#christ on a bicycle this is TEN pages

[sunflowerharrington]

@steddiebang2024 project reveal!! This is not a drill!

I’m so so excited for this year’s Steddie Bang! I’ll be collabing with the amazing @mvnsvn6 for this project! Forget everything you know about Stranger Things and Saltburn and dive into this adventure with us. You can find the summary and a little excerpt will be under the cut.

Looking forward to posting this Fall :)

Summary:

Eddie Munson knows he won’t make any friends at Hawkins University. He knows it. He knows it… Until he crosses paths with Steve Harrington; a hunk who’s got it all: the looks, the ladies, the money, and a mansion way too big for an eccentric family of five and a butler. He’s got a mansion.

He’s got a mansion.

or, Eddie Munson is twenty years old and enrols at Hawkins University. He falls in love with a guy from university, falls out of love with the same guy, grows to resent him — even though some feelings still lie at the bottom of his heart — and the aftermath of it all.

Excerpt:

The sun shines bright, the grass is greener than ever and the skies are pure, perfect blue, with no clouds in sight. Shadows follow Eddie as he cycles along the road by the crystal-clear river, and he breathes in the fresh air. Today’s going to be a good day.

A buzzing atmosphere flutters around him like butterflies, but it’s pretty bittersweet. Why? Because some god-awful racket is disrupting the peace. It’s Steve, sitting on the verge up ahead, cursing under his breath as he kicks his bicycle. What ever could be the matter? Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Eddie smirks as he passes, but stopping to help might get him on a page in Steve’s good book. He breaks to a halt in front of Steve.

“Hey, what happened?” Eddie asks, as if he doesn’t already know the answer. It’s a flat tire and the chain is looser than it should be. Steve has the bike upside down, trying to fix it by staring at it, hoping it’ll do something. Spoiler alert: it won’t.

“I’ve got a flat tire.” Bingo. “Chain’s loose too.” Double bingo.

“That’s bad luck,” Eddie says, and for once, something truthful comes out of his mouth— Eddie stops. For once, uh… he says something useful? Maybe? Eddie rolls his eyes. He has to stop changing his story! He was doing so well.

“I’ve just been trying to fix it,” Steve says, looking down at his feet. “Of course it’s when I’m already ten minutes late for my tutorial.”

Ooh, a tutorial. Eddie rolls his eyes. So posh. Jesus H Christ.

“Where is it?” Eddie asks.

“Just off Cherry Lane.”

“Oh shit.” That is pretty far away. Poor boy’s gonna have to walk all the way there on his own like half the people in college, probably. Eddie scoffs, it’s nothing. A walk is nothing. A run? That’s hard sometimes. Walking’s easy, and a good time to have a cigarette. And it’s less dangerous, and a lot easier, to smoke while walking than riding a bike. The scar on Eddie’s right arm is proof of that.

“Yeah…” Steve trails off, pouting like a kicked puppy. Jesus Christ, and Eddie thought he himself was dramatic.

They both look at the bike at the same time. It’s pretty much a goner. There’s no way to fix it in time for Steve to get to his stupid fucking tutorial before it’s over.

“I skipped last week to go- don’t tell anyone- but I went on a date with uh… Can't remember her name, sorry. Heather, or something. And I’m already in trouble with my parents for scratching some of the paint off it, so…”

Oh, poor, poor baby. Eddie internally rolls his eyes. Is Steve seriously trying to make Eddie feel sorry for him? Eddie’s pretty sure Steve’s parents could buy him a thousand bikes if he asked. But… He wants to get on Steve’s good side. He’s definitely popular around campus, and having that under his own belt could be good. Might get Eddie laid by a pretty girl if he’s lucky.

“Look, I’m not really going anywhere,” Eddie says, smiling at him. “Just taking these back to the library. So you can take my bike if you want?”

“No, no, no, I couldn’t. I mean, it looks like rain, I wouldn’t want to—”

Eddie can’t help but melt under Steve’s gaze, and that smile. Jesus H. Christ. “I’m not really going anywhere anyway. I can just get it back from you later. You’re in my college, so…” Perfect. He’ll get to see Steve again. One point for Munson.

“Am I?” Steve asks, keeping his gaze trained on Eddie.

Eddie sighs, his eyes downcast. “Yep.”

It’s a big college, sure, but how has Steve not seen him around before? Has he forgotten about their exchanged looks and smiles around campus whenever they cross paths? Does anything even really matter to him?

“That’s so kind, are you serious?” He asks, getting up from his spot by the tree. “That’s so kind, man. Are you sure? I mean, it’s a long walk back to college and I don’t want you to feel like you have to wheel it back.”

“You want me to take yours back?” Eddie asks. Oh what, so this douche thinks he can tell Eddie what to do now? He doesn’t even know Eddie’s name and he’s already giving him orders. Maybe it’s because Eddie looks easy to manipulate into doing whatever he wants.

But that’s what he wants Steve to think.

Eddie likes to think of himself as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s the strategy in life that gets people everything they want. And what is it Eddie wants? More. More. And even more. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get that, and so far it’s taken him right to Steve Harrington by a tree just outside of Hawkins University.

It didn’t exactly take much for him to get accepted; a carefully curated persona full of smiles and the story about his upbringing. That, and all the little extras: no criminal record—that the police know of, he knows how to make people take the fall for him. Bless Gareth, Frankie and Jeff—no drugs in his system, and a willingness to go down on anyone in any room to keep up his good GPA score.

Bedroom eyes go a long way, and the lack of a gag reflex goes even further. He’s willing to become the local slut to get what he wants. He doesn’t even have to try hard. Eddie is a slut and he’s damn proud of it.

“Oh, no, no, no!” Steve starts. “I’m sorry, I just thought that since I have your bike, you’ll take mine?” Eddie’s works, Steve’s does not, it makes little to no sense.

“I mean, I can wheel it back to college for you, it’s not that far away,” Eddie proposes… to get on Steve’s good side, of course.

“Thank you.” Steve takes Eddie’s bike from him.

He must be so used to people bending over backwards to help him.

Steve grins. “Oh, thank you. Thank you… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. I’m Steve,” he says with an apologetic look. Oh, but is it fake? Who knows? Everything is fake around here. And posh, rich boys like Steven Otis Harrington are no exception.

I already know your name. And you have no idea just how much I already know about you, Steve.

“Eddie. It’s Eddie.”

“Eddie. Eddie, I love you.” Eddie’s eyes widen as Steve grabs him by the shoulders, planting a kiss on the top of his helmet. Even though he doesn’t want to play it safe in college, he also doesn’t want to get a concussion. So the stupid helmet will have to stay on. “I love you, I love you. Seriously.”

“Like I said, no big deal.”

“Thank you so much, Eddie,” he says with a wide smile, hopping onto the bike, swinging his leg over to put one of his feet on the pedals. “So kind. You’re a fucking lifesaver, really. Thank you.”

Eddie scoffs. Yeah, sure. He’s so thankful for it. Sure. Eddie rolls his eyes when Steve isn’t looking, too focused on pedalling to look back.

“I’ll just leave yours in the bike shed, yeah?”

“Yeah, fine.” If Steve even so much as scratches the bike, it’s over for him. No more talking, no more looking… Eddie will just have to find a new friend, or else pretend to forgive him to stay on his good side.

“Thanks, Eddie!” He calls over his shoulder. “I love you!”

Wow. Does love even have any meaning to him? Does Steve even know what love is? Surely not if he’s telling a fucking stranger that he loves them.

Eddie watches Steve disappear around the corner, leaving him standing alone, holding the broken bike. This is so stupid. He’s gonna look like a fucking idiot walking a bike all the way back to campus. But who cares? It’s not like anyone’s even going to pay attention to some small-town boy anyway…

But Steve might.

