#for liking more genres than just amy grant

[strxnged]

i loooove how my mom criticizes 9/10 forms of media i enjoy btw!!

[onlymingyus]

Hallmark Moment: Daddy's Day

pairing; kim mingyu x f reader

genre; fluff, slightly suggestive

warnings; dad!mingyu, mom!reader, kids, mention of reader's mom, slightly suggestive conversation at the end, pregnancy

w/c; 1.7k and some change 

requested; no

hallmark moment ONE (fluff) & TWO (fluff/smut)

a/n; this is probably the last of the hallmark moment series. i just needed to write something sweet and happy. i wasn't planning on posting anything or writing anything but i needed it. i hope you enjoy it. the header was clearly the inspiration, but the cake of course has nothing to do with the story so just work with me here.

A small, exaggerated gasp escapes the young girl’s lips as she rolls over the couch with a toy foam sword in hand. Amy laughs as she bounces off the cushion finding it only slightly difficult to get to her feet so she can point her sword in the direction of where she and Mina had deemed the evil wizard was. 

“Back, back I say! You’ll never take our daddy from us.” 

Mingyu grins to himself, reaching up to adjust the plastic crown that Mina had placed there a few minutes before. The ring on his pinky just barely fit on his finger to his first knuckle but it seemed to make both his daughters happy. He had let them put on both earrings and the necklace without any sighs of a fuss.

Days like this were Mingyu’s favorites. It had been just over six months since the adoptions had been finalized making Mina his, and Amy yours. Days like these reminded him how important that had been to you both when you had spoken your wedding vows not only to each other but to each of the girls just over a year ago. 

With a laugh, Mingyu reaches out to catch Mina when she steps back stumbling over the rug in her valiant battle with the unseen wizard. The small girl grins from ear to ear, melting his heart as he helps her back to her feet so she can continue her task. 

Instead of a sword, Mina had chosen to brandish the magic wand that had come in the princess dress-up package that Mingyu was now wearing most of. With a flick of her wrist, Mina points with the silver and blue wand dramatically. 

“Your magic is no match for mine. I’m the best, right Daddy?” 

Soft, beautiful eyes that were the same shade as yours look to Mingyu for validation. There was no way he couldn’t respond properly. 

“Oh, absolutely sweetheart. You are the best I have ever seen with magic.” 

Amy giggles at her dad’s words, her sword slicing through the air with more flex than necessary. The sword was showing its age but she didn’t seem to mind, just simply enjoying her time playing. 

“And what about me?” 

Mingyu smiles brightly matching Amy’s smile. Shaking his head, Mingyu takes in a deep breath extending his arms out towards the girls with the same dramatic acting they had been using the entire afternoon. 

“I’ve never felt safer knowing you and your sword is in front of me Knight Amy of the House of Kim.” 

With seemingly renewed confidence both girls charge at the imaginary evil wizard as Mingyu watches with amusement in his eyes. It’s only when the girls cheer at their own victory does he join in clutching at his chest at how they had saved him and his kingdom. 

“I knew I could count on my brave protectors. Once again my kingdom is safe.” 

Mingyu laughs when both girls run over to him to pounce on him smothering him with hugs. His arms wrap around them letting them curl into his form so they can already begin to gossip amongst themselves about how well they did. Taking the wand from Mina’s hand, Mingyu sits it on the couch behind him only to do the same with the foam sword. 

Moving into the living room as silently as possible, you can’t help but smile at the sight in front of you. Your eyes move with the movement of Mingyu’s fingers pushing through both of the girl’s hair as they babble excitedly about some kingdom, wizards, and a princess. With your hand resting on your lower back you move into the room catching Mingyu’s attention first granting yourself his bright smile. 

“Hey, beautiful.” 

At his words, both of your daughters spring into action clambering from your husband’s side to move to hug you as best they can. Your own smile seems to warm the room making Mingyu take in a deeper breath as if he could inhale the happiness and keep it forever. Neither of you would get tired of his, seeing each other with the girls, seeing them happy like this. 

“Hi, Mommy!” 

“Mommy, oh my gosh. We saved Daddy from a wizard. We saved the entire kingdom!” 

Your sweet laugh causes Mingyu’s smile to move toward his eyes. You were so attentive, he watches as Amy and Mina lead you to the armchair helping you to sit down so they can start to recount the entire story. How Princess Daddy was trapped in his tower by the evil wizard and Knight Amy and Sorcerer Mina found him and took care of the evil. 

Glancing at Mingyu, you simply bite at your lips giving him a good once over with his crown, Mina’s wand now between his fingers as he lets his hand hang over his knee. He was the best father for your children that you could have ever asked for. The thought of him like this was enough to make you feel warm and for your heart to beat faster. 

“I am so glad you saved Princess Daddy. I love him very much and would have been so very sad if something had happened to him, but look how lucky I am that I have you two to keep him safe even when I am away. I love you both.” 

You watch as both girls seem to swell with pride at your words feeling like they are on top of the world at making you happy and keeping the house safe while you had your evening away from the house. Leaning to press a kiss to each of their cheeks you laugh against Mina’s skin when you hear her try to hide a yawn. 

“Being a hero is very hard work. I think it’s time for bed.” 

Mingyu watches you for a moment, your hand moving to the arm of your chair as you start to try to stand only for him to move more quickly.

“Please, let me put my brave heroes to bed tonight. Say goodnight to Mommy.” 

Letting out a relieved breath you smile up at Mingyu who winks at you before you have both girls draped over you. Your arms wrapped around them you give them more kisses whispering how much you love them and for them to sleep well. 

Mingyu glances back at you mouthing that he will be back soon, his hands gently guiding both girls toward their room and finally into their beds. Leaning down over Mina’s bed, Mingyu presses a kiss to her forehead making her smile. 

“Goodnight sweetheart. I love you.” 

Mina wiggles further down into her covers, her small hand reaching up to caress her dad’s cheek making the man lean into the gentle touch. It still amazed Mingyu how much someone so small could make him melt so easily. 

Reaching up, Mingyu removes the crown from his head placing it on top of the girl’s head smiling at the sound of her laugh. Moving his eyes and then his feet towards the other twin bed, Mingyu takes Amy’s hand into his own lifting it to his lips to press a kiss to each small finger before grinning at hearing another sweet laugh. 

“I love you, Daddy. I’m really glad we saved you.” 

And I love you too. You can save me anytime, but you know I’d do the same for you, right?” 

Amy smiles tiredly, her eyes beginning to close as she nods causing Mingyu to laugh softly. Slipping the ring from his pinky he puts it onto her index finger before leaning to press a kiss to his daughter’s cheek. His words whispered against her skin making her smile as she drifts off to sleep. 

“Goodnight, angel.” 

Mingyu only lingers in the room for a moment, his eyes moving from one bed to the other. He wanted to make sure both of his daughters were safe and comfortable. Soft happy sighs and snores told him that they were and that it was okay for him to pull the door shut and return to you. 

Seeing you still sitting in the chair, your left hand moving slowly over the swell of your stomach causes Mingyu to stop in the archway. He wished he had his camera handy. He wanted to capture little moments like this forever. 

Swallowing hard, Mingyu takes a step causing the floorboards the creak drawing your attention and making you smile when you see him reaching up to take off the last of the jewelry the girls had placed on him earlier. He only stops long enough to drop them onto the couch before moving next to you leaning down to press a soft lingering kiss to your soft lips that seem to make you lose your breath. 

“I missed you, but I hope you had a good evening with your mom. You deserved a break, baby.” 

His words were spoken against your lips, making you smile once again. Your fingernails gently scratch over the nightly stubble at his jaw causing Mingyu to grunt as he pulls away to look at you. Moving to stand in front of you, Mingyu lowers himself to sit on his heels so he is more level with your still-growing belly as your eyes move over his face. 

“I missed you too, and the girls. I’m glad you had fun with them, but I did need it.” 

The last of your words come out as a small laugh when you feel Mingyu’s hand run over your stomach, tickling you even slightly. A small whispered apology slips from his lips before your husband leans to kiss your stomach and rest his chin against it lightly to look up at you. 

Your fingers run through his hair gently, you tilt your head to look at him lovingly. You loved moments like this. You loved how much he clearly loved you and your family. How much, Mingyu loved the little boy the two of you had made together now growing inside of you. Shaking your head, you smile running your fingers along the side of Mingyu’s face and feeling him lean into your touch before he speaks. 

“Let me run you bath?” 

Nodding, you bite your bottom lip as Mingyu turns his head to press a kiss to your palm. 

“Only if you join me.” 

Mingyu smiles against your hand before nodding in agreement. 

“I’d love to, beautiful.” 

please note that I am doing my best to tag -- tags are now down in reblogs -- all of you who have filled out the tag list form but tumblr won’t let me tag some of you. I think that is because either you have tags turned off or possibly a blank tumblr page. consider reblogging some of the fics you like from me or other writers. ♥

© onlymingyus - all rights reserved. Reposting/modifying of any fic, or pieces of original writings posted on this blog is not allowed. Translations not allowed. 

[mlqueen89]

Pairing: Steven Grant/Marc Spector/Jake Lockley x OFC 

Word Count: 5,042 

Tags & Warnings: violence & mentions of violence (blame Jake) but relatively PG-13. 

Genre: Fluff, hurt/comfort, touch her and die, one-shot. 

Summary: In which Steven’s crush becomes a mutual moon boy crush. 

A/N: So this thing started out as a random thought I had about Steven “pebbling” when he likes someone. It turned into this.  

Sorry, not sorry. I’ll turn my mind back to the things I promised I’d do after this brief, but cool thing I did. Look, it’s shiny.  

Be kiiiiind, I’ve watched Moon Knight exactly two times, once when I told my partner that I wouldn’t watch it without him but did anyway and then the next time when I had to pretend to be surprised by the episodes when he inevitably wanted to watch it. If anyone gets the Latte Macchiato reference in relation to the moon boys, you’ll be my best friend forever.

Steven Grant felt more like Steven Grant than he had in a very very long time.  

That was, if he didn’t count actively thinking about himself in the third person and that there was no way he could hide the fact he walked three blocks out of his way to go to this coffee shop every morning for almost a month.  

Especially not from them. 

The bell over the front door was tinkling before Marc, ever present, ever watchful, ever knowing, chimed in, Steven catching his reflection in the glass of the door. You know we know what you're thinking, right? 

Steven smiled nervously, more to himself, and less to anyone in particular, as he tucked in at the end of the line three people long.  

“Not now. I'm getting coffee,” Steven rasped, thankful the din of the small shop masked his whispers. 

You sure about that?  

Steven hated how smug Marc sounded.  

He never let Steven be when it came to women. Especially beautiful women. Wasn’t it enough that Steven was painfully awkward on his own? He didn’t need Marc’s help messing it up, he was perfectly capable of doing that on his own. 

Three weeks. It had taken Steven three weeks to work up the courage to order a coffee here, from her.   

Three weeks of walking to the front door, apologizing for being in the way as people tried to get in and out while Marc told him this was a dumb idea.  

Three weeks of talking to himself in the shower, creating a conversation that never existed because he couldn’t bring himself to walk through the door.  

Three weeks of almosts and maybes and Marc telling him to get it together. So here he was, now, finally getting coffee.  

Steven stepped up to the counter his eyes focused on the petite brunette behind the till, the green apron she wore hiding a vintage AC/DC shirt just underneath, the ink of hidden tattoos peeking out from under her sleeves.  

“Hi, hiya-” Steven cleared his throat, his eyes searching for a name tag quickly, “… uhm?” 

“Ami - like Amy, but Ah-mee,” Ami smiled a smile that reached her eyes, pushed them up in the corners, accentuating the almond shape of them. Ami smiled like she hadn’t spent her whole life explaining her name instead of choosing one that would have been pronounced properly—Beth or Milly or Emma. “Hi, Steven.”  

Steven started, “I —uh.” She knew his name? How could she know his name? 

Ami quietly tapped the front of her own name tag and Steven’s eyes drew down to the one clipped to his shirt, peeking out from under his own jacket. Right. Of course.  

“What can I get for you?” Ami said, the sound of her smile in her voice. 

“I uhm—a coffee?”  

Marc snort-chuckled in his mind and Steven wished he could bring his eyes to meet the vision of Marc hanging around in the reflective surface of the shiny coffee machine. Three weeks of shower auditions and you didn’t think this far ahead? Order a black coffee, get out of her hair, it’s her job to smile at you.  

“I don’t want a black coffee.” 

“No black coffee. Got it.” Ami’s voice was light, cheerful and it had Steven’s imagination chugging along at speed as she chewed the inside of her cheek in thought, her eyes studying him, analyzing.  

Was she always this cheerful in the morning? If she looked hard enough, could she see Marc, sarcastic and perpetually perturbed and Jake, dark and dangerous, sitting behind his eyes? Steven wondered.  

“How about I surprise you then?” 

Steven nodded and shifted his weight. “I like surprises.” Steven didn’t like surprises named Marc or Jake, didn’t like surprises that shared his body and moved him around like a puppet, an unseen hand wiggling around his insides. 

Ami drummed her fingers on the register for a moment, her eyes moving to search the ether for a moment longer before she made a small noise that sounded like a eureka moment. “I’ve got it. You seem like a latte macchiato kind of guy.” 

Steven smiled, a shaky kind of smile that he felt would look encouraging. Latte macchiato sounded nice. 

Ami moved to the machine with too many handles and buttons, sweeping around behind the counter as she made the drink. Steven moved with her on the other side of the counter, watched her curiously as she concentrated on making the drink. 

“The Eye of Horus,” Ami’s eyes didn’t lift from the stirring and pouring she was busy doing. It wasn’t a question, more of an observation, but her casual tone caught Steven off-guard. 

Your geek pin, genius. Marc chimed in as Steven faltered, his eyes searching the speckled countertop. 

“Oh,” Steven reached up to the small triangle pin stuck to the breast pocket of his coat and touched it, reminding himself that it was there, tapping it twice. “Yes, right. Yeah. Protection and health. Can’t ever get enough of those, am I right?” His laugh was only a bit dry, but nervous. 

Steven bit his tongue before he launched into a deeper explanation. Marc had told him that the yammering on about ancient Egyptian deities, minor and/or major, was off-putting. People didn’t like it.  

Part of Steven wondered if Marc only said that because Layla had liked it.  

Reflection Marc flipped him off.  

Ami’s voice shook him from the scowl he fixed at the shiny surface of the steaming machine. “I loved Egyptology when I was a kid. Even took an elective in first year Uni.” Ami smiled up at him then, grabbing a lid for his coffee and pressing it on top. “Almost liked it more than my journalism course.” 

Steven smiled in response as Ami pushed the cup across the counter at him. “Here you go, latte macchiato Steven.”

Could we— Steven’s small voice itched at Marc’s right temple, scratched only in the way that it was annoying, in a way that wore a person down, a spoon digging a prison escape over the course of months. Just to say hi? 

It had been three days since the last time Steven had shuffled his way into Ami’s coffee shop and ordered another latte macchiato. Three days since Ami waved enthusiastically when she saw him walk through the door. Steven had worn the Bastet pin, backed by a colourful lotus flower and an ankh, the one from the gift shop, the one he’d asked Marion to bring in because cats sold well.  

