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queenlegacyproductions · 3 years ago

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The Dark Side of The Light

Pairing: Mustafa Ali/OC (Riley Carter)

Summary: Mustafa has acquired a new attitude on Raw with RETRIBUTION but his fondness for a certain returning Gangsta has not...although he has a different way of showing it.

Warnings: Violence, Praise kink, Spanking kink, Breeding kink, Choking kink, Daddy kink, Dom!Mustafa

Author’s Note: I LIIIIIIIIIVVVEE! Yes, your girl is back at it again for the first time in months, and I come bearing the smut! It’s been a while since I wrote something like this so let’s hope I can knock off some of the rust from being M.I.A for so long. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy!

~///~

‘Even the brightest of lights has some darkness in them.

These were the last words Mustafa remembered hearing her say to him on the night she was drafted to Raw from Smackdown last year. The last night the WWE Universe would see Riley Carter.

The last night The Heart of WWE would team with The American Gangsta.

And within the time they’ve spent separated, Mustafa became more of a martyr in the name of the light. To be that beacon of positivity. To give hope to the younger generation that you overcome anything by being good.

And what has that gotten him?

Injured before Elimination Chamber.

Screwed at Money In The Bank.

And overlooked by management for every overly muscular, uncharismatic MMA reject.

Well, he’s had enough. No longer will he or anyone else for that matter be overlooked because they don’t fit the mold.

And with that new mindset, he formed RETRIBUTION who has been causing havoc on WWE, a team of abandoned misfits whose dreams were left in the dust by the business.

He finally decided to follow Riley's advice and let the rage and anger consume him.

She would be so proud of him…

...if he hadn’t did the dumbass.

Not a shocker there.

In the midst of his conquest of fighting the corruption within the WWE, he targeted the Fiend with RETRIBUTION but was unsuccessful when The Fiend disappeared with Alexa. When the lights came back on, The Hurt Business’ music started to play.

“And now, here comes the group that has had some problems with RETRIBUTION the past few weeks. The Hurt Business.” Tom phillps said as Bobby, Shelton, Cedric and MVP stood at the top of the ramp.

“MVP said that The Hurt Business would deal with these masked cowards running roughshod in WWE and he plans on making good on that statement right now.” Samoa Joe said when they marched to the ring.

“And it appears that Mustafa and RETRIBUTION isn’t backing down. They’re still in the ring.” Bryon addressed as RETRIBUTION stood their ground in the ring, taunting them. But before The Hurt Business could get into the ring, they were attacked by three masked assailants on the outside.

“What the hell? What’s going on?!” Michael yelled from the commentary table as one of the attackers threw Bobby over the barricade.

“Looks like The Hurt Business is getting the hurt put on them.” Bryon said when another attacker threw MVP into the ring with RETRIBUTION who stepped back when the attacker followed him in as the rest beat up the others on the outside. The mysterious assailant picked up MVP, setting him for a small package driver.

“Wait! That move...looks familiar!” Mustafa heard Michael say as the masked figure hit the driver on MVP before they popped up to face RETRIBUTION head on.

“Oh, ho. And now it looks like they’re turning their attention to Mustafa and RETRIBUTION.” Joe chuckled as the other two attackers slid into the ring, joining the other figure. T-BAR and MACE stepped forward as if to attack them but the masked person stepped forward with their hands up in surrender.

“Wait. Looks like the masked attackers want no problem with RETRIBUTION.” Bryon said while the masked individual gestures towards their face covering. Ali steps forward, pushing T-BAR and MACE back to approach the individual. The three individuals reach behind their head to snatch the masks off their faces.

“Oh, my god! It’s the Carter triplets!” Bryon said as the two people that fell back were revealed to be Jordan and Michelle Carter, the youngest siblings of Riley, who stood in front of Mustafa with a cute mischievous smirk.

“It’s been a year since we last saw Riley Carter on Monday Night Raw but it’s been even longer than that since we’ve seen Ali be reunited with The American Gangsta.” Michael said as Mustafa looked Riley up and down, his eyes wide before he matched her smirk. He steps closer to her, pushing her silver highlights out of her face before he brings her closer to kiss her.

“And the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Joe said as Riley breaks the kiss, resting her forehead against his and the lights go out.

~///~

“The gangsta is back, baby! I. Am. Back!” Riley cheered when she got back to the hotel with Mustafa. He chuckled at her little victory dance.

“Yeah…” He scratches the back of his head, moving his hair out of her face. “And you didn’t even tell your boyfriend…” He feigned hurt which made Riley slap his shoulder.

“It’s not like I didn’t want to.” Riley laughed. “But I wanted to surprise you.�� She steps closer to him, biting her lip as she looks him up and down. “Besides, you can’t tell me that you didn’t like it.” She teased.

Mustafa chuckled, shaking his head when he looked down at her. “That’s where you’re wrong.” His tone seems to get deeper, almost as if he was trying to intimidate her. “I didn’t like it.” He stepped up closer to her, making her take a step backwards.

“I didn’t like the fact that you returned to Raw without telling me.” He continued to step closer to her.

“Mustafa-.” Riley said as she kept backing up away from him. He shushed her.

“I didn’t like the fact that you got into RETRIBUTION’s business tonight just to make a statement.” He continued as the back of Riley’s knees hit the edge of the bed, trapping her when he stepped into her personal space.

“Baby, I-.” She gets cut off again when Mustafa puts a finger to her lips.

“But you know what I really didn’t like?” He asked as he ran his fingers to her chin to tilt her head up to make her look up at him. He leaned closer to her when she shook her head. “I didn’t like that you always feel the need to put yourself in danger to protect me.”

Riley swallows as she goes to say but she gets cut off with a gasp when Mustafa suddenly wraps his hand around her throat. “B-Baby, please. You’re starting to scare me…” She whispered, her chest heaving fear and growing arousal.

Mustafa then smirked. “Oh, kitten..” He squeezed a little tighter, encouraging a moan to slip from her lips. He leaned closer to her, almost kissing her lips. “I haven’t scared you yet.”

Mustafa then kissed her aggressively, pushing her down on the bed without letting go of her neck. Riley’s eyes rolled into the back of her head as she gave him a choked mewl when Mustafa squeezed her neck again. He lets her go to stand up straight to look at her breathless form laid out before him. She whimpers, closing her legs as if she was shying away from his intense gaze.

“Uh,uh…” He tutted, grabbing her legs to pull her closer. “Don’t shy away from me, babygirl.” Mustafa teased, pulling her panties off her before he spread her legs again. “This is what you wanted huh, Riley?” He continued to tease her as he kissed up her calves. “Wanted the dark side of me, right?” Riley squeaked and squirmed as his kisses grew closer and closer to her core. “What was it that you always used to say?” He kissed her inner thighs.

“Ah! UH, fuck!” Riley shouted as she balls up her fists in the sheets. “Ah!” She yelped when he slapped her on her pussy.

“Answer me, Kitten.” He commanded when he guided his fingers up and down her pedals slowly. “I won’t repeat myself.”

“I said-uh!” Riley stammered when he teased her clit. “I-I said...I used to say...that...even the brightest of lights had some darkness in them.” She panted when he grabbed her neck again to make her look at him again.

“Good.” Mustafa kissed her lips, swallowing her moans. “Good girl.” He moves his hand down to her shirt collar. “I think you deserve a reward now, don’tcha?”

“Mmhm…” She nodded, toying with the fingers of his other hand which made him laugh.

“Love how submissive you get when you’re horny…” Mustafa teased before he kissed her. “That little innocent look on your face...makes me want to ruin you…”

“Mustafa…” Riley whines as she claws at his shirt. “You’re still completely clothed…” She bites her bottom lip when she manages to rip open his shirt, sending buttons flying across the room.

Mustafa laughed and grabbed her hands, pinning them to the bed above her head. “Kitten,”

He gives her a pointed look as if warning her. “Behave.”

“But Daddy…” She huffed, pouting up at him as she writhed on the bed. Mustafa groaned underneath his breath at her ravenous behavior before he moved off the bed to remove the rest of his clothes. He then got back on the bed to attack her neck with kisses and aggressive love bites.

“You’ll be lucky if you can even walk after I’m done with you.” Mustafa growled in her ear, giving her right thigh a rough squeeze. Riley lets out a light giggle.

“Who said I wanted to?” Her tone giving away mischievous intentions as she wraps her legs around his. Riley bit her lip to stifle her giggles when he groaned again, this time in annoyance. She then let out a soft keen as Mustafa slowly slipped his dick inside her. “Oh, fuck…” She claws at his back.

“Kitten...Watch your claws.” He warned as he rolled his hips at a slow pace.

“Or what?” Riley continued to taunt him, chuckling before she cursed as he began to move his hips faster as he grabbed her jaw firmly.

“You must really miss me if you want me to put your pussy on life support.” Mustafa said before he pushed her knees towards the headband, making her scream over the sounds of the headboard smacking against the wall.

“Ah! Ahhh, fuck! Mu-Mustafa!” Riley’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, biting her lip to stifle her loud moaning.

“Uh-uh, baby..” He tutted before he pulled out to turn her onto her stomach. “Don’t go quiet on me now.” Any other time, you’re running your mouth, talking shit.” He grabs her by the hips, raising her ass to pull her back to his dick. “So don’t be silent when I show you your place.”

Riley keens at his aggressive backshots as she pushes up on her hands to throw her head back in euphoria. “Oh my fucking god, baby! Fuck me just like that! Fuuuucccckk…” She bites her bottom lip as she starts to move her hips back against his. Mustafa then pulls her hair back into a ponytail before he yanks it back hard, turning her whining to shrieking.

“There you go…” He rasped into her ear, moving his other hand to her throat. “Scream for me. Scream my name. I want the whole roster to know whose pussy this is, kitten…”

Riley breathes a wanton moan as she balls her fists into the sheets as Mustafa continues to hit her spot dead on. “Mustafa…”

“I’m sorry.” He panted. “What was that?” He tugged on her hair again which resulted in a sharp yelp. “Say that again.”

“Daddy...please…” A strangled cry escapes her as Mustafa tightens his grip around her throat, her orgasm right on the edge.

“Don’t play with me, lil girl…” he practically growled before he let her go. “Give me what I want.”

“Daddy, please!” She lets out a broken scream when he smacks her on the ass again, thrusts hitting a little harder before he suddenly stops. “Nononono, Daddy, please…” She collapsed on the bed, quivering as her orgasm remained on the edge.

“F-Fuck…” Mustafa stutters, feeling her clench down on his cock. “How...t-the fuck are you this wet?’ I’m almost tempted to just give you a baby..” He breathed as he took ahold of her hips to stop her hips from moving.

“Do it…” Riley mewled at his words. “ I want it…”

“Yeah?” He purred again, kissing her temple. “My baby girl wants a baby, huh? Want a bunch of little ones running around?”

“Uh-huh!” She looks back at him with a smile as she notices the feral look in his eyes.

“Then take it.” He begins to roll his hips slowly, knowing that she’s right there on the edge.

“Mustafa-.” Riley shrieks as she finally reaches her peak, her body shaking violently as her pussy squirts, soaking the sheets beneath them.

“Shit, babygirl. You’re-You’re fucking-. Ah!” Mustafa cuts himself off, letting out a roar as he cums deep inside her, hands gripping her hips tight to the point of near bruising. “Shit, you are something else, baby doll.”

“So what...people...tell me.” Was her response. Mustafa popped her on her sore ass.

“Don’t sass me, woman.” He gently pulls out, laying down next to her. “I still have energy to go another round without taking a nap unlike you.”

Riley manages to give him a little giggle as she rolls over onto her back. “Never took you to make idle threats, my love.”

A sigh was heard from beside her.

“You must really want to be in a wheelchair for the week, huh?”

“A week, huh? That’s the best you got?”

tagging: @retro-rezz-the-est @gold--gucciempress

#wwe smut #WWE #Mustafa Ali #mustafa ali smut #mustafa ali x oc

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dustedmagazine · 3 years ago

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Dust, Volume 7, Number 7

What are Grandbrothers doing to that piano?

Greetings from under the heat dome, where shipments of vinyl are melting mid-journey and even the coolest of cool jazz sounds a little wilted by the time it reaches your ear. We are sitting in the shade. We are drinking lemonade and iced tea. We are looking for the window fans and lugging old air condition units up from the basement. We are, perhaps, headed to the community pool for the first time since our kids were young, though also, perhaps not. In any case, we are still getting through piles of recorded music, even in this heat, and finding some gems. Here are dispatches from the furthest reaches of Japanese psych, European free jazz, self-released indie folk, Irish lockdown angst, Moroccan raging punk and lots of other stuff. Contributors included Mason Jones, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Tim Clarke, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Arthur Krumins and Chris Liberato. Stay cool.

Yuko Araki — End of Trilogy (Room40)

End Of Trilogy by Yuko Araki

These 16 tracks whoosh past in just 35 minutes, with most of them clocking in around two minutes in length. Many don't reach a conclusion: they simply end abruptly, and the next one starts. Araki manipulates electronics to create whirling, sizzling atmospheres of confusion, sometimes fast-moving burbles of percussion and synths, at other moments pushing distorted hissing and confrontational tones to the front. The aptly-named "Dazed" begins with a cinematic feel, then its galactic drones give way to static and metallic scrapes. "Positron in Bloom" is like a chorus of machine voices shouting angry curses into space, and "Dreaming Insects" sounds as if the titular creatures are being pulled downstream in fast-moving rapids. Oscillating between menacing and humorous, End of Trilogy's bite-sized pieces of surrealist electronics are never boring.

Mason Jones

Alexander Biggs — Hit or Miss (Native Tongue Music Publishing)

Hit or Miss by Alexander Biggs

Alexander Biggs blunts sharp, stinging lyrics in the sweetest sort of strummy indie-pop, working very much in the Elliott Smith style of sincerity edged with lacerating irony. “All I Can Do Is Hate You” finds a queasy intersection between soft pop and tamped down rage, Biggs murmuring phrases like “I want you to fuck me til I can’t say your name,” but melodically, over cascades of acoustic guitar. “Madeline” is the pick of the litter here, a dawdling jangle of guitar framing knife-sharp lyrics about romantic disillusionment. “Miserable,” sports a bit of lap steel for emotional resonance, demonstrating once more, if you had any doubt, that very sad songs can make you feel better somehow. Biggs is good at both the softness and the sting, and for guy-with-a-guitar albums, that’s what you need.

Jennifer Kelly

Christer Bothén 3 — Omen (Bocian)

Omen by Christer Bothén 3

Dusted’s collective consciousness has spent a lot of time considering Blank Forms’ recent publication, Organic Music Societies, which considers Don and Moki Cherry’s convergence of artistic and familial efforts during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the two archival recordings by Don and associates, which shed light upon his Scandinavian musical activities. All three are worth your attention, but their liveliness is shaded by the awareness that almost every hopeful soul involved is no longer with us. But Christer Bothén, who introduced Don to the donso ngoni and subsequently played in his bands for many years, is not only among the living, he’s got breath to spare. This trio recording doesn’t delve into the African sounds that bonded Bothén and Don. Rather, the Swede’s bass clarinet draws bold and emphatically punctuated melodic lines, driven by a steaming rhythm section that takes its cues from Ornette Coleman’s mid-1960s trio recordings. This music may not sound new, but it’s full of lived-in knowledge and vigor.

Bill Meyer

Briars of North America — Supermoon (Brassland)

Supermoon by Briars of North America

New York-based trio Briars of North America take patient, painterly, occasionally cosmic approach to folk music. With “Sala,” Supermoon sounds like a backwoods Sigur Ros. A falsetto voice intoning a made-up language arcs elegantly over sustained waves of electric piano. Soon after, the album touches down into more grounded guitar-and-cello territory on pieces such as “Island” and “Chirping Birds,” which bring to mind Nick Drake, albeit less contrary or withdrawn. At the album’s midway point, the listener is carried into the aether with the eerie sustained brass and wordless vocals of the eight-minute “The Albatross of Infinite Regress.” A similar space is explored at the album’s end with the 12-minute “Sleepy Not Sleepy,” as strings and warbling synthesizer tones intermingle with the return of the made-up language. Though the band’s more conventional vocal-led songs, such as “Spring Moon,” are decent enough, Briars of North America touch upon something expansive and ineffable when they explore their more experimental side.

Tim Clarke

Bryan Away — Canyons to Sawdust (self-released)

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Chicago-based actor, composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliot Korte releases music under the moniker Bryan Away. His new album, Canyons to Sawdust, begins with what feels like two introductions. “Well Alright Then” is a Grizzly Bear-style scene-setter for wordless voices, strings and woodwinds, while “Within Reach” sounds like a tentative cover of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” that runs out of steam before it had the chance to build momentum. The first full song, single “The Lake,” gets the album up and running in earnest with its melancholy piano and string arrangement spiked with pizzicato plucks and bright acoustic guitar figures. Half Waif lends her vocal talents to “Dreams and Circumstance,” another highlight featuring some lovely interplay between guitar arpeggios and drum machine. One pitfall of exploring romantic musical territory is the risk of sounding a tad saccharine, and the weakest links in the album, companion tracks “Scenes From a Marriage” and “Scenes From a Wedding,” have the kind of performative tone you’d expect to find on the soundtrack of a mainstream romantic comedy. Elsewhere, though, Korte’s judgment is sound, and there’s plenty of elegant music to be found. Fans of Sufjan Stevens will no doubt find a lot to like, and it’ll be interesting to see where Bryan Away ventures next.

Tim Clarke

Jonas Cambien Trio — Nature Hath Painted Painted The Body (Clean Feed)

Nature Hath Painted the Body by Jonas Cambien Trio

On its third album, the Jonas Cambien Trio has attained such confidence that it’s willing to mess with its signature sound. The Oslo-based combo’s fundamental approach is to stuff the expressive energy and textural adventure of free jazz into compositions that are by turns intricate and rhythmically insistent but always pithy. This time, the Belgian-born pianist Cambien also plays soprano sax and organ. The former, stirred into André Roligheten’s bundle of reed instruments, brings airy respite from the music’s tight structures; the latter, dubbed into locked formation with the piano and jostled by Andreas Wildhagen’s restlessly perambulating percussion, expands the music’s tonal colors. The tunes themselves have grown more catchy, so much so that their twists and turns only become apparent with time and repeat listening.

Bill Meyer

Ferran Fages / Lluïsa Espigolé — From Grey To Blue (Inexhaustible Editions)

From Grey To Blue by Ferran Fages

When discussion turns to a pianist’s touch, it’s tempting to think mainly of what they do with their fingers. But it must be said that Lluïsa Espigolé exhibits some next-level footwork on this realization of Ferran Fages’ From Grey To Blue. Fages is a multi-instrumentalist who functions equally persuasively within the realms of electroacoustic improvisation and heavy jazz-rock, but for this piece, which was devised specifically for Espigolé, he uses written music and an instrument he doesn’t play, the piano, to engage with resonance and melody. The three-part composition advances with extreme deliberation, often one note at a time, turning the tune into a ghostly presence and foregrounding the details of the decay of each sound. This music is so sparse that the shift to chords in the third section feels dramatically dense after a half hour of single sounds and corresponding silences. The elements of this music have been sculpted with such exquisite control that one wonders if Catalonia has looked into insuring Espigolé’s feet; her way with the piano’s pedals is a cultural resource.