He just might. Because that’s all Eddie’s ever wanted.

Attention.

And he’ll do pretty much anything to get it.

[sanstropfremir]

episode 9 baby!!! dear lord that was a lot!!

frankly, i'm still in shock that i full on manifested an opera stage, AND it was a rock opera stage at that! plus i got a jazz stage AND a taemin stage??? if they’re pulling out all my favourites now then what on earth are they gonna do in the finale??? this was a very overwhelming crop of stages, i thought i was going to be prepared, but oh no i was not prepared. i'm just going to get right into it because this one is gonna be long and i have many words. i'll discuss in airing order first, and then put my personal rankings for this round at the end.

btob

costume

changsub, you absolute king. spectacular. stunning. incredible. zoot suit riot playing in my brain on repeat. will i finally get the zoot suit revival of my fucking dreams instead of this current drab ill-fitting suit trend? for those who are wondering why in the fuck changsub is dressed like that and what on earth i’m talking about, the specific cut of suit that he’s wearing is called a zoot suit, which were popular in mexican, black and italian american communities in the 30s and 40s, until they were outlawed by the united states war production board as a fabric rationing method as part of the war effort in 1942. there was a huge amount of mob violence surrrounding the wearing of them (there were actual zoot suit riots) as they were direct counter culture fashion to the predominant drab trends of white americans at the time. i'm actually very impressed they got a proper (modernized) cut of zoot suit instead of just putting him in an oversized one; there are actually specific structural differences. the pegged trouser legs, large should pads, and knee length single breasted jacket are key features, and they were often in much more flashy fabrics than a pinstripe, but they get points for effort. i wish they had put all of them in zoot suits but he’s playing the ‘lead’ actor so i will begrudgingly forgive them.

eunkwang those are the stupidest sleeve garters ive ever seen i love them never take them off. they’re like someone decided to repurpose a suspender in the worst way. excellent. i do love that they’ve got three of them in oxford saddle shoes, another great touch.

love the three piece and the fedora* on peniel. it's also in a relatively close period cut; waistcoasts (vests) were generally cut much higher in the neck pre-war, we only start seeing the neckline slide down in the 60s (i think? i don’t remember when exactly). also love to see a proper sleeve and jacket length, it's good practice to have at least a finger’s width of sleeve cuff visible ahead of the jacket sleeve when hanging at rest. also looks like there’s french cuffs on everyone, which is also great.

minhyuk in his slutty lowneck shirt....thank you. in addition to the zoot suit revival i would also like a revival of those ultra low necklines on mens’ shirts from like 2010-2011. i don’t think those are the same boots from the backdoor stage but those are some beautifully cut boots. i also loved the little details of his crewmember look, especially the chunky watch and the string bracelets; those are super realistic, i know so many crew with them and i had several for many years. and who doesn’t love a visible button fly?

none of any of the other costumes are period in any way shape or form but i’m forgiving it because there’s several layers of meta in this stage, and they explicitly based it on la la land, even though we don’t respect la la land in this house. do i wish they had gone more strictly period with at least the jazz club ‘actors’ a little more? absolutely, but i'm not mad about it.

set

again we’ve got a good delineation of the two different ‘stages,’ there’s the club itself in the smaller stage and the soundstage set in the larger space. you can pretty clearly see all the ‘pieces’ of the set on the soundstage, especially the obvious set painting techniques on false prosc frame and the window facade from that first little scene. also the you can see the castors (wheels) on all the setpieces too, which is another nice little versimilitudinous** (triple word score!) touch, as old hollywood movies were made still using theatre stagecraft techniques.

i love how the visual shorthand for ‘this is a set wink wonk’ is just...leaving a ladder on stage. i see it all the time and it's so funny. it doesn’t always make sense because as soon as there’s actors on set the ladders are the first thing cleared because actors cannot be trusted, but yes there are always ladders, so. also psa ladder safety is no joke, please be careful on ladders.

nice streamline of the mnet deco into the club. i’m consistently surprised at how well the designers have been able to mask it or use it to their advantage, because in the normal kingdom stage lighting it is SO obvious and stylistic that it always sticks out.

i'm going to ignore the fact that they implied changsub and miyeon were drinking wine out of martini glasses.

lighting

no complaints, it does its job. everything is visible and super clear. love that the ‘scene’ changes are made through the lighting, it's a really simple and effective device to change atmosphere. purple/blue/amber are the most flattering colours on human skin and that’s why you see it so commonly in stage lighting. also blue/lavendar is the best way to show nighttime/moonlight.

really nice and subtle projection work, especially with the billboard bit and the blue moon sign in the club. despite being obviously meta/’world breaking’ it’s actually very seamless and fits well into the flow of the stage.

sound

i love love love the big band feel in the intro, combined with the piano lead. very duke ellington, as all things should be.

no complaints. i love big band. i love eunkwang’s voice. i have nothing else to say.

staging

i LOVE this movie within a movie within a performance meta nonsense! it's such a fun concept and it is exactly what i wanted ikon’s first round stage to be! i also love to see btob consistently coming up with concepts that are inventive and fun and allow them to showcase their technical performance skills without the aerobics the younger groups are putting themselves through. it provides a really lovely variety and it just goes to show that you can make impressive, dramatic stages without having to be serious or ‘dark.’

i do wish they had leaned into the band director/lead singer with eunkwang a bit more; this could have been a really excellent place for a tap number a la the nicholas brothers or an homage to cab calloway. i know i know this was meant to be la la land themed but la la land is a cheap and whitewashed version of jazz and look me right in the eyes and tell me this isn’t the greatest tap routine of all time. i know i’ve typed this out somewhere before but la la land is just a conglomeration of old hollywood tropes and so stylistically cheap that this would have such a better visual core if they had actually looked back at the real old hollywood musicals like stormy weather. even singing in the rain and an american in paris have such phenomenal visuals and are really beautiful examples of the scope you can pull off with a limited technical capacity and sticking to these old techniques.

now that i'm thinking about it, oh my GOD i would DIE for a lindy hop routine in kpop PLEASE. i know it would never happen because kpop doesn’t like partner dancing and not a single kpop boy has the chops but oh you think fourth gen has too many acrobatics?

this got off track but i think you see my point.

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ateez

costume

these are really sharply cut suits. and the detail work on the beading??? so beautiful. i'm disappointed that they gave me a rock opera stage without the true ridiculousness of rock opera costuming, because they could have pushed this a lot farther if they really wanted. a tragic lack of gay little outfits, seonghwa’s lace choker is just not enough! two favourite suits: hongjoong’s and yunho’s.

that being said i do actually really like these. this stage is actually very modern opera with a kpop twist and i'm a little surprised by that? i continue to be impressed by the ateez team who are clearly doing their research.

i'm absolutely not going back through their stages to check all the choreography but i wonder if you can track all the ‘wound’ placements to places they’ve been ‘hit.’ i wouldn’t put it past them to have put that thought in but also i’m not expecting that much either.

who is this white grim reaper bdsm executioner chain arm man. where did he come from. i have no idea and i love it.

why is honjoong blindfolded. it was such a fast beat, if youre gonna blindfold someone give it a little longer and some more obvious narrative weight!

seonghwa does that quickchange, runs across that massive stage to the smaller set, and gets into places in like 45 seconds. it's not the hardest quickchange in the world but still, under a minute is fast for any quickchange, especially when there’s travel time involved. i think the fastest, most complex quickchange i ever did was in university which was a 50s cocktail dress into a flannel and culottes with a shoe, hair, and jewelry change in 35 seconds. and that took three dressers. quickchanges are always impressive. the added bonus of this review being later is that i can specifically reference that you can see him book it the fuck off stage in the full cam!

