#he was born to be bent over and used in a public place. ok

[domistique]

once you start to see bottom carlos you can never go back to exclusively top carlos....

[astarion-dekarios]

Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France: Chapter One

Hello this is a very loose/informal collection of summary, notes & discussion I am compiling to help me better retain info, and since this is a topic I know is relevant to other people in Les Mis fandom as well. Please feel free to Contribute to discussion, but also be aware my prior knowledge of Saint-Simonism is not much so, like, probably a lot of this isn’t gonna be exactly ground-breaking.

OK so, first chapter. Mostly about the origin and beginnings of the movement, highly Combeferre relevant.

Saint-Simon himself was a supporter of the Revolution who was interested in the Polytechnique and who was also familiar with the director of Napoleon’s Egyptian Institute. His mentors included Condorcet. Like Condorcet, Saint-Simon wanted France to be governed by an “elite” of enlightened, productive, competent people. Initially he had kind of an authoritarian bent, but during the Empire he decided Napoleon sucked and got with the liberals including Jacques Lafitte. He proposed that industrialists and businessmen should take a leading role in the state and was real big on Economics. He and his liberal pals founded a society for elementary instruction, which the author of this book describes as being concerned with educating the poor “to be submissive and useful at the lowest possible cost.” So, kind of sucked?

Towards the end of his life though he got a bit more radicalized and turned against the liberals, concluding that economic growth would be better achieved through public works and social change rather than liberal economics. He divided society into two groups, industriels (everyone who had to do some work to survive including farmers, artisans, doctors, journalists, etc) and oisifs (landowners and investors who didn’t work). Sounding kinda proto-Marxist now. He also got briefly jazzed about New Religion, which he wrote would “prioritise moral doctrine; religious belief and doctrine will only be seen as [...] accessories.”

Saint-Simon died in 1825 but these new ideas he came up with the end of his life were taken over by his followers, especially Olinde Rodrigues, and became a big social movement that went beyond his initial ideas. (ex. Saint-Simon said nothing about women, women would become a major part of the movement). The biggest notion of the movement was fraternity, above liberty and equality. Saint-Simonians stressed that association was the key to progress and social regeneration, and was able to reform the individual.

Who were Saint-Simonians?

1.) Young. The post-Revolutionary generation, born in the first ten years of the nineteenth century. They were the first generation educated in the new revolutionary schools.

2.) Outsiders. Though many of the movement [especially men] were well-educated and upper-middle-class, they still felt [and often were] excluded by society in one way or another. An eighth of the movement was Jewish. Prominent leaders were illegitimate, or mixed-race, or political outsiders (including members of the charbonnerie). Women fall under this label as well and later on the movement would even enlist uneducated Parisian needlewomen.

3.) Well-educated. A large proportion of recruits were graduates (or current students of) the Polytechnique. Medical Students were also well-represented and were “disappointed that their training seemed to ignore new empirical developments in medicine, such as the links between social deprivation and ill health”. They were also into homeopathy and phrenology.

4.) Attractive. The book literally says “almost all adherents were good-looking” and it seems to be more important than you would think. They were also theatrical and flashy and wore pretty flashy clothing including the famed back-fastening waistcoats. 

The group started up in 1825 but the first public meeting was held in December 1828. Members met on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in the rue Monsigny and rue Taitbout and had passionate debates as well as luxurious communal dinners with fine wines and meals-- the movement was about “enjoyment, not self-flagellation”. On Sundays they also met at midday for kind of an alternative “religious” service.

They talked a lot about philosophy and rejected Rousseau’s belief that “man is born free”, claiming instead that human nature is constructed and could be changed by the society they were in. This kinda doesn’t mesh with phrenology but whatever. They also believed in progress, that the Golden Age was ahead of them, but that “progress was not continuous but alternated between” phases of faith and scientific skepticism, reaching a kind of synthesis and then moving on to the next phase of faith. Pilbeam describes this as “a mixture of Hegel and Fourier”.

Saint-Simonians were not utopian and suggested practical solutions such as banking reform. While they were still big into economic growth, they thought that banks were a root cause of problems because they only cared about making profit for the wealthy. “The existing banks are founded by and for the idle.” Credit should be easily available for workers and entrepreneurs who would actually use the capital. They rejected revolutionary methods and liberal doctrines both, putting their trust in cooperation/fraternity. “To each according to his abilities, to each ability according to his efforts.” Property rights should not be dictated by conquest and birth but on a person’s potential ability and work; therefore they suggested an inheritance tax. They were also big on education.

Overall, some interesting ideas, some similarities with Marx but (and I’ve read this about the period in a few different places) the class struggle seems to place workers and entrepreneurs together against landowners and investors. Again overall it definitely seems relevant to Combeferre and makes me think about him in some new ways as well as solidifying some of my other vaguer thoughts about him. Lots of good information here, this is just the first chapter and I’m looking to getting more into it.

[thefandomlesbian]

#15 on the imagines list: “stop pretending you’re ok, because I know you’re now” - Foxxay AU where misty gets Cordelia to release some pent up emotion after the acid attack.

AO3 link here! 

Thanks for the prompt :) Please read on AO3, since Tumblr eats my formatting when I copy and paste (and I don’t have the time or the patience to go back and fix it). 

Misty sat across the couch from Cordelia in the silence of Miss Robicheaux’s. I shouldn’t be staying here. She ground her teeth. The place reeked—not physically, but emotionally. Souls were crying out. This was a place where tormented souls had never gained their rest. She wrung her hands. She had come here because she trusted Myrtle and because she had nowhere else to go, so when her revived friend told her she knew a place that was safe, she followed. I wouldn’t have if she had told me where it was. Misty didn’t know where else she would have gone. Everyone she had ever known thought she was dead—she preferred it that way. If she was dead, she was safe… or so she had thought, anyway. 

Cordelia and the other witches insisted she was safe from the witch hunters. But the longer she was here, the more she wondered if this whole place was just a more elaborate way to kill witches. After all, no one knew she was alive except for Zoe—how else would anyone have learned about her? Her lips twisted downward as she thought, tapping her toes on the wooden floor. It was all a puzzle, and Misty had never been one for solving puzzles, not the cardboard kind. She preferred her puzzles in real life before her, like finding the most effective way to climb a tree or the driest way to cross a brook. Thinking puzzles weren’t for her. 

The telephone rang. Misty glanced sideways at Cordelia, who held a book in her lap, open to a page, head bent down as if she could read the ink, but she kept trailing her fingers back and forth over the sheet of paper unevenly. She didn’t move at the sound of the telephone. Her dim fingers kept trailing over the book. The light refracted off of the dark lenses of her sunglasses. Is she gonna answer the telephone? It rang again, and Cordelia didn’t move. Misty shrugged it off and popped off of the couch. She didn’t have anything better to do but to answer the phone. Then, she would interact with Cordelia, try to make her look a little less morose. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve got a bad aura… She can probably tell I hate it here. 

Trotting off into the other room, Misty surveyed, trying to follow the sound of the ringing, before she finally spotted a landline phone two rooms away, well out of Cordelia’s earshot. “Hullo, Miss Robicheaux’s.” 

“Hey, Misty, it’s Zoe.” Misty perked up at the sound of Zoe’s familiar voice. “Listen, um, Luke is being lifted to another hospital, and Nan doesn’t want to leave him, so we decided to humor her. Madison’s going to drive us all down to Baton Rouge. We’ve got Kyle, so you don’t have to worry about him—and I think Fiona is going to be out with her date. It’ll just be you and Cordelia for awhile… Unless you want to come?” 

Zoe’s offering was reluctant, and Misty was equally reluctant to accept. “Nah, I think I got plenty of things I like better than being stuck in a vehicle with Kyle for hours on end.” Cordelia was odd, morose, sombre, but at least she wasn’t a hurricane in skin. Maybe I can cheer her up. “So me and Miss Cordelia—er, what’s her deal? She’s awful quiet.” Misty lowered her voice, just in case Cordelia could hear her. “She’s been holding this book staring at one page for close to an hour.” 

“Oh…” Zoe paused, and Misty could hear the sound of her audibly licking her lips. “She, um, I think she’s like… grieving. Because, I mean, just a few weeks ago, she was blinded—” 

“She was what?” Misty interrupted. She lowered her voice into a hushed whisper again. “I thought she was born that way!” she hissed. 

“What? Oh, no, that just happened recently. Halloween night, actually.” Well, no wonder she’s morose. “Somebody bumped into her in a bar bathroom and hurled acid in her face. They thought it was a case of mistaken identity, but Fiona said it was Myrtle, and that was why they burned her… Didn’t she tell you?” 

Misty blinked. “I never ask anybody how or why they died. That’d be awful rude.” She had first hand experience with dying, and when she woke up, the last thing she had wanted was for somebody to stick their face in hers demanding what had happened and how and why. She wanted to be alone, safe under the dirt, forever. 

“Um… If you say so.” Zoe cleared her throat. “Anyway, then, when she woke up, she had the Sight. You know, how she touches people and can see things. She couldn’t do that before, you know, everything happened. But her husband came in—”

“She was married?”

“Would you let me finish?”

“Yeah, sure, sorry—go ahead.” 

“When he touched her, she saw him cheating on her. I guess more than once. So now she’s trying to divorce him and all that jazz. But I don’t know where she is with it or anything. I’ve been kinda busy with everything… And I guess she probably has been, too.”

Misty waited until she heard a definite pause in Zoe’s speech this time before she interjected. “Does she have anybody?” she asked. “This all has been dumped onto her plate.” Where’s her support system? Misty knew better than to ask… She, too, had never had a steady support system. Her family wasn’t capable of providing such a thing, and the kids in school had always feared her. As an adult, she understood why. “Who’s helping her out?” 

Zoe’s uncertainty was palpable. “Well… She and Fiona aren’t on very good terms, but, um, I think Fiona helped her kick Hank out? Fiona always hated Hank, so she’s been gloating it over Cordelia a whole bunch, but at least Hank’s gone. And I think Cordelia’s taking it pretty hard that Queenie left, too, actually… I don’t know. She likes Myrtle, but I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. Did she tell you where she was going before she left? It’s unlike her to just disappear, especially after what happened with Cordelia.” 

Misty sighed. “No, I haven’t seen her.” Maybe she got out of this crazy town while she still had the chance. Misty doubted that Myrtle would abandon Cordelia that way—after all, she had fought so hard to get back here in the first place. But after experiencing this place for a little while, absolutely nothing would surprise Misty. She licked her lips. 

“Anyway, we gotta go. Are you okay? I don’t want anybody to be afraid of the witch hunters.”

“Yeah, we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. Thanks, Zoe.” Placing the phone back on the hook, Misty turned on her heel and retraced her footsteps back to Cordelia’s side in the living room. She hadn’t moved, still staring down at the book before her. “Hey, Miss Cordelia?” Cordelia lifted her head, closing the book with a snap on her own fingers and then jerking them free from the page. Her mouth formed a small O of surprise, as if she had lost track of time. “That was Zoe on the phone. Everybody’s going to Baton Rouge for awhile with Nan’s boyfriend. I guess Fiona and Myrtle are both MIA, so it’s just gonna be us for awhile unless they turn up.” 

Tilting her head up, Cordelia nodded. “Right… Okay. Thanks, Misty.” She kept trailing her fingers over the cover of her old tome, falling back into her reverent, sad silence. She was so still, so strange, and Misty couldn’t leave her like that, looking all pathetic. 

So she cocked her head. “Why don’t we do something?” Do what? Misty couldn’t appear in public as long as she was legally missing presumed dead; if somebody recognized her, she could be in deep shit. The last thing she needed was for someone from her old life to catch wind of where she was now and follow her—or the witch hunter who had chased her here, to this strange safety. Eh, not what I’d consider safe. She felt she was more likely to die from another witch here than any of the other threats on the outside world… But she had run out of options, at least for the time being. Maybe me and Cordelia could leave together. She entertained the notion. Clearly, Cordelia was miserable here. She needed to get far, far away from Fiona and learn to love herself again. 

But those were all long-distant future goals. First, she needed something for them to do right now, because Cordelia’s sunglasses reflected her face back at her as she asked, “I don’t know… I don’t think I feel up to doing anything in public. I’d just make a fool of myself.” 

Misty sat down beside her, instead of on the opposite end of the couch, and blinked down at the weathered book in her hand. “Well, I can’t really do public, either. If somebody recognized me, we’d be toast—literally, literally toast.” Cordelia cracked a tiny smile. Oh, c’mon, that’s some of my best humor. “We don’t have to do anything huge. I can drive you grocery shopping, since the cabinet’s a little empty. Or we could get coffee.” Cordelia hung her head. I’m losing her. She looked so disappointed, so ashamed. Misty reached out and touched the back of her hand. “Or we could go out to the greenhouse.”

Cordelia’s hand was warm under her touch. Her fingers had a slight tremble, and Misty wondered what she Saw. But she didn’t pull away. Instead, she slowly turned her hand palm-up, so they were palm-to-palm, fingers touching but not yet entwining. “Misty, I—I appreciate you want to entertain me, but I, um, I don’t think I’m cut out for doing much, right now.” She lowered her head, nose pointed down to the cover of her book. “I’m not exactly in a position to have much fun.” 

