#f: first prize bravery

[entitled-fangirl]

I won’t burn you.

Jace Velaryon x Targaryen!reader

SMUT

Summary: After the Battle at Rooks Rest, the reader is upset at Dragonstone. Her betrothed comforts her.

Warnings: oral (f receiving), fingering, heavy makeout, talks of death

Masterlist

…………………………..

Jace's eyes didn't leave her body.

Y/n Targaryen stood among the small council table of Queen Rhaenyra. A green at birth, Alicent's second daughter and youngest child, she now stood next to the rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Across the table, Rhaenyra’s heir and the girl's betrothed, Jace.

The two had been betrothed to make amends between the two houses during Luke's petition of Driftmark.

And when Rhaenyra decided to take her children home and return later to King's Landing, she had proposed taking Y/n with them so she may get to know Jace more. Though hesitant at first, Alicent was persuaded to agree by Viserys.

Now, Y/n remained loyal to Jace through the betrayal of her brothers.

Rhaenyra admired the girl's bravery throughout the ordeal.

Now, months later, Y/n stood at the table, utterly silent and motionless, save for the steady stream of tears that ran down her face at the news of the Battle of Rook's Rest.

Her brother injured beyond repair. Rhaenys dead. Sunfyre gone. Meleys paraded around King's Landing like a war prize.

It was the first time she had cried at Dragonstone.

Jace stood on the other side of the table, watching in pain as she weeped in silence.

The council was speaking, he was sure of it, but he couldn't tell what. Nor did he quite care.

He had offered to fight that battle.

In anyone world, Vermax may have been the war prize paraded.

He wanted to help. He did. It seemed he never knew how to help.

The moment Rhaenyra called an end to the meeting, Jace rounded the table to his betrothed. He took her face in his hands. His eyes darted across her face rapidly before his voice came out softly, "Please stop this."

Y/n's eyes finally looked up at him with her teary gaze, and Jace felt breath leave his body.

"My love, please," Jace tried again, not caring for the others in the room.

Her voice was hoarse, barely a whisper, "Why must it all end in fire?"

He wasn't sure what to say to that. "It's… it's in our blood."

She pulled herself from his grip, wiping at the tears herself. "My brother did not even wish to be king, and now he lies in a bed, half-dead. And for what? The feud between our mothers??"

"Watch yourself, my love." He warned, "Do not say the wrong thing just because you are upset."

She pushed his chest lightly, "You don't understand!"

His face morphed into one of anger, "I don't understand? Your brothers live. Where is mine? Slain by one of yours! I DO understand. More than you know!"

She shook her head as fresh tears warmed her face, "Please do not shout at me."

Jace scoffed lightly and crossed his arms, "Do not be unreasonable."

"I wish I was not who I am."

She began to rush out of the hall.

Jace opened his mouth to call out to her, but nothing came out.

…

Y/n had spent hours in her chambers with the door locked. No servants or guards were to bother her.

Her weeping could be heard throughout Dragonstone, making the Prince's gut tear itself in two.

But only when his betrothed's servant came to him to tell him of Y/n’s refusal of food did he do anything.

…

A knock sounded at the door.

Y/n sniffled and her soft voice called out, "Leave me."

"It's Jace."

"I said leave me."

"No."

She turned to look at the door. "Leave."

"Not until we speak."

She cursed lightly for his Velayron stubbornness.

"I won't come in until you say the words."

She finally gave in. "Fine. Come in."

Jace slowly opened the door, a tray of food in his hand. He closed the door behind him before his eyes settled on her frame.

Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy from the tears, a few still escaping down her cheek as she sat on the floor in front of her bed.

He stood awkwardly, not sure what to do.

Finally, her meek voice spoke up, "Forgive me."

His head tilted, "W…what?"

"Forgive me." She sniffled, "I said awful things to you. You know the pain of loss more personally than I ever shall."

"That's not true," he said as he stepped towards her, setting the tray on a table. "You lost your father only months ago."

"He was your grandsire."

"Still."

She continued, "And you've lost Luke, Princess Rhaenys, your father Laenor, your-" She stopped herself. "Your mother's… guard."

Jace looked down at the floor. "Yes, but I… it is different with me."

"I don't see how."

When Jace finally looked back to her, unshed tears swam in his eyes. "I don't know."

She sniffled, "Please just say you'll forgive me."

He knelt down next to her, looking deep into her eyes. "You know I will."

She reached up, brushing his unruly curls from his face before connecting her lips with his.

Jace's body wracked with sobs as he pulled her into his lap. Her kisses became more passionate, intent on showing her feelings through them. His tongue darted out to her bottom lip, and he was quickly granted access to her mouth.

"I love you," he whispered against her lips.

"You know I love you, Jace."

He stopped himself, pulling his lips from hers, "We should stop here."

She leaned forward, connecting their lips again, "I want you, Jace."

He shook his head, "We're not to marry until after this war. I won't sully you."

"I don't care. I need to feel you. Please."

He nodded, his hands pulling her hips closer and reconnecting their lips.

Her hand moved to his hair, pulling lightly.

"Onto the bed," he murmured.

She quickly left his lap, standing and beginning to pull at her dress.

He smiled as he wiped his tears and stood with her, "Let me."

He stood behind her, his lips leaving open mouth kisses against her neck as his fingers unbuttoned the small ones down her back.

She let out a small moan, resting her head on his shoulder.

When the buttons were undone, he tugged her dress down, making it pool at her feet. Now only in her shift, she turned in his hold and kissed him again.

His hands moved to her hips, and he walked her into the bed, playfully pushing her onto it.

She let out a grunt as her back hits the covers, but she laughed lightly at his antics.

He made quick work of tugging off his clothes, leaving him in his small clothes. He then joined her on the bed.

As he crawled over her, she grabbed his face gently, "How do you do it?"

He sniffled from his past tears, "Do what?"

Her thumb brushed over his bottom lip, "Suddenly I don't mind being consumed by fire as long as it is from you."

His lips pulled into a bright smile, "I won't burn you.”

She pulled him to her again in a desperate kiss.

Jace's hands began to pull her shift up to her hips. He pulled away to look at her, "Are you sure?"

She nodded.

"Please, I have to hear it. Please."

She smiled, "I want you, Jace. As much as you'll give me."

He pushed her legs up by her thighs, "I'll give you anything you want." He then made agonizingly slow movements as his body began to move lower and lower down hers. She waited with bated breath.

Jace had never pleasured a woman before. He was rather terrified of failing. But he was intend on trying.

His face lowered between her thighs. He felt breath leave him at the sight that laid before him.

He slowly lowered himself the rest of the way, licking a long stripe up her slit.

She let out a gasp from deep inside her.

He looked up with a hesitantly, "Does that feel good?"

Her hand trailed to his hair, "Please don't stop."

She could feel his smirk against her as he continued his motions.

It was experimental, continuing the things that made her gasp or when her grip on his hair tightened.

When his nose brushed her clit, her hips jerked back as a sinful moan left her mouth.

He reached up, holding her hips steady as he continued.

His tongue moved deep into her now, wanting to moan along with her.

"Jace…. Oh gods, Jace…."

He pulled away and brought himself up to her face again, kissing her deeply. She let out a small whine at the taste of herself on his tongue.

He grinned, "Not like it?"

She let out a calming breath, "Just feels strange."

"Want to stop?" He asked with a tilted head.

She immediately shook hers, "No. No, please don't."

He smiled, "Pretty girl."

Their lips connected again in a heated makeup.

She let out a small gasp when his fingers began to toy between her thighs, and he took the opportunity of her open mouth , letting his tongue explore her.

All-consumed by Jace, she gave in completely, her eyes closed and her lips slowing against him.

When his fingers slowly entered her, her entire body froze.

"This alright?" He whispered when he noticed her stiffness.

She gave a whimper but nodded her head.

"Jace…"

"You're so beautiful."

His fingers began to pump very slowly, his pants tenting at the feeling of his fingers in her.

She pushed herself up to kiss him but his fingers curled and her open mouth paused inches from his own.

He couldn't help the smirk that came to his lips. "You like that?"

She breathed out heavily, her eyes meeting his. "You… You know I… I love you."

"I love you."

"Burn me, Jace."

He kissed her jaw lightly, "I'll never mar your pretty skin."

…

They returned the next day to the council meeting in new spirits. Daemon's eyes moved between the two with a knowing look.

He knows the look of a man that's pussy whipped.

Perhaps he could get Rhaenyra to move the wedding closer.

……………………………

[redvexillum]

@feral-fox-crypt I think I'm a psychic because I think you want rough sex with Alastor? Am I right or am I right? I want to dedicate this story to @dewdropdinosaur she has read some of my other rare pair fic during Kinktober/Flufftober and always left a comment that brought a huge smile to my face. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy this one! 💖

TAGS/WARNINGS: f!reader, human!alastor, rough s♡x, reader has sub drop, aftercare, bad BDSM etiquette, rough ♡ral s♡x, p in v, choking, hair pulling, belt whipping, dual POV, alastor is bad with feelings, multiple ♡rgasm (f!receiving), over-stimulation, crude language, degradation, d♡m/s♡b, alastor is d♡m, reader is s♡b, minor hurt/comfort, alastor catches feelings for reader

✨️ recommended to read c☆ckwarming first for a fulsome experience ✨️

The sound of slick, wet slurping filled the room, obscene and unashamed, like a starved animal devouring a long-awaited meal.  

Alastor sat back, his glass of bootleg rye balanced in one hand as he stared out the window, eyes fixed on the darkened shed outside. His grip on the glass tightened, a muscle in his jaw twitching as his eyes narrowed, fury simmering beneath the calm veneer he struggled to maintain. It was a cold, bitter fire that burned hot in his chest, ignited by his own failure. 

He had let his prey escape. 

The papers were a humiliating testament to that. The Bayou Butcher, mocked openly, ridiculed. The survivor had painted a vivid tale of bravery, twisting the truth until Alastor was depicted as a bumbling fool—a pathetic predator who’d somehow let a prize slip through his fingers. Every word mocked him, taunted him, kindling the rage that boiled just beneath his polished surface. 

With a low, guttural growl, he seized a fistful of your hair, dragging your mouth off his cock with a loud, wet pop. Your eyes, hazy with lust and adoration, lifted to meet his. Your bruised, swollen lips parted as you gasped for breath, desperate for his approval even now. Your lips had been wrapped around him for the better part of fifteen minutes, greedily sucking him down, each needy pull of your lips drawing the otherwise dormant arousal to life.  His cock twitched at the sight of your expression: you wanted more, no matter how he took you. 

“S-sir?” you breathed, voice soft and trembling as your bare, supple body quaked under his fierce gaze. He could feel every small tremor against him as your hardened nipples brushed his legs, the friction sending jolts through you with each hitch of your breath, each restless grind of your thighs, trying to soothe the ache that pulsed between them. 

A smirk tugged at his mouth, dark and almost cruel, as he released his hold on your hair. “Come,” he commanded, low and dangerous, enjoying the thrill that coursed through you at the sound of his voice. You obeyed instantly, crawling toward him on all fours, desperate and shameless, just as he’d taught you—like the bitch in heat he’d once sneered you were, back when he had taken you in the dark intimacy of his radio station, his cock deep in your throat to muffle your needy moans. 

You were such a simple creature, so delightfully obedient. Alastor couldn’t fathom how any woman would indulge his depravity the way you did, how you could revel in the filthy things he made you do. 

But there you were—a rare, eager little pet, his perfect plaything, someone so willing to lay bare her body and soul for him that he’d found himself unwilling to discard you. You were a treasure he had now taken into his home, cherishing you like a prized possession. 

His cock throbbed at the sight of you, and his eyes tracked the sway of your breasts as you crawled toward him, each movement sending them into a pendulous swing that only fuelled his arousal. 

Your expression was one of pure, open adoration, your gaze filled with the kind of devoted bliss that soothed the sting of failure in a way nothing else could. His anger ebbed as he watched you, replaced by a strange, unfamiliar possessive warmth that simmered and coiled low in his gut. 

As you reached him, he knelt down, exposing himself fully, his arousal drooping slightly from lack of stimulation. But you, sweet and eager as always, hastened to rectify that, fingers wrapping firmly around him as you stroked him, forming a tight ring with your delicate hand. You leaned in, the tip of your tongue flicking over the head of his cock, and a shiver ran through him. With just a few teasing licks, you brought his desire roaring back to life, your skilled, needy mouth working magic on him with effortless grace. 

Alastor’s hand drifted to your head, fingers curling gently in your hair as he began to stroke it, his touch uncharacteristically soft, almost tender—a rarity that had your cheeks flushing as you stared up at him. Your lips curled into a blissful smile, basking in the affection he so seldom gave, your fingers still wrapped around him as you savoured his touch. 

You were nothing to him.  

He reminded himself of that with each pulsing beat of his arousal, each hungry sweep of your tongue over him. 

You were a diversion, a pastime, a convenient release for those primal urges that not even he could deny. And yet, as he gazed down at you, a small thrill surged within him, intoxicating and delicious. 

“Suck,” he murmured, his voice a soft, commanding whisper, devoid of emotion yet laced with something he had yet been able to name. 

You responded instantly, need and devotion glimmering in your eyes as you wrapped your lips around him, forming a tight seal at his tip before taking him deeper, letting him fill your mouth. Your tongue traced over him with soft, teasing strokes, and you began to bob your head, each movement drawing a low groan from his throat as he watched you. 

