#event: east district

[bigbadd0g]

you lookin for a new fit broseph? anything you got your eye on?

WOAH! WONDER WHAT THAT'S ALL ABOUT!!!!! ANYWAAAAY~~

[townpostin]

Govt Services to Reach Doorsteps in East Singhbhum

‘Aapki Yojana, Aapki Sarkar, Aapke Dwar’ program launched across 18 panchayats and 2 municipal bodies The ‘Aapki Yojana, Aapki Sarkar, Aapke Dwar’ program brings government services directly to residents in East Singhbhum district from August 30 to September 15. JAMSHEDPUR – East Singhbhum district launched the ‘Aapki Yojana, Aapki Sarkar, Aapke Dwar’ program, bringing government services to…

[bourbontrend]

Discover the latest gem from Rieger & Co. unveiled today the Kansas City distillery’s newest commemorative whiskey label designed in collaboration with Sporting Kansas City. This limited-edition 96 proof Straight Bourbon Whiskey celebrates Kansas City's rich heritage and the Kansas City Wiz fandom. Don't miss out on this perfect blend of history, flavor, and community spirit. Get ready to raise a toast to Kansas City!

[daretolovemyrambling]

ARCANE TIMELINE

every Information confirmed by lore or the creators is green. Everything I found out through math is orange (because we don't know months, birthdates, exact ages etc.). Things that are purely my headcanon i'm putting in blue. red represents League Wiki information that has not been disproved by arcane canon, that said it's Wiki anyone can edit and is not the most trusted source when the dates don't include a source.

I edit this everytime I find out something new!

some background that is important for the timeline:

BN refers to "Before Noxus". Before the Runewars, there were several rivaling tribes of Noxi in Runeterra. But after the Runewars they had banded together into one nation, Noxus. They establish their own Calender, BN (Before Noxus) and AN which stands for "After Noxus".

"Zaun" was not build at the same time as Piltover. In League lore. Zaun, then called Oshra Va'Zaun, was build 3000 BN, it was part of the Shuriman empire and became independent after Shurima fell.

Valoran is the name of the continent the story of Arcane takes place in. Zaun and Piltover reside in South Valoran. Noxus resides in East Valoran. Demacia resides in West Valoran.

772 BN: Oshra Va'Zaun attempts to create a safe sea-route between East and West Valoran. Their plan is to create a passage with bombs, which results in them accidentally triggering a series of strong earthquakes.

Half of Oshra Va'Zaun sinks and poisonous gas leaks into the city. Janna, a goddess revered by sailors, hears the Zaunites prayers and blows away the toxic gas, becoming their guardian deity.

790 AN: Thanks to the passage, merchant clans aquire an immense amount of wealth and take residence in the newly developed district that was build over the Pilt River. They name it Piltover to symbolize it's position over the Pilt River. In honor of it's founding, they have their first "Progress Day". Heimerdinger becomes one of the founders of Piltover. He is about 114 years old.

940-950 AN: Vander and Silco are somewhere between their 30's and 50's but exact ages are unknown. Same goes for Felicia and Connol. They look like they are in their 30's or at most early 40's when they die. All four must be born around 940 to 950 but I couldn't really narrow it down. If anyone finds information from the creators, let me know!

957 AN: Mel is 26 during season 1 act 1, so she is likely born in this year.

959 AN: Jayce is born in 959 because he is 24 in season 1 act 1. In the League Wiki he is listed as born in 959!

958-961 AN: Viktor is born sometime in those years. Viktor is around Jayce's age. It's unknown if he is older or younger though

965 AN: Vander and Silco work in the mines and meet eachother. (Putting this in blue because this detail comes from the Arcane artbook and we don't know at what age they meet, we just know they worked in the mines together) This could also be the year the last drop is bought or build by Vander!

967 AN: Vi is 14-16 during the events of season 1 act 1 according to Amanda Overton. I'm placing her at around 16 years old. Which means that she was likely born in 967. This is probably also the year the bar flashback with vanco and felicia happens :). This is also the year that is listed as her birth date in the League Wiki! In the League Wiki she is listed as born in 967!

966-968 AN: Cait is around the same age as Vi. If we say she was 15 during season 1 part 1, she would be born in 968. In the League Wiki she is listed as born in 966!

970 AN: year Ekko is born according to the League Wiki! This might be a headcanon from Ekko's voice actor, but I have to fact check it.

972 AN: Powder is roughly 5 years younger than Vi, so she would be born in 972 at the earliest.

978 AN: Felicia and Connol die in the riot at the bridge when Powder is around 6 and Vi is around 11 according to Amanda Overton.

980 AN: Mel says she was exciled ten years ago in season 1 act 3. So she arrived in 980 in Piltover. Mel is around 23 here because she is 33 in s1 act 2 & 3.

983 AN: This is the year were everything from season 1 act 1 takes place. It's not only the death year of Vander, Mylo and Clagger, Benzo and Greyson, this is the year Hextech was invented, Shimmer development was completed and the year the timeline splits into two (one where Vi lives and one where Vi dies)

990 AN: the 200th Progress Day takes place in 1x4. The events of episode 4-9 likely span not even longer than a week, so everything in season 1 act 2 and 3 happens in this year!

991 AN: between 2x3 ans 2x4 3-6 months have passed. I don't know how months and vegetation work in Runeterra, but if Viktor had enough time to build a thriving community and grow and take care of crops, i'd say that 2x4-2x9 takes place in 991 AN.

997 AN: is the year the current "present year" of the League of Legends Universe. In future spin-offs we will likely reach this year at some point.

unknown dates:

- Dr. Corin Reveck (Singed) is born and becomes a respected Doctor in Piltover. He worked together with Heimerdinger but the two parted ways because Heimerdinger disapproved of the unethical and inhumane methods Singed uses to bring Orianna back to life.

- Orianna (Singed's daughter) becomes sick and dies/is in a comatose state. In League lore she becomes sick after trying to help Zaunites escape from a chemical spill.

- Viktor's age when he meets Singed, Viktor's age when he enters the academy and becomes Heimerdingers assistant. Amanda Overton revealed that their (non-canon) idea is that Viktor's parents used their life savings to buy Viktor a Piltover school uniform. Viktor sneaks into the academy and impresses Heimerdinger so much that he doesn't kick him out and makes him an assistant instead.

- Jayce's age when he and his mother are trapped in the snowstorm. The death of Jayce's father likely already occured at or before this time.

- Isha's birthday. She between the ages Powder has in 1x1 (6-11). Since she is wearing a miners helmet we can guess that either he guardian or herself has worked in the mines at some point. She might be getting chased by goons because she escaped her workplace... chilling thought.

- the exact age of Kino and Mel, the date of Ambessa travelling through a regions where she falls in love with a stranger and has an affair with him (in the blood sweat and tears music video she appears already pregnant)

EDIT: Jayce was 24 not 25 in s1 act 1, my bad. Edited it to be his correct birth year (959)

EDIT 2: In a watch party Amanda Overton says that between episode 3 and 4 about 3 to 6 months have passed.

EDIT 3: thanks @darlingitsagathaharkness, you are right. I found this post that pieced together the chronological order of events in season 1 act 2 & 3. That is one hell of a week.

EDIT 4: I found concept art of Mel that confirms that she is imagined to be 26 during season 1 act 1.

If you find any other date or event that can be included here, please let me know :).

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

[bixels]

whoa i love your san diego miku so much - the tattoos are awesome! you mentioned LA/SD culture being different... as an east coaster im very interested in what that entails! :o

LA's (mostly) a flat urban sprawl while SD's more varied with rural/farmland areas and mostly suburban towns connected by freeways. The people in SD are more chill and less stressed but generally more conservative, since SD's also a military town with a large rural population. SD's more touristy with a culture focused on day-to-day entertainment and event hotspots –– beaches, parks, entertainment districts, venues, etc. –– (on weekends Southbound traffic in Oceanside gets clogged up from LA residents driving down to vacation in SD). LA's a little more long-term industry entertainment focused with entire cultures surrounding consumerism, fashion, and online fame. LA is also more diverse and has better food.

[feargender]

I think this perspective is mainly informed by living for the majority of my life in red states, where the touch of a democratic federal government was rarely ever felt, but here’s a tip:

We all need to stop relying on presidents to save us. I’m not saying don’t vote, I voted! I vote in every election, not just the presidential election. But look at it this way. Migrants were still being detained in border prisons along the Mexico-US border under Biden. Obama saw us through war in the Middle East. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade under Biden. States have continued to restrict eligibility for Medicaid and other welfare programs. Many southern states have become essentially inhospitable to trans life. The wheel of fascism doesn’t stop turning just because someone wearing a blue tie is sitting at a fancy desk. I am not talking about whether or not it will be “worse” or “better”, whether the wheel turns slowly or quickly. I am talking about the fact that the United States government is inherently a destructive and oppressive system, and no one person can change that.

The communities we form to defend ourselves and each other from a fascist state cannot be based off of or beholden to who is in the Oval Office. Go to that pro-Palestine event, volunteer your time with local grassroots organizations that matter to you, show up to that school district meeting where they talk about transgender students. When the cops show up at your house, Kamala won’t help you. The neighbor who comes over in her pajamas and robe to back you up will. When you can’t afford your medications, and you’re ineligible for your state’s Medicaid, there is not a democratic president in that moment who will fix this for you. Maybe it’s on their docket, but for right now, you’re broke and need those meds. You’re better off knowing what phone number you need to call to have a public health worker scrounge up some vouchers and coupons for you.

If the public transportation system in your city sucks, go find out who is in charge of that and bother them about it. If you are worried about over policing in your community, find a local abolition group and see what they want to do about it. If there isn’t one, find another leftist organization and stir up interest. If you’re seeing a lot of homeless people on your way to work, find out what’s wrong with the shelters and if there’s anyone you can support who is trying to fix it.

I feel like a lot of people associate the term “mutual aid” with cashapp links. Or they think that hating the current political system is all you need to be a leftist. If you don’t connect with your community, online or in person, through one form of political action or many, you will never see the revolution you’re waiting for. You’ll never know that change, good or bad, is happening all around you if you only count it when it happens due to a new presidential administration. It’s ok to fret! I’m worried!! I’m worried about the presidency and Congress and the Supreme Court. But realistically, there’s not a ton most individuals can do about that. I cannot make my vote count toward the presidency from within my red state. But I can improve my local community by knowing what the propositions at the bottom of my ballot mean.

