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evermoredeluxe · 4 months ago

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How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Took Over the Entire World

By Chris Willman

By Alissa Gao for Variety

On the morning that Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is about to begin a three-night stand in Dublin, the older gentleman taking charge of my passport at airport customs has clearly had his fill of Swifties, probably processing them by the hundreds already today. When I reveal myself to be one too — despite being arguably the wrong gender, inarguably old and lacking a telltale “Lover” mascara star over my right eye — his disdain is palpable. Suddenly, I’m getting way more screening questions than anyone not on a watch list should. “What do you like about her?” he sneers, peering up over specs.

This is probably the wrong time for me to point out Swift’s Irish heritage, or to assert that she is this generation’s James Joyce. (The original king of the Easter eggs, right?) I wouldn’t really go that far — I’m only on record as doing my best to certify her as this century’s Beatles. Trying to figure out how to answer him, the past 18 years of extolling Swift in print flash before my eyes. I end up murmuring the bare minimum: “Um, her songwriting.” This seems to disturb him further. He snaps back: “Aren’t they all the same song” — a slight pause, and I know what’s coming next — “about her breakups?” Then, abruptly, he stamps me through, sparing me a detour to Interpol for more grilling.

In the cab into town, the driver is blasting a local talk-radio personality sharing his dismay about the fans of an awful superstar taking over his country. The host reads an email sent in from a hater who says, “A year ago, when tickets went on sale, my partner and I made a reservation to take our kids out of the country this Friday morning. … Thank you for creating a safe space with your show.” I start to wonder if Swift might have met her match at the Cliffs of Moher.

But from my drop-off forward, the next three days are like living in a Swift-topia. The mile and a half to Aviva Stadium each night is like Disneyland when it shuts its doors early for an affinity group. Whether stopping in the pubs or walking through the charming neighborhood of Victorian brick homes adjoining the fancy new stadium, there’s that warm feeling of people who are united by one quality: They are all super in touch with their feelings — or else they wouldn’t be Swift fans. And they all are happy to stop on the street or over pints to talk about poetical expression. (Well, except for the occasional taciturn, invariably straight young male who has signified his supportive-plus-one status by wearing a jersey bearing the name of Swift’s Super Bowl beau, Travis Kelce.)

So it is that I end up chatting with a middle-aged gay man in a sequin-covered shirt whose female companion whispers to me, while he steps away to trade friendship bracelets with a 10-year-old girl and her mum, that Swift’s music just helped him through a difficult breakup. The girl then runs off to trade her homemade bracelets with a pair of high-helmeted Dublin policemen loaded up to their own elbows with friendship swag — unexpected accessories for long arms of the law.

All the stories about American Swifties swarming overseas to catch “The Eras Tour” turn out to be true: You couldn’t swing a neon golf club around here without hitting a Yank. Approximately one out of every five fans I approach is visiting from the States — and the jubilation they’re feeling about the night’s impending concert is compounded by the fact that nearly all of them financed a European vacation and a concert ticket for roughly the same amount they would have paid on a secondary ticketing site for a typical four-figure ticket to one of last year’s predatorily repriced U.S. shows.

Remember the venerable stereotype of the Ugly Americans, brusquely trampling over refined Europeans in their travels? Thanks to Taylor Swift, who has a gift for laying out global welcome mats, this is the summer of the Spangly American.

At the stadium on night one, just down the row from me are a group of millennials from New Jersey, several in glam unitards inspired by the “Lover” or “1989” portions of the career-spanning show and looking like they were costumed by Swift’s own designer, with fake jewel-encrusted microphones to match. I ask how many hours went into perfecting these nearly pro-grade outfits.

“About 80 hours for mine,” says Megan McLaughlin. “Hers probably longer,” she adds, nodding toward one of her sisters, Margo Steinberg. “She knows all the glues and the best gems.” Indeed, confirms Steinberg, “I was working on mine since January. And, yes, I did quit my job to finish it!” She adds, when I ask if she cares to share any secrets to a particularly good look, “You have to use the B-7000 glue.” (A third sister, Amelia McLaughlin, admits she resorted to buying her spangly dress off Etsy — “I was doing a PhD, but I had to match these girls’ enthusiasm” — while a fourth, Carolyn McLaughlin, skipped the glitter and went for a red dress that matches Swift’s from the “I Bet You Think About Me” video.)

Certainly, there is an element of cosplay to many of the fans’ outfits. Some have seen footage of the new segment Swift added to the tour beginning in April 2024 — devoted to her most recent album, the 31-song “Tortured Poets Department” — and have managed to manufacture gowns that look like they’re made of paper and feature lyric excerpts printed on them in script, à la Swift’s custom-made Vivienne Westwood dress. I meet a group of American women who became friends as literature majors in college who have “Tortured Poets”-themed outfits, one duplicating the Westwood dress and the other with handmade printouts of the latest album’s lyrics pinned all over her black dress, as if she were literally pulling pages out of Swift’s playbook.

It’s the devotion to lyrics, even more than glitter, that is most impressive about the bespoke outfits fans have concocted for the occasion. There are scores and scores of Swifties wearing homemade T-shirts — sometimes singular, sometimes matching with a friend, like walking Burma-Shave signs. Some of the messages are obvious, like the dozens of laddies wearing “It’s me, hi, I’m the husband/boyfriend/father, it’s me” shirts. (Bet that seemed really original at one time.) But a lot of them refer to more obscure songs or stanzas, as if every nearby street or stadium loge section is full of human Easter eggs, begging to be unpacked. It’s hard to think of any other superstar in the history of stadium tours who could have inspired as much fan-crafted clothing rooted in the power of words.

Combos of middle-aged mothers and their teen or 20-something daughters abound; some of them have seized on Swift’s mentions of her own mother, Andrea, to come up with their T-shirt ideas. On Lansdowne Road, I talk to a mum whose red-on-black shirt says, “Had to listen to all this drama,” accompanied by a daughter bearing the legend, “And here’s to my mama.” (This is a reference to Swift’s song “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”)

Later, in a stadium Guinness line, I chat up a pair of thirsty locals, the daughter’s shirt reading “I call my mom, she said …,” with the mom’s shirt completing the thought: “It was for the best.” (Damn it, I had to Google to recall that’s from a “1989” Vault track that came out last year.) I ask the daughter if she had to explain to her mom what she was wearing. “She’s 52,” she replies. “I don’t think she knows.”

Age is really no guarantor of not getting it — the popular #SwiftieOver50 hashtag on X proves that. Although outnumbered, plenty of older people are unaccompanied by a minor, or by anyone who has been a minor in the past 20 years. I approach a middle-aged couple, Jean Sebastian Conley and Natasha Gagne, again bidden by their matching shirts — “Who’s Taylor Swift?” and “Who’s Travis Kelce?” They turn out to be French Canadians who found their 206-euro SRO tickets to be a steal compared with the extravagant resale prices they briefly considered back home after being shut out of the initial on-sale. I ask what attracted them to Swift since, unlike so many others here, they didn’t grow up with her.

“I really fell in love with her with the ‘Folklore’ album,” Conley says, referring to her low-key Grammy-winning album recorded during the early months of the pandemic. “I think different audiences and older audiences found her through that and ‘Evermore’ because they were more singer-songwriter, a little bit rougher indie music, and that’s what we like most. So that’s how I got hooked.” For her part, Gagne says, “I like everything she represents. And when she redid all her masters, that’s where I thought she was a lady boss.”

It’s a reminder that, for however many mini-narratives Swift packs into the three hours and 20 minutes of an “Eras” show, there are really four or five years of backstory that feed into the audience’s shared awareness. When she sings the ominous ballad “My Tears Ricochet,” accompanied by a coven of stone-faced dancers, at least some fans will understand it as a distant reflection of her very public feelings about the men she considers her business bêtes noires, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, who bought and sold (respectively) the rights to her first six albums, spawning much vitriol as well as four “Taylor’s Version” rerecorded albums to date.

When the dancers put their grins back on, Swift plays an ebullient excerpt of a very recent “Poets” bonus track, “So High School,” which every person in the crowd will know is inspired by Kelce. There are some breakup songs of recent vintage too — yes, Mr. Customs Man! — like “The Smallest Man in the World,” which may or may not have cost Matty Healy, the 1975 frontman and former Swift paramour, a night of sleep.