You were hopelessly clumsy—always fumbling, tripping, and blushing every time he so much as looked your way. But he loved the effect he had on you, how that heavy blush painted your cheeks every time he took control, how you quivered with each command. And no matter how rough he was with you, how often he pushed you to your limits, you only came back for more, craving everything he would give. That thought alone made a sharp grin spread across his face. 

A dark, possessive desire simmered in his gut, and he felt the twisted thrill of knowing just how easily you surrendered to him. You were the perfect woman...pet for him—the way you willingly, eagerly, gave up control, placing your complete trust in him. The way you looked up at him with reverence, even now, as he twisted his fingers in your hair and tugged sharply. A delicious shudder ran through you as he thrust forward, pressing deeper until he heard that lovely, choked whimper, felt your throat tighten around him. Yet, even then, you didn’t pull away; you stayed, devoted and unyielding. 

Like a loyal dog. Like a bitch in heat. 

... Like his cherished, obedient... pet.

The sound of his harsh breaths mixed with your muffled moans and wet, sloppy noises filled the room, each messy gulp of yours sending a wave of satisfaction through him. Drool began to slip past your lips, clinging to your chin in a thick, sticky mess. As he looked down, he felt a realization settle in his chest—a rush of certainty that you would stay by his side until death itself claimed you. You would be there, smiling up at him with that same innocent adoration, even if he stood drenched in the blood and gore of his latest kill. 

You, his perfect, shameless... lover, would fulfill his every dark desire unquestionably, wouldn’t you? 

In one swift motion, he pulled you off his cock, and your breath hitched as you looked up at him, cheeks flushed and eyes glossy with need. The sight of you—so willing, so utterly ravished—sent a pulse of heat straight to his core, and his cock throbbed, painfully hard at the sight. Since when had you looked so divine? When had he started craving you like this? 

Why did he want to consume you whole? 

He took your hair in his hand again, a makeshift leash, and guided you to his bedroom. You stumbled as you tried to match his strides, hands and knees scrambling to keep up, yet you didn’t utter a single complaint. Instead, your wide, needy eyes were begging, pleading for him to take you, to give you every piece of himself.

When he crossed the threshold, he paused, feeling a strange sense of anxiety. This would be the first time he’d take anyone, you, in a bed. 

For the first time, he wanted to ravage you on something softer, something that allowed him to enjoy every moment, every gasp, every twitch of your body. Every other time had been in rough, illicit places: his office, the hidden corners of alleyways, beneath the cover of twisted trees in the bayou, or pressed against the cold, unforgiving floor. 

He stopped at the edge of the bed, watching as your trembling fingers reached up to trace the outer seam of his pants, awaiting his next command, your eyes so full of devotion it made his chest ache in the strangest of ways.

A thrill of ownership surged through him; you were his in every way, weren’t you? His pretty, obedient plaything. His perfect, precious pet. 

And you, he realized with a dark satisfaction, were entirely his. 

You were a strange girl.  

You knew you were.  

Excitement pulsed in your veins as Alastor, the one man who owned your every thought, invited you to his home. The whole way there, nerves danced beneath your skin, feeling the weight of his silence as he drove you deep into his bayou. This was a first—he’d never brought you into his home before. 

Heat flooded your core at the thought of what he might do to you. Alastor was the only man who didn’t treat you as fragile. The only one willing to satisfy every dark, unhinged desire you harboured, needs that would make anyone else turn away in disgust. But he never looked at you with revulsion during these acts, save for that lingering smirk when you fumbled over your duties. 

You were happy—beyond happy.

Being with Alastor made you feel more alive than you’d ever been. 

Now, completely bare before him, you knelt, wanting to whine, to beg him to take you in whatever twisted ways he pleased. 

But...as your eyes traced his expression, you realized that there was something different about him today. His usual rough, unyielding exterior softened, showing a rare glimpse of something tender, something reserved only for you. 

“Get on the bed,” he ordered, his voice low, demanding, with a hint of cruelty that made your stomach tighten. 

You scrambled, snapping from your trance. But after kneeling for so long, your legs wobbled beneath you, and you stumbled back to the floor, wide-eyed as you looked up. A cold, dangerous smirk curved his lips. 

“So you can’t even follow a simple order, can you?” he mocked, voice dripping with condescension. “And what did I say I’d do when you can’t follow orders, dear?” he hissed, fingers pulling his belt from its loops with an agonizing slowness, the sharp slide of leather against fabric filling the silence. 

Your breath caught, the thrill of fear mingling with a rush of wet heat between your thighs. You remembered all too well—the time he bent you over a tree for not bringing his dry cleaning on time, each slap echoing through the bayou, burning itself into your memory. 

“That you’d punish me, sir,” you whispered, barely audible, your voice trembling. 

“Correct. Ten strikes.” He grasped your upper arm, pulling you to your feet, only to toss you onto the bed. You landed face down, the plush fabric against your skin as you arched your ass up for him. 

A chill swept down your spine as he traced the belt’s cool edge over your heated skin, dragging it slowly along your soaked, sensitive folds. The slick sound of your arousal coating the leather mingled with your ragged breaths, filling the room. 

And then, without warning, the belt sliced through the air, landing with a sharp, punishing crack on your bare skin. 

“Ahh!” you gasped, your body lurching forward as you pressed your face into the mattress. “O-one,” you whimpered, each heartbeat amplifying the sting as your clit throbbed, the pain melding with pleasure. 

A fire sparked beneath your skin, flaring with each strike as Alastor whipped the belt against you again and again. You counted each one, voice wavering between cries and sobs, drool trickling down to meet the tears blurring your vision. Your thighs quivered, struggling to keep your ass raised, eager for him. On the seventh strike, when the belt caught your slick, needy folds, you felt a wave of shame as liquid spilled from you, glistening on your skin. 

A low, desperate moan escaped your lips as your walls clenched, craving something to fill the aching emptiness. 

Alastor’s sharp, mocking laugh sliced through the haze, his dark eyes gleaming with amusement. “Coming without permission now, are we?” He didn’t give you a chance to answer, raining down the final strikes in swift, merciless succession. 

Your cries softened, a mixture of raw pain and bliss as you trembled, knowing that the bruises would mark you for days. Each ache would bring you back to this moment, reigniting the desire pooling within you. 

Then, without warning, he pressed three thick fingers into you, plunging deep. Alastor leaned over your arched back, his breath hot and heavy against your ear. “How dare you be this wet when I’m punishing you,” he growled, his fingers relentless as they drove into you, the sound of your slick, desperate flesh echoing in your mind. 

Your body writhed, pressing back, eager for more, your hips grinding against his hand as he filled you. “Please, please, sir, I need you,” you finally gasped, voice choked with want, your vision blurred with pain and overwhelming pleasure. 

The tension snapped in the air as Alastor's voice, pitched with a teasing, dark delight, pierced the haze surrounding you. 

“Do you now?” he mocked, his fingers glistening with your desire as he slid them from your mouth. Gripping your hips, he yanked you back into position, aligning his thick, throbbing head with your dripping entrance. Before you could even brace yourself, he sank in, burying himself to the hilt in one fierce thrust that ripped a sharp, needy cry from your lips. Before you could release it fully, his slick fingers thrust back into your mouth, muffling your gasps as your body clamped tightly around him. 

You tasted yourself on his fingers, the heady blend of his dominance and your surrender driving you mad as he stretched you with each brutal plunge. You could do nothing but cling to him, letting him bounce you up and down with each pounding thrust that had you soaring, the friction of him catching at every perfect spot inside you. The delicious ache of being stretched so completely consumed you, your clit throbbing as his cock teased your depths, nudging your cervix and filling you with intoxicating waves of pleasurable pain that left you reeling. 

Your muffled moans mixed with his guttural groans, the raw sounds of your bodies filling the room as he drove into you. When he finally pulled his fingers from your mouth, he circled them over your swollen, desperate clit, wringing a broken, gasping wail from you as another wave of pleasure shattered through you. His fingers never stopped their relentless teasing even as you came, your body helpless against the mind-melting ecstasy that left you a sobbing, trembling mess. 

By the time he tossed you onto the bed, you were barely aware, your body limp and pliant. Your leg draped over his shoulder, he resumed, driving himself into your swollen folds. 

Your shameless moans filled the air, the slick sound of him claiming you echoing as he pounded deeper, harder, unrelenting. Gripping your breast, he squeezed, his thumb rolling over your sensitive nipple, sending sparks through your already sensitized body. Your back arched, surrendering every part of you to him, your tears mixing with the damp sheets as you lay bare, offering yourself to his every whim, every desire. 

Then his hand was at your throat, his fingers wrapping around, pressing just enough to cut off your breath to reach the edge of oblivion. His cock throbbed deep inside you as he watched you, eyes glinting with manic delight. With each bruising thrust, he tightened his grip just enough for your vision to darken, and with that growing pressure, a new wave of pleasure bloomed inside you, sharper, more intense than before. Just as your world began to blur, he released you, and you gasped, the rush of air into your lungs sending you spiralling as a fierce, desperate climax ripped through you, shaking you to your core. 

Your soaked body trembled uncontrollably, each pulse of his cock within you driving you deeper into a haze of pleasure. His hold never wavered as he brought you to the edge again and again, until there was nothing left but the raw, aching, consuming pleasure that marked you as his. 

The heat between you was overwhelming, each breath catching as you rocked on his cock, feeling every thick inch filling you deeply. You could barely process the bliss, but you didn’t stop, even as your thighs quivered, and your mind spun, surrendering completely. 

Alastor threw his head back, his usual control slipping as he gripped your hips, his own movements coming to a halt while he let you take control for the first time, guiding his cock deeper with your rhythmic movements. 

"That's it, dear," he murmured, almost to himself, his voice husky and rich with praise. His release flooded into you, thick and hot, and he let out a small, breathy moan as you continued to move, clenching around him to draw out every last wave of his pleasure. “Take every single drop,” he muttered, the words leaving his lips with a fervent, almost reverent edge. 

Finally, he softened and slipped free, his seed mixing with your own arousal as it dripped between your thighs. He let himself fall back, his gaze heavy-lidded but still drawn to you, watching as you slumped, exhausted and trembling. Your legs splayed apart, arms limp, and your face a mess, wet with both tears and the remnants of your desire. Breathing raggedly, you tried to ground yourself, but your mind still floated in that heady haze, every muscle vibrating with the aftershocks of pleasure. 

You stared up at him, craving more, more of...you weren't sure what you craved. But you wanted to feel him, whatever he was willing to give you. Even as your body barely held itself together, you forced yourself to move.

The thought of, please don't leave, echoing in the dark recesses of your mind. 

A warm, low chuckle rumbled in his chest, and before you could react, he gathered you into his arms, holding you close. Something in you seized up, a flood of warmth welling up behind your eyes as he pressed you against him. 

Normally, he’d leave by now, always returning to whatever occupied him after these indulgent moments. Your fingers trembled, hovering uncertainly over his back, unsure if this was something you were truly allowed to reciprocate. 

Alastor had taken you farther than anyone else, yet he also left you feeling more alive and more vulnerable. 

As the thrill of the moment faded, you often felt a pang of sadness after, not knowing how to tell him that all the intensity seemed to leave a hollow ache in your chest. You bit your lip, not wanting to risk anything that might make him see you as clingy or overly attached. 

“Go on, dear.” His voice held that playful lilt, but underneath it, there was an unfamiliar warmth. “You know how to embrace, don’t you?” 

Hesitantly, you let your arms wrap around his shoulders, feeling the roughness of his suit and the warmth of his skin beneath. Tears spilled over your cheeks as you pressed yourself to him, breathing in his scent, feeling a strange fullness you hadn’t experienced before—a feeling beyond just your body. He didn’t let go, instead rubbing a gentle hand along your back, wordlessly accepting your embrace. 

“Sorry,” you stammered, pressing your face into his shoulder. “I’m not sad; I swear I’m not…�� 

You wanted to tell him that the happiness you felt when he held you like this was overwhelming.Maybe you were a strange girl with strange feelings, but right now, held tightly in his arms, you felt more complete than you ever had before. 

For the first time, Alastor’s hand stroked your hair, each touch gentle and unhurried, melting away the last of your reservations. And as the tears continued to fall, he held you there, secure in his grasp, until you finally drifted into sleep, feeling a place of belonging and acceptance in his embrace. 

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[reasoningdaily]

After Black Lives Matter - CEDRIC G.JOHNSON

THIS BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY CLICK THE TITLE TO DOWNLOAD

Contemporary policing reflects the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed The historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way we think about race and policing. Why did it achieve so little in the way of substantive reforms? After Black Lives Matter argues that the failure to leave an institutional residue was not simply due to the mercurial and reactive character of the protests. Rather, the core of the movement itself failed to locate the central racial injustice that underpins the crisis of policing: socio-economic inequality. For Johnson, the anti-capitalist and downwardly redistributive politics expressed by different Black Lives Matter elements has too often been drowned out in the flood of black wealth creation, fetishism of Jim Crow black entrepreneurship, corporate diversity initiatives, and a quixotic reparations demand. None of these political tendencies addresses the fundamental problem underlying mass incarceration. That is the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed. Johnson sees the way forward in building popular democratic power to advance public works and public goods.  Rather than abolishing police, After Black Lives Matter argues for abolishing the conditions of alienation and exploitation contemporary policing exists to manage.