[myownwholewildworld]

wherever you go (a joel miller’s ff) - chapter 6

chapter 5 | series masterlist | main masterlist | chapter 7

pairing: outbreak!2003!joel x f!reader. (it's actually 2004 now)

summary: after months in the wilderness, you finally arrive at chicago. adapting to this new life has its cons, but also its perks. joel's birthday is around the corner, and you have planned for a couple of things you hope he likes...

a/n: hiya! here's chapter six!! it's packed with a bit of everything, especially drama because why not? 🤷 i want to thank you all ― i just realised that the first 3 chapters have hit over 100 notes each! i'm so damn grateful to all of you, honestly. as much as i'm writing for myself, i'm loving how hooked some of you are with this story 😳 also, i'd like to apologise in advance if i have butchered chicago's layout or its history, i did try my best doing some research. as always, thank you all for engaging. i do appreciate any comments, reblogs and/or likes you may want to leave! even asks/requests if you want to! take care lovelies <3 x

warnings: 18+, mdni. mention of Sarah's death. angst. fluff. filthy smut (don't you know me by now?). porn with plot or plot with porn (however you wanna look at it). irresponsible use of contraception (don't do that). consensual somnophilia. dry humping. unprotected piv. masturbation (m and f). creampie. pussy slapping. fisting. squirting. cum play. a bit of assplay. makeup sex. sir kink. “bar” fight. alcohol consumption. blood. stabbing. swear words. mention of past racist events and the precursor to the chicago race riot of 1919. soft!dom!joel. a bit of aftercare. pet names (darlin’, sweetheart). i'm sure i'm forgetting something lol. reader is female, no other description given. reader is mid-late 20s, joel is now 37 (🎉!). no use of y/n.  joel’s and reader’s pov.

w/c: ~6.9k.

tags (let me know if you want to be added/removed from the list pls!): @yesjazzywazzylove-blog @pedrospurplerain @missladym1981 @fancyyoouu @smolbeanzzz

Chicago was definitely not what you had expected at all. Shit had gone down really badly in this place. It took you a week to cross the southwest area, keeping close to Interstate 55 as a reference. The worst you had seen was Chicago Midway International Airport. Airplanes had crashed on the runway, the esplanade was a makeshift cemetery even almost a year after Outbreak Day. Bodies piled on top of each other, fires would break out in the adjacent buildings. The control tower was completely dilapidated. And the grounds were full of clickers.

Tommy, Joel and you made it through the worst neighbourhoods. As you covered more miles, Tommy and Joel realised that this had not been the best idea. But you were already there, so the best option was to move forward. You all had to defend yourselves, and each other. Although the Miller brothers took out many attackers ―humans and infected alike―, you also had your good share of action. You didn’t like it, but you were good at shooting. Your clothes were stained with blood and sweat. You endured, and you survived. That was what mattered.

The whole city was in shambles, divided by two different groups: the government and the rebels. The government held the north side of the Chicago River, from River North Gallery District all the way to Old Town ― basically everything to the east of Interstate 90. The rebels, on the other hand, controlled the south ― all the movable bridges along the whole Wacker Drive, from New Eastside to Chinatown. Anything further south or north, and between Interstates 55 and 90, from Little Village to Naperville, was no man’s land.

You ended up on the rebels’ side randomly. Tommy was not very happy about it, blaming the communists for overpowering the government, but it wasn’t like you had a choice. If you tried to cross any bridge to go northwards, you would be shot at with no warning. From both sides.

It took a while to convince the Rioters ― that was how the rebels called themselves. Two weeks later, on the 20th of August, you were given a place to stay near the Art Institute of Chicago, which was also the operations base. You did try to integrate yourself in this society as you knew it was better to have more friends than foes. The Millers, however, kept to themselves ― Joel more than Tommy, as you had expected. No surprises there.

The flat you were in was in urgent need of repairs but was better than sleeping rough. You and Joel fixed as many things as you both could, while Tommy took cleaning very seriously. It wasn’t much, but it was the place you called home for the last month. The only downside was that it only had two bedrooms, so Joel and you sadly had to share the only double bed available, while Tommy had his own room.

You wouldn’t lie to yourself ― the last four weeks had been pure bliss in a sense. Waking up every day besides Joel had become a delightful habit. He had awakened you many a times either in the middle of the night or in the early morning to give him a hand. Literally. And you had done exactly the same thing when you had needed it. You were sure Tommy was sick and tired of you two, but you didn’t care.

You stretched out, still lying in bed. The morning light had not come through the curtains yet, but it soon would. You rubbed your eyes and then let your arms drop to your sides dramatically. You were not a morning person, but your sleeping schedule was all fucked up. You rolled to your other side in an attempt to get comfortable.

Joel was sleeping on his right side. You had noticed he usually did in the same position. When you had asked him why, he had explained his hearing in his right ear was messed up since his suicide attempt. You wished you could have been faster that day to prevent the gun from going off. Ah, the regrets you both had…

His back was towards you, him facing the door. Despite the repairs you all had done to the flat, it was still not the safest. Every night one of you would make sure all locks were engaged and would bar the front door. A few days ago, someone attempted to break in. Since then, all of you would sleep with a firearm nearby.

Today was Sunday ― 26th of September. Which meant it was Joel’s birthday, as well as the first anniversary of Outbreak Day. The anniversary of Sarah's death would be tomorrow too. You had tried to talk to Joel about today, but he didn’t seem to be interested in celebrating at all, which you completely understood. As much as you wanted to do something, you respected his decision. You had only planned for a couple of low-key things, which you hoped he wouldn’t mind.

He had fallen asleep only with his briefs on, the bedsheet draping around his legs. You couldn’t see, but you were damn sure he had his arms crossed at his chest, always on guard. Your eyes dwelled on his upper body, two perfect dimples on his lower back. His shoulders were broad and toned, his waist smaller. He was not the most muscular guy you had ever seen, but he was perfect the way he was. His calloused hands had shown you multiple times how good he was for you, despite what he thought of himself.

You couldn’t resist, your mouth dry. Your fingertips traced the curve of his neck, then his left shoulder down to his elbow. Your hand caressed his left hip and slipped down to his front, following his V line. Your fingers touched the elastic of his briefs ― and something else.

You gulped down the knot in your throat, your heart beating harder in your chest, when your fingertips brushed over the damp tip of his cock. Joel’s morning wood was so prominent, his glans had slipped out of his underwear and was showing. You wetted your lips as you stroked him carefully. A deep, almost guttural growl flowed from Joel’s chest.

You got closer to him in bed, your nipples grazing the skin on his back even through your pyjamas. It probably wasn’t the best time ― you knew he was tired, but you wanted him so badly. Liquid fire was pooling in your furrow, knowing his erection was right there for you to play with.

Your internal battle didn’t last long.

You pulled down his briefs to free his warm dick. You didn’t need to look to know his shaft was resting against his happy trail, the head touching his belly button. With no hesitation, you wrapped your fingers around his cock, squeezing him delicately. Then you slid your hand down his meaty column, holding him firmly, in a very slow but strong pump.

He groaned, still asleep as far as you could tell, as you started pumping him ― more heat and excitement gathering in your pussy. You dunked your fingers in your panties, touching yourself. You were already wet, the mere thought of making him yours was enough. You kissed his left shoulder at the same time he uncrossed his arms ― his left hand over yours, feeling the rhythm you were imparting on him.

He was awake.

Joel didn’t remember what he was dreaming about, but he was sure it wasn’t this. When he looked down and saw your tiny hand trying to muffle his cock, he closed his eyes with a sigh. That felt damn good. He was knackered after last night’s patrolling shift, but this was exactly what he needed to decompress.

He turned around, his back flat against the uncomfortable mattress. His eyes were pinned on yours, your sweet hand upping the speed. You leaned towards him and invaded his mouth with your devilish tongue. Joel moaned in the middle of the kiss ― his brain completely switched off. He could not think straight when you were handling him like that.

Quickly letting go of his erection and mouth, you got rid of your pyjama shorts and your underwear. Then you doubled down your efforts with the handjob ― his throbbing cock was calling for you. You could see a few drops of precum sliding off his veiny shaft, which you swiftly gathered with your thumb to rub them against his leaking slit. You felt his dick pulsating hard for you ― your cunt palpitating at exactly the same time, anticipating. Your bodies were fully synchronised.

You then climbed on top of him, his balls welcoming the touch from your puffy lips. You rolled your hips against his, looking for that friction you so much loved, and took a deep breath before taking off the top of your pyjamas, throwing it to one side. You bended down, your mouth looking for his, so thirsty.

“Good morning, handsome”, you whispered as a greeting.

“Mhmmm”, was the only thing he managed to hum, sleepy.

You smiled and broke off the contact, straightening your back. His rough hands slid from your knees, across your thighs, to your butt. He clasped your ass cheeks with assertiveness. With no more words than those, you took his steely cock in your hand and lifted your hips. You glided his glans over your damp fold a few times, your cunt beseeching to be stuffed.

You guided his tip to kiss your entrance and descended on his dick slowly, very slowly, the palms of your hands flat against his lower abdomen to steady yourself. You closed your eyes, head tilted backwards, and whined loudly. Each inch was a blessing. Once his cock was entirely inside of you, you peeked back down at him and did a circular motion with your hips. His eyes were so intense you couldn’t look away while you started riding him.

Joel closed his eyes unwillingly when the muscles in his lower belly cramped. He didn’t want to miss a single second of this, so forced himself to open them again ― he loved seeing how the pleasure transformed your beautiful features. Your half-lidded eyes, your lips parted, a river of pearly sweat coming down in between your bosom. Your perfectly round breasts bouncing in front of him. He was a lucky bastard.

He liberated your ass, his hands drifting to your bust, holding your tits. While he kneaded that tender flesh and coddled your nipples, you covered his hands with yours. You were still jumping on top of him, albeit more erratically, as you felt an orgasm hit you with full force. You mewled as your needy pussy discharged the seed of your pleasure all over him, hugging his hard erection, strangling his cock, encouraging him to come with you.

Joel was so damn close to coming, his nuts contracted with equal parts of pain and lust. He could feel your gush soaking his dick. He was about to lose his goddamn mind ― he needed to stop. His hands abandoned your breasts to place them on your butt to help you lift it up, so you would release his cock before it was too late.

“No, it’s okay. Fill me up, please, sir”, you wailed, your palms against his chest, your hips grinding against his.

Joel glimpsed at you with doubt. It was like you could read his mind, because you knew what he was thinking. You smiled softly, your wet pussy palpitating around his cock. You forced your inner walls to contract against him as you leaned forward to kiss him.

“I’ve got the morning after pill. Please, please, Joel, come inside, I beg you. Trust me”, you wept, laying down on top of him.