The whole tour is themed around not just the newer records but the rerecordings that have made every older album in her catalog feel improbably fresh. It was, quite possibly, the single most baller move in the history of the record industry … and led to the career-retrospective concept for what is already unquestionably the biggest tour in the history of popular music.

Any discussion of the charms of fandom isn’t meant to forestall discussion of “The Eras Tour” as big business. The numbers are fuzzy because Swift’s camp does not release grosses from her shows, unlike nearly every other artist at the stadium or arena level. Even when the tour wraps after 20 months on Dec. 8 in Vancouver, it seems likely those numbers will continue to be guarded with a zeal on par with the government of North Korea’s. Many industry experts believe the gross will approach or even surpass $2 billion.

What is known for certain — even without a confirmation from Swift World — is that she broke the all-time tour-gross figure when she hit the $1 billion mark, whenever exactly that might have been. The two trade publications that specialize in the touring industry have slightly differing estimates: Billboard calculated a cumulative gross of approximately $900 million when she took a break at the end of 2023, figuring that she would crack $1 billion shortly into the tour’s resumption in April, while Pollstar estimated that she had passed $1 billion by the conclusion of last year. Any way you guesstimate it, Swift took less than a year to break the previous record of $939.1 million, which Elton John grossed with his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour across nearly three years of shows.

One source close to the production said early in the “Eras Tour” era that her average gross each night is $14 million. Others believe that is a highly conservative estimate, with a possible total that on at least some nights edges closer to $17 million. One remarkable aspect is that this does not include the revenue from any inflated resale tickets — which, as anyone who has tried to get tickets through Vivid Seats or StubHub knows, mostly have gone for several times their face value. It was little publicized, but Swift had “dynamic pricing” turned off for her ticket sales, possibly to avoid the controversies Bruce Springsteen encountered when the face value on some of his tickets leaped to the four-figure range upon their first sale. Swift left money on the table by not participating in the scalping of her own tickets, which had an average price of around $230 and topped out at $499, excepting VIP packages, which zenithed at $899 — all well short of what some other superstars ask nowadays. Of course, neither Argentina nor anyone at Wembley Stadium ahead of Swift’s opening night performance in June will be crying for her when she’s in reach of $2 billion without the resale inflation … not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in merch.

(This is extraordinary also because Swift hasn’t done any press to promote the tour, except for when she was selected as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in December. But she doesn’t need to — the tour is constantly being celebrated on social media with every outfit change. And it’s also become so huge, it’s featured more A-list sightings than the Oscars, from Julia Roberts to Tom Cruise to Stevie Nicks, who had the surprise song “You’re on Your Own, Kid” dedicated to her in Dublin.)

Benson Boone, whose “Beautiful Things” is the most-streamed song of 2024 in the U.S. and the world, says he felt dwarfed when performing as the opening act at one of Swift’s seven shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. He has forever committed to memory the exact attendance figure he was given for the night: “89,497,” he says. “Just her stage alone is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen — 300 feet of it!” he says. “I took in every moment. It was cool for me to experience another artist’s world and learn from it. I want to work that hard and be the captain of my ship.”

Although it’s maddening to a media that likes official box office reports and can’t get them, it’s easy to see the wisdom in not flaunting those figures if you’re a superstar artist who counts on being seen as relatable. Swift certainly is proud of breaking records — she posted a tweet when “The Tortured Poets Department” spent its first 12 weeks at No. 1 on the album chart, one of only three albums in history to do so. But she’d rather count fan impressions than dollars. By the same token, she doesn’t publicize or confirm acts of generosity that leak out, like the sizable food-bank donations she makes in every city she tours, or the $100,000 bonuses that the tour’s 50 truck drivers reportedly got for Christmas.

An addendum to all this is how the “Eras Tour” film — released last fall, less than halfway through the actual tour — grossed just over $180 million domestically and $261 million globally, beating the records set by Justin Bieber’s concert film in the U.S. and Michael Jackson’s globally. Massive big-screen spoilers only heightened, rather than diminished, resale demand for the shows yet to come on the 152-date tour and helped precipitate the movement among Americans to head overseas, to make up for the supply found sorely lacking at home.

“She is the torchbearer for the live industry,” says Andy Gensler, editor of Pollstar. “It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before, and it’ll be a long time before we see it again. Her timing was exquisite: The pandemic created this yearning and hunger for live entertainment like nothing else in our history, so she couldn’t have picked a better time to go out.” Pollstar called last year a “historic golden age” for touring, as the top 100 global tours collectively surpassed $9 billion — up 46% from 2022 — with Swift obviously contributing a significant chunk of that total. (This year, the trade reports that overall tour attendance is down, with flat grosses, representing a slight reckoning for the live industry that, obviously, isn’t impacting “Eras.”)

“What my partners and I talk a lot about is how it’s one thing to have a big tour in North America. It’s another thing to have an equally big tour wherever you are in the world and to do doubles and triples in these markets,” says Bernie Cahill, an Activist founding partner and manager of acts including the Grateful Dead and the Lumineers. “It’s an anomaly. It’s not normal. And don’t forget, you’re going into what I call asymmetric venues, which are venues that are not really built for music; these are venues that are built for football games or soccer games and can be very challenging to do music. And they get it right every time — Louis Messina [Swift’s tour promoter since her earliest days] and his team are world-class.” But for all that globe-trotting, he notes, “there are some artists that you see do a show and you know they don’t even know what city they’re in. I always feel like Taylor knows exactly where she is. She has a relationship with that city or that market and those fans and she’s connected to them in ways that are very authentic, that you can’t fake.”

The one big snafu in the rollout of “The Eras Tour” occurred in November 2022 when the Ticketmaster system melted down after too many North American dates went on sale at once, causing thousands of fans to experience long delays. The on-sale broke the all-time record for tickets sold in a single day at 2 million, but it also nearly broke the world’s largest ticketing platform. Swift herself was Teflon in this situation, as the blame fell on a ticketing system not capable of handling so much of the Swift-loving world at once. And although most of the problems people have with Ticketmaster are different from what fans faced in the “Eras Tour” debacle — mainly, hidden fees and monopolistic practices — it could have big legislative consequences anyway. Dean Budnick, co-author of “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped,” believes that the Swift hullabaloo was the main catalyst for Congress enacting reform. “There’s no question that perhaps there’s gonna be some meaningful change in ticketing as a result of what people experienced with that on-sale.”

That sense Cahill spoke about of the singer making it clear to an audience she knows exactly where she’s at is in full force in Dublin. Swift introduces the “Folklore”/”Evermore” segment by suggesting that she had a spiritual locale in mind when she started writing that more intimate material, locked in during the first part of the pandemic. “It keeps me up at night all year long: Which era is the most Irish?” she half-jokes to the crowd. “I’m gonna make a case for it being ‘Folklore’ … This album’s imaginary world had a whole aesthetic — like I lived in this cabin in a really green, nature-y, moss-covered landscape. You see where I’m going?… Another thing that I think makes it more Irish than the other eras is, ‘Folklore’ was all about storytelling. And I know you hear this a lot, but you guys are naturally gifted storytellers, right?”

Later on, Swift will cement the local connection by playing, as a “secret” surprise acoustic song, “Sweet Nothing.” She doesn’t have to give the crowd any explanation for that: From the first notes, Irish Swifties will immediately recall that the lyrics reference to the coastal town of Wicklow. The real cherry on top of the show for locals at any international Eras Tour stop, though, comes with a customized moment each night during “We Are Never Getting Back Together” when the spotlight is put on backing dancer Kameron Saunders for a couple of seconds, as he blurts out something locally appropriate, and cheeky. One night in Dublin, it’s the Irish catchphrase “the neck of ye!”; on another, he yells out “pog mo thoin,” meaning “kiss my ass!”; the massive, knowing laugh that inside joke gets makes it clear this isn’t entirely an audience of American tourists after all.

