guess he keeps doing the necessary liaison stuff without ever talking to them.

The requests for the two new members cross Gyrich’s desk and he takes it to the White House where the request gets signed by Ronald Reagan.

(The two new members are Hawkeye and She-Hulk by the by. We see it on the paperwork. Guess Spider-Man is still thinking it over.)

Anyway, I guess its interesting that new Avengers are a matter that goes all the way up to the president.

God, I’m glad that for the modern team, Cap told the US government to fuck off because I don’t want to even think about that still being a thing.

The next day after the paperwork is signed, Hawkeye is on his way to Avengers Mansion in a cab. He’s reading a Time magazine about the change in the Avengers’ roster and reflecting that it’ll be hard to hold down two jobs but worth it because he’s missed the adventure.

Check out the Time magazine though.

The cover of this comic book issue is in-universe the cover of Time magazine! That’s neat.

But Hawkeye’s cab is suddenly cut off by a pink Cadillac.

And Hawkeye being Hawkeye doesn’t just grumble and go about his day. He commits assault. Because this is Hawkeye.

The guy that Cap and Iron Man wanted back for being a good team-player.

So he gets out of the cab and shoots the pink Cadillac with an EMP arrow that fries the car’s electrical system.

Really abusing that Avengers Priority Status already, huh, Hawkeye?

The one mistake he made is that the pink Cadillac belongs to She-Hulk. She in fact earned it by doing a car commercial for Wacky Willie’s Wheels-And-Deals so you might imagine she’s fond of it.

So she picks up the cab with Hawkeye in it and leans it against a lightpole.

And then she picks up the Cadillac on her shoulder and walks off with it.

She-Hulk knows how to make a lasting impression, I’ll say that.

But soon after he gets down from the taxi and stops in at an ER to make sure he’s not concussed, Hawkeye arrives at Avengers Mansion to rejoin the team.

Hawkeye: “Okay, folks, life can go on -- Hawkeye’s here!”

Iron Man: “And it’s about time! We were starting to get worried. What happened?”

Hawkeye: “Oh, nothin’ much -- not ‘til some freaky Amazon tried to play dominoes with my taxi!”

She-Hulk, lurking silhouetted by the window: “‘Amazon’, eh? I don’t suppose it could have been -- a green Amazon?”

That is a powerful energy you have there, She-Hulk. Powerful energy and a power move in a power suit.

And that’s how Hawkeye’s day was ruined. Also how the two new additions to the team start with bad blood.

Conflict! We gotta have it!

Wasp: “Hawkeye, She-Hulk. I’d like to officially welcome you both. From now on -- you’re one of us. We’re one of you. And we’re all -- THE AVENGERS!”

Jan’s trying a new thing where she kisses every new member. And they both have to bend down a little for her.

Also, another new Wasp costume! Wasp gonna Wasp!

This is another good, light-hearted decompression issue. The Moondragon two-parter had some yuks but also mind-control sex and Drax’s brain melting. So this time Wasp throws a brunch and Cap and Iron Man help Hawkeye escape the drudgery of an adult job.

There’s a lot of what could have been with Wasp’s guest list. What if she could convince Sue Storm to take a break from the Fantastic Four to try being on the Avengers.

She’ll join later, in the Worst Roster but she’ll join with Reed. I’m thinking more of a thing where Sue gets some time away from the family. I don’t think it could last long and it would need the Avengers and FF writer to be on the same page but I think it could be interesting - Sue getting to be on a team where she doesn’t have to be the adult in the room and doesn’t have to work alongside the family.

It’s a similar reason to why I’d like to see adult Cyclops join the Avengers. He’s so tied in with X-stuff and being the leader of X-stuff that I want to take him out of that context and see a new side of him.

Spider-Woman and Black Widow also could have been interesting. They’ll both become Avengers later. I don’t know that Dazzler ever did and she presents interesting opportunities.

The Avengers have had Wonder Man who was also trying to break into acting while being an Avenger. So Dazzler trying to pursue her singing career might just be a retread of that but what if she were more successful and was a celebrity on the team.

The Avengers kind of are celebrities but I think it’d be a different feel if they had a famous (disco) singer on the team.

Interesting stuff (for me) to think about, anyway.

Something else to talk about is the creative credits. Jim Shooter is credited for plotting but Dave Michelinie as writer. And looking ahead, Shooter is not going to be the solo writer again in the near future.

I think we’re getting to the point where Shooter’s going to be too busy with EIC duties to keep up writing the Avengers. He’s going to get plotting credits for a few more issues, probably loose threads he’s handing to other writers.

So the second Shooter run is going to end soon. Shame. Very much a shame. It wasn’t a very long run but he put a lot of energy and humor into the book.

Next time: Egghead’s back and he’s bringing a new Masters of Evil. Wow, it’s been a while since we’ve had them and they’re supposed to be the Avengers’ evil opposite team.

And Egghead is the not very impressive criminal mastermind who couldn’t beat Hank Pym so instead framed him for crime. Hopefully the new Masters rise above that level of menace.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because I’m bringing you the She-Hulk content you crave. I assume. I took a poll and one out of one person said ‘this is the She-Hulk content I crave’ and I extrapolated from that. Also you should like and reblog because She-Hulk would want you to.

[tiesandtea]

Suede fell out of bed into Britpop and Britpop controversy about Blur and bisexuality and who was doing what to who in what direction, but between episodes of public drama was glammy rock ‘n’ roll in the most classic English tradition. After years off duty, Suede is substantially re-united (without Bernard) and active and playing their first stateside gig at Coachella. 

An interview with Brett Anderson by Chris Ziegler. L.A. Record, 15 April 2011.

How did Suede and Metallica ever get together for all-night rock sessions? Brett Anderson: Our press agent sorta said, ‘Hey, Kirk Hammett is a big fan— should we get you together?’ So we went out to San Francisco to Kirk’s place and spent a lot of time being a bit naughty and playing songs in his basement. He had a studio—a little bit of a jamming room. I remember running through ‘Metal Mickey,’ we did a bit of T. Rex—we were off our faces, anyway. He’s a nice chap!

Kirk said he was struck by how normal you were and how you didn’t spank your buttocks once. I should have spanked my buttocks. He was probably very disappointed. ‘This can’t be the real Brett Anderson. He’s not spanking his buttocks.’

What Crass lyric is so close to the front of your mind at all times that you can sing it to me right this second? ‘Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do!’ I love Crass. Feeding of the 5,000 was one of my favorite records growing up. I love that record. I love all the artwork. Talking about bands that draw you into a world—Crass really created their world, and it was a really confrontational, intelligent, political world. I really responded to it as a young teenager.

What part of the Crass ethos do you hold most dear? I don’t live on a commune in Essex. But it opened my eyes—if it’s done right—how powerful political music can be. I never wrote overtly political music, but I did write music that dealt with not like party politics, but themes of poverty and alienation and I used that in songs—that was possibly inspired by Crass.

How was Suede a political band? Dealing with the politics of life. Setting our songs in a real social context. I never wanted to be a writer who waved flags for a political party, but listening to the songs you can tell I was brought up as a member of the working-class, and you can tell the songs have a very strong left-wing bias.

You said you felt there hasn’t been a definitive genre of music invented in the U.K. in the last decade, and that you feel music is meant more to placate than provoke now. Why? I do very much feel that’s the state of things. I can’t see that the last decade has created its own genre, which is a terrible shame for that generation. Not to say there hasn’t been great music. There’s amazing music! I love discovering new bands and there’s a great wave of new bands. But the biggest cultural development of the last like ten years was computer technology. It wasn’t anything to do with art and music, and that’s a shame. Even in the 90s, we had dance music—definitely a 90s genre. Maybe people have become too knowing. There’s too much of a structured sense of what’s cool and what isn’t, and that comes from magazines constantly publishing lists which contain the same five Beatles albums and this kind of thing. There’s this constant pressure to comply with this very sort of rigid set of accepted rock albums. So bands are too afraid to go outside those reference points. I sense this real fear in the music industry. A lot of it is because the industry has become a lot more corporate. People won’t take risks anymore. In the early 90s—that’s the only time I can talk about because that’s when I started—magazines were putting unusual bands on the cover. Magazines put Suede on covers before anyone had ever heard of us. Commercially, that was very ill-advised—but at least it suggested they had a sense of purpose. Now I get the sense people only back who they think are gonna win, regardless of if they actually think it’s any good or not. They will back who they think are the winners, and they will write good reviews for the bands they think are gonna sell lots of records whether they like them or not, and I think that’s a fucking terrible way to be. People are too afraid of not being cool? Or getting it wrong? No one’s willing to get it wrong. No one’s willing to stick their neck out and become a hated figure. No one’s got that kind of confidence. Everyone’s too willing to comply. It’s a terrible thing. But things go in cycles, don’t they? Maybe it’ll move into another period where people are taking chances.

When is the last time you suffered Stendhal syndrome? At the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. I was looking at the Toulouse-Lautrecs, which were absolutely amazing. I’ve never been a huge fan of Toulouse-Lautrec before, but seeing the paintings in the flesh—as it were—is just so amazingly powerful. They’re so beautifully observed. I’m not sure if I actually experienced Stendhal syndrome, but I’ve read about it and it’s an extreme reaction to beauty—that’s the closest I can imagine it to be.

What’s it actually feel like? Like drinking too much coffee. Slightly restless euphoria. Or maybe I’m getting it confused with actually drinking too much coffee. I’m a huge fan of art . I spend a lot of time in galleries and that’s my favorite period of art as well—the post-Impressionists. Paul Gauguin and those artists. I love all the medieval painters as well. People like Bruegel and Cranach and Holbein. There’s something incredibly primitive about it—Bruegel’s ‘Return of the Hunters’ is so atmospheric. What I really like about Holbein is he’s such an amazing draftsman and a great observer of human features. He could completely capture a person. You’re looking at someone who lived 500 years ago but it could be someone passing you on the street. They’re so real. I love that about Holbein’s paintings.

Did you want to try and observe things that carefully in Suede songs? It’s difficult in the framework of pop music. It isn’t a very subtle medium. It doesn’t have as much as fiction or fine art. You’re in a very rigid structure—melody and rhyme and rhythm and those things are constricting you. I don’t think pop writers can ever take it to that depth of observation. But what pop writers can do is engage at an emotional level that other artists can’t do. The pop song, when done right, is incredibly powerful. That’s partly to do with the simplicity as well. Truth in music is incredibly important, but artifice can be incred- ibly important as well—that’s something I’ve done quite consciously. Lots of the songs I’ve written for Suede have been deliberately superficial but perversely enough there’s a kind of truth in that. A sketch is powerful because you fill in the missing pieces. You fill in the framework yourself. If it’s too full, there’s no space for you to interpret it.

Francis Bacon said, ‘The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.’ Absolutely. One of the most important quotes ever about creativity. Something I’ve learned through mistakes over the years is it shouldn’t be too clear what you’re doing. Sometimes the sketch is so powerful because of the room for interpretation. As soon as you know what something is about, it somehow kills the mystery. And mystery is so important in music. That allows the song to have life beyond what it was intended for. When a writer’s writing, they have a very specific thing in mind, but they don’t know about the life of the listener. The listener applies his life to the music and there’s a new interpretation. That’s why a good song has so much power. It reaches into people’s lives. But to do that, there needs to be a sense of mystery. I’ve always tried to do that with detail. There’s this whole thing with great songwriters saying songs should be universal, but I actually think songs should be opposite—strangely specific and set in a place to make them real. I mean, still allow space for interpretation.

You said once that Suede writes about the used condom, not the beautiful bed. That kind of detail? That’s not my favorite quote I ever said—but it keeps coming back. It must resonate with people’s vision of what the band is about. It’s quite a crass way of saying it, but I suppose it’s got some sort of truth. I always wanted to document the sort of grubby side of life. I didn’t want to talk in rock cliché. ‘Baby, I love you!’ clichés. I wanted to sing about the world I saw around me, and the world I saw around me was the used condom. It was the dusty street, the flickering TV. It was that use of detail and the fact I was born in the U.K. that made me write about the U.K. in detail, and it became distorted into the cliché of what became Britpop later—but it was never this nationalistic, jingoistic intention. It was just a desire to write about the world I saw around me.