He thought himself mad for believing you, but he did. Because he was mad for you, regardless of what he tried to convince himself of. He lifted your butt up off his lap with his hands ― with the help of his legs, the heels of his feet against the bedsheets, he thrusted into you like a madman while you remained still on top of him. Drilling your weeping cunt, as hard and fast as he could. He just wanted to know how it felt just once; he wanted you to milk him dry.

Joel fucked you like there was no tomorrow, the room echoing with the squishy sounds and the impact of flesh on flesh. He was fucking you so hard that you came again at the same time he spilled his spent in you ― Joel groaned like you never heard him before. The slick warmth you felt inside made you smile, your face buried in the curve of his neck, your nipples brushing his. With his pulsing dick still inside of you, you bit the skin on his neck, leaving a mark behind.

“Happy birthday, sir”, you whispered in his ear.

That was your gift to him. And to yourself, because you had wanted this from the very first time he impaled you in the forest. You had had to trade a few bits for the morning after pill, but it was worth every single one of them. You felt your cave so clogged with him and his cum, you thought you had descended to hell.

You both stilled, catching your breaths. His dick was still twitching, housed by your greedy, soaked cunt.

A minute later, he sat up on the bed, bit your mouth and lifted your butt up, his cock becoming free. He quickly laid you down in fetal position ― resting on your righthand side, back slightly curved, head bowed, your knees bent touching your breasts. He placed a hand on your left hip and tilted your pelvis a bit forward, so he could inspect your heart-shaped ass and your puffy, reddened pussy framed by your inner thighs.

Just in time to see his cum gushing out of your hole, dripping across your perineum and then going downwards, skidding through your butt cheek. One of his digits caught the semen before it hit the bedsheets, retraced its steps back and shoved the cum back inside of you with the push of his finger.

“You can’t waste my gift to you, baby, it’d be so fucking rude of you”, he purred in your ear, his voice coarse and warm at the same time.

He laid on his side behind you, moving his index in a circular motion, looking for your g-spot and finding it. He stroked it dextrously, sliding it in and out slowly. You closed your eyes, and fisted the bedsheet in your hand, trying to hold onto something. Your mouth shaped a perfect ‘O’ when he bottomed out, quickly adding a second finger. And a third. Then a fourth.

It didn’t take long for your pussy to adjust to such delightful intrusion ― your inner walls felt like clay, reshaping around him. Joel could feel you relax around his fingers and took the chance, introducing his thumb in your pussy too. Now his entire hand was buried in your fluttering cunt, down to his wrist. He remained still for a hot minute while your muscles loosened up to house him.

Then he slowly started to pump his fist inside of you, back and forth, building up a steady pace. Joel bit your shoulder and then kissed it ― his tongue tasting the saltiness of your sweat.

By that point you couldn’t stop moaning very loudly ― the whole building was probably listening to your whoring screams as Joel fisted you relentlessly with his whole hand. Each push propelling his cum further inside of you as if he wanted it to take. He was thrusting you so harsh, your entire body was rocking back and forth on the bed. He was fucking you senseless just with his hand ― and you were loving every single second of it.

Your sticky cunt couldn’t take it for much longer ― it was wet, pulsating, contracting, overstimulated, yearning… Your pussy literally was his, and only his. The orgasm had been building up for so long now that when you let it go, weeping at the top of your lungs, it hit you like a motherfucking truck. Your whole body went into shock while you squirted ― you were shaking due to the force of your own release. For fuck’s sake, you could barely breathe.

You whimpered again when he removed his hand and rubbed your wetness all over your delicate folds. Before you could form a coherent thought, he spanked you on your crotch so firmly it tingled ― you almost died and went to heaven right there and then, biting into the pillow underneath your head. He kept on slapping your quivering cunt until your sensitive clit twitched one last time with devastating pleasure, contracting your uterus so the last trickle of cum oozed out of you. He caught it with his thumb and brushed it gently against your asshole, caressing the tight ring, until you fully relaxed.

You sighed, unable to move. You even felt dizzy. Your limbs felt so limp you didn’t think you could sit up, so you just stayed there, melting against the bedsheets. You hadn’t realised your eyes had welled up until a few tears ran down your cheeks. Tears of complete, utter joy ― there was no other way of describing it.

You were so damn grateful for this man, you swore to yourself you would never let him go. You had been with others, but none of your sexual partners had been so fucking attentive. Joel would always make sure you were completely satisfied, without fail. And that said a lot about him.

You rolled onto your back to look at him, wiping away the tears with a satisfied smile and dreamy eyes. He was still lying down on his side, his elbow against the bed, his head resting on the palm of his hand. He returned your smile ― such gesture transforming his rugged face. So gorgeous it tugged at your heart.

“Y’know, it was supposed to be all the way around today ― me fucking you until you begged”, you confessed, although it was not a complaint.

He grinned, his hand possessively cupping your mound. You parted your legs slightly so he could massage your sensitive furrow. It felt so calming after all that pussy-slapping he gifted you with.

“As redundant as it sounds, plans rarely go according to plan, sweetheart”.

Understatement of the fucking year, you thought.

You just laughed while his hand was still kneading your sticky flaps. Joel kissed your forehead before he took out his hand from in between your legs, your damp, intimate skin being swept by the cold air.

“The morning after pill?”, he asked a minute later.

“I got it from Kelsey, it’s in date. Don’t panic, it’s okay. I have three days to take it. Which made me think… I don’t need to do it straight away, right?”, you glanced up at him, a wide smile on your lips.

“Mhmm, I mean, it would be a waste otherwise, I guess”, he replied, tucking a stray hairlock behind your ear. “But I need a minute here, darlin’. You work miracles, but even I have limits. Wait up”, he mumbled grumpily as he palmed his left wrist, and then got out of bed while he tucked away his member back in his briefs.

Joel headed towards the en-suite bathroom. He came back out only a few seconds later ― you could see panic in his eyes. You sat back up on the mattress quickly.

“What is it, Joel?”, you asked with worry, kneeling on the bed.

“My wristwatch, I can’t find it. I am sure I left it by the sink before I came to bed last night. I can’t lose it. I can’t”, he was now frantically searching his bedside table, panic growing in his tone.

You bit down your lip, because you knew where it was. In the drawer of your nightstand. You had taken it in the middle of the night because your second present was getting it repaired for him today.

“I have it”, you whispered, shrugging with an apologetic smile.

“What? Why?”, he approached you, extending his hand towards you, his tone so serious. “Give it back now”, he almost growled at you.

His reaction took you completely off guard. Why was he so possessive over a broken watch? Trying to understand the sudden change in Joel, you opened the drawer and took it out.

“I just wanted to get it fixed for you, as a gift”, you didn’t understand what was happening.

“You have not fixed it, have you?! Because if you have―”, he snatched it off your hand, inspecting it.

You frowned ― his attitude towards you was completely off. What the hell was going on?

“Don’t you dare touch my fucking things, is that clear?”, he snapped.

You looked at him blankly, speechless. Then your own temperament started to shimmer under the surface.

“Wow, wow, wow ― Calm the fuck down, Joel. It’s just a broken, useless watch―”, you stopped yourself because of his perplexed look.

“Shut up. It’s not just any watch. You don’t fucking understand”, he yapped.

“I would try and understand if you just fucking explained it to me?!”, you shouted at him while you got dressed. “What is your fucking problem, Joel? What’s up with that watch? I don’t read minds!”.

“Forget it”, he grumbled, strapping the watch to his wrist before putting his trousers on and grabbing a T-shirt, heading towards the door.

“That’s it? You just up and leave?”, you repressed the urge of throwing a pillow to his head.

“I’ve got stuff to do”, he muttered.

A few seconds later, you heard him opening the front door. Then he slammed it shut.

It was around lunchtime now and you had not seen Joel since this catastrophic morning. While you had the impression that Joel’s reaction was due to something he would not speak about, he had no fucking right to treat you that way. You were just trying to do something nice for him, that was all.

You walked through the main hallway of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was rammed with people running around ― some armed, some not. You didn’t think that humanity would prevail in big groups in such circumstances, but it did.

The Rioters had established some sort of order. People had tasks to do, everyone working together to build up a community. Chores were allocated according to people’s skills. Joel had been put on patrolling shifts, Tommy was helping with carpentry and other building jobs, and you were in the hunting group. As much as you hated pulling the trigger, you were a very good shot. All thanks to your good old Texan father.

You were on your way to check with the group if there were any plans of going out today when you got interrupted.

“Hey”, someone tapped you on the shoulder.

“What’s up, Joyce?”, you looked at the older woman when you turned around.

Joyce was around fifty five years of age, maybe more, and was the kindest soul you had ever met. She had welcomed you to Chicago like a mother a daughter. Joyce showed you around, explained how the Rioters worked and guided you in the right direction. Because as good as everything looked, there was still darkness lurking around.

She was also the best cook ever. Like, no jokes, she could transform a tasteless rabbit in the most flavourful stew your tastebuds had ever been in contact with.

“I just finished cooking, do you want some stew?”, she asked with a warm smile.

Your stomach growled at the mere idea.

“Fuck yeah”, you replied ― your duties could wait, surely.

“Watch your language, kiddo”, Joyce reprimanded you.

“Sorry, sorry”, all that time you spent with Joel was showing.

You followed her to the canteen and patiently waited for Joyce to pour some stew in a bowl. You then went with her to a table where more people were sat down. You didn’t know any of them, so Joyce introduced you. You were damn sure you weren’t going to remember one single name by the time you walked out the door.

“So, you’ve never heard the story of Eugene Williams?”, one of the men asked rhetorically to a younger fellow across the table, who shook his head in reply. “He was a black kid in 1919, when racial segregation was still in place here in Chicago. The summer of 1919 was so hot the kid wandered off to the white side of Chicago beach without realising. A man threw stones at him until the kid drowned and died. That was what ignited the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 ― and why we, the resistance, go by the Rioters”.

You listened to every word while you ate your meal. After hearing that explanation, many things made sense. Although they named themselves the Rioters, there were no riots in the streets ― actually, people seemed happy here, given the circumstances.

“That’s right, Walter, younger people need to learn about the past, so those mistakes are never repeated again”, said Joyce.

The conversation then moved on to present times, the people talking about the continuous fight against the so-called government.

Joel got the afternoon patrolling shift that day, which he thought was a killer, considering he did the night shift last night. But it was good in a sense ― it would keep his mind occupied. You had angered him so much this morning, it had set his mood for the rest of the day. The thought of you erasing that memory had maddened him so bad, he had to walk out before he said something he would later regret.

That watch was the only anchor chaining him to what little remained of his humanity. A gentle reminder of what could have been but wasn’t. Every day he wondered how Sarah would be doing in this new world. And most days, he was just somewhat grateful she wasn’t here to see what had become of civilisation. The unspeakable horrors she would have witnessed and suffered but didn’t ― it was very little consolation to a father, but it was better than nothing.