cute moment with the backup dancers dressed in costumes from the previous stages. i'm assuming this is a time travel reference? i'll get more into my thoughts on this in the staging section. regardless, love to see that iconic seonghwa moment again.

set

this is such a restricted space! they really pared down their dancing space with those staircases and ....arms? honestly i have NO clue what these are supposed to be. the only thing i can maybe think of is flying buttresses??? but why?? i mean, i'm 90% sure theyre just there for drama and i agree but i do still have questions.

there’s a lot of moving parts in this set? the buttresses, and the upstage centre staircase. i don’t think the staircase is totally automated because i spotted some dancers securing it in place, but it’s still a moving part. i do really like that we get that expanding upwards energy, because it's really tough to get functional level movement in this kind of a performance, mostly because of its length and because it moves so quickly. so seeing the downward vertical movement and then the upward movement was actually a really nice visual contrast that made use of how tall those fucking ceilings are, and the fact that they had less horizontal space. in sort of similar way to sf9’s jealousy stage, using long, narrow vertical lines really makes it feel like a castle space. the interiors of castles, especially the really old ones, are a lot smaller than you think they would be.

i’ve actually seen that type of small house/tent/thing several times in various types of performances before, but i think this is the first time i’ve seen it used as a time travel device (other than in the say my name mv). aesthetically it's a bit incongruent but i dont really mind because i'm used to watching rock operas that look a lot weirder than this.

lighting

there is so much happening. i have NO clue what the projections are doing. i dont hate it though, so that’s a plus? there’s a clear-ish colour arc even if it does get a bit funky in the middle, which is why the projections dont feel as insanely distracting as some of the other stages we’ve seen.

the climax is a perfect example of how to light a busy stage with primarily red but still maintain clarity on the performers. a little bit of red goes a long way; the spark stage from last week would have looked so much better if they had done what the ateez designers did here.

sound

i know it's only ode to joy, but answer already gets my motor running and then i get so gassed by the guitars and then by the time those vocals come in i'm inconsolable. i don’t know why i wasn’t expecting a rock opera stage but i'm so glad i got that surprise because i genuinely love rock operas so much. it's two of the most dramatic genres in music, what more could you possibly want?

staging

the choreo for answer is so goofy that I'm kinda glad this was mostly terrible mnet boom shots. i love it, but you can't deny that it's goofy. i spotted a couple of moves from their other choreos as well?

choreographing dance fights is just as difficult as choreographing real fights and i think they did a fairly good job here. i think it was a solid mix of dance and conflict that erred on the side of dramatic rather than accurate and i prefer that over trying to be ‘realistic.’ i’ve only ever seen one truly realistic fight scene on stage and that was for a deeply naturalist play (boring and a waste of the medium), but the best fight scene i’ve ever seen was in the prague national ballet’s adaptation of kafka’s the trial where three ballet dancers beat the absolute snot out of the main character with the most beautiful leg extensions. that whole show was probably one of the best pieces of dance i’ve ever seen, holy fuck it was so good.

despite how insane the music and the visuals were going, i actually really liked how sedate this was, on the part of ateez’s performance. there was a really sophisticated and resigned energy from them that is very different from what we’ve previously seen and i think that was a pretty admirable risk to take. reaching the top and then throwing away the crown? especially in a competition where every other stage has involved stealing crowns or royalty and there’s a group competing that got here through that very concept? that shows a real maturity, peace of mind, and foresight that i did not at all expect from a bunch of 22 year olds.

here we come to a very interesting comparison. both ateez and tbz are very heavily leaning on previously established group lore. we all know my thoughts on why it isn’t working for tbz, but here’s why i think it is working for ateez: it's because it doesn’t matter to the audience’s understanding of the stage. i had absolutely no fucking clue what was going on the first time i watched this, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the music and all the weird shit they were doing. i totally believed that they understood what was going on. there’s a loose enough established conflict right at the beginning that draws us in, and really it doesn’t matter who they're fighting because they win in the end. the key here is that they’re so earnest. they believe 100% in every move they make on that stage. there’s no winks to camera, there’s not a drop of irony. they really deeply care about the ridiculousness of it all and that’s what makes it work. i sure as fuck dont know what’s going on, but i can see that they do, and i trust that. this is what i meant when i talked about convincing the audience you belong on stage in my stage presence post. i’ve never once believed that juyeon was anything other than an idol. he’s talented and very beautiful and he may occasionally stand on that stage like he owns it but it's always as juyeon. as an idol. but when hongjoong flaps around in that gigantic fur coat i 100% believe he’s a pirate captain. I believe he’s a punk rebel leader. i believe him a resigned king. there’s always a level of irony you have to fight as a performer because we all start from a place of disbelief. acting is not just lying to the audience, it's lying to yourself too. and if you succeed in convincing yourself? well, you’re already halfway to convincing us.

i checked it out because i wanted to see if they did the blindfold how i expected them to and was genuinely surprised by hongjoong’s fancam. the boy is EMOTING even when he knew the camera wasn’t on him; that’s a real dedication to craft.

ok i'm finished talking about this stage, this is over two pages in my document, there’s so many things i have not covered here but that’s fine, i'm quite sure any further thoughts will end up out there at some point.

---

sf9

costume

let’s get it out of the way......crop top. crop top? crop top. crop top.

ok, besides the crop top, i think i might actually like the backup dancer outfits more...? i find mannequin adjacent looks really fascinating and i thought there was a lot more they could have done here in connecting the two thematically. i actually think a change of costume on the boys would have been very interesting, especially because there was a lot of inference and direct reference to changes of colour.

ALL the backup dancers are wearing the same wig and i LOVE that.

special mention zuho’s.....jacket? the right idea but it absolutely should have been one of those extreme french cut bodysuits, you COWARDS. don’t come at me with this ‘male version of venus’ if you don’t have your whole torso out! come on!

set

not sure if this is meant to be a department store, a factory, or a white cube gallery. honestly you could make the case that they’re all the same place anyways. more on this later.

i loved the movator and wish they had used it more! that sequence was so good and they could have done some more interesting repetition sequences to further highlight the ‘sameness’/the breaking of that sameness.

i feel like the set could have been used more as a whole? i would have loved to see some mannequin interactions with those boxes, because all they did was dump colour everywhere.

....why did they feel the need to include the rain bit? i know it's likely because it's in the mv and at the 2018 dream concert taemin does perform move in the rain, but with the standing still and the box walls with the words it just looks like a department store ad. which i...dont think is what they were intending?

lighting

nothing really to say here. it has a similar feel to the mayfly rap stage, which is fine because the lighting for that was good. i could tell what was going on all the time and that’s the most important part. notable standouts are the lips sequence, that's fun use of pop iconography and very effective, and the scanning lasers at the beginning.

the repeating sequence in the edm dance break is actually done pretty simply, it's just what happens when you point a camera that’s livestreaming to a monitor directly at that monitor. it's a very cool effect and it was neat to see it used intentionally, especially with the handheld leds.

actually i also really liked the lightbox tables, those were cool.

sound

the remix was fine for the most part, it was about what i expected it to sound like. i did however greatly dislike that unnecessary edm break in the middle. what was the point of that? it didn’t add anything to the overall sound or arc of the stage because it was SO out of place. there was no connective tissue around it.

oh i was also not a fan of the effect on zuho’s mic. no one else had a discernible vocal effect so it felt a little out of place. also for some reason his cadence and tone right at the end made me think of some of the voices that bo burnam uses for his vocal masque sketches/songs, especially repeat stuff, weirdly? took me right the fuck out of it. i listened to it again after i slept and i’m still getting it, so maybe i’m just going insane so best ignore this part.