But the basic theatrics and emotional currents remain consistent from show to show. If Swift is surprisingly reticent to make her “Eras Tour” numbers public, that may be, in part, her desire to keep the focus primarily on a personal fan connection. Music industry veterans are taken aback by Swift’s ability to be giant and intimate onstage. “She’s a master marketer of herself — and she is not afraid to be vulnerable to her fans,” says Michele Bernstein, who runs a consultancy that works with stars like Drake. Bernstein could almost be quoting the lyrics of “Mastermind,” where Swift describes herself in almost comically omniscient terms, then dives into a bridge about how no one would play with her as a little girl.

People like my guardian of the customs gate may complain about Swift’s songs centering on her romantic splits, but that subject matter magnifies her own insecurities and weaknesses, expressed in genuinely eccentric wordplay, in ways that keep the audience in thrall to someone they perceive as a humble underdog as well as a veritable cage fighter. She could do a $10 billion tour someday and still keep the crowd enraptured by how she measures up to, or rallies to exceed, the smallest man — or men, or Kardashians — in the world.

This plays out in the “Eras” show in all sorts of symbolic ways, like the new segment in the “Tortured Poets” section where she seems to have fainted from the vapors of failed romance. Dancers in tuxedos try to revive her while a swing version of “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” plays over the PA. A pair of women dressed as nurses fit her with what looks like a majorette’s uniform — or, with all its off-white stripes, is it really meant to resemble a straitjacket? The resemblance is probably not coincidental. Swift fans know there’s nothing like a mad woman.

The most exhilarating moment that has been added to the show this year has her gliding down the ramp on a platform, appearing to anyone at floor level like she is levitating like the witch she makes herself out to be in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Taylor Swift: She was Agatha all along!

Yes, there is much to unpack. But in Dublin and in every other city where “Eras” has alighted, there is also pure inspiration for those who maybe haven’t always felt like they’ve had a voice, whether it’s her LGBTQ+ fan base or, well, women. It’s a modern transmutation of Beatlemania in which Swift manages to be all four Fabs, and a mirror, as well as object, of that gaze. You don’t have to be a woman to experience the explosion of pure female joy that takes place on a mass scale at an “Eras” gig, but for men, it doesn’t hurt to have a healthy sense of where you might sit on the female spectrum.

Outside Aviva Stadium, two young Londoners have formed their own two-woman straight-gay alliance: One is wearing a shirt with the hand- drawn words “You’re obsessive and crazy,” and the other’s shirt has the phrase “You’re gay,” each with an arrow pointing to the other. This echoes the original lyrics to Swift’s 2006 oldie “Picture to Burn,” which was rerecorded after some were offended by “gay” as a possible teen epithet. “I am obsessive and crazy, and she is gay,” laughs Zoe Gibson, pointing to her friend, India Day. “We want to bring back the original lyrics. We never found them homophobic — we want to reclaim it.” Day adds, “We’ve listened to her since we were 4 years old, so obviously there’s the nostalgia factor. But for me, she speaks on quite a lot of issues like gay rights and feminism, and all of her songs perfectly sum up the experience of being a woman.”

Some of the shirts are apropos for Pride Month. Seeing a boy of no older than 15 or 16 wearing a homemade “But Daddy I Love Him” shirt (the title of a “Tortured Poets” fan favorite), it’s easy to imagine some courage was required to don that apparel. Along the same lines, I spot any number of women making their own statement in shirts with the modified exclamation “But Daddy I Love Her.”

Gay or straight, 6 years old or 60-something, female or just female-allied, the crowd inside gets its sway on early in the show, with the arrival of the gentle, waltz-time “Lover.” It’s not one of the big set-pieces of this nonstop Broadway-style production — the spotlight is just on Swift and her acoustic guitar — but it might be the one where the entire audience feels like it’s at a four-minute campfire. No wicked witchiness here, just winsomeness.

Down on the floor, I’m seeing what amounts to a Taylor Swift mosh pit: gangs of two or three or five young women, ignoring the fact that Swift herself is just yards away from them on the ramp. They’re singing and acting out every last line to each other, as if the superstar isn’t even towering right over them. A waste of their euros? Hardly. Swift will capture their full attention again as the show proceeds, but in the moment, she isn’t just a superstar — she might be the world’s greatest community organizer.

#variety 2024 #variety #eras tour #taylor swift

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seat-safety-switch · 9 hours ago

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"The '70s are coming back," explained the very patient sales lady at the Hudson Bay furniture department the other day. I was inquiring about a weird-looking brown sofa that some unscrupulous garbage-picker had clearly dumped in the middle of their showroom. Imagine my surprise when, rather than being grateful to see me haul it away and put it into my living room (I need new things to stack carburetors on,) she asked me for eight thousand dollars instead.

This is exactly why I don't shop at the downtown Bay very often. Too bougie, with all those lawyers, attorneys, barristers, and legal practitioners coming in there on their lunch breaks and buying seven sets of brand new underwear for the coming week. On the way home, though, I had plenty of time in the mandatory traffic jam (behind two Maybachs and an Aston) to think about what she had said. Could it possibly be true that my smoking, heaving, late-70s piece of shit Plymouth Volare, the very same vehicle that was mostly under my feet at this exact moment, be worth more than I paid for it?

To answer this question, I found an appraiser in the phone book. When I was a kid, I thought an "appraiser" was like the weird little dude who follows behind the bully in teen comedies, backing up everything they say. In actual fact, that is called a "hype man," and I recommend you not hire one of those to appraise your car. Appraiser Dave (or David, if you're friends) told me that he could do an appraisal of my car in his driveway in just minutes. At last, I would know what kind of asset base I had been flinging into corners and onto golf courses at reckless land speeds this whole time.

"Is this some kind of joke?" he spat, and demanded the payment immediately. Luckily for me, at that exact moment, a squirrel shook out of its home in the air cleaner and ran up his shirt sleeve. I think it was Ted, but it might have been his common-law wife, Tedina.

His or her tragic sacrifice was not made in vain, as in the ensuing distraction I was able to escape the neighbourhood without Appraiser Dave seeing my license plate. It helps that I couldn't shut the engine off, because it diesels really bad when you do that, and it eats batteries whenever it sits for more than ten minutes. Cheaper to just let it run 24/7 and top up the gas every morning. I need to count every penny: I'm saving up for a couch.

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fuck-customers · 8 days ago

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This was a couple of decades ago when I worked in sales, let’s say for an electronics company or appliance company or something similar to that. We had an older gentleman come in and he wanted to buy some high end stuff and quite a bit of it, so we were more than willing to help him out. Things started getting out of hand with him pretty quickly though. He was starting to demand that during the delivery and installation we would do stuff above and beyond what we could do because what he was asking for was against corporate policy. When we started to explain some of this to him he was all “You don’t know who I am, do you?” and he started to tell us that he used to be the ceo of a global company that I’ll leave unnamed. Think something big like energy, tech, or media. A company that has products in almost every household. He was telling us how corporate policies are all about lawyers and accountants and he doesn’t give a damn about that kind of stuff. If anything went wrong he wouldn’t hold anyone accountable and we could take him for his word. He said he used to make multimillion dollar deals on the golf course or over dinner with nothing more than handshakes and promises of phone calls over the next week to further hash things out.

We all thought this man was full of shit but he was willing to spend a lot of money, so we just let him keep on talking while we figured out ways to talk him down from his unrealistic expectations. It felt like a hostage negotiation. From time to time he would go on tangents and give us his “insider knowledge” about this company or that. It was all far from insider knowledge. It was everyday stuff that could easily be learned by reading Forbes or The Wall Street Journal.

I was the main salesperson and his first point of contact so I talked to him the most. He talked foul and looked completely disheveled. Everything about him and the whole interaction was the exact opposite of the types of corporate businessmen I was used to dealing with. I was starting to think we were getting conned. After about two long and painful hours the sale was completed and payments went through, much to my surprise. While a lot of equipment needed to be delivered, I volunteered to load the stuff we had on hand into his car. When we got out to the parking lot I saw that his car was a busted up and rusted out relic from the mid ‘80s. I thought that there was no way an ex-ceo of a global company would be driving something so crappy. I was convinced that he was just taking us for a ride for God know’s what reason.

When I got home from work that night I googled his name. Lo and behold there he was with photographs and articles. Tons of them. Not only was he who he said he was, he actually downplayed his career. I printed out some of the articles to take into work the next day. My boss, my coworkers, and I went over them, just dumb struck. We just couldn’t believe it. This complete asshole was exactly who he said he was. We ended up calling the installers to give them a heads up and warn them that they were probably be going to deal with one of the most difficult customers they’d see that year.