He absentmindedly touched the watch on his wrist, ensuring it was properly fastened.

Joel was stationed with other people in front of Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Bridge. In those long, never-ending hours, there was no activity on the other side of the bridge, but they had to remain vigilant nonetheless. By the time the next group showed up, it was already half eight in the evening.

Joel headed towards the headquarters to sign off and go home. He was already on edge, thinking about what he would say to you to appease you. Because he was damn sure you would be waiting for him, ready to pick up the fight where you both left it. As Joel walked past the canteen, he heard a familiar voice.

Tommy was on his feet, yelling at a man, his accusatory index pointing to the guy. Joel rolled the eyes to the back of his head ― he was sure his brother was so drunk he would probably not remember any of this the next day. Joel shook his head with disappointment ― some things would never change, not even when the world had gone to shit.

He planned to ignore the situation and get back home to you, when a fight started. Joel groaned in despair, debating what to do. But a man chose for him ― he saw how a bloke approached Tommy from behind, knife on hand, and he knew he had to do something. Joel quickly closed the distance in stride and grabbed the man from the neck of his shirt, pulling him backwards until the dude stumbled with his own feet.

Madness broke out, the whole canteen becoming a battling ground. People were fighting each other over absolutely nothing, throwing punches in the air.

“Tommy!”, he shouted angrily, while the younger Miller turned around and simply smiled.

That fucking pissed him off big time.

“Are you fucking out of your mind? How much have you been drinking?!”, Joel wanted to punch his brother so bad, he really had to control himself.

“Not enough”, he babbled.

As Joel approached his brother, ready to fight him if necessary, the man he had pushed away from Tommy tapped his shoulder. When Joel turned around, the dude punched him in the face and then stabbed him in the lower stomach.

Joel froze for a second, his back slightly curved, his brain coming to terms with what just had happened. He looked down while his hand gripped the handle of the knife. He knew not to remove it because it was the blade what prevented him from bleeding out. Then Joel glanced back up at the same guy and, without thinking, he removed the knife from his flesh and sticked it on the man’s shoulder with a growl.

Joel’s wound started to bleed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. Not that he noticed anyway, because hell literally broke loose.

It wasn’t late late, only ten in the evening, but none of the brothers was around when you returned home, which was weird. You could understand if Joel was avoiding you, but Tommy? You frowned as you called for them, shutting the main door behind you. Nothing, no reply at all.

Before you could walk to the living room to see if there was a note or something, someone knocked on the door.

You looked through the peephole. Joyce was standing outside, worry wrinkling her aged face. You opened the door.

“What’s the matter, Joyce?”

“It’s Joel, he’s in the infirmary”, she whispered while placing a soft hand on your forearm.

You just stared at her, bewildered.

“Huh? The where?”, you repeated, while her words started to sink in, your stomach contracting with fear.

“Come with me, kiddo”, Joyce took your hand, guiding you through the apartment building.

The next time you blinked, you were in an outbuilding outside the headquarters. Joyce palmed your hand with hers, in a calming gesture, while she took you to the far end of the shelter. The old lady planted you in front of Joel’s bed, and let go of you with a “take care”.

You stood there for a long minute, still trying to grasp what the hell had happened. He was asleep, his head slightly tilted away from you ― or so you hoped he was. Joel had no shirt on, a bloody bandage covering the right side of his abdomen. You got closer, your heart pounding in your throat.

“He’s fine, it’s just a scratch”, you looked up, befuddled.

Tommy was sitting in a plastic chair on the other side of the bed. He was crouching forwards, his elbow against his knee, head pressing against the palm of his hand. Tommy then smiled, which completely perplexed you.

You were about to reply, but suddenly Joel did instead.

“Fuck off, Tommy. Get your ass somewhere else”, he gritted his teeth.

You hadn’t noticed it yet, but you had been holding your breath, because suddenly you felt a stone being lifted off your chest. You glanced at the younger Miller, who had gotten up with a smile. When he walked past you to go outside, you smelled it. The stench of alcohol made you wrinkle your nose unconsciously.

Joel wrapped his fingers around your wrist to get your attention, so you turned around to look at him, so confused you couldn’t even form a sentence. Joel had already adjusted the pillow on his back so he could be somewhat sat up.

“It’s alright, no need to cry”, he said raising one of his hands to sweep away your tears.

You had not realised you were crying. Giving it a second thought, you probably had been since you left home. You pursed your lips and nodded, quietening your sobs.

“What…?”, you muttered, resting your cheek against his palm before placing a kiss on it.

“Tommy got into a fight in the canteen. He’s so drunk he probably won’t remember a thing tomorrow. A man tried to stab him, and I got in the way ― that’s all, sweetheart. No serious damage, just some stitches”, he tried to calm you.

You wished Tommy was still in the room, because you would have loved to slap the shit out of him for being so irresponsible. What the hell was he thinking? Joel was hurt because of him, and he had just left smiling as if it wasn’t so serious.

“Just leave him be, it’s worthless trying to speak to him in such a state”, something in Joel’s voice told you this wasn’t the first time he had been in this situation.

“Are you sure you’re fine? Joel, please, don’t lie to me―”, you mustered, trying to keep your tears in check, as you caressed his cheek.

He heavily sighed as he scooted over to one end of the tiny bed, leaving enough space for you to join him. You got on the gurney quickly, nestling against him, your arm across his chest in a half embrace. His body heat calmed your nerves a bit, although your hands were still shaking.

“I’m fine, I’m not lying. They won’t let me leave yet though, the nurse said I need to stay here for a couple of hours, until she’s certain the bleeding has stopped”, he explained, his fingertips tracing the shape of your right shoulder.

“I’m not going anywhere”, you said with a small voice, your left cheek against his chest.

Joel didn’t fight you on that, so you stayed by his side. His left hand was resting just below your face, his broken watch strapped around his wrist. You bowed your head a bit and kissed his knuckles.

“I’m sorry about this morning, I thought fixing your watch was a nice thing to do, considering it’s been broken since I met you”, you tried to explain yourself, but Joel hushed you by cupping your chin so your eyes would meet his.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. I know you meant well. It’s just…”, you heard him gulp down, as if the next words were extremely painful to say out loud. “Sarah fixed this watch for me on my last birthday. It’s been stuck at 2.40 AM since… since we both got shot. One of the bullets broke it”, he recounted in a husked voice, his brown eyes focused on the timeless sphere.

Then it hit you. That was Sarah’s time of death. And, unknowingly, you almost ruined the last memento Joel possessed of his daughter. His most precious treasure. You felt sick to your stomach at the mere idea of being responsible for such a thing. Had you known, you would have never even considered doing what you had planned.

“Gosh, Joel, I’m sorry. I swear to you I didn’t know”, you breathed out desperately.

“I know, baby. I should have told you that instead of getting angry and for that I apologise, but I just couldn’t…”, he clenched his jaw, and you tried to soften his expression with the touch of your fingers.

“Don’t apologise, please”, you kissed his bearded jaw and remained in comfortable silence for the next two hours, until Joel was finally discharged.

The next day you both stayed home. Tommy had tried to apologise when he came back to his senses, but Joel was having none of it. The younger Miller eventually understood that his brother just needed space until he decided to forgive him and gave up in his efforts. You were alone with Joel all day, making sure he was okay and helping him clean the wound. Those stitches were going to leave a nasty scar on him, but it was better than the alternative. It was healing well, no signs of infection, for which you were so pleased ― probably more than him. You almost had to tie him to the bed so he would stop fidgeting around ― Joel was going to get the wound open again if he didn’t remain still for a bit.

You knew Joel was just trying to keep his brain busy because this day marked a year since Sarah was wrongly snatched from his life. That was why he was so taciturn and quiet today, and you let him be for the most part.

When he sat down on the couch in the afternoon, you just nestled against his body, in silence, his arm affectionately enveloping you.

Nighttime came around soon enough, and you both got into bed. Joel spooned you as soon as he laid down behind you, his right arm hugging you, his chest against your back. You soon fell asleep in his warm embrace, feeling protected and content.

Joel woke up a few hours later, one of his recurrent nightmares haunting him. He grumbled in displeasure and got out of bed to change the dressing over the wound. He did so efficiently and returned to bed, slipping under the bedsheets quietly.

Another hour went by, and he was still awake, his eyes on the ceiling.

He rolled onto his left side and saw you sleeping peacefully, in the exact same position you fell asleep. You had not moved one inch. Joel smiled softly as he got closer to you, sliding his arm around your waist and dragging you over to him, looking for your soothing warmth.

Unconsciously, you wiggled your hips to bury your butt in his bulge, and Joel contained a pitiful moan. Your perfectly round ass was innocently embedded in his groin. Now he was sure as hell he was not going to be able to fall back asleep. Irremediably, he pressed his manhood against your buttocks again, looking for that friction.

Joel felt his cock tense up, an erection taking hold. He freed his manhood, slowly pumping himself ― his leaky tip brushing your asscheek until a wet patch adorned your panties. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t resist. You were all curled up, drooling on the pillow, faintly snoring, your knees slightly bent. He cut the distance between you and shoved his dick in your thigh gap, his shaft rubbing against your pussy covered by your underwear.

Sweat gathered on his brow as he rocked his pelvis back and forth, your thighs sweetly compressing his cock ― the tip feeling cold when it overhung on the other side. Joel kissed your shoulder, his hand gently placed on your hip to steady himself.

“C’mon, baby, wake up”, he husked near your ear, gently nibbling your earlobe.

You hummed, half awake. You felt your body being rocked, your eyes fluttering open and looking downwards. Through half-lidded eyes, you saw Joel’s glans sticking out through your thigh nook, then disappearing from sight to reappear again. You smiled pleasantly, shutting your eyes, as you felt your needy cunt melt for him. You pursed your lips with delight.

“Can I have my birthday present again, sweetheart?”, he whispered in a constrained tone.

You nodded, scatterbrained.

You were drenching your underwear so bad, there was a visible damp, darken spot right in the middle. Joel pulled back from in between your legs and pushed the bridge of your panties to one side. He lodged his cock in between your puffy lips, sliding it through your entire slit a couple of times to douse himself with your fluids.

“You’re soaking wet, baby”, he muttered as you let out a soft moan when Joel pressed his tip against your dripping hole, your flesh parting as the Red Sea.

Then Joel slowly pushed his hard cock in inch by inch down to his balls. His right arm hugged you, poising you in place and sneaking his hand under your pyjama top to hold one of your full breasts. He stilled for a second, feeling your cunt sheathing him like a warm glove. He thrusted once, twice, thrice. You lost count after that, Joel plunging into you from behind, gaining erratic speed. You grasped the bedsheet in your fist, your spit pooling on the pillowcase.