Review

"A virtuoso performance! Weighing the successes and limitations of Black Lives Matter, Johnson concludes that identity-based mobilization—confusing what people look like with what they need—cannot substitute for majoritarian political coalition-building." —Barbara J. Fields, Columbia University "A brilliant scholar who is first and foremost concerned with equality and justice. It’s those very commitments that lead him, in After Black Lives Matter, to question today’s antiracism and its nostrums." —Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto "Essential reading for those weary of platitude-driven texts on race and criminal justice and in the market for an empirically grounded political analysis that points to practicable solutions to one of the biggest problems of our day." —Touré F. Reed, author of Toward Freedom "A provocative and expansive critique from the left of the loose collection of protest actions, organizations, and ideological movements-whether prison abolition or calls to defund the police-that make up what we now call Black Lives Matter...After Black Lives Matter should be commended both for the clarity of its message and the bravery of its convictions." —Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker

About the Author

Cedric Johnson is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics was named the 2008 W.E.B. DuBois Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.  Johnson is the editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. His 2017 Catalyst essay, “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Anti-policing Struggles and the Limits of Black Power,” was awarded the 2018 Daniel Singer Millenium Prize. Johnson’s writings have appeared in Nonsite, Jacobin, New Political Science, New Labor Forum, Perspectives on Politics, Historical Materialism, and Journal of Developing Societies. In 2008, Johnson was named the Jon Garlock Labor Educator of the Year by the Rochester Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He previously served on the representative assembly for UIC United Faculty Local 6456.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Given the sheer scale, magnitude and diversity of 2020’s resurgent Black Lives Matter protests, many pundits, scholars and activists celebrated the George Floyd rebellion as an historic watershed, one where the possibility of real reform came into view. For too  many, however, the euphoria of the moment suspended any criti- cal analysis of what it all meant. This is a deeper problem on the  US left—the tendency to read protests as always prefigurative rather than contingent, and as a manifestation of real power rather than a reflection of potential. Such wish-fulfillment think- ing, however, forgets that mass mobilization is not the same as  organized power, and that mass mobilization is much easier now with the endless opportunities for expressing discontent provided by social media, online petitions, memes and vlogging.

The scale of protests can be misleading, and their actual effectiveness, regardless of their size, is dependent on historical conjunctures, such as the balance of political forces, the organized power and  capacity of opposition and the clarity of objectives among activists. Throughout the opening decades of this century, ever larger  protests have proved incapable of consolidating in a manner that might effectively oppose ruling-class prerogatives. In recent memory, we have witnessed successive mass protests—turn-of the-century demonstrations against global capitalism, protests against the Bush administration’s so-called War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street encampments, anti-eviction campaigns, the March for Our Lives following the Parkland High School mass shooting, protests against police violence and ICE deportations, among others—but these have done little to depose capitalist class power and the advancing neoliberal project.

If anything, the hegemony of finance capital, the war-making powers of the national security state, the criminalization of immigration, the power of the gun lobby and the unaccountability of police are as entrenched as ever. THIS BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY

[volantium]

circles around the sun 

i have risen from the grave to write peter’s pov of the first prize bravery ‘verse 😌 read it here on ao3

Someone, years later, in an interview for a magazine Peter doesn’t remember the name of but was definitely more interested in their love life than their contribution to science, asked him why Harley.

“Why Harley for what?” Peter had asked, confused.

“Anything, everything,” the journalist had replied, and the suddenness of it had struck Peter, he remembers that much, the way they’d lent forward, eager for an answer. “He’s your work partner as well as your life partner. There must be something about him.”

He’d snorted, because there was definitely something about Harley, that’s for sure.

“Harley’s, well,” Peter took a moment, to gather his thoughts, failed at figuring out how to put into words that his whole world existed for some six-foot-three menace from Tennessee.  “He’s Harley,” he’d said in the end, not at all to the point but clear all the same.

And that was explanation enough, really, when Peter thinks about it.

[heeytwelve]

"That’s practically my type”

I remember someone really smart in internet was debating that Draco Malfoy has 100% chance to be Harry Potter’s boyfriend, cause he is, in fact his type. And if we look at Harry’s girlfriends, we kinda see the pattern (quidditch, outspoken, bravery, and have I mention quidditch? ).

But anyway, this post not about those, this post about how Chosen One of Carry On universe has his type too and why Agatha wasn’t just mistake of adolescence and how he changes his views on Baz when he become actively infatuated with him.

“I’ve wanted her since the first time I saw her—walking across the Great Lawn, her long pale hair rippling in the wind. I remember seeing her and thinking that** I’d never seen anything so beautiful.** And that if you were that beautiful, that graceful, nothing could ever really touch you. It would be like being a lion or a unicorn. Nobody could really touch you, because you wouldn’t even be on the same plane as everyone else. Even sitting next to Agatha makes you feel sort of untouchable. Exalted. It’s like sitting in the sun. So imagine how it feels to date her—like you’re carrying that light around with you all the time.

Let’s elaborate. He doesn’t fall in love with her - because of her academic success or because her parents rich or because she’s kind and caring. The type of attraction that works for Simon is so called - aesthetic attraction, attraction to beauty. 

And before you blame him for being shallow, I say, having strong preference for beauty is quite common among the artistic people, who grew up in desperate poverty, in small provinces, poor houses where beauty is rarity (for instance, famous ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev was obsessed with beauty and collected a huge amount of beautiful things, because his poor childhood traumatised him). And, contrary to popular belief, Simon might have artistic tendencies, he sees beauty even dark creatures (goblins, *cough-cough* vampires), movements, colours and music.

Beauty for Simon is not a static thing to watch and enjoy the view, it’s not something he just want to own, it’s a force. Beauty protects him, it makes him untouchable, like nothing from of his previous (poor and mundane) life can touch him anymore, because he carrying the light, darkness will never reach him again. Agatha is not only his future, but also his shield. But - maybe it’s the same thing? Having future all sorted kinda shielding you from whatever you bump into.

He always mention her appearance whenever he talks about her - her clothes, her skin (”sparkles like she’s fairy”), her hair (multiple comparison with sun, light and halo). And when he decides to ignore the fact, that she quite possible betrayed him, it’s not only because he fear uncertain future but:

“She’s beautiful. And I want her. I want everything to be fine.”

Beauty as an attraction, beauty as a shield. Beauty is stability.

Now, before we talk about what all of this has to do with Baz, let’s bring up this quote:

“Like when I used to dream about becoming a footballer someday—or that my parents, my real parents, were going to come back for me.… My dad would be a footballer. And my mum would be some posh model type. ...

But we always missed you, Simon,” they’d say. “We’ve been looking for you.” And then they’d take me away to live in their mansion.”

I know, you probably roll your eyes now, like it’s stereotypical thing for poor kid in care to dream of, but isn’t that interesting, that Simon practically give us description of his future boyfriend and girlfriend as his dream parents? Now, don’t get me wrong, there is now perversion here, it’s just people he dreams to be with. People who potentially get him out of this awful reality and of course he will imagine them as the best people he can imagine - hence attraction to exactly those people. Now, we already know, that Agatha is beautiful as a model and she’s posh -Simon dwells how she good with regattas, polo matches, galas and he’s not posh enough for it. And right there, in next sentence, he mentions the only person who’s fit this interior - Baz. And let’s not forget about this:

“Baz walked into our room, much taller than me—and posher than everyone.”

There’s two interesting thing you notice when you will read Simon’s view for Baz. Simon never hesitates to use bold colours to describe how good Baz is. He never even doubts it, and Simon is not in submissive mode by any means. It’s just with Agatha - he sees the beauty and he admires it. But because Baz is evil, a threat (and potentially because he convinced that he’s heterosexual) AND Simon can’t just go in “I want him” mode, like he did with Agatha.  There’s a big quote above about how Simon met Agatha and here’s one about how Simon met Baz:

“and Baz was walking towards me. Looking so cool. Like he was coming my way because he wanted to, not because there was a mystical magnet in his gut.”

Though, it is looks, Simon talks about, I want to emphasise, that while Simon is not in active infatuation phase with Baz, he still unleashes his other attraction type, attraction to power/strength. Here and in quote below he indicates one of Baz biggest powers - ability to look unfazed and perfect no matter what. Power of composure.

“but he looked fine to me—not a hair out of place. Typical.”

Back to father being footballer. One might wonder, why violinist and person so into academic success went to be the lead player in sports team? All popular movies tell us that you either this (nerd) or that (jock), and Baz suddenly both. Because he’s perfect. And because he has his personality and vampire personality. One might also wonder, had Baz overheard Simon’s obsession about being footballer/football in general before deciding to enrol to the team and collect all trophies... Anyway. Baz as footballer:

“He’s the same on the field as he is everywhere else. Strong. Graceful. Fucking ruthless.”

If you ask me, this is where Simon shows a bit his infatuation. Yes, attraction to strength, even ruthlessness (Simon is a fighter, he does appreciate good fighter too). But graceful - is about beauty. You see, I think, maybe because Simon carries traditional values he kinda does that thing: women’s modus operandi is beauty, men’s - strength, ruthlessness. Same with his parents - mum is model, father is fighter footballer. That’s ok.  BUT when he starts to consider (even at the back of his mind) Baz as a romantic partner (it’s all starts when he sees that Baz is not a monster, that he’s a boy), he starts to notice his beauty more, than strength.

“He floats out over the moat and lands on the other side. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Infamous jeans scene, where Simon talking about Baz’ clothes (like he did w/Agatha) and literally checking out his arse:

“they do look like really expensive jeans. Dark. And snug from his waist to his ankles without looking tight.”

He starts to watch him aesthetically:

“I put my hand on his chest. I don’t have to step any closer to reach him. ... Baz swallows and licks his grey-pink lower lip. .. “he throws one of his pillows into my face. (It smells like him.)

“I’m watching him read—I swear he sucks on his fangs when he’s thinking.

The culmination of this development comes with “vampire club scene”:

““Every one of them must be so jealous of him. He’s everything they are, plus magic. Plus he looks the part, like he was born to be some sort of dark king.”

“Those vampires were in awe of you,” I say. “They wanted to put a crown on your head.

He has the skills AND he is royally beautiful. And Simon projecting his feelings to those night club vampires. The longer they in relationships, the more Simon dwelling on Baz beauty, just to show you this development, I’ll quote WS for a moment:

“I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look half glamourous. Like a boy Marilyn Monroe.… My brain gets kind of stuck on “boy Marilyn Monroe” for a while.”

...

“Baz casts his eyes down and smiles—girlishly, I would have said, but on him it’s not girlish. It’s, I don’t know, vulnerable.”

To elaborate, Marilyn Monroe is depiction of feminine beauty in popular culture and description of Baz as a bit feminine is something that would never happen in the beginning of “Carry On” setting. Of course, Baz opened up more to Simon (and this is important), but also Simon willing to see, no, he actually quite hungrily looking for this beauty. He is attracted to this kind of beauty AND I think, might be cause of his somewhat traditional views, he automatically looking for this in Baz, when he considering him as a partner. 

BUT. Again as in WS - Baz being powerful and strong AND that being attractive (and arousing) to Simon is not going anywhere.  So Simon’s type qualities - strength and beauty. (Not smartness and kindness, sorry Penny) though he does appreciate it.  And lastly, let’s go back to Agatha. We talked about her beauty, but she’s also an athlete. A competitive one. 

“I smile again and jump up off the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans and a purple sweatshirt that says WATFORD LACROSSE. (Agatha plays.)”

This sweatshirt Simon will proudly wear even in WS (Baz haven’t confiscated them yet :D ) - and if you think about it, it’s the way to show admiration too. And don’t forget the horse sports, she’s even more into sports than Baz (Baz would spend his summer practicing languages and violin - I believe his main passion, and football is just to unwind and fuck w/Simon, while Agatha would harvest prizes or skills in competitions). OK, no, he does play tennis :D So yes - as absolutely legit Simon’s type - Agatha do has these two qualities. They both do. Though not exactly in same proportions. Agatha radiates beauty, feminine beauty, you don’t have to watch closely to see it, it punches you in a face. But Baz is more powerful, as with Agatha, you don’t have to search for his power, it’s just there. And maybe this shift in quality proportions is what Simon needs at the end. But he certainly needs both. And let me finish this lenthy dwelling off with Baz quote, where he accidentally compares himself tells us this qualities proportions in Agatha:

“Wellbelove isn’t very powerful, but she’s gorgeous.”

There is interesting awareness between these two, but I will have a mercy and talk about it later.

[rosesloveletters]

I am going to gush about Jacob some more, so if you are not here for that, then please ignore this post. This post also contains spoilers for The Brothers Grimm (2005). Onwards:

I have found that I have the best relationships with F/Os whom I share an immediate connection with; within two whole minutes of Jacob’s initial screen-time, I knew. It did not take long for us to single each other out and form a connection. He is the only F/O I have who is similar to me in the simplest of terms. He is a writer, he is sensitive, he is adventurous, he is wise. He is also resourceful and full of ambition and zeal. 

He is the only F/O of mine who wears glasses without it being a trope or fetishized; never once does his canon mention anything about him being vision impaired or label him a “nerd” “prude” or xyz. He simply is who he is and the script does not tear him apart for what he looks like, which is extremely uncommon. 

Jacob is such an imaginative soul and I would give anything for him to have every bit of love the world has to offer him. I am in awe of how passionate he is about his work and how often he finds the time to work on his book and the importance of it to him. It ripped me apart when he had to leave his book to burn in the forest fire and he thought that it had been destroyed; the amount of time it had taken him to craft such a lengthy work must have been years in the making. I cannot fathom the soul-crushing weight of believing all had been lost. I could see how much pain was held in his eyes when Will forced him to leave it behind like that; he deserved to be able to grab it. The fire had not spread to it yet and he was only a few feet away from it. Will should have let him grab it quickly and then they could have escaped. Jacob deserves to be valued for his talents and skills, even though they are different from Will’s. Jacob is focused on what he wants to achieve and there is nothing wrong with the fact that he has a more child-like spirit. 