Bill Meyer

Grandbrothers — All the Unknown (City Slang)

All the Unknown by Grandbrothers

The duo known as Grandbrothers hooks a grand piano up to an array of electronic interfaces, deriving not just the clear, gorgeous notes you expect, but also a variety of percussive and sustained sounds from the classic keyboard. In this third album from the two—that’s pianist Erol Sarp and electronic engineer Lukas Vogel��construct intricate, joyful collages, working clarion melodies into sharp, pointillist backgrounds. The obvious reference is Hauscka, who also works with prepared piano and electronics, but rather than his moody beauties, these compositions pulse with rave-y, trance-y exhilaration. If you ever wondered what it would sound like if the Fuck Buttons decided to cover Steve Reich, well, maybe like this, precise and complex and shimmering, but also huge and triumphant. Good stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

id m theft able — Well I Fell in Love with the Eye at the Bottom of the Well (Pogus Productions)

Well I Fell in Love With the Eye at the Bottom of the Well by id m theft able

Al Margolis’ Pogus Productions imprint has cast its gaze toward the strange happenings in Maine, netting a mutant form of electroacoustic wizardry in the process. Scott Spear is the one-man maelstrom known as id m theft able, an incredibly prolific and confounding presence in the American northeast. He draws influence from musique concrète and sound poetry, but adds a whimsical spirit, a tinker’s ingenuity and the comedic timing of a master prankster to his compositions. Sometimes this leads to the bemusement of his audience, but he tempers any surface madness with an endless curiosity and a playful sense of the meaning of the word music. Well I Fell in Love with the Eye at the Bottom of the Well ostensibly came to be via Spear’s desire to create a doo-wop tune. Only Spear himself knows whether this is fact or fiction, because it is clear from the opening moments of “Shun, Unshun and Shun” that this disc is full of sonic non-sequiturs, amplified clatter and delightful mouth happenings that are as far removed from doo-wop as possible. The madness is frequently tempered with beautiful moments: a broken music box serenades a flock of chirping birds in the middle of a mall, Spear hypnotically chants at a landscape of crickets, flutes pipe along to the patter of rain on a window. As one gets deeper into the record, the sound poetry aspects become more and more pronounced, such as on “The Curve of the Earth” and the closing piece, “Purple Rain.” Those seeking a humor-filled gateway drug into that somewhat perilous corner of the sonic spectrum would be wise to pop an ear in the direction of this frenetic assemblage of sound.

Bryon Hayes

Mia Joy — Spirit Tamer (Fire Talk)

Spirit Tamer by Mia Joy

Mia Joy turns the temperature way down on gauzy Spirit Tamer, constructing translucent castles in the air out of musical elements that you can see and hear right through. The artist, known in real life as Mia Rocha, opens with a brief statement of intent in a one-minute title track that wraps wisps of vocal melody with indistinct but lovely sustained tones. The whole track feels like looking at clouds. Other cuts are more substantial, with muted rock band instruments like acoustic and electric guitars and drum machines, but even indie-leaning “Freak” and "Ye Old Man,” are quiet epiphanies. Rocha sounds like she is singing to herself softly, inwardly, without any thought of an audience, but also so close that it tickles the hair in your ears. Rocha closes with a cover of Arthur Russell’s “Our Last Night Together,” letting rich swells of piano stand in for cello, but tracing the subtle, undulating lines of his melody in an airy register, an octave or two higher. Like Russell, Rocha sets up an interesting interplay between deep introversion and presentation for the public eye; she’s not doing it for us, but we’re listening anyway.

Jennifer Kelly

Know//Suffer — The Great Dying (Silent Pendulum Records)

The Great Dying by KNOW//SUFFER

It’s not inaccurate to describe The Great Dying as a hardcore record. You’ll hear all the burly breakdowns; buzzing, overdriven guitars; and grimly declaimed vocals that characterize the genre, which since the mid-1990s has moved ever closer to metal. But Know//Suffer have consistently infused their music with sonic elements associated with other genres of heavy music. Most of the El Paso band’s 2019 EP bashed and crashed along with grindcore’s psychotic, sprinting energy. The Great Dying is a longer record, and it slows down the proceedings considerably. There are flirtations with sludge, and even with noise rock’s ambivalent gestures toward melody: imagine Tad throwing down with a mostly-sober version of Eyehategod, and you’re more than halfway there. As ever, Toast Williams emotes forcefully, giving word to a very contemporary version existential dread. But there’s frequently a political edge to the lyrics on this new record. On “Thumbnail,” he sings, “I swallow what must be hidden / Hoping assimilation makes me whole / The whole that everyone thinks I am / Smiling under this mask knowing / I’m not hiding my face in public.” “Assimilation” is a loaded word, especially on the Southern Border, and it’s no joke walking around in public as a proud black man anywhere in Texas. Wearing a mask as you walk into Target? P.O.C. stand a chance of getting shot. Know//Suffer still sound really pissed off, but the objects of their anger seem increasing outside of their tortured psyches, located in the lifeworld’s social planes of struggle. That gives their grim music an even harder charge, and makes Williams’s performances of rage even more powerful.

Jonathan Shaw

Heimito Künst — Heimito Künst (Dissipatio)

HEIMITO KÜNST by Heimito Künst

The debut album from Italian experimental instrumentalist Heimito Künst, recorded over several years in his home studio, uses an array of electronic and primitive instrumentation to create an overall woozy, dark atmosphere. From groaning, atonal slabs of organ, like a detuned church service, to murmuring field recordings and scrapings, these seven tracks are less like songs and more like unsettling journeys through sound. Pieces like "Talking to Ulises" blend quiet Farfisa tones and a wordlessly singing voice in the distance. Ironically, although the final track is titled "Smoldering Life", it's unexpectedly brighter, with major-key synth notes over the cloudy sound of a drum being bashed to pieces before ending with an almost gentle, summertime feel.

Mason Jones

Jeanne Lee — Conspiracy (moved-by-sound)

Conspiracy by JEANNE LEE

Lots of 1960s and 1970s jazz reissues offer beautiful music, but few redefine how liberating improvised music can be. Conspiracy, originally recorded in 1974 by Lee on vocals with an ensemble that includes Sam Rivers and Gunter Hampel, falls into the latter category without feeling forced. It combines sound poetry, the conversation of spontaneity, and grooves that don’t stay on repetition but still get ingrained into your brain somehow. Best digested in a contemplative sitting, the album demands you give your whole attention to the direction of the music and words mixed with extended vocal techniques. The sound shifts from a full-on medley of flutes, drums, bass and horns with voice, to more minimal experiments. The recording is clean and uncluttered, even at its busiest. A lushly enjoyable listen.

Arthur Krumins

Sarah Neufeld — Detritus (Paper Bag)

Detritus by Sarah Neufeld

Sarah Neufeld’s third solo album grew out of a collaboration with the Toronto choreographer Peggy Baker, begun before the pandemic but dealing anyway with loss, intimacy and grief. The violinist and composer works, as a consequence with a strong sense of movement, underlining rhythms with repeated, slashing motifs in her own instrument and pounding drums (that’s Jeremy Gara, who, like Neufeld, plays in Arcade Fire). You can imagine movement to nearly all these songs. “With Love and Blindness” rushes forward in a wild swirl of strings, given weight by the buzz of low-toned synthesizer and airiness in the layer of denatured vocals; you see whirling, bending, graceful gestures. “The Top” proceeds in quicker, more playful patterns; agile kicks and jumps and shimmies are implied in its contours. “Tumble Down the Undecided” has a raw, passionate undertow, its play of octave-separated notes frantic and agitated and the drumming, when it comes, fairly gallops. This latter track is perhaps the most enveloping, the notes caroming wildly in all directions, in the thick of the struggle but full of joy.

Jennifer Kelly

Aaron Novik — Grounded (Astral Editions)

Grounded by Aaron Novik

Aaron Novik is a clarinetist with an extensive background in jazz, klezmer, rock and in-between stuff, but you wouldn’t know any of that from listening to this tape. Its ten numbered instrumentals sound more derived from the sound worlds of 1970s PBS documentaries, Residents records of similar vintage, and Pop Corn’s fluke hit, “Pop Corn.” Recorded during the spring of 2020, when Novik’s new neighborhood, Queens, became NYC’s COVID central, it manifests coping strategy that many people learned well last year; when the outside world is fucked and scary, retreat to a room and then head down a rabbit hole. In this case, that meant sampling Novik’s clarinets and arranging them into perky, bobbing instrumentals. The sounds themselves aren’t processed, but it turns out that when recontextualized, long, blown tones and keypad clatter sound a lot like synths and mechanized beats. There’s a hint of subconscious longing in this music. While it was made in a time and place when many people didn’t leave the house, it sounds like just the thing for outdoor constitutionals with a Walkman.

Bill Meyer

Off Peak Arson — S-T (Self-released)

Self Titled by Off Peak Arson

Presumably named after the Truman's Water song — a fairly obscure name check, indeed — Off Peak Arson hail from Memphis, TN. Their debut EP's five songs are less reminiscent of their namesakes than of heavier, noisier bands like Zedek-era Live Skull, Dustdevils and Sonic Youth. Which is not a bad thing at all. The four-piece leverage the dual guitars to nicely intense effect, and with all four members contributing vocals there's a lot going on, at times blending an interesting sing-song pop feel with the twisty-noisy guitar. The band have a way of finding memorable hooks amidst sufficient cacophony to keep things challenging while also somehow catchy. Keep your ears open for more from this quartet.

Mason Jones

Barre Phillips / John Butcher / Ståle Liavik Solberg — We Met – And Then (Relative Pitch)

We met - and then by Phillips, Butcher, Solberg

In 2018, ECM Records issued End To End, a CD by double bassist Barre Phillips which capped a half-century of solo recording. You might expect this act to signal the winding down of the California-born, France-based improviser’s career; after all, he was born in 1934. And yet, in 2018 he played the first, but not the last, concert by this remarkable trio, which is completed by British soprano/tenor saxophonist John Butcher and Norwegian percussionist Ståle Liavik Solberg. Recorded in Germany and Norway during 2018 and 2019, this CD presents an ensemble whose members are strong in their individual concepts, but are also committed to making music that is completed by acts of collective imagination. The music is in constant flux, but purposeful. This intentionality is expressed not only through action, but through the conscious yielding of space, as though each player knows what openings will be best occupied by one of their comrades.

Bill Meyer

Round Eye — Culture Shock Treatment (Paper +Plastick)

“Culture Shock Treatment,” the lead-off track from this unhinged and ecletic album, swings like 1950s rock and roll, a sax frolicking in the spaces between sing-along choruses. And yet, the gleeful skronk goes a little past freewheeling, spinning off into chaos and wheeling back in again. Picture Mark Sultan trying to ride out the existential disorder of early Pere Ubu, add a horn line and step way back, because this is extremely unruly stuff. Round Eye, a band of expatriates now living in Shanghai, slings American heartlands oddball post-punk into unlikely corners. Frantic jackhammer hardcore beats (think Black Flag) assault free-from experimental calls and responses (maybe Curlew?) in “5000 Miles, “ and as a kicker, it’s a commentary on ethno-nationalist repression (“Thank…the country. Thank…the culture”). “I Am the Foreigner” hums and buzzes with exuberance, like a hard-edged B-52s, but it’s about the alienation that these Westerners most likely experience, every day in the Middle Kingdom. This is one busy album, exhausting really, a whac-a-mole entertainment where things keep popping out of holes and getting hammered back, but it is never, ever dull.

Jennifer Kelly

So Cow — Bisignis (Dandy Boy)

Bisignis by So Cow

This new So Cow record is a mood. Specifically, that mood during the third and “least fun” of Ireland’s lockdowns, when you head to your shed and bash out an album about everything that’s been lodged in your craw during a year of isolation — including, of all things, the crowd at a Martha Wainwright show (on “Requests”). And while sole Cow member Brian Kelly might have dubbed the record Bisignis, the Old English word for anxiety, it’s his discontent that takes center stage. “Talking politics with friends/Jesus Christ it never ends” Kelly sings on early highlight “Leave Group” before employing a guitar solo that could pass for some seriously fried bagpipes to help clear the room. This album takes the opposite approach of The Long Con, the project’s 2014 Goner Records one-off where So Cow made more complex moves towards XTC and Futureheads territory but obscured its greatest weapon: Kelly’s deadpan wit. And while a couple of these songs overstay their welcome with their sheer garage punk simplicity, others like “Somewhere Fast” work in the opposite way and win your ears over with repeat listens. “You are the reason I’m getting out of my own way,” Kelly sings, and in doing so has produced the project’s best full-length in a decade. So what? So Cow!

Chris Liberato

Taqbir — Victory Belongs to Those Who Fight for a Right Cause (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Victory Belongs To Those Who Fight For A Right Cause by Taqbir

In our super-saturated musical environment, another eight-minute, 7” record of scorching punk burners isn’t much of an event. But the appearance of Taqbir’s Victory Belongs to Those Who Fight for a Right Cause (the title is almost longer than the record itself) is at the very least a significant occurrence. The band comes from Morocco and features a woman out front, declaiming any number of contemporary socio-political ills. So there’s little wonder that the Internet isn’t bursting with info about Taqbir; you can find a Maximumrocknroll interview, some chatter about the record here and there, and not much else. It must take enormous courage to make music like this in Morocco, and even more to be a woman making music like this. The long reign of King Mohammed IV has edged the country toward marginal increments of cultural openness — if not thoroughgoing political reform — but conservative Islam and economic struggle are still dominant forces, combining to keep women relegated to submissive social roles. And the band is not fucking around: their name is a Moroccan battle cry, synonymous with “Alu Akbar!” Their repurposing of that slogan in support of their anti-traditionalist, anti-religious, anti-capitalist positions likely makes life in a place like Tangier or Casablanca pretty hard. The songs? They’re really good. Check out “Aisha Qandisha” (named for a folkloric phantasm that ambiguously mobilizes the feminine as murderous and rapacious monster): the music slashes and burns with just the right dash of melody, the vocals go from a simmer to a full-on rolling boil. Taqbir! y’all. Stay safe, stay strong and make some more records.

Jonathan Shaw

TOMÁ — Atom (Self-Release)

Atom by TOMÁ

Tomá Ivanov operates in interstices between smooth jazz and soul-infused electronics, splicing bits of torchy world traditions in through the addition of singers. You could certainly draw connections to the funk-leaning IDM of artists like Flying Lotus and Dam-Funk, where pristine instrumental sounds—strings, piano, percussion—meet the pop and glitch of cyber-soul. Guest artists flavor about half the tracks, pushing the music slightly off its center towards rap (“A Different You featuring I Am Tim”), quiet storm soul (“Outsight featuring Vivian Toebich”), falsetto’d art pop (“Catharsis featuring Lou Asril”) or dreaming soul-jazz experiments (“Blind War featuring Ben LaMar Gay”). Thoughout, the Bulgarian composer and guitarist paces expansive ambiences with shuffling, staggering beats, roughing up slick surfaces with just enough friction to keep things interesting.

Jennifer Kelly

The Tubs — Names EP (Trouble In Mind)

Names EP by The Tubs

“I don’t know how it works” declared The Tubs on their debut single, but they’re diving right in anyways on its follow-up, Names, with four songs that explore the self and self-other relationship. Their cover of Felt’s “Crystal Ball” tightens the musical tension of the original in places but still allows enough slack for singer Owen Williams to stretch the lyrical refrain — about the ability of another to see us better than we see ourselves — into a more melancholy shape than Lawrence. Of the EP’s three originals, Felt’s influence is most obvious in George Nicholls’ guitar work on “Illusion,” especially when the change comes and his lead spirals off Deebank-style behind Williams while he questions his connection to his own reflection. “Is it just an illusion staring back at me?” “The Name Song” is the longest one here at over three minutes, and in a similar way to The Feelies, it feels like it could go on forever, which might prove useful if Williams adds more names to his don’t-care-about list. “Two Person Love” is the best track of the bunch, though, with its classic sounding riff that swoops in and out allowing room for the chiming and chugging rhythm section to do the hard work. The relationship in the song might have been “pissed up the wall,” as Williams in his Richard Thompson-esque drawl puts it, but The Tubs certainly seem to have figured out how this music thing works.

Chris Liberato

Venus Furs — S-T (Silk Screaming)

Venus Furs by Venus Furs

Venus Furs sounds like band, but in fact, it’s one guy, Paul Krasner, somehow amassing the squalling roar of psychedelic guitar rock a la Brian Jonestown Massacre or Royal Baths all by himself. These songs have a large-scale swagger and layers and layers of effected guitars, as on the careening “Friendly Fire,” or hailstorm assault of “Paranoia.” A ponderous, swaying bass riff girds “Living in Constant.” Its nodding repetition grounds radiating sprays of surf guitar. You have to wonder how all this would play out in concert, with Krasner running from front mic to bass amp to drum kit as the songs unfold, but on record it sounds pretty good. Long live self-sufficiency.

Jennifer Kelly

Witch Vomit — Abhorrent Rapture (20 Buck Spin)

Abhorrent Rapture by Witch Vomit

Witch Vomit has one of the best names in contemporary death metal (along with Casket Huffer, Wharflurch and Snorlax — perversely inspired handles, all), and the Portland-based band has been earning increasing accolades for its records, as well. They are deserved. Witch Vomit plays fast, dense and dissonant songs, bearing the impress of Incantation’s groundbreaking (gravedigging?) records. Does that mean it’s “old school”? Song titles from the band’s previous LP Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave (2019) certainly played to traditionalists’ tastes: “From Rotten Guts,” “Dripping Tombs,” “Fumes of Dying Bodies.” And so on. This new EP doesn’t indicate any significant changes in trajectory or tone, but the songwriting makes the occasional move toward melody. See especially the second half of “Necrometamorphosis,” which has a riff or two that one could almost call “pleasant.” If that seems paradoxical, check out the EP’s title. Is that an event, a gruesome skewing of Christianity’s big prize for the faithful? Or is it an affective state, in which abject disgust somehow builds to ecstatic transport? Who knows. For the band’s part, Witch Vomit keeps chugging, thumping and squelching along, doling out doleful songs like “Purulent Burial Mound.” Yuck. Sounds about right, dudes.

Jonathan Shaw

yes/and — s-t (Driftless Recordings)

yes/and by yes/and

This collaboration between guitarist Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and producer Joel Ford (Oneohtrix Point Never) is an elusive collection of shape-shifting instrumentals. Each piece is built around Duffy’s guitar, yet the timbre and mood tends to switch dramatically between tracks. The album’s run-time is fairly evenly split between dark, atmospheric pieces, such as “More Than Love” and “Making A Monument,” and hopeful, glimmering miniatures, such as “Centered Shell” and the wonderfully titled “In My Heaven All Faucets Are Fountains.” “Learning About Who You Are” looms large at the album’s heart, as nearly eight minutes of hazy, wind-tunnel drone pulses and reverberates across the stereo space. Despite the variation in tone, each track stakes out its own territory in the tracklist, and it’s only “Tumble” that comes across as an unrealized idea. While it’s only half an hour, yes/and feels longer, its circuitous routes opening up all kinds of possibilities.

Tim Clarke

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haledamage · 6 years ago

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Pairing: Female Cousland/Nathaniel Howe

Story Summary: Cathain Cousland had been in love with Nathaniel Howe for as long as she can remember. It doesn’t take long after they reunite in Amaranthine to realize she still is.

Chapter Summary: The party makes it to Blackmarsh and regret it almost immediately.

Hey, so I posted this on Friday as a text post, but for some reason tumblr decided to hide it from everyone and make it not show up in the tags. So I’m posting it again like this in the hopes that it won’t be invisible. Text under the cut if you’d prefer to read here instead of ao3

Cait was awoken the next morning by Byron’s sloppy puppy kisses on his triumphant return to camp. He climbed all over her, tail wagging furiously, until she was able to push him away enough to sit up.

She rubbed his ears as he nuzzled at the poultice on her forehead. “Hey, buddy. Did you finish your mission from Nathaniel?” He barked happily and she laughed. “Good boy. Who’s my fierce Grey Warden? Who’s the best pup in Ferelden?” Byron rolled over on his back so she could pet his belly. “That’s right! It’s you!”

He wouldn’t leave her side all morning. She had to eat breakfast, change into clean clothes, and buckle her armor back on with Byron’s shoulder pressed hard against her hip. He didn’t back off until they were on the road again, and even then only far enough that they wouldn’t trip over each other.

They walked at a slower pace today than the day before, wary of another ambush, but the conversation flowed easily enough. It wasn’t much different than her travels before; different faces (except Oghren), but the camaraderie was familiar. Last time she’d traveled in a group this small, though, had been after Lothering, and she missed the comparative safety of a larger group. At least this time her friends mostly got along. Compared to trying to travel with Alistair and Morrigan at each other’s throats, being Commander of the Grey was a walk in the park.

“You know, Oghren,” said Anders cheerfully, “maybe we should get you a shield. While it’s only the four of us, you might be more useful as a meat shield than… whatever you call it that you normally do.”