You placed a hand on your mound and a few seconds later, you slipped it under your panties. With the palm against your clit to cause some grinding, you could feel Joel coming in and out of you in between your index and middle fingers. Your gushing cunt started palpitating around his slick cock, your inner walls squeezing him hard as you came, mewling like a kitten in heat.

Joel quickly followed you, his cum filling you up, breathing roughly behind you. You tilted your head towards your right to look at him over your shoulder. He kissed you, first gently, then more demanding, while his dick was still throbbing with the last wave of his release. Joel pinched your nipple before freeing your mouth.

“There you go, sweetheart, so you don’t forget who you and your tight pussy belong to”, he groaned as he pulled out of you.

“Thank you, sir”, you said gratefully.

Joel put your underwear back in place and pressed the palm of his hand against your wet panties, his cum trickling out with yours and swamping the piece of clothing even more, saturating it, almost as if you had pissed yourself.

“Go back to sleep, darlin’”, he kissed the nape of your neck, his hand still lodged in your thigh gap, hard pressed against your satisfied, clothed pussy. You loved how possessive he was of you, literally claiming your cunt for himself at every chance he got.

With a pleased sigh, you tucked your hands under your head and fell back asleep within seconds.

The earth was round again.

[ten-kei]

[Black butler] ComicMarket EVENT book, sample

"Circle name: エスペランサ" "Sunday East District "リ" Block-16a (East 4 Hall) I look forward to your kind cooperation!

PS. There may be other genres of goods such as ENNEAD

Twitter: ▶twitter/tenkei121 *Note Korean ♥ I can speak Japanese ^^ ('FUB' free')

[highrook]

The Two Worlds of Highrook

(part 1 ) Blacksands

There are actually two worlds that collide to create the highrook experience. The first is the town of Blacksands and its surroundings (such as the Highrook estate where the game is based). The second is the shadow cosmic realm of Nibiru. When these two planes are brought into contact, via magics and ritual, the intersection results in horrifying consequences.

Blacksands is a decaying sea-port, settled on the broken coast of the inmost ocean. Its ash colored beaches fold in and out of dank coves and dreary estuaries.  The town itself consists of a handful of shambolic districts, tumbling from the storm battered heights of Highrook down to the rotting docks of Aldwerth. 

Hemmed in by the oily sea to the east and treacherous cliffs to the west, the streets and its inhabitants exhibit a sense of dreamlike stoicism. Trade is sparse but well weathered ships still dock at the moldering port, bringing supplies - both mundane and exotic - into the town. Its isolation has made it a haven for those who do not wish to be found; thieves and heretics alike. And because of this gathering of minds and materials, the shadowed streets of Blacksands harbor wonders both revelatory and horrifying.

Blacksands is an amalgam of the many gothic locations that have inspired me over time. From the narrow streets of Bram Stokers Whitby, through the rotting shanties of Innsmouth and the candle-lit cities of games like Thief and Dishonored. Even though our game takes place on the cliffs overlooking the town, the characters, their background and their personal goals all align with their positions in the town itself. 

Blacksands also diverges from a purely accurate historical representation of similar locations, specifically with the addition of more steampunk and magical elements. This is most obvious with the introduction of the mecanists, a guild of expert engineers and machine workers. Ritualistic practices, backstreet medicine, smuggling and underhand diplomatic espionage are all part of the bustling but covert city scene. Even though Highrook - the game - takes place outside Blacksands  proper there are continual references to the geography, politics and history of the city. 

Influences

Cities have always been a favorite fantasy location for me.  They are usually more grounded in reality than the open world, which suits my tastes more. You don’t tend to get dragons or giants hanging out in cities, they are mostly the domain of human(oid)s. This doesn't mean that fantasy cities are relegated to being historical stage sets  though. Some of my favorite fictional cities; Viriconium, New Crobuzon, Sanctuary, Leá Monde, Gormenghast are far from realistic settings.

The city of Viriconium is the location for several novels and short stories by M. John Harrison. Like much of Harrison's work it merges styles,settings and tone in a way that feels deliberately inconsistent and dreamlike. In one tale it is the site of quiet poetic recollections, in another it becomes a hub for almost sci-fi events. But throughout all the iterations it very definitely seems to have a life of its own, beyond the page.. China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, featured in Perdido Street Station and other novels, is similar in its hybrid mix of sources, but feels less dreamlike and more cinematic. Instead of the blurred edges of dreams Miéville’s city is  described in cinematic clarity, like film sets ready to frame the action of the story.

Thieves' World was an anthology series published throughout the 1980s, it took the city of Sanctuary as its central theme, but allowed various writers to interpret the city as they wished. As a result the sense of place evolved over time through a number of fairly unreliable narrators and different authors interpretations. It wavers from complex tales of diplomacy to page-turning action-adventure. But the city as a container really appealed to me when I first read the series.

Gormenghast illustration by ian miller

Finally the ruined worlds of Gormenghast and  Leá Monde have always been visual touchstones to me. Both places are abandoned crumbling citadels where the remnants of once powerful families still cling on, alongside phantoms and decay.

Leá Monde is the only city listed here that is from a game rather than a book, but that makes it no less inspiring. It's the setting for the  PS1 game Vagrant Story (2000) and like the crumbling towers of The Last Guardian or the derelict districts of the Thief and Dishonored games it offers an incomplete history of a cities past, full of ghosts and half told tales.

In all these examples, and in the case of my own Blacksands, there is an interesting contradiction between people and place. All these cities are clearly a product of their successive inhabitants, yet also seem to have their own identity that persists beyond their population.

Highrook sits at the top of the salt cliffs of Blacksands, overlooking the smog filled port and its ashen coast. But it also sits on top of a gateway to a very different world, the hidden citadel of Nibiru, which I will talk about in another post soon!

[eretzyisrael]

by Richard Goldberg

Anti-Semitism is spreading in K–12 school districts. Even in primary and secondary education, Jews are often viewed as privileged whites and oppressors, with Israel branded as an egregious example of “settler colonialism” and oppression of “indigenous people.” “Liberated ethnic studies” curricula, like the one mandated by California, have created a distinct variant of critical theory aimed at Jews for being Zionist colonial oppressors.

Teachers’ unions are the leading purveyors of this approach. Two years ago, the United Educators of San Francisco adopted a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel. The Chicago Teachers Union instigated pro-Hamas demonstrations in the Windy City after October 7. The union persuaded Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (a former CTU lobbyist) to condemn Israel in the city council, and it organized a student and faculty “walkout” to show solidarity with Hamas—a city-authorized event that left Jewish students and teachers feeling intimidated. In suburban Seattle, kids as young as seven were recently encouraged to condemn Israel and join in anti-Semitic chants. Oakland Unified School District faces a federal investigation after 30 Jewish families removed their kids from school due to rampant anti-Semitism. And at a high school in New York City, hundreds of students hunted down a female teacher they saw on social media holding a sign supporting Israel.

Marxist ideology is the primary culprit influencing this mind-set, but not the only one. Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country that supports Hamas, is funding anti-Semitic “scholarship” not only in American universities but also in K–12 schools. Qatar Foundation International gave $1 million to the New York City Department of Education between 2019 and 2022 for a program featuring a map of the Middle East that erases the Jewish state. The same story played out at a public charter school in Irving, Texas. What other districts in the country might be taking money directly or indirectly from a chief Hamas sponsor? Brown University’s Choices Program, used by more than 1 million high school students nationwide, exhibits a clear anti-Israel bias. According to Brown, the Qataris “purchased and distributed a selection of existing Choices curriculum units to 75 teachers whose districts didn’t have funding to buy them.”

Tools to fight back, however, are available. Governors and state legislatures can begin by blocking “ethnic studies” from the K–12 curriculum and by imposing new teacher-certification requirements. To curb foreign meddling, states should ban school funding or in-kind donations from entities connected with countries that harbor U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. School districts and state boards of education should use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism to root out conduct meeting its standard. Several groups sued the Santa Ana, California, school district in state court for failing to notify parents before approving ethnic studies courses that contain anti-Jewish bias and for harassing Jewish parents at school board meetings.

At the federal level, parents could file formal complaints with the Department of Education for discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Such complaints are increasingly common against colleges and universities, but any school that receives federal funding must comply with Title VI. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce should consider holding a hearing on anti-Semitism in K–12 schools, putting the national spotlight on anti-Jewish administrators and school board leaders.

Local, state, and federal officials have played meaningful roles in fighting back against critical race theory in the classroom. They need to fight equally hard to stop anti-Semitism masquerading as Middle East or ethnic studies.

[birdfriend-theband]

SOMEWHERE YOU DID, SOMEWHERE YOU WILL: Bird Friend's Our Gods at 10; or, Last Thoughts on the Albuquerque House Show Scene

Author’s note:

Okay - bear with me on this one. Ten years have passed since the events in this piece occurred. In those ten years I’d like to think I’ve picked up a few scraps of wisdom here and there, and while our culture has built an industry around depictions of untamed youth, I’m inclined to believe that those years aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. I was far from perfect as a young man, and this memoir is not designed to suggest any differently. It is, however, partly an attempt to express gratitude towards those folks who gave me the opportunity to live something like the rich life of an artist. If this work has found its way to you, I will say this: my inbox is always open.

G. Himsel

Funeral Hill, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Autumn 2024

I. 

Halfway through the last-ever show at the old Vassar house, someone called the cops.

Cheap Time was playing in the living room when the police banged on the door, and when the hostess took over the mic to warn the crowd, the whole place fell apart. The music shambled to a halt, and the living room - which was painted floor-to-ceiling in graffiti - became the scene of a mad scramble for the exits. Young punks spilled into the backyard, clambering over the cinderblock walls and into the alleyways, or sprinting drunkenly past the squad cars blocking the driveways. Underage kids tossed bottles and dime bags onto the neighbors’ side of the fence before disappearing into the darkness themselves. The band stood around, dumbfounded, as the room cleared, their audience disappeared, and a pair of tired-looking cops wandered into the house with their hands on their hips. The night was over, prematurely - and while the old house’s closing ceremonies were supposed to have some sort of significance, the chaos of the evening was befitting of the chaos of its era. The street was full of wasted kids, running from the cop lights. With three beers in my body, I ran, too - into the cool bronze night of the neighborhood, past the bungalows and pueblo revivals, holding my half-empty pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of my flannel shirt. It was the fall of 2013 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was nineteen years old, and it was the first house show I’d ever attended. 

II.