Did you have to feel like you were living a Suede song to write a Suede song? I don’t feel I deliberately changed my lifestyle. But I didn’t rein myself in. I felt justified in writing what I was writing—the right thing to do for my artistic vision was live the lifestyle I was singing about, but it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. I was living that, obviously. But you can’t live that lifestyle forever and wanna remain alive. Things have to change. I championed—well, I documented it, and then you realize that what you’re documenting is quite harmful.

Did you think you were going to end up on a prison ship like Dan Treacy? Well, toward the end of the 90s, things started getting quite dark. Life was definitely changing. I thought, ‘Well, maybe we need to veer away from something.’ I always feel I’m slightly on dodgy ground when people talk about this whole concept of the artist as a damaged character—it’s such a powerful cliché that people really wanna believe in, and I think there’s so much great art made through clarity and sobriety. The damaged artist casts a huge shadow people sometimes can’t see beyond. Me personally, as an artist now I feel much more in control of my art. Much more driven. Certainly more than I did ten years ago. But people need to believe in that sort of figure.

Jason Pierce said he started Spacemen 3 because of people like Roky Erickson and Alex Chilton—that he felt he could do what they did because they were flawed and not professional and perfect. It’s the ultimate DIY ethic, isn’t it? The ultimate punk thing? Saying it doesn’t matter how incapable or damaged or all these pejorative adjectives you wanna apply—not you can still create art, but it almost makes your art more interesting or valid or gives it an edge you wouldn’t have if you weren’t damaged? Someone like Ian Dury—the ‘cripple as artist.’ It gives the audience a fascination, I think.

You said you were making music to find community in a fucked-up world. Did you ever find that community? It’s always a search for some sort of community, isn’t it? There’s a line from one of the old songs, ‘New Generation.’ ‘We take the pills to find each other.’ A search for human … ownership or whatever. I don’t know. It’s strange to say because I’ve always conducted my career and Suede’s career almost as outsiders. I’ve never felt accepted by the music industry. I still don’t. I’ve never felt part of any sort of gang, and I never really wanted to be part of any gang. The only gang I’m part of is this weird disparate group of non-members—the ‘others’—and I’m quite happy in that role as well. I don’t jealously look at other people’s lives and wish I could be like that. I don’t have that search for community I used to have— maybe I realized the reality of things.

Does that mean it’s not out there? That it was never there? Can bands create these communities anymore? That’s the definition of a decent band. They create a community. When I answered your question, it was in a personal sense. Whether I’ve found a community. But hopefully Suede as a band created a community. That was one of our real intentions—I loved bands like the Smiths who had this world you went into, with the sleeves and the reference points. You very much immersed yourself. I wanted Suede to have that sense as well. Almost a strong Suede way of being. The Suede army, as someone once said.

If you didn’t find community, what did you find? It made my life. It gave me all those things we were talking about earlier. It gave me everything. Gave me purpose in life. I wouldn’t ever advise anyone to do what I did! I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career. 99 percent of people who go into music won’t be as lucky. It is a lot to do with luck! The fact I’ve met Bernard Butler—little things! I might never have met him, and we never would have written those songs and Suede would have been a very different band. I never just say, ‘This is what you should do!’ I was just confident and stupid enough to do what I did, and it just sort of worked! But some of the decisions I made—they were pretty rash!

Is it necessary to commit totally to being creative to be good at being creative? To jump in with no safety net? Absolutely. You’ve gotta let yourself out there. I didn’t even have an instrument to fall back on! ‘I believe I got enough of a voice to say something interesting, and I’m gonna do it.’ Confidence verging on stupidity that happened to pay off!

Does pop music defend the brave and stupid? I think so. You have to push it as far as it’ll go. Part of the reason the public loves pop music so much is the drama of the story. You have people who have no idea about the drama and just wanna listen to Phil Collins records and that’s fine, but there’s a whole other group of people that love the back story—how it’s made and why people fall out and fall in love. It’s almost treating the world of music like you’re watching a soap opera and people love that.

Why do people fall in love? Probably some sort of chemical function. I don’t wanna be unromantic about it but it fulfills a necessary function for the human race.

[mst3kproject]

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Happy Holidays, MSTies!  Your present is Episodes that Never Were are back!  Remember last year, when I said Elves was so bad I wished I’d watched the Star Wars Holiday Special instead?  Let’s find out what those words taste like.

The galaxy may be in the midst of a rebellion, but Chewbacca promised his family he will be back for Life Day, and god damn it, he’s gonna get there!  He and Han Solo dodge Imperial forces and asteroid fields on the way, but the real danger may be waiting for them at home, as Stormtroopers do a treehouse-to-treehouse search for rebel sympathizers.  It won’t be much of a holiday if Chewie arrives home only to be immediately arrested!

That sounds exciting, doesn’t it?  It even sounds like it could be made to mean something. There is perhaps a point here about inter-ethnic empathy – Life Day may be a Wookiee holiday, but Chewbacca’s alien friends still know how important it is to him and they’re gonna help him keep his promise.  We could also compare it to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  In that movie, the Martians want to celebrate Christmas but aren’t particularly interested in what it means.  They get all their information about it from pirated television and from children who don’t understand anything much more than ‘free stuff’.  We didn’t give Christmas to them, they literally stole it by kidnapping Santa.  In the Holiday Special, the Wookiees are sharing their cultural traditions with outsiders who have become part of their family – Leia’s speech at the ends notes the humans’ respect for this.

But none of that’s relevant, because this is just a bad 70’s variety hour in a Star Wars costume.  We don’t get to see claustrophobic scenes of our brave heroes hiding from the Storm Troopers.  We don’t get sweeping space battles or bickering robots or weird new planets… we don’t get anything we go to see Star Wars for.  Instead, we mostly watch the Wookiees sitting around their house passing the time as they wait helplessly for Chewbacca to get home.  This could have been neat in itself if Wookiees had an interesting culture, but they live in a Mod 70’s Treehouse and seem to spend most of their time watching television.  The brief opening sequence, in which Solo and Chewie outrun their pursuers in the Millennium Falcon, is just a tantalizing offer of chocolate on the tip of a giant turd.

The actual point of the show, as far as the people who produced it were concerned, was the various little musical numbers and comedy sequences along the way, some of which are more Star Wars-themed than others.  Most of these are presented as one or other of the characters watching them on some form of television, which often doesn’t make any sense.  The sequences themselves are usually not very well-presented and a lot of them are just downright boring, so let’s go through them one by one. Top up your eggnog, folks.  We may be here a while.

Our first setpiece is a holographic circus featuring jugglers and acrobats, which the adults use to distract Lumpy so he’ll stop bothering them – like parents at the mall letting their kids watch Paw Patrol on a tablet while they shop.  When you see televised circus acts, they’re usually filmed up close and at interesting angles, to heighten the sense of danger, and give you a good look at what’s going on.  The Star Wars Holiday Special presents it as tiny figures on a table, always shot from far away and looking down, which removes all the drama from the stunts.  Lumpy enlarges a figure, but it’s only the ringmaster.  The others remain tiny, all while this little Wookiee looms over them like a kaiju that will start stomping if it isn’t entertained.

Then we get Mark Hamill’s cameo (in which he looks weirdly like one of the puppets from Invaders from the Deep), followed by Malla’s attempt to cook Bantha Surprise by following the directions on a tv show.  I’m not very interested in cooking shows anyway, but I have a hard time imagining anybody being interested in a fake cooking show featuring fictional ingredients from other planets.  What we see on Malla’s screen comes across as a sort of parody, but not actually a funny one. I’m tempted to think Harvey Korman must have been making fun of some particular 70’s cooking show maven but I don’t begin to know who that might be.

The ‘humour’ of the sequence is supposed to come from Malla’s attempt to follow the directions even though the cook on the show has four arms and Malla only two.  I could pull some commentary on ableism in cooking and cooking shows out of this, but it would be a stretch, and nobody on the writing end was thinking about it that hard.  It’s just stupid, and so is Korman’s plastic wig.  Malla eventually turns it off in frustration, long after we’re tired of listening to it.

By the way, if you’re wondering whose stupid idea it was to set the whole thing on Kashyyyk (or, as a guy in the Special calls it, Kazook) and not have any subtitles to the Wookiee’s dialogue?  That was apparently 100% George Lucas.  The actual script and everything was in the hands of the television producers, but Lucas would not budge on the premise being Wookiee-centric.  At least he exorcised that particular demon here, instead of subjecting us to it on the big screen.

Anyway, next Art Carney drops by to deliver some Life Day presents, among which is the source of our next setpiece: a VR machine which reads Itchy’s mind to present a personalized fantasy!  This takes the form of Diahann Carroll in a sparkly feather wig, singing a song and saying things like “I am your fantasy, experience me!”  The song is okay, I guess, and Carroll has a lovely voice, but what we’re seeing is basically a boring music video.  She’s just standing there on a glittery black background, and we can’t forget that she’s singing to a geriatric Wookiee who is doing the Wookiee equivalent of jacking off to this (emphasized by the appearance of literal little swimmers in part of the sequence!).  The fact that it’s a personal fantasy plucked from his subconscious makes it feel like this was something we weren’t supposed to be privy to, like we’re looking through somebody else’s computer at his girlfriend’s nudes.

Princess Leia (also looking disturbingly puppet-like… are we sure the actual actors appeared in this, and not look-a-likes in heavy makeup?) and C3P0 get their cameo, and then there’s the single actually effective moment in the Special.  This is when we think Han Solo and Chewie are about to arrive home, ending our torment a full hour early, but no, it’s the Storm Troopers!  This bit isn’t fantastic, but it does work.  Then, sadly, we’re on to the next variety act.

This is a holographic music video which Carney shows to the Imperial troops as a demonstration that the device he has brought Malla for Life Day is harmless.  It’s Jefferson Starship moaning out a rock song, in which I can understand at best one word in three.  The visuals are in intense soft-focus that’s probably supposed to be artsy.  The costumes (what I can see of them) aren’t any more Star-Wars-y than anything else bands wore in the 70’s.  And the song sounds like something you’d find in the ‘easy’ setting on Rock Band.  Why does Black Helmet sit there and watch the whole thing when he’s supposed to be searching every house on Kashyyyk/Kazook for rebel sympathizers?

The version of the Special currently available on YouTube, which tragically lacks the commercials, has a lot of comments along the lines of this is what you hallucinate after buying Death Sticks from that guy on Coruscant.

To drive the point home, the next thing we see is Lumpy watching a cartoon about Han Solo and Chewbacca crash-landing on an ocean planet while searching for a mystical talisman that makes things invisible (I wish they hadn’t actually shown this object – then I could have made jokes about it being the One Ring).  This sequence is generally regarded as the best thing in the Special, and it introduced Boba Fett and provided some characterization for him.  It is definitely true that this is the only segment with a plot, and with its weird aliens and grubby outposts it feels a lot more like Star Wars than anything else going on here.

The main thing that keeps me from enjoying this segment is that it just looks weird.  The animators use exaggerated squash-and-stretch on the droids, even more so than on the living characters, which makes them look like they’re made out of jell-o. Princess Leia looks like something out of a cheap 60’s manga and Luke like he was drawn by a twelve-year-old based on an action figure that wasn’t actually of Luke Skywalker.  Luke has no pupils, which is very distressing, but not as distressing as when C3P0 blinks.  Even worse, as far as I can tell Han Solo has no eyes at all.

The design of the alien planet in this sequence is pretty cool, though.  It appears to be entirely covered in a kind of goopy ocean and the creatures that live in it are neat-looking, even if not terribly plausible.  Animation is really a great medium for fantasy and science fiction, because it levels the playing field: we’re not thinking about the special effects because everything on screen looks equally unreal.  This is something Disney, who used it to such beautiful effect in Lilo and Stitch, totally forgot at just about the same time as they acquired the rights to Star Wars.  Oh, for what could have been.

I want to note here that the average review on this blog is about as long as what you’ve read so far.  We’re only about two thirds of the way through the Special, though, and I can’t really divide a holiday review up into two weeks.  Therefore, consider this your permission to take a break and go snag another latke or whatever you’re snacking on, and then we’ll continue.

There’s one fun bit of background social commentary in the animated sequence, too: the only way for humans to survive the virus is to hang them upside-down so their brains will get enough oxygen despite their weakened hearts.  In the city there’s an advertisement for the cure – and the upside-down human pictured in the ad is, of course, a woman in her underwear.  The image isn’t detailed and it’s not the focus of the shot, so I don’t think it’s an actual piece of gratuitous cheesecake.  Apparently somebody at Nelvana Ltd was just salty about the advertising industry.