“You know, Anders,” Oghren said, less cheerfully, “maybe we should get you a set of armor so you won’t fall apart like a wet paper bag if a darkspawn walks too close to you.”

“Maybe we should get Nate a sword,” Anders added.

Oghren giggled. “Heh heh, do you think he knows which end to hold?”

“Would you like to find out?” Nathaniel growled.

“Nah,” Oghren was laughing so hard now he stumbled, almost collapsing to the road. “Wouldn’t want to make the Commander jealous.”

They were still a day out from the Blackmarsh, and even though it was early afternoon the sky grew darker with every step. It felt heavy, like a storm was coming, but the darkening sky remained cloudless. The ground started to feel softer, springy under Cathain’s boots, and the air smelled of still water and rotting vegetation and something sour that stood out from the normal marsh scents.

Cait stepped up to the front of the group, where Nathaniel had taken the lead. He had his bow in hand, sharp eyes on the thickening woodland for anything amiss. She waited until he glanced her way until she said anything; he looked liable to jump at the slightest provocation.

“What do you remember of Blackmarsh?” She asked quietly. Something in the air made her want to whisper.

“Ghost stories,” he replied in the same hushed tone. “Tales Adria and your Nan used to tell us to keep us out of it. I never really thought there was anything to them until now.”

“Is that why I could never convince you or Thomas to come exploring with me? You were scared of ghosts?” A bird exploded out from a nearby bush, startled out of hiding by their passage. Cait gasped and reached for her blades, her heart hammering against her ribs.

Nathaniel steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. His laughter was warm in her ear. “Yes, how silly of us, to be scared of ghosts. Would that we all had your fortitude.”

“I’m just saying,” Cait said. She stepped away from him reluctantly, trying to ignore the prickle of Oghren’s and Anders’ stares on the back of her neck. “Going to explore a spooky swamp would have been an excellent excuse to have two or three days alone.”

“Then you should have led with that then,” Nathaniel practically purred at her, “or left your friends at home now.”

Cait stared at him slack-jawed. “You are a cruel and wicked tease and I hate you,” she told him with no real heat behind it.

His laugh pushed back the encroaching darkness a little.

——-

It was two hours past full dark when they finally stopped to rest, though it had been dark long before the sun had set. The gibbous moon hung large and nearly full in the sky, but none of its light seemed to make it down to their little fire.

They set up camp in silence, the shroud over Blackmarsh stifling conversation as quickly as it started. Cathain hoped they wouldn’t be there long, that they wouldn’t need to spend a night in the swamp itself. The shadow of the marsh felt like a living thing, like icy fingers on her neck. She found herself twitching at the smallest breeze, as if even the air and trees were her enemies, and saw the same niggling fear in her companions’ eyes.

Once the stew was started, Cait turned to find a place to sit down and nearly ran right into Anders. He grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling into the fire, looking startled for only a moment before his face rearranged itself into a familiar sly grin. “Throwing yourself at me already, Cait? What will the others think?”

When she didn’t push him away immediately, still trying to regain her balance, Anders stepped a little closer. He grabbed her chin in one long-fingered hand and gently but firmly forced her eyes to his. Those eyes didn’t hold any of the smile still painted across his face, and he studied her shrewdly, almost clinically.

“Are you going to kiss me, mage?” Cait whispered, because it’s what she knew he wanted her to say.

“Only if you beg for it, Commander.” He stared at her for another long moment before abruptly releasing her as if it had never happened. “Looks like you’re mostly recovered from your incident yesterday. How’s your head?”

“Attached. Bit of a headache, but I can function through it.” She stood where he had released her for a second, getting her bearings. Just when she thought she had a handle on who Anders was, he did something like that. She shook herself and sat down on the nearest seat by the fire. “You could’ve just asked, you know. You didn’t have to get all handsy.”

“You’d just lie. You’re lying about it right now, in fact. Besides, how could I miss out on the look on his face?” Anders nodded behind her. Cait followed his gaze to Nathaniel, who was past the edge of camp gathering firewood. He was too far away to hear them talking, most likely, and he was frozen just outside the light from the fire. The look on his face was… complicated. “Your boyfriend looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.”

“He’s not my–” Cait started, an old habit, but Anders interrupted with a scoff.

“He wants to be. You want him to be. I’m not stupid, Cait, despite appearances.”

“It’s not like that. It’s never been anything… official.” She thought back to summers past, sneaking into his room after everyone was asleep and back to her own bed before dawn, stealing moments in shadowed alcoves.

Cait pried her eyes away from Nate back to the fire. She wrung her hands in her lap, suddenly restless. “His father would never have approved.”

“His father isn’t around anymore, if I recall.” He popped a piece of dried fruit into his mouth. “Just something to think about.”

“What’s something to think about?” Nathaniel asked gruffly as he joined them by the fire.

“I’m trying to convince our stubborn and illustrious leader to take tonight off,” Anders lied easily. He threw a piece of fruit at Nathaniel, who plucked it out of the air and threw it back. It hit Anders in the forehead. “Ow!”

Nate sat down across the fire from them. “Is your head still bothering you, Caitie?”

“It’s tolerable. Really. You all worry too much.” It was worse than she let on, a sharp spiking pain that increased in the bright glow of the fire, but she could tune it out enough to do her job so she wasn’t quite lying. Still, she was happy to latch onto the lie Anders offered. “And I already told you, Anders, I am not a child, and I don’t appreciate being treated like one.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” he sighed as if they actually had been having this argument for a while. He was a frighteningly good actor. “I’ll let you take a shift tonight, under the condition that you take first watch with Nathaniel instead of a watch on your own. You still get to be useful and I don’t have to worry that the concussion you still have - and I can see it in your eyes no matter how pig-headed you try to be - will cause you to lose focus while you’re alone.”

Oh. So that was his game. Cait felt backed into a corner. “I… deal,” she said through clenched teeth. “But for the record, I am fine.”

Dinner that night was a somber affair, the darkness so thick Cathain couldn’t see anything past their little circle of tents. Even Oghren was remarkably sober and silent, two things she’d never seen from him before. He went to bed immediately after he was done eating and, after more waggled eyebrows and pointed looks, so did Anders. Bryon settled at her feet with a weary boof.

As soon as they were gone, Nathaniel came around the fire to sit next to her. Byron put his head in his lap and he absently scratched the dog’s ears. “What is with him tonight?” He asked quietly, nodding toward Anders’ tent.

“He fancies himself as a matchmaker, apparently.” Cait sighed, too tired to try and come up with a convincing lie. “I guess they don’t teach subtlety in the Circle tower.”

“He’s about thirteen years late on that,” he chuckled. “I was under the impression that he knew that.”

Cait ignored the accusation in his tone, and said, “I think he’s read too many of those romance books Delilah liked to read. He’s disappointed I haven’t fallen helplessly into your arms.”

“I think I remember those books,” Nathaniel murmured, smile warm in the deep darkness. His voice shook with barely contained laughter. “Aren’t I supposed to be wearing a billowy shirt with the breeze fluttering through the hair on my chest? Perhaps while reciting poetry or staring longingly at the ocean?”

“You have chest hair now? Mmm, that’s new.” Cait pushed that image out of her head, lovely as it was. “I think the billowing shirt is supposed to be under your armor, which I remove with my dainty and trembling fingers. Probably while wearing a clinging silk dress.”

“Hmm, dainty, trembling, and helpless. If I had to pick three words to describe you…”

Cait covered her face with her hands to stifle her giggles. “I’ve never been very good at playing the damsel.”

“Aye,” Nathaniel chuckled, caught up in her laughter, “but I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Cathain felt her face flush, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. She started to undo her braid so she wouldn’t fidget, unplaiting it and combing it straight with her fingers. “Your accent’s gone a bit Marcher,” she said, to change the subject a little and fill the oppressive quiet.

“Has it? I suppose it makes sense, but I never noticed.” He scratched at his jaw, running his fingers over the layer of stubble accumulated from two days on the road. It seemed like the same nervous not-fidgeting that she was doing, and drew a fond smile to her lips.

“I like it. It's…” it helps remind me of how much time has passed, it makes you sound less like your father, it does interesting things to the butterflies in my stomach when you say my name “nice.”

He didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he just stared at her in the flickering firelight, looking like he was trying to solve a puzzle and the answer was written somewhere on her face.

Cait tried to stare back for a while, but the intensity and curiosity in his gaze left her flustered, so she turned back to the fire instead, trying and failing to see past it into the woods around them. The night may as well have been a wall of black stone; neither light nor sound nor wind penetrated it at all.

She gasped as Nathaniel’s warm, calloused fingers touched her cheek. Her hair had fallen into her face now that it was freed from its plait, and he pushed it gently back behind her ear.

“I’ve never seen your hair this long before,” he said softly. Cait could barely hear him over the pounding of her heart.

“I… haven’t had much opportunity to cut it.” Her face felt hot again and she had trouble meeting his eyes.

“I like it.” Nathaniel traced his finger along her jaw, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. “It’s nice.”

“You stop that,” Cait said, flustered. She pushed his hand away resolutely, but he didn’t let her back away entirely, catching her hand between his. He still had his archery gloves on and she still had her fingerless ones. The contrast between cool leather and warm skin was… intriguing.

“‘Shy’ isn’t a word I’d use to describe you either,” he said with a sweet smile.

“We are supposed to be working.” Cathain couldn’t look at him, but she didn’t try to pull her hand back. “I have enough trouble concentrating with this blighted headache, I don’t need you being…” she couldn’t think of a word, so she just waved her free hand in his direction, where he sat too close and entirely too pleased with himself, her mabari asleep halfway in his lap.

“Okay, okay. No more flirting tonight.” Nathaniel still sounded far too amused with himself. He released her hand, but didn’t stop staring. “It seems I’m a bit rusty anyway.”

Cait crossed her arms over her chest. “Right. I’m sure you didn’t have Marcher girls throwing themselves at you,” she said, and was surprised at the amount of bitterness she heard in her own voice.

Nate started to say something and she cut him off. She stood up abruptly and put a few steps of space between them. She said in a rush, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… I’m just being grumpy. It’s none of my business anyway. I’m going to go walk perimeter for a bit, make sure nothing’s trying to sneak up on us.”

She stepped out of the light of the fire and into the solid night before he had a chance to reply.

——-

Cathain was awake just before dawn. It was a pretty normal occurrence for her - especially out on the road - and she was dressed and ready in time to join Anders in silence as the sun rose at the end of his watch shift. It didn’t do much to brighten the gloom of the Blackmarsh; even with the sun fully up, their camp was surrounded by deep twilight, but it at least pushed back some of the oppressiveness of the night.

Her headache hadn’t gone away. It settled as a dull throbbing behind her right eye. Anders gave her another once over, thankfully less hands-on without an audience, but couldn’t find any evidence of lingering injury. Most likely, it was an adverse reaction to the Blackmarsh itself; with luck, their business there would be done today and her head would clear as they left it behind.

She managed to do a passable job of avoiding Nathaniel for the most part, keeping conversation strictly on professional terms. The darkness helped; none of them had much energy to spend on conversation with the weight of the marsh pressing them down.

It gave her a lot of time to think. Too much time to think. She hadn’t really thought much about what Nate might have gotten up to in the Free Marches outside of training. He’d always been very serious, even as a boy, preferring quiet and solitude over the taverns his brother Thomas frequented or the balls and parties Delilah enjoyed.

But… well, 8 years was a long time. They had agreed not to wait for each other; they hadn’t known if or when he’d ever return to Ferelden, if she’d ever get the opportunity to join him up north. He hadn’t wanted to leave her with just 'someday’.

But she had waited. She was still waiting. Had he?

Cait’s feeling on the matter shifted wildly as they walked. Sometimes she was resigned: it didn’t matter what had happened before, it was in the past. Sometimes she felt possessive; she wanted to shove him against a tree and put her mouth and hands on him until he couldn’t remember any touch but hers. Sometimes, more than she would care to admit, she felt self-conscious. She wondered what kind of women he would have met in the Free Marches. Women like in the romance books they’d talked about, fair and dainty, with long flowing hair and soft hands that had never touched a sword.

She wore her hair down instead of braiding it back up. She hoped he’d comment, but he didn’t. All he did was stare; every time she looked his way, she found that he’d already been looking at her.

Around midday, they reached the swamp proper and progress slowed to a crawl. The mud sucked at their boots, the trees clawed at their hair and clothes, and every instinct Cait had screamed Run! Leave! Get out while you can!

She wished she was surprised when they found the first Fade tear.

“I hate the Fade,” she muttered vehemently. She crossed her arms defensively across her chest, tense for trouble as Anders did the Mage Thing, inspecting and hopefully repairing the rip in reality.

“What should we expect?” Nathaniel asked softly. He walked up to stand next to her as they watched Anders.

Cathain felt the weight of his hand on her back, one small point of connection. She didn’t move away. “If we’re lucky, just demons. If we’re unlucky, demons and weird shit. If we’re really unlucky, we get knocked unconscious and our spirits are sent into the Fade, where we have to deal with weird shit at the whims of a demon.”

“I feel like there’s a story there. Maybe you can tell it to me over drinks sometime.” His voice was very close, but she refused to look and see just how close he was. Distraction could be fatal right now, and Nathaniel Howe was nothing if not a tall, blue-eyed distraction.

She did feel warm and a bit giddy at the suggestion, though. She found her voice enough to say, “Okay. I’d like that.”

——-

Their second attempt at working together in combat went better. It helped that blighted werewolves were not subtle creatures. It helped also that they had expected to be attacked for days, since the darkness set in.

Cait and Oghren made a point to stay apart, harrowing the same enemy from opposing sides so one of them was always flanking. It gave room for Nathaniel and Anders to sling arrows and spells with impunity, and Bryon stood back to stop anything that tried to approach them.

“Did they bite or scratch any of you?” Cait asked once the last werewolf fell. She inspected the bodies as if they held a clue to the Blackmarsh’s mystery. They remained enigmatic. “We’re immune to the taint, but not the werewolf curse.”

“We’re all fine, Caitie,” Nathaniel said, tense and alert for more enemies. “I don’t think we should dally here.”

He was right, of course, and they moved on as quickly as they could. Cait really hoped Kristoff hadn’t actually come here. She’d really like to find a living person at the end of one of these wild goose chases for a change.

She wasn’t so lucky. Kristoff’s camp was only recently abandoned. A few days, maybe a week at most. Long enough for dust and debris to settle in his cot, for the embers of his fire to burn out, but his tent still stood and the things within it - notes, a chest with a few simple belongings, a couple days’ worth of food - hadn’t been reclaimed by nature or predator.

Cait tucked his notes carefully into her bag and sighed. “I’m sorry, Kristoff.”

Nathaniel’s hand found her shoulder again, gave her a warm squeeze. “We might still find him.”

“Yeah,” said Anders, sounding much less optimistic than Nate. “Maybe he found what he was looking for and left. Maybe he’s back at Vigil’s Keep right now wondering where you are.”

She touched Nate’s hand briefly before she stepped out of his reach. “Your optimism is noted and appreciated. I hope it serves you for a very long time.”

The town that had once been here was clearly abandoned, the buildings long since rotted away to skeletons and husks. It did not, however, feel empty. It felt as alive as if the entire population had just stepped out for lunch. Which, Cait supposed, was what the ghost stories said. That they all disappeared one day but their spirits still lingered.

She kept looking over her shoulder as they walked, catching flashes of light and movement in the corner of her eye. She tried to convince herself it was the trees or the sun glinting off the water, but there was no wind to blow through the bare branches of the trees, and the sun was hidden behind deep clouds and didn’t reach the still lakes.

Everything in this marsh was creepier than the last. A huge, mostly intact dragon skull. An ominous ring of tall stones with a pedestal in the center, untouched by the ravages of time. A scavenger hunt leading to a proposal, a glimpse into the lives and love of people long gone.

Cait held the ring in the palm of her hand. The gold was still untarnished, the green stone set in it clear and bright. “I wonder if she would have said yes,” she mused.

Nathaniel’s voice was soft, contemplative. “Maybe they’re still together, wherever they are.”

“You are such a romantic,” Cait murmured, much more fondly than she’d intended.

“One of us has to be.”

Cait slipped the ring on her finger. It fit. She stared at it, fascinated. It made her feel strange in a way she couldn’t quite understand. Like catching a glimpse of herself in another life.

She caught Nate watching her and removed the ring and shoved it in her pocket, embarrassed.

Not much farther along the trail, they found a body of a Grey Warden - and something much, much worse. They were like giant grubs or maggots with almost human-like faces. If humans had mandibles like a spider and too many malicious, beady black eyes. They were in her blood, clearly darkspawn, but the pitch was wrong. Not the warm hum of her fellow Wardens or the buzzing undercurrent of normal darkspawn, but a high pitched whine that sent chills across her skin.

One of them tackled her, much faster than they should be. She got a dagger up into its mouth, stopping its mandibles from clamping down on her arm. Oghren brought his axe down on it, bisecting it in one blow and only barely stopping short of getting her as well.

In the wake of these… monsters came something even worse, because that was apparently the kind of day Cait was going to have. A hurlock approached them and, like the one that had almost killed Varel, introduced himself. The First.

He spoke haltingly, with a mouth not made for human languages. Of a Mother, of The Children, of big problems about to fall on the heads of those Cait had sworn to protect.

She drew her blades and The First raised his hands and Cait discovered that her day could actually still get worse.

She stared up at the hazy, grey-brown sky, at the Black City always in the distance, and said with every ounce of rage in her soul, “I. Hate. The Fade.”

“Are you sure you’re not a mage?” Anders asked, looking more comfortable than any of the rest of them. Maybe mages were more used to traveling the Fade outside of dreams. He leaned against a barrel that appeared to be floating a foot off the ground. “Because you must have some sort of psychic powers.”

“Yeah, it’s called 'deja vu,’ Cait grumbled. She put a hand on Oghren’s shoulder to steady him as he silently freaked out. She wondered if the Fade looked different to dwarves, since they couldn’t come here in dreams like others could. She wondered if he was the first dwarf to ever walk in the Fade. She’d ask him about it later, once they had stone under their feet again.

"So we just… need to find the demon at the center of this and kill it?” Nathaniel asked, wary but surprisingly composed all things considered. “Or find The First?”

“There’s usually a trick to it,” Anders said. “Something like… the exit’s through a small hole and you need to turn into a mouse to escape. Or you have to find the demon and convince them that sending you home is their idea.”

“Or we can just go join that mob over there,” Cait pointed toward a gathering of spirit villagers, torches and pitchforks at the ready. “The demon’s probably keeping them there too.”

They walked through the town of Blackmarsh-That-Was, the buildings tall and clean, chickens and townsfolk alike ignoring their passage. No children, that was weird. Down an alley, Cait saw a man being dragged off by unseen hands; that was weirder.

And weirdest of all, the one inciting the mob was a Fade spirit.

That’s what he had to be. Cait remembered Wynne’s tales of the spirit of Faith that had saved her life and of other spirits that represented positive traits - charity, valor, compassion. As this spirit clearly was not human and also didn’t resemble any demon she’d ever met, she felt comfortable with the assumption.

She hoped he was what he appeared to be, but… well, worst case scenario they were still trapped here. Best case, they made a new friend and they all got out of here alive. She’d take her chances.

#nathaniel howe #cousland/nathaniel howe #dragon age #dragon age awakening #dragon age fic #cait cousland #cait/nate #rhi writes #cait and nate have the opposite problem of kai and aloth #in that they keep wanting to blurt out FEELINGS and have to remind themselves they've only been reunited a month #I hope people can see this one #I thought it very strange that literally no one even acknowledged it before #shoulda known it was tumblr bs

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this-that-and-every-thing-else · 6 years ago

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Superman’s Kingdom: Spawns of Satan

A/N: So I came to realize that there is very little Goonies fan fiction out there and even less revolving around Brand. So, I’m starting this series revolving around him and his family. I feel like this one really started out strong but got less and less as I went so I do apologize for that. This is the most I’ve written in well over a year. If anyone would like to be tagged in the series, feel free to let me know. I may do a part 2 for this specific story if people want it.