Albuquerque is about a day’s drive from anything; eight hours east of Las Vegas, seven hours out from Phoenix. Denver lies six miles to the north, and Mexico five hours south. The city rests on a massive alluvial plain and straddles the Rio Grande at its midpoint, where droughts and water-rights battles often reduce the river to a trickle. It’s bright: the sun shines four out of every five days, and at a mile above sea level, the sun can feel intimately close. Isolated by miles of Southwestern desert, it’s nonetheless a city of intersections - intersections of North American cultures, of rivers and railroads, and of highways. I-40 and I-25 collide here at the “Big I,” an engineering feat that doubles as a towering monument to the car culture of the American West. Nearly thirty percent of residents speak Spanish, and another significant portion speaks Navajo or Vietnamese. In the last hundred and fifty years, it’s grown from a railroad depot to nearly two-hundred miles of low-density urban sprawl - and many parts retain an odd 1960s or ‘70s feel. Outside of the city, they make movies and television, and test weapons for the military. Passenger trains still clatter through downtown, and bands play under gazebos in the historic district. In Barelas, Chicano pride shines. In Rio Rancho, suburban tract homes bump up against the stark, high desert. But while the city glows with a sort of mid-century American-ness, it more often feels far, far away from the mainstream culture and customs of the rest of the U.S. It’s a weird place, especially if you - like me - grew up amidst the urban renewal and suburban gloom of post-industrial New England. Out in New Mexico, you sort of get the feeling that you’ve traveled off the map.

I lived in Albuquerque from 2012 to 2016. I wanted to make art and play my guitar, and I got my wish; I spent most of those years submerged in the city’s weird subculture of underground house shows. Our neighborhood of University Heights - more generally known as the Student Ghetto, due to its huge population of off-campus UNM students - was the kind of starving-artist paradise peculiar to college towns. The neighborhood was made up of cheap, low-density rental housing. Landlords and neighbors were generally tolerant of the 18-25 crowd and whatever noise and chaos it generated. Homes were usually single-unit, with spacious yards and a sense of relative privacy. Rents were in the high hundreds, and we often had more space than we needed. The infrastructure supported public transit and cyclists and the whole area was anchored by a commercial strip with cheap food and plenty of intellectual resources.

But while while the Student Ghetto was typical of any neighborhood near a big college campus, the fact that the college campus happened to be located right in the middle of a major city - a city that, in turn, was an isolated stop on the way to the rest of the world - meant that a disproportionate amount of creative energy was funneled directly into the laps of the people living there. In 2014-15 a five-block stretch of Gold Avenue alone boasted five house venues, each with distinct programming, that sometimes threw shows on the same nights. The most important of them, Gold House, changed hands countless times but survived for over a decade as a magnet for nationally-recognized punk and indie acts. I saw Kid Congo play at Gold House, in the living room; I saw Kimya Dawson play on the porch. The loudest show I’ve ever seen in my life was at Gold House: the Cosmonauts blew my eardrums there, on a Sunday night in the summer of 2014.

A culture existed around these places. Different houses were home to different sub-families of the city’s greater punk community, and often had one or two of their own house bands in addition to a few touring favorites. My immediate neighbors hosted murky, reverb-washed psych rock bands like L.A. Witch, while the legendary Bungalow was something like a fraternal organization for strange, outer-limits outsider punk. 

Beyond that, different houses had different philosophies about live music, different levels of permissiveness surrounding drugs and drinking, and varying levels of preparedness for interactions with the police. At some venues, “rules” were looked upon suspiciously. At one Fourth of July show in 2015, the entertainment options were split between outdoor American flag-burning and a basement set by a band that played completely naked. But there were more often attempts to establish some order. At the Bungalow, there was generally a volunteer at the door who checked IDs and marked hands accordingly; this protected the house and its inhabitants when the cops were called, as they were during the second Mountain Blood Fest when one hardcore punk vocalist ended up on the roof. 

My Albuquerque experience eventually reached its zenith at the Bungalow, where Bird Friend recorded Cibola and I probably attended more shows than anywhere else, but it was Wagon Wheel - a miniscule pueblo house on Stanford Drive - where I first found my footing as a writer and musician. 

III. 

Wagon Wheel’s house band was Arroyo Deathmatch, an insane hardcore/folk-punk band that played a weird assemblage of uncommon and handmade instruments and acted as the essential masthead for the local Goathead Record Collective. Besides being the band that I most closely identify with this space, they were the first group I encountered in the Southwest who really completely embodied a DIY ethic. A lot of people coming into music feel as if they need to gather a certain amount of abstract necessities in order to reach a performance level - things like promotional materials, or a clear idea of genre, style, influence, etc. These guys didn’t even need proper instruments. They played a kind of shambling punk on a frankenstein lineup of homemade drums, bass guitars, flutes and ukuleles that was nonetheless really literary and challenging and rousingly political. They hand-printed their own CD jackets, did all their own distribution, and created their own music network before Spotify was a thing and when social media as we now know it was in its infancy. 

The first time I caught them was at Wagon Wheel, on their own turf - in the sweaty, postage-stamp sized living room that felt like it was ready to burst with bodies dancing, jumping, singing along. I have no idea how long they had been a band before I encountered them, but the scene that I wandered into felt completely fully-formed by the time I arrived. Folks knew the words to their songs, knew the breaks, wore the fashion and participated fully in the music. The audience was committed to this local band in a way that I had never considered, let alone encountered, in the fragile, decentralized, conservative and suburban music community back home in New England.

Seeing Arroyo Deathmatch for the first time completely reordered my idea of what was possible as a performer - instead of meeting the expectations of an entrenched music scene, as most fledgling musicians attempt to do, they created their own scene, with its own internal logic and set of rules. Obviously this wasn’t the first time this had ever happened in punk history, but to see it happening on such a grassroots level - and with an audience that was so ready to be a part of their thing - was incalculably influential on my soft, teenage brain. I sent them an email, asking how to be a part of that thing, and they set me up with my first show in town. It was the first Bird Friend show - a last-minute addition to the opening ceremonies of the first-ever Mountain Blood Fest. I banged my way through six or seven solo songs, completely unamplified, met our lifelong friend and collaborator Nikki Barva, and was at a Goathead Collective meeting two weeks later.

IV.

Goathead Record Collective was an non-hierarchical affiliation of artists and musicians that organized gear shares, music promotion, and operated a sort of mobile recording studio whose equipment was free to use amongst collective members. They organized a weekly meeting - on Wednesday nights - where participants drew up show schedules and local promo stuff and organized workshops on everything from tour booking and zine-making to discussions about scene politics and self-policing. The location rotated, sometimes taking place at the Bungalow, sometimes at my own place, Coffee House, and most often at Wagon Wheel. A ton of stuff came out of the GRC: an organized network of merch sales, three iterations of Mountain Blood Fest, countless shows at venues ranging from living rooms to warehouses, clubs, and karate studios. That’s not to mention the recorded output: GRC was involved in early releases by bands like Days ‘N’ Daze, and a distinguished list of Albuquerque artists like the Leaky Faces, Manuka Piglet, the Vassar Bastards, and Arroyo Deathmatch themselves. Using the DIY studio setup and a refurbished 10-CD duplicator from the flea market, the collective did hand-made CD releases and promoted them in local newspapers. 

If it sounds utopic, it was - and the collective disbanded after a few years. But when I stumbled into it, it was in its halcyon days. At Wagon Wheel and the other houses it felt as though there was an endless parade of bands who, although now fading into history, left a permanent impression on us. Far from the cultural centers of the country, and far even from the curated, “professional” music community of Albuquerque, the weirdest bands in the world summoned magic, effortlessly, night after night. These houses glowed with creative energy, and the more music they contained, the more their myths assumed legendary proportions.

V. 

I hoped that some of that magic would rub off when Alexster, of Arroyo Deathmatch, invited Bird Friend to record an album at Wagon Wheel. Our band was - as it’s always been - a pretty loose unit. I had one record out already, a self-titled release that I’d cobbled together with my high school band. It was a gloomy, navel-gazing collection of bummers and breakup songs that nevertheless featured “Parting Gifts,” a song that’d soon become a singalong staple of our years in Albuquerque. I’d been playing solo shows in the city for about six months, and had recruited Cody and Peach of the Leaky Faces to play with me when they were available. My then-roomate (now wife) Carson would sit in on harmony vocals every now and then. 

I booked a weekend at Wagon Wheel to bang out some songs I’d been working on; I’d recently read Hesiod’s Theogony & Works and Days and some of Edith Hamilton’s classic Mythology and become really interested in the weird, flawed gods and heroes of ancient Greece. I was a young dude, very far from home and trying to figure things out pretty much completely on my own; I was very aware that I was going through a transitional period, twenty years old and particularly susceptible to self-mythologizing. I began to think of myself as entering a new epoch of my life, and through my involvement in the Collective and the music community I felt as if I were making a full break from the expectations and orthodoxies of my “old life” in New England. It became very important to me to write down what I was seeing unfold all around me.

Reading the ancient stories - which really feel so contemporary at times - pushed me to mythologize what I was living through. The writers, artists, strangers and cities of the Southwest lived on one hand, with the folks I left back in New England on the other. I started to try and fit them into the contours of very, very old stories. I may have been trying to make some sense of the weird new world I found myself in. But I was more certainly writing to my older self; caught in that present utopia, I had the bright idea to create a sort of Myth of Ages that would elevate that fleeting moment to the status of folklore. After all, the excitement of the music community back then felt so much bigger than the sum of its parts. If this radical moment of mass self-actualization was, in its essence, just a bunch of people hanging out in living rooms, it felt huge, important, essential. That meant the only way to write about it was mythologically. 

Once again, it’s not like this idea was itself a radical development. Storytelling and tall tales are as old as anything in the folk tradition. But if Bird Friend’s love for the folk tradition has often pitted us against the prevailing currents of popular music, it was - in this instant - the most appropriate vessel.

We only had two days to record the material that would become Our Gods. Some elements of my music life never change, and the matter of scheduling is one of them. Alexster had a day job, a venue to run, and other groups to record; Cody had his other band, Carson was still in school, and I worked nights at the 66 Diner. Peach, who at that point had already played shows with us, may have been out of town or otherwise occupied, and didn’t get to join us at all. As it were, we had two days back-to-back in mid-October to crank out whatever songs we could. We planned a double release with the Leaky Faces in December, so the feeling was that whatever we committed to tape that weekend would pretty much be the album. The “the studio” was set up in the empty living room, and was limited to two microphones and a dining room chair. Alexster’s bedroom served as the control booth.

VI.