Everyone likes cats, Marion. Steven had reasoned, pointing it out on the order form as he slid it across Marion the Merch Manager’s desk. Steven smiled in his Steven way, sparing a small, awkward, aww as he pointed to the framed photo on Marion’s desk—her miniature pinscher, Rufus Sewell, dressed as Rick O’Connell from that movie Steven had grimaced through, but secretly liked.  

Had there been an ulterior motive to approach unapproachable Marion with his disarming awkwardness? Of course—Ami liked cats; Steven had noticed the small cat tattoo curled on her skin near her elbow. 

When Ami pinned the enamel Bastet to her apron, her small squeal of surprise and the resulting radiating smile were well worth the trouble he’d gone through with Marion, immediately justifying any continued false interest in min pin Rufus Sewell’s ridiculous costumes. Steven’s heart soared; the feeling astronomical. 

“Not today, pal,” Marc muttered, his hands stuffed into his pockets and the baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes as he threw a glance over his shoulder for any sign of the tail he had managed to shake, careful not to look up into the coffee shop as he passed. 

What about that pin from the new exhibit? Jake’s voice was more pronounced, unmistakable in the attention it demanded. Marc likened Jake to the feeling of an oncoming migraine, one that caused his ears to ring, punch drunk. The bird -. 

Thoth, Steven gently corralled Jake toward the correct answer, represents wisdom and writing – very gentle. His wife, Sesh - 

Marc rolled his eyes. Hard. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, you too?”  

Marc wasn’t surprised that Steven had tripped over his dick on the coffee shop girl. What was surprising, was that Jake “cold as fucking ice, shoot you in the face to say ‘howdy’” Lockley, was, apparently, following suit. 

Ami, Steven corrected, curtly. The vision of Ami moving carefully behind the counter in the coffee shop, hair that escaped her messy bun floating around her face, bloomed in Marc’s mind. She has a name. 

Que linda, Jake murmured in agreement, his voice husky, marveling in a way that had Marc conjuring his own visions of Ami—her skin bare and soft under his touch, the granite countertop in his apartment under her as he stood between her legs, his mouth roaming, tasting her tattoos. 

“Can we focus, please?” Marc shook his head to dissipate the vision, loosening the cloud from his mind, willing the feeling that stirred within him to dissolve just as quickly. It was a miracle he was able to get anything done with Steven and Jake knocking around in there, waxing poetic about a girl.  

Call him Marc the “Last Bastion of Fucking Sanity” (hitherto referred as “LBFS”) Spector, but Marc wouldn’t fall for the cute coffee shop girl with the dimples and the tattoos. He was digging his heels in hard – he’d pull them all back from the edge before he let them drag him over the cliff with them. 

See, you’ve noticed too. Steven’s itchy voice was gleefully smug.  

Marc hated it—hated that he was right. Hated that when he looked up and through the plate glass window as he passed the store front, he could see Ami laughing with a colleague. Hated that when she looked up and caught his eye and waved, smile wide and genuine and her dimples… dimpling, he could feel himself smiling back. Above all, Marc hated that he didn’t hate it all that much. 

Marc’s stomach flopped as Jake growled something inappropriate, he didn’t quite catch, and his eyes quickly drew back to the sidewalk. 

It was the next Thursday in September before Steven found his way through the door of the coffee shop again; the Thoth enamel pin wrapped in the palm of his clammy hand. 

Just give her the pin, get your coffee and ask her out. Marc coached with a huff.  

Steven nodded, quite literally to himself, as he stood in the line three people deep, shifting nervously. 

“Pin. Coffee. Ask.” Steven counted the steps on his fingers carefully as Marc groaned, a sound that would have come with a face palm. 

Marc had argued in the mirror the night before that he should have been the one fronting when they approached Ami.  

“Out of all of us,” Marc gestured dramatically, shuffling about, sniffing shirts and tossing them aside when they didn’t pass the test, “I’m the only one who’s been married.” 

Marc picked up a cigar cutter from a small table beside the couch, dried cigar clippings stuck to the blades and littering the floor beneath. “Are you smoking this shit again?” 

Jake chuckled dryly, pointedly ignoring Marc’s question, his dark eyes following Marc’s rushed pick up of the space below the brim of the newsboy hat. You’re also the only one of us who’s been divorced, hermano. 

Steven sat quietly in the reflection of the apartment, but his bottom lip jutted out and his head titled to the side as if Jake’s point couldn’t be argued. 

I mean, Steven shrugged, he does have a fair point. Reflection Steven absently picked lint off the leg of his trousers, seemingly uninterested in the conversation at hand. 

“How many times do I have to say it—that was a mutual separation!” Marc huffed, throwing his hands up before he stalked off to wash a plate in the kitchen sink for the third time, Steven hanging around over the reflection of Marc’s shoulder.  

“Don’t make that face at me.” 

What face? Steven asked, making the face. This – this is just my face. 

“That -” Marc jabbed in the direction of Steven’s reflection with a soapy finger, eyebrow cocked, “that face.” 

When Steven woke in the morning, in control, he knew Marc had agreed—at least partially. Steven would front. 

“Pin. Coffee. As—” Steven was going through the list again, touching the tip of each finger with his thumb, his eyes on the heels of the person in line in front of him, when the shouting began. 

“Listen, bitch.” A man in a pressed suit was immediately aggressive, his stubby fingers reaching across the counter to flick the name tag pinned to her apron, “Ay-mee. I’m missing my 9 o’clock meeting for this shit.” 

Puta madre.  

Steven could feel Jake bristle somewhere in the back of his mind, the tingling feeling of brain freeze, as he jostled for dominance, willed Steven to step in.  

Jake always felt like an attack dog on a short leash. Today, that leash felt especially short and the post stuck in the ground meant to keep Jake Lockley on a leash, behind the nice white fence that was Steven’s barely held together control, wobbled in the metaphorical dirt. 

“I don’t take fucking oat milk.”  

Pressed Suit slid the drink across the counter at Ami so hard that it wobbled and tipped, the plastic lid popping off and spilling hot oat milk coffee toward Ami.  

“How many times I gotta tell you and my stupid air-headed fucking assistant? Do it again and don’t fuck it up.” 

He’s gonna take something else is a hot fucking minute. Marc leaned on the fence of Steven’s control, the old man with the shotgun stepping off the porch. Give me the body, Steven. Let me have a chat with this piece of shit. 

“No.” Steven whispered, his fist tightening around the pin in his hand until its sharp edges stung, a reminder that he was in control. “No. I can—I can handle this.” Steven squared his shoulders as he stepped out of his place in line, inflating himself with a false sense of bravado.  

What Would Marc Do? Steven thought, what would Marc do?  

Steven sized the man up, eyes scanning the too-tight tailored suit and height. Taller than him by at least a head; his arms suggested he saw the inside of a gym more than two times every four years, on purpose and not because he had to use the bathroom before he made it to work.  

Steven. Listen to me. You don’t got this, pal. Marc was shaking the metaphorical bars as Jake seethed, ready to break his bonds and stage a coup d’etat. If Marc were Steven, Steven would give the body to Marc. 

“Steven’s got this.” Steven muttered under his breath, walking past Marc’s reflection in the shiny coffee machine, “Steven’s handling—” 

“What the fuck do you want?”  

The man with the stubby fingers and the throbbing neck vein and the Bluetooth bud sticking out of his ear spat as Steven approached with a tentative, awkward wave.  

“You here to trouble-shoot this moron, man purse?”  

His eyes touched on Steven’s satchel before he motioned at Ami behind the counter as she wiped up the spilled coffee as her co-worker scuttled behind the counter, remaking the drink. 

Ami didn’t look up at him, but Steven could see the redness in her ears, the way her fingers trembled as they gripped the coffee-soaked rag. “Ami?” 

Ami’s eyes darted up, catching Steven’s careful ones and he could see then that there were tears welling up and threatening to spill. She offered him a small smile, one that moved her lips, but didn’t reach her eyes. Steven’s heart broke in two and ignited a fire, three-alarmed and white hot in his mind.  

“Oh, Ami—” he hummed, his eyes softening. 

“Talk to me, I’m talking to you.” The man pressed two fingers into Steven’s chest, pushing him back so that he stumbled over his own feet, bumping into the person standing next in line. The Thoth pin he’d been holding dropped to the floor and skittered under a nearby table as his hands searched for something to brace himself against.   

“Bollocks—” Steven made a move to pick it up, leaned forward to chase it where it had fallen under the table closest to the counter. 

Eyes up, this is an eyes up situation, Steven. Marc warned in the back of Steven’s mind.  

He could tell how badly Marc wanted to front, the way Steven’s fists flexed at his sides told him as much. 

To be fair, Marc was more experienced in this area of life—Steven didn’t have Mercenary on his CV, he barely had Fist of Khonshu under the “Summary of Qualifications” header. As he tipped forward, Steven’s eyes focused on the shine of the Thoth pin under the table, he’d have to get it later.  

“Just thought that you might, I dunno—” Steven hated how small his voice sounded now as he straightened up, how appeasing he was trying to be.  

He’d once heard on an online instructional self-defense video how, when faced with a situation wherein you had the disadvantage, being reasonable was the best way to navigate.  

“—Maybe just get coffee somewhere else? Just if —you know —” 

The man chuckled and half-turned away and for a moment, Steven thought he’d handled the situation with grace, channeling the instructional video’s vibe. He’d have to leave a nice comment on the video after work. 

Steven!  

Marc’s voice rang out in his head and Steven flinched only slightly at the sound before he noticed the man had turned back to him, his balled fist aimed straight at Steven’s jaw. When it connected, bone on bone, Steven didn’t feel the pain, didn’t feel the way the momentum knocked him back.  

In that moment the dam within him broke. Steven could sense it. The lightness just before a fainting spell, the tinny whine skewing the sounds of the coffee shop, the airy feeling just before he lost control of his own body, another hand taking over the marionette, pulling the strings— his conciousness was being usurped. 

Whether it was Marc or Jake who had finally broken free, he couldn’t know.  

For Pressed Suit’s sake, he hoped it was Marc.  

Steven fell back, back and back until his head met the edge of the counter, a dull thud and then the sway of his vision before he sunk into blackness.

Marc had broken through first despite Jake’s efforts after Steven had lost consciousness.  

When Marc came to, on the floor of the coffee shop, his head cradled on Ami’s folded legs, Jake had retreated to a far corner of Marc’s mind. Quietly, he seethed, plotted. Waited until Marc stumbled into their apartment and fell asleep, icepack wedged between his pillow and the back of his skull. 

From there, Jake wasted no time. 

Pressed Suit Man had been easy to find.  

It almost came as a bit of a disappointment to Jake as he watched the man hop skip down the steps of his brownstone, briefly look both ways as he crossed the street and slipped into the back of Jake’s yellow cab. Jake felt his grip tighten on the wheel, the cap pulled low over his eyes as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows across his face. 

“I’ve got a dinner meeting at Capaldi’s on 7th.”  

Pressed Suit grunted as he shifted in the back seat, his eyes focused on the phone gripped in his beefy hands, his pinky ring catching a bit of light that shone in through the back seat in the twilight. “Get me there in 10 and I’ll make sure you get a nice tip.” 

Jake nodded without a word and without looking back, pulling the brim of his hat further down over his bruised face, Steven’s bruised face. Quietly, he pulled away from the curb and entered the throng of traffic. 

By the time his passenger had noticed that something was amiss, Jake had already pulled off the turnpike, the tires dropping off the road onto the gravel under the overpass. 

“Hey asshole,” Pressed Suit was hammering on the plexiglass divider, his fat fingers wedging between the sliding piece of the separation as Jake calmly shifted the cab into park. “Does this look like fucking 7th to you, dipshit?” 

The man fumed as Jake popped open his driver door and stepped out, taking a few steps back so that he was a good distance back from the yellow cab. 

In the back seat, Pressed Suit shifted with some difficulty, rattling the handle on the inside of the car, his face growing redder and redder with each passing moment.  

Jake huffed, impatiently, shaking his arm so that the sleeve of his jacket fell back, exposing the face of his watch. 

There was a low crack and muffled cursing, and Jake looked up to see the man with the door handle, broken off in his hand, using it to hit the glass.  

Above them, cars whizzed past on the freeway—the isolation of this place nearly absolute. 

“Cerdo impaciente,” Jake murmured before he took a deep breath and shrugged. Stepping toward the door to the backseat, just as the man inside began to throw his weight against it. The car rocked with his efforts and Jake wrenched open the door just as the man threw another shoulder at it. 

With his own momentum, the man tumbled out, landing in a puddle just outside the door, his large frame sopping wet as he struggled to push himself out of the stagnant, dirty water. 

Jake didn’t wait for his passenger to compose himself. Fisting the back of his dress shirt, Jake threw the man forward onto the dry gravel, where he landed with a grunt. 

“What the fu—,” the man peered up at Jake in the dim light, the glow of the cab’s headlights the only source of light under the overpass. 

Jake moved smoothly to the man’s side, reaching into his coat pocket and producing the butterfly knife he’d tucked there before leaving the apartment. With a flourish, he opened the knife, burying it in the back of the man’s beefy calf, just above the ankle. A quick slice and the muted sound of a ‘snap’ like a rubber band told him he’d hit his target. The Achilles tendon, severed. 

The scream that followed satisfied Jake, the sound of it clawing at a deep itch that had begged to be scratched for so long. 

He deserved it, Jake told himself. He deserved much more than what he had planned for him, this sad excuse for a man.  

The man’s screams turned hoarse as Jake folded the knife carefully, slowly and reached into his inner breast pocket to trade it for something else. 

The man scrambled, his one good leg pushing his large frame against the body of the cab until he was sitting upright, cowering.  

“Wait—wait, I—” he outstretched his hand, a pitiful attempt to shield himself. “I’ll give you money, you want money, right? The tip I told you about before? I’ll give it to you, a hundred-fold, I just—” 

Quietly, as the man bargained, Jake pulled out a cigar from his inner breast pocket, rolling it between his fingers. He paused for another moment before he reached into the pocket at his hop and pulled out the small cigar trimmer. 

“On the contrary. I have a ‘nice tip’ for you, cobarde,” Jake murmured, carefully snipping the end off as he spoke. “When you speak to a lady, show some respect.” 

“What?” The man sounded almost surprised, and Jake looked up from under the brim of the hat he’d tucked down over his eyes. 

“Respect.” Jake repeated the word, slowly, carefully, his voice just on the edge of warning. 

“Who sent you, was it—it was my assistant, wasn’t it?” The man had lowered his hand slightly now, unsure of what would come next. “I swear to fucking Christ, she’s fucking dead.” 

“Cuidadoso...” Jake warned again, his tone still even as the man continued to curse about his assistant. “Respect.” 