The self-contained story in the cartoon makes sense within itself. It justifies Fett’s fearsome reputation far better than anything in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, and the characters seem to be in-character even when they’re off-model.  The problem is with it as a part of the framing story about the Imperial troops searching Chewbacca’s house!  The Special is very explicit that this is not something that’s actually happening in the real world at the same time as the other events – it is a cartoon Lumpy is watching on TV.  Why, in a galaxy controlled by the Empire, would there be cartoons using the real names of real rebel operatives and presenting them as the heroes?  If nobody’s supposed to know Boba Fett is connected with the Empire, why does the show blow his cover?

More importantly, where can I get one of those awesome giant stuffed Banthas Lumpy has in his room?  I don’t know if that’s a real toy that was available in the late 70’s, but Comic Images does make something similar and you can buy them at Wal-Mart or Toys R Us.

While cleaning up the mess the Stormtroopers made of his room, Lumpy watches an instructional video of how to put together some kind of radio. This features Harvey Korman as an android who keeps getting jammed.  Like cooking shows, instructional videos aren’t very interesting unless you’re trying to follow the directions – since we can’t follow the directions, this one is pointless to begin with.  The ‘joke’ is not funny, and lines like “every one of the ten thousand terminals on your circuit breaker module is a different colour” might be amusing when written down but they just don’t work when somebody says them aloud.  Fortunately, it doesn’t last long.

Then we get on to what’s probably the second-best thing in the Special, the bit where we learn that the Mos Eisley cantina is owned by Bea Arthur.  It would be easily the most expensive thing in the Special were it not made up of b-roll footage and re-used puppets from Episode IV.  It’s also kind of got a plot, in that a guy with a baking soda volcano on top of his head (this is certainly an efficient way to get the alcohol directly to your brain) is trying to confess his love to Bea while she just wants to get on with running her business.  Eventually he gets his heart broken and leaves, and then the Empire shuts the bar down, so Bea throws everybody out with a song.

I have to admit, in The Force Awakens when Han Solo mentioned a female friend who ran a ‘watering hole’… there was a moment there when I was half-expecting it to be Bea Arthur’s character.  I’m relieved that it wasn’t, but also just the slightest bit disappointed.  We had to wait for The Mandalorian to get a proper Holiday Special callback.

This bit almost had a chance to say something with its ‘thwarted romance’ plot.  Usually such a thing in a tv show would get what the male character would consider a happy ending.  He would prove to his love interest that being cared for is important, she would realize that love is better than money, and they would metaphorically ride off into the sunset.  What it looks like we’re going to get here instead is something more like the episode of South Park where Butters fell in love with the Hooters waitress. Harvey Korman’s character (yes, he plays three different characters in this Special and this was apparently supposed to be a selling point) realizes his crush is based on a misunderstanding, and while it makes him sad, he’s not going to be an asshole about it.

Nor is Bea’s character vilified for rejecting him, which she does tactfully but firmly, as if she’s gone through this many times before. He’s just a minor annoyance in her day before she goes on to worry about bigger problems, like getting everybody to obey that Imperial curfew.  Then, however, at the last second he pops up from behind the counter after everybody has left – and that’s where the segment ends.  I think we’re supposed to assume they got together after all, but I kind of hope she just threw him out with the rest of them.  No means no, damn it.

Bea Arthur’s Go Home Song is to the tune the Cantina Band was playing in Episode IV, so it pretty much goes without saying it’s the catchiest piece in the Special.

Then, finally, it’s time to celebrate Life Day!  The Wookiees hold up some glowing Christmas balls, then dress in red robes and walk through outer space into a, uh, wormhole, I guess, that takes them to the base of the giant tree from Avatar.  There it’s time for our final setpiece, the culmination of this whole ninety-minute ordeal… Princess Leia sings!  The Life Day Carol is to the tune of the main Star Wars theme, and the lyrics sound like something from a generic Christmas album you get free if you buy three cards at Hallmark.  Carrie Fisher is a decent singer but she looks like she’s as glad this is over as we are.

Much like Howard the Duck, The Star Wars Holiday Special is a production in which they made all the worst decisions they possibly could.  Focusing on the Wookiees at home rather than following Han Solo and Chewbacca through the action killed the whole thing at the starting gate.  Then that plot is nothing but a frame on which they can hang the various variety acts, and none of those are very good.  It’s only towards the end of the sequence that what we’re seeing even has anything to do with Star Wars.  Watching it is an ordeal on the order of an un-riffed Coleman Francis film.  It’s so bad, it’s not even something people get together and watch like they do Manos or The Room.

So why do we still have it?  The Holiday Special was only broadcast once, and was met by fathomless loathing from critics, Star Wars fans, and ordinary people alike. It has never been released in any other format (Andrew Borntreger of badmovies.org has a story about how Lucas had him thrown out of a Q&A panel for asking if it were getting a DVD release), so the fact that you can find it on YouTube today is down to some nameless hero who recorded it on their newfangled VCR back in 1978.  That person then showed it to friends, apparently on the basis of oh my god, you guys, this is so bad, you have to see it, and then because misery loves company they copied it to show to their friends. What we have today is copies of copies of copies of copies, like fragments of Sappho only with VHS artefacts instead of holes in the papyrus (and without the artistic vision).

Humans like to preserve remarkable things.  Sappho we’ve preserved because it’s remarkably good, but the Star Wars Holiday Special we preserve because it’s remarkably bad.  Lucasfilm has tried very hard to stamp it out.  George Lucas himself has said that if he could he would gather up every copy that exists and smash them with a sledgehammer… but we won’t let him do it. We keep copying the Special and passing it along, in a way that’s very familiar to MSTies in particular.  We’re circulating the tapes!  Why this tape in particular?

I don’t claim to know, but my working theory is that it keeps us humble.  We are a species that can produce great things when we put our minds to it.  We landed on the moon.  We eradicated smallpox.  We built the Taj Mahal and the Sagrada Familia.  We wrote The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Einstein Field Equations and the aforementioned works of Sappho.  But for all that, we are also capable of throwing the same kind of effort into creating utter disasters – and the Star Wars Holiday Special is the rare example of an unmitigated disaster that didn’t actually hurt anybody.  It reminds us to take a step back and look at what we���re doing without getting too invested in it, but does so while being harmless and at times humorous.

Would I still rather watch this than Elves?  You bet your shaggy Wookiee ass I would.  The Star Wars Holiday Special may be longer, but it doesn’t leave nearly such a bad taste in my mouth.

I will leave you with this: the Special was, as I mentioned, only broadcast once, in 1978 – that means its signal is now forty-one light years from Earth and still going.  There are several hundred stars within that bubble, around two dozen of which are known to have planets.  Somewhere out there, aliens might be getting their first signal from humanity right now and it’s the Star Wars Holiday Special.

[fmdjaewonarchive]

► ‘our songs’ audition.

date(s): 20 july 2020 mentions of: jiah, ash, andy & sooyeon (all briefly namedropped) word count: 1617 warnings: n/a details: jaewon decides to audition for ‘our songs’ and somehow, manages to already stress himself out before the show has even begun. he also covers ‘q’ by onewe (note: the original version of the song features hwasa but this stage was my main reference point for this)

it’s not that jaewon has been putting this off but that’s exactly what he has been doing. which, truly, is stupid. he’s the one that decided he wanted to sign himself up from this, it’s one of the very few things in his idol schedule that he gets to weigh in on.

unlike his own music these days.

oh right, that’s why he’s been so stressed about this. dimensions entertainment had kickstarted his 2020 with a big fuck you and the announcement that they’d be taking away his creative freedom for something that would hopefully be more… lucrative than his own work. and their strategy had been proven effective, the sheer commercial success of fiancé has been a thorn in his side, a constant mocking reminder that maybe, jaewon doesn’t know shit about making music after all.

it has also only solidified dimensions position meaning that truly, jaewon could write any creative freedom apart from the odd co-writing jobs for unity and songs he featured on goodbye.

until our songs came along.

sure, the company hasn’t said it in that many words, nowhere has jaewon actually gotten the confirmation that maybe, if he does well on this, they’ll consider letting him weigh in on his own solo work again. but hey, there surely is no harm in taking some initiative right?

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

which circles right back to where jaewon is right now, in the home studio of his and soo’s apartment at some awfully late hour at night -because apparently his brain does not function during common office hours- to sit down and record this video for once and for all.

(for the 5th time this week but really, who is keeping count).

jaewon is glad he’s in a space so familiar to him as his own home, it takes away just a little bit of the stress and if he tries hard enough, he might even be able to forget just how much he has riding on this already, a pressure that for some forsaken reason he’s put on this all by himself.

he turns on the camera before leaning back into the office chair. it might look relaxed almost but anyone that knows jaewon also knows that the pen he’s twirling in his left hand is to keep the nerves at bay. luckily enough he can pass it off as a means of concentration for now.

the questions are displayed on the monitor of his computer in such way that jaewon can read them without having to make an obvious effort to lean forward. he has no answers written down but truly, he has mulled over these questions for so long by now that there is no need for that anyway. jaewon knows what he wants to say and he knows himself well enough that he can’t truly rehearse those words without sounding stiff and insincere.

“what inspires me to write songs?” he allows a brief silence to settle, a light frown on his face. “i’m not the best with words, not when i have to say them at least. i’ve always had struggles communicating, i just kinda… froze up. writing has helped a lot with that, it’s made it easier for me to put my feelings into words and to get messages across i wouldn’t have been able to get past my lips otherwise. i’ve written songs about difficult subjects in the past and hearing back from people that those resonate with them has really been keeping me motivated to keep pushing the bar further for myself, even if it’s a little hard sometimes.”

“what is my favorite song that i worked on... that’s kinda impossible to answer. i’ve been very fortunate to release quite some music already and to work with a lot of really talented artists. they’re all very different songs too so it’s hard to compare them so i don’t think there is really one ultimate favorite. if i had to name a few though-” he let his voice trail off for a second. “i collab earlier this year on we don’t talk together, i really enjoyed that song and working on that, i think it turned out well. oh and i got to feature and work on jiah-sunbaenim’s easy which has been released recently. i don’t get to take too much credit for that one though, taeyong-sunbaenim worked on that too.” his free hand moved to rest under his chin. “if i’m thinking about my solo work though i’d probably have to say am 4.44 and rebirth, both from my biorhythm album.” jaewon didn’t know if it was necessary to name what album they were from, especially since he hadn’t gotten to write a single word on love language but it would have to do for now. “i think those two are kinda a package deal for me? am 4.44 is about a pretty low point in my life, just mentally and all and rebirth is kind of the process of recovery from that.”

“songwriters i look up to? i worked with a lot of people and they all brought their own strengths to the table, all of those experiences have been very useful and incredibly pleasant.” he nods absent-mindedly. “i’d say i look up andy-sunbaenim, i got to work with him twice, on both bermuda triangle and on his latest album, i really like his style, i feel like it’s a bit different from my own but i do think they go well together. i also admire sooyeon from wish a lot, she’s very talented at a very young age. she balances both wish’ style and her own very well i think, i have a lot of respect for that.”

“my goals as a songwriter? i think to continue to grow till i can hold my ground by myself amongst other songwriters. i’ve learned a lot from all the people i already worked like i said before but i don’t think i’m near their level yet. i want to reach the point where i can continuously put out high-quality songs for other artists. like, i know my own sound and songs that work well for me but i think the real skill is being able to write well for someone other people. i want to be able to do that someday.”

“what do i hope to achieve by participating on this show?” to tell dimensions to go fuck themselves, jaewon thinks bitterly. but he can’t say that, not now he’s supposed to be all camera friendly. “i want to prove myself. towards other people on the one hand of course, you know, get my name out there and show everything i’ve learned up until this point, show that i know what i’m doing.” and yes, of course, other people in this case could just as easily be replaced with dimensions entertainment but there was no hard evidence for that. not like anyone was aware of jaewon challenging his label, not even dimensions itself. “but also to prove myself towards me. i’ve been writing for a while now, mostly when i felt like it or when i had an idea stuck in my head. i want to push those boundaries, to write specific themes within specific timeframes instead of just on a whim. i think that’s an important step i have to take for myself.” jaewon nods firmly. if he didn’t know himself so well he could believe it looks confident even.