Misty paused. Okay, so the ‘let’s have fun’ approach isn’t working. Could she be forward? She didn’t want to scare Cordelia off. She’s so pretty. Sitting in the natural light of the living room, the sun streaming through the window, Cordelia’s hair caught in a golden light. “What’s wrong?” she asked hesitantly. 

Cordelia shook her head. Her tangled hair drifted down her face and shook, and Misty wondered if she had been able to brush it since losing her sight. She reached out and tucked a lock behind her ear. Cordelia gave a minute flinch as Misty’s fingers brushed so near to the rim of her sunglasses, but she didn’t pull away. “Nothing,” she said. Her fingers ran up and down the pages of the book. “I’m fine. I’m just tired.” 

“Stop pretending you’re okay. I know you’re not. You’ve been holding this book for over an hour,” Misty pressed gently. Cordelia’s shoulders hunched over. Misty took her hand away from Cordelia and reached for the book, gingerly sliding it out of Cordelia’s lap. She squinted down at the title. It was an aged book, but the title was still legible. Herbology: Magique of Botanical Properties, Misty read on the cover. Cordelia fell silent. Misty carefully opened the cover. “What are you doing with this?” 

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “It makes me feel better.” Misty studied her face. “I like the way it smells… the way it feels.” The book was well-worn. Misty could tell which pages had seen the most light. “It was my favorite. I used it all the time, before…” She sighed despondently. “Now I can barely climb the stairs.” Bitterness laced her voice. 

Misty pursed her lips. “Well, you can still use it now. I may not be good for much, but I can read, you know.” 

“I don’t want to be a bother.” 

“You’re not a bother. I’m offering. We’ve got days of nothing but getting to hang out together. I want to be your friend. And I bet there’s a ton you can teach me.” Misty slid the book back over to Cordelia and grabbed her hand again, this time clasping them together. “What do you say?” 

Cordelia’s mouth hung slightly open, a small O, and she didn’t face Misty anymore; her face angled straight at the wall, her breathing heavy and posture rigid. She’s Seeing something. Misty’s brow quirked, and she wanted to call Cordelia’s name, but she didn’t dare interrupt whatever was happening in Cordelia’s mind. Then, she snapped out of it, her jaw closing with a firm click. Her cheeks stained bright red, and she began to giggle. “Miss Cordelia?” Misty asked, uncertainly. 

Covering her mouth with her hand, Cordelia’s shoulders quivered with her slight laughter. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry—yes, I’ll go with you.”

Misty grinned. “Can I ask what you Saw?” 

“I think you’ll find out soon enough.” Misty tilted her head, watching as Cordelia stood and the sun stained her hair all honey and beautiful. She’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d really like to kiss her. The thought struck her. 

She stood, offering her arm to Cordelia. “Yeah, you bet I will.” Another giggle confirmed her suspicions. Leading the way to the greenhouse with Cordelia’s book under arm, Misty had never felt lighter. 

[edourado]

Complete

Here lies another beggining of the  year indulgent thing. 

I have written fix-it fics and AU’s before, but none, I think, as sticky-sweet as this one. But it is also a lil smutty. So be warned. 

The first fic of 2019 had to be bright, given what Netflix and Disney are hell bent on doing to us all. 

Here it is. I hope you like it. Please let me know. The writer needs affection/validation. 

Much love. Happy 2019 to all of us. 

(Also #SaveDaredevil while we’re at it)

Frank caused a commotion the first time he visited her at her office.

She had not been expecting him at all. He was supposed to be in Florida with his kids, a Disney World event for Lisa’s 9th birthday. His flight was not scheduled to arrive until eight that night.

But then there he was, at 11 in the morning.

“Hey”, he called from her door, that voice full of gravel that still made her skin shiver, almost a year into their relationship.

“Oh”, she let out, looking up from her computer, surprised to see him. “Hi!”

Frank has this thing about him, that no matter what he put on, he looked good. It can be a bit infuriating, actually, especially on those days that she couldn’t decide what to wear or what to do with her hair. Frank just threw on a hoodie and some jeans and those boots he would wear to bed if he could, and he was ready.

Walking into her office, he made his way to her and she realized her strategy of not thinking about him during the week he spent away had worked. She had focused on everything but Frank Castle and everything she had to do so as not to think about him and, consequently, miss him too much, but now that he was here, placing the white roses that he always presented her with behind her pencil case, she felt the tightness in her chest that told that she had missed missed missed him but now was so glad that he was here.

Oh, she just knew this office was about to implode because of him.

He bent over her desk to place a kiss on her lips, and she angled her face up, but as soon as he backed away, she got up to close the door and shut the blinds, ignoring the protests of her nosy coworkers.

“I thought you were supposed to fly back tonight.”

“Yeah”, he started while she shook her head at Arlene through the window, who was making faces and mouthing “oh my God??” at her. “Leave it to those kids to not follow the plan.”

Turning to him, Karen smiled and moved to better greet him after a week of texts and quick calls to say good night.

“What happened?” She asked after a proper kiss and a tight hug, pulling him towards the couch, moving to sit sideways on his lap.

“We got a dog.”

She was on her way to kiss him again, but stopped and moved back to look at his face.

“You got a- the dog you were planning on getting Frankie?”

“Nope, not that one. Well, now, I guess, yeah.”

He had been planning on getting a dog for his son for his birthday, two months from now, in order to maybe teach some responsibility to the young boy that, unlike his sister, that took to their father and developed her organization skills from an early age, was truly content on being the spoiled youngest sibling, leaving a messy trail wherever he went.

“I took them to dinner last night”, he started to explain, one arm behind her, hand on her hip, the other caressing her thigh over her jeans.

Karen has never been happier to have a private office.

“We went to this sea food place-”

“You got a dog at a seafood place?”

“Almost. We get there and I’m looking for a parking spot when these two little maniacs yell ‘SHELTER!’ and hop off the car.”

Karen smiled, knowing exactly what he meant. They had picked this up a while ago, under the impression that, as long as the car was moving very slowly and they loudly announced why they were exiting the vehicle and where they were going, it was ok to simply unbuckle and leave.

“So I park the damn car, and when I get there they go ‘daddy daddy please!’, thrusting this puppy on my face.”

“What breed?”

Here, he sighed.

“A pitbull.”

“Oh, these kids are good.”

Frank loves pitbulls. Everyone that knows him knows this. He had forfeited the privilege of having one when he married Maria, who is very allergic to dogs, leaving the one he already had to live with his parents. Old Max had died soon after Frankie was born, and Frank has been puppy orphaned since then.

“Yeah”, he says, softly, as he always does when talking about his children, picking on a seam of her jeans. “I made it a little difficult, though, made them promise all kinds of things about taking care of it, going for walks and shit, but Lisa hit me with the birthday bribe thing, and Frankie said he never wanted anything more in his entire life, even if he had met the dog three minutes ago.”

With hands on his face, Karen bent to take her kiss, and the familiar warmth of him made her want to go home.

“So now you have a dog.”

“Now I have a dog. Its technically the kids’ dog, but he’s gonna live with me full time, so yeah.”

Weaving her arms around his neck, she pulled him for a hug, aware that someone was going to knock, any second now.

“I’m happy for you”, she said, feeling his arms tighten around her. “And I’m also glad you’re home a whole nine hours earlier.”

She had been right. Right when he was weaving his fingers inside her hair, opening his mouth to her kiss, someone knocked on the door, and she got up from his lap.

“Yeah, come in.”

Simone and Andre, of course. Everybody had been asking about Frank, wanting to meet him, but these two have been the worst.

“Hi-i, excuse us”, Simone sing-sang, walking in as Frank slowly got up from the couch. “We just wanted to know if you’re gonna join us for lunch. Hi, I’m Simone.”

Frank moved to shake her hand, and Andre stood there sizing him up.

“Frank Castle.”

“Ah, the famous Frank. I wish I could say we’ve heard all about you, but this one has built a mystery”, Andre said, taking his turn in shaking his hand. “She doesn’t say anything, no matter how much we beg.”

Karen would have sent them away, but it was a little fun to watch Frank squirm under her coworkers’ scrutiny.

He smiled his polite smile, and touched a hand on the small of her back.

“I’m afraid I came to steal her away for lunch.”

They tried to convince him they could all have lunch together, but he explained that he had just touched down in New York, his suitcase was still in the car, he had his kids waiting for them back home.

After a lot of probing, a lot of insistence, Alex and Sam joining them in the office, she managed to shoo everybody away and, finally, pull him by the hand to the elevators.

“I feel like The Bachelor or something”, he whispered to her while they waited, mouth to her ear, and she put one arm around his torso.

“They’re a bunch of reporters, and I have been retaining information about you for almost a year. You’re lucky they’re not dissecting you over my desk.”

The door pinged and opened, and they stepped into the empty elevator. Frank kissed her discreetly, a sweet hand on her face while they descended to the lobby for his car.

“Sorry for showing up unannounced”, he said against her cheek. “I thought I’d surprise you.”

“It’s ok. I’ll have to hold a press conference in the break room when I come back, but it’s worth it.”

He smiled against her face, placing a lingering kiss on her temple just as the doors opened to the lobby.

She asked about the trip on the way to his apartment, a hand on his hair while he drove, and he told her about long lines and kiddie rides, but how it was worth it, just to see the kids so happy. How they had to smuggle the puppy to the hotel, and Lisa forfeited a day in Sea World so they could go back home early and how they almost cried along when the puppy whined in the plane, the loud noises hurting his little ears.

When he parked in his usual spot, Karen tugged on his sleeve before he even started gathering his stuff to get out of the car.

Unbuckling, she leaned to kiss him and, after quickly bunching up her skirt to her hips, moved out of her seat and maneuvered herself on top of him, laughing out an “ouch!” when she banged her head on the car ceiling in the process.

He was smiling when she moved to kiss him, hands eager on her, going from her face to her hair, down her neck, over to her back and down her hips until he was gripping her ass firmly, kissing her slow and deep, making her sigh against his lips.

“I missed you”, she whispered when he dove to kiss and nibble on her neck, arms around his shoulders, feeling warm and tingly from his kisses.

“Fuck”, he sighed against her skin, looking up again to catch another kiss. “I missed you more.”

Frank had his hands full of her and everything was already spinning when she took her hands from his face, lowering them down his chest.

“The kids are gonna sleep over?”

“Yeah”, he said against her neck while she pushed his shirt out of her way.

“Well then”, she said, closing her eyes when he pressed a chunk of her skin between his teeth, a reaction to her fingers unbuckling his belt. “We’ll have to make do.”

It’s not that they never had sex with the kids in the house. He shared custody with Maria, 50/50, and they’ve been going out 10 months, now, of course they had to make sure the door was locked and try to be as quiet as possible.

But he was just coming back from a week away, if they went upstairs right away, she would have to wait until bedtime to get her fill of him.

So the car it was.

“Hold on, hold on”, he breathed, one arm around her, leaning off the seat to start the car again, setting the air conditioner on high.

Frank came back to her with renewed gusto, and she kinda liked the rough fabric of his jeans scratching her bare thighs.

It had to be quick. No time or space to draw out anything. Plus, his windows were tinted and the garage was underground, but this was still a public space.

She groaned into his mouth when he slipped inside her, bracing a hand on the ceiling right above her head, rolling her hips on his, the vents of his (very impractical) Mustang blasting cold air on her back.

He had ripped the buttons out of one of her shirts, once, on a drunk encounter where he knocked on her door after drinking with his buddies, and as exciting as it had been at the time, she had warned him not to do it again, she couldn’t exactly afford this habit of his. So now he was always careful, going button by button every time.

This time, he stopped just after three, when her bra was exposed enough, and pushed the lacy fabric aside to attach his mouth over her breasts, hugging her to him, making her moan at what the movement did, he was just so good at this.

Oh, his hands. Frank knew just how to handle her, his fingers applying just the right amount of pressure. A little bit over comfortable, not enough to hurt, just enough to make her shiver, guiding her over him, pressing and kneading, and they have to hurry, the kids are waiting upstairs, one of his neighbors could walk in any minute, there might be a security camera or two registering as his car bounced.

“Now, Kare’, come on”, he growled in her ear after just a few minutes, dipping his hand between them and bucking his hips up towards her, and she pressed her lips together to keep the scream in, moaning loud against his face, the air conditioner too loud to let anyone outside the car hear her.

Frank let go just after her, face pressed against her neck, and she hugged him to her, moving her hips to and fro slowly as they both came down, sweating a little bit in spite of the cold air coming out of the vents.

“One fucking week”, he said, all mellow, head resting against the seat, a hand on her face, and she kissed him slowly. “Away from you. I never wanna do that again.”

They took a few more minutes to put themselves together and look around before exiting the car.

Upstairs, opening the door, they found the Castle kids on the living room floor, playing with their new puppy.

“Hi, you guys!” She greeted, and both Lisa and Frank got up from the floor, excitedly talking over each other, showing her the dog, trying to tell her all about the trip to Florida in less than a minute.

“Ok, ok, hey, calm down”, Frank said, closing the door behind them. “Take a breath.”

The plan had been for them to go out, and they would drop her off at work after they ate, but she ended up sitting on the floor with the children, playing with the new family member, trying to come up with a name for him, so Frank ordered in.

“He looked straight at us when we came in”,  Lisa was telling her, sitting by her side playing with the puppy while Frankie sat, technically, on the floor, but with his back against her chest, her legs crossed around his small frame while he played on her phone. “The lady told us he was born less than a week ago. We were the very first to come in and see them.”