I detest that his brother countlessly reminded him of the time when he bought those “magic beans” whenever his sister needed medicine. Jacob was aware of how silly he had been; he felt remorse, apologized, not only that but he also had to live with the consequences of his actions on his conscience day in and day out, but he had been just a child. He was not old enough to fully understand the consequences of his actions at the time because he was not mature enough to process that far in advance. Will was still a child as well, but he was older and should not have used this horrible example as a way to torture his brother and make him question himself for years and years and years. 

Jacob never meant harm to anyone; he is always content to work on his stories and I like to believe that the only reasons he went into business conning people with his brother are because he wants to, hopefully, encounter real folklore and because he has to have money to survive. He is proud of his work and he writes down everything that he can so that he can process through various ideas for his book. I admire him so very much for how much effort he puts into the things that are important to him and I wish I could help him with his writing. Collaborating with Jacob would be a dream come true. 

Every action of his and every twist and turn of his story arc were incredible; he is fascinating and gentle and irrisistably cute. He was constantly living in the shadow of his brother and women rarely paid any attention to him at all. Even in the bar scene when Will told him to come to bed with them (Will and the two girls), Jacob did not want to and I can only imagine it was partially because he knew he would be sidelined, but also because he wants something more like in his storybook. He deserves a kind of love that puts the stories to shame. 

The only thing that Jacob and I do not see eye to eye on (as far as we know as of yet) is that he has no fear of heights. Whenever he was atop the castle tower, I felt my heart lurch. Watching him totter across those uneven shingles on the rooftop made my legs turn to jelly and I wanted nothing more than to scoop him up and hold him close so he would not fall; I could not have been as brave as him. I admire his bravery for entering the castle tower by swinging in through the window. I never could have done so myself; Jacob is more than capable of taking care of himself and I love that about him. 

For once, Jacob deserves to share a love wherein he does not feel it will be threatened by his brother. He knows Will means well, but it is shown time and again that Jacob falls into second place when placed next to his brother. Even with Angelika, after Jacob shared a kiss with her, Will did the same and she seemed to prefer it that way; the ending showed neither of them “winning her heart” (which is fine lmao more Jakey for me😂), but that she again kisses them both, so it seems to me that even though Jacob bared his soul to her and gave her a real kiss, she still entertained a love for Will and for that reason do I feel that Jacob could always do better. He loves so entirely that even in a life or death moment, he did what he did for his brother. Do I think that he kissed Angelika because he loved her? No. Do I think it still worked because the brotherly love he has for Will is just that strong? Yes. My point: all brothers fight with each other, but nothing can ever stand in the way of familial love which is that strong. Even though I do not agree with every decision Will has made in terms of how he treats Jacob, but I do think that their love for each other is pure and that they need each other to coexist. 

Jacob deserves to know the other side of love in a relationship with someone who wants to hold his hands, kiss his lips, hug him tight and treats him like first prize, because Jacob is a prize, not because he is an object but because anyone would be lucky to find someone as perfect as him.  

And Jacob cuddling his pillow is my favorite picture ever:

[ohnoiyo-yoyle]

Okay people it’s back!!! The extremely unnecessarily long rambles/highlights/reactions that I make with every episode is back! Unlike previous rambles I actually wrote these down as I was watching the episode instead of after the episode. And boy was it a long one. Which is why I’m splitting it up into two parts. ANYWAYS! Without further ado

Leafy Plush!!!! L e a f y P l u s h!!!!

Oh!! They actually have a place to stay!!

At least they acknowledge sleeping outside sucks

“On second thought, there’s not enough room in here for them” “I think there’s plenty enough room” “Okay, let me rephrase what I said. Haha, they’re outside”

They’re being so mean to Leafy they’re having a party without her!!!!! But also

This is cute ^^^

Oh? Will we finally see what’s in his diary? (Spoiler alert: no. no we will not)

So to add on to Four’s “not so legal snooping, he’s also committed theft......hmm

Taco and Leafy friendship!!!!!LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE TOGETHER PLAYING JUMP ROPE!!!!!!!!!

Taco appreciation!!!!!

oh no not the flower pot :o

Oh so THATS why there weren’t any prizes last time. I didn’t notice that

56,990 votes!!!!!!! At least 10,000 votes e a c h!!!!!!! Bfb really has grown huh?

Yay! Woody’s safe!!! I had a feeling he’d get a lot of votes so I voted Taco instead of him in the end

WOODY DANCE!!! Also Woody in sunglasses hehe

AAAYYY THE SONG’S BACK!!!

An almost 4 way tie?!??!??!

OH NO PLEASE DONT BE TACO!!!!!!! PLEASE NO!!!!!

1 VOTE DIFFERENCE?!??!!??? IM SO TENSE RN LIKE-

Oh!!!! The BRB!!!! We finally get to see it!!!!!

X yeeted himself away

Big Rotating Building..... oh...... Oh N O

Firey’s gonna have a hell of a time if he ever gets eliminated

Props to whoever animated that tho like that does not look easy to animate

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! TACOOOOOOOO!!!!! MY GIRL!!!!!!! SHE SEEMED SO SAD AND DISSAPOINTED!!!!!!!

Taco was the big sister of the group.....Now there’s no one to to hold the brain cell for the team

Court?

*Clap Clap* :)

OOH!! A court case!!! This is a good challenge

Yay! Moral support from X!!!

AAAWWW SHE GAVE TD A TYPEWRITER SO SHE CAN TALK AND HAVE SOMETHING TO DO!!!!

“Sorry I murdered her”

Gelatin going full on lawyer mode!!!

Jet flying class

Gelatin’s just so done with Blocky like

Blocky you can’t just explain the joke!! That’ll only ruin it!

Tappity Tappity :)

HEAD PATS FOR TD!!!! TD APPRECIATION LIKE LOOK AT THIS!!!!!

The first time they’re able to understand Woody and he pulls a prank to impress Blocky

AAAWWWW THEYRE BONDING

Ummmm..... Woody.... vision??

Haha Medusa Taco

Bravery juice

oh no Leafy

OOH!!!! Gelatin and Lollipop team up and handshake!!!!! Cool!!!!!

[lgcminjun]

INTRO :: LONG JOURNEY ——— like butterfly wings

the end of the trimester marks a new point in hwang minjun’s life. through the many twists and turns, he’s gradually shaping himself and spreading his wings.

minjun isn’t my first muse of the year, but he is the one i’ve grown incredibly attached to, with connections i never imagined he’d have. i missed the halfway point of the year, i meant to post this on his birthday, july 10th, but better late than never, right? this also serves as a thank you to everyone who plotted with minjun—he continues to develop as a character because of you all, both he and i can’t thank you enough !

PERSONALITY

not a lot has changed in terms of his personality, he continues to be a person eager to please, an overachiever at times, to the point where he’d push himself a little too far. he’s learning to overcome this flaw, to let others take care of him, listen when he’s being told that he’s working too hard. to give himself a break when he needs it. he’s opening his arms to different types of people, more than happy to accommodate all types of personalities if it meant building friendships. at the end of the day, he still has a lot of love to give.

CAREER

the beginning of it all—the valentines event drew out minjun’s infamous aegyo, which went viral within the blink of an eye. it may not be as significant as what follows, but it’s still an event that brings a smile to his face.

fear accompanied him when he auditioned for project origin, but the experience made him realise something important—what matters is that he stayed true to himself as he performs, gives it very best with every little stomp and twist, pour all he can with each move. and eventually, he’ll be rewarded.

type zero chipped away at his confidence, the pressures of being a replacement were heavy on his shoulders. gradually, he learns that he doesn’t have to deal with it on his own—after all, type zero is a group first and foremost, lifting one another up. it’s fine to be himself, he doesn’t need to pretend to be someone else.

being a part of project origin and legacy boys gave him opportunities he wouldn’t dare imagine even in his wildest dreams. the tour opened his eyes to new heights, brought him out of his shell, introduced him to a greater stage, one he had the privilege to perform on, including a solo performance. boarding a plane hadn’t been easy, minjun never ventured so far before. it’s a terrifying experience, but one he wouldn’t erase.

RELATIONSHIPS a recap of minjun’s connections thus far, from his point of view.

minjun finds himself facing pages of the past when he reunites with ( @lgcinsoo ), a fellow dancer from his old days that he used to admire. to his surprise, the reunion was far from awkward, ending with a promise to hang out whenever they find the time. though they’re walking different paths now, minjun will always be rooting for insoo. he hopes the time they hang out again will come soon.

( @lgcjiho ) had been another plushie collector, and was the person who managed to draw out minjun’s aegyo, causing him to go viral. in a way, minjun owes jiho his thanks, even more so for always seeming so eager to join him in his little tea parties. he believes project origin drew the two even closer, what with their shared fear for airplanes. they comforted one another like friends would, minjun won’t forget that day.

not all has been smooth sailing, he hit stormy waves when he went overboard with ( @lgchunji ). he’s not sure what he had done wrong specifically, but he knows it had to do with his desire to extend his hand even though he had been warned against it. minjun wants to fix things, tape back the string of friendship that he had broken. however, that isn’t his decision to make. either way, he can only hope hunji is thriving with whatever it is he’s doing. hunji helped him realise that there is merit to sticking to his own lane, to not shove himself into situations that doesn’t concern him.

he tried again to help someone else, ( @lgceunji ) this time. seeing her in a seemingly bad state after the prank worried him, and he did what he can do. offer a silent comfort and company, then gifting her one of his prized possessions, a small bear plushie. he intends to check up on her every now and then, even if he’s busy with the tour. he thinks of her as a little sister he wants to protect.

although it took a few days to adjust, he found friends among the type zero members. his worries were eased after his conversation with ( @lgcxking ), and minjun isn’t shy to admit that he admires the other for his determination and strong will. king’s bravery shown throughout the tour, like when king invited him to bungee jump, but also when king challenged himself to take part in babysitting services. he has a lot of respect for king.

among the project origin members, he finds himself adoring ( @lgcharu ), someone he can’t help but feel like he wants to take care of. discussing their characters aided minjun in figuring out how to ease himself into musical acting, something he had never done before. he had a lot of fun with haru throughout the tour as well, spending a part of their chuseok holidays together.

his encounter with ( @lgcemil ) had been one he hadn’t expected, meeting the other in the practice room when he intended to practice into the late night. he can’t hide his concern for emil, and although he doesn’t want to overstep his boundaries, he wants to become a friend that emil can count on whenever he’s feeling a little down.

there are a few special mentions. ( @lgceunho ) bonded with him when they were locked in a practice room, and although minjun would rather not get himself in such a situation ever again, he’s glad he had been stuck with eunho, who is a fun person to be around. panicking with ( @lgcxminseok ) over the april fools prank and playing with the animals in the shelter was a delightful time. during the project origin tour, he had a blast with king, ( @lgcyonghwa ) and ( @lgcmax ). yonghwa seems like a reliable older brother that minjun can count on. max’s bursts of energy draws out his own, there’s never a boring time with max. he didn’t know ( @lgcjueun ) before babysitting services, but as it turns out, taking care of kids together is another good way to bond.

YOON SHINHA ——— forever you are my star

( @lgcshinha ) appeared to him like a storm, wrecking his world in the best way possible. he encountered the enigma that is yoon shinha when he reached out towards the same cat plushie that the other did. it’s an out of the blue suggestion when he said they should share the plushie instead, but he wouldn’t have it any other day. that was the beginning of something beautiful—an encounter with an impact that will last a lifetime.

it’s a little funny when it turns out they ended up as roommates, but that makes it easier for them to take care of their little family. looking back, minjun isn’t sure when exactly things started to change between the two of them, where they drew the line between friendship and something else. it’s hard for minjun not to fall for shinha though, not when shinha took care of him like no one else ever had. the illusion of having a family with the other felt more real as days go by, to the point where minjun is afraid that he’d eventually do what he does best: overstep and ruin everything.

he had never, for the life of him, thought that shinha would feel the same way. and yet, after a long night of rigorous practice and a shared night in their dorm with no one else around, they laid their feelings out on the table. it all happened too fast, but it still felt like it was yesterday. minjun recalled the beating of his heart picking up pace, too quick for him to keep up. he remembers the tears that were in the corner of his eyes, ever the emotional person he was. but they left things up in the air, until...

july 10th, minjun’s birthday and the day the stars aligned. shinha keeps proving himself as someone minjun can’t help but think he doesn’t deserve sometimes. the gifts shinha bestowed upon him that day is enough to make his heart swell, he remembers feeling as if he’ll burst. a mix of emotions coursed through him that day, but overall he can say that he’s elated, he’s in love. that is further confirmed when shinha asked him out, and the tears he usually would try so hard to hide flowed almost endlessly. they became one that day, but minjun feels as if they were always one.

with project origin taking most of his time, he wasn’t granted enough time to spend with his beloved, but he can’t complain—not out loud, at the very least. the tour had been an experience minjun wouldn’t trade for the world, yet he finds himself thinking about shinha whenever he’s alone with his thoughts. texts and video calls weren’t nearly enough, he missed shinha’s presence by his side most of all. it was torture, but he believes in shinha, in their relationship, in them. minjun knows they can go through whatever hardships may come.

seeing shinha again during kcon backstage brought forth the longing he had been feeling the past month. but they’re strong, if they can survive a tour, then they’ll be able to handle worse.

a new trimester begins, and future dreams is knocking on their doors. minjun doesn’t wish for much, but if he could wish for one thing—he wants the both of them to debut, together.