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

after he pauses the recording, the first thing jaewon does is roll his shoulders and let out a deep sigh. he’s definitely not an interview person he can’t help but think to himself, at least the worst part is over now.he takes a sip from the water bottle on his desk, letting his eyes fall shut for a second as he leans against his seat. just a brief moment of recovery before he forces himself back into action.

the interview might have been the worst part but he still has a cover to record.

first he gets up to retrieve the electric guitar they keep in their home studio, getting it plugged in and getting the microphone all set up, before pulling up the audio file from his desktop and hitting record on his camera.

there are some changes to the original song. after all, onewe is a band and q is not a rap song but jaewon toyed around with audio some, emphasizing on electronics of the backing track rather than the instruments. he has taken some liberties on expanding on the rap parts in the verses and together with the monotone, repetitive chorus it makes it sound so much more like a laidback hiphop song rather than the band song it was before.

another big change is made to the bridge. jaewon has taken out the vocals at the beginning of the instead opting to extend the guitar solo that follows. which is where the electric guitar on his lap comes in. admittedly, it’s a risky choice because while jaewon doesn’t have to worry about hitting notes he can’t reach, he also isn’t as gifted of a guitar player as he pretends to be.  it works though, maybe it’s because he’s been practicing this particular riff until he could barely move his fingers and he has to admit, it sounds pretty good.

he finishes recording, switching the camera off nearly immediately after and then spends another hour rewatching both videos -the interview and the song cover- fixated on finding a fatal flaw, any reason to tank this whole idea and just not send in his audition for the show.

he doesn’t find it.

so instead he sends it in before finally calling it a night.

 here goes nothing.

[seeaddywrite]

malex + “Please, be gentle with me. I’ll break if you aren’t careful enough.” please! 💕

this one was really hard, because neither of our boys are generally the openly mushy type! but i tried – i hope you enjoy! :) & look, a rare sighting of Alex’s pov on this blog! also, this one is a companion fic to this one. 

warnings for ptsd, panic attacks, self-hatred & an unreliable narrator. 

The thing that no one tells a stupid kid about to enlist isn’t that going to war fucks you up — everyone knows that. It’s broadcast through the media, in television shows and romance novels, and hell, there are even commercials about vets with post-traumatic stress disorder. As a kid, Alex was privy to the more intimate details of what that looks like; he’s pretty sure Jesse Manes wasn’t born with a mindset that allowed breaking his own son’s bones. That, Alex figures, came from what he did to survive during his own tours of duty.

Alex doesn’t like to admit that he’s got anything in common with the psychopath who fathered him, but it’s hard to ignore, lately. As a kid, despite the constant fear that his own father was going to go too far and actually kill him one day, Alex was pretty optimistic. He had plans — leaving Roswell came first, followed by pursuing a music career in a real city, without the small minds that came from small town living. Later, it had been finding a gorgeous, guitar-playing guy to create a life with far, far away from his family and the insanity that seems to run rampant in their genes. Because young Alex wasn’t like his father, or his grandfather, or even his oldest brother. He was sane, and he wasn’t going to get sucked into the violence and rigidity of a military existence chasing aliens.

Military service changed all of that. Some of it for the better — Alex isn’t stupid enough to say that there was nothing good about his time in the Air Force. Enlisting showed him the aptitude he hadn’t known he had for computers, had introduced him to some of his closest friends, and given him the skills and courage he needed to realize that Jesse Manes wasn’t nearly as powerful as he liked his children to think. He’s proud of his service.

Unfortunately, pride isn’t enough to stop him from realizing that not all of his internal changes were positive ones. Some days, when he looks in the mirror, all he can see is the negative — how the circles beneath his eyes tell everyone of his newly complicated relationship with sleep, and how the crutch he leans on constantly denotes weakness to anyone who looks at him. But, more than the physical, Alex hates the emotional changes  from who he used to be. Anxiety has become an inconstant companion, coming and going as it pleases and leaving him shaking and pale for no external reason. Even when he’s feeling stable, it’s so much harder to feel excited, or even content. Every happy moment is constantly overshadowed by the question of when it will end, and Alex loathes that more than anything.

Because while everything else has changed, his feelings for Michael Guerin are still as deep and passionate as ever, and Alex can’t enjoy it. He tries, God, he tries. But every time he thinks he can do it, when he’s confident in his own ability to be what Michael needs, something sparks that same anxiety that has sent him running a hundred times before. Michael kisses him at the reunion? Alex panics when Isobel Evans might find out. Michael takes him on an actual date, in public, and stares at him with obvious affection, uncaring of who can see — Alex lets his father get under his skin and hurts Michael enough that he can actually see the heartbreak in his eyes. One would think that after all that, Michael would punch Alex when he comes around, asking questions about his past and who he is, but the other man still lets him in … and, yet again, despite his intentions, Alex runs away as soon as he realizes there’s a chance that Michael might abandon him. It’s a miracle that Michael doesn’t seem to hate him even now; God knows that Alex hates himself.

It’s a cycle he can’t break, and Alex is resigned to the fact that he’s not meant to figure it out. He works alongside Michael and the others, helping them fight back against Project Shepherd and his father as his penance, trying to show Michael how much he means to him without trampling all over his heart, but some days, he aches with wanting the other man’s arms around him. On the hard days, when he hurts to much to wear his prosthetic and can’t leave his house, or when he’s curled on the bathroom floor, gasping through the aftermath of a nightmare and trying to ground himself with the stupid techniques his military-appointed shrink assigned him before deeming him fit for duty, Alex always has to resist calling Michael. He knows he would come. Of course he would. It’s like a law of the universe: whenever Alex needs him, Michael Guerin comes. So Alex can’t ask, can’t need him, because he’s got nothing to give back.

So the night that the guy Maria has nicknamed ‘Racist Hank’ punches a guy and sends him sprawling into Alex’s bad leg while he’s spending some time with the others outside of working and running for their lives, Alex sucks it up when the immediate throb in his residual limb sends him spiraling. Pain doesn’t always have this effect on him; Alex’s usually as calm and competent with pain management as he is with hacking. But every ache in that leg sends him straight back to Baghdad, to the crash and the adrenaline, to waking up in a German hospital to find himself missing a limb – 

Alex cuts off that line of thinking quickly. It’s not quite a panic attack, not yet, though he knows that if he doesn’t get a handle on himself, it’ll become one. He’s gotten good at hiding his weaknesses behind a mask of competency and detachment, and it works that night, too. Liz glances at him once, from where she leans against Max’s arm, but she only flashes him a smile. Michael, though – Michael’s eyes, as always, track his every movement, and seem to know way too much. Alex does his best to ignore the fog creeping into his mind and the way his fingers shake when he releases the beer bottle in his hands. He keeps up with the conversation around the table for a few minutes, nodding when Isobel declares that they all need more drinks, and smiling woodenly when Max kisses Liz on the mouth – but soon, he can’t manage it. It takes all of his focus to stay seated, to keep his stomach from overturning. His leg aches, though Alex can’t be sure that it’s a physical pain, and he’s desperate to leave before his heart beats out of his chest and shows everyone what a coward he is. 

Salvation comes in Michael’s quiet voice. “Hey, you good, man?” 

Alex wants to answer. He simultaneously wants to insist that he’s fine and walk out of the bar under his own power and to burrow into Michael’s arms and hide there until he can breathe normally again. Fuck. He flinches at Michael’s calloused hand on his, and guilt at the way the other man yanks his hand back as if stung adds itself to the heap of negative emotion in his head. 

Michael doesn’t say anything about that, though. Those uncannily perceptive eyes just watch him as Alex struggles to find his voice, to find any words to get him out of this situation – 

And again, Michael saves him. “You want to get out of here?”

Alex’s answering nod is desperate, and he’s not sure he cares. His breath is starting to stutter, and it’s going to become impossible to maintain any sort of dignity if he starts hyperventilating in the middle of Maria’s bar. After all of his hard work to show his friends that he’s fine, that he came back from war with all of his faculties, and that they don’t need to worry about him, that would definitely be a blow to his pride. And at this point, Alex feels like pride is one of the few things he’s got left. 

Michael turns around to talk to the others; Alex doesn’t know what he says, but when the other man turns around expectantly, he finds himself stuck in the chair. The low-level ache in his leg is still there, and he doesn’t want to stand – he’s not sure he could, even, without help. So, swallowing past the lump in his throat, he waves at his leg in vague explanation and asks hoarsely, “Think you could give me a hand?” 

He’s expecting Michael to haul him out of the chair, and part of him is excited for the prospect – it gives him an excuse to let Michael hold him together, if only for the few minutes it takes to make it out the door. But instead, Michael just puts his hands out and waits. 

It’s harder than he’d like to reach out and take the offer. It’s stupid, since Alex is the one who asked for help, but this – this feels like he’s asking for too much, admitting to weakness. But Alex reaches out anyway, because he can’t fall apart in the middle of the Pony, and he trusts Michael. 

They make it out the door pretty quickly after Alex throws a half-hearted wave at the rest of their friends, and he all but falls into Michael’s chest when they’re alone on the dark street. Alex presses his face into Michael’s neck, inhaling the familiar scent of sweat and motor oil and laundry detergent like it’s smelling salts or something. It works – or maybe it’s just the warmth of Michael’s body, and the sturdiness of his muscles, holding Alex up while he can’t quite manage it alone. 

“Hey,” Michael’s voice is low, and Alex can feel it rumble through his chest. “You okay?” 

Alex chuckles, and knows the sound isn’t a happy one. “You already know the answer to that.” His voice sounds raspy, like he’s been screaming – and Alex supposes he has, though the noise has all been internal. 

“You checked out on us during that fight. You faked it pretty well for a while, but I – I could tell something was wrong.” Of course he could. Michael’s always been able to read Alex so, so well. “You want me to take you home? Maria won’t let anyone tow your SUV.”  The offer sounds so good that Alex’s exhales in relief, his pounding heart easing slightly at just the thought of being in a safe, isolated place with Michael. 

“I can –” But Michael doesn’t let him finish, and the accusation that Alex is trying to push him away again, to insist that he’s fine when it’s blatantly obvious that he’s falling apart at the seams, stings. He goes rigid as his lungs stop cooperating, and he yanks himself out of Michael’s embrace, nearly tumbling down to the sidewalk when his weight is put back on the prosthetic. He catches his balance, though, and looks at Michael even when he’d rather avert his gaze. 

“I was just going to say that I can send her a text tomorrow and ask her to have someone drive it to the cabin,” he tells Michael in a soft voice. “I’d appreciate the ride. If you don’t mind.” It sounds like every too-polite interaction they’ve had over the last few months, since Alex insisted they be friends, and maybe that’s what Michael wants. The way he stomps over to the driver’s seat of the truck doesn’t really seem to support that theory, but Alex ignores it and clambers into the other seat, biting down hard on his cheek when he’s forced to use the prosthetic to push himself into the cab. 

Once inside, Alex sits with his hands clenched on his thighs to keep himself from reaching out to Michael as a way to anchor himself. His breath is once again coming too quickly, and he has to keep his mouth shut, because he’s not sure what embarrassing things would fall out of it, otherwise. But Michael isn’t content with the silence, and Alex ends up telling him what happened at the bar, about the panic that creeps up on him sometimes for no real reason. He expects to be swamped with embarrassment, but Michael’s calm assertion that panic doesn’t always need a reason keeps the mortification at bay. 

“Anything I can do to help?” 

The casual question, the offer insinuated within it so easily, makes Alex’s eyes sting. There are a thousand things he could say, each of them dismissive and right, because he has no business dragging Michael into the shitshow that is his life right now, not again. But he can’t stop himself from grabbing at Michael’s hands as soon as the engine turns off in front of the cabin, even when he realizes that the strength of his grip is probably hurting him. He stares intently into Guerin’s eyes, letting him see pat the walls and the facade and into the swirling anxiety and desperation that’s doubling as his mind. 

But letting him in isn’t enough. Michael wants the words, and Alex doesn’t know if he can give him that. “Don’t make me ask,” he begs in a whisper. Don’t make me admit it. Just - please be gentle with me. I’ll break if you’re not careful enough, and if you put me back together, I’ll never be able to let you leave. 

Alex doesn’t know if Michael’s being stubborn, or if he’s finally hit the point of no return with the man – maybe this is when he’s going to get shoved out of Michael’s life, instead of the other way around. He’d deserve it, he knows he would. But he says the words anyway, when pushed, spilling all of his anxieties and unwanted desires when Michael points out that he’s not a mind-reader. His hands shake harder than ever as he speaks, but there are strong fingers supporting them, clasping them against Michael’s chest and holding him steady, so Alex gets through it. 