“He has three sisters”, Frankie piped in, not looking up from the phone. “I wanted to bring them all home.”

“Yeah, in your dreams, buddy”, Frank said from the couch.

“But daddy, you love dogs”, he argued, calm as cucumber. “You would love all of them.”

“I think it’s good that you only got him”, Karen said, pushing the boy’s hair away from his forehead. “One dog is already such a big responsibility, can you imagine four?”

“I agree”, went Lisa, rubbing the puppy’s belly. “We would be totally overwhelmed.”

Nine years old and such big words.

“Right. Totally overbelted”, echoed her brother, sort of.

“By the way”, Frank said from his spot on the couch. “What’s this guy’s name?”

They thought about names for a few minutes, laughing while she and Frank suggested names like Tiberius or Leandrenous.

“Frank Jr Jr!” Suggested an excited boy.

“That’s too many Franks in one house”, argued his sister, shaking her head solemnly.

The food arrived and they jumped to set the table, babbling away about Disney World and how they couldn’t wait to be old enough for the “big rides” while Frank opened the door and payed the delivery guy.

They sat down at the table to eat and, while Frank served rice to Lisa, Karen spotted a stain on his neck, right below his left ear.

Lipstick. Hers, from the car.

Dropping her fork, she reached out to clean it, or, at the very least, smudge it away before the kids saw it. He looked at her, a question in his eyes, and she moved her hand to show him the soft pink tinge in her fingers.

She had to breathe deep not to laugh at the smug expression on his face.

“No chicken for me, daddy”, Lisa said. “I’m a vegetarian.”

He fixed her with a look.

“Since when?”

“Since today. I just saw on TV how they make burgers and chicken nuggets, so I’m not gonna eat meat anymore.”

“You could have mentioned that before I ordered chicken and steak, maybe?”

“Sorry. I’ll have rice and fries. And I guess I can have some cauliflower.”

They ate and the puppy whined, begging for food while Frankie listed all the disadvantages of being a vegetarian and Lisa listed the benefits.

“They eat dogs in China. Did you know that?”

“No they don’t!”

“They do, too! And in India, cows are sacred. So us having burgers is just as weird for them. You wouldn’t eat a dog, would you? So why should I eat a cow?”

There was a moment of quiet, while Frankie thought about it and Lisa tried not to make a face at the steamed vegetables she was munching on.

“What else do they eat in China?”

.:.

After teaming up to load the dishwasher, they all got into their shoes again, to go out and drive Karen back to work. They needed to also stop at a pet store, to buy the newest member of the family some proper food.

“You’re sleeping over, right?” Lisa asked from the back seat when Frank pulled over in front of the Bulletin, the dog on her lap.

“Yep”, she confirmed, twisted around to look at the girl.

“Good. We still need to tell you about the rest of the trip.”

“And I need to show you my new comic books”, Frankie - now also a vegetarian - added.

“I want to hear and see it all”, she smiled at them. “Bye, you guys.”

Moving back, she looked at Frank, who leaned in to collect a kiss.

“We can come pick you up.”

“No need. I have a Skype interview, don’t know how long it’ll take. I’ll get a cab, or something.”

“Ok.  But call me if you want me. I’ll come running.”

She took the kiss, and whispered just for him.

“I always want you.”

.:.

As she expected, the office was holding its collective breath waiting for her return. She had barely walked out of the elevator when Simone got up and started to follow her.

“You sneaky bitch”, she said, pinching her arm and Karen smiled. “You were hiding that all along?”

“I wasn’t hiding anything. Or anyone.”

“Karen”, said Sam, catching up to them. “That is your boyfriend? Jesus Christ, he’s so yummy.”

She didn’t say anything to that because, well, yes, he is.

She didn’t mean to keep Frank a secret. He wasn’t, really. But things had started very uncertain, with them.

He was married, when they first met. Just starting on his divorce process, and he was not in a very good place then. Neither was she, really, what with the break up with Matt and Wilson Fisk waging war on her over the exposè she wrote on him, Nelson & Murdock handling the case, it was a mess.

But then they met again, and she wrote a story on him, they teamed up to bring some corrupt CIA officials down, he became a source, she became his one woman database, he saved her life, and suddenly-

Suddenly they were in love. Crazy, stupid, inexplicable love, theirs was a completely new thing, for her.

Karen had boyfriends before, she had been in love before, but what she felt for Frank and what he felt for her was beyond her own comprehension. She’s a respected journalist, and she doesn’t have the words to describe it.

She’s his and he’s hers. That’s it.

But she never had envisioned herself falling so hard for a man as complicated as Frank Castle. A man whose divorce papers were still warm from the printer, the ink from the judge’s signature still fresh. A man whose job she couldn’t even understand right, so covert everything was. A man with two children (and a pretty spectacular ex wife, if she’s being honest. It was pretty much impossible not to fall in love with Maria Castle) and more redacted record files than she thought was healthy.

Still. There she was, ten months after the first time he kissed her, unable to imagine her life without him, anymore.

But if she was anything, it was a pessimist. Her own life and history too punctuated with heartbreak for her to be anything other than that.

So she kept him a mystery. Not telling her coworkers she was dating, at first, and then evading questions about him when it became obvious that she was indeed seeing someone.

Plus, it felt good, to keep him all to herself.

During that time, she had also developed the purest form of love for little Lisa and Frank Jr.. She met them after a few months of dating, and the kids took to her with ease, embracing Daddy’s new girlfriend with a warmth that, honestly, choked her up a little bit.

She loved Lisa and her curious mind, sharp wit and enormous heart.

She loved Frankie and his tenacity, his sweetness and his bravery.

And, Lord above, she loved Frank. All of him, even the parts that made her want to yank her hair out in frustration, sometimes.

They were, both of them, more than a little bit broken when they first met. The way they put each other back together made them stronger everyday.

“Come on”, Alex was saying as she put her hair up for her interview. “Dish.”

“There’s nothing to dish”, she lied. “Now shoo. I have a call with Tony Stark, if you don’t mind.”

They only left after she promised happy hour next Monday, so they could question her about her relationship over tequilas and margaritas.

And, while she waited for the call to connect, she conceded: that didn’t sound so bad.

.:.

Dinner was somewhat tricky.

Lisa was standing her ground with this whole vegetarian thing, and the last thing Frank wanted was to curb any of her impulses - especially when they were rooted in something valid -, even if they didn’t last long, so he had no choice but to adapt.

When she got there, they were, Frank and Lisa, in the kitchen, trying to make a cheese and broccoli soup.

“Tomorrow”, Frank started while he supervised the kids brushing their teeth after dinner, already dressed for bed. “We’re gonna go to the vet, get that little guy all the vaccines he needs to be healthy.”

“Can we go to the park after?” Frankie asked, standing on a little stool step to make him reach the sink, foam spilling out of his mouth.

“Depends on what the vet says.”

“We should get him a trainer”, Lisa said after rinsing, drying her face. “Like the one Kim Kardashian got. You know, to house train him.”

“I doubt I can afford Kim Kardashian’s dog whisperer.”

They said goodnight while Karen rubbed moisturizer on her face and Frank walked to tuck each of them into their own beds, maybe read with them a little bit. The dog - who still didn’t have a name - was going to sleep in Frankie’s room tonight (he had won the coin toss).

She was already in bed, browsing her phone when he walked in, turning the lights off and closing the door behind him, carefully turning the key.

Karen locked the screen and reached to put the phone on the nightstand, smiling when Frank reached the mattress and got a hold of both her ankles, yanking her to him, she giggled and bit on her lower lip, watching as he quickly shed his shirt and threw it behind him.

He bent to place kisses and nibbles on her belly, moving her own shirt out of his way, until he was pushing it over her head and lying down on top of her, his kisses slower than the ones they shared earlier in the car, but not any less intense.

Karen likes the weight of him on top of her. Likes to raise her legs and wrap them around his torso, feel the muscles of his back with her hands, tug on the longer strands of his hair. And she loves everything he does to her, he never disappoints.

But she felt him a little different this time. While his right hand holding her hips up for him was nothing new, the left one on her jaw, angling her face up so he can kiss and lick and nibble on her neck, lower, a tiny bit more intense than usual, was.

(Not unpleasant, by any means, but new.)

“Fuckin’ craved you all week”, he says against her navel, hands busy busy busy on her, and Karen feels violent shivers running all over her. “Missed the taste of your skin.”

This is what her coworkers meant when they said “dish”. They wanted the details of how Frank performs in bed, how his body feels on top of her, how thoroughly he fucks her and how expertly he eats her out, but that is something she was determined to keeping for herself.

She didn’t want to share how he makes her arch her back off the bed when he dips his head between her legs, or how he makes her shiver with the way he works his mouth on her, how she trembles while trying to be quiet, biting on her lip and seeking leverage on his hair.

Karen was not even a little bit eager to describe how he makes her come on his tongue, her skin erupting in goosebumps when he slides up to whisper how much he loves the taste of her, or how he is so good in reading her body that he knows just how to touch her to have her shivering for him all over again, or how perfectly he fits between her legs, how perfectly he fits inside her, her perfectly he moves within her.

This is just theirs.

But, maybe, depending on her mood, she can imply the way he rolls them around and perches her on top of him, and how very good she is at riding while his eyes inspect her, hungry and loving.

Maybe, just maybe, if the drinks are good and the mood is right, she might even tell them how hard he takes her from behind, and she has to scream into a pillow to avoid waking the kids, but even then he doesn’t stop, how he can go for so long she ends up dizzy.

Karen would never soberly admit how she begs for him, how he commands and she obeys, because this is the best she’s ever had, or how he tells her that he loves her so so so much while fucking her silly.

Her nosy and curious coworkers sure would like to know about the shower they shared after that, because they worked up quite a sweat, and maybe Sam, the hopeless romantic, would sigh if she told him that the way Frank looks at her makes her heart spread warmth all over her.

But she thought that it was private, just like the fact that her favorite position is when he’s fully lying on top of her and she is all tangled around him, or that is how the start and end most of their encounters, except when they’re too eager to make it to the bed.

Maybe she’ll tell them. We’ll see.

.:.

Frank is usually the first to wake up, so he’s the one that starts breakfast. Eggs and waffles with honey and jam, fruits, fresh juice for the kids and coffee for himself and the woman who stole his heart. A decent breakfast for a Saturday morning.

This morning, though, he had company. While he cracked eggs on top of melted butter, a tiny little puppy wobbled his way to the kitchen, no doubt following the smell.

After the table was set, Frank picked the dog up, feeding him a little treat, and walked back to the bedroom, to pick wake the rest of the house up.

And honestly. This boy is almost seven years old, now. Maybe it was about time he stopped climbing into his parents’ beds? He would have to talk to Maria about that.

Not that he didn’t like that his son felt safe and comfortable enough around Karen to sneak into bed with her and pass back out while Frank was in the kitchen, sleeping starfish style in the middle of the mattress, one of his feet on top of her stomach, his little chest rising and falling as he breathed.

(Good thing Karen insisted on changing the sheets last night after their enthusiastic reunion. Even tired as she was, she had the presence of mind to predict his kid’s behavior.)

“Go on”, he whispered to the dog, placing him on the bed, watching as he walked towards Frankie’s face to sniff and inspect.

Frank walked to the window and cracked the curtains open, letting a little sun in before lying back down on his side of the bed, moving the kid so he could fit.

“Morning”, Karen greeted, stretching, eyes still closed, moving her face towards his for a kiss. “Something smells good.”

“I made breakfast”, he said softly as the dog sniffed Frankie’s face and the boy turned away, groaning and rolling until he was lying on his stomach. “Hey there, buddy. When’d you get here?”

Soon, Lisa padded out of her bedroom and joined them, hair a mess, also woken up by her nose.

They walked to the table and Frank carried his youngest like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder, placing him on the chair and laughing at his sleepy face while he blinked awake, staring at the plate in front of him.

Deep sleeper, Frank Jr.. Barely ever cried when he was a baby. Slept through the night from the beginning. Unlike Lisa, whose lungs capacity had humbled her parents and their neighbors alike.

Finally sitting down on his own chair after making sure everybody’s plate was full, Frank watched his daughter make plans with Karen about next year’s birthday, when she would be old enough for some of the bigger rides at Disney.

He thought he lost his family when he got divorced. Had night terrors about becoming one of those estranged fathers, alone and unloved for the rest of his life.

Instead, he never even had time to miss his kids. He just got a new dog, and there was a ring burning a hole inside the safe in his office.

All there was missing was a “yes”.

[orangeoctopi7]

A Familiar Hero

Part 1

Part 2

Seeing the Spider Man in action, Ford’s previous theory that this was a visiting extraterrestrial seemed ludicrous. His every movement, his posture, even his voice exuded familiarity. How could he be anything but human?

But at the same time, how could any human do these things? The Spider Man disarmed two gunners before either of them could fire, pulling the guns out of their hands without even closing his fingers around them. Their male attacker swore, and in one swift motion tried to stab the Spider Man. No one could have seen that coming, and yet the Spider Man pulled away and to the side, easily dodging it as though the assailant had clearly telegraphed the move. He retaliated with a powerful left-hook, knocking the man to the ground like a sack of potatoes. When he turned his attention to the woman, she was already running back out the alley-way. The Spider Man shrugged, obviously deciding chasing her was not worth it. He picked up the man like he was nothing more than an awkwardly shaped sack of flour, and not a sack of flesh and bones coming close to thee hundred pounds.