Word count: 2.4k

Summary: Brand has been away for two weeks on a business trip and his wife Sadie is left alone and pregnant to look after their normally well-behaved children...this time they’ve managed to turn themselves into the Spawns of Satan.

Warnings: None really...its fluffy, some minor child annoyance.

Sadie Walsh was a patient woman. She had no problem with waiting in lines, she had no problem waiting for food at a restaurant or waiting at the doctor’s office. She didn’t even mind waiting to go out if her husband was watching a football game. What she didn’t have patience for, were her children misbehaving in the grocery store. She was very close to losing her cool. Her normally well behaved children had somehow been replaced with the spawn of Satan. Bryon, her normally adorable youngest, was currently running circles around his 5-month pregnant mother, while her oldest, Mikey, was trying for the fourth time to add candy to their cart even though he’d been told that he couldn’t have any. Yes, they had truly turned into little monsters these past few days.

Sadie took a deep breath and turned to Mikey. “Take the candy out of the cart. I told you no three times already.”

Mikey, looking up at his mother with a defiant glint in his eye, reached out to the shelf, grabbed a random bag of candy, and proceeded to toss it into the cart. “What did I just say Mikey? No. Candy! How many times do I have to tell you?” She was very close to just leaving the cart in the middle of the aisle and going home. Then again…they’d have no food for dinner tonight if she did that.

“But I want it! I want it and I want it now!” Mikey whined, stamping his feet and his face turning red. Sadie closed her eyes, counted down from ten and wondered who took her sweet 9-year-old and turned him into a 2-year-old demon. “Mikey, enough! You are 9 years old! Act your age! Now, take the candy out of the cart, if I have to tell you again you’ll be grounded and won’t be going to camp next week. Understood?”

Mikey huffed, stomped his foot once, but reached into the cart and removed the candy. Sadie sighed, hoping that this was the end of the issues for the day. The sound of breaking glass broke ended that though very quickly. Sadie looked towards the end of the aisle where Bryon was standing, looking down at a pile of glass and what looked to be jam seeping onto the tiled floor. Bryon looked up at his mother and then back at the mess. Thinking he was in bigger trouble than he actually was, he burst into tears. Not softly crying either, full on, large tears, snot running down his face and chest wracking sobs as if the world was ending. Yes, Sadie was losing her patience.

Sadie sighed, and proceeded to try to pick up her crying son, struggling to do so with her slight baby bump in the way, but eventually succeeding. She sat him in the cart and headed to the checkout where she continued to comfort her son and offered to pay for the broken jar. Thankfully the cashier was understanding and declined the offer. Small miracles do happen. She fought her way to her car, with one child still crying and the other trying to run into traffic. She quickly got them into the back seat and the groceries in the trunk before getting in the car herself and taking a moment to breath. Bryon was finally calm and Mikey was playing with whatever action figure he had left in the car.

The drive home would only take her 20 minutes, 20 minutes that she hoped would be peaceful. She must not have hoped enough because as soon as she turned out onto the road, the boys began fighting. Bryon wanted to play with Mikey’s toys, even though he had some of his own. Mikey wasn’t having any of that and now there was a full on tug of war in her back seat with two screaming children. Maybe if she ignored them long enough they’d stop…

Just as she was a block away from their home, Sadie heard the tell-tale sound of a hand connecting with skin, hard. With it came the pained screams of her youngest. Gritting her teeth, she pulled over to the side of the road, unbuckled her seatbelt and turned around to face her children. Bryon was holding a tiny hand on his face, with fat tears rolling down it and an angry red mark peeking out behind his hand. Mikey had his arms crossed and was glaring at his brother.

“Brandon Michael Walsh! You do NOT hit your brother! How would you like it if someone went around hitting you? Apologize right now.” Sadie was at the end of her rope. Her back hurt, her feet hurt, she was getting a headache and her children were being holy terrors. Thank god Brand was returning home tonight.

“But Mama he tried taking my army man! I don’t want him to have it!” The 9-year-old was now starting to sniffle, knowing very well that he was in big trouble. “Then use your words! It won’t hurt you to share with your brother. When we get home you are going straight to your room until dinner. After dinner you’re going right to bed. Do you understand me? I’ve had it with your nonsense today, both of you!”

With that, she turned back in her seat, buckled her seatbelt and carefully pulled back out onto the road and heading home. Thankfully, they pulled into their driveway two minutes later with no more incidents. Mikey was sulking with his arms crossed, and Bryon was rubbing at his face, glaring at his big brother.

Getting out of the car, Sadie had both of the boys grab a bag or two of groceries, while she grabbed the rest. The kids had waited on the porch for her to unlock the door. Once she had, they dropped the bags in the kitchen and headed for the living room, Bryon grabbing his Lego and Mikey turning on the television. Sadie sighed and shook her head, clearly the message hadn’t gotten across.

“Mikey, turn that off and go to your room, I told you that you would be staying there and I meant it. Bryon, I think you need to go down for a nap, head on upstairs and hop into bed, I’ll be up in a minute.” Thankfully for Sadie, with the exception of Mikey huffing, they both listened and headed on upstairs to their bedrooms.

Sadie dropped the groceries off in the kitchen and made her way upstairs to check on the kids. Mikey was sitting on his bed with a book in his hands. She was okay with that, if he was being quiet, she was happy. Bryon was lying in bed as he was asked and was curled up on his side. Sadie pulled down his blinds and read him a quick story to help him fall asleep, which thankfully didn’t take long. With both kids taken care of she was more than happy to make her way downstairs to put the groceries away…and then hopefully get to put her feet up, although she should start thinking about getting dinner ready.

When she finally got to sit, she did so in Brand’s favourite chair, curling her feet under herself and tipping her head back with her eyes closed and wishing he were here already. She couldn’t wait for Brand to get home that night. His presence these passed two weeks was sorely missed. The first week hadn’t been bad, the kids had behaved, looking forward to phone calls from their father every night, asking him all about Texas, was it as hot as they say? Was everything reallybigger there? Was the gym almost ready to open? When was he coming home? Did he buy them anything? The questions went on and on until he’d tell them to go to bed and he’d ‘read’ them their favourite book over the phone…because he was super dad and had it memorized. There’s a reason she called him her Superman…so many reasons actually.

The second week? It seemed like all hell had broken loose. He wasn’t able to call as much, the kids were constantly fighting, and Sadie was tired, she was sore, and she missed her husband. She never slept very well without him and he was a godsend when it came to the kids. She got lucky with him, he was very hands on with the kids both in keeping them busy, healthy and when they were sick he was right there, ready and willing to take on clean up, staying up all night and whatever else was thrown at him. And when the kids were misbehaving? He put on his stern face and made sure they knew why they were wrong in what they were doing, why they were being punished and just all around made sure they understood. He’d never been gone this long and it was taking its toll, on both the kids and herself. But, he had to be there to oversee the opening of the newest Walsh Fitness facility, it was only the third location to be opening and the first out of state.

The stress of the day, well really the last two weeks, caught up with her and instead of relaxing she found herself starting to cry a little. Overwhelmed, emotional and in need of a nap of her own, she was unable to stop herself. Later, she’d chalk it up to the pregnancy hormones, but for the moment she let herself cry it out. Normally, Brand would be right by her side, taking a lot of the load off of her, sometimes it scared her how much she relied on her husband, but that’s what marriage was about, sharing the burdens, the highs, the lows, and of course loving each other unconditionally. But without him and their children being tiny little…well, assholes? Yeah, she was just a little emotional and deserved a bit of a cry.

The crying didn’t last long; she couldn’t let it last long to be honest. One of the kids could catch her and then they’d be upset, plus she didn’t want to look horrible when Brand got home. Lord knows that when she cries she ends up looking like a mess. So, once she got it out of her system she turned the television on, it was some kid’s movie, but that was fine, it wasn’t like she didn’t usually end up watching that anyway with the kids.

Surprisingly she found herself sucked into the plot, it may have been for kids, but damn, Disney was good and she couldn’t deny it if she tried. She got so into the movie however that she didn’t notice the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, or the front door being opened and someone kicking off their shoes. Nor did she hear the sound of a gym bag being dropped on the floor by the staircase. She did however hear the creak of the floorboard next to her as Brand came into her line of vision, coming around the chair to kneel down in front of her.

Before he could even speak she launched herself at him with a squeal of delight, finding a burst of energy somewhere within the depths. Her arms wrapped around his neck in a fierce hug as his wrapped around her waist, pulling her close as she toppled them over and onto the floor. Murmuring a quick hello and an ‘I missed you,’ Brand slid a hand up from her waist, brushing her bump and over her breasts before cupping her neck and pulling her down for a much needed kiss. God he’d missed this.

Breaking away after a few moments Brand was more than happy to just stare at his wife. His wife who had clearly been crying at some point and looked utterly exhausted. He cupped her face, rubbing his thumb along her cheek. “You look awfully tired for someone who said she was doing just fine Princess.” Sadie leaned into his touch, almost nuzzling his hand like a dog or cat would.

“I’m okay Superman, honestly, I may have almost killed your children today though.” He frowned a bit, sitting them both upright but staying on the floor. With her arms wrapped around his shoulders and his around her waist, she told him what all went on this week with the children, from the attitudes to the near constant fighting and her just being tired and sore in general. The baby was certainly sapping her energy and taking care of the boys by herself clearly hadn’t helped. He felt horrible for leaving her alone, but he did have an idea to help her relax a little.

“Tell you what darlin’, why don’t you go on upstairs, get in a nice bath and just relax. I’m gonna ship the kids off to my parents or Mikey, get dinner started and we’ll have a weekend to ourselves. Just you, me and the bump.” Sadie just closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his and nodded with a smile. That sounded like a fantastic idea to her. Why she hadn’t thought of asking her in laws to take the kids in the first place she didn’t know. She’d blame that on pregnancy brain. The doctor said that might happen, and it had with the other two.

Speaking of doctors…

“Before I head on upstairs, I had that ultrasound appointment the other day.” Sadie was excited to tell him about this one, they’d wanted to find out the gender of this baby, just like they had the others and while she had wanted Brand to be there, well he had to work and he’d told her to go right ahead and she could tell him when he got home. Though, since there had been no girls born into the family for a few generations, it seemed like there was no reason to check, still they both agreed it would be good to know for sure.

“And? What’s the verdict?” He was looking at her with such anticipation on his face and was almost bouncing on the spot. She couldn’t hold back a grin.

“We broke the curse; you Superman must have super sperm because you’ve got yourself a little girl on the way.”

His eyes widened and he broke out in a huge grin, pulling her close once again and into a deep kiss, yes, he was definitely a happy man.

#the goonies #brand walsh imagine #brand walsh fanfiction #josh brolin imagine #the goonies fanfiction

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benbarnesescape · 7 years ago

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Rules

Warnings: 18+. Unprotected sex (don’t be silly wrap that willy), bad language. If you’re not 18 you gotta go to the kids table until you are (sorry ‘tis the law)

A/N: This was inspired by Dua Lipa’s song Rules and for @starless-skyox for my B. Russo prompt challenge. I had to write vulnerable Billy even if he’s an asshole. There’s just something about men who you know aren’t good for you….

“Oh Billy…”

Your nails claw down his back as your legs wrap around his waist, drawing him deeper into you. Both your sex fills his nostrils as he bites down on your neck, catching that sensitive area of skin that has you moaning out his name in approval.

You both had been fooling around for months. It had started out as something casual. An old friend of Curtis, Billy knew of you. Knew that Curtis would do anything for you just like you would do anything for him. You both had grown up in the old neighborhood together. When Curtis had introduced you both to meet for quick drinks at happy hour one Friday night, one drink became two drinks which became karaoke, then dancing, followed by street shawarma with more drinks.

When you had woken up in his bed the next morning – you had been petrified. You were married. Sure, your husband was dull and boring. Sure, the sex was bad. Sure, maybe you had married him because it was your mothers dying wish before she gave into the cancer that had been killing her for years. Cheating was cheating. You told him such.

That was of course, after you had fucked him senseless on his kitchen counter. Before you had sucked him off so good, he had almost passed out from his orgasm.

Yet you still called and when you did, he was more than eager to meet you.

You were both addicted to each other. Sex was just sex.

You had even defined three rules to ensure that it stayed that way. To ensure that this just stayed sex – nothing emotional. Just sex.

That was what he told himself as he felt your body shake under his own, feeling the way your walls fluttered around his cock as you bite your lip, your eyes rolling back in ecstasy before he released himself in you, his body shaking just as uncontrollably as your own.

It was just sex.

You both lay together in your post coitus bliss, his head laying gently on your chest before you’re pushing him away softly. Too soon.

“Told Bryon I was running to the store for ice-cream and now I have to come up with an excuse to why I’m late.”

You swing out of bed all too quickly, looking around the room for your underwear and jeans.

“Run to the corner mart.”

You snort as you shimmy into the tough material, before you’re scurrying around for your bra.

“Think I haven’t already figured that out.”

Billy smiles before he turns his head, watching you as you throw your shirt on before walking to the mirror in his room. You give an internal sigh at your hair, fresh from sex, before tugging on the hair tie around your wrist as you pull your hair into a ponytail.

He catches your eye in his mirror and your lips tug into a soft smile as you watch each other. Then you shake your head, turning around before saying,

“You know I can’t stay.”

“Never asked you too.”

You walk up to the bed, bending down to place a soft kiss on his lips before whispering,

“Maybe not this time.”

He pulls you down to him, his hands finding your waist easily and you giggle into his mouth as your weight falls on top of him, before his lips are skimming down your neck.

“Say halfway to the store you got called into work. Stay a little longer.”

“Billy…” You groan as you pull away and he sighs, his head falling into the crevice of your neck.

Rule # 1 – you don’t stay the night.

You were crystal clear about that. Never bended on it, not after that first time. Yet he pushed.

He always pushed.

He had missed the way it felt to wake up to another warm body, inhaling the way your shampoo filled his nostrils with his arm wrapped over your body, warming you up.

Not because he had feelings. He just wanted to feel that way again. Feel like there was someone else in the world who gave a damn about him.

“Or I could wait for you to call me when you’re ready to be fucked the right way again.” He sighs, pulling away from you and you cast your head to the left, your eyes considering him before saying,

“How about lunch a few days from now? There’s this great new French restaurant that opened by your job. We can have lunch then dessert and that way you don’t have to feel like a used sex slave.”

Billy laughs, trying to bite away the excitement building in his gut. Trying to deny the fact that you never wanted to do something casual, like go to lunch or go out and be seen with him and that he was far too excited to spend time with you outside of bed. Instead, he does what he always does as he caresses your face tenderly. He hides behind a lie.

“You can always get your husband to buy your meals.”

You nod, rolling off of him,

“I could. But I’d rather this time you do. You are the one, after all, benefiting from dessert.”

You kiss him one last time before pulling from his arms, walking to his bedroom door. You give a small wave,

“Au revoir amore.”

And then you’re gone, like you always are, the faint smell of your perfume the only evidence that you were fever around.

Lunch took too long. When you had shown up to the restaurant, a phone held to your ear as you maneuvered through the intimate space, he knew he was done for. The dark gray dress hitting your curves in all the right places, teasing your cleavage behind the designer blazer he might as well threw in the towel now. When he saw you, typically in tight jeans and leggings, hair thrown up as you laughed with him you were casual. Light hearted. Fun. The kind of fun girl you imagine taking home and fucking for hours.

Now you were like a runaway model, demanding the room of your presence as you strolled power walked into the room. You walked with confident purpose as you neared him, a large smile on your face as you held up a finger, speaking into the phone at a rapid pace in what was either Arabic or Armenian. His ear was rusty, hadn’t been abroad in a while.

“What is it that you do again?” he asks naively, aware for the first time that you knew too much about his life but he knew too little of your own.

“I work for the U.N. International Relations Manager. Means you translate and keep the kids away from each other when they get into a bad fight. And hello to you too.” You placed a kiss on his lips that lingers for too long. You’re both aware of it as you pull away, blinking at him.

Neither of you refuse to accept it.

“Got you flowers.”

His hands idly go to the bouquet of tiger lilies to the left of him and your twitch up into a smile as you threw a napkin over your lap, taking the gift and inhaling them softly.

“How’d you know tiger lilies were my favorite?”

He leans back in his chair, thrumming his hand against the table as a waiter comes, asking for your drink order. Billy takes a cool sip of the whiskey he’s already been sipping, trying to navigate his next answer.

“You mentioned them a month back. When we were attempting to watch a movie.”

“You were listening?” you counter and he shrugs,

“Was in the military. You learn to pick up on details.”

The twinkle in your eyes tells him that you don’t believe him, that you believe it’s something else but you don’t voice it. Just watch him curiously.

“Perhaps I should make a more conscious effort to get to know you. Tell me – what was it like growing up in New York?” he’s trying to steer the conversation away from how you were making him nervous. You lift a skeptical eye though and he knows you don’t buy it. He hopes you don’t challenge him on it.

“You don’t wanna hear about that. And honestly, you don’t have to know me to validate fucking me on the side…” You allow yourself to drift and he leans onto the table, his elbows propping up as he balls his hands into a fist.

“Yea I do. I know about as much as Curtis told me about you and you know way too damn much about me. I’d like to fix that.”

Rule #2 – you would learn as little about each other as possible.

Helped ward off feelings of attachment. You both worked hard for that. He was a naturally private person as were you.

But when you were around someone so much, no matter how hard one tried, it was inevitable to pick up little things about them. What made them smile. How they grew up. What motivated them. He was curious about you now, knowing that you were a UN officer. Intrigued. His thirst for needing to know all the details outweighing the need to lie to himself.

You give a slow nod, watching him as you take a long sip of water before shrugging.

“Okay, but this is just to make things even. Doesn’t mean anything else okay?”

He nods and you sigh, gesturing for the waiter to pour you another glass of wine.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” He says simply

He listens, his dark eyes bearing into you as he watches you as you dive into your autobiography

This was different. It was different in the way you laughed as you sat back in your chair, allowing the white wine to consume your senses. The way you brushed hair out of your face as your eyes eagerly told him tales of growing up, your hands moving from nervously playing with your napkin to know moving around you in an animated fashion. The way you sit up in your chair, crossing those legs he knew like to wrap around his waist when he was plowing into you deeply, as you bite your lip, sharing things he knows you normally would keep to yourself.

This was different because he was seeing you beyond the woman who he just wanted to fuck. Now he was seeing you as something else – someone who grew up with an abusive stepfather and a mother who drank herself to death. Someone who was the youngest of seven kids and had to step up at an early age to support the family. Someone who had found a way out of a shit show family situation only to be forced into a loveless marriage. Bryon – the insurance carrier who had you had known your whole life and eventually married because toward the end of your mother’s sickness, was one of the few things that gave her peace.

The way you felt like you were alone in this busy world, standing amidst a crowd screaming for help only to fall on silent ears.

You were like him. And that small ache deep in the back of his heart, the one that had always told him that he was going to be alone, chips a bit.

When you’re done, realizing that he hasn’t responded you begin to nervously begin to fiddle with your napkin again, wringing the tough fabric in your hand.

“Sorry to dump that all on you.” You finally say after you take a long swig of your wine, finishing the cup and he shakes his head, reaching out for your hand. The movement takes you both off guard and he shakes his head, trailing circles on your exposed hand,

“Don’t apologize about being you. Not to me or anyone us. Most of us fill the same way but would never admit it.”

You quirk your head to the side, watching the way his lean fingers play against your skin and you look back up at him, eyes lust blown as you clear your throat. He had pushed too much. Got too intimate. You were pushing him away as you shrugged out of your jacket, exposing your shoulders and allowing him a better view of your cleavage.

“Where’s the nearest bathroom?” you ask and he can’t help his eyes from wandering between your eyes and your chest.

“Behind me in the back. To your left.”

“Family restroom?” you ask and he nods as you pull from him, ceasing the intimate contact as you stand to straighten out your dress. Then you walk toward him, bending down quickly to whisper,

“Meet me in 5?”

“I’ll see you in three.” His eyes are fixed on your face as you smile, noting the way two dimple dig deep into your cheeks before he feels your fingers grazing over your shoulder as you walk past him.