When Michael whispers against his hair that he’ll stay, that Alex is okay, the latter gives up and weeps openly into the strong shoulder beneath him. The embrace is exactly what he needs in that moment, strong and gentle, warm and soft, with Michael’s ridiculous curls tickling his damp cheeks. Alex isn’t ashamed to admit that he clings, his fingers scrabbling against the collar of Michael’s button-down shirt to get at skin. 

“Easy,” Michael murmurs again, and there’s a hand against his back, rough fingers stroking along Alex’s spine. “I’ve got you.” It’s impossible to disbelieve him like this, with their chests pressed together to tightly that Alex can feel Michael’s heartbeat against his own. He nods jerkily, his own hands finally giving up on the buttons and sliding down Michael’s sides to delve under the fabric and press against the flat, strong planes of his stomach. While normally he’d be appreciating the other man’s physique, this time, it’s all about the warmth and comfort another man’s skin against his brings. 

“You ready to go inside?” Michael asks, an indeterminable amount of time later. Alex’s breathing has returned to normal, and his hands no longer shake – and, most importantly, he can think straight again. 

He nods once, starting to disentangle himself from Michael. The look in the other man’s eyes makes him pause, though, and Alex raises an eyebrow. “You said you’d stay,” he says plaintively, when it’s clear that Michael’s questioning his welcome in Alex’s home. “I’m hoping you meant longer than half an hour. Especially since I spent most of that time ruining your shirt.” Alex jerks his chin at the wet patch on the shoulder of Michael’s flannel, his ears feeling hot with shame. 

“That what you want?” Michael asks, and there’s a wariness in his voice that makes Alex furious with himself all over again. If he hadn’t left before, over and over again, Michael wouldn’t need to ask that question. He would trust Alex the first time – but that’s Alex’s cross to bear. 

“You’re what I want,” Alex says firmly, catching Michael’s good hand in his again. He’s learned his lesson tonight about verbalizing what he wants, and while he fully anticipates forgetting it the next day for his dignity’s sake, tonight, he’s willing to keep talking if it proves to Michael that he’s serious. “I want you to stay with me tonight. In my bed. And tomorrow, too, if you want – you might change your mind, because I don’t sleep worth a damn much, anymore – but yeah, Michael. That’s what I want.” He catches his lower lip between his teeth, chewing at it uncertainly before adding, “Please?” 

Michael leans back and unlocks the truck’s doors, then disappears outside for a long minute. Alex’s heart begins to pound as he realizes that he might have just been rejected – but before he can figure it out, Michael’s back, on his side of the vehicle this time, and opens the door. “I’m thinking pancakes for breakfast,” he says, once both of Alex’s feet are on the ground, and he staring up at Michael, hopeful and confused all at once. “C’mon, Alex,” he finishes, shaking his head. “Don’t look at me like that, like you don’t already know the answer. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me to stay for ten years – you can’t really think I’d say ‘no,’ now.” 

Alex’s eyelids fall closed for a moment in pure, unadulterated relief, and once again, he tucks himself into Michael’s arms, trusting that he’d hold him upright. Because, there it was in action, the single law of their universe: whenever Alex needs him, Michael Guerin is always there.

[lovemesomesurveys]

What are you planning to do tomorrow? Tomorrow is Halloween, but I’m not doing anything special. I’ll just watch scary movies, which I’ve been doing all month, and chill with my family. Probably get some takeout. Are you comfortable with your height? I wish I was a little bit taller. Ha, cue Skee-lo “I Wish.” Last text received? My dad letting me know he was on his way home from work yesterday. Whats your favorite subject in school? My favorite was always English. Many of my psych courses in college were as well, which is what I majored in. Whats your least favorite subject in school? Me and math never got along. Are you afraid of heights? Yes.

Are you afraid of the dark? I sleep with my TV on because I can’t have it be completely dark. Or quiet. Are you a jealous person? I feel envy more. I haven’t felt jealous in a long time. Do you miss anyone right now? There’s a few someones I’ll always miss.  How do you feel about your hair? I hate it right now. I badly need to get it dyed, trimmed, and styled.  Do sleep with a stuffed animal? I have 3 that sit on my bed. Do you sleep with the light on? I sleep with the TV on for a little sound and light. Do you sleep with the fan on? Yes. Were you happy when you woke up today? I never wake up happy. I wake up feeling like a zombie. Have you ever laughed so hard you cried? Yeah. Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard. Do you drink coffee? Duhhh. Do you find piercings attractive? No. I don’t mind some, I just don’t find them particularly attractive. Do you find tattoos attractive? Same thing I said about piercings.  When is your birthday? July 28th. How long are you on the computer? I spend a lot of time on here. Do you watch a lot of TV? Yeah. It’s on as background noise a lot, but I’ll tune in and out to it. I do have my shows I watch and am into, though. Or if there’s a movie I like that’s on. I multitask between that and being on the computer. What was the last movie you watched? On TV it was Halloween (2007) yesterday and in theaters it was Joker last week. What was the last TV show you watched? Catfish. Do you curse in front of your parents? No. Are you slowly drifting away from someone close? That happened already with a lot of people these past few years. :/ Do you like your phone? Yeah. Have you ever taken a road drip? Yes. Are you happy right now? No. Do you have a crush on anyone? No. Have you ever written a story? Yeah. I used to write short stories when I was like 13/14. Man, I wish I still had those. What are you listening to right now? An ASMR video. Do you watch American Idol? No. I did when it first started and many seasons after that, but one the original judges started leaving I lost interest. Whats your favorite number? 8. Whats the last thing you ate? Ramen. If you were a crayon what color would you be? Gray.  How is the weather right now? Nice and cold.  Are you too shy to ask someone out? There isn’t anyone I want to ask out, but yeah I’m never the one to make the first move. What were you doing before this? Another survey. Do you have any pets? I have a 2 year old German Shepherd/Lab mix named Princess Leia. Have you ever been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? Yeah. Are you still friends with someone from kindergarten? No. Do you like to travel by plane? I’ve only done it twice, but I might be traveling via plane next year. :O Do you use chapstick? Not often enough. I should. When did you last cry? A few days ago. What did you do today? So far just a few surveys and watched a few ASMR videos. Do you drink a lot of water? I need to drink more. I only drink like 1-2 bottles a day. What was the last website you visited? Google. How long do you think you will live? Blah. What do you spend most of your money on? Clothes. What did you eat for lunch today? I haven’t had lunch, yet, but I’m sure I’ll have a sandwich like I usually do. Do you eat breakfast? Usually. Do you eat junk food every day? I guess ramen could be considered junk food and I eat that like every night. Otherwise, no I’m not a snacker like I used to be. My appetite changed a lot a few years ago and I have some eating issues. How’s your life going lately? Blah. Do you like the winter time? Love it. Have you ever had to get your blood drawn? Countless times now. Do like eating mashed potatoes? Yesss. Are you a good cook? I make a pretty good bowl of ramen, ha. What is the most important thing to you? God and my family. Are you trying to avoid liking somebody at the moment? No. I don’t have an interest in anyone like that currently. When was the last time someone put you on the spot? Surveys like to do that. Do you lie about your age? No. I have no reason to. I’m 30 and old, ha. Have you ever been stung by a bee? No, thankfully. Who was the last person you high fived? Probably my mom. Who made you mad today? No one has. Do you like whip cream? Yeah, I like it in hot chocolate and like latte/mochas/cappuccinos. I don’t like whipped cream frosting, though. Give me buttercream. Do you know how to swim? Nope. Are you afraid of falling in love? Yes.  Could you go a whole month without cursing? Yeah. I don’t cure a lot anyway. Are you close to your mother? Very. Are you close to your father? No. We don’t have a bad relationship, but it’s not like the one my mom and I have. It’s just different. Do you miss your past? I miss a lot of things about my past. Are you any good at math? Nope. Do you look at the keyboard when you type? No. Who hugged you last? My mom. Who’s one person you can tell everything to? Ya’ll. ha. Do you keep things bottled up inside? I keep to myself a lot “in real life”, but I share a lot in surveys. Has anyone let you down lately? Just myself as always. Do you call anyone by their last name? No. Have you ever been called a bad influence? No. Do you have a lucky number? I don’t believe in luck, but I have a favorite number: 8. What scares you the most? Losing my loved ones, never getting better/getting worse, and never doing anything with my life and just wasting away. What did you do today? Just a few surveys and watched a few ASMR videos so far. It’s only 3:22AM. Why do you feel the way you feel? Good question! I’d sure like to know what the hell is wrong with me. What was the last thing you put in your mouth? Starbucks Doubleshot. What woke you up this morning? My body will wake itself up. Do you have a best friend to lean on? I have my family. Do you ever have wierd confusing dreams? All the time. How is your hair right now? A mess. When was the last time you went shopping? Earlier this month my mom and I did a little shopping at the mall. We went grocery shopping last week. Did you laugh a lot today? Not so far, but like I said it’s only 3 in the morning. Do you know what pseudo means? Yes. Was there anyone who made your day today? Sigh. Are you liking how you look today? No. Or any day. Do you hate when they give a lot of tv commercials? Yeah, they’re pretty annoying. Are you waiting for anything? Not at the moment. Are you a very stressed out person? Yes. Are you single? Yes. Do you watch the news? Sometimes. I mostly get my news online or from news app on my phone.  Have you ever been to disney world? No, but I’ve been to Disneyland. Do you like animals? Yesss. Do you know how to skateboard? I can’t. Do you go to church? No. I do listen to the sermon that’s uploaded every Sunday from a local church that I plan to attend in the future. What do you do to relax? “Relax, don’t do it when you want to go to it.” 

Anyway, the only time I’m able to really relax even just a little is when I’m at the beach. Do you hate when people stare at you for no reason? Uh, yeah. It happens a lot with kids. They’re so fascinated by wheelchairs, I guess. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? My mom. Do you remember what date is was? When I had the deep convo with my mom? It was just a couple days ago. How often do you talk on the phone? I rarely talk on the phone. The only time are brief calls with one of my parents when they’re calling from work or while they’re out and about. Do you have any saved texted messages? My phone just keeps ‘em all. I’ve never gone through and deleted any. Which color is better? Red, Blue, Green, Black, or Yellow? I like all of them, but honestly I’d probably go with black. And blah, blah yeah I know it’s not really a color. Shh.  Whats your first initial? S. Are you good at hiding your feelings? Not anymore. I used to be. My emotions were like, “we’re in control now!” Are you afraid of rollercoasters? Yeahhh, I don’t do rollercoasters.  Is anyone annoying you right now? No. Everyone here is asleep. Do you smile a lot? *shrug* Genuine ones not as much.  Does the person you like know that you like them? I don’t like anyone in that way currently.  Have you ever cried from being so mad? Yes. If I’m mad then I cry, they go hand in hand. There’s been a few times where I was literally shaking with anger. That’s rare and takes a lot, but it has happened. Did you cry today? Not so far.  When was the last time you had a sleepover? Several years ago. My cousins used to sleep over all the time. Do you like watching horror movies? Love ‘em. How many kids do you want? Zero. What do you wanna be when you grow up? I’m “grown up”, but I still have no idea. Don’t let my age fool you, though. I don’t feel grown up in a lot of ways. Have you ever been suspended from school? No. Do you like taking pictures? Not of myself, but sure. Do walk around bare foot when your at home? Or do you wear socks? I always wear socks. Don’t you hate that when it’s freezing cold outside your nose gets runny? It’s not pleasant. Don’t you hate that when it’s freezing cold outside your eyes get teary? That doesn’t happen to me. Do you wear make up? It’s been a long time since I’ve worn any makeup. I honestly don’t think I have at all this year. :O Do you wear jewerly? I wear these beaded bracelets (some I made, some I bought) sometimes. Do you ever play games on the computer? I like to play The Sims sometimes. It’s been awhile, though.

[yeppeojiwrites]

beauty and a beat (unofficial chapter)//bang chan

warnings: a little bit of swearing but like twice so don’t worry

pairings: bang chan x female reader (she’s a little bit of an oc)

word count: 2,499

yo!

so this isn’t an actual chapter of beauty and a beat but it serves as a kind of informational (??is that the right word??) chapter about the relationship between the reader and chan and why chan likes her. there will be more unofficial chapters like this in the future for different characters. 

(previous / next)

plain text is english

bold text is korean

bold italicized text is korean with honorifics (noona, hyung, unnie, oppa, etc.)