“What were you idiots thinkin’?!” The Spider Man demanded. “Are you trying to get yourselves killed!? I’m lucky– I mean you’re- you’re lucky I was nearby. What would I have– uh, what would you have done if I wasn’t here?”

The two researchers were too stunned to say anything. They just stared at him with slack jaws.

“I-I gotta dump this guy someplace the cops’ll find him.” He made to leave.

“It’s really you!” Ford blurted out, finally finding his voice. He thought they’d be lucky if they just got to see the Spider Man, and not only had he saved their lives, he was talking to them now!

“You… you know who I am?” The Spider Man tugged nervously at his mask.

“Of course I do! I’ve been following you since the beginning!” Ford grinned. There was something nagging at the back of his head, something about that familiarity, but he was too excited to stop and really think about it right now.

“Wait, seriously!?”

“Ah, well, not literally following you!” The researcher backpedaled, realizing that may have come off as stalkery. “But ever since that first article I found in Peculiar Pennsylvania, I’ve been following every publication and story about you I could find! I can’t believe we were lucky enough to find you!”

“You’ve been looking for me?”

“Well, just since you were sighted here in Portland, it’s the first time there’s been a sighting near enough for conducting a search to be feasible.”

“But… why? Why would you bother lookin’ for me?”

“Are you kidding? You’re amazing! All those people you’ve saved, all those criminals you’ve apprehended, you’re a hero!”

The Spider Man made a sound half-way between a laugh and a sob. “Ford, you really do still care!”

The second Ford heard the Spider Man say his name, that nagging familiarity in the back of his head clicked into place, and he realized who he was talking to just a split second before his brother pulled off the mask.

“Stanley!?”

Stan’s expression of euphoric joy quickly dropped to annoyance. “You said you knew who I was!”

“I was talking about the Spider Man! I know all about the Spider Man!”

“Well obviously not, if you didn’t know he was me!”

“What are you even doing here?”

“What am I doin’ here? What are you doin’ here!?”

“I already told you, you knucklehead!”

“What in the name of Charles Babbage is going on here!?” Fiddleford finally shouted, interrupting the brothers’ argument. “Why does the Spider Man look like you? How do you know him!? This ain’t some, I dunno, shape-shiftin’ sorta thing-a-ma-bob, is it?”

“…Oh. Right. Sorry.” Ford apologized.

“Yeah, that’s another question, who the heck’s this yahoo?” Stan demanded.

Ford gestured towards McGucket, “Stan, this is my research assistant, Fiddleford McGucket.” he then pointed to Stan, “Fiddleford, this is my twin brother, Stanley.”

The two of them just stood there, looking the other over.

“I thought you said you hadn’t talked to yer brother since you was a teenager.” McGucket eventually said.

“I hadn’t, until just now.”

“Well, ain’t that just the craziest coinky-dink you ever heard of.” Fiddleford gave a low whistle.

“Research assistant, huh?” Stan scratched the back of his head with his free hand. “What, uh, what’re you studying?”

“You”

“The Spider Man”

McGucket and Ford said simultaneously.

“Huh. Well, uh, you want me to, I dunno,  pose for a photo or somethin’?”

“Yes!” Ford said quickly. “Mask on, of course.”

“An’ then I can dump this guy someplace the cops’ll find him.”

“And we’ll go our separate ways.” Ford nodded.

“Really!?” Fiddleford exclaimed, “We jus’ randomly ran into yer brother who ya haven’t seen in over a decade, he saves our lives and turns out to be the very cryptid we came here to study, an’ yer jus’ gonna go yer separate ways? Jus like that?”

“There’s a reason we haven’t spoken in so long, Fiddleford.” The young researcher said stiffly. “Besides, I’m sure Stanley has his own life to get back to

Stan harrumphed, folded his arms and looked away. “Yeah. Yeah, sure I do.”

They walked a few blocks until Stan found a dock he said the Coast Guard frequented. McGucket asked him to pull his mask back on and Ford took a few pictures, one of the Spider Man carrying the unconscious man like he was nothing, and a few of him climbing up the warehouse walls. Unfortunately, Ford didn’t get the thrill out of it he’d been expecting. Maybe it was because all the pictures were posed. Maybe it was because, now that he knew who the Spider Man was, there was no longer the thrill of the mystery.

“…Thanks…” Ford said awkwardly when they were done.

“Don’t mention it.” Stan grunted in reply.

McGucket glanced between them, his expression stuck somewhere between perplexion and annoyance. “Well, I guess we’d better head back to the hotel.” He finally sighed.

The two groups had walked maybe ten feet away from each other when Stan turned around and shouted. “Wait! Uh… how far’s your hotel?”

“Downtown, just off the interstate.” Ford replied. “Why?”

“You yahoo’s aren’t gonna walk that whole way yourselves, are ya?”

“We’re taking the bus.”

“That’s still far enough you two could get mugged. What’s the point of me savin’ your lives if you just go an’ get in trouble again?”

“I-is that likely?” Fiddleford stammered nervously.

Stanford sighed in irritation. It didn’t matter how likely it was, because now that the idea was in Fiddleford’s head, the inventor’s anxiety would latch onto the possibility and send him spiralling until he would jump at any little sound or movement.

“My car’s parked not too far from here. Lemme just give you guys a lift back to your hotel.”

Ford sighed. “Fine.” For Fiddleford’s sake, he told himself.

***

“I thought you said your car was close!” Stanford complained ten minutes later.

“It is close, if you can climb straight up an’ over buildings.” Stan defended.

“Well how much further is it?”

“Uh, I think another block.”

“You think?”

“Hey, I don’t usually take the street!”

Ford huffed. “It would have been faster to head for the bus stop.”

“Yeah, and you would’ve wandered through the roughest part of town at 11pm.”

Fiddleford shivered and took a step closer to Stanley. “Let’s talk about somethin’ else! Say, this gives us a chance to ask ya some questions, Stanley! Like, uh… how d’you stick to walls?”

“Uh… I don’t really know. I just sorta think about it, I guess.”

“Well, how’d you know that thug was gonna pull a knife on ya?”

“I dunno, sometimes I just sense danger.”

“How would you describe this sense?”

“I don’t know, ok? It’s like tryin��� to describe colors to someone who was born blind. Look, I don’t really get how my powers work, ok? I just know that they do.”

“Ok, that’s fine.” Fiddleford assured him. “I can ask some different questions. Like, hmm, where’d ya come up with that nifty outfit?”

Stan laughed awkwardly. “Heh, what, this? Just some stuff I’ve slapped together from thrift stores, honestly. Like, these pants’re just workout sweats. They got pockets an’ fleece linin’ and everything. I got another pair that’re lighter for the summer. An’ the mask? Got it at a yard sale in Mazatlan. Just cut some eyes out of an old black basketball jersey I picked up at the same time. Don’t really remember where I picked the gloves up at, probably some bargain bin at like, Walmart or something. And they gave me the coat at this homeless shelter I stopped at in Denver.”

“What?!” Ford exclaimed, turning to face his brother suddenly.

“What?” Stan repeated innocently.

“You said something about a homeless shelter!?”

“Oh! Ha!” Stan forced a laugh. “Did I say homeless shelter? I don’t… I don’t know why I said that. What I meant was– Look, there’s my car!”

Sure enough, across the street behind a gated chain-link fence was the familiar red El Diablo Stanford remembered from his teenage years. It even had the old STNLYMBL license plate. They reached a gate that was closed not with a chain and padlock, but a stout copper pipe bent around the end of the chain-link fence and the side of the gate. Stan grabbed the pipe and unbent it as easily as a normal person would unbend a paperclip. He pulled the gate open wide enough to allow the car to drive out and motioned for the two friends to enter.

Stanford struggled with a whirlwind of emotions and thoughts as he got in the car. Stanley had been in a homeless shelter!? No, no, Stan said that wasn’t what he meant! But he was obviously lying, wasn’t he? Or maybe not. Maybe Stan was helping someone else get to the homeless shelter? Stan was the Spider Man, and the Spider Man helped people, after all. And even if Stan had spent some time in a homeless shelter, it was his own fault, right?

“Hey, uh, sorry it’s such a mess.” Stan apologized, quickly grabbing as much junk as he could out of the front passenger seat and shoving it into the trunk. “I don’t normally give rides.” He moved to the back seat and shoved everything to one side, trying to make room for someone to sit back there.

“You go ahead and sit shotgun McGucket.” Ford insisted. “I’ve at least lived in Stan’s mess before.”

“Hey, I don’t remember you bein’ any cleaner!” Stan protested.

McGucket chuckled. “Yer cabin was a disaster area when I showed up, even fer a bachelor pad.”

Ford rolled his eyes and got into the back of the car without further comment. Sure, he often got so caught up in his research that he forgot to clean, but at least he didn’t leave his clothes laying around in the back seat of his car! Or towels or toothbrushes or… was that a pillow? Then it dawned on him: Stan had been living out of his car. He really was homeless!

The young researcher immediately tried to rationalize things. It made sense, really, with what he knew about the Spider Man. The Spider Man had been traveling all over North and South America, moving from one city to the next, with little rhyme or reason, never staying in one place for too long. It made sense that the Spider Man would live out of his car if he was traveling around so much! …Or was he traveling around so much because he had to live out of his car?

Ford was about to ask his brother if he was homeless, but McGucket beat him to the punch with another question.

“So how’d ya come to be the Spider Man?”

“Well, I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to become a superhero, I can tell ya that much.” Stan replied. “It kinda just happened. I got spotted by a few obsessive nerds like my brother here, sent a few jerks to jail, saved some innocent people, and the next thing I know I’m hearin’ AM radio shows and readin’ obscure articles about my exploits, callin’ me ‘The Spider Man’. And, y’know, I decided to just run with it.”

“Ah. Suppose that makes sense.” McGucket nodded. “But I mean, how’d ya come to have these powers? Obviously ya weren’t born with ‘em, or else Stanford woulda known about ‘em.”

Ford perked up, listening intently. He’d been wondering that himself, but hadn’t quite had the courage to ask. He had an uneasy feeling he wouldn’t like the answer.

Stan stared Ford down through the rear-view mirror for a long moment, almost as though he expected his brother to say something, before finally answering. “What, y’mean the almighty genius Stanford Pines hasn’t figured it out yet?”

“Enlighten us, Stanley.”

“It’s drivin’ you crazy that I know something you don’t, isn’t it? Y’know, I might just revel in this moment a little longer, really let it sink in.”

“Stanley!”

“Alright, alright, fine, but only ‘cuz your friend here’s on the edge of his seat.”

Fiddleford was indeed giving Stan his full attention, a notebook and pen already in hand. “Golly, I wish I had my portable computer with me. Ah well, go on!”

Stan took a deep breath and fixed his brother with another hard look through the rearview mirror. “My brother ever tell you about his senior science fair project?”

“Uh, only that it was an unqualified disaster.” Fiddleford murmured awkwardly. He knew it was a touchy subject for his friend.

“What on earth does that have to do with your powers?” Ford growled.

“Just lemme finish! Anyway, Ford had genetically mutated a bunch of spiders using radiation.” Stan explained. “An’ it was winnin’ all the awards! Best in the school, best in the district, the works. Once it got to state, it got the attention of some big wigs from this fancy school called West Coast Tech. They wanted to offer Ford a full-ride scholarship if his project lived up to the hype when they came to see it. And I… I was scared ‘cuz my bro was movin’ on without me an’ I was statin’ to feel like I was gonna be stuck in Glass Shard Beach forever. I needed someone to blame, so I blamed the spiders.”

“Ahah!” Ford exclaimed, “So you admit it! You sabotaged my project!”

“That’s not what I said!” Stan defended.

“You blamed the spiders, so you smashed their containment unit and killed them all!”

“That’s not what happened! It was an accident!” Stan pleaded.

“How do you accidentally smash a containment unit?”

“Just hear me out!” Stan shouted, slamming on the breaks as they came to a red light. Ford glared at him, and McGucket just watched them both like they were a particularly volatile mixture of chemicals just waiting for the right activation energy to explode.

“Like I said, I was mad.” Stan continued. “And I blamed the spiders. I went into the gymnasium and ranted about everything I was feeling to them. I shoulda talked to you instead, but I didn’t. Once I was done gettin’ all that off my chest, I slammed my fists down on the table to let off some steam. But I hit it too hard. The containment unit tipped off the table and cracked open when it hit the floor. I picked it up right away and tried to cover the crack with my hand to stop them from escaping, but one of the spiders bit me. It startled me, so I dropped it again. And I guess the shock of gettin’ dropped twice in such a short amount of time must’ve killed ‘em or something.

“I shoulda found you and told you right away, but I panicked, and I was already startin’ to feel weird. My vision was swimmin’ and I had a killer migraine, the kind where you feel like all your senses have been turned up too high. So I ran home. After that… well, you remember.”

“I don’t.” Fiddleford reminded them.