staging

loved the mannequin tree, not a clue why it was there.

do actually think this is a successful cover because it does what i was hoping it would, which is take move completely out of the taemin context and put it into an entirely new one. however, i’m really struggling to figure out what exactly that new context is? and what theyre trying to say with it?

obviously they went for a ‘show your own colours/individuality’ vibe, like i said in the set section, where exactly is this supposed to be? from the start i get factory/mechanized environment, which is fine and grand because mannequins and making repetitive motions and products and all that, makes sense. but then there’s stacked shelving type units happening and curtains and that combined with the mannequins give me pretty big department store vibes, which is also fine, because that’s still a comment on commercialization and the mass production of product. but then we get to the movator and the repetitive movements of the dancers say pretty clearly factory, but the lighting and projections are very pop art referential, plus combining that with the white set, just makes me think of an art gallery. so now is this a comment on the commercialization and commidification of contemporary art? are they making a statement about being ‘real’ artists among the others who have lost the critical understanding of why pop art was even a thing in the first place? and then the rain bit at the end literally looks like a department store ad, so are they then making another statement that they still are that packaged product? maybe the episode has more clarity in it but i’m genuinely a bit baffled by what the underlying statement is here.

i suspect it is not as deep as i'm making it, but i did say that i was likely to be hyper critical of this stage AND i am a grad student, so here we are.

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tbz

costume

ok of all the ‘fourth gen’ style costumes we’ve seen, i actually like these ones more than most. i'm not entirely clear on the theme but i'm assuming it's meant to be post apocalyptic, and i'll take that.

backup dancers in black!!! we’re beyond this!!!

this will be a running theme with this stage, but i’m disappointed these don’t have more depth.

set

compared to every other stage, the set here seems especially plain. there’s so little set dec that it's disappointing. i do like the movement of the pieces themselves combined with the blocking; that first slide underneath the arches was slick and i would have liked to have seen more of that.

yea ok the big snake was cool and also a fairly complex build, but the transitions around it were a bit awkward for my tastes. especially the turn around, why did they even show that at all? you have control over what the audience sees, you can totally not show scenic transitions. skz were super smart about hiding theirs in last week’s episode.

also if you have a bigass puppet like that, i wanna see some more movement from it! it doesn’t have to be complex, we literally just saw a kraken balloon arm wave around aimlessly, but at least there was movement! that snake had a long ass body, why didn’t they at least take a pseudo dragon dance movement with it, that would have been such fun to watch with the iridescent scales. there was a lot of opportunity here!

lighting

i don’t hate it but also.... not a lot to say about it on the whole.

there were two really smart ideas here, the first being the front projection section, which i was SO glad to see! i explained in a previous review, but the projections in kingdom are not actually projections per se, because they’re actually massive led screens. there are two common types of projections in performance, rear projection and front projection. rear projection is when the projector is behind the screen, and front projection is ‘normal’ projection. rear projection can produce a crisper image because you have full control of the light values, because the projector is in a separate room from the performance space. but the downsides are that the projector has to be in a separate room from the performance space. so if you’re short on real estate, it's not ideal. front projection is much more common, because the tech is a lot cheaper and easier to access, especially now, and it requires less real estate because you can ceiling mount about the audience (you can move a projector wherever, this is just the most common spot in commercial theatres). but! in order to get an actually crisp image, you have to be really careful with your light bounce. it’s exactly the same principle as how you kinda can't see a projected screen when you have all the lights turned on, but when you turn them off it's a lot clearer. front projection works best in pitch dark, so when you use it in a theatre you gotta be smart about it. i use front projection a lot in my personal art practice as a singular light source, and that’s what tbz did here in that traveling/snake intro sequence. it’s a really fun technique that they used as a good gimmick because it’s not something we’ve seen before, and you get some great shadow effects because the projector is throwing light directionally at the performers (they have it set up close to the floor, it’s probably on a wheeled cart of some kind). however i did not like the snake intro. a bit too cheesy and out of place, especially because the asset quality didn’t match the rest of landscapes that we have been seeing.

the second smart idea, which is partially also a set and blocking thing but whatever, was that final image of the eclipse within the circle architecture with all the members standing in front of it. it was a great shot and a great ending pose, but it felt like a concept photo. like someone had that image as the idea that they then built the stage around, instead of a narrative first and then imagery after.

sound

this remix had SO much promise! those first two minutes were SO GOOD. i love that dirty discordant strings bit, it's gross and right up my alley. but it really fell off in the back half and i'm sad about that.

staging

i'm sorry tbz but.....what did you actually do differently than exo here? with the exception of the continual game of thrones references? nothing here felt transcendentally different from the original monster. and especially coming RIGHT after sf9’s move, which did go beyond its original context. this feels more like an awards show stage cover than a stage at the level of the others we’ve seen just this episode.

again like with the skz stage, there’s no conflict here. no tension. yes they do a great job covering the dance but it just isn’t enough! this is obviously personal preference and i'm sure lots of people liked the fact that it was uncomplicated, but even just a hint of narrative tension could have pushed this into more engaging territory. and if they didn’t want to do that, i would have loved to see them make up for that with extra visual spectacle. this is the no limits round! ikon is putting a full jungle on stage and these are grey cubes!

i think this is a perfect example of what i talked about at the end of my tbz section in my episode four review; this is a good performance, there are good elements at play and good ideas at their genesis, but the core of the issue is that nothing about this is transformative. all of the ideas here are just exaggerations of the original song. fuck, the snake was even IN the mv! and they didn’t even include the best part which is the lip chains! ive said before and i'll say it again; being a good artist has two steps, the first is understanding the material and its context, and the second is elevating the material from that context and synthesizing something new. tbz are really good at the first step, but terrible at the second.

---

ranking

btob - the cleanest and the most fun of the round. everything i wanted.

sf9 - fun and a good cover, despite being conceptually baffling.

ateez - very extra dramatic nonsense with an unexpected dose of sincerity. and it’s rock opera, of course i love it.

skz - fun, with some good thematic devices but generally lacking in arc. also australian accents, that’s an automatic ding.

tbz - honestly the first two minutes of the remix and the costume are holding this above 6th. it just wasn’t fully formed.

ikon - aesthetically this is a great set design and although i do love the opening and closing moments, everything else scrapes me the wrong way. super personal preference here, i’m not expecting anyone else to agree with me.

i feel like my rankings were probably pretty easy to guess if you’ve been around reading the reviews for long enough. i do have very specific tastes after all. i know sf9 ranked first in the episode but i have no idea what the other slots are. i’ll find out when i watch the episode in a couple of days, but i think yea a first for sf9 is fair. i do think its mostly because it’s a taemin song and you have to do something horrendous in order to fuck up a taemin song, but there is a lot of thought and work that went into that stage.

ok i'm done now, sorry this was later than usual, but i was busier and there were four stages that i had to review. also technical difficulties because tumblr is a garbage platform and nothing works properly. comments/questions/opinions always welcome, i know i didn't expand on a couple of points that i could have so hopefully y'all have some thoughts too!

* the type of hat that ~society~ has told you is a fedora is actually a trilby. what peniel is wearing is a real fedora, i felt the need to correct this unjust hat malignment.

** meaning ‘the appearance of being true or real.’ you do sometimes hear it used by normal people, but it’s more commonly used as a descriptor in film and theatre. it’s also one of the five rules of neoclassical theatre, which are: versimilitude, purity of form, five act structure, decorum, and purpose. the most prominent playwrights from that era are moliere and racine if youre interested in what those look like in an actual text.

[natamoko]

UNEARTHED by @nakamoto

for @11thsense (3.7K)

(There is a reason why Aidonsvalley stands alone, makes its own decisions, attracts and denies, takes and leaves. There is a reason why it has a heart of its own.)