--

Chan has had feelings for you from the first time he talked to you. 

In the first video call the two of you had back in May 2018, he found himself enamored of you. He found you so beautiful, with your then chin-length dark brown hair and your milk-chocolate skin and pretty eyes, and the way you talked and explained things...he knew that you would be not only a great musician to have helping his group with their next few albums but a great person for him to have a romantic relationship with. 

The romantic relationship thing fell flat when he found out that you were 17 years old turning 18 while he was 19 years old turning 20. That’s fine, he figured. We can be friends.

His impression of you only grew when he found out that you were basically fluent in Korean. “Why did you learn it?” he asked in genuine interest. 

“I got into K-Pop when I was 10 years old in 2011. My first song was ‘Hot Summer’ by F(X) and not too long after ‘Hot Summer’ was released, ‘Be Mine’ by Infinite came out and by then I was sold.” you started. 

“Ah, I remember when those songs came out! I was 13 years old and it was my first summer in South Korea after I became a trainee,” Chan reminisced. “But continue, sorry.” You smiled and waved off his apology. 

“Don’t worry about it. But as I was saying, in my tween obsession, I took it upon myself to try to learn Korean so I could understand what the artists were saying in their songs. So, I started by watching lyric videos on YouTube and writing down the Hangul and the English translations and then I watched dramas like, um, Boys Over Flowers and The Heirs. By 2015, I could understand and read Korean but my pronunciation was weird so I joined some language exchange apps where I met some really nice people, as well as some really weird older guys, but the really nice people and I exchanged information and we would video chat and after a while my grammar and my speech improved.” you said. “That was a lot, I’m sorry.” you apologized. This time he waved you off. 

“Don’t worry!” he laughed. “So how did you get into music?” he asked you.

“My parents have had me in piano lessons since I was 5 years old and vocal lessons since I was 7, but I stopped after I turned 14. My dad was very involved in music production. He used to write jingles for commercials and he helped make some demos for music made by smaller artists. I think my mom told me that he proposed to her with a song he wrote himself.” you laughed. 

“But when I was 14, my dad got into a really bad car accident and he was stuck in a coma and was basically brain dead, so we...you know. That was a tough time for me but music, especially K-Pop helped me through it. My dad had a small home studio set up in a room in my house and before he passed, my dad taught me how to use everything. So I would do little projects where I made songs that I wanted to hear. The first project that a company decided to use was called ‘Eclipse’ and it was something I made in October 2016 and posted on a website where producers share demos or instrumentals, and production companies can buy them to use in songs. I was contacted in January 2017 by a newer company called Blockberry Creative who wanted to know if they could use my song for their upcoming girl group and I agreed.” 

“Do you know what the song is now?” Chan asked. You nodded. 

“It was released in May 2017 for the debut of the Loona member Kim Lip. They decided to keep the title the same.” you tell him. “Have you heard it?” you asked him. He shook his head. 

“I’ll play it for you,” you said, pulling out your phone. 

“Wait, no.” he says. You look back at your laptop in confusion.

“What?” you asked. 

“Sing it.” he says. 

“It would be better if I played it,” you say shyly. A smile spreads across Chan’s face. 

“You can’t be shy now. We’ve already started the partnership and I’m going to need to hear your voice anyways, so why not start now?” he asks. You bite your lip in hesitation before sighing. 

“Fine, but only because of your dimples.” you agree which causes Chan to laugh. 

“My dimples?” he asks. 

“Yes, now do you want to hear me sing or not?” you ask him in a fake serious tone. 

“Go ahead,” he says. 

“I’ll sing the Korean version since I forgot the lyrics to the demo. Are you ready?” you ask him, a little nervous. 

“I can feel your nervous energy through the screen. It’s fine, don’t worry okay!” Chan reassures you. You sighed one last time before you began. 

“It begins eclipse

In the shaded shadows where you and I meet

It happened in the fate

The light which is lighted by mind of us

Come closer to me

This is eclipse

I can’t keep my eyes off, so will you be with me continually?

Unforgettable eclipse, it’s destiny.” 

Chan felt himself in even more awe. You were nervous for no reason. Your voice’s timbre was beautiful and your breath control and technique had to have been professionally learned.

“How would you feel about joining JYP Entertainment as a trainee?” Chan joked which caused you to laugh. 

“I’ll think about it,” you laughed. 

--

From that night in May, you and Chan created a great friendship. 

You’ve both seen each other at your worst; Chan seeing you at your worst first. Finals week sucks. 

Time differences were very hard. With Seoul being 14 hours ahead of Chicago, someone was always going to bed late while someone was waking up early. Each day that you had school, you would spend a couple hours doing homework before videochatting. Both of you were fatigued for a while but when school ended for summer break, you had much more time to work. 

“Hey Chan?” you asked one night while the two of you were working on “M.I.A”. 

“Hmm?” he hummed as he played a beat over and over again on the computer. 

“Have you heard of this rap group from SoundCloud called 3RACHA?” you asked him. He smiled a bit. 

“Yeah, why?”

“They’re pretty cool and they have really good songs.” you sighed. 

“Yeah, I think they’re really good too,” you said. 

“They haven’t made a song since like 2017 though,” you said before groaning. “They need to comeback so they can save the South Korean rap industry again!” you exclaimed. He laughed. 

“I’m sure they’ll come back soon.” 

“I wonder if they’re handsome,” you tell him, leaning back in your chair. 

“I think they are, especially CB97,” he said, moving a sound clip to a part of a song he was recording. 

“Oh, have you met them before?” you asked, leaning forward in your chair. 

“Yeah, we’re pretty close,” he said. 

“I’m gonna Google them to find a photo,” you declare. 

“Hm, alright,” he responds. 

“Th-ree-ra-chaaaa,” you mumble as you type in the search bar. “Oh, a ‘P.A.C.E’ lyric video!” you say excitedly. Suddenly, your eyebrows begin to furrow. 

“CB Ninety- Chan you motherfu-You’re the fakest person I know! You’re literally the fakest person on the planet!” you yell. 

“So are we hot?” he asks, a shit-eating grin on his face. 

“Choke,” you say flatly, to which Chan laughs. 

--

“Hey Chan, I got an email from this company called KQ Entertainment,” you told Chan one day via FaceTime in September. 

“Oh, Ateez’s company! Changbin knows one of the members.” Chan says. “What did they email you about?”

“They want me to come to South Korea to work as a producer for Ateez’s next few albums. KQ will pay for my living expenses and everything.” you tell him. Chan’s head snaps to face you on his phone screen. 

“Like...this South Korea? The one I’m in right now?” Chan asks dumbfounded. 

“Uh, yeah,” you tell him. 

“Have you talked to your mom about this?” Chan asks, trying to tone down his excitement in the event that you tell him that you can’t go. 

“She says that I can go and my sister thinks that it’s a great idea...” you trailed off. 

“Then why do you sound so sad?” Chan asked you. 

“I visit my dad’s grave every two weeks. I have money saved up from birthdays, Christmas, Easter, royalties, the money from JYP for helping you guys out with I Am Who and I Am You and other odd jobs that I’ve taken up over the years and I can afford to fly to Korea but...I don’t know. I know that some people think of this as a job of a lifetime...but I just...I don’t know, Chan.” you sigh. “What should I do?” you ask him. Chan felt his heart hurt at your facial expression. 

“I don’t know what I would do. If you want to come here, maybe take something of your father’s like a shirt or a photo of him,” Chan suggested. “Wouldn’t you be able to work from your house?” he asked. 

“KQ feels like it would be more efficient if I lived there so I could be easily accessible and so time zones wouldn’t be an issue.” 

“How badly do you want to go?” Chan asked you. You laughed slightly. 

“It’s been my dream since my demo for ‘Eclipse’ was first used,” you tell him. “I hadn’t thought about it prior to my demos being used.” 

“Follow your heart, (Y/N),” Chan tells you. “Do you hear me?” he asks you. You nod. 

“I have to go soon, we have to start filming the music video for the title track that YOU helped me work on in SOUTH KOREA,” Chan said. 

“Are you trying to influence me?” you laughed. 

“Maybe a little bit,” he said. “Bang Chan, we need your for filming!” you heard a voice off-screen. 

“I’ll be right there,” Chan said to the source of the voice. 

“I’ll let you go, Channie. Thanks for listening.” 

“Anytime, (Y/N),” he replies.

“Chan, one last thing!” you tell him. 

“What?” 

“You look really handsome with your curly brown hair.” you tell him. 

“What what-” “See you later, Channie!” you say before hanging up. 

He sighed, his cheeks reddening. Minho came up next to him. “Who were you talking to that has you so flustered?” he asked. 

“No one,” Chan replied, sliding his phone into his pocket. 

“Oh, it was (Y/N), wasn’t it?” Minho said, leaning closer to Chan. 

“No,” Chan said unconvincingly. 

“Yes, it was, you cradle robber!” Minho exclaimed. 

“Are we talking about Chan having the fattest crush on Lav?” Jisung comes over, taking a sip from a bottle of water. 

“No, we aren’t, and no, I don’t have a ‘fat crush’ on Lav,” Chan groans. 

“Oh he totally has a crush on Lav, he’s a cradle robber.” Woojin said, standing up next to the forming group around Chan.

“I’m not a cradle robber!” Chan exclaimed.

“That’s totally something a cradle robber would say,” Jisung whispers to Minho who nods in agreement. 

“I heard that,” Chan warned. 

“What did (Y/N) say?” Changbin asked, coming up from behind Chan. Chan shifted a little bit, knowing his younger member’s feelings towards you. 

“KQ Entertainment emailed her about coming to Korea and working on a few albums for their new boy group,” Chan said. 

“So she’s coming here?” Changbin asked, excitedly. Chan relished in knowing he had the ability to change Changbin’s mood with a single phrase. 

“She wants to but she isn’t sure if she can,” Chan says. Changbin’s happy mood changes into a dejected one. Jisung throws an arm around Changbin. 

“Here’s the other cradle robber,” Jisung teases, poking Changbin’s cheek. 

“I’m not a cradle robber,” Changbin exclaims, pushing Jisung off of him. 

“That’s something a cradle robber would say,” Minho whispers. 

“You guys are annoying, I’m going to go film,” Chan says, standing up from his chair. 

“Make sure your scene looks nice for Lav!” Minho yells. Chan ignores him. 

“Hey, Binnie, did your scene look good for Lav?” Woojin asks Changbin. 

“Chan’s right, you guys are annoying,” Changbin says as he walks away in the opposite direction as Chan. 

“I hope their rivalry doesn’t split us up,” Woojin says, crossing his arms as he looks between the two boys. 

“Me too,” Felix agrees. 

--

“Channie?” you say into your phone, your speech slurred from sleep. It was two in the morning after all.   

“Lav? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” Chan asked worried. 

“I’m gonna go to Korea,” you tell him, your pronunciation a bit off. 

“What?”

“I just had a dream that I went to Korea, and it was great and I feel like things would be just as great in Korea as they were in my dream. I’m gonna go to Korea.” you tell him. 

“What about your dad?” Chan asked you. You sighed. 

“I’ve gone four years without him. It’ll be tough, but I’ll be able to go four more years if I have you and the rest of the guys by my side.” you tell him. Chan smiled. 

“Why are you telling me this in Korean?” Chan laughed. 

“I wanted to see if I could speak Korean while half-awake and I feel like what I’m telling you is more meaningful when it’s said in Korean.” you slur. 

“Go to sleep, (Y/N). We can talk later.” he says. You hum in agreement. 

“Good night, Channie. I love you.” you tell him before hanging up. 

“Wait Lav-” the line beeped. 

“I love you too.” he whispered. 

“Cradle robber!” Jisung sang as he passed the doorway to Chan’s dorm room. 

“Shut up!” Chan yelled. 

--

Chan received a text from you on November 17, 2018, at 1 PM in Seoul, before a variety show appearance. 