“When the representatives from West Coast Tech arrived, all I had to show them was a broken glass globe full of dead spiders.” Ford growled. “I looked like a fool in front of the people I was supposed to get a scholarship from! And what’s worse, when I returned home, Stan tried to shrug it off like it wasn’t a big deal! Like it was a good thing I missed out on the scholarship because now we could go treasure hunting like we’d dreamed of when we were kids! And he had the gall to fake sick so Dad wouldn’t kick him out! Not that it worked.”

“I wasn’t faking it!” Stan insisted indignantly.

“And I still don’t understand how this has anything to do with your powers!” Ford glared at Stan through the rear-view mirror.

“You seriously still haven’t figured it out!?” Stan huffed exasperatedly. “What kind of idiot genius are you?”

“I’m not seein’ the connection either.” Fiddleford admitted.

Stan rolled his eyes. “I get bit by one of those radioactive spiders. Right after that, my vision starts swimmin’ an’ I get a headache like my senses got turned up.” He repeated. Still all he got were blank stares. “The next morning I realized I didn’t grab my glasses when Dad kicked me out. But I didn’t need ‘em.”

“Because you never wore them anyway?” Ford asked flatly.

“I didn’t need ‘em 'cuz I didn’t have eyesight problems anymore!” Stan corrected. “An’ less than a week after that, I started stickin’ to stuff! All my powers developed within a year of that day I got bit by one of your spiders.”

“Sweet sarsaparilla! Stanford, this is unprecedented!” Fiddleford exclaimed, “Do ya still got the notes on them spiders? Imagine if’n we could replicate these results!”

The inventor continued to prattle on excitedly, but Ford was barely listening. He’d just been presented with evidence that completely changed his world-view. Whether or not Stan had been lying about the 'accident’ at the science fair, this was proof that Stan hadn’t been making up his sudden illness. It hadn’t been an unsuccessful attempt to garner sympathy, it had been the early stages of a major postnatal genetic mutation. And that meant Stan had gone through all these probably horrifying changes alone, with no idea what was happening to him. And probably homeless.

Ford was struck with a sudden sense of guilt. All these years he’d held a grudge against his brother, but now he realized Stan had just as much a reason to hold a grudge against him! But… could he really have made any difference? He imagined what would have happened if he’d known his brother was really sick; if he’d tried to stand up to their dad. At best he would have been sent to his room, and at worst he would have been invited to join his brother on the street. No, he couldn’t have changed things then… but maybe if he hadn’t held a grudge for so long, if he’d tried to reach out to his brother as soon as he left home himself, maybe he could have helped his brother then.

“Alright, we’re downtown near the interstate.” Stan said as he stopped at another stop light. “You two see your hotel from here, or is it further down the road?”

“It’s that one with the big green sign.” Fiddleford pointed to a building to their left.

Stan pulled into the drop-off zone and parked in front of the door. “Glad I could help you two get back here safe. I know it’s hard for you, but try not to get into any more trouble for a while.”

He was rolling up the window and putting the car back into drive when Ford made a split second decision.

“Stan, wait!” He raced forward and grabbed the closing window.

Stan stopped cranking the window up and shifted back to park. “What?” he asked apprehensively.

“I-I think we could have a mutually beneficial situation here.”

“English, Sixer!”

“W-we could help each other! You’ve gained remarkable control over your powers on your own, but you don’t really understand how they work, correct?”

“Yyyyeah….” Stan said slowly, not quite catching on to where his brother was going with this.

“Think how much more you could do if you learned the ins and outs of what your body can do now! There might be things you’re not even aware you’re capable of yet! And even beyond your powers, we could help you become a better crime-fighter! Fiddleford’s a real whiz with gadgets, and just a while ago I was working on a device I couldn’t quite get to work, but I think it’d be perfect for you.”

“You… you want me to come back with you guys? So you can do experiments on me?” Stan asked warily.

“Not like that!” Ford assured him. “We’d just like to study you and run some tests…. Ugh, there really isn’t any way to make that sound better. What I’m trying to say is, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable with.”

Stan still looked skeptical.

“And you’d have some place to stay! I might even be able to pay you if the grant committee accepts my proposal for another research assistant.”

Stan sighed forlornly, and for a terrible moment Ford was afraid his brother would turn him down, but instead he asked. “What time are you leaving?”

“Around 11am tomorrow morning.”

“And where is it we’re going back to?”

“Gravity Falls, Oregon.

“Never heard of it.”

“Well, most people haven’t. It’s a small logging town in the backwoods.”

“Alright. I’ll meetcha back here at 11 tomorrow an’ follow you back to Gravy Falls.”

“Gravity Falls.”

“That too.”

Ford tried to stop himself from grinning. “Thank you, Stanley.”

“Yeah, well, I’m only goin’ so I can keep an eye on you an’ your scrawny friend. Last thing I need is a postcard from Ma sayin’ you’ve been eaten by bigfoot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stanley, the largest prey a Sasquatch will bother with are beavers.”

Stan quirked a small smile. “See you tomorrow, nerd.”

[minny5ca2018]

The Inquisitors five fanfiction - family

Jamie came into the room and found Claire pacing the room, furiously moving back and forth at the foot of the huge king size bed they shared in their Dublin flat. She was holding her smart phone and muttering under her breath.

He came over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder, stopping her determined pace over the area rug. “Babe, what’s wrong?” Jamie took a deep breath. “Is it, is it Michael?” he asked suddenly, referring to their 5 month old son.

Claire put a reassuring hand on Jamie's arm and shook her head. “No. He's fine. He’s with Uncle Terry and your mum. He’s fine. He’s had his bottle and down for the night. Just fine.”

Jamie nodded. “And Mary Kate?” he asked. He shook his head in wonder. His daughter was now almost three. Amazing how his wife and himself were co stars in a hit tv show The Inquisitors for the last five years now. And were married for the last four. And had children. And were hiding it from the general public.

Claire reached up and caressed her husband's cheek. Loving the feel of new whisker growth there, she smiled. “She's with Myra tonight in the adjoining apartment. Sound asleep when I checked on them an hour ago.” She murmured.

Jamie bent down and gently kissed her, pulling her body into his. “Then, what had you pacing that way? Looked like you were ready to put a hole in the rug.”

Claire held up her cell phone impatiently. “I got reading some of those blogs again. And some of the Facebook group stuff. I don’t know what is worse. The ones who drool and lust after you, or the ones who have determined to believe that I was pregnant!” She hmmphed.

Jamie smirked at her expression and pulled her closer. He shook his head. “But, sassenach. You were pregnant. Twice. And the production company and the Network didn't take kindly to it, the second time, remember? And demanded all the extra stuff we are involved with now. And had to use camera angles and such to hide your pregnancy babe. For most of this latest Season.”

Claire scowled at him. “Yes, I know. But to listen to the growling on one side. And the other making a case for the two pregnancies. And, to make it all worse, we have all these foolish women on Facebook lusting after my husband!” she retorted. “And to maintain the level of the other side lines, especially the engagement, well, it gets hard. I’m not like that, Jamie. I’m not.” She sniffed.

He bent down and kissed her again, his lips lingering on hers. “I know you’re not, babe. But, the general public thinks it is all real. The majority of them don’t really think we are together, let alone married with two children.” He placed his hand in hers and held it against his cheek. “They believe you are engaged, to Terry. Or at least they all assume it's Terry.”

She nodded. “I know. But, with the second pregnancy, our PR teams and the Network and The Inquisitors production cast wanted the added push to the general public. That we are not together, and are just co-stars and friends. Hence, the engagement was born.” Claire mused.

Jamie sighed. “Except they wanted it on me, babe. They were happy with the Claire – Terry boyfriend thing.”

“Yes. Except what the Network does not realize is that he’s been security for us, under the guise of a bf – escort all this time. And when they wanted an engagement for you, I said, no way. You were looking green around the gills as it was with Tracy as your gf. I wasn't about to allow them to put you into an engagement with that piece of trash.”

Jamie glared at her. “Claire, cut the criticism of her. She was paid to do a role. As required. Stop being so critical of the woman. You certainly cannot say this fake engagement has been pretty. With all the merger takeover rumors involving the Network, it's been ugly at the top level. You know that.”

Claire tucked herself in against Jamie, and shivered. “I know. I know. The pregnancy made it worse too. Especially when I was sick most of the time. Keeping extremely fit helped, but it didn't stop it completely. It was so hard, filming sometimes---"

Jamie tightened his arms around his wife of four years. “I know, babe. I know. But, it's over now. And with both companies about to change hands in the new year, things will change for us. We can, … tell the truth, if we want to,” he said softly.

She shuddered at the thought. As much as she wanted the truth out there, at the same time she was absolutely terrified of the women who lusted after Jamie. They saw him as the next best thing to Robert Johnson and drooled over Jamie Fraser because of it. “I know,” she returned, sighing. “But---, a part of me still, is so terrified Jamie. Of telling the truth. Admitting that we’ve lied. That we are together and are married, with two young children. I'm terrified. And when the Network and the Production company change hands, and we follow through with the charges and the lawsuits---" Claire continued, shivering. “It's going to get even uglier than now, Jamie.”

“Hey, shhhhh. Shhhhh. It will be ok, babe. I got your back on this. Lean on me. I am your rock, and your anchor. I love you. We can get through anything. We got through this far. Trust in me. Trust in us, what we have. Together.” Jamie assured her, pulling her tight against him.

Claire nodded and put her own arms around her husband, holding him tightly. She burrowed against him. “I know. I know. I love you too. Together.”

They stood there in the middle of the room, just holding the other until it was well past midnight. Looking down at his sleepy wife still in his arms he carried her over and gently laid her on their bed. Pulling off her outer clothing, he tucked her into the covers. Quickly pulling off his own clothing, he climbed in beside her and just held onto her while she slept in his arms. Giving in to his own fatigue, he finally closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift off into sleep.

Tomorrow would be a new day. Like always, they would face it together.

***

[noodles-send-n00ds]

oh, baby

pairings: mother!reader x daniel

warnings: teenage pregnancy (is that a warning?)

summary: the journey of you and daniel’s relationship when you have a kid.

a/n: this isn’t gender neutral but the next one will be. reader is 22 and daniel is 19 (i cry) and also this is based off of the video of reese and daniel and daniel and the little bean. 

word count: 3586

i don’t like this.

not my gif

***

you never expected to have a child at the age of seventeen. you never expected to get into a relationship with a pop star either. but you wouldn’t change either of those things for the world.

your daughter, addy, is the light of your life. you’d spend every minute of the day making her happy. five years ago when your daughter came into the world, the guy you were with at the time left you and her on your own. of course you had your family’s support but your baby girl would grow up without a father. that was until you met daniel.

meeting daniel was an accident. you bumped into him on the street one day and he spilled coffee all over your shirt. being the nice boy he is, he offered to buy you one and turned into a date. the dates happened one after another and before you knew it, you and daniel had been dating for eight months.

although you knew daniel was the sweetest guy you’ve ever met, you were scared he would leave you when you told him about your daughter. so when you told him before you started dating you were more than surprised by his reaction:

“daniel, before we get into anything serious, i have to tell you something,” you sighed, nervous. he looked concerned and he reached across the table in the restaurant you were in to grab your hands.

“hey, you can tell me when you’re ready,” he looked at you with those amazing, ocean blue eyes.

“no, i have to tell you now,” you intertwined your fingers with his and squeezed them lightly. you took a deep breath and looked up to him.

“daniel, i have a kid,” you looked down, frightened of his potential reaction. you had this conversation with only two other people and not one of them went well.

“look at me, baby,” he moved your chin up to look at him. he smiled at you and chuckled a bit. “did you think that that would stop me from liking you?”

you nodded, relieved he didn’t leave you in the middle of the restaurant.

“well, it doesn’t. i can’t wait to meet your kid. what’s the name? boy or a girl? you’re probably the most amazing mom. how old?” he started asking all these questions, clearly growing more excited by the second.

you took this time to look at him. he looked overjoyed and you’ve never seen him smile so big. your heart burst of happiness and the only thought in your mind was about how this man deserved the world.

when daniel met your baby girl, he was more nervous than you. he had gone to the store and bought toys, snacks, and so much more to get her to like him. you knew she would but the idea of him trying to impress her made you giddy inside.

but when the two of them met, everything fell into place. daniel was the piece missing in your puzzle. he stayed in your apartment for five hours that day; watching disney movies, playing dolls, and baking cookies. she loved daniel and couldn’t stop talking about him after that day.

when the time came to make your relationship public, you were nervous about exposing your daughter to the limelight (and limelights) but the reaction from everyone was very positive. of course, some people would give you hate for being older and having a kid at a young age but most people seemed to love addy. the boys also loved her and constantly asked you to bring her over to the house.

even though lots of people loved her, you were still freaking out about meeting daniel’s family. you even tried to get out of going because your nerves got the best of you:

you tapped on the call button for daniel’s contact. he picked up on the third ring.

“what’s up, babe?” he asked you, happy that you were calling.

“um, dani, i don’t think i can meet your parents,” you shuffled around, nervously.

“why, love?” he questioned, concerned.

“i don’t have a babysitter for addy,” which was true but you could probably get one pretty easy.

“that’s great! you can bring her! they’ll love addy,” you could practically hear the smile forming on his face.

“are-are you sure?” you asked, feeling a little guilty for trying to get out of going.

“yeah, babe! see you soon. i’m so excited!”

you two exchanged goodbyes and you hung up the phone.