A few days before the release, the Collective got together in the basement of the Bungalow, and we had a CD-making party for Our Gods and the Leaky Faces’ Freak Tree. We burned blank discs ten at a time on the duplicator, and cut album covers that we’d printed for free with someone’s UNM library card. We did some beers and carefully glued the covers onto plain black CD jackets, each one stamped with the Goathead Records logo. It was December, and it was cold; in photos from that night, everyone’s wearing jackets and sweaters indoors. I wonder now if the heat was on, or if it was ever on in that house. 

We did the show at Wagon Wheel a few nights later - something like eight bands played, and our resident videographer Isaac “Boose” Vallejos got the whole evening on film. That night was Wagon Wheel as I remember it: packed, sweaty, and electric with creative energy. In those days, getting a show at all felt like a blessing - every single performance felt vital, essential, and to attach a whole album to it felt triumphant. I have the videos of the Bird Friend set, and we’re loose, sloppy, full of humor, and backed against the wall by a big crowd of happy people.

The Goathead thing began to splinter apart a few months after Our Gods. Social friction amidst the growing proportions of the scene, not to mention the exhausting undertaking of Mountain Blood Fest II, contributed to a slow drift towards other projects. The atmosphere of idealism was hard to sustain as more people joined the fold, and the collective itself felt more beholden to a sense of expectation and accountability that quickly overwhelmed it.

It was tough to let it all go. It’s not like the shows and the bands simply vanished, but a growing sense of dislocation and disunity began to take over. The essential loss of a mutual support network returned the music scene back to a landscape of unfocused cliques. At this point, I was 21 years old, totally untethered and spinning my wheels. I started drinking a lot, and entered a dark stretch, turning out songs that were long, desperate, and heavy with a sense of doom. I fell down for a while. Eventually I left Albuquerque, in order to hit the reset button before I went too far down an ugly path.

A friend of mine once said that writing is a selfish act. Before he passed away, I often thought about asking him what he meant - and now that I don’t have the chance, I meditate on it often. And writing down these memories so long after the fact, I find myself meditating on it all over again. Maybe it’s selfish to attach too much significance to this brief period of my life. Or maybe it’s selfish to view something that touched so many people through the narrow window of my own, meager experience. After all, the world of New Mexican music was so much bigger than the record collective. Or perhaps it’s selfish to talk about those days like they belonged to some perfect, unspoiled era; for they most certainly did not. All of this history took place against the confused, chaotic backdrop of about a thousand peoples’ early twenties - not generally known as a peaceful or self-assured time in life. Not everyone got out in one piece, or even alive.

Yet I’ve been playing my guitar in front of people for a long time now, and Bird Friend has been around in some form for over a decade. And though I’ve started to suspect that we’re not going to be famous (not that that’s the point), in navigating a whole range of music scenes I’ve started to double back to the questions leftover from the days of Goathead. How do we celebrate each other, and our art? How do we inhabit the role of audience, critic, and creator all with the same grace? And now, in a world whose modernity is more disenfranchising than ever, how do we do it all with dignity?

As musicians, we’re constantly being assaulted by statistics: our plays, our listeners, and their level of engagement is constantly being tracked in extreme, granular detail. Promoters use these numbers to gauge your marketability, an important task in a world where the profitability of a music venue is considered life-or-death. Less people are going to shows, less people are consuming physical media, and the network of music discovery is essentially in the hands of algorithms and AI. The context of a piece of music is often lost when a “user” only spends a few seconds with it on a reel or social media post. The act of creation is its own reward, yet I sometimes find myself asking the most frightening question: what’s the fucking point?

What are we supposed to do as artists? Why do we make music? Who’s it for? In a perfect world, it’s one pathway to building a shared philosophy. That’s what the Goathead era was for me: a forum in which a little music scene was foundational to ideas about culture, community, and mutual support. But what’s the benefit of creating a shared philosophy, if it only exists in a digital space? The town I live in now is supposedly full of artists - and I don’t see a united front against the behemoth of corporate development that’s shuttered a frightening number of venues these last few years. Art as content, art as corporate culture, art supposedly made “accessible” by an internet machine designed primarily to make money are all more dominant than ever - and I sometimes wonder if the concept of an art community actually stands a chance. When I worry, I think of the extremely unlikely success we had in Albuquerque. If it warms me just a little, I also remember that it was all a very long time ago.

Our Gods is not the greatest album ever made. It’s not even the best album Bird Friend ever made. But for myself, and my own personal history (here comes the selfish act again), it represents a little glory that we got to participate in, if only for a while. I wonder if I’ll ever experience that intensity again, but if your time is still yet to come, hear this: somewhere you did, somewhere you will - somewhere you are all together still.

VII. Belated Liner Notes

Listen to “OUR GODS” on Spotify or Bandcamp.

Overture (Muses)

The idea with “Overture” was to start the record with a reference to Greek poetry and to Hesiod’s work by including a rip-off of the kind of invocation that would commonly begin a piece of ancient literature. This little prayer was meant, in the old days, to set the tone and context of a piece and to assure the audience that a storyteller knew what they were talking about.  Performed a cappella in one take, I don’t think this song was ever performed again. I still like the concept, and still think it’s clever to flip this old convention on its head by admitting in the first line of the album that the writer of these songs is an unreliable narrator.

Where Are You?

I spent a lot of my younger years wandering around the woods of New England. This is the oldest part of the country, and if a historical site isn’t preserved, it’s quickly swallowed up by nature. The area I grew up in was clear-cut in the 19th century for sheep grazing, and by the early 1900s was completely forested again. There are really no such thing as historical ruins out here, and if you do find something abandoned out in the forest, it’s probably only a few decades old.  I saw some coincidence in the idea that, in both the Mediterranean and the Southwest, researchers are constantly finding throwaway evidence of really old civilizations - potsherds, petroglyphs, architectural stuff that’s all just been sitting out in the desert for hundreds or thousands of years that gives you an idea of the everyday lives of people who lived and died generations ago. You can actually just wander out into the desert and see this stuff. It doesn’t get washed away by the rain or the ocean or torn up by a tree root after fifty years. That’s the idea behind “Where Are You?,” a song that supposes what will be left of our lives a thousand years from now. When you’re young, you feel things so, so intensely - how much of that intensity lives in the objects we leave behind? What kind of half-life does it have?

Oh, Pilgrim!

This is a pretty straightforward song, message-wise. It was most likely written before I began to fixate on the “concept” of this album, and it’s more of a clear-cut celebration of my independence and my Big Desert Adventure than anything else. It’s very important in our catalog, however, as the first-ever recorded Carson performance. Her natural gift for harmony is obvious here, and I remember Alexster being somewhat stunned that she pulled her part off in one take.  Recording vocals can be the most nerve-wracking element of the studio experience, and her fearlessness in performance and ability to write complex vocal harmonies is as stunning now as it was then. 

The Wheel

I haven’t talked much about the dominance of folk punk in the Albuquerque scene of those days. It had already been around for years by that time, and the blank-canvas nature of the genre was well-suited to the limited resources of our little scene. For a while, it felt like folk punk was all there was in the neighborhood, since it could be played convincingly on cheap instruments, by folks with limited chops, and didn’t require anything as burdensome as an amplifier. The minor-key inertia of “The Wheel” owes something to the prevailing folk punk conventions of the day, and seems to be particularly indebted to The Leaky Faces’ “Steam,” even if it doesn’t match the energy of that band. 

The Road (Forever Returns to the Heart)

“The Road” flirts with bluegrass, a style whose strict conventions and average level of musicianship are completely foreign to a band as ramshackle and inconsistent as Bird Friend. This was one of the songs that was supposed to include percussion, which is blasphemous in the bluegrass world, and there are live recordings out there that include Peach on the drums. Nevertheless, any listener of “The Road” can probably tell that I’d discovered Ralph Stanley by this point.  This is one of the songs from Our Gods that I vividly remember working on; I recall flipping through Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume as quietly as I possibly could while Cody recorded the freewheeling banjo parts. “The Road” is probably only second to “Parting Gifts” when it comes to its popularity, as well as the number of times it was caught on video during this era. It’s featured in the Before You Burn documentary and on the Mountain Blood Fest II compilation. 

Granite & Gold

This is an interesting track. I don’t remember much of what motivated me to write this one, although it strikes me now as some hand-wringing over the future legacy of the Goathead scene. Ten years later, Goathead is long gone, and the artists that are still active have completely evolved. Looking back at that time in such depth feels like going back to a place you used to live in; everything’s different, and a lot of people are gone, but the light still falls in the same way. An uncanny feeling, I guess. Like visiting your old elementary school. 

The Fear, The Fear

“The Fear” is a weird composite of a lot of my influences at the time of recording. The title is, of course, ripped from the Defiance, Ohio album of the same name. The guitar part is totally indebted to Bob Dylan’s version of “House Carpenter,” which I played often back when I spent my Sundays busking in Santa Fe. I’m not entirely sure where we got the idea to attempt the weird, sitar-like banjo part, but I suspect it was from Mark Fry’s “The Witch,” which was on heavy rotation at Coffee House. I do also remember Cody joking that the banjo part came out “sounding like Donovan.” Our Gods is a pretty spare record, and I think this is the most ambitious we got during those recording sessions. It’s another comment on the fleeting nature of the community and the anxieties and social pressures that motivate people to choose a life of convention over a life of art. 

Our Gods

The title track features Kylee Jo on fiddle. Kylee was staying overnight at Wagon Wheel during the Our Gods sessions; it wasn’t uncommon for house venues to host traveling musicians (or just travelers) even if they weren’t performing there, and Kylee was just on the way to somewhere else when we met. Having never met us before, and certainly never hearing of our band, she agreed to play fiddle on “Our Gods.” I played the song once through to teach the changes, we recorded one fiddle track, I wrote her name down on a piece of receipt paper for the album credits, and we never saw each other again.  Some of the most intimate exchanges of ideas happen in your own home, far from performance spaces, and Carson and I have always tried to keep our home open to other artists. It’s a tough world out there, and a little sanctuary can go a long way. Sometimes you even make new friends, or collaborators. 

Sucker & St. Joan

Sometimes you look back at a song you wrote and surprise yourself, and in revisiting Our Gods after so many years, this song seems to stand taller among the others. The intent behind this album is clearer here than anywhere else, and the composition, harmony, and structure are all about as highly-developed as I was capable of at age 20. The playing’s good, too; but what really strikes me on “Sucker” is its clarity. Hearing the chorus again, recognizing that even a decade ago we were aware of our community as a temporary junction of lives, is awfully moving - and revisiting this song is what encouraged me to write this piece in the first place. When listening to this song, I can feel my present self looking back, my past self looking forward - and we meet each other somewhere in the middle.  I do my best to catch up with people from the old scene, engage with their art, listen to their bands and see what’s going on in their lives. Some folks are still permanent fixtures in the Bird Friend family, while some are like distant relatives. Still others I check in with once a year or so, or catch their shows when they’re in town. Others just cross my mind from time to time, or pass by in the social media parade. 