“Her whole fucking family —I’m going to have them deported for this.” The man was seething now, his situation momentarily forgotten in the misplaced anger he held for his poor assistant. “I’ll destroy her and then when she begs me not to —” 

Jake didn’t wait for the man to finish, didn’t provide him with another warning. Swiftly, he reached forward, hand snapping out, fingers closing around the man’s wrist and tugging forward. With a sharp twist of the man’s arm, Jake slotted Pressed Suit’s pinky finger into the cigar trimmer, just past the first knuckle. Without hesitation, Jake squeezed, the blades pressing down into flesh until the resistance was gone, a report of the satisfying snip at the end of the cut. 

The man’s scream was drowned out by an eighteen-wheeler thumping over the roadway overhead. As he writhed, Jake pulled out a white handkerchief from the lapel pocket of his long duster jacket, crouching to gather the dismembered digit, folding it away in the pocket of his coat. 

Patiently, Jake waited for the man to compose himself, the ebb of blood running down his wrist darkening the man’s dress shirt. 

“If you ever think about harming another woman,” Jake started, his voice even, calm, eyes locked on the man’s as he whimpered. “I will know, and I will come back for another.”  

Jake Lockley’s eyes drew down pointedly to Pressed Suit’s large belt buckle.

“A latte macchiato is one part espresso, one part cream, and one part milk dollop,” Marc murmured, scrolling through his phone and reading aloud from the mommy blog recipe page he’d found. 

When Marc had woken up the next morning, his body aching, head pounding, eye still swollen and his lip split, he noticed the small speck of blood on his neck that couldn’t have been his.  

When he’d stripped off another layer of clothing to get into the shower, he’d been able to connect more tiny flecks of blood spatter just under his chin with his eyes as though they were constellations. 

“What did you do?” he muttered, eyes hard, hands grasping the edge of the porcelain sink as he stood in front of the chipped mirror in the tiny bathroom, his grey sweatpants slung low on his hips. 

Took care of the problem. Jake’s response was casual, as if it was natural and fine, as though the information was on a need-to-know basis. 

“Fuck.”  

Marc’s head rolled forward, chin to chest. It made his eye throb as the blood rushed forward, his eyes staring at the pristine white of the porcelain, focusing on where the hard water had dripped from the tap and stained the otherwise perfect white with a teardrop shape of yellow. “Are we going to have to move again?” 

Move? I don’t think we need to get too hasty— Steven’s voice was two tones too high. We just moved here—I like this place. 

No need to move. I was careful. There is no evidence to connect us with— Jake began, his words slow, drawn out. 

Marc’s eyes drifted to his hands, a stain of soot on the webbing between his thumb and index finger drawing his attention. It took a beat for the pieces to come together and when they did, Marc rushed to the decorative fireplace in the living room and fell to his knees in front of it. 

Quickly, his hands moved aside the false logs stacked there and came away soot stained black.  

They’d have to fucking move.  

Blood spatter and now this: evidence that something had been burned here. 

Relax, amigo. Jake’s voice rolled up in the back of Marc’s head, smooth like the slither of a snake. There’s nothing left to find. I didn’t kill him. I wanted to kill him. I could have killed him, but I didn’t. 

“Am I supposed to say, ‘thank you’?” Marc’s chest was heaving, his sooty hands running through his hair and smearing the ash down his face when his hands passed over his eyes and down his cheeks. 

Might be considerate. Jake replied after a beat of silence. 

Marc kicked himself for teaching Jake about how to be considerate, because it meant that Jake could easily turn it back on Marc. Which he did—more often than Marc cared for. Marc was swearing off self-help books on co-existence with “difficult” personalities. Marc didn’t think the authors of the books he was reading meant “personalities” in the actual sense which Marc co-existed with them. 

Once he was showered and dressed, Marc turned his mind to recreating the latte macchiato. He wouldn’t be going back to that coffee place for at least a month, maybe two. 

The machine hissed, emitting a puff of steam that sounded like the squeal of a beast that protested being tamed. Marc jumped back; his arms pulled in. 

I think we can probably go back to the coffee place now? Steven chanced, his tone hopeful in a way that only Steven could be in a situation like this. Ami texted us twice about meeting up— 

“I just think we should lay low for a bit,” Marc interrupted Steven as he moved to the fridge to grab the cream, his phone in hand as he opened the door and reached in without looking. 

What his hand hit in the space where the cream usually sat, was decidedly not the cream carton. 

When Marc looked in, the small plastic baggy in the middle of the otherwise bare fridge caught his attention. It hadn’t been there before and Marc sure as hell didn’t have the extra cash lying around to buy Ziploc bags. Cautiously, he reached in, seeing the red smear in the bag as he inched closer. When he picked it up, he wasn’t sure how to process what he was seeing. 

“Is that a fucking finger?” Marc’s voice was cartoonishly high as Steven gagged in the stainless-steel reflection of the fridge door. 

He wanted to give me a tip, Jake shrugged. It would have been rude not to take it, no? 

A/N: Feedback is always appreciated. Might do more like this in the future.

[allnightlongzine]

“How I Discovered My Chemical Romance 15 Years After the Rest of the World”

May 25, 2020 | Scott Raymer | concertcrap.com

To obsess or not to obsess.  That is the question.  My apologies to Shakespeare. I tend to lack focus in many aspects of my life.  Bouncing back and forth between learning a foreign language, playing guitar, photography, and many other endeavors. However, when it comes to music I can become obsessed and fixated on a single artist, song, or album.  I mostly ignore radio and have a habit of listening to a single artist for months or sometimes years while ignoring others.  I have gone from the Beatles to Olivia Newton-John to Duran Duran to Green Day to Amy Grant to Sum 41 to the Sick Puppies back to Green Day.  The result is that I miss out on a lot of great music unless I manage to catch something on TV, due to not paying attention.

Sometimes it can take me years to discover a band.  This happened recently.  Around six months ago I started seeing all this chatter on Facebook about this band called My Chemical Romance.  My Chemical Who? The name triggered some deep memories making me think that maybe I had heard the name before. A quick search of Apple Music displayed a long list of songs by the band. The first song on the list was “Welcome to The Black Parade”. I clicked on the song title and began listening to see why people were so excited about this band.  It started off with a slow piano intro, followed by some mellow vocals by Gerard Way, which gradually increased in intensity.  I was rapidly losing interest and the finger was just getting ready to swipe the app closed when at 1:48 into the song, Ray Toro and Frank Iero’s guitars kicked in. My finger instantly pulled away from my phone.  I started listening intently and by the time Way got to “And through it all, the rise and fall, The Bodies in the streets” I was hooked.

Moving down the list brought songs like “Teenagers”, “Helena”, and “I’m Not OK”.  Even though I am long past my teenage years and missed the Emo movement by a couple of decades, these are all songs that I can still relate to and which take me back to life as a depressed, harassed, bullied, suicidal tempted teenager.  Some of us never truly become OK. When I got to “Famous Last Words”, I was totally blown away and my obsession began.

One of the things I find interesting about the great bands is how they transform and evolve. I saw this in both of my favorite bands, the Beatles and Green Day.  The Beatles first US album Meet The Beatles was raw and packed full of energy, but with musicianship which was somewhat lackluster. As they progressed from album to album, you could hear the music getting more and more polished; the lyrics getting more complex; culminating in their concept album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Green Day displayed a similar evolution going from Kerplunk to Dookie to their rock opera American Idiot, with Billie Joe Armstrong transforming his guitar abilities all along the way.

I feel My Chemical Romance’s evolution was more dramatic than either The Beatles or Green Day.  It’s relatively easy to classify both the latter band’s music without much debate.  However, there is no consensus on My Chemical Romance.  Each of their four studio albums, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, The Black Parade, and Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys are each unique and show Way and the band transitioning from punk to emo/post-hardcore to pop-punk with a half-dozen other genres thrown in the mix.  It was as if the band purposely hit the reset button attempting to reinvent themselves with each album.

Not only did the band reinvent themselves with their music, but also with their look.  Way changed his appearance throughout the band’s dash through the first decade of the new millennium.   Going from a dark emo goth in Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, to a Sgt Pepperish platinum blonde look for The Black Parade, to pop punkish red hair for Danger Days.  This change symbolizes what I admire most about the band; a constant changing flux of identity. It is hard to get bored with a band that is always striving to do something different. A band not content with where they are now but being in constant pursuit of what they can become.

It’s been seven years since we last saw the band.  I can’t wait to see want the next evolution will bring.  This is no longer a band of restless youths.  It is a band now composed of husbands and fathers, hitting middle age in a new decade.  How will this influence the direction of the music?  We will have to wait and see.  All I know is that of my litany of musical obsessions, this one may be the hardest one to overcome. Ten years from now I may still be listening to the band, looking back, and wondering what happened in the rest of the music world.

[vital-information]

"The wondrously humane and strangely spiritual odd-duck of a movie, Junebug, incisively gets at all that unspoken complexity existing in the spaces between family members by treating them as just that: spaces, gaps, blind spots. Family in Junebug is as aesthetically controlled as it is suffocatingly full; as warm as it is frigid. Jousting is ubiquitous: Brothers engage in unarticulated hostilities as outwardly as sisters-in-law fumblingly attempt emotional contact, and husbands and wives cut each other down with razor-sharp truth as much as they dull each others’ senses with politeness. In other words, the world in a house. How to enter upon such a simultaneously antagonistic and reassuring trunk full of decades-old angst and secret communications without seeming like a mere intruder?...More than anything, more than its oft-cited red-state/blue-state dichotomies, more than its fish-out-of-water conventions, Junebug is about the bonds of family, for better or for worse, and their propensity to morph and alter with each passing season, the need to make room for change, to allow for error, to accept transition with open arms.

What makes Junebug such a unique, even cathartic, experience, however, is its reliance on silence, not just as a mere narrative justification (many of the characters seem more than happy to not express themselves verbally) but as a visual and aural tool. Junebug straddles a fine line between realism and aestheticism—its determined mise-en-scene often gives way to almost documentary-like flights of fancy, suddenly brimming with Carolina locals, picking up on the sensorial surroundings of a church banquet-hall or a factory warehouse. There’s a fairly drastic split at play here between ceaseless chatter and contemplative quiet, and not just within the obvious differences between maddeningly with-child Ashley (Amy Adams) and her preternaturally collected brother-in-law George (Alessandro Nivola): think of how Morrison will shoot his family’s living space—at once populated by the joy of family babbling, the next moment empty, voices trailing off like the faint buzzing of flies as they exit the room and thus the camera’s frame. A succession of shots shows the now-empty house with a hush fallen over it, yet the space is still alive, breathing, cognizant, pregnant with memories.

Something familiar has become unfamiliar, made odd through what the camera is able to capture. This is Junebug’s greatest strength and what gives its mundane setting such an extraordinarily uncommon demeanor...

Morrison’s contemplative style (a thicket of backyard woods at nighttime is granted the same calm as an empty living room) keeps us constantly off-guard, a refreshing sensation in what initially seems a family comedy. Yet genre is ultimately beside the point, for Junebug coalesces as something far darker and thoughtful; if not tragic then somehow beyond feeling. The title itself refers to the film’s most gaping empty space, the place on which an entire family hangs its hopes, desires, and grief."

Michael Koresky, "Inside Out," a review of Junebug (2005) for Reverse Shot

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

“I was a raging alcoholic!”: Jonathan Davis meets Amy Lee

Two iconic rock stars, one epic interview – Evanescence’s Amy Lee and Korn’s Jonathan Davis talk fame, nu metal and living on the edge

On the surface, Jonathan Davis and Amy Lee don’t appear to have much in common. While Korn’s vocalist is best known for purging his psyche and utilising pure rage to fuel his art, Evanescence bandleader Amy is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist. To an outsider, the primal roar of Korn and the vast, intricately crafted swell of Evanescence could seem worlds apart.

In reality, the two share many similarities. Both have endured childhood trauma, which colours the music they make, giving Korn and Evanescence an honesty that connects with their fans on a massive scale. Both the bands they front have survived well beyond the nu metal tag of their early years, and are now thought of as unique artists in their own right – latest albums Requiem and The Bitter Truth charted in the Top 10 in the UK and the Top 20 in the US. Both have experimented beyond the boundaries of those bands, entering into film scoring and classical work. And, as we find out when we join a Zoom call with the pair in the aftermath of their recent co-headlining tour across the US – where they teamed up to perform Freak On A Leash together each night – both have an immense amount of respect and affection for each other.

We’ve been granted a rare opportunity to converse with two giants of the metal world. But, as Jonathan sits with his brand-new puppy on his lap – a subject that dominates the first few minutes of our conversation, and leads to Amy telling us that she’s in the process of getting a kitten – today feels far more like an informal catch-up than a rock star state of address.

Can you remember the first time you heard each other’s music?

Amy: “Gosh! I’m not sure what the first song was, but it was in high school for me!”

Jonathan: “You’re already making me feel old!”

Amy: “It was like nothing that I had ever heard. We all have certain artists in our life that we hear and they have a spark, they have an impact. Korn was absolutely one of those artists for me. The music was coming from a real place. So, I became a fan right away. My favourite album was [2002’s] Untouchables.”

Jonathan: “That’s so surreal for me. I still trip out on it. You have to remember that I was this green kid from Bakersfield, but we relocated to Huntington Beach. I gave up my whole life to live my dream, and I can’t believe that this thing we did could be so impactful. We were just doing our own thing, these punk kids telling everyone to fuck off – and we’ve gone through our entire career like that! Even the name! Who names their band Korn, man?! And to hear Amy say she first heard us in high school and… now look at what she is doing!”

Amy: “That’s what metal is, that’s what rock is supposed to be, that nonconformist attitude. ‘This is what this is supposed to look like? Well, I’m not gonna do that!’ The whole idea is that you are meant to break the mould.”

Jonathan: “I remember driving around in my car and their song [Bring Me To Life] came on, and I flipped, I thought it was cool. Listen… I hate everything, man, but I loved her voice. I liked that there was a girl doing some rock music and it was badass.”

You both had to shake off the tag of nu metal around that time as well…

Amy: “I have a feeling Jonathan may feel the same, but I don’t like boxes. As artists we are unique. The real value in something is being who you are and not trying to fit into a certain genre. I want the freedom to make whatever music comes out of my soul. When [2003 debut album] Fallen came out, I was fresh out of school and I was like a cartoon of myself; it felt like nobody got me, it was just a 2-D representation of me based on people only knowing a couple of songs. I really struggled with that.”

Jonathan: “For me, we were making Untouchables, and that was when so many bands were coming out and jumping on the bandwagon. Now I don’t mind the tag ‘nu metal’ – they named an entire subgenre after my band? Holy shit! That’s cool! – but punk-ass, crazy Korn back then, we were like, ‘What the fuck? Fuck everyone! We’re going to make this insane record.’ Keep people guessing. It had become a parody of itself – I don’t want to be defined like that! Nowadays, I don’t care, but back then, I hated it. I make the music I make… you don’t call Metallica some thrash band! They’re fucking Metallica! You don’t call the Chili Peppers a funk rock band! They’re the fucking Chili Peppers! And Korn are Korn!”

Amy: “Exactly! You did it, there is only one Korn!”

Both of you seem to really dig deep into your personal lives and experiences to make music.