1 new message from lav <3

lav <3: channie!!! look!!! it didn’t hurt that much!!

attached image

Chan clicked on the image and his eyes widened. You had gotten a small-ish tattoo of a stalk of lavender on your left forearm. 

chan: SDKLFSJLKFJ what did you do??????

lav <3: are you blind?? i got a birthday tattoo!!! i’ve been 18 years old since the 10th!!!

chan: (y/n) it looks really nice! it complements your skin tone!

lav <3: thanks!! it stings and i’ll have to put the tattoo solve on it for a while but it’s TOTALLY worth it. i’m getting another one next month!!

chan: where? 

lav <3: don’t worry about it, channie

chan: what do you mean???

lav <3: not like that!!! the odds of you being able to see it are VERY slim though

chan: ???? that doesn’t worry me any less but go ahead i suppose

--

author’s note: 

here’s something that describes the relationship between the reader and chan and a little bit between chan and changbin!! i have yet to start working on the third part of the actual fic BUT i’m going to start tomorrow. alright homies, its 10 pm and i have school tomorrow so i’m going to dip!! see you guys in the next one! 

ellie <3 

(previous / next)

[eldritchsurveys]

549.

What type of bread did you use on the last sandwich you made? >> Buttermilk bread.

& What was on said sandwich? >> Turkey, pepper jack, broccoli slaw, pickles, and mustard.

How many doors are in your house? >> Not counting closet doors, five.

Got any bad habits? If so, what are they? >> Yeah. Picking at my lips is the major one.

What was the last compliment you recieved, that made you smile? >> I don’t remember the last compliment I received, period.

Do you ever lie to your friends? >> No. I have nothing worth lying about, really.

If so, do you feel bad about it after? >> ---

Think you need to lose weight? How much? >> Sometimes I’m fooled into thinking so, but I don’t actually need to, no.

When was the last time you watched a VHS movie? >> Damn... probably 2003 or so.

What event would you go back in time to see, if you could? >> *shrug*

Do you remember the last thing you said you wanted? >> I don’t.

Who was the last friend you hung out with&what’d you do together? >> Eli, at the post-wedding brunch.

Who is the person, other than a spouse, that you are closest to? >> Er. I feel close to inworlders. I don’t know how to gauge closeness to outworlders.

Do you know when to use ‘to’ & ‘too’? >> Sure.

Who do you currently live with? >> Sparrow and a cat we have yet to officially name.

Favorite board game? >> ---

If you watched it, who was your favorite ‘Hey Arnold!’ character? >> I didn’t watch it.

Have any good school pictures? or do they all just suck? >> I don’t have any school pictures. My father has/had them all.

How old were first kiss? >> ---

Do you ever wonder what people think when they look at you? >> Yeah.

Do you like trying on clothes or not? & Why? >> No, I hate trying on clothes. The whole process is just executive function hell and really annoying. Also, it’s a great way to trigger some spicy dysphoria.

What are your thoughts on marriage? >> I have no real thoughts about it. It doesn’t strike me as a particularly remarkable part of my life, probably because we’re not terribly fussed about monogamy or child-rearing or anything like that. It strikes me more as a convenience than anything else.

What was your favorite toy as a kid? >> Ones that mimicked computers. And then I got an actual computer, and a monster was created.

Do you still play with it or have it? >> No.

Are you currently IN love with anyone? >> No.

Difference between loving someone&being in love with someone? Yes or no? >> I have no idea what “being in love” even means, so.

Don’t you hate when reruns on TV are in a random order? >> Not unless it’s a serial with a specific plot. But even then, if it’s a show I’ve already seen, then I already have the context in mind so it’s not a big deal.

Do you ever watch any crime shows? >> Not anymore. I was obsessed with Investigation Discovery a few years ago, but those kinds of shows get so samey after a while.

If so, which do you watch the most/is your favorite? >> ---

Ever smoke pot? >> Yeah.

Don’t you hate when people you love/care about annoy you with stupid crap? >> I don’t enjoy being annoyed, just like anyone else. But like... something about the way this question is worded seems loaded.

Do you ever get frustrated&say 'nevermind’ when people just don’t get it? >> Yeah.

Still have feelings for an ex? >> No.

Have you ever SERIOUSLY considered any kind of plastic surgery? >> Only top surgery.

What was the last thing you cleaned&why? >> I don’t remember.

Don’t those weightloss pill commercials just irritate you? >> I don’t see them, usually. But that sort of thing definitely irritates me.

Before taking this survey, what were you thinking of? >> I don’t remember.

How long have you lived in the current place you’re living? >> Over 3 and a half years.

Do you plan on moving anytime soon, if so where? >> I don’t know if we’ll attempt to move when this year’s lease is up, or not. I don’t think we can afford to live anywhere else at this point, being that this complex is actually lower than the average price for a 2br, 1 1/2ba apartment. (If they keep raising our rent, though, it might end up catching up. :| )

Does blood make you queasy? >> No.

Do you ever walk alone at night just because, or does that freak you out? >> I mean, I’ve done so, yeah. Walking alone at night hasn’t ever freaked me out.

What happened in the last TV show you watched? >> The main characters of The Good Place find out whether their afterlife experiment has convinced the judge that humans are not innately good or bad. Hijinks ensue.

Do you ever correct grammar/spelling errors your friends make? >> No. 

Or do you just not care about that stuff? >> I really the fuck don’t.

Don’t you think things are getting wayyy too pricey? >> No? I mean, a lot of things are pricey in comparison to my income level, but they’ve been that way for as long as I’ve been alive.

Facebook, wasn’t 'become a fan’ better than 'like’? >> I don’t care about this.

What do you think was the best year you ever had? >> ---

Are you more of a follower, or a leader? Be honest. >> It depends on how much I care about what’s going on, and how much contempt I have for the other people involved.

Are your dreams/nightmares in black&white or color? >> In colour, I assume.

Or do you not even remember any of them? >> I rarely remember my dreams properly, but I’ve never had the impression that they were in anything but colour.

Have you ever wanted to be some sort of hero outside of videogames? >> No. Sometimes I don’t even want to be one in video games.

Will you admit that you’re at least somewhat superficial? >> Sure, it doesn’t bother me to say that.

Most attractive actor/actress that comes to mind right this second? >> Joaquin Phoenix.

How often do you go to the mall closest to you? >> Eh, maybe once a month. Well, there are two that are pretty much equidistant from me, and I usually go to Rivertown Crossings more often than I go to Woodland. But Woodland has the Red Robin right there, and that’s always tempting... (Fuck, now I want Red Robin.)

What physical features can you just not stand about yourself? >> I’d rather not think about that right now.

Do you still count with your fingers, even if only every so often? >> Yeah, every so often.

The last flavor of gum you chewed? >> Bubble gum.

Have you ever gone on a road trip with just friends? >> No.

What was the last thing you had to drink & was it yummy? >> Water. It was fine.

What word or words do you think you say the most? >> I have no idea.

Without trying, do you act differently around different friends? >> Sure, because different people bring out different aspects of your being.

What was the last thing you drew/wrote on your own or someone elses’ skin? >> I don’t remember.

Did you know your nose continues to grow/get longer as you get older? >> That’s not something I was ever made aware of, and I’m not sure I believe it.

The last time you spent money, what was it on & how much did you spend? >> I spent $21 (with tip) at J. Gardella’s Tavern yesterday. Oh, and I spent $18 (with tip) on a Lyft to Sparrow’s job.

What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on one piece of clothing? >> I don’t remember the most money I personally spent on a piece of clothing. But the most expensive clothing item I currently own is my suit (which Sparrow’s mother paid for).

Don’t you believe you’re not really a vegetarian if you still eat chicken >> Yeah, because chicken is a meat and vegetarians don’t eat meat.

Who was the last person you avoided/ignored? >> *shrug*

In elementary school, were you more of the bully or the bullied? >> I was the bullied.

How much do you say you walk in a week outside of school &/or work? >> Like, not much. Especially now that it’s cold.

Did the last person you talked to in person annoy you in anyway? >> No.

Where are you sitting right now? >> On my bed.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF DETAILS

They will have all the extra motivation that comes from being freed from the constraints of research. So far, we've reduced the problem from the direction of the arts, you're less likely to depend on this sort of calming lie is that we grow up thinking horrible things are normal. You could start users with a seed filter, but ultimately each user should have his own per-word probabilities based on the pie fallacy is stated explicitly:.1 Combine that with Pirsig and you get: Live in the future is to focus extra attention on specific parts of the email. Most hackers' first instinct is to try to think of startup ideas. As subjects got softer, the lies got more frequent. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? And the reason you should avoid these things is that you are already working as hard as you can in so many print publications—which is one of the first things he'll ask is, how much more.2 Let me repeat that recipe: finding the problem intolerable and feeling it must be very hard. In fact, faces seem to have made that deal, though perhaps it has to be able to filter them. I do, I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp.3

In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. At YC we call ideas that grow naturally out of the corner of his mouth is very disconcerting. This isn't quite true. Competitors commonly find ways to work around a patent.4 If economic inequality should be decreased. The source of the problem it fixes.5 The same is true in the arts, but most hackers are very competitive.

There is no such thing as better, it doesn't make any difference what Larry Page's net worth is compared to yours. Treat a startup as an optimization problem will help you avoid another pitfall that VCs worry about, and rightly—taking a long time it was most of making things easier, but now that the things we build are so complicated, there's another rapidly growing subset: making things easier. Windows itself.6 But really it doesn't matter much which you use. Why do you keep emails around after you've read them? The problem is not, in itself, what makes startups kick butt, but rather that small groups can be select. Marie Curie was on it because she was a woman, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway.7 What are they to do? You pick the companies you want to get rich, and this trend has decades left to run. Right?

How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company. While the best way to discover startup ideas is to work with him on something. Kids, almost by definition, lack self-control.8 But it's not just fastidiousness that makes good hackers avoid nasty little problems. A viable startup might only have ten employees, which puts you within a factor of two? But I also think that the more different it gets.9 I've learned, to some degree, to judge technology by its cover. When you negotiate terms with a startup idea in one month, what if they'd chosen a month before the Altair appeared? What would you think of a financial advisor who put all his client's assets into one volatile stock? But that world ended a few years?

But you can't trust your opinions in the same way about the operating system. Notice all this time I've been talking about the limit case: the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you endanger your health.10 The unsexy filter is to ask yourself whether in your previous job you ever found yourself saying Why doesn't someone make x?11 Programs are very complex and, at least, by eliminating the drag of the pointy-haired middle manager who would be your boss in a big company: the pay's low but you spend most of your time working on new stuff. I wouldn't try to defend the actual numbers. Except in a few cases to buy a certain stock. Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. The Matrix have such resonance. Arguably pastoralism transformed a luxury into a commodity. Being at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, there will be things that are false, and I'm going to talk about it to have anything more useful to say.12

Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money.13 Of all the approaches to fighting spam, from software to laws, I believe Bayesian filtering will be the single most effective. Don't spend much time worrying about the details of deal terms, especially when you first start angel investing. The part of angel investing that the decisions are hard. When I protested that the teacher had said the opposite, my father replied that the guy had no idea what he was talking about—that he was on the list because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right startups is for investors.14 We were all lied to as kids, and some of the growth in economic inequality we've seen since then has been due to bad behavior of various kinds, there has been a qualitative change in the world. A job means doing something people want.

The way to kill it is to be young. This way you might be able to make something useful.15 I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be anything waiting for it. It was not till we were in our twenties that the truth came out: my sister, then about three, had accidentally stepped on the cat and broken its back. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, approach offers as in this approach offers having a probability of more than. The reason our hypothetical jaded 10 year old leaning against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the founders' own experiences organic startup ideas—by spending time learning about the easy part. If anyone wants to take on this kind of project. The cartoon strip Dilbert has a lot of other people's. Pay particular attention to things that chafe you. A company big enough to be fairly conservative, and within the company the people in the future, not now.16 So the guys you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of.

Notes

Down rounds are at selling it. Living on instant ramen would be improper to name names, while simultaneously implying that lies believed for a patent is conveniently just longer than the 50 minutes they may end up reproducing some of these groups, which is the odds are slightly worse.

Something similar has been happening for a reason.

Most were wrong, but investors can get done before that.

Give the founders.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can teach startups a lot more frightening in those days, then they're not ready to invest, it is still what seemed to us.

It was harder for you? Exercise for the talk to a car dealer.

Some are merely ugly ducklings in the production of high school kids at least bet money on convertible notes often have valuation caps, a market price if they did that in practice signalling hasn't been much of The New Industrial State to trying to focus on their utility function for money. So it may not be if Steve hadn't come back. They therefore think what they meant. So what ends up happening is that so many trade publications nominally have a single cause.

The existence of people we need to.

Different sections of the world as a definition of property without affecting and probably also the fashion leaders. Later stage investors won't invest.

We could have used another algorithm and everything I write out loud at least for those interested in each type of mail, I advised avoiding Javascript. One of the corpora.