THE ROAD AHEAD

above all, minjun intends to debut. he knows he’s meant to be on stage, and he wants to prove that he’s worth it. he doesn’t know what future dreams will bring, but he’s eager to show off what hwang minjun can do.

there are a lot of people he still wants to befriend, particularly those who will be participating in future dreams. there may be a competitive element, however friendly rivalry isn’t a bad thing.

he’s eager to brush up on his language skills, particularly japanese. with the workshop, that may be achievable. there seems to be a strong market in japan, so he wants to try it out.

despite the fun time he experienced in babysitting services, he’s eager to try out the other two variety shows. he isn’t the best at cooking, but masterchef legacy piqued his interests.

[lilthreadsclothes]

Nothing Makes Me Smile More Than Looking Into The Face Of A Dachshund That Loves Me T Shirt From AllezyGo

All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them walt disney for the better part of my life I ve been known as a Nothing Makes Me Smile More Than Looking Into The Face Of A Dachshund That Loves Me T Shirt From AllezyGo basketball player some people those behind the scenes might have known me as a businessman but to the vast majority of people I was and am kobe bryant long time star shooting guard for the los angeles lakers few occasions over the past few years though have excited me as much as the time this past winter when I stood in the back of my office in southern california and watched my team build a puppet city canvas city out of nothing but cardboard glue and sweat not too long ago I was fully focused on basketball it consumed my existence and I was maniacal about improving and being the best in the game it was on a daily basis my life and that showed on the court I could score I could bend the flow of the game through sheer will I could to be honest dominate now though I moved around my office with purpose as I pursued another dream see I ve long been interested in the powerful art of storytelling and canvas city was going to be my first foray into utilizing animation and song to teach a global audience about basketball and life skills it s true yes that I ve taken part in documentaries and other forms of journalism until this past winter I always held something back I ve worked on edgy projects and I ve pushed the line here and there but I ve never fully given into my vision canvas city though was just that I finally felt ready we put in months and months of research and work before we even started building the set and narrative we put ourselves in a position where we felt confident we could teach kids how to better their best and achieve their full potential that doesn t mean however that we weren t still vulnerable people were going to tune into espn expecting to see and hear analysis from bryant the scorer they knew and loved instead they were going to get bryant the writer new and unknown instead of mamba mentality they were getting musecage shoot initially even my teammates on the project were caught off guard when he first presented the idea I was very surprised said patricia seely producer on canvas kobe comes from a world of sports and business so this was different it was courageous not a lot of people would put themselves out there in that way yet I went out on a limb and did just that I wrote songs aimed at adolescents I invented phrases primed for hashtag fame I built a large city in my modest office convinced espn it was worth 10 minutes and introduced the world to my inner mind I was all in and I convinced those around me we could pull this off kobe believed in it so much that I knew no one was going to stop this puppet train said molly carter cmo of kobe inc there will always be haters but we typically find that people are willing to accept creativity when it comes from an authentic place in the aftermath of the episode s march airing feedback came in fast and furious some people loved the idea so much that they recorded it and re watched it with their children other people took to social media to berate me I was interested more so than usual in the feedback I saw all the people who said they paused the show and brought their kids over to watch I also saw the ones that questioned my judgment my favorite out of hundreds if not thousands was probably the one that questioned whether I was a genius or insane I can laugh and I can smile I can do that because I faced down all of the boxes I was put in and stepped outside of them I pursued my vision regardless of what people previously thought of me and laid the groundwork for future puppets songs and of course episodes of canvas city like patricia once said the first episode was exhausting but the sky is now the limit all we had to do was take that first eurostep take a look at this same message in what do you do with an idea once you have an idea finding the courage to pursue it becomes the hardest part bravery in the eyes of doubters will be the most important factor in bringing your idea to life eventually others will see the beauty that you saw all along mondaymuse mambamentality. The best moments of vinicius jr’s presentation day los mejores momentos de la presentación de vinicius jr en el real madrid c f welcomevinicius. Need a minute or ten we ve partnered with our friends stop breathe think to bring you mindful moments that will help you find peace anywhere click to learn more image via instagram jescatebrown Nothing Makes Me Smile More Than Looking Into The Face Of A Dachshund That Loves Me T Shirt From AllezyGo

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[whatzaoverwatch]

Prize of Victory 2: The Cold War

So many loved the first part so here comes another one! I went really long on this one so I might pull some NSFW in a part 3 if you are all interested

Part one here

Part 3 Here

It had been almost a year since you were dragged away from your falling village to be by the side of the General Lu Bu. Lead into a closed fate that you were to be his bride by the end of his battle. Village by village he conquered, laying waste to all that opposed his rule. Many had tried to fight back, but death followed suit much faster than anticipated.

But what of you? Since he had unveiled his true form to you that day, he prevented you from leaving the tent. Having himself bring you the food and other needs to keep you in good health. Refusing for any to see you within, not even his highest ranked men were allowed to see your beauty. You were merely a delicate flower he kept to himself until he had his rightful place on the throne.

The contact between you was very limited. He hardly spoke to you when he returned, bringing you your food and clothes then leaving for his next line of work. He never advanced towards you nor shown his face again. Only speaking a few words from the questions you asked and then leaving you alone. You were the only one that warmed the bed at night (roaming in your thoughts on whether or not he gained any rest). You could tell when he did watch you sleep, as the air in the tent grew colder. Feeling the yearning to join you, but finding that slight bit of resistance to carry on.

It was said that Lu Bu never gained injuries, but something always felt uncertain on battles that didn’t go as planned. He was more silent and brief on his visit, leaving you with the concern of his condition. Fearing you would only make him upset if you asked; however something within you knew he wouldn’t raise a voice nor hand to you.

You felt it, even when you first arrived. It was as if he did not intend to take you during his war. As if the entire plan was rushed and taking you away was a last minute decision. Maybe your village was ready to fight back. Or perhaps something in his strategy forced himself to find your village. You didn’t understand why, but overtime you grew accustomed to your fate.

It wasn’t as if he was cruel to you, at least he took care of you. Of course it was merely a cover to the harsh reality that he did burn your village and took you away from your home. But home was nothing more than a distant memory. This was now your home, and one event solidified your ease into that conundrum.

It was the near end of the year, and the winter was ever so cruel to the army. The limit of food and supplies was evident with Lu Bus visits. You questioned if everything was alright, but he only assured you not to worry about it. But the agitation behind his mask was clearly shown. The tent walls were thin, and you could hear the distasteful mutterings of the guards.

“We’ve been at this war for too long. When’s the bastard going to realize there’s nothing to conquer?”

“All he does is rip the shreds off poor villages and spoils that girl he has in his tent.”

“Is the bloody princess still even alive? Thought by now he’d have his share then discard her.”

It left you uneasy in your stomach. The trust and loyalty was becoming evident and you knew your protection was becoming limited. Then one morning, as the General had left for a battle strategy meeting, you were suddenly greeted by some unfamiliar faces entering the tent. Startling you considering the fact that only Lu Bu was to visit.

At first, you did nothing. Just staring at the three guards as they took a gander at the room. Bringing an uneasy aura of boldness and discomfort when they spotted you. Your doe eyes showing nothing but innocence, huddling by the bedside for warmth. Stomach churning when their faces grew smiles of wickedness.

“Well well, so you really are still around,” one of the guards stated while the other two made certain to eye your outfit up and down, “Such a pretty little thing to be wasted inside.”

“Y-You aren’t supposed to be in here.” You told them with a hint of fear in your tone. Making them aware of their intimidation. Taking bigger strides with a chuckle as one approached you.

“Oh come now, surely you must not like being all bundled up here by our rotten general. If you’d like, we can take you outside for some fresh air.” He beckoned you to approach him, like he meant no harm. But you stayed in your place.

“Or how about you help us poor freezing men with some of your heat.” Another piped up, exposing their further intention with a snicker. You quickly rose from your position, knowing they were more than willing to corner you.

“S-Stay away from me.” You warned. They mocked your bravery with laughter with a snatch of your wrist. You squirmed frantically as they held you firmly in place.

“Such spirit even after all this time,” The man teased and leaned in closer, his murky alcohol tainted breath brushing against your skin, “I’m sure the general wouldn’t mind if we tasted his so called queen in the meantime.”

You felt fear like no other. Not even Lu Bus face gave you the same fear as this man did. Praying for once that he was here instead of these guards. Shaking like a leaf as you tried to push him away from his advances. You could feel your body weakening to the man’s grip and laughter. Before he could manage to grab you and throw you onto the bed, a sudden scream of terror came from the tent opening.

Drawing both of your attention towards the two other guards. Soldiers becoming nothing more than bleeding corpses. One held by the throat in a limp by none other than Lu Bu himself. His yellow eyes glowing against the mask as you could feel the displeasure in his presence. The stance presenting upmost authority above the already dead guard by his feet. Your meek little gasp drew his attention, causing the man that held you to tremble in upmost fear.

“Release her.” his voice growled to the man as you felt his grip on you weaken by his mistake.

A stir kicked inside you by the way he commanded the guard. Not in the sense of fear, but by comfort. The man instantly knew the disadvantage of turning against the general as he immediately let you go onto the bed. Falling to his knees into a bowing position before him.

“F-Forgive me sir! I-I didn’t mean to…I-“His begging was cut when Lu Bu released the other soldier out of the tent. Taking slow but intimidating steps towards the man. You felt this uneasy aura around Lu Bu the closer he approached.

“Not a spine left in you? I expected more of a fight. I can see why I have yet to take back my land,” He stated with every bit of displeasure in his tone. Grabbing the man by his collar, he lifted him up with ease to look him in the eye. Stiffening yourself as you expected him to slaughter the man before you. As the man squirmed the generals grasp, Lu Bu drew his attention towards you. Hesitating for a second to make his move only to turn around with the soldier, “You will set an example for any who approach their future queen.”

Relief washed over you as that yellow gaze was his silent statement to forget your worries. Leaving with the panicking guard alongside the other bleeding warriors to your isolation. It was only a moment until you realized what he addressed you as: the future queen. It was still such a surreal topic. All this time and still desired for you to be by his side. It left you to rest against the bedside, thinking on it until he had returned later in the evening.

You had no time to address him as he quickly made his way over to your side. It startled you as he sat on the side of the bed. He was hunched over, slowly breathing against his mask, as if to relax himself. Just noticing that he was partly shaking while you sat up.

“Are they…” You managed to speak out, only to let your words fall when he looked over at you. He didn’t need to answer the obvious as you knew they would never be seen again. Noticing his hands curl into fists, as if hesitating to move them before breathing out.

“Did they hurt you?” You felt the heaviness in his voice when he asked.

A pang of guilt could be felt within like he shouldn’t have left you alone. Finding it within yourself to place a hand over his own. Watching his presence tense when you touched him, only for it to ease a little bit. The bruise from when he grabbed you was hardly noticeable, but enough to catch his attention. Turning his gaze to you, you felt your heart leap seeing another side of him show. A side that worried as he gently held your hand, but still hesitating from the tenderness. You shook your head when he expected a response.

“No, they didn’t,” Despite the bruise, you were lucky to gain nothing else from the encounter. He looked back to the floor, letting his thumb brush gently across your wrist as if he remained focused on it. Drawing his attention away when you spoke once more, “Thank you…for saving me.”

“I should’ve known this would happen,” he confessed, a roughness in his tone that you hadn’t heard, “the army is losing their trust. The empire should’ve been mine by now.”

“It will be,” he turned to you, stunned by your words that you were even shocked to say. You meekly shrugged as you lowered your head, “if you continue to show them that you can rule, then I don’t see why not.”

You had no idea where this was coming from. Maybe the long isolation was getting to you, or maybe this was something you knew was inevitable the moment you heard about him. He had every sign to be a king, and something within him showed a glimmer of once ruling a kingdom before. He huffed, reaching over to gently brush his thumb across your cheek. You could feel he wanted to say so much, only to pull back once more.

“You should rest.” He told you, shifting to make his leave. Your hold on his hand stilled him, causing his gaze to still fixate on you.

“Can you stay with me? Just for tonight,” You asked, feeling a flutter in your chest as you asked. He seemed uncertain until you shuffled closer, “I would feel much safer in the arms of the great Lu Bu.”

For the first time since you had known him, you heard him chuckle. Not in a sense of a deranged psychopath laughter, but one out of complete amusement. Shaking his head, he took your hand with a sigh.

“You do not have to address me as Lu Bu.” You blinked, seeing him hesitate to remove his helmet before you. Suddenly taking the first move to remove it as you spoke.

“Then what would you prefer instead?”

It had been months since the last time you saw his face. Having spotted more scars than you remembered before your eyes. Exhaustion clearly seen in his eyes as he looked to you with shame. Clearly detested by his appearance before you, showing the man underneath the general. But the fear of him never arose, he was a rather handsome man under the evidence of age and war. You felt him wanting to take the helmet back onto his head. However you surprised him when you cupped his jawline. Letting his gaze continue to fixate onto you, like you were the only light in his world. Reaching his hand to hold yours on his face, he told you his true name that not a single living soul had known. Solidifying his trust and devotion to keep you all to himself.

“Call me Gabriel, [Name].”

[juniemunie]

HTTYD Books: How To Ride a Dragon’s Storm Commentary :P (w/text pictures!)