Amy: “That’s what sticks, that’s what stays, that’s what really touches people. Not the bullshit. It’s when you’re really taking a chance and speaking from the heart. I want to feel something real when I listen to music – it’s food for the soul, to feel not alone in the universe. When it comes to the bands that really stick, they’re the ones that really put everything out there.”

Jonathan: “For sure. Kids have bullshit detectors; they can hear that shit a mile away.”

Amy: “We had to fight the power with labels and stuff throughout my career. It’s always been a fight. Not now, I fought my fights…”

Jonathan: “And you won!”

Amy: “I did! The fights were always for the fans’ intelligence. They are not as stupid as the industry thinks they are! We’re going to give them something real, and it can’t be fake… anything but that! That turned into fights about real strings versus synthesisers. I knew we had to spend the money to make it sound right, because I knew it was what I would have wanted as a fan.”

Jonathan: “I feel the same. We were lucky, because we always told them that it was going to be our way or no way. We got into fights with magazines, fights with video directors, literal physical altercations, because we were so sure that it wasn’t going to go down like that.”

Amy: “‘Y’all want a single, say fuck that!’”

Jonathan: “Exactly!”

Amy: “When [Korn’s] Y’all Want A Single came out [in 2003], it really affected me again. I was like, ‘These people get me! This is my people!’”

Jonathan: “When the managers said, ‘We gotta try and get a single,’ we were like, ‘OK, here’s your single!”

Amy: “[To Hammer] They play that song every night, usually near the end before the encore, and we are all always side of the stage like, ‘Oh boy! Here we go!’ It’s always one of our favourite songs to warm up to before we go on, too.”

Is it hard for both of you to get into a place where you have to deliver such personal material every night?

Jonathan: “It’s like a switch flicks in my mind and I go to that place. Honestly, I kind of enjoy it. Most of the time I’m happy as fuck, but when I hear my band, and there’s a crowd, and it’s loud as fuck, I go there. I feed that to the people that want it, and they purge it and they let it out and it’s a huge release. I need it to get whatever is inside of me out, but by the end of the tour I’m so exhausted I can barely walk. I’m in hell, I want to go home and sleep for two weeks. But I need it, it’s therapy.”

Amy: “It’s a release, and there are days when you don’t feel like going onstage. But, without fail, when you get to the point where you walk up onto that stage and something takes over, it’s purifying.”

Jonathan: “Totally. I’ve said, ‘I’m gonna go on autopilot!’ so many times and…”

Amy: “Never gonna happen!”

Jonathan, how difficult was it to do Daddy live for the first time in 2015, on the 20th anniversary of your self-titled debut?

Jonathan: “I felt like I robbed the world of doing that live for so long. I felt like I owed it to our fans that were hardcore enough to come and see us on the 20th anniversary of that album, but I don’t wanna do it again. Going out and touring that record, I realised how dark it is – it’s some depressing shit. As we got into Follow The Leader, it became more about groove. The emotion was there, but it wasn’t that particular darkness we captured on that first record. In a few years, it’s the 30th anniversary and… I don’t think I wanna go through that again. It was difficult, and I think I was proving to myself that I could do it too.”

You both had to deal with an intense level of fame early on in your careers. How was that?

Jonathan: “I became a raging alcoholic. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t do anything, you have to have a fucking bodyguard 24 hours a day. Crazy shit. Still to this day, it’s tough, but that’s what we signed up for. Everyone in Korn went a bit nuts in the late 90s.”

Amy: “It was a hard adjustment. I was 21 [when Bring Me To Life came out], and I was often the only female anywhere. In my mind I thought, ‘That doesn’t matter!’, but you do start to feel alone. It wasn’t just about being female. Like I was talking about – it was that you start seeing the cartoon of yourself, the album cover version, the interview version. How can you feel like everyone knows me… but nobody knows me…? We’ve grown up and times have changed, but in the beginning it was scary. I used a lot of that as inspiration for the second album [The Open Door, released in 2006]. Billie Eilish’s second album does that too, and I found myself really relating to a lot of that.”

Jonathan: “It was hard for my little boy, Nathan. People would rush me and he would start crying, because all he knew was that ‘This is my daddy and this is my daddy time.’ He would cry and I’d have to say to this person, ‘Yo, I’m with my kid.’ And they go away pissed off. It’s mentally taxing. I know Amy can relate, but most people can’t.”

Amy: “Yeah, you’re ungrateful!”

Jonathan: “‘You’re an ungrateful fuck, fuck you! I’m burning your CDs!’ That sort of shit.”

Do you remember meeting each other for the first time?

Amy: “I do. It was at a festival, I guess. I was too nervous to knock on the door. So, I wrote a note saying how big a deal it was to have played with them, pushed it under the door and was happy to leave it at that. But they chased me down. Their security guy came and got me and brought me in. You were really nice to me, Jonathan, you were like, ‘Hey come on in, sit down!’ It was really sweet. Do you remember that now?”

Jonathan: “Yeah, I do now. I haven’t thought about that for years!”

Amy: “Fast-forward a few years and we’re doing Family Values [in 2007], and they really taught me how to have fun on tour. There was one night where I was stood by our bus, and suddenly these golf carts came out of nowhere, and all of Korn are on them and they say, ‘Hey! We’re gonna go let off some fireworks!’ It was just like they were still kids. There was something really pure about that.”

Jonathan: “That’s the whole reason we become artists, so that we can remain kids. Not to conform to what society tells us we have to be. I’m a 51-year-old kid. I remember that tour now. It was us and you, Trivium…”

Amy: “I remember Atreyu was on that tour and… Flyleaf, and Hellyeah.”

With Atreyu and Trivium on that Family Values tour, did it feel like there was something of a sea change happening in heavy music?

Amy: “Music has changed all along the way, and I think that is a good thing. That’s what keeps it interesting and genuine.”

Jonathan: “I just like anyone that is nice to me!”

Amy: “Ha ha ha! I had such a great time with you guys on this last tour! Coming back after doing that Family Values tour, what, 15 years later, it actually means more. After the pandemic, the passion from the audience to the bands and the crew, it was a moment of coming full circle. You get older and you recognise that time is fleeting, and we’re very lucky to have that moment and to have each other.”

What did you think of Amy’s cover of Korn song Thoughtless in 2004, Jonathan?

Jonathan: “I LOVED it! I loved how you broke it down and really got the chord progression and the melody; I wrote that fucking thing on an acoustic guitar in my room in Arizona, when we moved to go and write [for Untouchables]. I locked myself in my room and I would just write all night. I came up with that riff, I played the drums on the demo, I laid it all down, and I just love that she made it so… beautiful. Then when you put it out [on 2004 live album Anywhere But Home], they didn’t put the [Parental Advisory] sticker on it…”

Amy: “Oh yeah! They ripped it out of Walmart! Ha ha ha!”

Jonathan: “All because some uptight Christian family were pissed at the language on there!”

Amy: “It didn’t have the parental sticker and they said, ‘What? I thought Evanescence was a Christian band?’”

Jonathan: “Exactly, all that shit. I was going, ‘Yes!’ I love that.”

Amy: “It’s one of my favourite songs. I think the thing with metal is, it still needs to have a melody for me, and something I love about Korn is their beautiful melodies. When we started this tour I said, ‘We gotta do some collab! You can pretty much pick any song!’ I was really inspired by Tori Amos. She’s done a million covers, and she showed me that you can take pretty much any song and give it a whole new perspective and make you hear the lyrics in a different way. She did this cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit, and she gave it this deep pain. And Korn have done so many cool covers over the years…”

Obviously, you did Freak On A Leash on the Korn MTV Unplugged set too, Amy. It aired in 2007. How did that come about?

Jonathan: “I do not remember…”

Amy: “You guys just asked me! I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m gonna do a Korn song!’”

Jonathan: “You know what’s funny about that? Originally, we were going to do a mash-up with Metallica as the last song, but they were in the studio and couldn’t leave. My second choice was The Cure [who performed Make Me Bad / In Between Days].”

Amy: “I remember Robert Smith was there!”

Jonathan: “They all were! And that freaked me out, because that’s my band right there. But we knew we wanted to have guests, and so we asked Amy, because of the Thoughtless cover, and we wanted people to hear Freak On A Leash stripped right down. It was so intimate, we wanted to have people hear the actual melodies. We didn’t really rehearse, remember?”

Amy: “I feel like we ran through it once or twice, but I’m a practiser – I had run through it a whole bunch of times at home.”

Jonathan: “Well, I appreciate that… because I’m not! Ha ha ha! I just gotta feel it!”

And not many people would have believed that metal could translate to an acoustic style in that way, either…

Jonathan: “Nobody believed we could pull it off! It was the most intricate thing we had ever done. We had all these extra musicians, strings, a glockenspiel player, the glass harmonica player. ‘Korn can’t do Unplugged!’ ‘Yeah? We fucking can, watch this!’ We had to look at what Korn is really about, it’s about me purging my demons, but we did exactly what we wanted, and we wanted to come out of leftfield. A lot of people hated it but we really didn’t care!”

Amy: “Anything great that comes out of nowhere is always going to get people going, ‘Nah! Hated it!’ But to bring everything full circle, for me to get to do that every night on stage [on our recent tour], to do the heavy version, was such an honour. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Jonathan: “It was great, too. Everyone loved it every night.”

Amy: “It felt like the ultimate celebration every night, right at the end of the encore after a night of so much love. I’m going to miss doing that.”

At this point, our time is up, and Amy and Jonathan quickly make plans to speak again soon. It’s been a trip learning about their journeys and how they’ve connected over the years, and before we go, we ask both icons what they most admire about each other.

“I respect the shit out of how she can sit down in front of a piano and make such beautiful music,” Jonathan immediately replies. “I respect her as a musician and a person totally.”

Amy beams, before answering, “It’s interesting… he was a legend before, and now we’re friends. That’s a weird way to start. It’s amazing to me. He’s a rad, down-to-earth, normal person with an amazing talent. It’s that simple.”

And with that, these two friends, so different on the face of it but so similar at their core, bid us farewell.

[ggomos-maribat]

Aime Trent

Jon crashed on the space on the couch, letting out a dragged out groan. Marinette shifted her legs, stretching them out as she sat at the foot of the sofa. She poked the side of his head. "What's up?"

"I got terrorized." Jon shuddered. "They won't stop talking about it."

Damian uninterestedly looked up from his sketchbook.

"Who won't stop talking about what?" Marinette set down her chin on top of folded arms.

"Kon and Aunt Kara and Mom!" Jon lamented. "Do you know that anonymous singer who got popular recently? They keep playing her songs at home! I told them it's not my type of music but nooo they just had to force me to listen!"

"Is that why you flew all the way over here?" Marinette snorted out a chuckle. "Who's this singer anyway?"

"Dunno. Amy Whatshername or something."

"Aime Trent," said Damian firmly, stopping in the middle of his sketch. His gaze fell on Jon, shining with disapproval. "Her name is Aime Trent."

Jon's eyes went wide. "You know her?!"

"Obviously. It is evident that she pours her heart and dedication into the songs she composes and she delivers her own lyrics well with her heavenly voice," Damian said, "Not to mention, she's talented in playing instruments and the messages she puts into her songs are poetic and meaningful."

"You listen to her?!" Jon screeched. Even Marinette seemed taken aback.

"And what if I do?"

"I didn't know you like that genre."

"It's not my usual style, but her songs are too beautiful to be ignored." Damian crossed his arms indignantly. "In fact, more people should know about her."

"A lot of people already do." To prove his point, Jon took his phone out and showed them his Twitter feed filled with Aime Trent hashtags. "See? She's trending. They love her songs."

"That is not surprising. She deserves all the recognition she can get." Damian nodded.

Meanwhile, Jon eyed Marinette. "What about you? Don't tell me you're a crazy fan too."

She raised her arms defensively. "I haven't heard of her that much. I've only listened to a few songs."

Damian scoffed. "You both should learn to appreciate her masterpieces."

"Wait, but no one knows who she actually is, right?" Jon leaned towards Damian and the latter pushed his face away. "You didn't try looking for her? Oooh, maybe we can earn some money if we—"

"I am not breaching the anonymity she's worked hard to maintain," Damian cut him off. "Also, my brothers have tried and they have repeatedly complained that she's extremely difficult to track down."

Jon blew a raspberry. "No fun."

---

Marinette set the palette aside, careful not to spill any paint on the floor. She and Damian were working on their joint project for school: an oil painting with themes from their English literature class. They were taking a break, so she decided to get her notebook out to do some writing.

"What rhymes with 'all'?" She tapped her pencil against her lip.

"Tall? Small? Call?" Damian examined their paintbrushes for any bending. "Todd is better at flowery words than I am."

"I'll make a placeholder first," she scribbled on the page.

"What are you writing?"

"Hmm . . . a poem."

He granted her silence so she could focus while he washed their materials. She was bent over on her tiny notebook, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration. But she perked up when she heard him humming softly.

'Fireflower'. Third song of the first album. She recognized Aime Trent's song instantly.

"Marinette?" Damian called out suddenly.

"Yeah?"

"About Aime Trent . . . it is confirmed that she is from Paris, correct? Do you happen to know anything about her?"

She laughed. "There's still a lot of people in Paris. I don't know all of them. I can ask Luka later, though. Or Uncle Jagged. They probably know some insider stuff."

She looked up at Damian, who settled close beside her. "Do you actually want to know who she is? I heard she's making her official debut in a few months. Why not wait until then?"

He showed hesitance before answering: "I'm only curious for myself. I want to know more about her. If I do find out, I have no plans in divulging her identity to other people."

"Why, what do you like about her songs?"

"I've mentioned it before, but her voice is divine. It's unique, and she knows how to use her range in different dynamics," Damian listed off. "In Deep Wave, she uses breathy tones in the chorus but there is also her own background vocals towards the end. In contrast, she uses more powerful belts in Mythical City."

"I didn't know you knew so much about that." Marinette ducked her head, hiding her blush.

"I tend to research deeply about my interests. Get into the 'rabbit hole' as Drake called it," Damian said. "The instrumentations she uses in her songs are intriguing as well. According to one analysis I read, she used a traditional instrument in Blind, accompanied with modern samples. It is amazing to hear the sounds come together perfectly."

Marinette bit back a smile. His rambles were cute.

He wasn't finished. "And her lyricism. She weaves her words into a story to evoke vivid emotions. I believe that she references the former Paris situations in some of her songs."

"She—she does," Marinette stammered. "That's why she has a lot of Parisian fans."

"I will definitely come to her debut concert. Even if it's the last thing I do."

Her chest warmed at the thought.

---

Damian was not having a good day.

He had accidentally fallen asleep before the ticketing release for the debut concert. All her siblings had bought their own tickets without including him (Drake had even reserved an entire row for himself and his friends). Even Jon lucked out on a good seat and proceeded to resell his ticket for a fortune to someone who wasn't him.

He had tried to look for resales, but most had already been sold (not to mention, he had gotten scammed in one of his attempts to buy a ticket). He just had to hope he could A: get a ticket for the second show or B: sneak into the venue.

He dragged his groggy self into the classroom and slouched on his seat, exhausted. Marinette bounded up to him.

"Got your ticket?" she chirped.

"No, I may have to kill someone to get one," he grumbled.