“addy! let’s pack! we’re going to meet daniel’s family!” you shouted and got off your bed. you heard an excited squeal from your living room.

and that’s how you ended up in a car, driving to daniel’s family house. addy was sleeping in her car seat in the backseat of daniel’s car and you were in the front, holding daniel’s hand.

“i’m so nervous,” you confessed.

“why?” he asked, looking at you for a second before looking back at the road.

“well, we just have so many differences. i’m older than you and like i have a kid-” daniel cut you off.

“princess, they’ve been asking to meet you and addy for months. they’re going to be ecstatic,” he pulled your hand up to give it a quick kiss.

“but daniel-” he cut you off again.

“no but’s. we’re going to have the best weekend ever,” he gave you his award-winning smile.

***

soon, you pulled into the driveway of their house. your heart started thumping and you were pretty sure you were about to spontaneously combust into a pile of nerves.

“hey, it’s going to be ok,” daniel told you before hopping out the car to go softly wake up abby.

you noticed how gentle he was with her. he treated her as if she would break into pieces with the slightest push.

“hey, ads. we’re here, baby girl,” he whispered to her and she slowly woke up. he unbuckled her from the car seat and picked her up, her head laid on her shoulder.

“i’ll get the bags,” you told him and kissed his cheek and addy’s nose. he walked over to the back of the car to open the trunk with one hand.

you reached over and grabbed two backpacks you brought for your daughter and yourself. you handed daniel his bag and all of you made your way to the front door.

you knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer the door. in this time, you practiced what you would say to each of them. you were surprised at how quick someone got the door.

it opened and you saw the one and only, anna seavey, standing there.

“wow, you’re even prettier in person,” she said and invited you inside. you laughed at her comment. once you put down the bags, she gave you the biggest hug ever.

“this must be addy!” anna squealed before introducing herself to addy.

“you’re not going to say hi to your amazing brother?” daniel looked hurt as he put addy down to give anna a giant hug.

“amazing is an exaggeration. hi, daniel,” she giggled and gave him a hug. you took your time to look at the two siblings. daniel was the most caring person you’ve ever met and it made your heart warm when you saw how excited he was to see his sister again.

you anna talked for a bit about high school and you slowly got more comfortable around her. addy just held your hand and fidgeted a little with her feet, getting used to her surroundings.

“where’s mom and dad?” daniel asked and your nerves returned.

“mom! dad! daniel and y/n are here!” anna shouted.

you heard footsteps and you saw mr. and mrs. seavey coming down the stairs. you let daniel have his moment with his parents before going up to them, still holding addy’s hand. it gave you a little comfort.

“y/n! it’s so nice to meet you! daniel talks about you all the time,” mrs. seavey gave you a quick hug. they were a family of huggers, that’s for sure.

you hugged daniel’s father real quick too. addy probably felt a little uncomfortable and moved closer to daniel’s side and grabbed his hand.

“oh, this is addy, my daughter,” you told them and reached your hand down to rub her back softly.

“you’re beautiful, darling,” mrs. seavey bent down to gently move her hands up to her cheeks. addy giggled a bit, still holding daniel’s hand. you could tell she was a bit nervous.

“i’m going to spoil you rotten,” mrs. seavey said and booped her nose.

“oh please don’t, daniel already does,” you laughed, lightening the mood even more.

“he better. that’s the son i raised,” mr. seavey patted his shoulder.

“thank you for letting us stay, mr. and mrs. seavey,” you smiled at them.

“don’t be silly, anytime! call us keri and jeff, love,” she gave you a heartwarming smile and you could see where daniel got it from.

after greeting everyone and keri apologizing for chris and tyler not being able to be there, you all migrated to the living room where you guys could all sit down and talk.

anna and addy sat on the rug in the middle of the room and talked about my little ponies or something.

“so how old are you?” jeff asked taking a sip of water, looking genuinely interested.

“i’m twenty-two,” you responded, a little hopeful for their reaction to be good. the age difference between you and daniel wasn’t much but he was still a teenager.

“are you graduating college this year?” keri asked, her smile big too and not caring about the age difference between you and her son.

“actually, i graduated about two years ago. i went to a community college. money’s tight with this little one,” you smiled down at addy. even though you wanted to go to a four year college and get your bachelor’s degree, you didn’t mind having to compromise when she was born.

“i understand. kids are tough, especially when i had daniel,” keri teased.

“wow, thanks mom,” daniel said, sarcastically. you laughed at him.

the rest of the evening included talking to everyone and eventually eating dinner. you were helping wash the dishes when you heard daniel talking from the living room. you peered into the room and saw addy sitting next to him on the couch looking at his phone which was taking a snapchat video. they were making funny faces for quality snapchat content.

you giggled quietly to yourself and watched them as they moved onto the next snap.

“that is a drawstring that holds my pant on. if that gets untied, my pants will fall off,” daniel said, earning a laugh from addy and you. 

daniel looked up to see you laughing at him. “what are you laughing at?” he joked.

you continued to laugh and addy ran over to you.

“mommy! daniel says he’ll take me to see him sing!”

“oh, did he?”

“yeah! and he said he’ll get us meet and greet photos!” you looked up to daniel and gave him a small glare. he just shrugged and smiled at you.

he knew how you felt about taking addy to one of his concerts. you didn’t want her to be overwhelmed with all the people and you didn’t want to upset fans that didn’t like you by taking some of his attention away.

“baby, there are going to be lots of people there,” you set down the plate you were drying and picked her up, placing her on your hip.

“my mom and i are going to the la show coming up. you guys should go with us! we’ll be in the control room so people won’t crowd around us,” anna said, trying to convince you to come. she already felt like a little sister to you, how could you say no.

“please babe!” daniel said, walking over to you and sticking out his bottom lip, making you look like a puppy.

“fine,” you gave in and all three of them jumped and celebrated. you just laughed at them being childish.

***

after putting addy to bed in anna’s room (anna insisted she slept there and anna slept in tyler’s room), you and daniel retired to his old bedroom where you flopped on the bed. daniel walked out of the bathroom, shirtless and brushing his teeth.

“so how was it?” he said, mouth full of toothpaste. you were surprised you understood what he said.

“really good. i love your family,” you turned your head to look at him and take in his features. well, you were mainly looking at his gorgeous body.

“they love you too,” he told you before going back into the bathroom to spit out the toothpaste. he came back, putting a shirt on. you frowned a little. “oh, you want me to keep my shirt off?” he smirked, noticing the slight frown.

“shut up,” you laughed and moved over so he could get on the bed next to you. you both got under the covers to stay warm for the night. he pulled you close to him and you cuddled into his chest.

both of you feel asleep like that but you woke up to the sound of your daughter opening the door to the bedroom. you heard soft sniffles and untangle yourself from daniel’s arms to look at her.

“what’s wrong, baby?” you asked her, sitting up and motioning for her to come to you.

“bad dream,” she was still sniffling a little bit when she crawled into your arms. that must’ve woke daniel up because you heard his groggy voice say something incoherent.

“wanna sleep with us, baby?” you asked her and she nodded. you picked her up and placed her in between you and daniel. daniel suddenly realized what’s happening and wrapped his arms around the small girl and you did the same.

“daniel, can you sing to me?” she whispered to him.

“of course, love. what do you want me to sing?”

“can you sing when you wish upon a star from pinocchio?”

before you know it, you and your daughter were being lulled to sleep by daniel’s beautiful voice.

*** (next week)

daniel’s show in la was tonight and you were more excited than ever. addy was pretty much jumping for joy. 

anna and keri came over to your apartment to get ready since it was closer to the venue. you four girls just chatted while anna took her time getting ready.

soon it was time for you all to head out and drive to the venue. you were all dancing to disney music per addy’s request. you were having the time of your life with everyone and you got even closer to keri and anna over the course of a week.

the venue was quite big and you were incredibly excited to see your boyfriend perform in front of a big crowd.

you walked up the place while holding addy’s hand tight so she wouldn’t lose you or more like you wouldn’t lose her. fans were screaming when they saw anna and keri. they were so excited and you had the biggest smile on your face. daniel insisted that the four of you guys had a security guard walk you in so you guys could be protected in case anything got out of control.

“y/n! y/n!” you heard someone say your name and you looked in the direction of the voice. you saw a girl who looked to be about sixteen. “can i have a picture?”

you looked over to anna who had done this so many more times and she ushered you to go before the security guard restricted you from going. she grabbed addy’s hand you jogged over to her.

“hi!” you smiled to her.

“oh my god, you’re so gorgeous! can we please get a picture?” she looked overjoyed to see you and it was such a weird feeling to know that someone was so excited to see you and didn’t even know you. daniel must experience this every day.

you nodded and took a quick picture with her and a couple others before hearing the security guard yell at you to get back to the group. you waved at them all, hearing them all scream, as you jogged back to the group who was heading inside.

“you’re more famous than daniel,” anna joked as you two walked inside.

you guys went straight to the set up where they had the pictures taken for fans that were going to meet them. you had seen the other boys a couple days ago when daniel invited you over because it was your off day from work and addy was at school.

you guys walked over to the little setup and all the boys ran to hug you, anna, keri, and addy (mainly addy though). you met christina there too and you two instantly became friends. you got your pictures taken; you being on the end with daniel hugging you from behind, giving you a kiss on your cheek, and addy being lifted onto jonah’s shoulders and all the boys crowding around her. (i would kill to be on jonah’s shoulders or on jonah’s anything ;)).

*** (time skipping to the after party because i’ve been writing for three hours and this is starting to get bad)

after the amazing performance from your amazing boyfriend and your good friends, you all went backstage to congratulate them and to wait for the after party to start.

you ran to daniel and jumped into his arms. he spun you around in a circle before putting you down.

“you did so well! when you did that thing and then when you did that and wow,” you were grinning from ear to ear.

“i’m so glad you enjoyed it, babe,” he wrapped his arms around your waist, nuzzling his head into the crook of your neck. you began to congratulate all the other boys, talking with passion as you did so. this was probably happiest you’ve ever been.

time quickly passed and soon all the boys left backstage to go to the after party and talk to fans. you and everyone else stayed back and started talking about life in general. addy grew impatient and got desperate to see daniel again.

“when is daniel coming back?” addy asked.

“soon,” you were trying to talk about new york with christina but addy kept interrupting.

“why is gone?” she questioned.

“he’s talking to fans, baby.”

“when can i see him?”

“addy, he’ll be back soon. stop asking love,” you went back to talking to christina, not noticing that addy snuck off.

addy ran to the stairs she saw daniel disappear from. she quickly sped down them into a big room where people crowded everywhere but she spotted the orange shirt daniel was wearing before he left. she started to pick up pace and ran towards him. daniel noticed her out of the corner of her eye while talking to a group of limelights and bent down to pick her up.

all the limelights around them “awww”ed and squealed at seeing their favorite celebrity with a kid.

“how’s that? you tired?” asked the small girl, getting a nod from her. daniel went to hug another fan who walked up to the group, “how are you doing? i have a kid with me now.”

addy smiled at everyone who was fawning adoration towards her. daniel rubbed her back and kissed her head. “i love you,” he told her and the crowd around them went wild.

you, however, were in search of your daughter who escaped your sight. knowing this would be a difficult task, you looked for any of the boys who could help you find her. luckily, corbyn was only talking to a couple fans because most fans were huddled into a giant group in the center which was odd.

“corbyn! have you seen addy?” you rushed over, not meaning to interrupt the conversation but your parental instinct was kicking in.

“no, is she missing or something?”

“yeah, she was asking for dan- where’s daniel?” you realized and looked around for daniel but all you could see was the giant group of fans.

“in there,” he pointed to the huddle of limelights and facepalmed yourself. how were you supposed to get in there?

“thanks, corbs. sorry for interrupting,” you rushed off into the crowd.

you were trying to push your way through but you were making no progress. so you admitted defeat until a fan came your way.

“hey, aren’t you daniel’s girlfriend, y/n?” they asked, nicely.

“yeah, i’m just trying to see if daniel has my daughter. she kinda ran off,” you were pretty embarrassed to say that out loud.

“oh i can help,” they walked over to the group and shouted at some people saying that you needed to get through. suddenly, the group separated into two to let you through. that was so cool.

you thanked the fan that helped you out and walked up to daniel who was holding your daughter.

“i’m going to kill her,” you whispered in daniel’s ear. he laughed at you. you kissed the top of her forehead and felt awkward under everyone’s gaze. “i’ll take her and leave.”

“noooooo. stayyyyy,” he begged, sticking out his lower lip which gets you every time.

the crowd of people also chimed in for you to stay. you didn’t know what to say so you just stayed and everyone cheered and asked you guys questions. you grabbed addy from daniel’s arms so he could take pictures with fans.

you answered some questions before daniel came up to you and pecked you on the lips. you were shocked he would do that in front of fans especially cameras but it made you smile.

“i think i love you,” he told you, resting his forehead on yours.

“i know i love you,” you told him back.

***

partly edited

[buckyscrystalqueen]

I Can’t: Part 3

Pairings: Seb Stan x Reader

Warnings: Anxiety, introvert stuff… angst. IDK I’m bad at this kinda thing. Fluff & swearing as usual.

Word Count: 1,910

A/N: Looks like we got another one shot turned mini-series. Enjoy & Thank @magpiegirl80 for the adorable derp photo of her dog, Ollie & send love to my pups, Lucy and Skye!!!