On the door of the Church of St. Agnes, a page was stamped: “1 PETER 2:4-6 — As you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

A crimson thumbprint was displayed alongside the words, and Raheem didn’t know whether to take it as some extremely obvious omen or something that should be ignored. He shrugged and went on his way. He had things to do. Nothing necessary, of course.

Aidonsvalley attracted a healthy amount of tourists due to its strange nature. The sun appeared at dawn and left at dusk just like it did everywhere else in the world. Everything worked as it should, but evidently something was amiss. The land chose what it acquired and what it discarded. It chose what it claimed and what it dismissed. And if you did everything right, (and you had to—those who didn’t could never die, those who didn’t would wander and lead a life of toil forever) then the land embraced you warmly enough and you would never get to leave. Raheem had been claimed not too long ago. Partially because of his transformation when he was fifteen, partially for a reason he had not yet understood. That knowledge was long overdue.

Aidonsvalley loved the supernatural, he knew that much.

Despite the wonders it did for the town’s tourism, he couldn’t help but mess with the newcomers everytime they arrived. They marvelled at the aging billboards (“Look, honey, this is the ‘56 ad! From the D’Arcy era; you know I love my beverage trivia—”) and the churches at every corner, more churches than convenience stores. They usually arrived in the evening times when it was cooler, because that was when the neon electronic advertisements would light up. No one ever donated their used dreams, but they sure loved staring at it.

Raheem, from a folding chair situated near a rhododendron bush, noted that these particular tourists looked alike, but not so much that you could mistake them for siblings. They were both wiry and tall, limp blonde hair; one was pulled back in almost identical ponytails, while the other was closely and badly shaven. Diligently poring over the maps in their hands.

The couple peered at the statue before them—Edmund Aidon, the founder of the town. His image was said to be greatly exaggerated, as his biceps were larger than what seemed humanly possible, and his canines were unusually blunt. Still, he looked important, so tourists adored him.

The woman, the one with a fascination for old Coca Cola television advertisements, tapped lightly against Aidon’s thigh. Her partner asked, “Isn’t it magnificent?”

“I’m not too sure,” she said, giving it another light knock before straightening and snapping a photo. “Smile, Edmund Aidon. 1834 to 1911. Timor dei in terra. I think that’s his own personal motto, or maybe something for the town. You studied Latin in school, Geoff, what does that say?”

“All I got was ‘terra’,” he said with a shrug, “Land. And are you okay? Why are you obsessed with that thing?”

Raheem had never offered the statue anything other than a sidewards glance. The tourists in the area generally camped near the lake, hoping to catch sight of the legendary local siren (or something close to that—there wasn’t a word to accurately describe her). Or sometimes they lingered near one of the many churches, over-analysing the scripts hung to the doorposts or trying to catch a word or two from one of the sermons. A rumour had started spreading amongst the tourists a while ago of demons being summoned in church, the house of God being used as a cover. As a demon himself, Raheem knew that was untrue. But its unlikeliness didn’t stop the persistent, eager tourists.

If they were going to remain here, poking at the statue and conversing, they should spend some money on him and make themselves useful. Raheem continued listening to their conversation, considering whether he should use his influence. But unfortunately, he wasn’t really in the mood to make them both walk off the pier, hand in hand, and become April’s supper, or cause them to develop a sudden intense fascination with his father’s restaurant.

The woman turned to her partner. Raheem could see her face from here, all sunburned skin and worry in her eyes. She scratched at her crooked nose and gave the statue one last tap. “I don’t know. It feels hollow, almost. Forgive me for this, but slightly corrugated, even.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” ‘Geoff’ said, not even bothering to check for himself. Idiot. “The guide says it’s made of marble. Marble doesn’t echo.”

“This does.” She sighed and stood up. “Whatever. We should head to the hotel now. I’m starving.”

• • •

It started with Alex losing sleep. Then his jaw would begin to grind against itself while he was both sleeping and awake. His eyes would redden and become sore, the skin on the tips of his fingers would begin ache before breaking and bleed in preparation of what would happen next.

It did not matter whether he was indoors or out, visible to the moon or hidden, awake or asleep. It was an inevitable part of his life. There would be a chanting in his head (run run run), the urge to find someone and pull them apart. Then there would be prey underneath his fingernails and between his teeth, blood would taste more like fear than copper, and the ground would move beneath his feet so quickly it would hear but beneath him. When the sun would rise he would become still and straighten and look eastwards, then shortly find himself waking on the forest floor. That was routine.

This moon was particularly awful. Coffee severely worsened things, made the readjusting of bones so much more painful, and he had been drinking it no less than ten hours ago in order to stay awake and supervise his younger sister’s recent dressmaking project. His parents were not pleased with him being left in charge, especially since the moon was so close, but there had been no one else.

Alex picked a piece of bone from between his teeth, imagining it came from his father’s femur or his mother’s skull. They were the more harmless Aidonsvalley folk—or, at least, the sort that believed themselves to be harmless when they were just weak—and he despised them for it. They were related to him but were not his family.

He suddenly felt around for his glasses’ case. He was not especially helpless without them, but they were the key to looking relatively normal. Only a select few people knew who he was. His moon-addled mind had concluded that his glasses were the key to stopping the residents of Aidonsvalley from looking too closely at him and figuring out exactly what was wrong.

Alex gave up and struggled to his feet, holding a tree for support. Within the forest stood an oak, with the beginnings of a treehouse balanced atop it.

He grinned. It’ll never be finished. Aidonsvalley chose what to keep and what to throw away, and buildings would never be included in the former. The most recent home that hadn’t been destroyed by the town had been built in the mid-twentieth century. It was just another strange part of the town that Alex was simply not particularly interested in solving. However he did like to reminisce about Anita Darlington’s attempt to build a windmill when Alex was younger. She was his aging neighbour, and spent an entire season constructing her windmill, which stood next to her vegetable garden.

It was struck by lightning less than an hour after it’s completion. Alex had been riding his bicycle next to her house when the incident occurred. He still remembered the flash in the sky moving downwards, his hammering heart, the smell of burning wood. He remembered the fright in his chest and Umi’s terrified face. He remembered how pleasant of a day it had been beforehand: warm, but not overbearingly so. Not a single rain-cloud had been sighted.

•••

“I’m telling you,” Raheem insisted, his hand holding onto Umi’s upper arm. “I’ve never seen someone stare at it for so long. You have a good eye—”

“So do you,” said Umi. He gave the statue a gentle knock and frowned. “It feels cheap. Too light. It’s almost like sandpaper. I’ve felt something like this before.”

A week had passed since the incident with the tourists, and Raheem had spent it scamming them by selling useless trinkets and completely fake stories about the origin of the town’s strangeness. He usually undertook little projects throughout the year, but it was summer and he deserved somewhat of a break. The ancient Coca Cola bottle he found buried in his garden and had subsequently sold to the blonde, observant woman would support his expensive lifestyle for at least a week at most.

If Raheem scraped the top layer of the soil in his garden, he could find enough things to set up his own museum. It was not a phenomena exclusive to him, and additionally, no one knew where all those things came from originally. Once, when uprooting weeds, one of the townsfolk, Amara, had discovered that her front garden was soaked in blood, not water. That explained why she couldn’t grow anything more demanding than cress.

Kel took Umi’s hand. He had sort of forced himself into this boring excuse of an adventure, but Raheem didn’t mind because he didn’t mind Kel. He was quite fond of anyone who sought out an entertaining experience.

“Never knew a tourist would work you up this much,” said Kel cheerfully, before pointing to a mark behind Edmund Aidon’s knee. “Hey, what’s this?”