We never saw him again. On the one hand we were happy because none of us wanted to deal with him again. On the other hand we were kind of disappointed. He spent money without even trying.

I believed he was who he said he was before you said you looked him up.

The really rich people (worth billions) will drive a thirty year old car, wear clothes decades out of date, and expect a lot of things "extra" on everything they do buy. That's how they stay rich. The CEO of our company is still using a flip phone and came to our meeting (when I was still in corporate) in jeans and a t-shirt. And that dude is worth billions.

The showoff's (flashy car, new phone/bag/shoes) either are millionaires that will not be rich their whole life. Or celebrities/influencer's that need to have that image of wealth.

At least that's my experience in retail corporate and working security for the mouse.

-Rodney

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fanfictilltheend · 8 months ago

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As promised (since I'm late sorry 😭) Snippet 5 of ❤️‍🔥Violent Heart❤️‍🔥 aka stepdad!mechanic!convict!joel x afab!reader fic

I SWEAR I WROTE THIS BEFORE HE WORE THIS OUTFIT ON GOD I LITERALLY SPOKE IT INTO EXISTENCE YOU CAN THANK ME BELOW 👇

Warnings: Nothing crazy just joel admiration and dressing him up 😍

Context: Joel is Y/N's ex step-father. He just got out of prison for killing David and Y/N (age 20) takes Joel shopping for a new wardrobe.

HERE IS A LINK TO A MASTERLIST OF VIolent Heart STUFF TO TIDE YOU OVER

You take Joel shopping. At his insistence it is nothing fancy, just the local department store. That doesn’t stop you from dressing Joel up in ridiculous outfits of your choosing. You make him try on a hawaiian shirt, some golf polos like your dad liked to wear, a pinstripe suit and he lets you because saying no to you has never been in his vocabulary. He acts grumpy on the outside, but you can tell he is amused. You know in the end you’ll just end up buying every flannel shirt and jeans combo they have in the store, but it’s just fun anyway. You watch the fabric hug his torso, his tummy, the slight bulge at his waist. At one point he comes out shirtless and you try very hard not to swoon as you stare at the hair lining his chest and his adorable little tummy that you for some reason have the urge to bite. The band of his Hanes boxers sticks up past his jeans and he looks so good. He even lets out a genuine smile. The middle-aged sales attendant who is helping you even takes a good look at him which makes the butterflies inside you swarm possessively.

Finally you make him try on a proper white-collared button-down shirt and black dress pants with matching black shoes and he looks so good you’re actually at a loss for words when he asks you what you think. They hug the curves and lines and planes of his body so nicely. All you can do is ask him to put on a black tie to match and he does at your behest following some customary griping that he would never wear such a monkey suit in the first place. The effect that a fully dressed up Joel has on you is not one to be reckoned with. He might as well be wearing the mens version of lingerie for how it makes you throb and ache between your legs. He looks like a force of nature, commanding and tall. It makes you weak. All you say is,

“Looking good, old-timer.”

He snorts.

HERE IS A LINK TO A MASTERLIST OF VIolent Heart STUFF TO TIDE YOU OVER

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boatem-probler · 1 month ago

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Cthulhu Returns as a Soccer Dad, in... Tokyo Soul!

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / You Are Here!

Last Time on Tokyo Soul...

"So yeah, these are definitely gonna come out slower from now on." -- Me, a Fool

Yeah I have no excuse. But! With this big batch of episodes down, the finale is so close I can smell it. It smells like something witty I'll think of later.

This report contains mentions of: Blood, Violence, Death, Guns Medical Malpractice, Allusions to Sexual Harassment/Assault

So Let's Get Back To It...

Episode 36 – A NEW FRIEND!!

Sam and Grian are on Taurtis’s computer, looking at his search history. He’s been searching for hair growth formulas.

Doughboy has been cooking parts of himself and distributing them to people.

Grian and Sam convince Taurtis to do several very stupid things on the premise that they can cure hair loss.

Geode is having a yard sale of all the trash he’s collected. And also Taurtis’s school locker.

They go to the train station to pick up another one of Sam’s friends, this time from Canada. He and Suspicious Person (remember Suspicious Person? From way back in episode 1?) walk out of the walkway on fire. The train platform is also on fire. Apparently Sam’s friend, Nick, set the fire.

Sam sent Nick Taurtis’s school uniform in the mail.

Sam apparently met Nick in a My Little Pony chatroom, where Nick said he was 14. The boys express doubt about this, given that Nick has a very full beard.

Grian: “We’ve had worse friends.”

Sam: “We were just talking about sports, right guys?” Grian: “Uh huh, sports! Footballfootballfootballtennishockey. Golf.”

I’m obsessed with the way he says this.

The cashier at the convenience store is Hank Kingofthe Hill except his name is Frank Chill. Just. By the way.

Episode 37 – DRAGON BALL Z!!

They all go over to Geode’s yard sale. He is frolicking around in the trash with a knife. He has a “mask” that is just a severed Dom Clone head. Grian wants to buy Taurtis’s locker. Geode just hands him a whole bunch of raw chicken. Geode doesn’t exactly grasp the concept of “sale”.

Another one of those weird aliens from the special has landed in the soccer field, and he’s brought Minions. Yes, those ones.

The alien guy gives a whole Dramatic Alien Speech to the effect of: he heard about Taurtis defeating that other alien guy in the special, and he would now also like to fight Taurtis.

Grian: “On a completely unrelated note, has anyone got any bullets?”

Basically Grian REALLY hates Minions and would really like the opportunity to actually shoot some in real life.

Anime Alien charges up for a good long while, and then Taurtis One Punches him. Then all the Minions charge, so the boys end up killing most of them too.

Sam: “How did you get this powerful, Taurtis?” Taurtis: “I did a push-up yesterday!”

As is tradition, they take Nick to Get His Class Schedule. Sam tells him there’s a fatality rate to the procedure, which I’m not sure I remember anyone saying before so he may just be fibbing. No one died that Sam saw, anyway.

Oh dear. So, Señor Loro is not wearing a shirt, because Geode is wearing his Christmas sweater. It turns out that Geode did, in fact, steal it from him without his knowledge, and attempts to deny ever having it. Despite this, Geode and Señor Loro both profess to being best friends. Grian is skeptical of the idea that someone would steal their best friend’s clothes and go to school wearing them. Sam argues that Grian has done that before. You may be able to see where this is going.

Anyway, Nick and Señor Loro fight. Unfortunately, someone has stolen all of the schedules.

Also this episode has the “Sam is my dog” blooper at the end.

EPISODE 38 – THE DARK LORD CTHULHU!

Chupa won the lottery for 5 cents, so he’s summoning Cthulhu again with a ritual meant to “gaze into time”. The ritual text is more old memes. Everyone makes Grian read it.

The whole class is transported to a room with blank white walls and a whole lot of bookshelves just kind of floating in various places. Igbar Cthulhu is there.

There’s also someone else who looks like a shadow with rainbow hair. Grian “wants whatever she’s smoking”.

Cthulhu has decided not to destroy humanity, and instead let Sam do it for him. Sam is “the cause of it all”. And also “the root of it all”.

Grian wants to know if he’ll ever get out of here. Cthulhu says it’s possible but not likely but also not really no.

Sam wants to know why they can still hear the school bell inside the weird room they’re in. Cthulhu says it’s a pocket space and they’re technically still in the classroom. Grian thinks this is bullshit and Cthulhu is just Saying Words.

Grian wants to know: “How do I kill Sam?” Cthulhu says: “You can’t.”

Also, the rainbow-hair shadow person is Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. Sam and Grian start bullying her.

They transport themselves back to the classroom, and Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep come with them, because they want a front row seat to the world’s destruction. Also, Grian is jealous that Sam gets to be a horseman of the apocalypse and he doesn’t.

Sam is now threatening to destroy the universe when his friends are mean to him. Grian tries to call his bluff. There is a very ominous sound of thunder, but nothing else really happens.