IIX. 

Spotify, music streaming, and social media all belonged to a very different landscape a decade ago. Many bands of the Albuquerque community never made it to Spotify for logistical or philosophical reasons; others never recorded much at all, or produced anything that sounded like their live performances. Practically none of the bands of those days are still active - although most of the artists involved are still working, the vast majority of them have moved onto other projects. Much of the Goathead Record Collective’s web presence has been lost over time.

Below, I’ve listed a few songs that are representative of Bird Friend’s world during the 2013-2016 era. Some of it comes from bands we played with, and most of it comes from Albuquerque. All of the bands featured were, in some significant way, affiliated with the house show scene. Bandcamp is still the best way to listen to these artists. If you have the paper edition of this piece, the QR code on the bottom will take you to the web version where you can listen to the music.

If you want the authentic experience, you can download these songs as mp3s, drag them into an iTunes playlist, load them onto an iPod Mini with a cracked screen and listen to them on a skateboard.

The Leaky Faces - Steam 

Arroyo Deathmatch - Swimming the Witch

Bella Trout - Coffee Stains

Human Behavior - Crag

Smoke & Mirrors - The Godslayer

Manuka Piglet - Mr. Kelp

Crushed!? - Ethereal Horizon

Soviet Science Fair - Toast (Live 2014)

lemurtween - pee van/no one understands me

Lindy Vision - Bad Things

The Vassar Bastards - Dead Cat

Nobody Particular - Cage Wreck

Colour Me Once - 10,000 Miles to Graceland

Marissa. - Running For The Gates

Klondykes - BTSD

[bigbadd0g]

Aw look how pretty ur eyes are

I don't think now's the time for those sorts of jokes, but what do I knows, eh?

It's just a few blocks to the maglev station, and I'm coasting.

[townpostin]

Kshatriya Karni Sena Expands, Names New Youth District President

Mohit Singh appointed as East Singhbhum Youth District President at Bhuiyandih event The Kshatriya Karni Sena Parivar Sangathan expanded its district-level organization, appointing a new youth leader. JAMSHEDPUR – At a special event in Bhuiyandih, Mohit Singh was unanimously chosen as the Youth District President for Karni Sena in East Singhbhum. The ceremony took place on Thursday evening at the…

[thatthingilovewith]

Any general District 8 headcanons/thoughts?

Here is some of the general lore I have for District 8:

I divide the district into three distinct neighborhoods, The Warp, the Weft, and the Selvidge! The Selvidge is the merchant neighborhood and runs along the river that divides the district in half. The Weft past the Selvidge on the east side of the river; roads in this area run north to south. The Warp is on the west side of the river past the Selvidge, and the roads here run east to west. The Victor Village is located in a gap between the Selvidge and Warp created due to bombings in the first rebellion.

All people in District 8 sew buttons on their clothes in patterns and colors that reflect a certain aspect of their personality and personal history! I am currently creating a guide for this. They also collect strands of buttons given to them by loved ones over the course of their life that they are buried with.

The air quality in District 8 is really poor meaning they have a lot of pulmonary diseases. They are also the district with the most disabled people in Panem due to how poor the factory conditions are.

At the time of TBOSAS, most men split their time between working in the factories and working in shipping yards due to the destruction of machinery that would load the trains automatically. As such, most positions of authority in factories are filled by women or disabled men due to them working there exclusively. Some women do work in the shipping yards but it is dominated by men.

District 8 inadvertently started the trend of people dyeing their skin in the Capitol. At one point, a tribute whose skin was stained due to their job as a dyer went to the Capitol, and their stylist incorporated it into their look, inspiring the trend going forward. Sometimes, I characterize this tribute as being Cecelia, and her victory is what makes it mainstream, her supporters during the games dyed part of their skin to show they were rooting for her.

I think quilting plays a big part in District 8 culture and is in some way incorporated into every major life event.

District 8 has cobblestone streets, it is the only district with this trait.

I have some others, but these are the ones that came to mind right now! Thanks for the ask, feel free to send another if you have any more questions!

[miwhotep]

THE JACK THE RIPPER CASE IN YUUMORI AND IN REALITY

One of my favourite arcs is the Phantom of Whitechapel because it adapted the real Jack the Ripper case quite well and the story was full of elements what actually happened. I wanted to write a little about the similarities as recently was the anniversary of the first murder.

The Jack the Ripper murders or Whitechapel murders took place in 1888 in the East End of London, the infamously poor Whitechapel district where the underclass people lived. Lot of women here earned their money for the living from selling their bodies and a serial killer, Jack the Ripper started to target them. The number of the victims is unsure, the police accepted five murders to be surely connected to Jack the Ripper, they are often referred to as the canonical five. The women got murdered by their throats being cut away and some of their inestines were also removed from their bodies.

The first victim was called Mary Ann Nichols whose body was discovered at 3:40 a.m. on 31th August. She was last seen alive by a woman she lived with in a lodging house. These all are very similar to how Moriarty the Patriot described the murder details, except that there, the victim's name was Melanie Nichols and she was seen with a blond man.

The second victim was Annie Chapman, her body was found at 6 a.m on 8th September and she was last seen half an hour ago in a company of a dark-haired man. The details shown in Yuumori are again similar, just the victim was called Adeline Bergman.

(Interesting addition to here - just like you see, the fan translation uses the victims' real names while the official gave them fake ones. In the original Japanese, also the fake ones are what are used.)

When it comes to the later murders, Yuumori's story deviates from the historical events, since here, the last three victims of the canonical five was just a stage-play by William who tried to catch the killer(s) with setting up a fake Jack the Ripper. In reality, two of the victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were found on the same morning of 30th September - the Morigang placing two of the dead bodies at the same place so they get discovered at the same time must be a reference to that. The last victim, Mary Jane Kelly was discovered in the room where she lived on 9th November - her murder was the most gruesome out of the five, what I think Yuumori also referenced with Jack's show who pretended to kill a woman brutally on the roof.

Several letters signed as Jack the Ripper were sent to the newspapers. The media, especially the Central News Agency where some of the letters arrived, also overexaggerated about the details when they wrote about the murders, spreading a lot of misinformation just to sell more papers. In Yuumori, the group of people responsible for the murders who committed them to cause fear in the public and make a revolution by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and the police forces collide, hired Milverton to create the Jack the Ripper agenda with the help of his media power and he also manipulated the public opinion. The quotes shown from the letter sent to the Central News in the Moriarty the Patriot manga are from the first letter (called as Dear Boss letter) signed as Jack the Ripper what was also sent to Central News in reality - now researchers say it was written by a journalist to sell the papers better. The real letter was longer and the writer threatened to send the lady's ears to the police instead of her organs (however, with one of his later letters, Jack truly sent one of his victims kidney to the police), otherwise they are the same.

The Scotland Yard, just like in Yuumori wasn't really on the top when it came to solve the murders what resulted in riots and conflicts with the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in reality too. And just like Chief Inspector Arterton was removed from his position in Scotland Yard - tho, for a slightly different reason - for not solving the Jack the Ripper case one of the police chiefs of London back then was also fired. In Moriarty the Patriot, a doctor was wrongly arrested and sent to prison in order to silence the raging public and in real life, lot of doctors were suspected to commit the murders.

In Yuumori, the identity of Jack the Ripper was solved by both Sherlock Holmes and the Morigang - who killed them - but it stayed unsolved for the public. In reality, the identity of Jack the Ripper either remained unsolved or not - few years ago, there was a DNA test what was said to determine the killer's identity, but lot of researchers believe that the test was incorrect and don't accept the answer.

I adore this arc for how well the series merged reality with fiction and it was especially exciting to read knowing the details of the real Jack the Ripper case.

[perrysoup]

Jewish State Ideas BEFORE Palestine

CRITICAL PREAMBLE: It is important to keep in mind that the idea of building a Jewish State is Zionist. It does not reflect the views of Judaism as a whole, and any antisemetic actions will result in blocking and banning. It is critical now more than ever that we recognize that there is a different. Your issues in Palestine are with ZIONISM, not Judaism. Do NOT associate them as the same. Doing so is a common Zionist tactic to make comments or opinions against Israel be rebutted that it is antisemetic purely because it comments on actions by Israel and their Zionist government and military.

Again, Zionism and Judaism are NOT one in the same, and should not be treated that way.

Anywho, timeline time!

1820 - Ararat City - Grand Island Niagara River in Western New York. Considered a precursor to Zionism as known today.

1902 - Leaugue of Eastern European States - "would entail the establishment of a buffer state (Pufferstaat) within the Jewish Pale of Settlement of Russia, composed of the former Polish provinces annexed by Russia."

Date Unsure - Herzl Plan - "The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes." His proposed location? Cyprus 1903 - British Uganda Program - Rejected after (shocker) there were lions in Africa. Also "it was populated by a large number of Maasai people, who did not seem at all amenable to an influx of people coming from Europe." fuckin wonder why. Note that some Zionists were concerned it would "make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine in Ottoman Syria, particularly the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem" 1928 - Jewish Autonomous Oblast in USSR - Proposed by Russia specifcally to prevent a State of Israel AND done because it viewed Judaism as a threat to the state. "In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, the creation of the modern State of Israel, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts would replace religion as the primary expression of culture." Also included the idea of a JSR in Crimea or "part of Ukraine, however these were rejected because of fears of antagonizing non-Jews in those regions."

1940 - British Guiana - "the British Government decided that "the problem is at present too problematical to admit of the adoption of a definite policy and must be left for the decision of some future Government in years to come""

The Madagascar Plan and the Italian East Africa plans were both efforts by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to "solve Jewish problem" (YES THIS IS BAD). "Jews from Europe and Palestine would be resettled to the north-west Ethiopian districts of Gojjam and Begemder, along with the Beta Israel community."

1989 - Plans for the West Bank - Contemplation of a Second Jewish State - "Israeli settlers in the West Bank have mulled declaring independence as the State of Judea should Israel ever withdraw from the West Bank. In January 1989, several hundred activists met and announced their intention to create such a state in the event of Israeli withdrawal."

So yea, don't tell me about "homeland" when there were a shit ton of other ideas accepted within the Zionist ideal prior to SETTLING on Palestine. It's "homeland" cause that's where the British Empire could throw Israel. Not because they though it was the "right thing to do" or whatever thing Zionists claim now a days.