The fuck was wrong with him. He waited a beat, before straightening out and buttoning his jacket.

This was just sex.

He never realized how lush your lips were. It was all he could think of as you pulled him to the back seat of his car – his $600,000-dollar car he reminded himself – laughing as your lips fall on his neck, drawing a low moan out of him.

You’re both drunk. Way to damn drunk. You were both technically supposed to be inside, celebrating with friends and strangers the start of a new year. Your husband was inside. Curtis was inside. Neither of you gave two fucks. The minute you walked into Anvil in the glittery, tight fitting number he knew he was going to fuck you. His eyes had undressed you the minute you waved at him, walking over with someone a bit smaller than you, my gangly in your presence.

You’re husband. Things clicked the minute you introduced him. He understood why a woman like you – a woman full of passion and adventure – had to get away from someone like that. Understood why you choose a job that required you to be away most of the year. Understood why you ignored your phone when he called or texted. Understood why you had cheated on the sad man in the first place.

He was an ant trying to carry a goddess.

It had been six months and while he hadn’t tried to be sentimental, it had slipped out while you were both in bed.

“Come to my New Year’s Eve party?” he whispered against your hair, his arms wrapped around you as you nuzzled into his chest. You were going to be gone a month and had forced him to take half a day for work. You were insatiable.

“I’m not your girlfriend.”

He snorts though something bites at his heart. Wishing it wasn’t this way. Confused on why he wanted it.

“Not asking you too. Curtis is coming and he’s not either.”

You laugh, kissing his chest softly before resting your head on his pecks.

“Why do you want me to go?”

“I think it would be fun. Booze, dancing and good company. Come on – tell me you don’t want to go out and have a good time together. It’ll be like the first time we met.”

You sigh but he knows by the smile tugging at your lips he’s got you. He doesn’t admit to himself that he wants you to go because it marks the six months you’d have been together. That would really scare you. Scared the shit out of him when he thought too hard on it. Which is why he lied. To himself, to you.

Lying was how you survived in this world.

Of course, this was the karma for wanting more from you. Now he was stuck with your husband – Brandon was it? – having to listen to him as he dryly droned on about running – one of his hobbies. How he was thinking of expanding your New York home, how he devoted all his time volunteering to fill in the time when you were away for work.

God could the man be more boring.

So it was a little after 11, when people were really starting to feel buzzed and you were leaving the bathroom that he had pulled you into the dark hallway.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he had whispers in your ear and you relax in his grip, wrapping your arms around his neck as you shake your head.

“You scared the shit out of me Billy.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he runs his lips down your neck causing you to tremble as he mutters against your skin, “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

You laugh, giving him a soft nudge before saying,

“You know my husband is here right?”

“Yea I noticed. Why is he here? I invited you and Curtis. Not you, Curtis and the third boring amigo.”

You laugh, shaking your head and shrugging,

“No way I leave the house looking this good and not have an explanation. Besides I’ve been gone a month in Columbia, he missed me, blah blah blah…”

Billy bites down on your collarbone causing you to yelp and shakes his head.

“This simply won’t do. Can’t have you dissatisfied.”

“Hmmm,” your hands make slow work of his button up shirt, popping each button slowly, “What are you going to do to remedy it.”

He lifts you, carrying you out to his car, a place more private from the wandering eyes inside, throwing you in the back seat as he turns it on. Locking the door to warm the small space up. Had only got so far before you were pulling him in the back seat, your hands greedily reaching for his belt as he lifts your dress up.

“This dress on you,” he ruts up the material high on your belly, taking in the garters you’re wearing and he groans as he rolls back on his knees, taking you in, “Fuck babe, this dress on you should be illegal.”

You give a satisfied smile as his hands roam up your thighs, over the intricate material running down your flesh at it meets in your center before he’s pulling down your underwear, biting his lips. Watching the way you were watching him, your arousal filling up the space and goddamn if that doesn’t do him in, he doesn’t know what will.

He pulls down his briefs quickly, spreading your legs apart as he leans between them, his face barely touching yours as he slowly slides into you, causing you to moan. Then he bends down and he kisses you, his cold lips pressed against your own and you both freeze. Stare at each other for what seems like a century.

Rule # 3 – No kissing.

Kissing was intimate. Invited something more. Sure a few pecks down each other’s neck was fine but actual kissing was off limits.

He was breaking all of them now and he knew it.

He’s about to pull away, about to take it back but then your tongue is skimming along his lips, asking them to be opened and he submits, his tongue mingling with yours for the first time. Tasting you. Moaning deeply into your mouth as he lifts your leg, hitting your deeper as his cock grazes across that spot that has you moaning out his name, your hands digging in his hair.

Your other leg wraps around his torso, drawing him closer to you as his hand snakes between your leg, circling your clit. He can feel the way your body starts to shake, succumbing to the pleasure he is giving you as you pull him closer to him, kissing him deeply.

He pulls you up higher, driving into you deeper, a low moan grumbling from his inner chest as you wrench from him, grasping at the leather underneath you as his name fills the air. Your hand rakes down his chest as his forehead leans on yours, lips brushing against each other and he whispers,

“I think I could fall for you.”

You cradle his face, wrenching away from him for a second and shake your head whispering,

“Don’t.”

He doesn’t cease his movement as his hips move faster, more sloppily against you. Doesn’t stop as his hand intertwines with yours, coming inside you as his head falls into the crook of your neck, moaning out your name. You however are still, your head moved to the side as silence starts to fill the car. The sound of people counting down echoing against the crisp night air.

“Forget I said it.” He whispers in your neck, pulling away from you, that part of him that has always kept himself distant starting to harden up again. You’re silent and he looks down at your face, at the way tears glisten in the moonlight and fear grips your heart.

Was the thought of him loving you really that horrible? Was he that unlovable?

“Really, I didn’t mean it.” He tries to get it out in a gruff but he knows it’s more of a whisper and you turn toward him, shaking your head.

“I can’t have you Billy. Just as much as you can’t have me. The sooner you come to terms with that – the easier this can get.”

He’s confused, knows his face is reflecting it and you wipe at your tears before your face cradles him,

“You’re kinda great Billy you know that? Funny. Talented. Successful. Intelligent. Perceptive. But your just as broken as I am. You don’t know how to love. I don’t know how to love. Two broken things don’t make a right. This is fun, what we have but one day you’ll get bored. You’ll find someone else and I’ll go back to my dull existence. Maybe you find a boring, charming girl who can put up with you and your broken soul but it can’t be me. Don’t know how to love you in all the ways you deserve to be loved. Because you do Billy – deserve love. But it can’t me. Don’t get attached to me.”

There’s something about the way your voice hits his ear, the way you look at him before you’re fighting back a sob that tears deeply to his soul.

Because he was you. Knew you. Knew that everything that you were saying was true.

You were two broken souls just looking for someone to put you together. But that couldn’t happen. Too much damage had been done. Far too much.

“Hard to not love someone like you.” He mutters and you laugh, pushing him a bit.

“Billy Russo doesn’t love.”

“And Y/N does?” he challenges back and you shake your head.

“I don’t want to see you after this.”

It tears him. Feels like the air is being sucked out of his lungs slowly, filling up with something dark and twisted that poisons his lungs. He feels alone and vulnerable suddenly. But he knows you’re right.

You had to go. He had to watch you go.

Love like this was dangerous.

“After tonight?” he asks and you nods slowly and he sighs, wiping a strand of hair from your face.

“Only if you come home with me. Just for tonight. Then you can go.”

The only rule you haven’t broken yet. The only one that’s mattered the most.

You don’t hesitate to say yes.

When he wakes up the next morning you’ve left him alone in his bed and you’ve taken his broken heart with you.

#ben barnes #billy russo x reader #billy russo #billy the beaut #the punisher #ask and you shall receive

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littlepuddingsugg · 7 years ago

Text

Scavenger Hunt

Request: Joe creates a scavenger hunt for Y/N for him to purpose.

You felt your peaceful dream slip away from you as the sound of muffled laughter slowly brought you back to reality. You closed your eyes tighter as you moved your foot back to nudge Joe who you had assumed was the one who was laughing, but when your foot hit nothing but the empty space beside you, you slowly blinked yourself awake.

“Bloody hell boys!” You said noticing Oli and Byron standing over you as you slept, a smile plastered on both of their faces.

“Sorry Y/N.” Byron said as his smile grew.

“Did you know that you smile in your sleep?” Oli asked as he pointed his vlog camera back towards you as you pulled the duvet up to your chin.

“I was having a good dream which you two ruined….why are you in here anyway? Where’s Joe?” You asked.

“You’ll have to find him.” Byron said handing you a pastel colored envelope with your name on it written in Joe’s hand writing.

“What is this?” You asked, sitting up and taking the envelope, looking questionably at the boys who exchanged smiles to each other, “It’s too early for these games Sugg.” You said out loud as you ripped open the seam.

“He’s not here Y/N” Oli laughed.

“And where is he?” You asked rhetorically as you continued to unwrap the contents of the envelope.

“Read it out loud so the people at home know what it says!” Oli said as you unfolded the piece of paper that was tucked inside.

“Dearest Y/N….” You read, pausing to look strangely up at the camera, “Sometimes I feel like our life together isn’t exciting enough so I thought ‘Hey! Let’s do a scavenger hunt!’ As you are aware (hopefully) you woke up to Oli and Byron, their job is to help you find the 7 other envelopes that I have hidden and vlog your progress. When you have found all the envelopes, you’ll be given a prize, that prize being yours truly as I’m sure you’ve already asked where I was. Not sure how long it will take you to find all the envelopes but I’ll see you soon.” You continued to read out loud.

“A scavenger hunt?”

“Yep so let’s go!!” Oli said as he panned the camera back and forth from you, Bryon and himself to show the excitement.

“Umm….there’s no clue as to where the next envelope is in here.” You said as you scanned back over the note, turning it over even to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

“Just go get ready.” Byron said unphased that you had no prompt as to what to do next.

“Are you just going to keep filming the entire time?” You asked Oli as you realized he was still filming.

“Mhmm.”

“...is there an envelope somewhere in here?” You asked them both.

With no answer, the two boys parted leaving you with a direct sight line to the bathroom, “Is it in there?”

Getting nothing once again, you sighed as you pushed the duvet off of your body and headed over to the bathroom, flicking on the light to find another pastel colored envelope, this time with the number ‘2’ written on it, taped to the mirror.

You turned around and noticed the boys had followed you and were now standing in the door frame, watching as you ripped through the paper.

“Congratulations! You have found the second clue. Take this time to get ready for the day. Make sure not to skip over any part of your Saturday routine or you’ll miss the next clue.” You read.

“Any ideas where the next one could be?” Oli asked.

“Nope, but I’ll let you know when I do.” You said giving the boys and the camera a smile before closing the bathroom door on them.

The next thirty minutes or so was spent in the shower and in your wardrobe where you thoroughly searched for another envelope. With no luck, you threw on some clothes and a bit of makeup as you would every Saturday you supposed.

Oli and Byron glanced up at you at you walked down the stairs but they made no effort to get off the couch which meant they knew where the envelopes where hidden and you were nowhere close to find the next one.

Just as Joe had told you to, you began doing everything you typically did Saturday mornings. You began by making yourself some breakfast, unloading and loading the dishwasher and opened your laptop to check for any emails that may have came in late last night or early this morning.

“So are you two going to give me a clue as to where the next clue is or just sit on my couch?” You ask.

“You’re haven’t done everything you usually do on Saturdays.” Oli said without looking up from his phone.

“How do you know what I do on my Saturdays?”

“Y/N, think really hard. You’re forgetting something and they won’t be very happy with you later….” Byron said as he looked at you, his eyes shifting to the floor beside where you stood in the kitchen.

Your eyes followed his gaze to the potted plant that sat on the ground, “It’s in a plant? We have like 50 plants in this house!”

“Better get watering.” Oli said putting his phone down and pulling out the camera.

You silently cursed Joe’s name for letting him talk you into getting so many plants as you began filling the watercan that you grabbed from under the kitchen sink.

For the next 10 mins the boys followed you through the house as you watered each plant, keeping your eye out for an abnormally place piece of paper. With no luck inside, you headed outside and began watering those plants where you found the pastel paper hidden behind the tall grass of Joe’s favorite plant.

“Number 3…” You said tearing the clue open. “Got mail?”

“Well that was a shit clue Joe!” Oli said from behind you has he and Byron laughed.

>>>

“What did the clue say to order?” Byron asked as the three of you entered the coffee shop the sixth clue had told you to go to.

“My favorite drink.” You said looking around the busy shop for anything that remotely resembled an envelope, “Do you guys want anything?”

The three of you stood in line of the coffee shop Joe had asked you to come to shortly after the two of you had met four years ago. You hadn’t been in here much since that day but it still looked and smelt the same which made you smile. You glanced over that the large storefront windows that were lined with booths that were surprisingly unoccupied including the booth that you and Joe had sat in the day ages ago.

“And can I get a name for these?” The barista asked you.

“Y/N.” You said giving her a smile before you left to join Oli and Byron at the booth, “So now what?”

“Read the clue again.” Oli told you as he pulled back out the camera and brought it up to speed.

“You’re almost finished love. The penultimate clue is one of my favorites. It’s the only place that can satisfy your sweet-tooth. Order your favorite drink and sit at our booth.” You read.

“Y/N.” The barista said as she set the last of your order of drinks on the counter.

“Okay...so I have my drink, now what?” You said placing the three drinks on the table and sliding back into your seat.

“Read it again.”

“Oli there’s nothing in this clue! Just a rhyme that probably took Joe ages to come up with!” You said rereading the clue.

“Lemme see that.” Byron said as you gladly handed in the piece of paper, “Alright….congratulations...blah blah blah….order your favorite drink and sit at our booth. Okay, so you have your drink…-”

“And we are sitting at the booth.” You interrupted.

“Are you sure this is the correct booth?” Byron asked.

“Yes, it was the only one open that day and we continued to sit at this one every time we came in here because….” You trailed off as you remember why this booth was so special.

“Because why?” Oli asked as he continued to point the camera in your direction.

“The table.” You said as you started to feel around the underneath of the table, “There was a sticky note stuck to the underneath of this table that day that said something about being happy….” You paused as your hand ran over was what felt like an envelope.

“Wow Joseph, that was a good one.” Oli said surprised as you blushed and ripped open the clue.

“‘You make me happy in a way that no one else can’ is what the quote said. Back then I didn’t really think about that too much but as I got to know you and love you over the years, I realize that not only were we meant to find that sticky note but that it was talking about us. You make me so incredibly happy Y/N, even on the days where I don’t feel like smiling at all.” You said as you continued to stare at the paper for a few seconds after you finished reading before smiling and sliding yourself out of the booth, “C’mon boys, let’s go find Joe.”

The three of you walked the short walk from the coffee shop the the park where you and Joe had first met.

~ You were on your way home from work, dazed with an oncoming headache and just general stress when the next think you knew you were being caught from falling on your ass by the object that sent you tumbling.

“Sorry, sorry. Are you alright?” The man who was holding onto you asked.

“Um yeah I think so. Are you?” You asked finding yourself becoming lost in the man’s blue eyes.

“Yeah but I’m not the one who nearly fell to the floor.”

“Just the one who knocked me over.” You laughed as the stranger brought your back upright.

“Yeah again I’m sorry about that. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve had a pretty shit day actually and I was trying to sort things out rather than paying attention to where I was going.” The man stopped as he realized he was rambling, “And now I’ve just unloaded all of that onto a stranger. I’m sorry again.”

“It’s alright. I’m Y/N by the way.” You said giving him a soft smile.

You watched the man’s face swift from worry into an equally soft smile, “Joe.”

“Well Joe, it looks like we are no longer strangers are we?” You laughed.

“No I guess we aren’t. Hey, are you busy right now? There’s a nice little coffee shop down the road, I don’t know if you’d like to grab a coffee or something.” Joe asked.

“That’d be really nice actually.” ~

“So this is the infamous park!” Byron said as the three of you walked further into the park, “I’ve only heard stories about this place.”

“It’s hardly a park, just a shortcut from work to my old flat really.” You laughed as you turned left at a fork, “And right up here is where is all happened.” You said and smile creeped across your face as you noticed the figure that was sitting on a bench was your boyfriend.

“Hello love! I’ve been looking for you all morning!” Joe said as he stood up and pulled you into a hug.

“What was all this about? I’d say our life together is pretty exciting.” You said.

“I suppose it’s exciting but it’s just missing something.”

“And what is that?” You questioned as you watched Joe’s eyes shift to look past you.

You turned around and found the rest of the boys walking backwards as they carried something that they clearly didn’t want you to see yet. You watched as Byron ran over to help the boys as Oli stood back, his camera still pointing in your direction.

“A promise.” Joe said from behind you as he wrapped his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder as you continued to watch the boys, “A promise that I will love you forever and ever and no matter what. Because like that quote said, you make me happy in a way that no one else can and I don’t even want to test that theory out because I don’t want to risk losing you.”

Joe let his hands fall from your body as the boys finally made it to a reasonably distance. Byron backed away from the boys, giving them a thumbs up before they all turned around revealing what they were carrying. A large banner was stretched between them that read in big letters; ‘Will you marry me?’.

You turned around to Joe to find him down on one knee, a velvet box open in his palm.

“Y/N Y/L/N, will you mar-”

“Yes!!” You interrupted him with excitement, “Yes Joe, oh my god!”

Joe let out a small laugh as he stood back up, sliding the ring onto your finger before pulling you into a hug as the boys began to cheer behind you.

“That was a lot of work for a proposal.” You laughed before placing a kiss on his lips.

“I know and you didn’t even let me finish asking the question.” He laughed.

“I’m sorry, you can ask it again if you want.”

“Nope, nope. Moment’s over.” Joe said pushing you away before pulling you back in with a laugh before giving you another kiss.

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elevenhoursinfront-blog · 7 years ago

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12th December 2017

I had the worst nights sleep going. In fact, I can't even call it a sleep. I was just laying there. I'm ridiculously overtired today so I can see what's going to happen here, so can Steve.

We got up around 0800. We had to be out before 1000 for checkout so we needed to get our arses in gear.

We had our breakfast which was lovely, as per normal. We got showered and made the most out of our delightful bathrooms. We checked out and we were on the way!

Byron Bay – here we come!

Byron Bay has quite a reputation. All the backpackers that I've met have said that this tiny little town is their favourite. It is quite literally tiny but it has a very chilled vibe. It's pretty hippy, or so there's loads of wanna-be hipsters. It's full of surfer dudes and girls with floral dresses and dark round sunglasses.

We were driving along the motorway when the sign came up 'WELCOME TO NEW SOUTH WALES'. How amazing?! New South Wales has a different time zone to Queensland so within an hours drive, we lost ourselves an hour. I was excited though, this meant the day and the sunlight would last a lot longer. We'd also be able to sleep in a little bit better.

Our phone time changed automatically which I always find weird. How does my phone know that I've just crossed a boarder? I mean, obviously with it's navigation, location and data. But, like, how?

We drove through the main town after road works took us off the road we wanted. We were driving for an extra half an hour trying to get onto the main road that was blocked off. I was getting very stressed. Google Maps didn't know about the diversion – how rude, and kept taking me to the road block. Stupid phone!

Steve eventually got us round and into the main town that was very small. Extremely busy mind you. There was nowhere to park so we drove on and parked up. There was a lighthouse walk I wanted to do so we found where it started and drove down to find free parking. The parking at the main car park was about $4 an hour. How expensive can you get?! There's no way I'm paying that.

We found a place with 4 hours free parking a few blocks away. We ended up parking and I ended up having a bit of a mental breakdown due to lack of sleep, unnecessary road works, a stress head boyfriend when he's driving and well, I don't need any more reasons really. I couldn't stop crying and I just needed to go to sleep. You know when you're desperate to sleep, you'd fall asleep the second your head hits that pillow.