Dr. Nurse has apparently gotten tired of Grian bugging him about “learning” all the time, so he’s taking the class on a field trip inside an ambulance. They’re going to see a car crash!

EPISODE 39 – CAR CRASH!

They arrive at the car crash. There is a man covered in blood standing in front of a burning car. He’s actually mostly fine, but the guy he crashed into, on the other hand, appears to have been… decapitated. Death is beautiful, remarks Cthulhu.

Oh, apparently the other guy is not fine, his organs feel squishy. Dr. Nurse gives him CPR. He dies.

Dr. Nurse gets a report of screaming… at Kurokuma’s house. Kurokuma claims he was just listening to Screamo. They can hear the screams. Once again, no one pays any attention to Grian’s protests. He doesn’t protest very much.

Then they all rush off to help Doughboy open a jar of pickles. Grian is pretty ticked off.

They go back to school for lunch. Grian reveals he took something from Cthulhu’s pocket dimension called a “Sleeping Chaos Potion”. He’s contemplating drinking it. Sam, of all people, points out that it’s probably a bad idea to drink something called a Sleeping Chaos Potion, but he still ends up chanting “chug” alongside everyone else.

Grian drinks the potion, and starts taking damage. Cthulhu says he’ll be fine, there will just be some “lingering side effects”. “If you have dreams about the world exploding, let me know.” This surely won’t have consequences! (But really, as far as I’ve been able to glean there aren’t actually any consequences for this within the canon of Tokyo Soul. I, however, can think of plenty of consequences!)

Also I feel like it’s worth noting, it turns out that Geode milking Dom way back however many episodes ago must have been accomplished with some sort of mod, and not by just hitting him and quickly swapping a pre-prepared bucket of milk into Geode’s hotbar as I has assumed, because every time someone hits someone else while holding an empty bucket, said bucket becomes a bucket of milk named “[username of the person who was hit]’s Milk”. I just thought you should all know that, because I am completely baffled by the fact that they chose to do this and then leave the mod on the server instead of doing a much easier classic filmmaking trick, for what was supposed to be a one-off gag. Anyway. I just had to get that off my chest.

Anyway they’re in gym class and Cthulhu wants Sam to kill Invader. He kind of sounds like a dad at his kid’s soccer game, except instead of soccer it’s the destruction of Earth.

Another Anime Alien has landed on the track behind the school. Sam shoots him and he dies.

Okay so I’m now coming back to this after God knows how long and also after a Very Long Day so I am very tired. We will see how this affects the Energy.

Where were we. Ah, right, this was supposed to be Jerry’s gym class. He’s at a bit of a loss. Jerry is one of the most reasonable and responsible people in this show honestly. Like, he’s trying. No One Else in this school is trying.

Students: So, what do we do for gym class now? Jerry: "Uh. Play?"

Also one of the students falls in a hole and everyone else starts badgering them with the milk buckets and the fishing rods that sound like guns. What is with these people and just leaving weird shit on this server that isn’t supposed to be there? It does add to the Atmosphere, I’ll give it that.

Episode 40 – KILL THE MINION!

Professor Geode has claimed all the unused classrooms as His House. Well, specifically his Holiday Home. He also has a Shop. Grian points out that it’s all very clean for Geode. He finds this suspicious.

Geode has an indoor yard. With sheep. And a Minion. The sheep are also robots?

Geode’s plan for today’s class is to dissect the Minion. Also, Google Docs is still trying to autocorrect “Geode” to “God”.

Geode bloodily slices from the Minion: A Watermelon Slice. A Single Rose. The Minion Energy Core (he’ll save this for later). A Bucket Of Milk. Numerous Garbage Bags. A Potion Bottle Of Blood. More Cores. And A Skull. Sam speculates whether the skull means that the Minion ate a human alive, and then simply assumes it does mean that. Geode then kills the Minion.

Grian wonders if Geode has been learning what friendship is. Taurtis looks directly at the sun.

Taurtis: "Do you ever wonder if we’re alone in the universe?" Grian: "NO."

Oh, Jerry has stolen Geode’s TV. Now I know I just said Jerry is one of the more reasonable characters but I fucking love Jerry and Dom’s TV Saga so he can steal as many TVs as he wants.

Sam remembers that Taurtis technically won a spaceship that morning, so they go over to the soccer field and break into it. The ship pranks them with a fake self destruct sequence, and then the boys accidentally take off for Planet Canada.

And then it’s…… the end of the day, but not the end of the episode? But it seems like it’s still the end of the recording session because they’re now making an excuse for why Grian isn’t there and going off to do some whole other plot? And I’ve decided this is too confusing for this late at night so I’m calling it here for now.

Okay I’m back. Let’s see… Taurtis’s hair is growing back in weird patches because he’s been using a suspicious hair growth serum, Grian got left in Canada and Sam blames Taurtis because the spaceship is technically his.

Taurtis: "He’ll be fine, he’s with Nick- oh, God, you’re right." Sam: "He’s screwed, dude!"

Regardless, Sam has decided that he wants to be a superhero too.

They go downstairs, where the house is covered in “totally not stolen” appliances. Like, not just TVs, there’s also ovens, landline phones, refrigerators, an entire streetlight, and Taurtis’s locker. Apparently this was Jerry and Doughboy’s doing.

Dom seems to be dressed up as some superhero I haven’t heard of. Oh, he’s Rorschach from Watchman apparently.

Some sort of robot appears and says it has come for the “bald one”. It’s here to kill Taurtis before he becomes too strong. It was also sent by someone called “The Steampunker”.

Episode 41 – MEETING SUPER HEROES!

Sam and Taurtis tell the robot to shut up while they argue about which one of them should be the sidekick. The robot starts speaking in binary and then attacks Taurtis, who kills it. Sam and Taurtis continue their argument.

Sam says he’s “contacted” some superheroes and takes Taurtis to meet them. Also, Alex Minecraft is just, like, There and walking around. Wait, there’s some Steves too, a weirdly high amount of people just don’t have custom skins on in this recording session apparently.

They meet up with Sam’s superheroes at a coffee shop. There are also two Inconspicuous Bald Men at the coffee shop. Oh also one of the “superheroes” is Old Kurokuma, currently under the name “Kuma the Lion”.

The other superhero is called Captain Radiator or Luke, I assume he’s meant to be a reference to something but I have no idea what. But he’s wearing a yellow hazmat suit.

Sam wants his superhero name to be “The Strongest in All the Universe and the Leader of All”.

Kurokuma is still a creep.

Sam: "Okay, well my superpower, is… that… Taurtis! He- he neeed me. In the time of need."

Sam is also still insisting that he can destroy the universe because Cthulhu said so. Taurtis continues to doubt this.

Sam is given a superhero outfit. It is a rabbit costume.

Taurtis: "How do you defeat people like that? Do you like, jump on their head like Mario?" Sam: "I kill them with cuteness! And this 50-caliber sniper rifle."

Ah, the Inconspicuous Bald Men are holding up the superstore.

Episode 42 – SUPER VILLAINS!

They attempt to enter the superstore from the roof, but Taurtis misses the jump and gets trapped in an alleyway, so they all just agree to meet him at the front of the store.

Captain Radiator takes off his mask and gives everyone in the store radiation poisoning. It is unclear what this actually accomplishes.

Also, The Steampunker has appeared outside the superstore. He’s captured Invader and wants the heroes to meet him in a warehouse at midnight. The heroes just go there immediately.

Then they spend a Good Five Minutes trying to think of a superhero team name.

Captain Radiator tries to give the robots radiation poisoning, but fails, because they’re robots.

Oh also Invader is just kind of dangling above a vat of goo that supposedly will turn her into a robot. She doesn’t seem particularly distressed or anything though.

Taurtis volunteers to take Invader’s place because he thinks being a robot would be cool. Sam thinks this will put Taurtis under the Steampunker’s control, so they should kill him first. The Steampunker says the robot goo won’t work if he’s dead. Sam decides this means he can take the Steampunker’s place after they kill him and then he’ll be the one to control Robot Taurtis. Taurtis says he’d rather be controlled by the Steampunker.

Anyway, I think they eventually decide they want to kill the Steampunker after all, because Taurtis decides he wants to fight on the edge of the goo vat (because it’d be cool)... and the Steampunker punches him into the goo.