Part 1 / Part 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘So what are you up to tonight?” Seb texted roughly two months after you had started texting like he did almost every day. You took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully through your nose as you set your Mountain Dew down on your table and pulled up your messenger app. 

‘Apparently watching Jaws 3 for the millionth time on TV. So not a damn thing LOL. Why, what’s up?’

‘I have a proposition for you, sweetheart.’

He didn’t give you any time to respond.

‘I’m back in New York for a couple weeks; got in this morning. I was wondering if you would consider meeting me again maybe for dinner? Let’s say tonight at your house so that you’re not somewhere out in public and you’re somewhere you’re comfortable being. I’ll order pizza and I’ll even bring a movie from our list if you want.’

You stared blankly at your phone and reread the message a couple times before you responded with the only thing your brain could come up with.

‘But I live in Queens.’

‘Yea, you do. That’s what taxi’s are for. Don’t over think, sweetheart. I know I’m asking a lot from you but I promise, if I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t ask. So what do you say? Pepperoni pizza and ‘Reservoir Dogs’?’

A nervous, small smile pulled at the corner of your lips.

‘I still can’t believe you haven’t seen that, Sebby.’

‘So that’s a yes then?’

Your stomach turned a few times and you bit your thumb nail as you considered his proposition. Sebastian waited patiently for your response, which took about five whole minutes to come up with.

‘OK’

‘OK. Send me your address, sweetheart. I’ll come by in let’s say an hour. That way, you don’t over think it and back out. Is that OK?’

You nodded your head at the screen.

‘Yea’

Knowing that you were already starting to get anxious, Seb sent you a selfie he knew would make you smile.

‘YES PIZZA!’

With a giggle, you sent him a thumbs up and your address. He let you know he’d see you soon and you quickly shot your mom a text letting her know Sebastian was coming over to hang out for dinner and a movie.

‘Clean your bathroom mirror and don’t leave your clothes drying over the backs of the dining room table chairs. And for God’s sake, PLEASE put (and keep) some pants on! A little mascara wouldn’t kill you either.’

‘Yes, boss lady.’

You responded sarcastically as you kicked your foot rest down, set your laptop on the coffee table and went to go get ready.

——

“Lucy, hush.” You scolded as you gently put your foot on her chest and carefully moved her back away from the front door she was barking at. “Hush, you’re fine, mouthpiece.” You tried not to psych yourself out as you unlocked your front door and pulled it open with shaky hands.

“Hello.” Sebastian said behind a large, fake, handlebar mustache. “My name is… um… Bass. Yea, we’ll go with that. I am not a famous actor what so ever, and I’m here to hang out with a pretty lady. Not an actor though.” You couldn’t stop yourself from smiling as you stepped back.

“They won’t bite. They’ll just smell you.” You said as you pointed at your dogs. He nodded to himself and smiled behind his mustache as he pulled open your screened gate door and instantly bent down to say hi.

“Hi puppies. Hi! Are you good girls?” He asked as Skye jumped up on his thigh and Lucy wagged her short tail (which meant her entire body) to say hi as she sniffed his jeans.

“Alright, let him in.” You said. “Let him walk, Luce.”

“They’re alright.” He laughed as he crouched down in front of the pair. Skye, being the little shit that she was, stood so her front paws were on his muscular thighs and when he bent over to get kisses, she snagged his mustache and took off at a run for something new to chew on. “Well that lasted long.” He laughed as you scrambled to grab your dog to keep her from choking on the fake hair piece.

“She’s a little shit.” You said as you grabbed her around the middle and picked her up so she couldn’t run and hide. “We give her a new toy and within an hour, it’s missing all it’s stuffing and every appendage it has.” You held onto the mustache with your left hand and wiggled your left pointer finger between her teeth to push down her tongue and force her to let go of the hair piece. Once she did, you balled it in your fist and put her back down so she could turn and look at you indignantly.

“How old is she?” He asked as he closed the front door for you.

“Umm… she’s about six. She was about a year old when we rescued her and we got her in 2013 when my parents got divorced. Lucy is eleven, born on Cinco de Mayo.”

“That’s actually really cool.” Seb chuckled as he scratched Lucy’s head a few more times before standing up to look at you with a smile. You froze awkwardly as he looked at your face to try and commit it to memory before he gestured to the couch behind you. “So I know I said pepperoni but on the drive over I kinda decided I wanted sausage, too? I know you said you like both so we can do like half and half or whole… I’m not picky. I also brought this…” He said as he pulled out a DVD from his jacket pocket. “… and I figured we can find a pizza place around here that you haven’t tried before to try together. Give us a little adventure.”

“OK.” You said simply as you walked over and sat down in your usual spot. He sat down on the same couch but a little bit away from you.

“Just keep breathing. You’ll get used to me being here. I’m just another guy. It’s all in your mind… Oooo!” He joked as he wiggled his fingers near your head; purposely being extra goofy to make you relax faster. “So, let’s find some pizza.”

—

“I love this part.” You said softly as you sat curled up in your spot and watched the Mr. Blonde cop torture scene set up. You shrugged as you reached out and pulled a piece of pepperoni off the slice of pizza on Seb’s plate. “But I’m twisted.”

“Yea, I got that.” Seb teased as he picked up his slice and ate it, not even caring that you stole half the pepperoni off it already. “Wait… is he gunna…”

“Oh yes he is.” You giggled. “Fucking love Tarantino.”

“Damn, and I thought I was messed up.” You smiled and barely glanced over at him as he took another large bite of his dinner. You didn’t know how he had managed to do it, but he got you to relax and forget that he was an actor within twenty minutes of him getting there with funny faces and seemingly never ending jokes. “Get it!” He cheered over the cop screaming.

“Oh he got it.” You said as you watched Mr. Blonde look at a severed ear before delivering on of your favorite lines ‘Was that as good for you as it was for me?’ You missed Seb glance over at your twisted smile and he shook his head.

“I feel like I should be worried about you here, sweetheart.” You let out a huffed laugh and shook your head as you rested it on the back of the couch and met his eyes.

“My mom has told me thousands of times that I find joy in other peoples misfortune. I legit laugh when I see people get pulled over when they do stupid shit. She thinks that’s bad. I find it hilarious.”

“I think I have to agree with you on that one. It is funny.”

“See, I knew I wasn’t the only one.” You said as your laptop started to ring on the coffee table in front of you. You glanced at the screen and reached out to his mute when Seb started to laugh.

“What does that say?” As he read the name you had Christine saved as in your contacts list.

“‘My Favorite British Cunt’. It’s a friend of mine that lives in the UK.”

“Answer it.” He laughed as he grabbed the remote off the table and paused the movie. You looked over at him with your eye brow raised and he nodded. “It’s fine.” With a small shrug, you answered it.

“Where the fuck’ve you been all day! I’ve a story for you.”

“I’ve been busy, bitch.” You said as you picked up your laptop and put it on your lap. “What do you want?”

“So you’ll never believe what happened to me…” She started as Seb reached over and slowly started to turn the laptop toward him.

“Bet mine’s better.” You laughed as the corner of his eye, part of his forehead, and some of his currently short hair appeared beside your face in the screen. Your friend’s eyes went wide as the laptop stopped moving.

“Is he there?” She asked as she pointed at the screen for confirmation.

“No, I bought a life size cut out and decided to hold it up next to my face, you idiot.”

“Piss off, ya cunt.” She said as Seb blinked a few times but otherwise stayed perfectly still. “I’ll let ya go then…”

“No, keep talking.” He laughed. “Pretend I’m not even here.”

“Oh, cause it’s that easy.” She laughed.

“This is Christine, by the way.” You said with a glance over at him. “She’s the Tumblr girl I talk about all the time a.k.a. my internet wife.”

“The fuck’ve ya said ‘bout me, twat?” She shouted.

“That you’re a terrible person who swears more than I do.” You laughed. “Tell me your story.” You listened intently for a few moments as she launched into the story of how her house key broke in the lock and how she and her fiancé got locked out of the house for a couple hours but your attention was claimed more locally when Sebastian moved out of the camera frame and carefully slipped his hand into yours. You looked down at it as he laced his fingers with yours and gave it a gentle squeeze. 

“OK?” He whispered as you glanced over at him. You nodded subtly as you let your fingers relax around his hand.

“OK.”

“Are you even listenin’ ta me, wench?” Christine hollered at you.

“No, not any more.” You said honestly with a laugh. “Let me call you tomorrow, OK?”

“I hate you.” She growled as she hung up the phone without even waving good-bye. You closed your laptop and set it on your side table as Sebastian grabbed the remote.

“Keep watching?” You nodded in agreement as you turned in your spot toward him and let your knees rest gently on his hip. He smiled broadly as he picked his arm up and set it on your legs with your hand still in his. He hit play and settled back against the couch, happy that he was took another couple bricks down from the mental wall you had up.

Part 4

[atmickeywhite]

2020 Favorite Albums

Hi friends,  So each year, I put together a list of 50 or so of my favorite albums on Twitter. This year, I’m shifting that to tumblr and using words, etc.. And fortunately, I took a long enough break from playing Wu-Tang in Brittany’s car to listen to new music. So a bit on music -- staying current on new music, making playlists, sharing with friends and learning the history has always had its way of cementing my memories. It’s been a great way to recall dreary bus rides and summer walks around Portage Park, the loneliness of working nights and the utter joy is was to become adults with Desirae.  2020 cranked the existential shit to 11.  In January, I had moved after a brutal 14-month situation in my last apartment. In February, my childhood friend’s little sister passed away. In March, the lockdowns happened. In April, I got fired. In May, I decided to move out of state. I spent a third of June traipsing around Chattanooga before finally moving there in mid-July. August was filled with impossibly long bike rides in the Georgia rain and summer heat. September was the heart of a frustrating job search and extensive dental work. COVID came roaring back in October. My anxiety caught up to me really hard in November and December hasn’t had the greatest start, either. That’s not to speak on what the homies went through this year, and it was a lot. But we keep it pushing.  The point is that life is constantly kicking our ass and these are fifty albums that helped me get some reprieve from all of that, whether is was listening or sharing or just going back and forth with Tyler about what’s new and relevant. To that end, this year saw the cementing of Griselda is a legacy street rap act, the rise of HAUS of ALTR as a preeminent techno label and surprise turns from artists that exist in a staid major-label milieu (Dua Lipa, Lil’ Uzi Vert). Stalwarts like Sada Baby, Shinichi Atobe, Angel Marcloid and Actress stayed on repeat. Jazz, metal and folk weirdos rear their head from time to time. Acts peaked and self-destructed. I left the individual writing of the albums to people get paid to be better than me at this stuff. History, context and a feel for what the albums sound like is more useful than me painting a picture of what riding your bike around Lookout Mountain with no breaks is like.  If you check any of these out and like what you hear, I highly encourage you to buy (directly from the artist’s Bandcamp page, if applicable). And remember, taste is built in cars, not in large public places.  25 Honorable Mentions: Anunaku - Stargate Anz - Loos In Twos (NRG) Arbor Labor Union - New Petal Instants Conway The Machine - From a King to a God Drive-By Truckers - The New OK Duval Timothy - Help Eartheater - Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin Eiko Ishibashi - Impulse of the Ribbon Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters Four Tet - Sixteen Oceans Gabriel Garzon-Montano - Aguita GB - 186.22 Ian William Craig - Red Sun Through Smoke Jerry Paper - Abracadabra  Kali Uchis - Sin Miedo Lucinda Williams - Good Souls, Better Angels Machinedrum - A View of You Margo Price - That’s How Rumors Get Started Mary Lattimore - Silver Ladders MJ Guider - Sour Cherry Bell Park Hye-Jin - How can I Quelle Chris / Chris Keys - Innocent Country 2 Ringo Deathstarr - Ringo Deathstarr Soul Glo - Songs To Yeet At The Sun Trees Speak - Shadow Forms

50 - A Pregnant Light - You Cannot Pour From An Empty Vessel "These songs were written and recorded in 2017, and in a haze of... well, just imagine the bad sort of things that cause a haze over one's life. These songs were lost. In the process of cleaning out some tapes and recording sessions, these songs were found and completed in 2020. It's a bridge between where APL was three years ago, and now. It was so strange to hear these forgotten songs and go in and finish them. It was like collaborating with a person I used to know. It was an odd experience, but turned out fruitful." - A Pregnant Light Bandcamp Page 49 - Rian Treanor - File Under UK Metaplasm "We hardly need any convincing on the quality of Rian Treanor's productions as he's been completely unfuckwithable from day one, but "File Under UK Metaplasm" is still next damn level.Rian bashed out the initial demos on returning from a trip to Uganda in 2018 for Nyege Nyege Festival. Inspired by the producers he'd collaborated with in Kampala, he switched up his workflow and began jamming out ideas at higher tempos, harnessing the energy of singeli music without simply carbon copying the style. Initial sketches were eventually fleshed into proper tracks and tested on audiences (and on soundsystems) around the world where Rian could assess the power of each element.It was worth the hard work, the result is a fiery set of tunes that sound like everything at once and nothing at all. Opener 'Hypnic Jerks' is ragged kick-bubbling 200-bpm club on secondment to Tanzania; 'Vacuum Angle' is wobbly DMT-step that sounds like an attempt to use aging educational computer software to power the Stargate; 'Mirror Instant' is shuffling bassline house kicked up to 45rpm; 'Opponent Process' is EP7-era Autechre with the fun switch turned on; 'Debouncing' is double-speed grime that glides into parts unknown. By the time the album reaches a close on 'Orders From The Pausing', a melancholic gabber tune with an almost inverted, whisper-soft kick (?), Rian suddenly introduces reverb to the mix, just because he can.Peerless, unfathomably inventive electronic music from the North of England, via East Africa - fucking essential." - Boomkat Product Review 48 - Sex Swing - Type II “Fuck,” I thought when I first heard it. “This really, really rocks.” - Adam Lehrer, The Quietus