Steve tried to comfort me and he had a look at what campsites we could stay in. We weren't really looking in advance any more, we didn't need too. Our apps 'Wiki Camps' and 'Spaceships' were our lifesavers and did all the hard work for us. We were ringing the ones in the vicinity to see who was the cheapest. First one was $69 a night! WHAT?! THAT'S DAY LIGHT ROBBERY! I was so angry that I left a comment explaining their price and that it was day light robbery. A bit harsh as I hadn't even gone there to see if it was worth the money but come on – we're paying $35 a night for our camper van alone!

Second one was $50 unpowered... I was getting fed up! The third was the same. No way was we paying that.

Steve found a campsite 20 minutes drive away from Byron which was $30 powered. Perfect!

I told Steve that I didn't want to waste another day so we'd quickly do the walk and then go to the campsite. Well, boy was I wrong when I said the world 'quickly'.

The sites along the way were absolutely stunning. We walked down a path, detouring, to see the local beach. The water was perfect. A clear bright blue. It wasn't hugely packed but it was. It was no Bondi Beach but for Byron, it was popular.

We walked back up the steps to the main road to continue, or should I say, begin our walk. I realised after about 20 minutes walking that we could've parked the van much closer and start the walk closer. Never mind. Walking is good for you!

I was taking picture after picture because it was just so beautiful. The views were incredible. We came up to another beach (same beach, different area) and had a walk around that. We climbed over the rocks and sat down to watch the surfers. I reckon Steve could watch them all day long. I get bored because they sit on their boards for ages before picking the 'right' wave.

We went up to a lookout point which I believe was called Captain Cook's lookout – I could be wrong though. The view was unreal. We could see into the water it was that clear.

We left after about 10 minutes of watching and walked back onto the track. We had been gone around an hour now and we weren't really on the track to the lighthouse yet.

We continued walking and I was getting more and more tired. The views weren't disappointing and it was definitely worth it.

We eventually got to 'The Most Easterly Point of Australia' after a huge climb of rocks, stairs and everything else. Steve and I were dripping in sweat. I had more stairs to go. A year of travelling means a year of being slobs, sort of. Our fitness levels weren't even at 1. Steve started making a point of moving quicker and started doing step ups on each step we came across. I was laughing at him. He said I needed to do it too and I told him that he was on drugs. He ended up with a soaked T-Shirt, aching legs and he was well out of breath. Who's the real winner here?

Finally – the lighthouse! It was beautiful. It was bright white in colour. You could see the tip of the lighthouse just above the trees. We had a few more flights of stairs before we were actually there but this was good enough.

We finally made in alongside the lighthouse. It had the number '1901' on the door so I presume that's a date of importance. It looked so well kept considering. It was surrounded by the most beautiful waters that were so blue, even blue wasn't the best word to describe it!

We were invited in by an elderly woman who was telling me off for not wearing a hat. She said I was far too fair to not be wearing one in this sun! She was right but I wanted the sun to bleach my hair... Oops.

We went inside and there was a little museum in the main room. It had all things lighthouse/byron bay kept inside, all ancient. My favourite things were the news articles. They were so blunt and to the point. You had family members named like everyone knew who they were. At that time, they probably did. I stood and read them all.

We started getting talking to a lovely elderly lady. There were about 4 members of 'staff' there - all retired people volunteering at the lighthouse. After speaking with her, she asked if we wanted to go up to the top. Wow! I'd never been inside a lighthouse properly, let alone a working one.

We queued up with 5 others and went upstairs. The lady told some stories about the lighthouse before we got to see the incredible views. It was worth the wait though – the water! I just couldn't believe it. Steve and I took loads of photos and videos before going back downstairs. We signed our names in the book and made our way out.

Steve managed to find a little cafe joined to the lighthouse and he bought a coffee. He bought me a milkshake because they're my favourite and I was miserable and tired (as always).

We continued our walk in hope that we were almost finished. I was exhausted. We're a good 4 hours into the walk and my poor feet didn't want to do any more.

According to Google Maps, we had about half an hour more until we got back to the van. I had to keep telling myself “I can do this!”.

We got back to the van and I was desperate to just fall asleep, then and there. We drove the 20 minutes out of town to a place called Skennars Head. It had the cheapest camp site going so there was no way I was staying in Byron and paying $60 to sleep, in my own van!

We got to the campsite and checked in. It was $30 for powered. Or so, we thought. We couldn't find the power plug and we had to ring reception to ask where it was. We were really hoping they hadn't checked us in as unpowered so we had to pay more. It might not be the bargain we thought.

Reception said it was hidden underneath the water pole and when we checked, there it was. Phew. It really is a bargain spot!

We got ourselves showered, ready to make dinner. I was starving. The toilets and showers were really nice here. I reckon my favourite. The only reason I prefer them to the Gold Coast ones are because they play the radio 24/7 in there. What a dream! We haven't been able to listen to the radio since, well, forever.

Steve and I cooked a vegetable medley. We had broccoli, peppers, onions and carrots all fried in a paprika seasoning with cashew nuts. We had a bottle of Fifth Leg Sav Blanc too. Delightful.

We sat in our chairs at the table playing cards and drinking all night whilst the sun set. These are the evenings I'm going to miss the most I'm sure.

When it got dark and it was time for us to go to bed, the nosiest birds came out to play. It was like listening to Monkey's have an argument. Then countless amounts of planes flew over our campsite really low – really loud. The crickets decided to join in too with their constant noises! I recorded them all and sent them on the group chat! Do these creatures know how tired we are and do it on purpose?!

Either way, we fell asleep within moments. It was a lot later than we thought. The sun set later, obviously as we were in a different time zone. It was amazing. It was so much cooler at night, we needed the duvet again. Amazing! We decided no alarm tomorrow and a chill beach day at Bryon. I think we need something like that. With the price of this campsite too, we may as well stay one more night.

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noble-pro · 5 years ago

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Ultra Trail Mont Blanc (UTMB) - The journey that took 18months of long mountainous races

The journey for this race most definitely started months ago. Accumulating points in order to be eligible to enter took 18months of long mountainous races. I used the points from the CCC 100km, Laverado 120km and Translantau 100km in Hong Kong. The journey has just ended. It’s ever so anti climatic. Where did those 30hours go? All that hard work and focus and I crossed the finish line feeling so flat and devoid of emotion it surprised me. I wanted to write this as soon as I finished but we travelled back late on Sunday night. I was tired when my head hit the pillow at 2am and to be honest I’m still pretty tired. We collected the dog who then decided to be ill/ have a melt down which took a trip to the vets and an anti-sickness, a painkiller and a sedative to settle. I was then back at work. It’s only been today that I’ve felt emotional. I was cycling to feed a neighbours cat and got knocked off my bike. The shock made me cry for a good long while. I’m now done with feeling sorry for myself. There are lessons to be learnt for next year! Yes I need to go back! Training essentially started 12 weeks out where I shifted focus to gaining elevation from just getting some runs and miles in. I like to run fast so it was difficult for me to drop all my speed sessions so I kept a few in along with the odd park run. I cross trained on the bike. I slept in an altitude tent to acclimatise to the elevation gain at the top of the hills. I visited the area twice – once for the Mont Blanc Marathon (a great race) and then again for a recce which didn’t quite go to plan. I sprained my ankle at the end of the first day so had to limp it back to a bus and travel back to Chamonix. This meant I missed essential long training days at a key moment. I couldn’t run for 10days which in itself wasn’t too bad as cycling can be used as an alternative but the timing 4 weeks out was far from ideal. The rest of the training went well. Lots of uphill running on a treadmill or reps of a local hill. Probably could have got some fast hiking practice in but I didn’t. I would rather run! I tapered sensibly wanting to fully respect how long and hard the race would be. Being tired on the start would not be an excuse. Jon and I got out to Chamonix late on Tuesday. Wednesday was number collection. I felt pretty stressed for some reason – ok you may say well of course you would be with what is ahead but that is not really like me. Then my hormones kicked in a week early so that explained that (sorry but this is a real life blog). Thursday and Friday kit preparation and relaxing. They enforced the cold weather mandatory kit as it was forecast to be minus 10 and wind chill. My crew was Pete from SCOTT Running and Jon, my husband. They were brilliant. It was so good to see their friendly supportive faces at the permitted checkpoints, saying all the right words of encouragement and providing me with all I needed. As the race went on I really felt like I was letting them down. The runner is just the person on show- none of these ultra races can be achieved without support on and off course. The race departed Chamonix in the rain at 6pm. I was ready for this beast. Well I thought I was! Photo Credit: Tom Wilkinson Photo credit: irunfar.com (Bryon Powell) I started off doing what I felt was a comfortable pace. It was difficult to judge as the first 10km is essentially road and flat trail to Les Houches. I climbed well but never pushed. The first check point was 31km in. It was manic as everyone was still really close together. I could not find Jon so started to fill my pockets with apricots/ cheese/ cake etc from the aid station. Then I did one more check and he spotted me. Rubbish out and more food in (komfuel selection of gels, chews and Tailwind mainly). I was smiling and enjoying it immensely. It was properly dark when I left and with 650 lumens (Ledlenser NEO10R) on my head I had complete vision so headed up the road happy in my tunnel of light. It was wet and cold. I had my warm gloves on and some waterproof ones over the top. My buff on my head and of course a waterproof jacket. In my pack was all the mandatory kit so I knew I had another 2 warm layers top and bottom if things really were bad at top of Col de Bonhomme (2329m). In hindsight maybe I did keep pace here but I honestly didn’t feel like I was pushing it. I caught up with Cat Bradley and then tried to stick with her but I probably should have asked myself what am I doing this far up the field. People told me running 100miles is like a lifetime lived in one day. But what I learnt is that you don’t get a second chance. I was cautious descending Bonhomme as this is where I sprained my ankle. Running at night was magical. I could see ice flake patterns forming on the rocks. The moon was so bright when it appeared from behind the clouds. The clouds were keeping us warm because when the wind picked up it was very much chillier. I sailed through the compulsory kit check at Chapieux. On leaving there my stomach decided to let me know that 52km of running into the night was not the right thing to be doing. However, energy felt good so being a tad lighter as I ascended Col de la Seigne (2516m) wasn’t so bad. I was pleased to be running this bit as I’d had to hobble it on the recce.

The top was shrouded in mist and it was hard to see where to go but I figured this was good as it made the pace steady. I was soon running on a track as the bad weather has re routed us around Col des Pyramides Calcaires. My focus was Courmayeur. However, I could sense I was descending into the town not feeling as I wanted to be. My stomach was still complaining but the odd stop here and there was no real excuse for such a slow pace. I had been running for 11hours and it was 5am. I swopped my tights for shorts and ditched my extra clothes thinking as the daylight arrives so will the warmth. What a stupid error! The wind picked up and it was freezing. Unbeknown to me many dropped out due to the cold weather. I left the aid station only to return as I had forgotten my poles. Doh! I ate and replenished my pack but as I write this I have read what other runners ate and I’m beginning to think I did not eat enough properly food. I was still on gels and chews and eating a bit of rice pudding. On leaving Courmayeur it was the climb up to Bertone which really highlighted how lethargic I felt. I wrapped up at the top as the wind whistled around me.

Photo credit: Reme Fabregue As I climbed towards Grand Col Ferret (2490m) my little legs turned pink and my fingers lost their feeling. I didn’t hang about it was up and over. I could not collapse my poles as my thumbs could not apply enough pressure to the button. Descending into La Fouly should have been enjoyable but I was getting frustrated with my performance. I kept willing my legs on. I remember a runner asking me as they passed if I could not push on through the discomfort of my quads but I really couldn’t. I shouted out loud but still no response. I felt deconditioned, I guess. Missing out on my recce and its long days was taking its toil now. I was passed by many. I kept recollecting my pace throughout this part of the course when I did the CCC in 2016 and the contrast was really demoralising. Heading to Champex Lac was a case of putting one foot in front of the other. It was pathetic. I didn’t feel the need to hang around for too long at the aid stations. I just wanted to keep going. Jon has finished UTMB in 40hours so what excuse did I have? Photo credit: Yann Audouin At Trient I hiked in and hiked out. I’m not a strong hiker but it was faster than my shuffle! At Vallorcine I changed my shoes and Injinji socks. I had badly stumped my toe (and then obviously again and again) and torn my Tibialis Anterior (shin muscle) so thought it might help reduce the pressure to go half a size up in shoe and it did. Amazingly for me I finished with no blisters either (just massive bags under my eyes!). Night arrived again and I began to hallucinate. I saw people having a bath and rocks turning into animals. Vallorcine, via La Flegere took forever. I enjoyed the journey of training and I felt the race end should have been a journey of euphoria but it wasn’t. I felt nothing. 170km, 10,000m of elevation. 30hours 16mins, 19th female. 128th overall out of 1778 finishers (783 dropped out). Next year I’ll feel more! I’ll achieve more!

Photo credit: Jon Meek Lessons learnt: Condition legs with more long days of training- get a good week in about a month out preferably in the mountains or just don’t sprain your ankle whilst trying to! Eat more proper food. Ideas I’ll try include peanut butter and jam sandwiches and potatoes. Go slower at the start…really slow. Ducktape works well to prevent blisters. WD40/ lubricate my poles so the button to fold them isn’t so stiff with cold hands. Be pleased to have finished as many didn’t and a DNF is hard to make peace with. Be grateful- the body is a wonderful thing especially considering what I put it through. I am recovering well although my torn shin muscle may take sometime yet. A massive thank you to all those who helped me through training and the race. I had the best kit (SCOTT Supertrac Ultra RC shoes and waterproofs etc; socks from Injinji); a great choice of nutrition from Komfuel; no sprained ankles due to careful footfall, diligent rehab and Rocktape; no altitude sickness courtesy of SportingEdge; great night vision from Ledlenser; great daily support from Symprove, Coffee Buddies, and Bounce Balls; inspiring crewing from Jon and Pete, great Rufus- dog care from my Mum, and during training Anne and Di; and finally great support from all those lovely people who cheered me on online and on route! Read the full article

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indi-flying-with-dragons · 8 years ago

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(Get ready!) 1. Any scars? 4. Kissed anyone? 5. Coke or Pepsi? 6. Someone you hate? 7. Best friends? 8. Have you ever done alcohol or drugs? 9. What’s your dream job? 13. Height? 18. Obsession? 19. If you had one wish, what would it be? 21. Kiss or hug? 22. Nicknames people call you? 23. Favorite song? 24. Favorite band? 26. Best thing that has ever happened to you? 27. Something you would change about yourself? 30. Watch the movie or read the book? 32. Favorite show?

[Continued]

(Same anon continued!) 35. Do you wish you could ever start over? 36. Any bad habits? 37. Ever had a near death experience? 38. Someone you can tell anything to? 41. Someone you hate/dislike? 42. Are you okay?

WOW… you’re certainly a…. enthusiastic anon eh? e.o *mind boggled* Let me… let me reply to all these. As brief as possible. E^E….Geesh. 24 different questions. Damn… My apologies to everyone. This is gonna be a LONG POST. e.o

Btw THANKS FOR ASKING :D *GLOMPAGES* X3 *hug-SQUISH*

Long post below! O.e

1. Any scars?

Um, I have two on my head, right behind my ears at different heights from my two different cochlear implant surgeries to install the internal parts into my head so the external processors will work. When my hair is short it looks like someone purposefully buzzed a line through my hair there, lol, but it’s natural from the surgery when I was 7 and 11 years old respectively.

And since I heal very well, my scars are real hard to see. I still have a faint one on my thumb, at the base of the last joint to the front of it, and one along the left side of my middle finger (both fingers on my right hand) that is still rough and keeps peeling a lot even now, years after the event.

Those I got from a random-ass exploding lightbulb that I was screwing in, had MADE SURE the lamp was off both at the wall and at the lamp itself (though I didn’t unplug it because I didn’t think I needed to…), but nope I had screwed it in one too many times, saw a BRIGHT FLASH OF LIGHT, and then it exploded, glass everywhere, and somehow only got hit on my index finger, middle finger, and thumb. ONLY there! Even to this day my engineer mother is completely baffled as to how that happened.

4. Kissed anyone?

Yes. My first ever kiss[es] was with an enthusiastic sloppy and awkward boy during a yearly dance when I was in highschool (I was unschooling and going to the Voyagers Homeschooling Co-op and they hosted yearly dances). Five French kisses are not my idea of a good first kiss ever!

My second ever person to kiss was … well. *blush and funny deadpan with crossed arms* He knows who he is. Since apparently I keep totally forgetting it somehow until he mentions it in a teasing fashion and yes we did date for a short while there before breaking up and remaining friends.

My third and remainder of kisses are thoroughly claimed by my handsome, hot boyfriend. -w-

5. Coke or Pepsi?

Coke. ALL. THE. WAY.

Blame my awesome grandmother (R.I.P.) who had 4 pm be coca cola time every day. :D She got me on coke early. …NOT COCAINE! Yeesh. Dirty minds. She also introduced me to my love of dragons and she was awesomely supportive and adoring of my artwork. :3 Since she was hard of hearing from old age and I was born hard of hearing, we got along well with having the TV on a comfortable loudness (for us). x3

…Damn just thinking about coca cola makes me think of her. :,) I even drank a whole 1 liter glass bottle of coke we got at a Mexican food store nearby for her funeral fiesta since she wanted a party for a funeral, not a sad dirge. :3 https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/51/da/ea51da750fc136a655021c558b7c28c5.jpg Yes this one. XD I drank it all in under an hour in her honor and memory. I was so thirsty and so proud. XD I still have the empty bottle. x3

6. Someone you hate?

IDK… Hmm… I’m not one to really hate people. It’s such a strong emotion… I always thought of it as a “I want you to instantly die, right here and right now!” kind of emotion. So I don’t really hate people.

…I DO know of someone I would… honestly NOT be sad if she died. Considering she caused a hellava LOT of suffering and torment for my friend. I’d be sad because my friend would be sad, BUT I wouldn’t be sad because I actually missed her or regretted her death in any way.

7. Best friends?

Oh gosh. :3 Off the top of my head @destan-of-the-shadows and @faes-hiding-place :D my boyfriend counts too! Two RL friends I can meet with at times are more friends than “best” friends but I still count them as my friends because we’ve been friends since like 5th or 6th Grade in Middle School when we were all like 11 or 12 years old. :D I’m 22 now so see how long we’ve been friends. :D

8. Have you ever done alcohol or drugs?

NO drugs! The only thing that counts as alcohol is that couple sips of champagne at my cousin’s wedding when the servers mistakenly forgot to give us kids sparkling apple cider instead of champagne. Oops. XD We of course took great advantage of sipping as much as we could before they removed it. ;D It tasted HORRIBLE though. X_X What’s the appeal? IDK!

I drank some sips of other people’s drinks when I turned 21 but I absolutely HATE and CANNOT STAND the horribly bitter taste of alcohol (even in the sweetest mixed drinks it is strong and proud there when nobody else can taste it). Even if it’s burned off when used in a cheese fondue, that HORRIBLE bitterness remains. Bitter like the rotting corpse of a dying animal.

No thank you. I don’t ever want to drink again. X_X

9. What’s your dream job?

…. :,,,( I’ve not thought about this in ages… since I had to give up a lot of my “dream jobs” and “dream life” in order to make peace with the chronically ill life I have now. The grieving process was hard.

Goodbye my aspirations of being a geneticist, a psychologist, or even a therapist. Hello my life goals of being a professional artist and published author. :3

13. Height?

5'10". 5 feet, 10 inches. -w- … I really wish I was taller than my dad though. *grumble* He’s 6 feet. At least I’m an inch taller than my MOM. -^-

18. Obsession?

Oh dear. Which one? XD Take your pick. ;D I have: dragons, wings, flight, flying, cats/felines, biology, psychology, discussing the universe, astrology, culture, world-building, magic, art (as in drawing and coloring), writing, daydreaming, reading, listening to music, and cuddling with my boyfriend in a literal Netflix and chill. -w-

19. If you had one wish, what would it be?

…. *blinks and sighs* … It’d either be to be healthy again so I wouldn’t have this chronic illness (but would still keep my being deaf and hard of hearing because I LIKE THAT PART)… or to go back home, to my home world where my soul came from.