Episode 43 – KILL ME!

Taurtis breaks out of the vat and kills the Steampunker (he tried to let Sam kill him, but Sam failed). Then they try to get Invader down, but accidentally drop her into the vat. And it seems like her face is melting off, so Sam et al. run out of the warehouse like cowards.

Cthulhu shows up to tell Sam how proud he is of him for killing more people and melting a girl’s face off. Nyarlathotep gives everyone Mountain Dew. Cthulhu insults Taurtis’s hair, so Taurtis tries to punch him, it doesn’t work, and Cthulhu electrocutes him with a bolt of lightning.

Sam and Taurtis break into someone’s house and sneak out the back door, so Kurokuma doesn’t find out where they live. It doesn’t work, because they forgot they live with three other people who have no idea what the fuck they’re trying to do.

Dom, Jerry, and Doughboy are just living their best TV stealing lives and I support them.

Once AGAIN they are starting a new day in the middle of an episode and it’s really throwing me off my rhythm!!

Anyway. Taurtis has changed out of his One Punch Man outfit, and he’s in the kitchen angrily trying to make breakfast because, according to him, someone sent him a letter saying that if he didn’t make food, he’d be “fired”. I think it’s implied that Sam sent this letter, and that Taurtis knows this, and that Sam knows Taurtis knows this? But who honestly fucking knows with Sam.

Grian walks in! Apparently he’s “just been in orbit for a while”. He’s very confused about why there are so many appliances in the house. He also acquired his own spaceship somehow, and parked it on the roof.

Is it more interesting if the spaceship simply fell out of orbit directly above “Tokyo”/navigated there on its own automatically, implying that there is some supernatural force keeping Grian trapped there, or if Grian decided to go back there himself? Discuss. I could go either way, honestly, although I would like to find a way to have both, ideally.

Oh, apparently the context behind “Taurtis angrily making food or else he’ll be fired” is that it was something CC!Sam decided he wanted to do like right before filming the scene. “And then you can poison my food or something.” The more you know!

Thank God this episode doesn’t end in the middle of anything honestly.

Grian Trauma Count!

Deaths Witnessed:

Anime alien

Lots of minions

He didn’t actually witness the death, but he did see the decapitated body, so, Car Crash Victim Number the First

Car Crash Victim Number the Second

Grian seems pretty sure whoever was in Kurokuma’s basement died

Anime Alien The Second

Minion

Listen he had to get that second spaceship somehow

Injuries Sustained:

Basically anytime the guns come out I assume he gets shot a few times

Traumatic Events:

Subjected to another one of Sam’s shady friends

A somewhat all-powerful evil being tells him that Sam is going to destroy the world, there’s no way out of this town for him, and he can’t even kill Sam about it

Kurokuma

Sleeping Chaos Potion (even if there are no consequences in the canon series, it did still definitely hurt)

Look, he didn’t seem all that shaken up by the Minion Dissection, but I think it should still count

Got left in Canada. Again.

Next Time... Grian Pushes Someone Into A Big Hole

#al's unhinged tokyo soul summaries #tokyo soul #yandere high school #ts #yhs #surprise bitch i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me etc

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beautouslysandy · 2 years ago

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New Feelings

Chp.1 Rafe Cameron x Fem!Reader

By-Sandy

Warnings: Just language and not proofread

Word Count: 1,698

Note- I have been binging OBX and I have been wanting to write a Rafe Cameron x Reader for awhile even though there is an plenty of them in this comment, hahaha. Enjoy!

______________________________________________

You were looking outside the window of the car with gloom. Your family and you are moving to the Outer Banks, you heard it’s pretty there but it didn’t matter. You were leaving your friends and home in New York. Your dad was humming along to a song playing on the radio while your mom was reading a new book, she never gets car sick, your younger brother Jamie who was only 8 was crashing his Transformers together as if they were fighting. Your golden lab, Lulu, was in between you and Jamie as a couple of your boxes were in the trunk of your dad’s SUV. There were two big moving trucks behind you guys, following you to your new home. Your dad says that an old friend of his lives here, coincidentally the house a few blocks down from said friend was for sale and your parents bought.

“We’re here!” Your dad said loudly as the car pulled up to a big beach house, it was gorgeous and huge. Your dad was smiling and your mom kissed him on the cheek. “WOAH!” Jamie yelled with astonishment as he got out of the car. You got out in your jean shorts and yellow shirt that had a white outline of the Statue of Liberty on it. Your h/c hair was down and blowing in the wind. You were wearing white retro gas station sunglasses covering your gorgeous e/c eyes. You walked into the large house, Jamie already had rushed in to pick a room. “I got the best room! Y/n, it has a cool window! I gave you the one with the big closet for all your girly things!” Jamie exclaimed with a grin, his left front tooth was missing. You smiled back and playfully said “Thanks, squirt.” You headed up to the room Jamie didn’t chose, opening the weirdly tall door to reveal a generously sized room with a large window seat looking out into the ocean and a few small windows here and there. You walked into the bathroom which was also generously sized which then attached to it was a walk-in closet.

You squealed, at home there wasn’t this much room. The houses are pricey so you didn’t get as much space. •••• A few hours have pasted and everything in your new room was set, your mom said that you guys can get stuff for the window seat in a couple of days. You we’re in a sundress and your hair was styled how you most liked it. You had a touch of makeup not to much, you preferred a more natural look like your mom. You had your favorite sandals on, you headed downstairs. Your dads old friend had invited you guys over for dinner, your mom mentioned that he had two kids around my age. You pulled up to the house and it was a bit larger then yours but had similarities.

As your parents knocked on the door your brother Jamie was behind you, he was wearing cargo shorts and a white golf shirt. He was a bit shy around strangers but once he got to know them he could be a real spitfire. “Brandon, how is it going man!” A masculine voice called as the door opened. Your dad chuckled and said “Ward! It’s good all good! How about you?” Your parents walked into the door as if it were their second home, you and Jamie slowly walked into the unfamiliar house. “Hi! I am Sarah!” A song like voice greeted

You turned to see a tan girl with beach wavy blond hair. She had a warm smile, she was wearing denim shorts and a white crop top.

“Hello, I am Y/n!” You replied with a smile, you felt your brother move from behind your figure. “I am Jamie..”He said with a sheepish smile.

“Nice to meet you guys!” She said throwing her arm around hers, your brother took your hand as she steered you guys toward the kitchen. There was a average yet tall sized teenage boy, his hair was buzzed which you typically didn’t like on guys but it suited his cold and tan face. He made eye contact with you and then looked at Sarah and scoffed. “Who are ypu?” He said bluntly almost accusingly looking back at you.

You felt Jamie’s grip tighten on your hand “I am Y/n! Nice to meet you.” You said holding out your hand with a smile. “Rafe.” He stated not shaking your hand. You cleared your throat and retracted your hand to your side. “Rafe, be nicer.” Sarah scolded.

Jamie started snickering, you looked at him with a grin. He was starting to warm up to these new people around this new unfamiliar place.

“What’s so funny?” Rafe said with a glare towards Jamie. Jamie started laughing loudly which softened to a giggle. He was very tall for his age around 4’7 he gets his height genes from your dad who is 6’5. Jamie whispered in your ear, “He looks so pissed off that it makes me angry just looking at him.” He snickered

You giggled and tucked a loose hair behind your ear. Rafe got a bit of butterflies, the light of the sun rays were beaming perfectly on you and you were wearing a gorgeous sundress that complimented your physique perfectly. Your hair looked almost surreal. Your laugh was so soft yet full of joy, your beautiful smile made his heart stop.

“I don’t understand.” Sarah and Rafe siad at the same time and then glared at eachother. This sent you and your little brother over the roof. ••• Everyone was sitting at the table. Ward was sitting at the head and your dad was at the other end. Your mom was next to your dad. Jamie was next to you, across from y’all’s mother and you were across from Rafe who was next to his father and sister. “So, Y/n, where did you say you were applying to university?” Ward asked as he cut into his steak. “Oh um, Oxford…Havard” You began and Rafe choked on his water and Sarah stared at you with disbelief. You continued “Yale, Stanford and uh…”

“A university in Scotland…right?” Your dad said looking at you proudly.

“I forgot the name of it…”You said with a shrug.