After reading a draft of this essay, I have a standard piece of casuistry for this situation: that startups usually lose money at first had two parts: the source of food. Exercise for the talk to an adult. Throw in the King James Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and many of the flock, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with other people's.

If not, and B doesn't, that's not relevant to an investor derives mostly from the example of a type of thing. None at all. Which OS? You can build things for programmers, the work of selection.

So far, I suspect five hundred would be worth trying to capture the service revenue as well, but this sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. But an associate is not pagerank commercialized. A small, fast browser that was really only useful for one user.

It might also be good employees either. There is nothing more unconvincing, for example, would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push founders to try to be staying at a particular valuation, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the mercy of investors want to stay in a limited way, without becoming a police state. But in most competitive sports, the computer hardware and software companies constrained in a place to exchange views. No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a company that could be mistaken, and—and probably also a second factor: startup founders are in a series.

Together these were the case of the growth in wealth, and there didn't seem to have too few customers even if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference. This probably undervalues the company than you expect.

Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the best startups, the higher the walls become.

Thanks to Brad Templeton, Trevor Blackwell, Fred Wilson, the friends I promised anonymity to, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston for smelling so good.

[kalluun-patangaroa]

SUEDE: SLIGHTLY RESTLESS EUPHORIA

April 15th, 2011 

Illustration by Amber Halford

Suede fell out of bed into Britpop and Britpop controversy about Blur and bisexuality and who was doing what to who in what direction, but between episodes of public drama was glammy rock ‘n’ roll in the most classic English tradition. After years off duty, Suede is substantially re-united (without Bernard) and active and playing their first stateside gig at Coachella. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

How did Suede and Metallica ever get together for all-night rock sessions?

Brett Anderson (vocals): Our press agent sorta said, ‘Hey, Kirk Hammett is a big fan— should we get you together?’ So we went out to San Francisco to Kirk’s place and spent a lot of time being a bit naughty and playing songs in his basement. He had a studio—a little bit of a jamming room. I remember running through ‘Metal Mickey,’ we did a bit of T. Rex—we were off our faces, anyway. He’s a nice chap!

Kirk said he was struck by how normal you were and how you didn’t spank your buttocks once.

I should have spanked my buttocks. He was probably very disappointed. ‘This can’t be the real Brett Anderson. He’s not spanking his buttocks.’

What Crass lyric is so close to the front of your mind at all times that you can sing it to me right this second?

‘Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do!’ I love Crass. Feeding of the 5,000 was one of my favorite records growing up. I love that record. I love all the artwork. Talking about bands that draw you into a world—Crass really created their world, and it was a really confrontational, intelligent, political world. I really responded to it as a young teenager.

What part of the Crass ethos do you hold most dear?

I don’t live on a commune in Essex. But it opened my eyes—if it’s done right—how powerful political music can be. I never wrote overtly political music, but I did write music that dealt with not like party politics, but themes of poverty and alienation and I used that in songs—that was possibly inspired by Crass.

How was Suede a political band?

Dealing with the politics of life. Setting our songs in a real social context. I never wanted to be a writer who waved flags for a political party, but listening to the songs you can tell I was brought up as a member of the working-class, and you can tell the songs have a very strong left-wing bias.

You said you felt there hasn’t been a definitive genre of music invented in the U.K. in the last decade, and that you feel music is meant more to placate than provoke now. Why?

I do very much feel that’s the state of things. I can’t see that the last decade has created its own genre, which is a terrible shame for that generation. Not to say there hasn’t been great music. There’s amazing music! I love discovering new bands and there’s a great wave of new bands. But the biggest cultural development of the last like ten years was computer technology. It wasn’t anything to do with art and music, and that’s a shame. Even in the 90s, we had dance music—definitely a 90s genre. Maybe people have become too knowing. There’s too much of a structured sense of what’s cool and what isn’t, and that comes from magazines constantly publishing lists which contain the same five Beatles albums and this kind of thing. There’s this constant pressure to comply with this very sort of rigid set of accepted rock albums. So bands are too afraid to go outside those reference points. I sense this real fear in the music industry. A lot of it is because the industry has become a lot more corporate. People won’t take risks anymore. In the early 90s—that’s the only time I can talk about because that’s when I started—magazines were putting unusual bands on the cover. Magazines put Suede on covers before anyone had ever heard of us. Commercially, that was very ill-advised—but at least it suggested they had a sense of purpose. Now I get the sense people only back who they think are gonna win, regardless of if they actually think it’s any good or not. They will back who they think are the winners, and they will write good reviews for the bands they think are gonna sell lots of records whether they like them or not, and I think that’s a fucking terrible way to be. People are too afraid of not being cool? Or getting it wrong? No one’s willing to get it wrong. No one’s willing to stick their neck out and become a hated figure. No one’s got that kind of confidence. Everyone’s too willing to comply. It’s a terrible thing. But things go in cycles, don’t they? Maybe it’ll move into another period where people are taking chances.

When is the last time you suffered Stendhal syndrome?

At the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. I was looking at the Toulouse-Lautrecs, which were absolutely amazing. I’ve never been a huge fan of Toulouse-Lautrec before, but seeing the paintings in the flesh—as it were—is just so amazingly powerful. They’re so beautifully observed. I’m not sure if I actually experienced Stendhal syndrome, but I’ve read about it and it’s an extreme reaction to beauty—that’s the closest I can imagine it to be.

What’s it actually feel like?

Like drinking too much coffee. Slightly restless euphoria. Or maybe I’m getting it confused with actually drinking too much coffee. I’m a huge fan of art . I spend a lot of time in galleries and that’s my favorite period of art as well—the post-Impressionists. Paul Gauguin and those artists. I love all the medieval painters as well. People like Bruegel and Cranach and Holbein. There’s something incredibly primitive about it—Bruegel’s ‘Return of the Hunters’ is so atmospheric. What I really like about Holbein is he’s such an amazing draftsman and a great observer of human features. He could completely capture a person. You’re looking at someone who lived 500 years ago but it could be someone passing you on the street. They’re so real. I love that about Holbein’s paintings.

Did you want to try and observe things that carefully in Suede songs?

It’s difficult in the framework of pop music. It isn’t a very subtle medium. It doesn’t have as much as fiction or fine art. You’re in a very rigid structure—melody and rhyme and rhythm and those things are constricting you. I don’t think pop writers can ever take it to that depth of observation. But what pop writers can do is engage at an emotional level that other artists can’t do. The pop song, when done right, is incredibly powerful. That’s partly to do with the simplicity as well. Truth in music is incredibly important, but artifice can be incred- ibly important as well—that’s something I’ve done quite consciously. Lots of the songs I’ve written for Suede have been deliberately superficial but perversely enough there’s a kind of truth in that. A sketch is powerful because you fill in the missing pieces. You fill in the framework yourself. If it’s too full, there’s no space for you to interpret it.

Francis Bacon said, ‘The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.’

Absolutely. One of the most important quotes ever about creativity. Something I’ve learned through mistakes over the years is it shouldn’t be too clear what you’re doing. Sometimes the sketch is so powerful because of the room for interpretation. As soon as you know what something is about, it somehow kills the mystery. And mystery is so important in music. That allows the song to have life beyond what it was intended for. When a writer’s writing, they have a very specific thing in mind, but they don’t know about the life of the listener. The listener applies his life to the music and there’s a new interpretation. That’s why a good song has so much power. It reaches into people’s lives. But to do that, there needs to be a sense of mystery. I’ve always tried to do that with detail. There’s this whole thing with great songwriters saying songs should be universal, but I actually think songs should be opposite—strangely specific and set in a place to make them real. I mean, still allow space for interpretation.

You said once that Suede writes about the used condom, not the beautiful bed. That kind of detail?

That’s not my favorite quote I ever said—but it keeps coming back. It must resonate with people’s vision of what the band is about. It’s quite a crass way of saying it, but I suppose it’s got some sort of truth. I always wanted to document the sort of grubby side of life. I didn’t want to talk in rock cliché. ‘Baby, I love you!’ clichés. I wanted to sing about the world I saw around me, and the world I saw around me was the used condom. It was the dusty street, the flickering TV. It was that use of detail and the fact I was born in the U.K. that made me write about the U.K. in detail, and it became distorted into the cliché of what became Britpop later—but it was never this nationalistic, jingoistic intention. It was just a desire to write about the world I saw around me.

Did you have to feel like you were living a Suede song to write a Suede song?

I don’t feel I deliberately changed my lifestyle. But I didn’t rein myself in. I felt justified in writing what I was writing—the right thing to do for my artistic vision was live the lifestyle I was singing about, but it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. I was living that, obviously. But you can’t live that lifestyle forever and wanna remain alive. Things have to change. I championed—well, I documented it, and then you realize that what you’re documenting is quite harmful.

Did you think you were going to end up on a prison ship like Dan Treacy?

Well, toward the end of the 90s, things started getting quite dark. Life was definitely changing. I thought, ‘Well, maybe we need to veer away from something.’ I always feel I’m slightly on dodgy ground when people talk about this whole concept of the artist as a damaged character—it’s such a powerful cliché that people really wanna believe in, and I think there’s so much great art made through clarity and sobriety. The damaged artist casts a huge shadow people sometimes can’t see beyond. Me personally, as an artist now I feel much more in control of my art. Much more driven. Certainly more than I did ten years ago. But people need to believe in that sort of figure.

Jason Pierce said he started Spacemen 3 because of people like Roky Erickson and Alex Chilton—that he felt he could do what they did because they were flawed and not professional and perfect.

It’s the ultimate DIY ethic, isn’t it? The ultimate punk thing? Saying it doesn’t matter how incapable or damaged or all these pejorative adjectives you wanna apply—not you can still create art, but it almost makes your art more interesting or valid or gives it an edge you wouldn’t have if you weren’t damaged? Someone like Ian Dury—the ‘cripple as artist.’ It gives the audience a fascination, I think.

You said you were making music to find community in a fucked-up world. Did you ever find that community?

It’s always a search for some sort of community, isn’t it? There’s a line from one of the old songs, ‘New Generation.’ ‘We take the pills to find each other.’ A search for human … ownership or whatever. I don’t know. It’s strange to say because I’ve always conducted my career and Suede’s career almost as outsiders. I’ve never felt accepted by the music industry. I still don’t. I’ve never felt part of any sort of gang, and I never really wanted to be part of any gang. The only gang I’m part of is this weird disparate group of non-members—the ‘others’—and I’m quite happy in that role as well. I don’t jealously look at other people’s lives and wish I could be like that. I don’t have that search for community I used to have— maybe I realized the reality of things.

Does that mean it’s not out there? That it was never there? Can bands create these communities anymore?

That’s the definition of a decent band. They create a community. When I answered your question, it was in a personal sense. Whether I’ve found a community. But hopefully Suede as a band created a community. That was one of our real intentions—I loved bands like the Smiths who had this world you went into, with the sleeves and the reference points. You very much immersed yourself. I wanted Suede to have that sense as well. Almost a strong Suede way of being. The Suede army, as someone once said.

If you didn’t find community, what did you find?

It made my life. It gave me all those things we were talking about earlier. It gave me everything. Gave me purpose in life. I wouldn’t ever advise anyone to do what I did! I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career. 99 percent of people who go into music won’t be as lucky. It is a lot to do with luck! The fact I’ve met Bernard Butler—little things! I might never have met him, and we never would have written those songs and Suede would have been a very different band. I never just say, ‘This is what you should do!’ I was just confident and stupid enough to do what I did, and it just sort of worked! But some of the decisions I made—they were pretty rash!

Is it necessary to commit totally to being creative to be good at being creative? To jump in with no safety net?

Absolutely. You’ve gotta let yourself out there. I didn’t even have an instrument to fall back on! ‘I believe I got enough of a voice to say something interesting, and I’m gonna do it.’ Confidence verging on stupidity that happened to pay off!

Does pop music defend the brave and stupid?

I think so. You have to push it as far as it’ll go. Part of the reason the public loves pop music so much is the drama of the story. You have people who have no idea about the drama and just wanna listen to Phil Collins records and that’s fine, but there’s a whole other group of people that love the back story—how it’s made and why people fall out and fall in love. It’s almost treating the world of music like you’re watching a soap opera and people love that.

Why do people fall in love?

Probably some sort of chemical function. I don’t wanna be unromantic about it but it fulfills a necessary function for the human race.

L.A. Record (US Magazine), April 2011