Yeah. XP

21. Kiss or hug?

Hug. :3 Preferably cuddle. :D

22. Nicknames people call you?

Indi-bindy-bo (You know who you are

23. Favorite song?

OH GEEZE. Hard to answer! XD … My favorite song of ALL time that I will ALWAYS love, have always loved, and might as well be my theme song for the sake of it? xD “Can’t Take Me (I’m Free!)” by Bryon Adams, from the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron movie. xD

24. Favorite band?

My favorite singer is Michael Jackson. :3 He’s the only one I really know a lot about. All other bands and singers I just like some of their songs but know nothing about them as people, not even what they LOOK like a lot of times. -////- I prefer to respect their privacy. :)

26. Best thing that has ever happened to you?

Oh… Oh GOSH. IDK… XD … :3 Meeting my boyfriend, @destan-of-the-shadows and @faes-hiding-place :3

27. Something you would change about yourself?

See my wish above. -.- I’d LOVE to change that chronic illness of myself. … If I can’t then my persistent anxiety, or to somehow grow wings (like this third would be more likely than the other two? XD Hell, I can still ask! XD)

30. Watch the movie or read the book?

I’d rather read the book. :3 Unless the book is so horrible, that I wanna see why people think it’s so horrible, then I watch the movie because they usually try to tone things like that down. If the movie is horrible in many of the ways that I’ve heard criticism of the book itself… then I know never to touch that book. E^E

32. Favorite show?

Of all time? Avatar: The Last Airbender, Gargoyles, and Seconds from Disaster. >:D

Right now? XD Air Disasters. -w-

35. Do you wish you could ever start over?

Start what over? This life? Blegh. Don’t make me go through puberty TWICE!

… *looks at the side effects of taking testosterone HRT* Oh wait, I’m already doing that! -p-

… Make that don’t make me go through it a THIRD time. xD Even if that means I’d be able to be in a male body from day one, as opposed to having to be trans. XP

36. Any bad habits?

Which one do you wanna know? -x- Anxiety, hyper-focusing on a thing in my mind and then having the mind get stuck and not concentrate on anything else until I yank it off that… Staying quiet about things that affect me because I don’t want to hurt others or be a burden? Often opting to be quiet instead of confronting things that could make the relationship better in the long run? Being intensely private? Judging the strength of my relationships based on how much of my inner self I truly share? Doing subtle tests as I get to know someone to see which subject is “safe” to talk about and which I should just shut up about without them ever knowing? Over-thinking things a ton? Apparently my not needing to talk to others for a while is a weird-ass thing? … I can go on. -x-

Oh wait, were you asking about like little quirks like twirling hair or picking at the skin kinda bad habits? My apologies. -x-;;

37. Ever had a near death experience?

Yes. Waking up to being strangled by a spirit counts as that.

No, I’ve had an occasion of sleep paralysis before. I know what that feels like. You can’t move anything.

This was where I CAN move. I could move my hands and arms and everything else. It’s just something invisible and mostly intangible was strangling the life out my throat. Not from the inside choking, because I know what that feels like too. (My Life…) but from the outside suffocation and pressure and constriction on the outside of my neck.

Being strangled to near death in my spirit form by another spirit meant my physical body could feel that too, panicked the FUCK OUT at the feel of almost dying, and I literally felt my awareness fading away into a black nothingness with the faint but faltering heartbeats starting to skip and take longer and longer between each beat. Gasping and choking and then going still…

Thankfully helpful spirits got the negative one off and thoroughly destroyed it. They could heal my spirit form and with that healed, my body was able to come back too.

Never want to do that EVER. AGAIN. *shuddering* Those spirit attacks over the course of those three years were HELL on Earth. *holds self tight*

38. Someone you can tell anything to?

My boyfriend. I’m still working on being more honest with my two close friends @destan-of-the-shadows and @faes-hiding-place but I’ve made a lot of progress over the years thankfully. :3

41. Someone you hate/dislike?

Try that woman I mentioned far above that I hate.

As for actively dislike? Trumperdink. Bigoted assholes. TRUSCUM, TERFS, SWERFS, rapists, rape-apologists, racists, ableist assholes, murderers, serial killers, homophobes, aphobes, transphobes, and all the rest of that shit. I really dislike and don’t trust the police force in this country. And the vast majority of politicians too.

My country is a dystopian nightmare the tyrannical capitalist US of A. x.= Save me.

42. Are you okay?

Umm…Today was a bit hellish. I survived though. *grins a bit too widely and eyetwtiches* My life is just…………. very…… VERY………. interesting. *twitch*

… I still stand by my previous opinion of laughing my ass off at the utter ridiculousness of how people try to portray those “superhero teenagers” as somehow balancing a “regular life” with “crime fighting on the side with a secret identity” and somehow NOT having the crime fighting life interfere with their regular life outside of those “special two episodes.”

Yeah the fuck right.

Obviously written by those who have NO idea what balancing two different lives are like. X_X In my case it’s nothing so noble as a superhero identity, but it’s the difference of my spirit life and physical life.

And above, in my near-death-experiences… you saw just ONE of the many manifestations of that clash. -x- …Not. ….Fun.

I high-key DO NOT RECOMMEND. -x-

Most days these days (since the spirit attacks ended WHOOT WHOOT!) I can have a normal calm life. Then SOMETHING comes up and I’m like “what the shit-fuck is my entire existence right now??”

Yeah. -x-

… Can I have a hug? ;;;n;;;

#answers #answering a submission #ask game #ask me anything #long post #thank you!#my confessional #confession #confessions

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years ago

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New from Kevin Wozniak on Kevflix: The Last Dance – Episode IX

ESPN’s latest documentary, The Last Dance, is a ten-part documentary series chronicling the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls and their journey to their sixth championship. The Bulls gave the documentary team unprecedented coverage, giving us a truly immersive experience into what one of the greatest teams the NBA has ever had went through during their final season.

ESPN just aired the third episode of the ten-part documentary series. Here is a recap and review of Episode IX of The Last Dance.

EPISODE IX

Episode IX is the penultimate episode of The Last Dance saga and it’s a lot of the same that we’ve seen throughout the series. We watch some of the 1998 “Last Dance” playoffs, go back in time to watch an old Bulls series, look at how someone pushed Michael Jordan over the edge, and how the Bulls prevailed. Though some interesting moments, the only really interesting part was when they discussed the legendary “Flu Game”.

Episode VIII ended with the Chicago Bulls about to face the Indiana Pacers in the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals. Episode IX starts off in February 1993, where the Bulls faced the Pacers in a regular season game. In this game, after an aggressive play, Pacers guard Reggie Miller hits Michael Jordan and causes a near brawl. This opening sequence sets the tone for the Bulls 1998 series against the Pacers.

According to many in that series, Jordan included, the Bulls series against the Pacers was one of the toughest series the Bulls ever played. They had a young, tough, talented team and were coached by a former Jordan foe in Hall of Fame forward Larry Bird. After the Bulls won the first two games in Chicago, they went into Indiana and didn’t have as much luck. With Reggie Miller playing at the top of his game, the Pacers won game three. Game four was the most memorable game of the series. The game was a constant back-and-forth and came down to the final possessions. After two missed free-throws from Scotty Pippen late in the game, Reggie Miller was able to make a go-ahead three-pointer to give the Pacers a two point lead. However, there were still a few seconds left on the clock, which gave the Bulls an opportunity to still win. Though a valiant attempt, Jordan missed the buzzer-beater and the Pacers won, evening the series at two games each.

We then jump back in time to the 1997 NBA Finals, where the Bulls faced the Utah Jazz. There were two motivating factors for Jordan going into this series. The first was that Jazz forward Karl Malone won league M.V.P. over Jordan. The second was Jazz guard Bryon Russell talking trash to Jordan earlier in his career about being able to guard him. This was all Jordan needed to push him over the edge.

The Bulls won the first two games in Chicago and the Jazz won the next two games in Utah. The final game in Utah is one of the most legendary games of Jordan’s career. Known simply as the “Flu Game”, this game is legendary because Jordan dropped 38 points in 44 minutes while being unbearably sick and barely being able to stand. An iconic game that lives in NBA infamy, it is a game that shouldn’t actually be called the “Flu Game”, but the “Food Poisoning Game”. When talking about the game with Jordan, he reveals that the night before the game, he ordered a pizza and that it got delivered to his hotel room by four guys, something his security team thought was a little off. Jordan woke up in the middle of the night realizing he had a case of food poisoning. Was Jordan intentionally poisoned or was it just bad pizza? Did those four guys poison Jordan or did they just want to see Jordan in person? The fact that it wasn’t actually the flu doesn’t take away from the legend of the game, but only adds more layers to one of Jordan’s most infamous moments.

The episode then shifts focus to Bulls guard Steve Kerr, an interesting choice that felt a little off. As much as I liked Kerr as a player growing up and as big as he is now as 3x-NBA Championship head coach for the Golden State Warriors, I don’t think his story really mattered in the grand scheme of The Last Dance story, especially in Episode IX. Kerr’s life growing up was interesting, as he grew up in a house of academics and busted his butt to get a last-minute basketball scholarship to the University of Arizona. His life took a tragic turn when his father was fatally shot while teaching in Beirut, Lebanon. Again, I liked Kerr a lot as a player and I like him as a coach, but giving us his story this late in the game felt forced and empty.

We then go back to the 1997 Finals, where the Bulls are up three game to two heading back to Chicago. Game six was a tight game and came down to the final shot, which was taken not by Michael Jordan, but Steve Kerr. Kerr says he had Jordan’s trust because he worked hard, was tough, and went beyond what people thought was capable of him. Kerr made the shot and the Bulls won their fifth title.

We then come back to the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals. The Bulls and Pacers split game five and game six, forcing a game seven in Chicago for a trip to the NBA Finals. Yet another tough game between the two teams, the Bulls pulled off the win and were headed back to the NBA Finals in search of their second three-peat. Jordan credits his determination to win game seven to his security guard Gus, a father-figure to him after his father passed away. Gus was Jordan’s security guard his entire career, but was diagnosed with lung cancer and had to leave for treatment. Jordan was by Gus’ side for every treatment and when Gus game to visit Jordan and the Bulls in game seven, that was a little more push for Michael. It’s one of the sweeter moments in the documentary and showed Jordan’s softer side.

There were good moments in Episode IX, but it was really all over the placed and highlighted the major flaw of The Last Dance as a documentary series. The footage was good, but some of it felt empty and the episode felt really long.

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itsmusicforfun · 7 years ago

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Album Review: Bryson Tiller ‘True To Self’

Sophomore Standard.

Pen Griffey took his second swing at bat this past Friday, with his ‘True to Self’ album. To the delight of his fans, Bryson’s long awaited sophomore LP has arrived a month before it’s scheduled release. It’s nearly been a 2 year album haitus for young Tiller, who has remained relatively quiet in between projects. Lending out maybe 3 features post ‘TrapSoul’, Bryson has been able to maintain an air of mystery. Now, Tiller has broken his silence and has a lot to say with a total of 19 tracks.

Bryson’s first time stepping up to the plate with ‘TrapSoul’ was a homerun, a grand slam even. The project was an amazing, groundbreaking piece of art that shook up the music scene, and catapulted Bryson’s trajectory to astronomical levels. Admittedly, I am a fan of Bryon Tiller. I discovered his music via soundcloud in 2015, with “Just Another Interlude” and was amazed. His view count at the time was in the low 20 thousands and he was relatively unknown. In typical @NajiChill fashion I told everyone around me the kid was going to blow (Bdot can attest to this). Watching Tiller’s ascension was a joy to see, and felt like vindication seeing my prediction come to fruition. However, the greater your start, the higher your expectations.

With the proverbial bar already set so high, we tune in to ‘True to Self’. The smooth sampled intro, “Rain On Me” gives us a peek into the different space Bryson is in. He’s clearly a lot more busy these days than the guy that use to work at UPS & Papa Johns a few years back. His explanation of missing a young lady’s calls leads into his second track “No Longer Friends”. Bryson is literally the definition of “Don’t leave your girl around me”. He’s back to his ‘dirty mackin‘ ways putting all kinds of thoughts in a girls head. The woman can be heard telling her boyfriend that Bryson is just her “brother”.

“Blowing Smoke” is a track that exemplifies the dichotomy in Bryson’s style. Is he a singer or a rapper? Bryson continues to blur the lines of distinction between the two. Why is this important? Because we hold rappers to a different standard lyrically than we do singers. Tiller’s flow is very melodized, but often contains spurts of bars and rap like cadences. Being that this track is rap, it’s just okay, not great, not terrible, just “cool”. They’re a bunch of tracks on this project that unfortunately embody such mediocre sentiments. Tracks like “Money Problems / Benz Truck” “Teach Me a Lesson” “Stay Blessed” “High Stakes” all assuage you in the short term, but still leave you feeling unfulfilled.

Bryson does reach the pocket in some spots though. “In Check” is a dope track that focuses on the different space he’s in, rapping singing from a position of power and comfortability. Spitting lines like “Album – Overdue, you would find it hard to focus too, if you met the woman I have, hard not to get side tracked”. He’s no longer the starving artist, and sometimes needs a reminder from the woman he’s with to value her. “Before You Judge” is a track that is reminiscent of his past hit “Rambo”. This record is probably the most open and vulnerable Tiller we get on the album. He speaks candidly about fame, his daughter Harley, his old manager that he fired, and second guessing his artistry. This is the Tiller that we love, the Bryson that gets in his bag.

The true stand out track on the album though is “Self Made”. This record is great from the premise, to the production, to the lyrics, it has all the elements of a hit. Again focusing on his success, he’s going to be a little selfish in wanting to spend the fruits of his labor on himself; nothing wrong with that. Another bright spot is “Run Me Dry”. This track has a very afro beats, Nigerian dance like flavor. It feels really good, from the vibe to the hook, and is clearly a joint that will make you get a drink and hit the dance floor.

In conclusion, Bryson’s project is just satisfactory. In the era of streaming and playlists, longer projects are becoming the cultural norm. 19 tracks from Bryson appears to have been way too many though. His flows at times get redundant, and there aren’t any features to break the monotony. I think a feature or 4 would’ve helped bring a different dynamic to this body of work. There are definitely some tracks on ‘True to Self’ that I will bump, but many of the tracks are skippable. TrapSoul has set the bar so high that it’s tough competing against his old work. While not a bad album, it definitely fell short of expectations. If I’m being true to my-self Bryson’s album is a 6.5/10

@NajiChill

from Tier 2 music sites http://rapradar.com/features/album-review-bryson-tiller-true-to-self/

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musiczonelove · 7 years ago

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Album Review: Bryson Tiller ‘True To Self’

Sophomore Standard.

@NajiChill

from Tier 2 music sites http://rapradar.com/features/album-review-bryson-tiller-true-to-self/

#Tier 2 music sites

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dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

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Dust Volume 7, Number 4

Axel Ruley x Verbo Flow

A little bit of optimism is creeping into the air as Dusted writers start to get their shots. We’re all starting to think about live music, maybe outside, maybe this summer. But as the spate of freak snow storms demonstrates, summer’s not here yet, and in the meantime, piles of records and gigs of MP3s beckon. This early spring version of Dust covers the map, literally, with artists representing Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and stylistically with jazz, rock, punk, rap, improv and many other genres in play. Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Patrick Masterson, Tim Clarke and Bryon Hayes.

Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam)

Vulture Prince by Arooj Aftab

Arooj Aftab is a classical composer originally from Pakistan but now living in Brooklyn. Vulture Prince, her third full-length album, blends the bright clarity of new age music with the fluid, non-Western vocal tones of her Central Asian roots. “Last Night,” from an old Rumi poem but sung mostly in English, lilts in dub-scented syncopation, the thump and pop of stand-up bass underlining its bittersweet melody. An interlude in some other language shifts the song entirely, pitting vintage reggae reverberation against an exotic melisma. “Mohabbat” (which is apparently Urdu for sex) soothes in the pristine instrumentals, lucid guitars, a horn, scattered drumbeats, but smolders and beckons in the vocals. None of these tracks feel wholly traditional or wholly Western and modern day, but sit somewhere in a well-lit, idealized space. Timeless and placeless, Vulture Prince is nonetheless very beautiful.

Jennifer Kelly

Assertion — Intermission (Spartan)

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Intermission comes from an alternate timeline. Founding drummer William Goldsmith started his musical career in Sunny Day Real Estate and had a notable stint with Foo Fighters. To cut the biography short, Goldsmith took a decade off from the music industry. He's returned now with Assertion, joined by guitarist/vocalist Justin Tamminga and bassist Bryan Gorder (both of Blind Guides, among other acts). This band picks up in the late 1990s, imagining a new path for post-hardcore/post-grunge music. The trio's name suits, as the songs' energy and the lyrical assertiveness develops the intensity of the release. The group works carefully with dynamics, neither parroting the loud-quiet tradition nor simply pushing their emo leanings toward 11.

“The Lamb to the Slaughter Pulls a Knife” epitomizes the album. The track sounds like Foo Fighters decided to get dirtier rather than more arena-friendly, while the lyrics mix violence with emotional persistence. First single “Supervised Suffering” finds triumph in endurance, turning the aggressive chorus into something of a victory. “Set Fire” closes the album with something more delicate, but it's just the gauze over a seething anger. Goldsmith's time off seems to have served him well, as does collaborating with some new partners. Assertion makes its case clearly and effectively, and if the intermission's over for Goldsmith, the second half sounds promising.

Justin Cober-Lake

Michael Beach — Dream Violence (Goner/Poison City)

Dream Violence by Michael Beach

“De Facto Blues,” from Michael Beach’s fourth solo album, is a barn-burner of a song, rough and messy and passionate, the kind of song that makes you want to take a stand on something, who cares what as long as it matters to you. It snarls like Radio Birdman, slashes like the Wipers and follows its muse through chaos to righteousness like an off-cut from Crazy Horse, just back from rockin’ the free world. It’s got Matt Ford and Inez Tulloch from Thigh Master on guitar and bass, respectively, Utrillo Kushner from Colossal Yes (and Comets on Fire) on drums, and Kelley Stoltz at the boards, and it’s a killer. The rest of the album is varied and, honestly, not uniformly astounding, but there’s a nice Summer of Love-style psych dream in “Metaphysical Dice,” a slow-burning post-rocker in the title track and a driving, pounding punk anthem in the opener “Irregardless.” Beach has been splitting his time between San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, and lately settled on Melbourne, where he will fit like a native into their thriving punk-garage scene.

Jennifer Kelly

Bloop — Proof (Lumo)

Proof by BLOOP (Lina Allemano / Mike Smith)

The trumpet is already a catalog of sound effects waiting to happen, and Lina Allemano knows the table of contents by heart. So, to shake things up, she has paired up with electronic musician Mike Smith, who contributes live processing and effects to Allemano’s improvisations. A blind listen to Proof might leave you with the impression that you’re hearing a horn player jamming with some outer space cats, and we’re not talking about hip, lingo-slinging jazz dudes. In fact, everything on these eight tracks happened in real time. Smith’s a strategic intervener, aware that too much sauce can spoil the stew, so he mixes up precise layering and pitch-shifting with more disorienting transformations. It’s hard to say how much Allemano responds to the simulacra that surround her brass voice, but there’s no denying the persuasiveness of her melodic and timbral ideas.

Bill Meyer

Bris — Tricky Dance Moves (TrueStory Entertainment)

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Bris left some music behind when he died in 2020, but it took almost a year to shape these recordings into a proper CD. The label CEO Mac J (a fine artist himself) could easily capitalize on his friend’s death, stacking Tricky Dance Moves with features from the artists Bris never would have worked with. Yet the album was prepared with the utmost care, not giving an ugly Frankenstein monster feel. Bris’s references to his possible early death are scattered throughout the whole tape: “Heard they wanna pop Bris cause they mad I’m poppin.” Almost every song could be easily turned into a prophetic tale (a cheap move one wants to avoid at all costs). Nonetheless, something is missing here. Or maybe it is just an image of death that disturbs the whole picture, making us realize that this is the last we’d hear from Bris.