((shoutout to astrid-the-fearless that started the whole thing and giving me permission <3))

Yoooo this is how far I’m in the books right now thanks to the blessing of pdfs and I thought; “Hey? Lemme try reacting to this!!” 

Mind you, this is ridiculously long and it’s all because of the pictures I added in lmao so peruse for your amusement ((I might continue this just for kicks :P))

So it begins!

-everything went wrong when the fire nation attacked

-OOh! Swimming competition?? Don’t count me in!! I’m terrible at swimming, in  fact, I don’t know how to do it at all!!! :DDD

-of course the competition has to have a spice of suicidal bravery and possible death

-clueless, tf dude

-aRE WE GONNa TIME TRaVEL??? WHaTS THE WHOLE aLaRM THING OLD WRINKLY??? EXPLaINNNN HoW DID U EVEN KNOW????

-the judges are basically 99% old dudes 99% of the time

-aweeee toothless u cutie

-snotlout my boy, sometimes i really want to strangle u, u know

-yooo sTOICK U'RE DOING UR BEST THE BEST ISNT aLaWYS THE MOST OBVIOUS he's trying im proud that he's trying

-good ol teamwork

-nONONONONO DONT TRUST EM 

-u got bamboozled 

-only in the near end of his life, yeah

-oh man hes gonna kill em again 

-same

-awe, she's just like meatlug

-uh oh

-bet y'all it gets worse

-damn straight

-sHOOT CaMI NOOO-

-i hear the Jaw's theme song guys

-tOOTHLESS KEEPS TRYING ;-;

-well you're a jolly dragon23

-how was this marketed for children again

-brUH U SERIOUS?? I JUST THOUGHT IT Was only nORBERT

-woh fist time getting a look on nobert and he looks cool

-whoops u gon axe him again??

-u mean an unfortunate series of events??? wink wink

-i wouldn't go there if i were you its completely messy there

-buddy this dude has survived so many times out of pure dumb luck

-theres still more to go hiccup so much more

-awww this is such a throwback to the first book

-norbert is a crazy inventive dude i wanna see how well he goes with movie hiccup in the right circumstances :/

-thats a problem

-im not sure whether to be terrified or impressed

-yoooo hiccup youre right youre prize is absolute misery

oh no

-whoops i guess this is where he became a slave??

-bitter grandma is bitter than all my mates when discussing love42

-oH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD THIS IS IT HES GOING TO BECOME a SLaVE  HOLD ME

-nONONONONONONONO NOOOOOOOO

-my poor boy my POOR BOY

-oh man i knew this already but its still giving me shivers

-look at these drunk cuties lmao

-perfect excuse toothless hiccup totally believes u

-yOOO dragon nip exists in the books too!!!??

-This is one happy lot

-( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

-Uh oh

-Look at this happy boy <3

-U sure??? I don’t think so

-Oh shit.

-oHHHH shitTTTT

-u aint wrong tho

-hahahaAHAHAHAHA not yET

-well fuck

-YO. WATCH YOUR FUCKING LANGUAGE.

-Oh. My fucking god.

-pHYSICS  WHY WOULD YOU BETRAY US-

-Knock knock its death’s doorstep

-Chances are, it wont.

-yEP

-“dafuq, why the hell is he running at us??” “maybe he’s given up”

“is it just me or is that an eye back there? “oh sHIT-“

-Y’all these kids know the drill already

-Toothless’ still asleep during the whole ordeal lmao

-So that’s how it works…69

-Stuff like that usually happens boyo they’ll prolly be back

-Poor Ronald.

-Not anOTHER ONE

-Shouldve made a spare and changed it while you were still in the border smh *Cinema Sins Ding*

-same

-a terrifying but intriguing thought.

-These sweet loyal kids backin up their parents yo ((Poor Fishlegs))

-i like the books that they portray a more worrier Stoick but the movieversion is also great too

-DON’T BELIEVE IT STOICK

-This LITTLE SHIT

-what??? really?? That’s a dumb revenge excuse :/

-We DON’T

-Holy shit he survived ((just like his third son cOUGH COUGH))

-In short; “Sorry to disappoint the masses, but I AM STILL ALIVE”83

-YOOOOO OLD WRINKLY KNEW??? HE’S AWESOME aND INSaNE!

-Poor stoick, tbh if he was movie stoick he’d have a heartattack by now

-Shit I feel bit teary in the eyes-DON’T LOOK AT ME!

-True just like this post that has way too much pictures like tf

-Sweet, but WHY WOULD yOU LEaVE THEM BEHIND???

-tbh this is both true

-Basically every country that was going to pillage America

-Oh shit times up

-whA-AA-At???

-Hiccup u little shit

-Discrimination between hair color too??? Jesus. Just when I thought skin colors -were ridiculous

-Have I told y’all I love sword fighting hiccup?? Because I do

-Nooo not his poor beard agaIN

-Oh. Oh no.

-fuck.

-Godzilla??? That u??

-tHINK aGaIN

-Tbh cats are sometimes really cruel ; - ;

-Nope. Theres always a chance of death bro

-OF COURSE IT WaS.

-This ridiculously huge shit

-Geezus. You’re fucked hiccup.

-Press F to pay respect

-ToothLESS HICCUP IS GONNa FUCKIN DIE

-TOOTHLESS U LITTLE SHIT

-Tbh, he does have a point

-Friendly reminder hiccup wrote this himself

-Hiccup the Insane. Sounds about right

-Me procrastinating some stuff i cant procrastinate while everything is going wrong

-yOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

-yOOOOOOOO tf he doin??

-“yo bro”

“yeah loki?”

“some kid’s asking for your help. It’s getting pretty intense.”

“really? Lemme see”

“see?”

*whistles* “wow, he’s crazy. I like it.”

-“wtf is this dumb redhead doing??” everyone thought simultaneously

-oHHHHHH LIGHTNING LIKES METaL!!!!

-Benjamin Franklin can eat HIS HEaRT OUT123

“wow thor, you actually helped”

“¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

“how tf did you say that”

-Ship: If I die, I die with STYLE.((Like Grimbeard fucker sang to his death while burning his entire kingdom down))

-SWIM FISHLEGS SWIM ((wow he c an swim now amazing what near death experiences teach you))

-Poor toothless ; - ;126

-Itsss the cirrccccleeeeee the ciiirrrccclleeeee of liiiiiifeeeee

-Lets hope I wont learn to swim in this emotionally draining way 0-0

-Tbh this is kinda terrifying imagine if they died this way 0-0

-I KNEW THEYD BE BaCK YOU BETTER BRING HICCUP aBOaRD U LITTLE SHIT

-Oh thank god

-In short; “we have ship standards, peasants.”

-LaTE FOR a VERY IMPORTaNT DaTE

-G G. u did ur best lol

-yEEEE YOU BEST KNOW IT HICCUP Me BOYYY

-They gONNa FLYYYYY

-FISHLEGS MY BOY WERE GONNa DO IT WHETHER U WaNT TO OR NOT

-That’s THE TRUE CHIEFTaN WaY BOIS EXaCTLY HOW STOICK DIED- I mean shit uh

-Awww berk would love u back in their own way too

-*sobbing in the distance* ((fuckin alvin))

-yOU BET THEY ALL ARE

-“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!” screamed the Reader.

-Happy sweet old senile future guessing dudes make me happy ; v ;

-How tf would it be deer

-Just like Grimbeard did.

-YOOOO IM SO PROUD OF YOU FISHLEGSSSS

-“IM SORRY TO DISAPPOINT THE MASSES, BUT I AM STILL ALIVE.”

-SNOTLOUT DO U WANT TO BE DEAD??? ((before your proper death))

-When Old Wrinkly is mad at u, you better be ashamed of urself.

-He really is Grimbeard’s Heir ain’t he? ; v ;

-Uhhh more common than u think boyo *turns to Harry Potter*

-oooHHH u done for gumboil

-My heart kindly says mercy, but my mind screams revenge

-SHit stop giving me ides to draWWWWW

-Somethings are often just found at home <3 like my MISSING PENCIL WHERE TF IS IT

-Summary of Httyd 2 Hiccup

-SO MUCH WISDOM IN THE EPILOGUE HICCUP SLOW DOWN

-Nooo HICCUPPPP- THE DRagONSSSSS

-DON’T REMIND ME OF THE SLaVEMaRK U CRUEL BEING

wow

that was a ride from start to end. (pUN INTENDED)

things are getting intensee

*scrambles to read the next book*

[volantium]

lateral move the last instalment of the first prize bravery ‘verse 

read it here on ao3 

for @sheps-shepherd 💘

“I’m eating that.”

“No, you’re not,” Harley replies, taking a bite of the granola bar he’s just plucked from Peter’s hand. “I am.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Peter says, as if he doesn’t do the exact same thing all the time.

He swallows. “Apologies, darlin’.”

Peter hums, and winds his arms around Harley’s neck. “Lucky I love you, I guess.”

“I guess so,” Harley replies, chomping down the last bite of the bar.

Peter just draws him closer, presses a kiss to Harley’s temple before resting his chin on Harley’s head. They stay like that for a while. Just existing together, soft and gentle in the mid-morning light. Peter plays with the hairs curling at the back of his neck and Harley thinks there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

“We are disgustingly domestic,” Harley says, laughing into Peter’s neck, pressing a kiss to his pulse point. “I’m disgusted.”

“We’re engaged,” Peter replies, like that explains everything. “We’re getting married.”

Harley has a brief moment of panic, a brief moment of how in the actual fuck did I end up here kind of panic. Because if you’d ask him where he’d be at this age, he would’ve said dead in a ditch somewhere. Or still stuck in Tennessee, in a town he hated and one that hated him, with nowhere to go but further down. Wasted potential and all that. He never would’ve imagined this; laughing in the kitchen on his own apartment, with the love of his life, along with the best family he could’ve asked for, and most of all—happy.

And yet, here he is. Despite it all.

Peter quietens, as if he knows Harley’s thoughts. In all honesty, he probably does. They’ve spent so long besides each other, irrelevant of that fact that it took them forever to finally admit to the depths of their feelings, that Harley knows Peter knows what Harley’s thinking. In that way that only comes with time and over-exposure to a person, so much so that they’ve begun to blur.

“I am lucky, you know?” Harley asks, leaning back to look Peter in the eye. “I’m so lucky you love me.”

Peter just smiles at him softly, and Harley knows. Harley knows Peter understands him.

[iambeyn-blog]

ILOCOS SUR

HISTORY OF ILOCOS SUR

The story of Ilocos Sur can be told in the same historical events and episodes which fill the pages of our country’s past. It is similar narrative of conquest, exploitation, persecution, revolution and emancipation as the Philippines. The great men and women of Ilocos Sur who sailed forth from her native bosom into the limelight of history wrote with their immortal deeds of bravery, courage, and heroism the records and chronicles of the times. Indeed, the Ilocos Sur story reads like excerpts of the Philippine history, chapters of the Filipino saga made unforgettable by the exploits and achievements of Ilocos Sur’s sons and daughters through the long march of our country and the progress of our people from the era of colonialism to the sunlight of liberty and freedom. Today, history lives in Ilocos Sur. In Vigan, the famed Villa Fernandina founded in1574 by Juan de Salcedo, grandson of the Adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, the hand of history is everywhere, in the imposing monuments and statues standing as permanent tributes to the memory of illustrious dead, on the markers of stone and the memorial tablets upon the hollowed grounds where long ago a martyr was born, where a famous poetess lived, where a President taught as a humble barrio teacher. These markers and inscriptions are veritable readings a history, citing here and there “a chapel of wood and thatch erected on this site, 1574,” “an earthquake in 1619’,” “a fire in 1739”, recording the seizure by revolutionists under Col. Juan Villamor, and the detention by American forces as a political leader, Mena Crisologo 1899. Of Ilocos Sur, history records that three years after the founding of the City of Manila, Legaspi dispatched the ‘conquistador’ Salcedo on a mission of exploration and conquest to the north in the island of Luzon. Salcedo established the Ciudad Fernandina in honor of King Ferdinand, the reigning ruler of Spain at the time, and for his reward was granted a rohyal “encomienda” and named Lieutenant-Governor for the whole Ilocos.

CULTURE AND TRADITIONS OF ILOCOS SUR

Ilocanos strive hard to make a living, difficulty is never a hindrance to their success. To and Ilocano, hardships can easily be overcome. He believes in the value of study, industry and patience; thus, every Ilocano family encourages the children to go to school and learn skills to find better paying jobs and consequently, have a better life. Most customs and traditions of the Ilocanos are influence by their frugality. From the cradle to the grave, the Ilocano rituals reflect what they believe in. Death to the Ilocanos means great sorrow. If the father dies, the wife dresses the deceased alone so that her husband's spirit can tell her any messages or wish he was not able to convey when he was still alive.

The body is placed in a coffin in the middle of the house parallel to the slats of the floor. A big log is is then lighted in front of the houses so that the spirit of the dead will go to heaven with the smoke. As long as the dead body is in the house, the log is kept burning to keep the evil spirit away. During the wake, the members of the family keep vigil. The women wear black clothes and a black manto (handkerchief) to cover the head and the shoulders. Before the coffin is carried out of the house all windows must be closed; No part of the house must be touched by the coffin; otherwise the man's spirit will stay behind and bring trouble to the family. Family members shampoo their hair with gogo as soon as the funeral is over to wash away the power of the dead man's spirit. Prayers are said every night for the next nine nights. After each night's prayer, rice cakes and basi are served to all guests. The period of mourning ends on the ninth day when relatives and friends spend the day feasting and praying. The first death anniversary will then be another occasion for feasting and praying.