“Any of them accepted you?” Ward asked with shock and looked at your dad.

“All of them expect Yale.” Your dad said for you with a proud smile. “We are very proud of, Y/n!” Your mother gleamed as she gave you one of her motherly smiles.

“Yeah Yeah we get it Y/n’s the golden child.” Jamie said playfully with a smirk. “Jameson…”Your mother said warningly

“Sorry.” He said with a snicker.

“Camile, he is just playing. Rafe, how about you?” Your dad said with a grin.

“I-“ He began.

“He is being very selective.” Ward said coldly.

“I was very selective too, Rafe. It’s completely normal.” Your mother said comforting sensing some tension, she even gave him one of her maternal smiles. That’s the thing you love about your mother, she is so kind to others.

Rafe looked at your mom with a soft smile. “Sarah your 16?” Your dad asked.

She nodded with a smile. “Remember that kid from that boarding school?” Your dad said with a smirk looking at Ward. Your parents grew up here.

“Ah. Yes. If I remember he had a thing for Camile.” Ward replied chuckling at the old memory.

“Oh my god not the guy you told me about…” You said laughing.

Your mother snickered and your dad scolded.

“He was such an ass.” Your dad said scoffing.

“Brandon!” Your mother said hitting his arm.

“Sorry.” He said with a smirk, the same as your younger brother Jamie.

After everyone finished, Ward and your parents left to get drinks at the local bar. Your mom dropped Jamie off at your new house for bed and because he wanted to watch Transformers. Sarah was bringing her friends over. You were sitting on the porch looking out into the ocean when a slightly familiar voice said. “So your a big shot with the colleges?”

You turned to see Rafe heading towards you and sitting down next to you. “It’s because of my parents. Not me.” You said with a sigh.

“What do your parents do?” He asked

“They work for the government. It’s why we had to move here.” You said looking at him with a soft smile.

“Ah.” He said as if he understood. You looked out back at the ocean. Rafe looked at you in awe, you were making him feel feeling he wasn’t supposed to be feeling. “So, why are you being so selective with your schools?” You asked looking him in the eyes to find him already looking at you, you blushed slightly.

“Just…” He began and his eyes turned sad.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about, I mean you only just let me three hours ago.” You said with a sympathetic smile. He looked at you shocked to be on the receiving end of such kind and supportive words. He was began to say something but was interrupted by loud voices entering to porch. “My man!” A loud slightly annoying voice called as he slapped Rafe on the head. “What the hell, Top?” Rafe said annoyed

Someone car whistle then said “Damn who is this beautiful young lady, we have here?” You blushed out of embarrassment, “I better be going, see you around Rafe. Tell Sarah I will see here tomorrow.” You said with a bright smile, you locked eyes with him but quickly looked away when a guy walked up to you saying “Can I have your number, m’lady?” “Kelce.” Rafe said coldly.

You giggle slightly and said “Maybe another time, Kelce.” you winked and walked away saying one last time “Bye, Rafe!” Rafe felt this pit in his stomach, after you left. Kelce was blushing and in awe. Rafe might of punched Kelce in the face. He didn’t know what was coming over him but all he knew was that you were making him have feeling he was never had.

#outer banks #outerbanks x reader #rafe cameron x reader #rafe x reader #rafe cameron #rafe outer banks #rafe obx #rafe imagine #obx rafe cameron #outer banks rafe

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birdxdeals · 3 months ago

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#acne #accounting #3d printing #1950s #100 days of productivity #19th century #35mm #60s #70s #80s

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 1 year ago

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I haven’t read this section of Feeding Habits in probably 3 years & tell me how I wrote ALLLL of this before I watched Hannibal

The confessional smells rank, like rotting paper and expired cologne, its corners seedy with overuse. Scratches mar the fabric he rests his elbows on, like someone clawed into it while reliving their sins, track marks on the floor from a rainy day. He can’t imagine anyone else but him in this small box, caged in by the lattice, mumbling incoherent sins to the priest he hasn’t even committed. Stealing a set of glass eyeballs from a garage sale. Forgetting his wedding anniversary. Missing Easter Sunday mass to go whale watching. He doesn’t sign himself at the right times or speak at the right times or thank the priest at the right times. He lies when he’s asked if he’s lied since his last confession. He mentions nothing of drinking with Anya, of not saving the sheep or the bunnies even though he knew the outcome of their lives without finishing the program. Of being a wicked child, of knowing wicked children, of not knowing the difference between wickedness and innocence, and which one he learned first. He says his name is Luka. He works at a law firm. He’s married to a Harriet, a seamstress or a stock broker or an antiques trader—he doesn’t know. He likes golfing, parcheesi, drinking martinis on yachts. He’s never overindulged, he’s loyal to his woman, he wants three kids and a house with finished floors and no neighbours. He’s a good father, a gentle father, a careful father, no wickedness, just an empty shell of goodness, like a father should be. His father is retired, and visits him on weekends—they play checkers, paint birdhouses, keep a distance but toast with spirits he can’t pronounce. Everything is good—it’s all good, all good. That’s not a sin, the priest should say but they laugh—it’s good to be good. Children are good, marriage is good, fathers are good, everything an iteration of good. By the time his confession is over and he’s well on his way out of the church mumbling I am heartily sorry, he believes his lies are true—he’s absolved into someone new, Luka married to Harriet, three kids, an empty shell, dreamily stumbling through a house with finished floors that’s actually just the sidewalk until a woman passing by with two small children has to help him sit on the curb.

She asks if he needs something to drink, if he needs someone to call, and emerges with a half-empty bottle of sparkling water and a cell phone. She asks what’s wrong with his eye, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with anything—with eyes, with children, with sins, with confessions, with baptisms, with orange juice, with madeleines, with wickedness, with practicing how long he can breathe underwater because he knows it’s possible just like walking on it.

One of the children, hair pulled into two plaits secured with pearlescent butterflies, pokes at her mother and asks if he’s crazy. Her mother shushes her at the same time her older sister shows him a cool trick she learned with a toy convertible. Its wheels whir. Lonan gasps. The girl says, “Even crazy people think I’m gifted,” and wheels the car again. People stop to watch. Church bells gong an elegy he’s sure he’s heard before. The woman’s sparkling water dribbles from his mouth and dampens his dress shirt. Sun eclipses his face and eats at his throat like a parasite, like it knows all the unclean things about him, a watcher, an eyeball, a scorching little thing that bullets through his neck like the tooth of a wolf. The woman shushes her children and asks if he’s got a health problem, a drug problem, any problem, and he could say yes to all three but instead keeps repeating I am heartily sorry, I am heartily sorry. And when she does call someone, no one he knows, he leans against the cool pavement, cranes his neck to the sky, and parts his lips so the sunlight fills his mouth.

#I forgot Lonan has FH chapters LOLLLL #knowing now that this canonically comes after Hallowed Bodies is so exciting to me #LIKE YEAHHH HIM RETURNING TO A CHURCH AFTER GOING TO CHURCHES ALL SEPTEMBER #anyway the lack of paragraph breaks is giving garth greenwell #I WAS 18 WHEN I WROTE THIS??? 18????????#does anyone remember this lol he’s so epic fail to me #ALSO HARRIET LOL hey girl 💅💅#if we’re curious I watched Hannibal after writing the first scene of chapter 3 LOL I couldn’t get thru a scene and was like #I wanna look at hugh dancy #it worked!#also Lonan being ‘crazy’ is something I did not realize was pre established before HB but like duhh #everyone has been concerned for his well-being since like 2016

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shafaqmum · 6 months ago

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ramblingcecimonster · 6 months ago

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On the Train to Success

The night sky turns gray with the ache of dawn and I watch a tired young couple pass a cup of coffee and a lit cigarette back and forth on their postage stamp scrap of a porch that looks like the gentlest of breezes could detach it from their trailer. We don’t make eye contact or anything, but something about their expressions, in the split second before the train rambles speedily down the track, is familiar to me. I can imagine a colicky baby finally sleeping or a sick toddler whose fever finally broke, a pile of bills, a car that needs gas, an empty fridge. I know what white trash looks like, what “trying our best,” “secondhand furniture,” “buy one get one free sale,” “too much month at the end of our money” look like. Sure, we wear it like pride: hard-working folks, trying our best, willing to bend over backwards for our neighbors. Wearing dusty shoes and worn-out jeans and fixing whatever just broke until it literally cain’t be fixed no more. But it’s a tired existence. Hungry. Worn.