“Looks like a square,” said Umi, leaning forward to see it clearer. “How did you spot this anyway?”

“Not sure,” answered Kel, despite obviously knowing that the mark had shifted itself, working up towards their line of sight so it could be seen. Those sort of things were ignored here. Everything had a life, and its own motives and ambitions. “In my opinion, it looks like a jackhammer, a bit. If you turn your head and squint.”

“No it does not,” said Raheem, annoyed. “It’s a cradle.”

Yes, it did appear to be a cradle the longer he looked at it. The thin bars grew clearer. Somehow he could tell it was wooden. But something about it all wasn’t right—it didn’t look like something carved into the statue. Rather, something that had been a part of it ever since it was constructed. Aidonsvalley didn’t have a symbol, official or unofficial. Something strange was certainly going on. Raheem wasn’t sure if he wanted to dig deeper.

“This is odd,” remarked Umi. “This is the only thing that survives Aidon—no other records as far as I know, and there’s something carved here. Should we look into it?”

“Maybe,” said Kel. “This isn’t very strange for this town, but it’ll be fun to investigate. But where? The library won’t be much help. They don’t keep records there.”

The only library in Aidonsvalley was this stuffy building from the early twentieth century that held absolutely nothing of value. Investigative material couldn’t be brought in for some reason or the other. It was all rejected in some form. The town archives had to be kept elsewhere because of it. As a demonstration of this fact, once, the mayor's niece Stephanie Murray attempted to trace the nearby lake’s history. Her paper had promptly burst into flames, and she decided to complete her project in a café maybe an hour or two away from the town. Really, the only thing the library had going for it was its complete Toni Morrison collection.

“They keep the town’s archive in the church on main street,” said Umi. “You know the one: St. Agnes. Apparently there’s a cellar underneath the altar, but I can’t be too sure.” He turned to Raheem, expressionless. Unsure. “Look, if you can find a way to get in, I’ll help you out. You know I’m not too certain.”

“I know,” replied Raheem brightly. “Doubting Thomas. Do you even think there’s something strange afoot?”

“Well there’s always something going on here,” said Umi, affronted. “If we get caught, it’s your fault. I’ll get Alex in on this as well, it’ll make things easier, I think.” Pause. “Do you want to get ice-cream with us?”

He waved a dismissive hand and turned back to Aidon. “Sure. Go ahead, I just need to check something.”

The two waved—Umi visibly confused but still sure in his own decision, Kel apprehensive and glancing around—and made their way to the nearby parlour.

Raheem placed his hand flat against the statue. Something shifted beneath his touch, he heard a faint noise like a beating drum, and he frowned.

Half an hour later on the other side of town, Alex stood at the lakeside. The lake beside Aidonsvalley (still technically within the town but somewhat shoved to the side) was the subject of many rumours. The tourists all cleared out before the sun had fully set, interested in what apparently went down beside the lake, but still in possession of some sense of self-preservation. Unfortunately, Alex did not have the aforementioned sense of self-preservation.

The only harm that could possibly befall him was if he lost his balance and fell down into the lake. There were pointed rocks below, carefully sharpened at dawn and at dusk, and if he pierced any part of his body, he most certainly would not survive that experience.

There was someone standing on the jetty above the lake. Alex recognised him as one of the Fallow brothers, three siblings from a family of mechanics. They handled the people who “washed up at the town’s shores,” fixed their cars, cleared their memories and sent them away. He was a high school student. Perfectly average. Nearly unnoticed. Graduating this fall.

And April was also below him, treading the water. Her hair floated on the surface. Alex averted his gaze, half out of respect and half to avoid her hypnotic technique. But he still saw her from the corner of his eyes, saw the way she unhinged her jaw and said the Fallow boy’s name: Matthew, in a voice she didn’t possess.

The boy moved closer to the ledge. He crouched and peered through the water. April’s power was clouding the air, turning it green. Matthew moved slowly, as if he were running through a lime cloud as if in a trance. Or a dream. Then he called for his mother and April responded in kind. He, foolishly, reached for the water, looking at her face and seeing his late mother instead of what she truly was. April grabbed his wrist and pulled.

He toppled over easily, and didn’t struggle until April sank her teeth into his neck. He flailed desperately and cried out from under the water. His movements slowed with every second until he finally fell still.

April emerged from the lake a moment later, her upper half collapsing on the ledge. She looked up at Alex and grinned. “It’s rude to watch a siren eat, you know.”

“Really?”

“No,” she said, “But it is an indicator that you’re the main entrée.” Her smile widened. “Kidding, I love you.”

Alex continued to watch the water. “He wasn’t claimed, you know. He can’t die until he gets things right. I’d expect to find him in the sewers. Or in the church.”

“Why’d you think I chose him?” April questioned. 

They stared at each other for a moment before Alex reminded her of the time he saved her from these ‘low-quality’ whalers, as he dubbed it. She owed him, she even said that earlier. Then he told her that he needed her help breaking into her uncle’s church. Her hand shot out so fast, tightening around his earlobe, that he shouted and wobbled perilously on the edge.

“Idiot,” she chastised, “Why’d you wanna do that?”

April had this unfortunate habit of being constantly hesitant. It was not a con, for sure, but it certainly hindered any interesting activities Alex thought up. This was the wrong time to be careful, he reckoned, because if there was a mystery surrounding Aidonsvalley, then it was bound to be serious. She should know this.

“Something weird is happening,” said Alex, separating her fingers from around his ear and trying to keep his tone light. If he appeared to be desperate, she might decline just to fuck with him. “Raheem told me.”

“Raheem is a compulsive liar.”

“Not to me.”

He belatedly realised that it was the wrong thing to say.

“No,” April answered with a grin. “Not to you.”

Sensing a serious change of subject, Alex quickly arranged himself to a sitting position further up on the ledge. He balanced his chin against his palm and gave her a long look. She raised her brows in turn.

“Do you not have the stomach for this, April?”

“Of course I have the stomach for this,” she snapped. “I’m just careful, unlike you lot.” She paused. “I’ll help you plan your little heist, but don’t tell me what it’s for.” Despite herself, April grinned at him. “If that happens, I’ll get really interested. Things will all go down from there.”

•••

Raheem sat on the stone steps of St. Agnes, a book in hand. It was in French, a language he didn’t recall ever learning, but he could understand it perfectly. Strange. Even stranger was the fact that he could not walk past the altar for some reason, so Alex and Umi were the ones who had to retrieve the appropriate town records. Raheem was not pleased. He started this adventure, but had been forced to play whistleblower instead.

“How annoying,” he said as his phone began to ring.

“Found something about the town’s origins,” said Umi, breathing hard. From a distance, Raheem heard Alex laugh. “None about Edmund Aidon himself, though. I’m beginning to doubt his existence.”

“Tell me more. Is it interesting?”

A sharp inhale. “Oh, very.”

And it went like this:

The Preston’s were a family known for their hatred for supernatural creatures and how they exercised the aforementioned hatred. Once they were a few generations into the family practice of murder, several other families joined together with them to help achieve their shared goals. They called themselves The Cradle. Soon enough a town was founded for the five thousand or so members, and its name was unpronounceable.

About a century after the town’s creation, someone received word of a counterattack. In just a matter of days, vampires, werewolves and other supernaturals would band together and burn the town to the ground. Fearing something a little worse than death, the townsfolk hypocritically sought out a method to save them. They selected a random person in the town and made them live forever. The exact method, Umi stated, was not stated. Then the other townsfolk transformed themselves into the town—they knocked down the church and all the homes and created new walls out of their own flesh. The altar was made of bone. They drained the lake and replaced it with their own blood. The grass and the trees were fertilised with people, and the person they left behind was meant to bring them back once the danger had been averted, but they didn’t.