Ilocano’s famous writers and their works

Ilocano literature is one of the most colorful regional Filipino literatures. It is one of the most active tributaries to the general Philippine literature next to Tagalog, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Bikol, and Pangasinense.

Prior to the Spanish colonial period, the Ilocano literature is purely alive in form of written and oral literature. The ancient Ilocano poets expressed themselves in folk and war songs. Another popular form of literature was the dallot, which is an improvised, versified and impromptu long poem delivered in a sing-song manner.

When the Spaniards arrived in Ilocos Norte in 1572, it took a toll on Ilocano literature. During the Spanish era, Ilocano poetry was heavily influenced by Spanish poetry. The earliest known written Ilocano poems were the romances translated from Spanish by Francisco Lopez. Lopez was an Augustinian friar who published his Iloko translation of the Doctrina Cristiana (first book published in the Philippines by Cardinal Bellarmine) in 1621.

The Christian missionaries started using religious and secular literature to advance their mission of converting the Ilocanos to Christianity during the 18th century. In 1719, Fr. Jacinto Rivera published the Sumario de las Indulgencias. In 1845, Fr. Antonio Meija published The Pasion, which is an Iloco translation of St. Vincent Ferrer’s sermon.

Today, Ilocano writers are known to have published their works in foreign countries. Francisco Sionil-Jose (F. Sionil Jose) is the most internationally translated Filipino author. He is a pure blood Ilocano born in Rosales, Pangasinan. Contemporary Ilocano writers are also known to bag numerous major awards in the most prestigious Philippine literature award giving body, the Palanca Awards.

Biag ni Lam-ang

Biag ni Lam-ang (Life of Lam-ang) is a pre-Hispanic poem of the Ilocano people. It was finally written down around 1640 by Pedro Bucaneg. Bucaneg is the first known Ilocano poet and was dubbed as the “Father of Ilokano Poetry and Literature”.

The epic tells about the heroism of a brave, almost-mythical Ilocano warrior named Lam-ang.

Lam-ang is born from a noble Ilocano family. Nine months before Lam-ang’s birth, Don Juan (father) left for the mountains to defeat an evil tribe of Igorots. Unfortunately, Don Juan was beheaded. His head was displayed at the center of the village as a prize.

Ina Namongan (mother) was surprised to learn that her son could talk immediately after birth. Lam-ang chose his own name, chose his own sponsor, and asked for his father’s presence. He was barely 9 months old when Lam-ang fought against the headhunters who killed his father. He was also eaten by a river monster (Berkakan) and was reborn from his retrieved bones.

[imagineunderneaththemountaindeep]

Ooh could I request UT!Asgore headcanons please? I love the big fluffball

Glad to oblige, doll~ I also didn’t know whether or not you meant General Headcanons or Romantic Headcanons, so you’re getting both. Enjoy~!

-When he arrives onto the Surface after the Barrier breaks, he finds a small cottage just outside of Ebbott City, right in a cove of tall aspens with a assortment of many ponds and creeks surrounding. It’s a gorgeous plot of land, which makes up for the tiny size of the home. Asgore wanted something more modest when he and his citizens moved into the world above, but, after a few months of being on the Surface and owning his chalet, his flower garden is anything but modest as it bursts and bleeds with vibrancy. He managed to make his little valley a painting of happiness and colour within the short period of time he was bestowed with. Buttercups are the centerpiece of the entire garden, but they’re bunched together with daisies, begonias, hydrangeas, daffodils, tulips, violets, and he even preens a prize-winning pink rose bush that takes its stand right under his kitchen window.

-He gave up being King of the Monsters when Mt. Ebbott’s Barrier was destroyed. He believes that he doesn’t deserve the title anymore, consider all of the horrible things he’d done to Frisk and all of the poor children before them. Giving his people hope beneath his own prejudice… he doesn’t even believe that he is still meant to be blessed with a beating SOUL and a solid body anymore. Frisk convinced him to become their partner in crime when it came to being an ambassador, but that’s all he’s willing to do. All he wants is some quietness in his life so he may repent.

-No human child that fell before Frisk had been directly killed by Asgore. PATIENCE was killed in the Ruins by Vegetoids and the spiders. BRAVERY was captured by the Royal Guard in Snowdin and was slaughtered because they fought back too hard. INTEGRITY bumped into Undyne in Waterfall, but they managed to escape and hide in some grass. They perished because of their wounds after they dragged themselves behind a sheet of water (in the secret cavern) in attempt to hide from Undyne. PERSEVERANCE met their demise off of the bridge in Waterfall. They were knocked off by Undyne, and then the Head of the Guard then proceeded to gloat her victory to Gerson by bringing him their remains. KINDNESS bled internally from blunt-force trauma brought upon them by a Tsunderplane. JUSTICE made it to MTT Resort before being the co-star of Cooking with a Killer Robot. Bratty and Catty then took their items because the besties associated the gun and the hat with MTT’s killer performance. Asgore still blamed himself for every death. Every ounce of pain. Every drop of blood. He’ll never get over it.

-A flower crown was the first gift he ever gave you. It was weaved delicately with dandelions, daisies, carnations, buttercups, and every variant of your favourite flower he could manage to grow. It was beautiful and honestly a very genuine gift because of the meanings of the flowers. Dandelions mean persevering through life’s challenges, daisies mean loyal love, carnations have the meaning of pure love and the implication that the recipient is lovely, and buttercups have the tendency of saying ‘your charm dazzles me’. The connotation of your preferred bundle of petals is dependent on what that bundle of petals is, but nevertheless. He also tells you that each blossom has a meaning, and is very fluent in those meanings. He speaks through them when he can’t find the words to speak aloud.

-His favourite thing to do with you is to sit on a love-seat near his bay window, sipping at Golden Flower tea, with you leaned against him and the slight hum of classical music in the background. Many if not all of the dates he takes you on are quiet, such as afternoon trips to the local tea house or slow strolls through the woods that encircle Mt. Ebbott before dusk, just so that you can watch the sunset together. He prefers to stay out of the city as much as possible, and he just wants you to understand the reasons he loves his solitude. He’s still terrified of you finding out about his past and leaving him for his sins (and he doesn’t blame you; he’d leave him, too), but he’ll still try to make you as happy and comfortable as possible when you’re with him. Because, hey; you are the newest and only light in his life. He will cherish your warmth for as long as he’s allowed.

-He melts into any kind of affection after becoming sure of your presence. His hugs are the best for these reasons; he’s big, he’s strong, he’s gentle, he smells like flowers, and he’s s o f t. They don’t call him Fluffybuns for nothing. He just kind of envelops you in his arms and suddenly you’re in a safe cocoon of contentment and love, because this goober adores you. His kisses are also silky, but they do have the downside of tickling a bit when his nose twitches, which is an involuntary movement he’s gotten used to doing when something brushes against his nostrils. Whilst on the topic of schnozes, he also sneezes like a kitten. It’s adorable, send help.

-His nicknames for you are ‘dear’, ‘buttercup’, and ‘my flower’. He also has so much free time on his paws that he writes you little poems, stories, and paints you small pictures with all those hours he has to himself. He plants them in your coat pockets, into your lunch bag, and/or into your backpack for you to find throughout the day to read the sappy and affectionate words he spent hours writing, just so that they could be as poetic and as heartfelt as possible. He overthinks all of them, but I swear to god, if you don’t love every single one of those beautiful little notes then there’s something seriously wrong with you.

~Mod Jellyfish~

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: Lady and the Tramp

(Image: omeroyaar.com)

For warped reasons of splashy attention and an internal need to top themselves, the overfilled four-film 2019 slate of Disney re-imaginings have favored the gaudy, garish, and just plain loud. Granted, flashy noise appears to makes money, but it does not say much for the true quality of the picture. With unending charm and quaint simplicity, Disney+’s delightful Lady and the Tramp remake proves the old adage of “less is more.” All year long, its mainstream blockbuster peers tried every costly artificial and technological height to be a blaring chorus of bells and whistles, when all that was really needed were some cute, real animals backed often by a swanky band.

This new film is a wise and modest update to one of Disney’s best romances of its Silver Age. By utilizing actual dogs, many of which are rescued pets at that, with a mild computerized varnish, feels more tangible than fake in one of these Disney re-imaginings for the first time in a long time. This restraint of creative prudence is what defines its humble disposition and winning achievements.

Coming to life from the overhead illustrations of Dean Tschetter, Lady and the Tramp descends upon a stunning Victorian home on Christmas morning in the early 20th century. The young newlywed Jim Dear (Me, Earl and the Dying Girl’s Thomas Mann) gifts his wife Darling (Kiersey Clemons of Hearts Beat Loud) a cocker spaniel puppy. Given the name Lady and voiced by Tessa Thompson, the prized pet, through her bedspace takeovers, endears herself as a member of the family, one that is growing by a human bundle of joy at the same time Lady earns her official collar and tag.

LESSON #1: BABY MOVES IN, DOG MOVES OUT — In what should be a trauma listed right there with Stockholm Syndrome, a new baby will almost always absorb adult time and previously undivided attention away from four-legged best friends, even an easy-to-love one like Lady. Like its animated predecessor, this Lady and the Tramp keeps its roots in the imagined psychology and personification of what this might be like from the animal’s perspective.

When a dog-sitting misunderstanding with Aunt Sarah (Community favorite Yvette Nicole Brown) leads to a muzzle purchase and a runaway escape, Lady meets the slick, free-spirited loner Schnauzer, voiced by Justin Theroux, who would come to favor Tramp above his other temporary names around town. He teaches the well-groomed neophyte the owner-less life on the streets avoiding the persistent local dog catcher (Adrian Martinez of Focus). Scrapes lead to scraps and noodles turn into canoodled kinship as the two become close.

LESSON #2: THE PLIGHT OF THE HOMELESS — Family films, animated or otherwise, do enjoy their moments of addressing a societal problem in an approachable fashion. Lady and the Tramp then and now, with its riches-to-rags and rags-to-riches reversals, puts storytelling to the difference between being self-reliant and truly alone without the value of loving relationships. In a way, pets have that two with the shelter and adoption processes. Seeing this cuddly classic story play out with real animals better set off a spike in pet adoptions across the country.

LESSON #3: THE AUDIBLE VOLUME OF BRAVERY, CONFIDENCE, LOYALTY — The manifested personal improvement steps of Lady and the Tramp involve audibilizing in different ways. Lady has never asserted herself with a howl while the brash Tramp has never vocalized his broken feelings. She hasn’t found courage and he hasn’t learned to trust others again. Both help each other with those utterances which bring them together and crack Lesson #2. After all just as Darling extols “we’re not a family without you.”

Thanks to its period-era setting and the lively ragtime jazz of its Savannah, Georgia locale, there is a jazzy flair to everything. That pep gives a new pace to the barky banter shared between Theroux and Thompson. The supporting voice cast, led by the dual-threat Janelle Monae, a saucy Benedict Wong, Scotswoman Ashley Jensen, and gristle of Sam Elliott, are excellent and distinctive additions. Strolling and walking on two feet instead of four, even the human actors add little eccentricities to match the light style without anyone being over-the-top whatsoever. By the time Arturo Castro and F. Murray Abraham serenade their “Bella Notte,” you’re in heaven right there with the love-struck pooches.

In every major and minute production detail, tangible textures and patiently composed feels imbue the dainty enchantment of the movie, and they come from very unexpected sources. One would think the director of The LEGO Ninjago Movie would make something wildly feverish. At the same time, one might also expect the very adult mumblecore filmmaker responsible for Funny Ha Ha and Support the Girls to never involved himself in a Disney romance with dogs. Additionally, Yet, here are director Charlie Bean and lead writer Andrew Bujalski (with a boost from newcomer Kari Granlund) disarming us all with their own sprinkles of magic. The unexpected artistic transitions did not end there.

Legendary costume designer and four-time Academy Award winner Colleen Atwood graced this film with her period-era presence in a spot where the lead characters are never adorned with threaded finery. John Myhre, the two-time Oscar-winning production designer behind the stage numbers of Chicago, Nine, and Memoirs of a Geisha, created grand sweep within the sumptuous architectural antiquities of Savannah. 28 Days Later and Bumblebee cinematographer Enrique Chediak traded chasing zombies and robots with handheld cameras for the stable dollies following the darting dogs under legs and wheels on cobblestone streets. The live-action velocity of this Lady and the Tramp required marvelous training from lead animal coordinator Mark Forbes and a fair bit of stunts for San Andreas coordinator Bob Brown.

Even Tron: Legacy and Only the Brave electronic music veteran Joseph Trapenese finds himself channeling his The Greatest Showman side with pleasant orchestrations that evoke and retain much of the original Sonny Burke and Peggy Lee music from 64 years ago. Co-star Janelle Monae is a welcome new voice for Burke and Lee’s lyrics who does not try to overpower what already works as it is.

To have an effortless and bewitching finished film come from this kind of collection of diverse talent working out of their usual elements demonstrates a measured, inspired, and carefully minded level of production. Nothing is over-amplified and the result is more family-friendly than most of the action-ified re-imaginings of the calendar year from the Mouse House. Once again, it is a concerted effort not to do too much or be too big. This confluence cannot be complemented enough. This movie alone is worth your first month of the new subscription streaming service.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#839)

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[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – June 15, 2020

What I’m reading: 

I am almost in despair for the way the pandemic has reduced my reading time, some combination of longer days, lack of plane time, and mental distraction, I think. However, I just finished Marguerite Yourcenar’s magisterial Memoirs of Hadrian, a historical novel, though I hesitate to call it that because A) she would likely reject the term, B) it is so much more, and C) it stands among the towering pieces of mid-century literature for so many. It’s that last point about which I feel so sheepish. As a reasonably well-read person, how did I miss this one? It is a work of stunning achievement (don’t miss her exhaustive bibliography or end notes), highly refined style, and as much philosophy as anything else. It won’t be for everyone and you have to power through the first chapter, but it is a remarkable book. I’m intrigued to use it as a reading on leadership.