It's an existence I don’t know from childhood. It’s not how I grew up. I grew up with polo shirts and golf sweaters and country clubs and new cars and back-to-school shopping at the LL Bean. We never went to the Walmart. We never cussed or ate day old food or had holes in our shoes. I didn’t know what a factory looked like, but I went on vacation twice a year. I grew up with angry parents who absolutely knew better. (Some folks ain’t got resources, they’re just doing what’s always been done, raising their babies up the way they were raised, with no knowledge that giving your kid soda in a baby bottle or sending them out for a switch really ain’t what to do. They don’t necessarily know not to expose their kids to drugs or alcohol or driving without a license or whatever else it was that my folks looked down their noses at. If their kids went to bed without dinner, it was because there weren’t money for dinner, not because their kids did something wrong. They aren’t bad people, they ain’t bad parents, and they love their kids. They just ain’t got no money and they don’t know better than the only life they’ve ever known. My parents weren’t those kind of parents.) They knew better than to starve their teenager or to keep their fourth grader up all night as punishment. They knew better than to punish any expression of emotion with psychiatric medications and trips to a private psychiatric hospital. They knew better than to keep me isolated, gaslit, and terrified. But they did it anyway. In our ivory tower, silver spoon world, as long as you wore the “right” clothes and said the “right” words, if your parents went to church on Sundays and volunteered their time and had you in youth soccer or Boy Scouts and were good enough at lying, nobody questioned everything. I learned not to trust the cops not because my parents’ car insurance expired 4 months ago or whatever else it is that law enforcement likes to punish poor folks for because they’re poor. I learned not to trust cops because when I ran away from home after being spat on and getting kicked in the head at 14 years old for taking food from the pantry because I was starving, the cop wanted to know why a kid from such a nice home and such a nice family would run away like that. Because my parents labeled me the problem, a liar, and not to be trusted, so I knew nothing I said would be believed or even matter. I watched my abusers lie straight to the police officer’s face, and knew in that moment that the whole system was a sham.

But I was nonetheless raised to believe that poor people were somehow a problem, that they were morally deficient. So imagine my surprise when the family that came to my rescue when I got summarily kicked out at 16 by the suburban couple from hell was a truck driver and a high school teacher. Poor, tired, with lines on their faces and miles and miles on their shoes. My new mama worried loudly. It was no secret that she worried about every last one of her babies – about our grades, our futures, our relationships, our emotional states. We are the same person, and the older I get the more I open my mouth and the words I find leaving my throat are just TL. Mama G with a little more therapy under the belt and far more colorful hair tendencies. She taught high school English at a military boarding school, so she knows a thing or two about angry teenagers and how to navigate the emotional hell of abandoned children. I knew her first, recognized her as safe first. With her black pencil skirts and schoolmarm bun, standing stock still at my track meets because sometimes all you need is someone who is there. She cooked like a maestro, picked out nail polish colors, introduced me to Patrick Swayze, drank cheap beer, and watched baseball in a way that involved far more screaming than I was used to. She loved summer nights and all her babies and hated the cold and the fact that her husband smoked.

But my daddy is a different breed of human. Quietly there. There’s a quote in one of my favorite books, about a young girl’s adoptive father. “Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Huberman would always appear midscream, and he would not leave” (Markus Zusak, The Book Thief). I was a hurt, angry, insomniac teenager. I was lost and lonely and broken. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, he was there in the living room, watching some horrible made-for-tv action movie or crime drama. We watched most of Criminal Minds together in that quiet living room. We didn’t speak, but sometimes we’d go do the grocery shopping at Walmart at the crack of dawn before anyone else in the house was awake, me in my superhero pajamas and him in his cargo pants and t-shirt – the same outfit he’s worn nearly every day of my entire life. We’d stop for sweet tea at the McDonald’s on the way home. I helped him fix the cars and he existed. A phone call away. He called me Missy and I called him Dude. He spoke my language, the language of broken and angry and abandoned teenager. His there-ness, his appearance on the other end of my phone in the middle of every panicked scream assured me that as bad as it got sometimes, it would never be as bad as it once was. He told me with a laugh that he was born white trash, and he’d die white trash, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it in the meantime. He budgeted and scrapped and saved nails and screws and stripped wire. He worried quietly.

A friend of mine joked, when I was fresh out of college and trying desperately to figure out how to actually be a human person who understood relationships and emotions and how to live in a world that terrified the shit out of me, that I was like Athena. That one morning, Craig had woken up with a headache to beat the band, and then I popped out of his skull, fully formed, angry, and ready for war. I was on a battlefield against the world, against myself, against anyone who might try to hurt me. Some days, I wonder if Zeus ever worried about Athena the way I know my daddy worried about me. Did Zeus ever wonder what his tired, angry daughter might be like if he had been given the time to raise her up the way she ought to have been raised? To channel that righteous furious energy into something beautiful, like the drums or boxing or who-knows-what. To tell his brilliant, decisive, strategic daughter that it was okay to take a deep breath and trust the world a little. Did Zeus ever worry that it was too late for all that? That his war-torn daughter was already too covered in her own blood to be able to take a full breath and wash it all clean.

Because I know Craig worried about me. I know he still does. I know the face of world-worn, tired parents on a middle-of-nowhere back porch drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes they meant to quit 10 years ago is familiar. It’s familiar the same way “Hey Missy, whatcha doin’?” is familiar, the same way the smell of old spice and Marlboros on the coat you wear to go haul the dog back inside because it’s the one closest to the door and it’s 10pm and it’s January is familiar. He worries about this child born of fury and fear might tumble headlong into something, eyes closed, head first, can’t lose, that they can’t find their way out of. That maybe my heart won’t stop beating a little too fast, that the drumbeat I run to is just a little too off step, that one day someone will try to convince me I didn’t deserve to be free. He won’t ever really say, but when you’ve spent hours in silence with someone while you were learning to be a human person, you learn to read their expression, their voice. The way they pretend not to cry on the day of your college graduation or on the day you drive away from their house with a U-Haul holding all of your worldly possessions attached to your Jeep on the way to California. The way they know you’re having a panic attack over the phone before you’ve even said anything, they way their voice catches just a little bit when you tell them you got into the PhD program. The way their eyes change just a little when you start talking about your something and they tell every store they deliver to how smart and wonderful their kid is.

So, when I saw that dawn-tired young couple, and imagined them a child and a sea of bills to pay, on a train on my way to a conference where I’m presenting twice, I may not have known them, but I recognized them. I recognized them in the way my daddy looks at the sky to ponder the weather while he’s rebuilding the deck after my mama fell through, in the way he checks the route and the road conditions and the name of the hotel and asks what day I’m presenting when I head to a conference in a city he’s never been to do, to do things he hardly ever imagined possible. I recognized them in the dreams they have for their hypothetical, imaginary child. I recognized them in the way you can’t pretend you don’t have an accent, but you read the etiquette books and know all the right things to say and read and research relentlessly and watch your child accomplish things that you – and they – never thought were possible. I recognized them in the way the smoke curled but never took away the worry; the way some things just line your face a little more every year and when it’s four in the morning on a foggy fall morning and your kid is just doing the best they can, the only thing you have left to do is smoke and drink your coffee and hope you did enough. Worry the way I’m sure Zeus never did, but the way that I know Craig always will, that it won’t be enough, that being there, perpetually and permanently there won’t be enough.

But to me, to me and for my tired and worrying and world-worn parents, for that young couple outside my train window and all the trailer trash, poor, working class parents out there doing your best to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the end of the month without running out of money… some things are as lasting as the moon and the tides, and one of those is the act of not leaving. Of being there, of worrying the way Zeus never did, of doing the best with what you have to make sure that your kids – even, and perhaps especially, the angry, hurt, and terrified ones �� know that you are there. That you will not leave them. That they are worth the world.

#story #writing #short stories #memoir #essay #white trash #poor #trailer trash #cigarettes #parents #childhood trauma #child abuse #appalachia #zeus #athena #success #adoption

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