Ray Garraty

Dreamwell — Modern Grotesque (self-released)

Modern Grotesque by Dreamwell

I recently read an interview with Providence’s Dreamwell breaking down in almost excruciating detail the influences that led to the quintet’s sophomore full-length Modern Grotesque. I kept scrolling past Daughters and Deftones and Deafheaven and increasingly disconnected influences like The Mountain Goats and Nina Simone. I went back to the top and looked again. I typed Ctrl+F and put in “Thursday.” Nothing. This is preposterous. I may not be in the post-hardcore trenches the way I once was, but even I’d know a good Full Collapse homage if it swung a mic right into my face the way this one did; hell, just listen to “The Lost Ballad of Dominic Anneghi” and tell me singer Keziah Staska doesn’t know every single word of “Paris in Flames.” That may not look like flattery on a first read, but too often, bands striding the emo/pop divide have chased the latter into sub-Taking Back Sunday oblivion; what Thursday did was much harder, and Dreamwell has ably taken up the torch here. That they did it unintentionally is a curious, bewildering footnote.

Patrick Masterson

Paul Dunmall / Matthew Shipp / Joe Morris / Gerald Cleaver — The Bright Awakening (Rogue Art)

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It’s a bit perplexing that reeds player Paul Dunmall hasn’t spent more time playing with American musicians. He’s firmly situated within the English improvisation community, where he’s perhaps best known for his longer tenure with the quartet Mujician, and his ability to double on bagpipes has allowed him to establish links between improvised and folk music. But

his jazz-rooted approach makes him a natural to work in settings such as this one. When Dunmall toted his tenor to the Vision Festival in 2012 (even then, it could be costly to lug multiple horns on a plane), he found three sympatico partners in Fest regulars pianist Matthew Shipp, double bassist Joe Morris and drummer Gerald Cleaver. They all hit the ground running, generating a barrage of pulsing, roiling sound for over 20 minutes before the piano and drums peel off, leaving Morris to sustain momentum alone. Dunmall’s gruff, spiraling lines find common cause with each of his fellows, and the gradual addition and subtraction of players from that point makes it easier to hear the exchange of ideas, which often seem to take place between dyads operating within the larger flow.

Bill Meyer

Editrix — Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound)

Tell Me I'm Bad by Editrix

Wendy Eisenberg’s rock band is like her solo output in that it snarls delicate, self-aware, mini-short stories in complex tangles of guitar, hemming in high, sing-song-y verses with riffs and licks of daunting difficulty. The main differences are speed, volume and aggression (i.e. it rocks.) and a certain communal energy. That’s down to two collaborators who can more than keep up, Josh Daniel on surging, rattling, break-it-all-down percussion and Steve Cameron, equally anarchic and fast on bass. The title track is an all-out rager, thrusting jagged arena riffs of guitar and bass forward, then clearing space for off-kilter verses and time-shifting, irregular instrumental interplay. “Chelsea” follows a similar chaotic pattern, setting up a teeth-shaking cadence of rock instruments, with Eisenberg keening over the top of it. “I know, perfectly well, that we’re not safe, safe from the men in power,” she croons, engaged in the knotting difficulties of the world as we know it, but winning.

Jennifer Kelly

Elephant Micah — Vague Tidings (Western Vinyl)

Vague Tidings by Elephant Micah

The new Elephant Micah album, the follow-up to 2018’s excellent Genericana, has an apposite title. Vague Tidings conveys an atmosphere of feeling conscious of something carried on the wind, a story passed on that may have shifted through various iterations, leaving only a sense of its original meaning. All that can be sure is that this is sad, sober music, unafraid to brace against the chill of mortality and speak of all that is felt. The instruments — guitar, piano, percussion, violin and woodwinds — move around Joseph O’Connell’s voice in stiff yet graceful arcs, distanced by an unspoken etiquette. Repetitive melodic figures, stark yet steady, gradually accumulate weight as they roll along like tumbleweeds. It’s a crisp, forlorn country-blues, in no hurry to get nowhere, carrying ancient wisdom that seems to acknowledge the empty resonance of its own import.

Tim Clarke

Fraufraulein — Solum (Notice Recordings)

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Fraufraulein’s music is immersive. Anne Guthrie and Billy Gomberg beam themselves, and us along with them, Quantum Leap-style directly into multiple environments in medias res. Through the clever employment of field recordings, they transport us to a hurricane-addled beach, performing a voice/piano duet as driftwood missiles careen through the air. In another “episode,” the manipulation of small objects conjures up the intimacy of a water garden filled with windchimes. Partners in both life and art, Guthrie and Gomberg are also consummate solo artists. He is a master of spike-textured drones, while she explores the intimate properties of physical entities. Like a child tends to resemble one parent while borrowing subtle traits from the other, Solum identifies more with Guthrie’s electroacoustic tendencies than it does with Gomberg’s electronics. This is in stark contrast to 2015’s Extinguishment, which felt a little more balanced between those two modes. Both approaches work, yet Solum feels more meticulously crafted and nuanced. Careful listening unveils multiple subtle tones and textures, and each piece is an adventure for the ears.

Bryon Hayes

Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi — Triplet Fawns (Kettle Hole)

Triplet Fawns by Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi

The album’s title implies a crew you wouldn’t want on your yard; while those adolescent ungulate appetites do a number on your bushes, the hooves are hacking up your grass. But if they knocked on your door, saxophone cases in their respective hands, you could do worse than invite them around the back for some blowing. Hatcher, Magill and Shiroishi present with sufficient lung power to be heard fine without the reflective assistance of walls, even when they aren’t making like Sonore (that was Gustafsson, Vandermark, and Brötzmann, about a dozen years back). This album, which was released in a micro-edition of 100 CD-Rs on Hatcher’s Kettle Hole imprint, builds gradually from restrained melancholy to pointillistic jousting to a climactic blow-out, and the assured development of each piece suggests that each player was listening not only to what each of the others was doing, but where the music was headed.

Bill Meyer

A.Karperyd — GND (Novoton)

GND by A.Karperyd

On his second solo release, GND, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd broodingly ruminates on snatches of musical ideas that have been percolating in his consciousness over extended periods. Anyone familiar with his 2015 debut, Woodwork, will find these 55 minutes similarly immersive, as Karperyd manipulates live instruments such as piano and strings into shimmering, alien tapestries. Opener “The Well-Defined Rules of Certainty” appears to take Fennesz’s Venice as its blueprint, issuing forth cascading, percolating tones that tickle the ears. “The Desire to Invoke Balance with Our Eyes Closed” and “Failures and Small Observations” have a Satie-esque elegance to their piano lines, albeit refracted via a hall of mirrors. The 12-minute “Reminiscence of Tar” sounds like a slow-motion pan across the hulking mass of a shadowy space station. And closing track “Mummification of an Empire” slowly fries its piano in static, then unfurls wistful melodica and throbbing synth across the wreckage.

Tim Clarke

Kiwi Jr. — Cooler Returns (Subpop)

Cooler Returns by Kiwi jr

Kiwi Jr.’s brash, brainy indie pop punk vibrates with nervy energy, like the first Feelies album or Violent Femmes’ 1983 debut or that one great S-T from the Soft Pack. Those are all opening salvos for their respective bands, but this one is a second outing, suffering not a bit from sophomore slackening. Instead, Cooler Returns tightens up everything that was already stinging on the Toronto band’s debut and adds a giddy careening glee. An oddball thread of Robin Hood-ness runs through the disc, with Sherwood forest getting a nod in the title track and “Maid Marian’s Toast” tipping the love interest, but these songs are anything but archaic. “Undecided Voters,” the single jangles harder than anything I’ve heard since Woolen Men, slyly upending creative pretensions in a verse that goes: “You take a photo of the CN tower/you take another of the Honest Ed sign/Well, I take photos of your photos/and they really move people.” Has it been done before? Maybe. Does it move us. Yes indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Kool John — Get Rich, Die $moppin ($moplife Entertainment)

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A year ago, Kool John was shot six times. Yet you wouldn’t know about it from the general mood of Get Rich, Die $moppin, his first tape since then. He does name one song “6 Shots” and explicitly mentions the shooting accident a few times on other songs, but his bouncy music says he wasn’t hurt bad after all. The beats perfectly match the rhymes, playfully ignorant and ignorantly playful. Kool John still doesn’t mix with broke people, doesn’t return calls if it’s not about money and “doesn’t get stressed out.” Instead, he gets high. His new tape is nothing groundbreaking, even though he’s pretending that is: “If I had no legs I’d still be outstanding.”

Ray Garraty

Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner — See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Out Of Your Head)

See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival by Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this recording is that the titular festival happened at all. While most festivals either canceled or went on line, Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival dealt with COVID by spreading out. Instead of big stages and indoor shows, last September it staged little pop-up events on sidewalks and in parks. So, if the sound of See or Seem feels a bit diffuse, it’s because it was recorded with a device propped in front of two guys playing on a grassy median. There are moments when the buzz of bugs rises up for a second behind Nick Mazzarella’s darting alto sax and Quin Kirchner’s brisk, mercurial beats. But the thrill of actually playing in front of some people (or actually being surrounded by them; when there’s no stage and social distancing is in effect, it makes sense to walk slow circles around the performers) infuses this music, extracting an extra ounce of joyousness from Mazzarella’s free, boppish lines, and adding a restlessness charge to the drumming, as though Kirchner really wanted to squeeze as much music as possible into this 31-minute set. This release is part of Out Of Your Head Records’ Untamed series of download-only albums recorded under less than pristine conditions. A portion of each title’s income is directed to a charity of the artists’ choice; the duo selected St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Bill Meyer

Dean McPhee — Witch’s Ladder (Hood Faire)

Witch's Ladder by Dean McPhee

Finger-picked melodies cut through haunted landscapes of echo and hum on this fourth LP from the British guitarist Dean McPhee. Track titles like “The Alchemist” and “Witch’s Ladder” evoke the supernatural, as does the spectral ambient tone, reminiscent of Chuck Johnson’s recent Cinder Grove or Mark Nelson’s last Pan•American album. Yet while an e-bow traces ghostly chills through “The Alder Tree,” there’s also a grounding in lovely, well-rooted folk forms; it’s like seeing a familiar landscape in moonlight, well-known landmarks suddenly turned unearthly and strange. The long closing title track has an introspective air. Pensive, jazz-infused runs flower into bright bursts of notes, not quite blues, not quite folk, not quite jazz, not quite anything but gorgeous.

Jennifer Kelly

Moontype — Bodies of Water (Born Yesterday)

Bodies of Water by Moontype

Margaret McCarthy’s voice swims across your headphones like being on an innertube drifting languidly downstream. Typically, saying someone’s vocals are like water indicates a degree of timidity or laziness, obscured in reverb or simply buried by the mix, but on Moontype’s debut LP, it’s a compliment: McCarthy floats across the different styles of music she makes with guitarist Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton. You notice it not just because she often sings of water or because it’s right there in the title, but also because the Chicago trio hasn’t settled on any particular style yet — just listen to the three-song stretch at the heart of the record where achingly beautiful alt-country ballad “3 Weeks” leads into “When You Say Yes,” a sub-three-minute power-pop number Weezer ought to be jealous of, followed immediately by crunching alt-rock swoon and first single “Ferry.” All the while, McCarthy lets her melodies drift to the will of the songs. I’m reminded of recent efforts from Great Grandpa, Squirrel Flower and Lucy Dacus, but the brief, jazzy curveball of “Alpha” is a peek into whole other possibilities. Bodies of Water is a fine record, but perhaps its most exciting aspect is how much ground you can see Moontype has already conquered. One can’t help but wonder what sonic worlds awash in water await.

Patrick Masterson

Rob Noyes / Joseph Allred — Avoidance Language (Feeding Tube)

Avoidance Language by Rob Noyes and Joseph Allred

The 12-string guitar can emit such a prodigious amount of sound, and there are two of them on Avoidance Language. If Joseph Allred and Rob Noyes had planned things out in order to avoid canceling each other out, they might never have picked their instruments up, so they just started playing and listening. The result is not so much a summing of two broad spectrums of sound, but an instinctual blending of similar textures that ends up sounding significantly different from what either musician does on their own. Even when Allred switches to harmonium or banjo, as he does on the album’s two shorter tracks, the music rushes in torrential fashion. Their collaboration is so compatible that it often seems more like a recital for one big stringed thing played by one four-handed musician than a doubled instrumental duet.

Bill Meyer

NRCSSSST — S-T (Slimstyle)

NRCSSST by NRCSSST

There’s no “I” in NRCSSSST but there’s plenty of swagger. The Atlanta-based synth pop band, formed around Coathangers drummer and singer Stephanie Luke and Dropsonic’s Dan Dixon, taunts and teases in its opening salvo “All I Ever Wanted.” Luke rasps appealingly atop Spoon-style piano banging, and big shout along choruses erupt from sudden flares of synths. It’s all hedonism, but done with conviction. You haven’t heard a big rock song kick up this much fun in ages. “Love Suicide” bangs just as hard, its bass line muttering like a crazy person, unstable and ready to explode (and yet it doesn’t, it maintains its restraint even when the rest of the cut goes deliriously off the rails). Dixon can really sing, too, holding the long vibrating notes that lift these prickly jams into anthemry. It’s been a while since a band reminded me of INXS and U2 without sucking, but here we are. Sometimes guilty pleasures are just pleasures.

Jennifer Kelly

Zeena Parkins / Mette Rasmussen /Ryan Sawyer — Glass Triangle (Relative Pitch)

Glass Triangle by Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer

Harpist Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer have a long-standing partnership in the trio substitutes Moss Garden, a chamber improv ensemble with pianist Ryan Ross. But swapping in Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen brings about a change, not just in instrumentation, but attitude. She plays free jazz like a punk, impatient and aggressive, and Parkins and Sawyer are up for the challenge. This music often plays out like a battle between two titans, one blowing and the other pummeling, while Parkins seeks to liquify the ground upon which they stand. She sticks exclusively to an electric harp whose effects-laden tone is disorientingly alien, blinking beacon-like one moment, low as a backhoe engage in earth removal the next. The combination of new and old relationships promotes a combination of instability and trust that yields splendid results.

Bill Meyer

claire rousay — A Softer Focus (American Dreams)

a softer focus by claire rousay

In film, soft focus is a technique of contrast reduction that lends a scene a dreamlike quality. With A Softer Focus, claire rousay imbues her already intimate compositions with a noctilucent aura. She has created a dreamworld with sound. One glimpse at the glowing flowers that grace the cover art created by visual artist Dani Toral, with whom rousay closely collaborated on this release, and the illusory nature of the record is revealed. The reds, oranges, blues and purples of deep twilight are reflected in both the textures rousay weaves into her soundscapes and the visual themes that Toral conjures. Violin, cello, piano and synth are the musical origins of this warmth, which rousay wraps around environments crafted from the sounds of everyday life. She recorded herself moving about her apartment, visiting a farmer’s market, observing kids playing and just existing. These field recordings of the mundane, when coupled with the radiance of the musical elements, are magical. Snatches of conversation become incantations; auto-tuned vocals are the whisperings of spirits; fireworks explode into brilliant shards of crystal. With A Softer Focus, rousay takes a glimpse into the beauty of the everyday, showing us just how precious our most humdrum moments can be.

Bryon Hayes

Axel Rulay x Verbo Flow — Si Es Trucho Es Trucho / Axel Rulay (La Granja)

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Axel Rulay must be kicking himself right now. With more than three million plays on the original version and more than five million on the remix that adds verses from Farruko and El Alfa into the fray, the Dominican is cruising into our second pandemic summer with an unbeatable poolside anthem — and to think, after years of clawing his way up through the industry dregs, working to get his name out there, all he had to do was make himself the chorus over Venezuelan producer Manybeat’s 2019 tropical house trip “El Tiempo.” Presto: Massive visibility in the Spanish-speaking world and a song that ought to transcend any linguistic barriers unlocked even if the best I can manage is a title that translates as “If It’s Trout It’s Trout.” Expect that long-desired Daddy Yankee collabo to follow any day now.

Patrick Masterson

Rx Nephew — Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me (NewBreedTrapper)

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Rochester rapper Rx Nephew trailed brother-turned-archrival-turned-back Rx Papi’s coming out party 100 Miles and Walk’in by just a few weeks with the 53-minute all-in proposition Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me. Unlike Papi’s Max B-ish smoothness, Nephew is all rough n’ tumble through these 17 tracks, provocative pump action with narrative bursts of violence and street hustling delivered with a verve most akin to DaBaby or, in some of his more elastic enunciations, peak Ludacris. A recent Creative Hustle interview provides some insight: The first time he went into the booth, “I didn’t write anything. I just started talking about selling crack and robbing people.” The stories haven’t stopped since. If he can keep putting out music as engaging as Listen Here…, Rx Nephew is destined for more than just the margins; until then, we have one of the year’s densest rap records to hold the line.

Patrick Masterson

Nick Schofield — Glass Gallery (Backward Music)

Glass Gallery by Nick Schofield

Nick Schoefield, out of Montreal, composed these 13 tracks entirely on a vintage Prophet 600, the first synthesizer to designed to employ the then-new MIDI standard established by the instrument’s inventor Dave Smith and Roland’s Ikutaru Kakahashi. The instrument has a lovely, crystalline quality, floating effortless arpeggios through vaulting sonic spaces. Though clearly synthesized, these pieces of music resonate in serene and peaceful ways, evoking light, water, air and contemplation with a simplicity that evokes Japan. “Water Court” drips notes of startling purity into deep pools of tone-washed whoosh and hum. “Snow Blue Square” flutters an oboe-like melody over eddying gusts of keyboard motifs. The pieces fit together with calm precision, leading from one beautiful space to the next like a stroll through a museum.

Jennifer Kelly

Archie Shepp — Blasé And Yasmina Revisited (Ezz-thetics)

The Ezz-thetics campaign to keep the best of mid-20th century free jazz on CD shelves (yes, CD, not streaming or LP) breaches the walls of the BYG catalog with a disc that issues one and a half albums from Archie Shepp’s busy week in August 1969. Blasé is a stand-out for the participation of singer Jeanne Lee, whose indomitable and flexible delivery as equal to the demands of material that’s be turns pungently earthy and steeped in antiquity. But the rest of the band, which includes Philly Joe Jones, Dave Burrell, some harmonica players, and a couple members of the Art Ensemble, is also more than equal to the task of filtering the blues and Ellingtonia through the gestures of the then-contemporary avant-garde. “Yasmina,” which originally occupied one side of another LP, makes sense here as an extension of the raw, rippling “Touareg,” the last tune on Blasé, into exultantly African territory.

Bill Meyer

Juanita Stein — Snapshot (Handwritten)

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Juanita Stein was the cool, serene, Mazzy Star-evoking vocal presence in the Aussie dream-gaze outfit Howling Bells, and she plays more or less the same role on her third solo album. Yet she is also the source of mayhem here, kicking up an angst of guitar-freaked turmoil on “1,2,3,4,5,6” then soothing it away with singing, hanging long threads of feedback from the thump-thump-thumping blues-rock architecture of “L.O.T.F.” and crooning dulcetly, but with a little yip, in the trance-y title track. This latter cut reflects on the death of her father, a kindred soul who wrote a couple of Howling Bells songs for her and passed away recently. It distills a palpable ache into pure, distanced poetry, finding a cool, dispassionate way to consider the mysteries of human loss.

Jennifer Kelly

The Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums — Wabi Sabi (Sowiesound)

Wabi Sabi by Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums

Over its 30 years together, the Tiptons Sax Quartet has done less to hone its sound and more to figure out how many styles to embrace. The group (typically a soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax joined by percussion and even including some vocals) can dig into trad jazz but sounds more at home in exploration, adapting world music or other traditional American styles. The title of their latest album, Wabi Sabi refers to the Japanese concept of finding beauty in and accepting imperfection. The Tiptons, despite that sentiment, don't approach their play with a sloppy sound; in fact, they're as tight as ever. The understanding of impermanence and imperfection does help contextualize their risk-taking. When they turn to odd yodeling on “Moadl Joadl,” they find joy in an odd vocal moment that highlights expression and discovery over formal rigor. When they tap in New Orleans energy for “Jouissance,” we can connect the dots between parades and funerals, celebrating all the while. The whole album serves as a tour of styles and moods, always with an energetic potency. If it's more of the same from the Tiptons, that just means continuance of difference.

Justin Cober-Lake

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