What I’m watching:

When I can finally turn off the computer screen, I find myself drawn to the television screen for its less demanding passivity. Pat and I absolutely reveled in the ten-minute installments of State of the Union (Sundance Channel), written by Nick Hornby, one of my favorite writers. It is stunningly good – witty, smart, warm, painful, and powered by the chemistry of its two utterly charming leads, Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd. It’s just two people – funny and smart – trying to salvage their marriage and talking, in ten-minute snippets, in a pub and no one writes dialogue like Hornby. We devoured it. If you asked me to watch two people talk about their marriage for 100 minutes, I’d have said “no thanks.” But this was sheer, unequivocal delight. And because all great comedy is closely related to tragedy, there is more substance and depth and complexity here than sheer delight might suggest.  

I don’t usually do two recommendations in my categories, but we also watched Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods. It is long, flawed, and uneven – but Spike Lee remains one of our most brilliant directors and Delroy Lindo already has my vote for Best Male Actor for his Shakespearian performance as one of the four buddies who go back to Vietnam to reclaim treasure, find the remains of their friend, and address the trauma of the war they fought then and the war fought against them as Black men in America. Even flawed Spike Lee is better than 95% of what makes it onto the screen and while made before George Floyd’s death, it feels so well suited for the time. Powerful.

What I’m listening to: 

Protest music. Chronological and cleaned up for listening at home (if we could include the f-word, it would be a lot longer (see Nipsey Hussle or Kendrick Lamar), Pat put it together and you can find the playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3z1W5Dbfcn7F9LBFcayTqa?si=u2oxkMTkSFef7_sQy3cNXw

Archive 

April 1, 2020

What I’m listening to: 

Out of nowhere and 8 years since his last recording, Bob Dylan last Thursday dropped a new single, the 17-minute (the longest Dylan song ever) “Murder Most Foul.” It’s ostensibly about the murder of President John F. Kennedy, but it’s bigger, more incisive, and elegiac than that alone. The music is gorgeous, his singing is lovely (a phrase rarely used for Dylan even in his prime), and he shows why he was deserving of his 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s worth listening to again and again. The man is a cultural treasure and as relevant as ever.

What I’m reading: 

The Milkman by Anna Burns, the 2018 Booker Prize winner, felt like slow going for the first bit, a leisurely stream of consciousness (not my favorite thing) first person tale of an adolescent girl during “the troubles” in 1970’s Northern Ireland. And then enough plot emerges to pull the reader along and tie the frequent and increasingly delightful digressions into the psychology of terror, sexual threat, adolescence, and a community (and world) that will create your narrative and your identity no matter what you know and believe about yourself. It’s layered, full of black humor, and powerful. It also somehow resonates for our times, where we navigate a newfound dread. It’s way more enjoyable than I just made it sound. One of my favorite reads of this young year.

What I’m watching:

I escaped back in time and started re-watching the first season of The West Wing. It is a vision – nostalgic, romantic, perhaps never true – of political leadership driven by higher purpose, American ideals, and moral intelligence. It does not pretend that politics can’t be craven, self-serving, and transactional, but the good guys mostly win in The West Wing, the acting is delightful, and Sorkin’s dialogue zings back and forth in the way of classic Hollywood movies of the 50s – smart, quick, funny. It reminds me – as has often happened during our current crisis – that most people are good and want their community to be a better place. When we appeal to our ideals instead of our fears, we are capable of great things. It’s a nice escape.

February 3, 2020

What I’m listening to: 

Spending 21 hours on airplanes (Singapore to Tokyo to Boston) provides lots of time for listening and in an airport shop I picked up a Rolling Stones magazine that listed the top ten albums of the last ten years. I’ve been systematically working through them, starting with Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I just don’t know enough about hip hop and rap to offer any intelligent analysis of the music, and I have always thought of Kanye as kind of crazy (that may still be true), but the music is layered and extravagant and genre-bending. The lyrics seem fascinating and self-reflective, especially around fame and excess and Kanye’s specialty, self-promoting aggrandizement. Too many people I know remain stuck in the music of their youth and while I love those songs too, it feels important to listen to today’s music and what it has to tell us about life and lives far different than our own. And in a case like Twisted Fantasy, it’s just great music and that’s its own justification.

What I’m reading: 

I went back to an old favorite, Richard Russo’s Straight Man. If you work in academia, this is a must-read and while written 22 years ago, it still rings true and current. The “hero” of the novel is William Henry Devereaux Jr., the chair of the English Department in a second-tier public university in small-town Pennsylvania. The book is laugh aloud funny (the opening chapter and story about old Red puts me in hysterics every time I read it) and like the best comedy, it taps into the complexity and pains of life in very substantial ways. Devereaux is insufferable in most ways and yet we root for him, mostly because A) he is so damn funny and B) is self-deprecating. But there is also a big heartedness in Russo’s writing and a recognition that everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and life’s essential dramas play out fully in the most modest of places and for the most ordinary of people. 

What I’m watching:

I can’t pretend to have an abiding interest in cheerleading, but I devoured the six-episode Netflix series Cheer, about the cheerleading squad at Navarro College, a small two-year college in rural Texas that is a cheerleading powerhouse, winning the National Championship 14 times under the direction of Coach Monica Aldama, the Bill Belichick of cheering. I have a new respect and admiration for the athleticism and demands of cheering (and wonder about the cavalier handling of injuries), but the series is about so much more. It’s about team, about love, about grit and perseverance, bravery, trust, about kids and growing up and loss, and…well, it’s about almost everything and it will make you laugh and cry and exult. It is just terrific.

January 2, 2020

What I’m listening to: 

I was never really an Amy Winehouse fan and I don’t listen to much jazz or blue-eyed soul. Recently, eight years after she died at only 27, I heard her single Tears Dry On Their Own and I was hooked (the song was on someone’s “ten things I’d want on a deserted island” list). Since then, I’ve been playing her almost every day. I started the documentary about her, Amy, and stopped. I didn’t much like her. Or, more accurately, I didn’t much like the signals of her own eventual destruction that were evident early on. I think it was D. H. Lawrence that once said “Trust the art, not the artist.” Sometimes it is better not to know too much and just relish the sheer artistry of the work. Winehouse’s Back to Black, which was named one of the best albums of 2007, is as fresh and painful and amazing 13 years later.

What I’m reading: 

Alan Bennett’s lovely novella An Uncommon Reader is a what-if tale, wondering what it would mean if Queen Elizabeth II suddenly became a reader. Because of a lucked upon book mobile on palace grounds, she becomes just that, much to the consternation of her staff and with all kinds of delicious consequences, including curiosity, imagination, self-awareness, and growing disregard for pomp. With an ill-framed suggestion, reading becomes writing and provides a surprise ending. For all of us who love books, this is a finely wrought and delightful love poem to the power of books for readers and writers alike. Imagine if all our leaders were readers (sigh).

What I’m watching:

I’m a huge fan of many things – The National, Boston sports teams, BMW motorcycles, Pho – but there is a stage of life, typically adolescence, when fandom changes the universe, provides a lens to finally understand the world and, more importantly, yourself, in profound ways. My wife Pat would say Joni Mitchell did that for her. Gurinder Chadha’s wonderful film Blinded By The Light captures the power of discovery when Javed, the son of struggling Pakistani immigrants in a dead end place during a dead end time (the Thatcher period, from which Britain has never recovered: see Brexit), hears Springsteen and is forever changed. The movie, sometimes musical, sometimes comedy, and often bubbling with energy, has more heft than it might seem at first. There is pain in a father struggling to retain his dignity while he fails to provide, the father and son tension in so many immigrant families (I lived some of that), and what it means to be an outsider in the only culture you actually have ever known. 

November 25, 2019

My pop picks are usually a combination of three things: what I am listening to, reading, and watching. But last week I happily combined all three. That is, I went to NYC last week and saw two shows. The first was Cyrano, starring Game of Thrones superstar Peter Dinklage in the title role, with Jasmine Cephas Jones as Roxanne. She was Peggy in the original Hamilton cast and has an amazing voice. The music was written by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, two members of my favorite band, The National, with lyrics by lead singer Matt Berninger and his wife Carin Besser. Erica Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife, directs. Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play is light, dated, and melodramatic, but this production was delightful. Dinklage owns the stage, a master, and his deep bass voice, not all that great for singing, but commanding in the delivery of every line, was somehow a plaintive and resonant counterpoint to Cephas Jones’ soaring voice. In the original Cyrano, the title character’s large nose marks him as outsider and ”other,” but Dinklage was born with achondroplasia, the cause of his dwarfism, and there is a kind of resonance in his performance that feels like pain not acted, but known. Deeply. It takes this rather lightweight play and gives it depth. Even if it didn’t, not everything has to be deep and profound – there is joy in seeing something executed so darn well. Cyrano was delightfully satisfying.

The other show was the much lauded Aaron Sorkin rendition of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring another actor at the very top of his game, Ed Harris. This is a Mockingbird for our times, one in which iconic Atticus Finch’s idealistic “you have to live in someone else’s skin” feels naive in the face of hateful racism and anti-Semitism. The Black characters in the play get more voice, if not agency, in the stage play than they do in the book, especially housekeeper Calpurnia, who voices incredulity at Finch’s faith in his neighbors and reminds us that he does not pay the price of his patience. She does. And Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape – “convicted at the moment he was accused,” Whatever West Wing was for Sorkin – and I dearly loved that show – this is a play for a broken United States, where racism abounds and does so with sanction by those in power. As our daughter said, “I think Trump broke Aaron Sorkin.” It was as powerful a thing I’ve seen on stage in years.  

With both plays, I was reminded of the magic that is live theater. 

October 31, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

It drove his critics crazy that Obama was the coolest president we ever had and his summer 2019 playlist on Spotify simply confirms that reality. It has been on repeat for me. From Drake to Lizzo (God I love her) to Steely Dan to Raphael Saadiq to Sinatra (who I skip every time – I’m not buying the nostalgia), his carefully curated list reflects not only his infinite coolness, but the breadth of his interests and generosity of taste. I love the music, but I love even more the image of Michelle and him rocking out somewhere far from Washington’s madness, as much as I miss them both.

What I’m reading: 

I struggled with Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo for the first 50 pages, worried that she’d drag out every tired trope of Mid-Eastern society, but I fell for her main characters and their journey as refugees from Syria to England. Parts of this book were hard to read and very dark, because that is the plight of so many refugees and she doesn’t shy away from those realities and the enormous toll they take on displaced people. It’s a hard read, but there is light too – in resilience, in love, in friendships, the small tender gestures of people tossed together in a heartless world. Lefteri volunteered in Greek refugee programs, spent a lot of interviewing people, and the book feels true, and importantly, heartfelt.

What I’m watching:

Soap opera meets Shakespeare, deliciously malevolent and operatic, Succession has been our favorite series this season. Loosely based on the Murdochs and their media empire (don’t believe the denials), this was our must watch television on Sunday nights, filling the void left by Game of Thrones. The acting is over-the-top good, the frequent comedy dark, the writing brilliant, and the music superb. We found ourselves quoting lines after every episode. Like the hilarious; “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the Myspace of STDs.” Watch it so we can talk about that season 2 finale.

August 30, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but the New York Times new 1619 podcast is just terrific, as is the whole project, which observes the sale of the first enslaved human beings on our shores 400 years ago. The first episode, “The Fight for a True Democracy” is a remarkable overview (in a mere 44 minutes) of the centrality of racism and slavery in the American story over those 400 years. It should be mandatory listening in every high school in the country. I’m eager for the next episodes. Side note: I am addicted to The Daily podcast, which gives more color and detail to the NY Times stories I read in print (yes, print), and reminds me of how smart and thoughtful are those journalists who give us real news. We need them now more than ever.

What I’m reading: 

Colson Whitehead has done it again. The Nickel Boys, his new novel, is a worthy successor to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad, and because it is closer to our time, based on the real-life horrors of a Florida reform school, and written a time of resurgent White Supremacy, it hits even harder and with more urgency than its predecessor. Maybe because we can read Underground Railroad with a sense of “that was history,” but one can’t read Nickel Boys without the lurking feeling that such horrors persist today and the monsters that perpetrate such horrors walk among us. They often hold press conferences.

What I’m watching:

Queer Eye, the Netflix remake of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy some ten years later, is wondrously entertaining, but it also feels adroitly aligned with our dysfunctional times. Episode three has a conversation with Karamo Brown, one of the fab five, and a Georgia small town cop (and Trump supporter) that feels unscripted and unexpected and reminds us of how little actual conversation seems to be taking place in our divided country. Oh, for more car rides such as the one they take in that moment, when a chasm is bridged, if only for a few minutes. Set in the South, it is often a refreshing and affirming response to what it means to be male at a time of toxic masculinity and the overdue catharsis and pain of the #MeToo movement. Did I mention? It’s really fun.

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading: 

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching: 

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirrorand Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life.  While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading: 

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library.  It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more.  It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching: 

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading: 

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous. 

What I’m watching: 

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s  AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we���ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018 

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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