"Here." Marinette pulled out slips of paper from her pocket and placed it on his desk. He stared at it.

Two tickets to the Aime Trent concert.

He rubbed his eyes. "What . . . how? Are you not going yourself?"

"I already have my own ticket?" She smiled sheepishly. "From . . . myself?"

He shot up from his seat and wrapped her in a tight hug. "Thank you. I owe you my life."

"Why don't you look at the back of your tickets and return your favor that way?" She pointed to the tickets before scrambling away to her seat.

Damian flipped one of the tickets. At the back, there was a note: Go out with me after my concert?

A lightbulb flickered in his messy mind. 'I already have my own ticket from myself'. A sharp intake of breath graced his lips as he looked at Marinette, who was smiling shyly at him.

He tucked the tickets safely in his pocket, smiling back. He had a date to plan. 

Permanent Taglist: @tinybrie

Cross posted on AO3

[hoboal87]

Fool Us Twice Writing Challenge

@synmorite and I are hosting a Challenge! Starting this month, which happens to be our birthday month (plus the bebe currently growing inside @hoboal87) and with no end date.

We want you to write a fic whose purpose is to trick us into believing something that isn’t true. As some of you know, Syn and I love to theorize the hell out of fics, and we're quite good at it. Throw us for a loop! We want you to trick us. 

For example: Make us believe someone is a villain but turns out they’re the good guy, or vice-versa! Or maybe the reader thinks he/she/they are being cheated on, but it’s really that the s/o is shopping for engagement rings (or go for the opposite and bring on the angst).

Bend the rules however you see fit, but it should still make sense once the twist is revealed. Distract us with other details. Is there a large time jump? Was something revealed about a character and they haven’t been heard from since? Does a character have a mysterious past? Make us focus on the why, even though it might be irrelevant to the story itself. The point is: make us believe the lie. You can use any type of literary device; unreliable narrator, red herrings, Chekhov's gun, flashbacks/flashforwards, in medias res, framing devices, ect. 

Interested? Check out the rules below!

Some Rules:

18+ participants only please

No minimum word count, max 3k per part. 

Any genre - Angst, smut, fluff, crack are all welcome. Please tag/warn your fic accordingly

If you choose to write smut, no scat or piss play. We both are pretty much open to anything outside of that, but if you're not sure you can send either of us a DM

Fandoms: Supernatural (Sam, Dean, John), Walker, The Boys, and any iteration (soulless!Sam, Demon!Dean, ect.) of those characters as well as RPF for those fandoms. Crossovers are more than welcome and encouraged! 

RIs, OCs, and Ships. We respectfully ask for no Destiel smut as neither of us are particular fans.

Need an idea for a pairing? Sastiel, Saileen, Denny, Dean/Cordell, Dean/SB, Sam/Jess, SB/Cordell, SB/Stella, Butcher/Liam, Cordell/Liam, Cordell/Stella. Think your pairing is unusual? Please write it!

If you write any RPF, wife-hate is not acceptable. 

We do ask if you decide to stay compliant or adjacent to the SPN canon, no mentions of the Barn or Dean’s death.

Post in at least two parts with the twist in the second part so we can theorize!

You can pick from either option one or two, or both, it's completely up to you!

Sign ups are not required, but if you'd like to let us know you can DM either @synmorite or @hoboal87

Please tag both of us as well as use the hashtag #trick and treat hobosyn in the first 5 tags

if one or both of us don't reblog within 48 hours please send us a DM

First option: pick a song or movie from 1987. Use this as the inspiration for your fic. Multiple authors may choose the same song/movie.

Bad by Michael Jackson

Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi

With or Without You by U2

Here I Go Again by Whitesnake 

Don't Dream it's Over by Crowded House

I Think We're Alone Now by Tiffani

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2

Didn’t We Almost Have it All? by Whitney Houston

The Next Time I Fall by Peter Cetera and Amy Grant

Alone by Heart

Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi

U Got the Look by Prince

(I Just) Died in Your Arms by Cutting Crew

Lean on Me by Club Nouveau

(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) by Beastie Boys

Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac

Notorious by Duran Duran

The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range

Three Men and a Baby

Fatal Attraction

Flowers in the Attic

The Princess Bride

Dirty Dancing

The Lost Boys

Moonstruck

Overboard

Throw Momma From the Train

Lethal Weapon

Mannequin

Some Kind of Wonderful

The Untouchables

Predator

Roxanne

Adventures in Babysitting

Full Metal Jacket

Second option: Below is our Wish List of Tropes that we love to read. We have a wide variety of favorite tropes and once again, we aren’t here to judge.

Have Fun! We can't wait to read and theorize your fics!

A/B/O breeding farm

Dark Winchesters

CNC

Hand/Size Kink

Fuck or Die

Wincest

Weecest

A/B/O True Mates

Dadchesters

Genderswap

Walkercest

Rough sex

dub-con/non-con

Serial Killer AU

Possessive/obsession 

Breeding Kink

Knife Kink

De-Aging

Chef AU

Inappropriate Relationships

Grooming

Dark J3

Medical AU

Age Gaps

Mpreg 

Historic AU

[clairebear1298]

So. My submission for the Fluff Crawlspace is really only, like, 2/3 fluff. Because I'm me, and I can't help but throw in a little angst in what's supposed to be a day to celebrate adorable, light-hearted Shamy goodness. But I hope you enjoy it anyways:

The parameters of Date Night became much more blurred once Sheldon and Amy started living together. They were with each other constantly now- at home, at work, and everywhere in between (literally; they drove together from the apartment to CalTech every day). They had virtually every meal together now, even at work, so did that make every time they ate together a date? What about when they watched a movie, or went to a lecture, or spent any kind of quality time together? It was a pesky game of semantics that Sheldon still wasn’t sure how to clarify in their Relationship Agreement.

Regardless, Date Night remained a fixture in their lives, every second Thursday of the month or every third in a month with five Thursdays. It was comforting, in a way; no matter how their relationship would evolve or change, no matter the discoveries they would make, the children they would have, or the years they would share together, taking one evening a month to get dolled up for a night on the town to reconnect would remain a constant. Their love would always be a priority.

So it took Sheldon by surprise, when it was Amy’s turn to pick the location of their next Date Night, that she chose to have a night in. Amy always enjoyed a little pomp and circumstance when it came to their dates, so when she told him that they were just going to order chinese food and stay in their regular day clothes, Sheldon was more than a little suspicious. He’d been with her long enough to recognize when she was trying to butter him up, but if there was one thing that he loved, it was getting his way even if there was an ulterior motive behind it. And besides, a low-key night at home with his girlfriend would be worth the price of whatever said girlfriend had up her cardigan sleeve.

Unless that price was watching what was to him the most dreaded movie sub-genre in existence. The rom-com musical.

“La La Land?” Sheldon asked as he sat on the loveseat, arms crossed and staring down his girlfriend. “You mean the movie that won Best Picture for all of two minutes before going to the actual deserving film?”

Amy paused in the middle of unwrapping the DVD to look at him. “You know about that?”

“Of course, it’s all Penny talked about for weeks. I also learned from her that the movie is full of unrealistic bursts into song, signs of Hollywood’s narcissistic self-absorption, and jazz.” Sheldon crossed his arms and sat back in his seat. “I won’t let you put me through this.”

“If I can sit through the extended edition of Batman v. Superman for you, you can sit through this for me.”

“But-”

“No buts. It’s my turn to pick the movie. End of story.” And with that, Amy popped the DVD in and moved to the couch, plopping the popcorn between them as she went. “I won’t even make you hold my hand this time.”

Sheldon sighed. It was only when Amy was irritated that she started picking at years long fights like this one. “I’ve told you, I don’t object to holding your hand in general, but for prolonged periods it gets sweaty and itchy and keeps me from paying attention-”

“Just start the movie, Sheldon,” Amy said.

And so he did. From the moment the movie opened with people dancing on cars on a freeway he unfortunately knew well, Sheldon knew he was in for a miserable ride. He heaved a sigh at Mia’s acting woes and rolled his eyes at Seb’s hipster attitudes. Never mind that he found the colors aesthetically pleasing or the script surprisingly sharp, nothing could save the horrendous, erratic notes of jazz. Even if Seb’s passionate explanation of the genre reminded Sheldon of Physics.

Then as the movie was bathed in the purples and pinks and a hint of orange, and Mia and Seb tap danced to the backdrop of a Los Angeles sunset, Sheldon somehow found his toes tapping out a soft rhythm with them. Amy glanced down at his feet as well, and Sheldon quickly drew them closer to the couch and out of her line of sight.

But it was the scene at the Griffith Observatory that did him in, the horror he felt at their audacity to sneak in after hours offset by his fantasy of enjoying the museum without the usual throng of people surrounding him. And as Seb and Mia gazed into the astral projected sky, and as he lifted her into the starry night, Sheldon felt his hand creep slowly around the half-full popcorn bowl and towards Amy. Maybe it was his deeply secret love of astronomy, or their perfect waltz pose, or the memories of dancing with his own love as the universe watched over, but just as the scene began fading into white Sheldon decided to leave old arguments and his own stubbornness behind and take his girlfriend’s hand.

As the music drifted down from it’s crescendo, Amy glanced at him, and they shared a smile before turning back to the movie.

The rest of the movie was expressed through their hands. Sheldon found his thumb tapping out a rhythm on Amy’s hand during the summer montage, and Amy’s fingers grew restless and fidgety when Seb left to go on tour. Sheldon’s nails dug into her palm during their argument, and they both held each other in a vice grip when Seb chose to skip Mia’s show. They relaxed during Mia’s audition, and as Seb and Mia sat on the bench afterward Amy slipped her other hand into the crook of his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. But Sheldon felt himself grow more and more tense throughout the epilogue, his hand going cold in hers, and in the final moment where Mia and Seb parted ways he dropped it altogether.

“Well,” Sheldon declared as he tossed the remote aside. “That was a colossal waste of time.”

“What do you mean? You seemed like you were enjoying it.”

“How can I enjoy a movie with an ending like that?” Sheldon stood abruptly, grabbing the long abandoned popcorn and taking it to the kitchen. “You take two characters, endear your audience to them, demonstrate over and over how perfect they are for each other, and then break them up for good?”

“They wanted different things,” Amy said. “Their dreams didn’t align anymore.”

“They would’ve been fine,” Sheldon said as he emptied the popcorn into some tupperware with a little too much vigor. “Mia could’ve done her movie and then gone back to Seb.”

“But he was touring with the band,” Amy argued as she rose to join Sheldon in the kitchen. “They just grew apart, that’s all.”

“They didn’t even try!”

“They did try, and it only made them grow to resent each other,” Amy said, resting her arms as she stood at the island. “They broke up so they wouldn’t keep hurting each other. All that long distance, back and forth and back again. It would’ve been too much work.”

“It’s not too much work for the person you love!” Sheldon almost shouted, making Amy take a step back again. “No, the problem was that they put their own ambitions above each other. A partnership is about working to achieve your dreams together so that you can have it all in the end. Is it even worth it to open that jazz club, or get that Oscar, or win that Nobel Prize if you don’t have the love of your life to share it with?”

The air hung heavy after Sheldon’s words, the silence deafening. Sheldon felt his eyes grow wide in realization of the carefully guarded emotions he let slip to the surface, and he quickly turned to avoid seeing Amy’s face. He had no clue what Amy must be thinking, and he feared the worst until he felt her small arms come around to hug him from behind.

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” Amy whispered, her head pressed between his shoulder blades.

Sheldon’s hand came up to grasp her own, feeling like he and Amy were fused together as one, like this was how they had always been meant to be. “Well, now you know,” he said, speaking just as softly.

“Sheldon…” He heard Amy’s voice grow tight along with her embrace around his middle. “You know I’m always going to come back, right?”

Sheldon craned his head to look at the black suitcase sitting in the corner of the living room, its omen constantly draped over them as Amy’s departure for Princeton drew ever closer. He turned in Amy’s arms so he could look at her. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Sheldon released a heavy sigh as his hands came to rest on her shoulders. “I wasn’t talking about you, I promise. I meant it when I said that this is a chance you need to take. I was talking about me, before, before…” Sheldon thought back to years of putting his work before Amy, of looking down on her achievements, of taking for granted that she would always be there until she left behind the shattered pieces of his heart in the middle of Howard’s living room. “Before.”

Amy stepped closer to him so that their chests pressed into each other, her heart beating beneath his. “Well… we’re just gonna have to find a way to make sure our dreams align.”

Sheldon tilted his head down so he could look at her, a smile playing at his lips despite his earlier melancholy. “We’re two of the smartest people on the planet. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

Amy grinned back, then stood on her toes to kiss him before turning back to put away the popcorn. With her no longer looking at him, Sheldon took a chance to glance at the bookshelf beside their bedroom door, where Gollum stood watch over a certain something tucked behind a stack of comic books, where Amy was sure to never venture near. That could be one way to get their dreams aligned… but no, it wasn’t time yet. He didn’t know when it would be time, but people seemed pretty adamant that he’d know when it would. So for now, he would wait. Maybe after the summer, when Amy came back to him. Because she was right, no matter how long she left, she always came back.

But there was one thing he knew without a doubt, as he wrapped an arm around Amy and she held his hand in reply as they turned off the lights and went to bed. He was adding the La La Land soundtrack to his Spotify, even if it was jazz.

[nextonmy-tbr]

Book Review: Gemina (The Illuminae Files 02)

Author: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Genre: Science Fiction

If you thought that BeiTech’s tale of assaults were done in the first book then you may be wrong. Here, they have invaded the jump station Heimdall and we have two new characters ready to protect their home. But their problems may not just end with BeiTech goons; Hypatia is headed towards Heimdall with the news of Kerenza invasion, they have the responsibility to protect the residents and workers at Heimdall and other than that they may also have to stop the universe from destroying. But they have a plan. You want to know how the events of this book turns out? Read the book to find out…

My thoughts: -

This book starts right 5 mins after the end of the first book (Illuminae). I had fun reading this book and there were more villains, higher stakes, deeper secrets being pulled out. But like every book trilogy, this one also suffers from the second book syndrome. Though there are so many things going on in this book, it still felt a bit boring and I had a bit of difficulty in connecting with the characters. But as the story progressed I found all the characters pretty amazing. One thing that I have to say is that I am a fan of the female characters on this series. They manage to give us badass female characters in literally every form. So kudos to the authors for that.

Plot: -

“Now, children, watch closely. Hold your breath. Listen. And I will show you the components of calamity.”

As this is the second book the plot gets thicker from here. We see more of BeiTech’s cruelty and nastiness. We see what is the effect of the Kerenza invasion on other parts of the universe. Also, the lengths BeiTech is ready to go to hide their acts from everyone. We are introduced to new characters here, about whom we will talk in detail later. If you miss Kady, Ezra and AIDAN then I am sorry you will be disappointed to hear that they don’t have much page time in this book. They will surely be lovely as ever. If you are a person who loves the concept of alternate universes then let me tell you, you are in for a ride.

Characters: -

“You might get only one shot. So shoot.”