With a chill creeping down his spine, Raheem noted that the person might still be in Aidonsvalley. He glanced around in worry for a moment, as if the person might just be standing at his shoulder. Thankfully no such thing existed, but something else attracted his attention.

A porcelain statue near the church’s pillar, of a mother holding its child. It could be mistaken for Mary and the baby Jesus, but its features were hauntingly realistic and unlike the usual paintings of the Madonna and child. Beneath the porcelain was flesh, presumably. Raheem stared at the child holding his mother’s finger, sat in her lap, and felt a feeling both strong and indescribable.

“So presumably Aidon came across an already furnished yet empty town, then re-established it,” said Raheem, “But if that’s the case, wouldn’t there be anything about him? It’s like he just sprouted here.”

Things in this town tended to do that, he reminded himself. He was used to everything here. The tourist had described the statue in a strange manner. Slightly corrugated. That could mean skin, but it was hollow—

“There’s a chance that he was the person left behind,” said Umi slowly, “and no one ever thought to write it down since he’s a constant. You wouldn’t take note of the colour of the sky everyday? It’s either blue, red and sometimes black. We know that.”

They both hung up after Umi agreed to finish up shortly. Kel joined Raheem on the steps, very carefully not meeting his eyes. Perhaps the blue colour was too bright for this time at night, Raheem told himself.

The more Kel touched a stone step with his fingertips, the more it wore away until it revealed a portion of a face. Grey-skinned, open-mouthed, expression trapped somewhere between terror and exhilaration. The person’s eyes, fixed skywards, slowly lolled down to look directly at Kel. If its mouth was visible, Raheem would have received confirmation that it was smiling.

That was two incidents now, he stated privately as his heart jumped. The first was the cradle appearing just as Kel drew near, the second was the face.

When Umi and Alex returned and led the other two away, the stone replaced itself and the face was safely hidden away. As the four followed the path they had followed for well over a decade, Raheem distinctively felt like he was being watched. Perhaps it had always been this way, but now that he knew that Aidonsvalley was a real, living, breathing town, he felt it strongly.

There was one thing he knew for sure, though. When he would eventually sit in his living room, surrounded by relatives that were not family, and press his head against the wall, he would hear breathing. A deep inhale and exhale. It makes the whole world shake, but he’s the only one who feels it. He’s one of the only people that knows this town is made of living stone.

[wildcard47]

6.Wild, breathless kisses brought on by a heartfelt gift or 42. Distracting kisses from someone that are meant to stop the other person from finishing their work, and give them kisses instead for Fitzier? Your writing is top-notch ;)

First: OMG your icon, WHERE DID YOU GET IT; second, TY for the prompt and the compliment!

6. Wild breathless kisses brought on by a heartfelt gift

Perched on one edge of their sofa, Francis shook the flat, rectangular package from side-to-side in one hand as if he were shaking a tambourine in a 60s folk band; although the immaculate blue foil paper didn’t budge an inch, and the gift didn’t make noise in an obvious way, it was impossible to notice the way James flinched and hissed at this joke.

“Francis.”

“Just checking to see it’s not a puppy.” Francis’s smile widened as he caught James’s narrow-eyed glare. “All right, now I’ll open it.”

Purposefully taking his time, certain it would be another one of those instances where James supposedly bought him an incredible gift – which was not at all to Francis’s taste and was more suited, in fact, for James’s – Francis resigned himself to badly-faked enthusiasm as he cut through the last of the tape with his pocketknife, and unwrapped the face of the gift.

It was a framed picture, as he’d imagined, but instead of facing down some sort of odd spy show fanart or an offbeat embroidery filled with curse words, Francis saw something very ordinary.

“An old newspaper.”

Pulling a puzzled face, he glanced over at James, who sat shockingly still and quiet next to him. Still clueless, Francis turned back to the framed front page. London Saturday Review. May fifth, nineteen ten. The illustration was of a handsome auburn-haired woman in a sinuous black dress, wearing a dark fur-trimmed scarlet cloak and balancing a long, slender cigarette holder between two fingers. Looked like a witchy Little Red Riding Hood.

“Think he was trying to copy the Leyendecker illustrations from the Post,” was all James said, clearing his throat. “Glamorous young things, and all that.”

“Right.” Francis still didn’t understand why this mattered, or why he was receiving a copy of some American-inspired newspaper art – and then he glanced at the caption in the bottom right corner.

Set in minuscule type just below the artist’s signature was a small caption, no bigger than his little finger: Miss Moira Graham.

“That’s funny. She’s got the same name as my Memo.”

James said nothing, although one corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. He was silent for so long that Francis had to study the illustration again.

Although this woman – barely more than a girl, really – wore clothes that made her look as wealthy as an eligible countess, and therefore nothing like the Memo he remembered from childhood, the shape of her eyes when she smiled still seemed familiar. The amused purse of her lips made him think of the way Memo had always grinned while telling a joke, even if this girl’s face was full and unlined, and her elaborately-pinned hair was thick and glossy.

“Done by John Lavery.” James touched the side of the frame with two fingers, barely crooking his fingertips against one corner. “According to the records, the woman who was supposed to model didn’t show up that day, and the only other girl – office typist – had a fainting spell. On the way to find a new muse, Lavery got run down on the pavement by a hot-tempered Irish girl on a safety bicycle. Who told him to get the hell out of the way, because she had deliveries to make.”

Before she’d married, Memo Moira had worked as a delivery girl for a local farmer, carrying eggs and butter and produce in a basket on her bicycle. Said it had been one of the happiest times of her life.

“You mean... it’s actually.... ?”

“Your Memo.” James touched Francis’s forearm, now. “Found it sitting in a dusty attic on my research trip in March. Thought she looked familiar, figured I’d ask around. Antiques Roadshow people won’t leave me alone now.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Francis stared open-mouthed at the framed portrait, unable to tear his eyes away from his Memo’s face, now that he knew who she was. He didn’t think he’d seen any photos of her taken before she had kids. The few he had were all from his mother. In most of them, Memo hovered in the background, a blur of reliable blouses and dark trousers against a sea of birthday cakes and church functions and school graduations. Never mind how she’d looked during Francis’s own childhood, ambling slowly through a dilapidated house in lumpy sweaters and worn house dresses, with her salt and pepper hair knotted into a bun and hidden under dark knitted caps.

“She was really pretty,” he whispered after several minutes of studying the likeness, now brushing the pad of his thumb against the bloom of summer flowers pinned at her temple. A burst of delight rushed into his stomach as he thought about how bold she must have been, to go posing for a strange artist with no notice. “Wasn’t she?”

“Yeah.” James’s fingers tucked hair behind Francis’s left ear before fluttering back to his left shoulder. “Beautiful.”

Slowly, not wanting to jostle the portrait an inch, Francis placed it face-up onto the nearby coffee table, ensuring it was evenly balanced and not in danger of falling onto the carpet before he turned back to James.

“So,” James said, looking nervous, but he did not get a chance to complete the sentence, because Francis launched himself forward, gathered James in his arms, and kissed the damn dickens out of the man, running his hands through James’s messy curls and over his muscular shoulders and down the small of his back until he groaned against Francis’s mouth.

“Oh! Fra’cis, we – ” James could hardly eke out the words, head falling onto Francis’s shoulder as Francis’s fingers teased around the hem of his shirt “ – we’ll miss our reserv – ”

“Hush, love.” Francis was already breathing hard as he leaned forward to kiss James again; his boyfriend gasped aloud though Francis had barely touched him yet. “Let me thank you properly.”