Hanna Donnelly is a badass female character with a strong head, good strategies, great survival skills, love and compassion for others, and stunning fashion sense. She is the station master’s pampered daughter whose only concern was getting a good time with her friends and boyfriend on Terra Day. Until that day turned out to be a disaster for her because the one and the only cause of all problems - BeiTech. In the first book we had Kady with great computer skills who saved thousands of people, now in the second book we have Hanna with great combat skills who was able to save another thousand people. So yeah, the authors in this series are serving.

“Patience and Silence had one beautiful daughter. And her name was Vengeance.”

Nik Malikov is our resident badboy from a family of criminals with a good, old soft heart. In the start he is introduced as a dealer having a crush on Hanna. But his role and importance grows bigger later in the book. His character makes us feel as though he is dumb but don’t let him fool you as he is quick witted, sharp and great fighter. He is an underrated character who deserves much appreciation. If you guys are hoping for romance, you might enjoy Hanna and Nik’s chemistry here.

“I hear swinging in commando style is all rage among interstellar murder squads atm.”

Ella Malikova is another badass character that you’ll love. Her sarcasm is deadly, and her computer skills too. She is Nik’s cousin and some of the few people who helps Hanna and Nik in saving the residents and fighting with BeiTech goons. Even though she faces quite hardships in her life, she is one tough girl and I admire that a lot about her.

Other honourable mentions are Isaac Grant - loved him, I wish to see more in the next book and Jackson Merrick - I hated him for most of the book but he did one redeemable act in the end which was quite important one and hence a special mention.

Lastly, let’s conclude that if you are a sci-fi fan who loved the first book Illuminae from this series then surely you should check this book out - you won’t be disappointed. Let me know what are your thoughts on this book. You can also recommend some books to read or to write reviews on.

[ratingtheframe]

A strong performance from Rosamund Pike that we haven’t seen in years - I Care A Lot REVIEW

Bold and punchy,  I Care A Lot has A LOT to offer including Rosamund Pike as a head strong and cutthroat entrepreneur with a questionable business adventure.

If someone were to ask me what my thoughts on Rosamund Pike are, I'd immediately drawn my attention to her performance in David Fincher’s Gone Girl as Amy Dunne; a vicious and vivacious sociopath who frames her husband for her own death. That was 7 years ago though and since then Rosamund Pike has had various other lead roles and TV appearances, playing Marie Curie in her biopic Radioactive (2019) and war correspondent Marie Colven in the Golden Globe Nominated picture A Private War (2018). Both roles were notable and had some significance in Pike’s ongoing career, however neither matched that of her latest role in this boldly told tale.

Marla Grayson is first introduced to us physically in a courtroom. I say physically as the film opens with an intriguing montage that’s plagued by an unnecessary V.O monologue from Marla. There are a few elements to this film that do more harm than good such as this V.O, but for now, Marla Grayson is in the midst of battling a man whose mother has been legally put into her care. Marla is cunning from the get go, her face framed with a sharply trimmed bob and lips lined with red lipstick. From the outsiders view, she appears sincere, loving even, talking well of her patient and the defendant’s mother that comes across as caring. Caring a lot in fact. The judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) sympathises with her, almost brandishing her as some saviour when surely the man would know what’s best for his own mother. But because Marla has a winning smile, perfect teeth and isn’t a man, the judge grants her full “custody” of the man’s mother.

This idea that Marla gets away with what she does because of who she is biologically, is highlighted after the ceremonial court hearing, when the man whose mother she’s taking care of bombards her on the street with vulgar threats. Marla remains grounded in this, almost too grounded for my liking as she spouts some on the nose dialogue about the man’s shame at losing to a woman. Though true, this moment could’ve been constructed in a more subtle way instead of referring directly to both their genitalia.

What we begin to establish is Marla’s business adventures as a woman who virtually cons the elderly out of their assets and forces them into care homes with high monthly bills. Once they’re imprisoned in these homes, Marla and her sidekick Fran (Eiza González) cash in on everything her clients own. Now  despite the horror of such an act, it's extremely hard to dislike Marla and the way in which she conducts her business, which in itself is horrific seeing as she exploits the elderly with zero conscience. And that’s also the reason why Marla has been able to get away with so much, practically building an entire empire off the backs of those who can be manipulated the easiest. She’s successful in her work until she decides to prey on Jennifer (two time Oscar winner Dianne Weist) a seemingly independent and healthy woman until Marla brands her unfit to take care of herself, using a phoney doctor to prove it who advises the court that Jennifer be taken into Marla’s care. Jennifer is what Marla labels a cherry, someone who’s very rich, without any family or friends who could intervene or vouch for her. Marla decides to take her pick but clearly hasn’t done her homework as a few days later when Fran is redecorating Jennifer’s home, an unknown man comes knocking on the door to pick up Jennifer.

Turns out Jennifer isn’t as lonely as Marla thinks and the decision to force Jennifer into her care has disastrous consequences. Marla goes from thinking Jennifer is a cherry to learning that she’s a spider’s web, with attachments not only to a real family but also the Russian Mafia. Her son (Peter Dinklage) not only wants his mother out of Marla’s care but also for someone to pay for putting her there in the first place...

I Care A Lot started off terrifically. Rosamund Pike certainly controlled the playing field, scoring frequently in her performance as calculated and cold. It was a refreshing reminder of her role in Gone Girl whilst also allowing us to appreciate Pike as a stand alone actor who approaches her roles with ingenuity and flare. Her and González made a great on screen pairing and did a great deal in trying to tell this story with patience and truth. However, the on the nose dialogue that kept making a frequent appearance and the way the story lost itself by the end were two grating parts to this film. Not only that, but the film's finale felt rushed and out of tune to the rest of the story and setting that first gave us the film. There was certainly a huge genre flip by the end of the film that hadn’t been set up properly and if anything, left me rolling my eyes. It's a shame to say seeing as the performances of all actors in this film were truthful and grounded, despite the majority of the story being structured in an unsatisfactory way. An abundance of cliches that fall into action genres withheld the film’s potential and had me placing it in the box of films that aren’t worth watching. I praise the film’s well written, three dimensional characters and stylistic storytelling however the story itself lacked refinement and authenticity. 

Rosamund Pike didn’t disappoint in I Care A Lot and had me caring a lot about her, just not the rest of the film.

I Care A Lot is available to watch on Amazon Prime now,

[wordsandsound14]

Switchfoot albums ranked (not including interrobang)

I've been thinking about this a lot too recently. Ik I'm late to the party on this one but I don't get on reddit often. Only got on since the band did the ama. I won't include interrobang since it's so new and ranking it seems difficult. (worst to best)

11. Learning to Breathe - While this record has some of the best written songs (Learning to Breathe, The Loser, Love is the Movement), it also has some of my least favorites (Poparazzi, Innocence Again, Living is Simple). I often just find myself bored with this album and disappointed. There are plenty of dipping of toes in ideas and then abandoning them. For instance, the beginning of Erosion is such a cool unique sound and then it's abandoned for the rest of the song. The themes of this album are also really boring to me, even when I was a christian. I just found it wasn't taking a unique perspective or doing anything different with its themes when they have done so before.

10. Where the Light Shines Through - I feel this was the band when they were the most uninspired. It feels like it was trying to sell itself to the CCM crowd and make some waves there since it's been the most consistent place of making waves and it still didn't do that. Don't get me wrong, there are great songs here (If the House Burns Down Tonight, Float, Holy Water). The first half of this album is super good. It's that back half that feels like an axe to the first half. Every song on the back half has something that disappoints me. And I'm fine with christian themes and all but it felt like this album had more just praise songs vs the questioning of faith. Would've been a great EP and it kinda made sense that they went into hiatus after this album. I also feel that the themes of the album didn't really make it to it. Jon talked about how he was in a some struggle and storm before the album and then by the time they got recording it more so became an album after the storm. And I just wonder what was going on. Cause there's only small hints. I can only feel that an album that actually talked about that or coming out of the storm would've worked but we got way after the storm and leaving a lot of good inspiration behind in a ball of mystery that we still don't know about. I don't need to know every information that he went through but the songs got effected by it.

9. New Way to be Human - I think what holds this album down the most is it's lack of direction. I can feel them trying to tackle all of their ideas from folk to pop to indie while maintaining their identity. I just don't feel these ideas get fully fleshed out. But these songs are really well written and the philosophy bleeding into these tracks and ending up being a basis of many future songs can all be tracked back to this album. This album is just a very specific listen so I don't often turn to this album. I do think Something More is the most overlooked song, with Amy's song being a close second. I also think Incomplete is a just a better version of I Turn Everything Over so it feels like a repeat track. But I really appreciate what this record represents in their career and see it as a stepping stone of sorts. (Company Car is one of their best earlier works)

8. Native Tongue - Seems a lot of people have very different feelings about this work. I think the biggest thing that makes Native Tongue feel distinct is that it feels like a Jon Foreman project with Switchfoot. Like Jon was the only one who couldn't stay away from the studio and was calling the other members. They came and were happy to but it was Jon with the initiative. At least, it's how it sounds to me. A lot of these ideas are incomplete. But when they aren't, they hit really well (Native Tongue, Dig New Streams, Oxygen). And the amount of trying different things! Granted a lot of ideas of modern production ideas but I'm glad they happened. But some I'm not too fond of (Joy Invisible, Wonderful Feeling, The Strength To Let Go). I feel this album also really fell short without a good producer. It's not the production value that doesn't work but Switchfoot works best when there is a producer there that works with them and pushes them. I fell they could have been better but it also has some solid songs in here.

7. Legend of Chin - This is one of the most fun Switchfoot records but has such a distinct sound and charm to it. I understand that a lot of songs are about girls that Jon doesn't even know any more but there isn't a bad song on here. It's all just fun from 3 guys jamming in a room. I used to not like the closing track but it's grown on me and I crave that sound more and more. Some standout tracks are Home, Chem 6A, You. With Underwater being a super creative song. I don't have a ton to say other than this is root Switchfoot and their cores are on display here.

6. Fading West - I feel this is their most misunderstood record. The struggle this album went through is tremendous. Take the two best things Switchfoot is known for and strip them away and they still make a record worth listening too imo. It's not their best but it's really ambitious, even if accidental. Originally, they were going to only strip the guitars away but when you listen to the story of Fading West, going on a journey to feel inspired. There are plenty of lines hinting that Jon was having writer's block (blood clot pen). It does mean the lyrics suffered some here but I don't think they suffered a ton. They achieved the california surf music. However, I do think they missed a huge part that I feel the fans were wanting. It's the sound that's on the ep. It's the one we were advertised and didn't receive on the album. I would loved if the album had the sound of Edge of the Earth (the song). But I really appreciate the risk cause it's a huge one. (stand out tracks: Love Alone Is Worth the Fight, BA55, Slipping Away).

5. Vice Verses - This was the best they have ever been as musicians (you could argue this for Oh Gravity too tho). But the amount of pushing their musical talent is very apparent on this album. The bass lines and drum rhythms are amazing. The only songs I'm kinda eh about are Rise Above It (still has great production and energy) and The Original (still has amazing bass and guitar parts). This album does have a weird issue with the lyrics either hitting really deep parts of your heart or being a very vague or simple line. The production is also the best imo and everything is layered super well. The only production that I disagree on is on Where I Belong (the digital claps for why and some parts sounding a little inconsistent with the rest of the album). But the choices in the sounds of the guitars and genre jumps and the grunge. Still lacking in some areas but still a solid record. (Holds my favorite Switchfoot song Thrive)

4. Oh! Gravity. - Oh yes, the golden era as I call it. I pin this album as the core Switchfoot sound. If you want to hear what Switchfoot sounds like, this album nails it. Guitars, fun, great lyrics, and musical variety. I don't have much words like I did for Chin. It's a pretty simple album to digest and it's the quickest made one (from what i'm aware of) and it shows but in the best way possible. It's also only made better by the podcast series they made. The only things that hold this album down a bit is American Dream and Burn Out Bright being repeat tracks of another (American Dream being the better one) and the double edged sword of it being simple when surrounded by high effort long works that are beyond exceptional.

3. The Beautiful Letdown - The Classic Foot album that defined their careers. It's not a joke tho that everything went up a whole level with this album. Something clicked in Jon's head that turned out some of his best lyrics and the song formats and sound just grew a ton. Jerome being an essential new member. And only one song that's a little meh (Redemption) and even the meh song is still catchy. Overexposure might be why it's not higher but I feel I have more reasons being that it does sound dated. Most of the time for better but a little for worse. I also feel that if Drew was a part of this album, it would be up a another level also. There's just a slight amount of incompleteness to this record. Not sure exactly but regardless the songwriting on this album is amazing and the questions and the way they are asked remain timeless.

2. Nothing is Sound - Grunge at its best here. I'm still not certain what Jon was going through here other than what the lyrics mention but whatever he was feeling hits hard. It resonates so much. To this day, these songs hold my throat. Not a bad song on here. It's a really good album that only gets beat by it's production value. Some songs could've been produced better (ironically Jon mentioned that recently too lol). Golden, The Setting Sun, and We Are Young Tonight are the forefront of those. And it's not like they are terribly produced but they are missing a little from what they could be. But literally it. Front to back, this record just rocks while wallowing in despair from the fallen world and the loneliness and helplessness it brings. It also represents a huge decision on what to do after a breakout record and is one of the best records after a band reached public success.

1. Hello Hurricane - The whole sound of this record is the most complete the band has ever sounded to me. The writing on this album is so great. Not one song is a waste and process this album went through is amazing. I get that they can't (prob shouldn't) do this process but damn was it worth it. This project sounds so complete and so organically made, even with two songs that I feel could have been switched out. (Always isn't my favorite but I may having it be a song for a past relationship. But it also does still have a lot of raw emotion in it that I appreciate and can get past my own perceptions. It's the lesser of the offense. Free is the other one only cause it kinda is booty in studio. It's live version makes ya wish it was that way on the record). But i adore these lyrics and I love the sounds they used without washing it up with production but still using production (Sing it Out) as a tool. It's so good and I love this album so much

quick review of interrobang is that it’s a very solid record and I love the sound of it so far. It doesn’t take my top record but it’s an insanely catchy album with a lot of listens in the future. I’d probably rank it as 2 or 3. Not sure if it’s above or below nothing is sound. but really give it a listen. It’s exactly what i’ve been wanting from the band for so long

[darling-i-read-it]

Proposal

Theodore Laurence  x reader

Word Count: none I don’t think !

Warnings: 1k

Author’s Note: Sorry this took so long, I’ve been spotty at getting to my computer lately. But I looooveee Laurie so I hope you like this because I had a fun time making it! Again, you can picture Timmy or Christian I just pictured Christian :)

Requested: by anon, I FREAKING LOVED THE LAURIE FIC. And i was wondering if I could request another one where Laurie proposes to reader, but reader tell him she has to think about it. And she sorta gets advice from marmee (she's a march btw) then she ends up running up to the Laurence house and saying yes.

Summary: the request!

Genre: FLUFF

(not my gif)(LOOK AT MY LOVE)

   You and Laurie had been friends for ages. You were as close as close could get. You weren’t a March but you may as well have been, considering how closely you were with them at all times. Your family was alright but you always felt more at home with Laurie and the Marches. Especially Laurie.    

    Granted, you and Laurie had always been a little bit more than friends. Originally everyone figured that it was him and Jo that would end up together in the end but the second you saw that Jo wasn’t one to lean on any man, everyone could tell it was meant to be for you and Laurie. You danced off of one another easily, always laughing, always hanging around each other. 

    It shouldn’t have been a surprise to you when he proposed but on your behalf, he had caught you quite off guard. You were in the field of his house, in between the March and Laurence place. You sat in the grass, looking up at the clouds in the clear blue sky. It was a gorgeous day which didn’t come around too often. You were surprised that you haven't seen Amy yet that afternoon but it was just the two of you. 

    “Do you ever think of the future?” he asked. You shrugged, turning on your side so that you faced him. He cocked his head toward you and smiled. You put your head in your palm, propping your head on your elbow.

    “I try my best not to. Unless it's the next day and I have to make plans with you or the girls,” you told him truthfully. You sat up some and he looked up at you. You watched his face. “Why?” He shrugged and sat up as well.

    “I was thinking about it. About us in the future,” he admitted. You raised an eyebrow. He looked antsy and finally he simply stood up. You brought your knees to your chest and placed your chin on them. Your dress bunched up underneath you. 

    “What about us?” He shrugged.

    “Just about what we might be doing. Who we might be.” You noticed he was attempting to be subtle but you saw he was also messing with his shirt which meant he was nervous about something. 

    “Laurie.” 

    “Will you marry me?” Your mouth opened in surprise. You hadn’t been expecting that. There was a silence as he waited and you thought about what to say. Your mind was on overload, you hadn’t been thinking about that question. Sure you had thought about it but it wasn’t something you had been pondering just then. You stood up and opened your mouth to speak. He nodded, encouraging your answer.

    “I have to think about it I think.” His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and you turned on your heel, walking quickly to the March house. Your walk turned to a run as you bellowed through the front door. 

    In the living room sat Marmee, looking through a book with her knitting in front of her. She raised her head at the sound of you entering the house.

    “Something wrong?” she asked. You looked at her for a long moment.

    “Laurie just proposed to me.” Her face lit up. Everyone in the house had been waiting for you to say that and she hadn’t expected you to be hesitant at all. You and Laurie were so close, she thought the answer was obvious but you looked worried.

    “What did you say?” 

    “I told him I had to think about it. He might still be out in the field waiting,” you said, laughing dryly. She nodded and put her book down carefully. You walked further into the room and sat down in the chair beside her. 

    “You’re hesitant I take it.” You shrugged.

    “It just seems to be final. Marriage. What if he grows to hate me? What if we hate each other? I couldn’t bear it if I thought he ever hated me,” you muttered. She leaned forward and put her hand on yours. You stared into her eyes. You had always trusted her more than anyone else. You thought she was so wise, that she knew everything and she was so kind. You just wanted someone who was kind to tell you what you should do.

    “You and Laurie have been friends for a long time, I don’t imagine that’ll ever happen if I’m being honest.” She glanced out the window and saw that Laurie had retreated back into the house. “Do you love him?” 

    “Yes,” you said without thinking. She smiled softly.   

    “Then what’s the problem?” You thought about that for a moment and nodded to yourself rather than to her than to the window. 

    “You’re right. You’re very very right.” You stood up, her hand slipping off of yours. “Thank you Marmee.” She gave you a smile and then you opened the door to the March house and started a quick run across the way. You stopped on the porch of the Laurence house to take a deep breath. 

    Before you got the chance to knock the door opened. You smiled at the sight of your Laurie and you had never been more sure of anything than what you were about to say.

    “Yes. I would love it very much to marry you.” He let out a breath of relief and leaned forward, placing his hands on your cheeks and giving you a well needed kiss. You melted into his chest and threw your arms around his neck. 

    He pulled away, laughing a little and brushing your cheek with this finger.

    “You wouldn’t believe how happy I am to hear that.”

    “Well I have some idea.”

[darringauthier]

The Woman In The Window (2021)

Genre: Mystery, Drama

Who's In It: Amy Adams, Anthony Mackie, Gary Oldman, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Tyree Henry

Who Directed It: Joe Wright

Plot: An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors, only to witness a disturbing act of violence.

Run Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

IMDB Score: 5.7

Metascore: 41

Why I Watched It: The cast

How I Watched It: Netflix Canada

Random Thoughts: Boy does this have Oscar hopes written all over it. Call it more Oscar bait than Oscar buzz cause sadly it didn't have any buzz. Just look at that cast and it's lead by a multi time nominee that hasn't won an Oscar yet.

I guess at some point this ended up a Netflix movie and Netflix kind of does what it does to most films gives it a little hype and then it's a cog in the wheel. Also this film got pretty bad reviews and I'll be honest I was kind of dreading watching it, oddly what sold me was not only the cast but that the run time was well under two hours.

What I Liked: I'm a sucker for Amy Adams, I like her a lot but oddly don't watch most of her films as they all do kind of feel Oscar baity for me. Here she's picked a throw back movie, this easily could have been in the fifties. Now it's weird cause this looks like Rear Window knock-off but it does end up as a "Is she or Isn't she crazy" movie. The film works for me and at times it shouldn't but I not only bought it but I cared for Adams character and Adams did a good job of shading this character and giving her some depth. This character good easily have been a very and sad and pathetic drunk character and Adams does a good job of showing that this one is holding on by her finger nails. There's two reasons this film worked for me, one was Adams and two I'm a sucker for this sub-genre.

The thing I liked about it the most is that they played more into the mystery genre, more a thriller than a heavy drama. For me when I saw this cast and director I thought well this is high end snotty Oscar fodder but what they went with was more B-Movie thriller which worked for me. I liked the fact that they used Adams as a flawed character but at her core she knows what she saw. The only thing I wished is that they went more campy and turned it into a Joan Crawford film.

Now the supporting cast is loaded her but sadly most of them don't have a lot to do, the stand out for me was Brian Tyree Henry, he was very good as just a decent human being who happened to be a cop, he gives Adams character not only the benefit of the doubt but respect.

I also liked this was just a hour 40 minutes, if this dragged past two hours I think I would have disliked it. I enjoyed it but it's very flawed but keeping it shorter also kept the pacing and tone up and it does work as a mystery thriller.

What I Didn't Like: It's clear this was going to be a bigger movie and I would guess longer cause some major actors who are on the poster are barely in it. Jennifer Jason Leigh might have one or two lines of dialogue, anyone could have played that role. Julianne Moore has one seen, granted it's a long scene and it's good her and Adams are very good together. There's a version of this movie where they have extended scenes together and end up being friends. Anthony Mackie is a voice in the film, pretty much. Gary Oldman is there to scream and be unpleasant. Wyatt Russell is there to be either a red herring or a suspect. My point in a smaller film the roles would have went to good character actors and not name stars. It helps and hurts the film. You want to see most of them more.

Now the trailer gives a lot away and I won't go big into spoilers but the main thing in the trailer and really the main plot point is Adams sees a murder and says it was Gary Oldman's wife, they live across the street and Adams had spent time with the women she saw killed. We find out Oldman comes over with the police saying that women wasn't his wife, who is played by Moore, it's Jennifer Jason Lee. Now this sets up is Adams crazy, I won't say how it plays out but boy it's a very simple twist, so simple one line of dialogue would have solved this in about five minutes.

Even though in the end I liked the film, I will say it's a bit much. It could have been learner and meaner and also more pulpy. They get stuck in the heavy drama where they should have leaned into the pulp and camp. I don't love the ending it goes on too long and yes the twist and there's two of them aren't jaw dropping. Also they seemed to throw in Adams' character being agoraphobic for little reason, I guess they wanted to do Rear Window with a dash of Vertigo, it doesn't play that big of a part, they could have done more with it. The film does rely heavily on cliches and troupes in the last act. There's one seen past the mid way mark when we learn something about Adams' character that just plays out weird and surreal, the way it's handled and shot and with so many people around just seemed awkward, it's suppose to be a big twist and it doesn't play that way. Also kind of wished it was more atmospheric. Joe Wight is a good director but the film kind of lacked flare, it was more workmanlike.

Final Thoughts: It's not nearly as bad as I heard but it isn't as could as it could have been. It fell somewhere in the middle for me, I enjoyed it.

Rating: 6/10

[newmusickarl]

Mercury Prize 2021 – Ranking The Contenders

It is that time of year again – the season of the Mercury Music Prize. In the last few weeks, the albums nominated for the 2021 Mercury Music Prize have been revealed and, as ever, it is a highly diverse and eclectic list of some of the best British and Irish music released over the last 12 months – some familiar, some not so familiar. Each of these nominated records is now vying for the prestigious title of Album of the Year, the overriding criteria for which has greatly deviated throughout the award’s history.

Traditionally the eventual prize winner would tend to be a lesser-known record rather than what was necessarily the best album out of the 12, with the judges choosing to highlight the artist and record that may have been overlooked and needed the most attention. However, this has changed in recent years, with the judges choosing what has been widely regarded amongst music critics as the best album in most cases.

So, with the likes of James Blake, Michael Kiwanuka, Dave, Sampha, Alt-J and The XX being just some of the acclaimed artists that have taken the top prize home over the last decade, the big question is - who is in with the best shout this year of being named the overall winner?

In recent years a strong favourite has often emerged from the pack, but I must say I find the 2021 prize to be the most open and hardest to predict in years. There is no clear favourite this time around for me, which makes for an exciting and intriguing build to the September awards show.

Despite the unpredictability, as I do each year I’ve listened to all 12 albums and tried to rank them based on what I think are their chances of winning. To be clear, this is not a “Worst-to-Best” countdown – this ranking is based solely on how likely I think they are to win the overall prize.

To determine this, I’ve considered the front-to-back listening experience and the artistic achievement attained by the album, the popularity of the artist, how critically acclaimed the album is and how similar albums have fared in recent years too. So without further ado, here’s my final thoughts and analysis on this year’s nominees.

12. Promises by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

This collaborative release from electronic artist Floating Points, American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra was one of the albums I hadn’t heard prior to the nominees being announced, so was pleasantly surprised by what turned out to be quite an interesting listen. Built mainly around a twinkly harpsichord and Sanders’ saxophone, the music builds to a swell at various stages before gently disappearing in the same subtle way in which it arrived.

That said, I would be very surprised if this album took home the overall prize and title of “Album of the Year” for several reasons. Firstly, this feels primarily like a Pharoah Sanders project, who is of course American and not British. Secondly, although split into nine movements this is ultimately one single piece of music and the Mercury Prize has always been about celebrating artistic achievement in the traditional album format. Based on this, I’m surprised it has even been nominated and I think this cancels this one out for me.

Of course, there is always a chance this could prevail on the night, but I think it would be too controversial and therefore highly unlikely to get the overall nod.

11. SOURCE by Nubya Garcia

This debut album from London-born jazz musician Nubya Garcia was another record I hadn’t heard before her Mercury Prize nomination, which sees Nubya take the listener on a journey throughout musical history. As she describes the record herself, this is “a collection of thoughts and feelings about identity, family history, connections, collectivism and grief.”

Now jazz records have always found a spot on the Mercury Prize shortlist with at least one record from the genre getting a nomination each year. However, the reality is that none have ever actually won the overall prize - even in recent years with promising efforts from the likes of Moses Boyd, Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming in contention. So as impressive as Nubya’s debut is in parts, I don’t think it is the album to buck the trend.

10. Pink Noise by Laura Mvula

Singer-songwriter Laura Mvula is certainly a favourite with the Mercury Prize judges, with her third album Pink Noise representing the third nomination of her career, making her an impressive 3-for-3 so far. That said, Pink Noise is a very different record to her first two outings, with Mvula lacing these tracks with synths to give them a wonderful 80s aesthetic and neon glow. When combined with her traditional soul style, it does make for an enjoyable and fun front-to-back listen.

However, my biggest reservation with the record is that it’s not particularly ground-breaking – this is a sound that a lot of other artists have employed recently and had similar or greater success to what Mvula achieves here. With this being the case, I’m also putting this one down as unlikely.

9. Not Your Muse by Celeste

Brighton-born singer-songwriter Celeste has already proved herself a hit with critics, having been named as the BBC’s Sound of 2020 prying to releasing this debut album. Across the 12 tracks on Not Your Muse, Celeste’s powerful, beautifully toned voice takes centre stage, simply soaring amongst the glossy musical arrangements. 

From the instantly recognisable groove of Stop This Flame that has been everywhere in the last 12 months, to the string-drenched majesty of A Kiss, Celeste shows off her full range with plenty of style and flair. This is an impressive debut outing to say the least, drawing natural comparisons to the late-great Amy Winehouse for her soulful voice and cinematic presentation.

Although I wouldn’t be completely shocked if Celeste was to walk away the overall Mercury Prize winner, I think the success Not Your Muse has brought her already goes against her case. With its release, she became the first British female to have a No.1 debut album in the last five years and she even already has an Oscar nomination to her name for Best Original Song. She’s also been featured on Sky Sports coverage all year, as well as high profile John Lewis and SuperBowl adverts.

Therefore, I think it’s safe to say Celeste’s career is already flourishing, so a Mercury Prize win for her would simply be another accolade rather than the career-defining moment it has been for other artists in the past, and would be for other artists on this year’s shortlist.

8. Fir Wave by Hannah Peel

Northern Irish composer, producer and electronic musician Hannah Peel makes for a fascinating entry in the Mercury Prize shortlist for me. This was another record that I hadn’t heard previously and took me by surprise, with Peel essentially reinterpreting 1972 album Electrosonic by Delia Derbyshire (famous for creating the original Doctor Who theme) and the Radiophonic Workshop.

Although this is based on source material, this is an entirely fresh composition with Peel’s style of electronica drawing comparisons to that of Mercury Prize alumni Jon Hopkins. Peel herself best describes the record as “The cycles in life that will keep on evolving and transforming forever. Fir Wave is defined by its continuous environmental changes and there are so many connections to those patterns echoed in electronic music – it's always an organic discovery of old and new.”

It is an impressive record, and I was quite torn as to where to place this one on the list. If the Mercury Prize decide to return to their old habit of giving a lesser-known record the overall nod, then Hannah Peel could well be the artist to benefit - but that hasn’t really been the trend in recent years. Additionally, Peel herself is a very successful composer who continues to score many TV programmes and films, as well as putting together orchestral arrangements for the likes of Paul Weller.

For me, the nomination for Fir Wave has already granted it additional attention, which I think makes it a winner already in that sense. It’s certainly got an outside chance for the overall prize itself but based on recent history I don’t see it being named as the winner.

7. As the Love Continues by Mogwai

At this point, ten albums and 26 years into their career, people just about know what to expect from Scottish post-rockers Mogwai, and that is soaring, grandiose instrumentals. Yet somehow with each new release, the band continue to astonish, taking their instrumentals into unchartered territory and leaving listeners in wonder with their colourful, breathtaking soundscapes.