[buzzdixonwriter]

“Fire & Forget” Theology

About a month ago I posted the following link on a Facebook page administrated by mi amigo Art Greenhaw.  Art liked this clip of Ron Austin, a retired screenwriter and TV director, speaking to a Dominican gathering earlier this summer and asked my opinion on it in the context of his Facebook page’s theme, Methodist Renewal: Reversing the Decline.

Well, I tried. 

Really.

I put a lot of serious thought into it, and since I couldn’t see how to fix current problems without addressing some systemic issues going waaaaaaaaay back, I decided to include a brief overview of how we got to where we are today, and by that point I was at the 1,400+ word mark and I still hadn’t addressed the main issue that Art wanted to me address.

But in the meantime, reality happened.

Reality in the form of Roy Moore and far too many evangelicals normalizing his behavior and in celebrities and politicians on both sides of the aisle being revealed as amoral sexual predators and other politicians being willing to lie and various religious leaders overlooking the sins of their own and pundits defending the indefensible bad behavior of those who benefited their ideological POV, and I realized my previous lengthy response was now rendered null and void by a rapidly changing cultural environment so I’m going to cut through all the BS and get straight to the core issue of what Christian churches and denominations should do right now, today, this instant:

Shut it down.

Mind you, this is a far more optimistic and restrained improvement over my original version:  Burn it down.

But the frank, ugly, brutal yet irrefutable truth is this:  American Christianity as a movement is over, and whatever Christian movement replaces it, it’s not going to be church as usual.

Period.

Full stop.

Now, I know this will dismay a lot of people who love their local churches and their denominations, but I am not the sort of person to offer a criticism without offering a solution as well.

So bear with me, we’ll get to the religious / spiritual / theological issues in a moment, right now let’s discuss what to do with the organizations that exist today under the Christian banner.

Turn them into chautauquas.

No, seriously -- bear me out!

Chautauquas would satisfy almost all the needs and functions offered by churches today. 

For those unfamiliar with the term “chautauqua”, they were old fashioned tent shows that traveled the US, offering cultural / educational / inspirational lectures and entertainment to folks in the hinterlands.  Elvis made a movie about them -- The Trouble With Girls (And How To Get Into It) -- and while it isn’t very good movie even for Elvis, it does paint a vivid and mostly accurate picture of what the chautauqua experience was like.  (And how many Elvis movies have Vincent Price and John Carradine in them, hmm?)

By turning churches into chautauquas, the local / neighborhood congregation would become a social magnet for the community, offering inspirational lectures and classes and scouting and public service events, but stripped of all specific American Christian content.  The larger denominations would turn into networks of speakers and performers to supply programing for the local meeting halls, providing administrative and logistical support.

Denominational institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens, etc., would continue as tax exempt secular charities.

The local chautauqua would operate seven days a week, with numerous classes and lectures for all ages and interests, some supplied by local staff, some by local volunteers, some by the various former denominational networks, some by itinerant freelancers.

All lectures and performances and presentations and events would be dedicated to uplifting their audiences, encouraging integrity, tolerance, compassion, honesty, and charity. 

Jesus would not be banned from the chautauquas -- a lecture on the Beatitudes would be a fine thing for all audiences, believers or not -- but other philosophical and spiritual leaders would be taught as well.

There could even be Bible classes…for adults only.

Because you see, the way in which American Christianity has presented the Bible is a YUGE hunk of the problem we’re having today, and arguably the number one contributing factor into the implosion of American Christianity.

I do not believe we should be teaching the Bible to little children, certainly not to anyone under the age of 12, and we should only teach the Bible to those who want to understand it fully.

We cram little kids into a Sunday school class, tell them fairy tales -- and that’s how they’re processing the dumbed down Bible stories we’re feeding them -- and end up creating false impressions in their minds of what those stories mean in proper context.

We give them crayons to color in a big bright rainbow over the ark, let them glue cotton bolls over the sheep gamboling down the plank, put glitter on Noah standing there with a big smile plastered over his face that God spared him and his family…

And we never really take them past that point, do we?

Our entire approach to the Bible is kept at that dumbed-down-and-not-at-all-accurate first depiction.  When they become adults, the lesson plans and sermons don’t deviate much from that initial image that completely belies the meaning of the flood story, that completely ignores the complexity and the contradictions of Noah and his behavior.

We argue we do that out of deference to visitors who may not be familiar with the Bible, or to keep from confusing young kids in church with a more thorough study, but a story told badly should not be told at all, and the messages we should derive from Bible study have to first fight their way past a morass of misconceptions that have been carefully hammered down on us for years.

So, no, no Bible stories for anybody under the age of 12.  Teach ‘em Christ’s parables, those are okay:  Little bite size tales that vividly illustrate and illuminate a specific moral or spiritual point, but please stop trying to hammer the Bible into their heads.

It only warps and distorts them.

(The Bible stories, that is; not their heads.)

I recognize that due to varying methods of organization it will be more difficult for some churches and denominations to reorganize into chautauquas -- the process will be more than simply changing letterheads and signage -- but it can be done.

Because the alternative is that they go out of business.

I want to focus on that word:  Business. 

Let’s not mince words:  American Christianity is a business.  It provides a living for tens of thousands of people.  It has income, it has expenses.  It has a house nut to meet.  There are gas and electric and water bills to pay, insurance to cover, salaries to be met, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Whatever the ostensible purpose of this business, it’s a business.

Americans like business, and while it’s absolutely true that the business model of Christianity originated thousands of years ago in Europe (and to be fair, all the major religions are run like businesses, going back to the paganism of ancient Greece and the polytheism of ancient Egypt), this business model has distorted, diminished, then discarded the gospel of Christ.

Christ’s message was not how to make a buck.  (Yeah, prosperity gospel shills are quick to point to the parable of the talents, etc., but tap dance around the far more numerous admonitions that rich people will go to hell.)

Christ’s message was not about how to achieve and maintain power.  (Christ did not care about specific institutions and governments; he wanted his followers to live and act justly no matter what system they were in or under.)

Christ’s message was about how to live righteously in an unrighteous world.

There’s an old Jewish legend of the Tzadikim Nistarim, the 36 righteous people who stave off the day of judgment simply by being in the world.

The legend is emphatic that these righteous people need not be Jews, or for that matter even particularly devout or religious.

They just have to be righteous, and by their mere presence in the world, the world is saved.

Metaphorically, that is what Christ was teaching us to be.

Yeah, he had a lot of teachings on heaven and hell, but he crafted his message for his audience so that they would grasp his teachings at their level of understanding.

They were anxious about their future; Christ taught, “Don’t be anxious.  Your Father in heaven loves you.  Love one another as He loves you.”

American Christianity teaches:  “Be anxious.  God doesn’t love you unless you do what we say.  Obey our rules and you’ll go to heaven.”

That’s the business of American Christianity speaking.  A business that needs repeat customers to keep the coffers filled.

You cannot serve God and Mammon.

Becoming a Christian is like learning to ride a bicycle.

Once you learn, you just ride the bicycle.

You don’t keep coming back to take the same lessons over and over and over and over again.

Christ taught a “fire & forget” theology. 

“Fire & forget” is a military term for self-guided weapons that, once locked in on a target, can be fired and trusted to find and destroy the target on their own, without direct control from the person who launched it.

The lone wolf terrorists of various ideologies operate on the same principle.  The ideologies radicalize them, encourage them, spur them on, but don’t actually provide logistical or tell them what to attack.

Having absorbed the message, they go and act on their own.

Followers of Christ should operate on the same principle -- though obviously for the sake of righteousness, not hate and terror.

Once we have the gospel of Christ -- the good news -- we don’t need any organization to guide us.

We will not act unrighteously.

We will not willfully harm others.

We will not let others suffer if we can help.

We will not worry about the day, but have faith.

We will be the light of the world, the salt of the earth.