Amazingly, As the Love Continues is the band’s first ever Mercury Prize nomination, which is quite incredible given the high standard of their output over the course of their career. That said, it is not surprising this is the one for which they have finally been nominated, as it is for my money one of their best releases.

From cathartic opener To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate The Earth, the acid-drenched industrial sounds of Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever, and the dreamy, looping guitar riff and euphoric crescendo of Pat Stains, Mogwai’s touch for forging fascinating sonic textures hasn’t missed a beat. That said, it is the one track that contains clean vocals that stands out amongst the pack here, and that is the emotional gut punch of Ritchie Sacramento which sees frontman Stuart Braithwaite paying a beautiful tribute to all his musician friends that have passed away over the years.

This is still one of my favourite releases by anybody so far this year and my second favourite album overall out of the 12 shortlisted. So why only at No.7 you ask? Well, because sadly I just don’t see Mogwai taking away the overall prize.

Firstly, as well as their first Mercury Prize nomination this was also the album that saw Mogwai land their first ever UK No.1 album, so they are arguably more popular than they ever have been. Secondly and most importantly, the Mercury Prize has mostly favoured debut albums and younger artists throughout its long history, and I think Mogwai are simply too established and verging on legendary status at this point to get the win. So as much as I love this album, I think it’s likely to get overlooked in the same way Radiohead have been every time they’ve been nominated. Here’s hoping I’m wrong and left pleasantly surprised!

6. Conflict of Interest by Ghetts

Here’s another record where it’s quite puzzling as to which way the judges will sway on this one. On the surface, this third album from Grime MC Ghetts has all the credentials to be a Mercury Prize winner. With the likes of Dave, Skepta and Dizzee Rascal all amongst previous winners, Ghetts comes from a genre that has a winning track record, certainly in recent years as well. 

The album itself is also mightily ambitious and grand in its scope, with each autobiographical, astutely written track seamlessly segueing into the next one. There are also plenty of moments throughout of stunning, cinematic orchestration that help to elevate Ghetts’ bold vision at various key points. Perhaps most importantly though, it is also one of the most critically acclaimed albums on this year’s shortlist, holding an impressive 95/100 on Metacritic at the time of writing.

However, as many reasons as there are for Ghetts to be a contender, there’s also some things working against him, which is probably why he’s landed at the midway point on the rankings. Firstly, I found the album was about 10 minutes too long and didn’t quite strike the same chord that Dave’s Psychodrama, or even Kano’s two recently nominated albums, Made In The Manor and Hoodies All Summer, have done previously. It’s certainly an impressive outing, but for me lacks the emotional punch of those records.

Also, as I said about Stormzy’s record last year and still rings true today - no album that has Ed Sheeran on it deserves to win the Mercury Prize.

5. Collapsed in Sunbeams by Arlo Parks

Into the top five now and I think here is the point where we finally arrive at what are the genuine contenders for this year’s prize. Kicking us off is young singer-songwriter Arlo Parks for her beautifully understated debut album, Collapsed In Sunbeams.

Parks said of the album recording process that she trusted her “gut feeling” a lot of the time, with most tracks “taking an hour or less from conception to end.” This is very evident across this raw, no-frills debut, where her wonderful soulful voice and honest songwriting are often the main attraction across the album’s 12 tracks.

Now, there is a lot working in Arlo’s favour when it comes to acts that historically win the Mercury Prize – it’s a debut album, she has her fans on the Mercury judging panel, and her success has been modest so far in comparison to some of the other nominees. That said though, the vital ingredient this album is missing for me is that grand ambition that recent winners Michael Kiwanuka, Dave and Sampha have all had – this is certainly a well-crafted record, but not necessarily one that will set the world alight and be talked about for years to come. For that reason, my gut says Arlo will be one of the names in the mix on awards night but will ultimately come up short.

4. DEMOTAPE/VEGA by BERWYN

For me, Trinidad-born rapper, producer, and songwriter Berwyn is the real dark horse amongst this year’s nominees. At just 27 minutes long, DEMOTAPE/VEGA is by far the shortest album on this year’s list, but nevertheless still manages to leave one of the biggest impacts.

Ultra-raw, brutally honest and charmingly homemade on his laptop, this debut is the perfect showcase for Berwyn’s talent. Across the album’s concise runtime, he carves out piano-driven R&B and Soul elements to backdrop his spoken-word style of rapping. To draw comparisons to other Mercury Prize alumni with multiple nominations, think James Blake meets Ghostpoet and you’re not a million miles away from Berwyn’s sound. For me personally, this album left a bigger impact in less than half the time of Ghetts’ whole album, thanks to cuts like the mesmerising and passionate 017 FREESTYLE.

Berwyn is certainly one of the artists on the shortlist that will greatly benefit from the extra exposure that winning the Mercury Prize brings so if you want to take a punt on an outsider, this would be the album I’d recommend backing.

3. For the First Time by Black Country, New Road

Much like Arlo Parks, experimental London rockers Black Country, New Road are another artist that have a lot pulling in their favour.

Another critically acclaimed debut and one that blends multiple elements from favoured Mercury Prize genres – post-punk, jazz, alt-rock, math-rock, amongst many others - to make a truly unique and bold sound. With razor-sharp guitar riffs, cutting lyrics and moments of seismic, horn-backed musical swells, this is a record that you can see easily winning over the judges on awards night. Although at times this is a record that’s easier to admire than it is to love, there are moments in which you can’t help but get enraptured, such as the wonderfully erratic Instrumental opening, the epic and meandering Sunglasses and the melancholic, romantic groove of the stunning Track X.

For me, this one is a genuine contender that I could easily see being named as the overall winner. In terms of things going against it, I would say it’s simply down to the fact that these next two albums are on the shortlist.

2. Blue Weekend by Wolf Alice

For me, the album that presents the biggest intrigue on this year’s shortlist is Wolf Alice’s Blue Weekend. This is because as much as there are factors working in this album’s favour, there is almost an equal measure working against this record winning the top prize.

Having released their debut My Love Is Cool in 2015 to much acclaim and their first Mercury Prize nomination, there was a lot of talk at the time as to whether the rock quartet could deliver with their eventual follow-up. With their sophomore effort, Visions of a Life, they actually went one better and won the 2018 Mercury Music Prize, achieving further critical and commercial success.

Now with Blue Weekend, the four of them have produced a record that has managed to exceed the high expectations set by the predecessors. At the time of writing, the record is currently sat on a 91/100 on Metacritic, with a 9.2 user score, suggesting widespread universal acclaim amongst both fans and critics alike – so it would certainly be a very popular winner. It also suggests that by all accounts, this record is a more significant achievement than the 2018 album for which they won the Mercury Prize.

So as the only previous winners on the shortlist who’ve also just created their best work to date, they’re a certainty to win the prize again, right? Well not quite.

You see the thing is with Wolf Alice, they have Mercury Prize history working both for and against them. On one hand, if Wolf Alice were to win, they would become only the second artist after PJ Harvey to win the Mercury Prize twice, and also become the first artist ever to win back-to-back prizes for consecutive albums. If they were to achieve this, I don’t think there would be any outcry from the public, as the consensus with Blue Weekend is that it is a very special album and would be fully deserving of such an accolade. However, to achieve this it would mean the judges doing something they have never done before, and something they have only ever done once previously.

Therefore, you must feel on the night of the awards ceremony, it will ultimately boil down to one big debate - Deserve Vs Need. With this album, it feels like Wolf Alice have finally evolved from Britain’s most promising young band, into Britain’s best band working today. They are at the height of their powers right now, with Blue Weekend landing them their first ever UK No.1 album, helping them to instantly sell out tours and catapulting them to festival headline slots. So ultimately, they don’t need the win like they did several years ago to take them to that next level.

That said, this is the best album on the list and feels like a generational record in the same way Dave’s and Michael Kiwanuka’s did the last two years. Just take a track like The Last Man On Earth for example - a haunting piano ballad built around Ellie Rowsell’s powerful vocals, that begins gently before eventually erupting into a glorious haze of soaring guitars and Beatles-like riffs. It is barely six months old and already this song feels like a timeless classic, and you can argue the rest of the album is the same. So, if any album really deserves to be named “Album of the Year” and make a bit of Mercury Prize history in the process, it is very much this one.

Which way the judges lean on this Deserve Vs Need debate I feel will ultimately decide this year’s prize, whether Wolf Alice triumph and make history or whether this next album pips it to the post instead. My gut says that the latter is more likely, but it makes for an exciting conundrum around this year’s winner and will have me rooting on the night for Wolf Alice to prevail.

1. Untitled (Rise) by SAULT

So here we are then, the album I think is most likely to take home the 2021 Mercury Prize…. and kind of predictably it’s the current favourite. Although it may be the boring choice to put this album first, analysing the chances of mysterious musical collective SAULT against the rest of the nominees, it is clear as to why they are looking the most likely at this moment in time.

Interestingly much like Burial when he was nominated back in 2008, no-one really knows much about SAULT other than the fact they make eclectic and vital music, with their identity still very much a mystery. However, despite their anonymity, the last 12 months have seen them create shockwaves throughout the music world, releasing three highly acclaimed and topically urgent albums for which they could’ve been nominated for any one of them. In fact, on Metacritic’s compilation of all critics’ Best of 2020 year-end lists, both Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise) landed in the overall Top 10, with the latter for which they are nominated holding an impressive critic score on the site of 93/100.  

Whereas Untitled (Black Is) feels like the rallying cry, Untitled (Rise) is a record that celebrates black excellence, arriving in a year where the voice for racial equality has never been louder. Bringing together various elements of House, Soul, Disco, R&B and Afrobeats, SAULT have crafted a powerful statement through the pure majesty of their diverse sound. This is a thought-provoking and engaging album that will have you dancing one minute, then contemplating the state of the world around you the next.

Although it would be easy to say they have the benefit of collaborator and last year’s winner Michael Kiwanuka being on the judging panel, I think the real reason this SAULT album seems the most likely candidate is because it makes for essential listening that also perfectly fits with the Mercury Prize ethos. It is a musical collective still in their infancy, making important music that takes inspiration from a vast array of genres, as well as the current social and political climate around them.

Having listened to this record several times now, it is no surprise that many music outlets had this as their Album of the Year for 2020, and I would not be surprised at all to see the Mercury Prize give it that same accolade come September - if music really can change the world, then SAULT are leading the way.

[him-e]

Could you give some recommendations of TV shows that are, in your opinion, good/interesting/fun to watch/etc.? They can be recent or older ones, and pretty much of any genre (also, the more recommendations, the better).

disclaimer: I haven’t been in the *right* mood to really get into anything for a LONG WHILE, so my feelings about tv and movies at the moment exist in a spectrum that goes from “ok I guess” to “this somehow sucks even more than my life does and I want to crawl into a hole and rot in it”. So don’t expect lots of flailing and squeeing, lol. THAT SAID, I’m going to focus on the stuff I’ve seen recently:

bridgerton. mildly fun. very cw-ish but with occasional sexplosions. a mix between reign and gossip girl set in regency era. no mr darcy equivalent, unfortunately (the duke of hastings is 100% a chad). also don’t expect historical accuracy or anything like actual jane austen vibes. the main couple is quite shippable and has some decent banter and slow burn until it suddenly escalates into marriage and the sexplosion I mentioned above. the best part, though, is that i’m apparently shipping in*cest again 

the undoing. nicole kidman is married to hugh grant, who is, shockingly, an asshole. but before you think “typecasting”, more on the creepy than pathetic side. the mystery is kinda underwhelming imo bc it leads you to think there’s much to the story than what you originally thought, but no, it really is that simple.

the crown. what can i say? very well written and acted. It’s also super slow and analytical, and can be occasionally boring, if you’re not in the mood. I’m being super slow at catching up because I’m watching it with my mother, and I’m still at season 3 and feeling inappropriately (but also predictably) sympathetic towards Charles (but I’m looking forward to the Diana episodes). This is also a good show if you wanna play “drink every time you recognize a Game of Thrones/Being Human/*insert iconic franchise starring predominantly british folks* actor”. Speaking of royals...

the queen’s gambit. 10/10. Singlehandedly cured my depression for a week. absolutely perfect in every aspect (almost---the lack of a main romance with HEA was a bit of a bummer, but there’s shipping material nonetheless): only one season, “strong” heroine in the sense that she’s a character with an actual PERSONALITY who falls and has genuine flaws and---despite being “inexplicably” a genius (the show gives the context of how she learns to play chess but doesn’t go out of its way to *justify* her talent or how she managed to pulverize guys older and better trained than her)---falls, and loses, sometimes badly, actually at one point slips into a pit of depression and self destruction but only to eventually rise again. I also somehow didn’t come out of this show hating the entire male gender any more than I already do, even though it’s a story about a woman in a male-dominated field who often has to face sexism and patronising attitudes from her peers. but almost everyone she meets is, actually, a quite decent guy? even those who initially challenge her or treat her condescendingly. It’s also a lesson about writing stories with very definite ANTAGONISTS who, however, are NOT villains (but obviously this wouldn’t work for every genre, this one is a fairytale-ish coming of age, a female power fantasy set in the real world, it actually reminded me of 80′s spokon/shoujo anime like Attacker You) 

a discovery of witches. I’ve seen only season one so far, and let me say I didn’t expect a main romance between a VAMPIRE and a WITCH to be such a SNOOZEFEST. dear god. I swear they’re giving me Bill/Sookie vibes (and I like Matthew Goode). but aside from this, it’s sorta watchable, and there’s an *evil* finnish witch who’s in a sorta kinda enemies-to-friends dynamic with the protagonist

his dark materials. Still have to catch up on season 2 because I feel rather lukewarm about it. I haven’t read the books so I can’t tell if it’s a good adaptation or not. From what I can see, everything is in the right place to make it a good story, but somehow, I’m not vibing with it? Maybe I’m just too old to care about stories with child protagonists lol.

cursed. watch it for the weeping monk. YES he’s Medieval Kylo Ren.

the boys. pretty much the most FUN (and plot-heavy) shit I’ve seen recently, but also the only good take about marvel-style superheroes and their whole fake-deep, dishonest, intensely capitalistic rhetorics i can stomach anymore (beyond the on the nose parody and obvious--a bit insufferable actually--genre-subverting intent, try looking at Homelander & co. through the lens of this post). oh yeah I also ship Frenchie and Kimiko btw, which just proves how a mediocre show can become good, and a good show can turn into AMAZING if there’s something I can ship in it.

now quite out of character for me but here’s a couple Netflix rom com movie recs:

holidate. yeah I know christmas time is over but this somehow became my new comfort movie. Fake dating at its finest. Hot, fun, not insufferably cheesy, definitely not a Hallmark Xmas movie (you know those movies where as a set up the female protagonist breaks up with her long term fiance and she’s like, “oh.”, and proceeds to be sad for 0,5 seconds? This is not one of those), it’s an actual slow burn, and there’s a part where the heroine has a diarrhea emergency which a) is not played as a gross joke and b) somehow leads to hot, romantic sex??

leap year. a 2010 movie with Matthew Goode (who is sexier here than in vampire form) and Amy Adams, it’s a road trip in Ireland (!!!!) with a shitton of belligerent romantic tension and fanfic tropes, 10/10