47 - Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind

"In that way, Heaven to a Tortured Mind is the most straightforward record in Tumor’s catalog. It’s an album with commercial, or at least mass, appeal in mind. And it seems to confirm something Tumor hinted at in a 2016 interview about their musical aspirations: “I only want to make hits. What else would I want to make?” The product of this ambition is a gratifying and intense record, one whose pleasures are viscerally immediate. Above all, it’s loads of fun to watch Tumor don the guise of a devilish rockstar. It’s not exactly a new archetype in our cultural imagination, but the ravishing delight Tumor brings to this character is what makes their music so affecting. Yves is a performer whose roles, played with the utmost rigor, always find a way to linger in the memory." - Kevin Lozano, Pitchfork

46 - DJ Taye - PYROT3K

"Pop music moves fast: new instructional-dance songs, new Drake songs, and new instructional-dance songs by Drake can bombard the zeitgeist one week and all but evaporate the next. Footwork, the lightning-fast Chicago-born house subgenre, is well suited to capture that frenetic pace. Young footwork master and Teklife member DJ Taye instinctively understands how to combine footwork’s adrenaline rush with the pop’s euphoric glee to build tracks with a distinctive energy. Last month he self-released Pyrot3k, the third entry in the Pyrotek mixtape series he launched in October. On the latest volume—also available in a deluxe version called Pyrot3k (SS)—he focuses on blissful melodies and antsy samples. On “Gang,” for example, he loops a snippet of JackBoys’ “Gang Gang” into a hypnotic koan at a speed that makes the original sound like it’s stuck in the mud. Several of Taye’s friends, including Teklife members DJ Earl and Heavee, join in on the fun, and I’m especially partial to his collaboration with Night Slugs label owner James Connolly, aka L-Vis 1990. On “Parade Float,” the two producers whimsically intertwine Morse code beeps and battering-ram gabber-style kick drum to manifest a cartoonish energy that seems to gather itself and balloon outward during the song’s tiny silences. - Leor Galil, Chicago Reader

45 - Hudson Mohawke - Poom Gems

"At the moment, nothing can stop Hudson Mohawke. After a hiatus from his solo work, the Scottish producer started his summer by releasing his first single under his HudMo title since 2016, “BENT” with JIMMY EDGAR. Since then, he’s only upped the ante, with his inexhaustible activity culminating in his first solo LP in four years, Big Booty Hiking Exhibition. Now, HudMo is back with his second album in a month’s time.

Poom Gems can be thought of as a companion album to Big Booty Hiking Exhibition, as both comprised previously unreleased tracks that Mohawke has been sitting on. Like Big Booty Hiking Exhibition, Poom Gems ranges from some of HudMo’s most off-the-wall beats yet to his classic, unreplicable, and bombastic sound, though as a whole, Poom Gems is more accessible than it’s predecessor. After almost no announcement before Poom Gems‘ release, only one question remains: how much more is to come amid Mohawke’s return?" - Mitchell Rose, Dancing Astronaut

44 - Shinichi Atobe - Yes

"The stately, melodic techno and deep house made by Shinichi Atobe—a resident of Saitama City, just north of Tokyo—puts me in mind of his country's devotion to orderly calm. One of two non-European artists to appear on Basic Channel's legendary Chain Reaction imprint, Atobe took 13 years off before the archival Butterfly Effect album arrived via DDS in 2014. His re-emergence into the dance music world has been one of the decade's most welcome surprises.

Yes is his fifth album for DDS. Demdike Stare states their communication with Atobe is limited to a CD that arrives in the post every so often, "no words except for the track titles." The first circulated photo of Atobe was included with the Yes CD-R, perhaps to quell rumors Shinichi Atobe is an alias of another Chain Reaction artist. He's never granted an interview.

He doesn't need to. Each Atobe album feels like the latest installment in a serial novel, a body of work mysterious in its ability to mix calm rhythms and atmospheres with achingly beautiful melodies. As usual, Yes will sate the small group of obsessives that smash the pre-order on each new Atobe album. He's nearly always in top form. The title track's hopeful mix of synth and house-y piano stand up to Atobe's other melodic classics "Heat 1" and "The Butterfly Effect." "Lake 3" contains Atobe's most boisterous synth theme to date, the '90s Carl Craig-esque figure mixing with Atobe's signature sad piano and, in a novel twist, hand drums.

The progression in Atobe's work is incremental. Beyond the title-track, Yes mostly does away with the classy, tech house-style snap prevalent on 2018's Heat. For an artist that emerged as a model of consistency, Atobe takes a surprising amount of left turns. The closing cut "Ocean 1" is Atobe's placid take on a synth-funk jam. The opener "Ocean 7" is beatless, with hectic arpeggios. In the background of that track, there's a peaceful drone that runs throughout. A similar tone runs in the background on the entirety of "Lake 3." These touches imbue Atobe's sonic world with its own concept of gaman, enveloping the listener in an eerie sense of calm." - Matt McDermott, Resident Advisor

43 - Various Artists - HOA 012

"Did you think we were done?

The story is not over, but only beginning. HOA012, We come together as a unit, to continue our story. A story that needs to be told. For those of you just joining us, welcome. For those of you returning, welcome back. Now fully on the path, we march toward a future of unabashed black electronic expression." - HAUS of ALTR bandcamp page

42 - Garcia Peoples - Nightcap At Wits' End

"New Jersey-based avant-jam band Garcia Peoples were a little slow to take shape, but after the release of their excitable 2018 album Cosmic Cash, they switched into overdrive. Constant live performances, residencies, concert documents, and prolifically recorded studio albums tracked a creative development that morphed from record to record. The group took cues from the open-ended improvisation of classic jam band acts like Phish and the Grateful Dead, but also incorporated dual-guitar wizardry on par with Television or, in their more Southern-fried moments, the Allmann Brothers. For their 2019 album One Step Behind, the band expanded to a six-piece lineup and added avant-jazz touches to the equation as they stretched out over the course of a half-hour-long title track. With Nightcap at Wits' End, Garcia Peoples shift gears yet again, with a set of neatly composed and relatively concise tunes that distill their wandering impulses into easily digestible forms. This can take the form of rowdy prog-lite tunes like album opener "Gliding Through" or the shadowy but mystical folk-rock of "Altered Place." In this more composed rock mode, the band recalls the shadowy mystique of early Bay Area psychedelic giants like Jefferson Airplane as much as they do obscure acts like Anonymous and Relatively Clean Rivers. After a lively start, the album shifts into mellower territory with the drifty "Fire of the Now." "Painting a Vision That Carries" is made up of delicate vocal harmonies and a dynamic structure that goes from controlled acoustic segments to blasting verses and back. As this song burns on into a vamping jam, the band's Dead-like tendencies come to the surface with noodling guitar leads and dazzling group interplay. The second half of Nightcap at Wits' End becomes a string of woozy and meandering pieces that blur into one another in clouds of hazy jamming. Themes resurface as the band shuffles through meditative riffing on "Crown of Thought," Krautrock-y interludes, and the blissfully droning Popol Vuh-esque "A Reckoning." Garcia Peoples' excellent psychedelia manages to recall moments from past masters while still offering a chemistry and composition unique to the band. Nightcap at Wits' End is the most complete articulation of their wide-reaching creative range, and stands as the their most focused and engaging work to date." - Fred Thomas, AllMusic

41 - Nonlocal Forecast - Holographic Universe(s)?

"Angel Marcloid's recordings as Nonlocal Forecast focus the trajectory of a vast catalog squarely in the realm of retro Weather Channel-inspired smooth jazz fusion, intricate prog, and expansive new age experiments. Trading off a measure of the typically overloaded compositional style found in other projects to favor lush atmospheres and relatively pared down arrangements, Marcloid populates Nonlocal Forecast pieces with progressive keyboard and synth harmonies, complex drum programming, and majestic leads performed on guitar, keyboards, and guests' saxophones. The project runs alongside the omni-combinatory works of the flagship project Fire-Toolz and many other monikers including the vapor-focused works of Mindspring Memories. Holographic Universe(s?)!, the second Nonlocal Forecast full-length and the first to be released on vinyl, follows Bubble Universe! with a cycle of songs that elevates Marcloid's grandiose compositions to previously undiscovered heights, while packing the music with dramatic shifts that allow it to journey off into dynamic new directions." - Fatbeats product summary

40 - Black Dresses - Peaceful As Hell

"The Canadian noise-pop duo’s music conjures a psychotic slumber party, or a Second Life rave, but remains grounded in the bittersweet beauty of lifelong friendship. " - Leah Mandel, Pitchfork

39 - Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song

"Owens’ self-titled debut album played with sounds that felt spiritual, almost new age, like the tablas on “S.O.” and sitar drone on “8.” On Inner Song, that meditative quality comes less from instrumental texture and more from the actual form of the songs. Though she drifts across tempos and dabbles with a variety of drum patterns, loops—both instrumental and lyrical—provide the record’s through line. On “Wake-Up,” life’s circular patterns are made explicit: “Wake up/Repeat again/Again.” Owens writes with clarity and simplicity, using her own voice as something like a synthesizer, processing a phrase and then repeating it as she sings subtle variations in timbre and tone. Her lyrics are, in their own quiet way, a celebration of the pleasures of solitude and self-love." - Nathan Smith, Pitchfork

38 - Pink Siifu - Negro

"The core of NEGRO is defined by its antipathy for police. “DeadMeat” was inspired by a harrowing incident in New York, where a black cop threatened his life for jumping a subway turnstile. Siifu recorded “DeadMeat” the next day, reeling from the fact that someone of his race would treat him with such unmitigated hate. It begins with Siifu repeating the police officer’s threat verbatim and ends with him drawing the distinction between police officers and “pigs.” - Max Bell, Bandcamp Daily

37 - Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now

"Our homes have become offices, churches, mutual aid hubs, child- and eldercare centers. Every inch of space has been claimed by a corner of life, worn from multi-purpose use, yet hopefully loved and lived in. But the home — even just one room strung with cheap lights — can also be a refuge to dance through your emotion. how i'm feeling now — an album whose title says everything, and whose music has a rave intimacy that reaches beyond quarantined walls — doesn't just capture the mood, but the modes of our survival. Charli XCX collaborated remotely with trusted producers (A. G. Cook, Danny L Harle) and new ones (BJ Burton, 100 gecs' Dylan Brady), to lean harder into the buzzing-yet-glam-blammed hyper-pop that she's explored in recent years. While the aural abrasion amplifies our collective WTF, turnt up on video chats and pining for reckless nights, the core of how i'm feeling now deepens around the loving bonds forged in close quarters." - Lars Gotrich, NPR Music

36 - Armand Hammer - Shrines

"Shrines boasts a larger roster of producers and featured artists than any of the group’s past work. Many of them were already members of the duo’s tight-knit, avant-garde circle: Curly Castro, Fielded, Kenny Segal, Messiah Muzik, R.A.P. Ferreira, Quelle Chris. A woozy instrumental (“Bitter Cassava”) and verse (“Ramses II”) by Earl Sweatshirt suggest that Armand Hammer could soon extend their reach even further. In this fraught time, the camaraderie on Shrines feels intentional. In 2018, Elucid told Pitchfork that his music is about bringing like minds together, to feel like “we’re fighting against the same evil.” Shrines is a confirmation that the more people who put those sunglasses on, the better." - Christina Lee, Bandcamp Daily

35 - Bad Bunny - Yo hago lo que me de la gana

"From the moment Bad Bunny's sophomore album begins, over a synthesized interpolation of bossa nova staple "The Girl From Ipanema," the Puerto Rican superstar leans heavily on past classics to breathe new life into Latin trap. El Conejo is, for the most part, done missing his ex jeva for now — instead he's dressing up as his female alter ego to call out creeps at the club, de-stigmatizing a particular romantic pursuit on a perreo-fueled symphony, and rocking out to his own success on an emo-trap anthem. YHLQMDLG is an homage to the reggaeton bangers that raised Bunny, complete with collabs from some of the greatest vets in the game, including Daddy Yankee, Ñengo Flow and Jowell & Randy. It's an album steeped in nostalgia for the garage-party-perreo of the early-aughts, but with a modernity that forecasts a bright future for urbano — even one that may find Bad Bunny (if you believe the album title) permanently tapping out. He does what he wants, and he gets away with it, too." - Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, NPR

34 - Popcaan - FIXTAPE

"In its mix form, Fixtape is framed as an epic tale in which Popcaan shares moments along his route to dancehall’s most prominent torchbearers. Instead of starting with the self-produced “Chill,” the SoundCloud version begins with melodramatic piano strokes, almost reminiscent of the theme song to The Young and the Restless. Those key hits grow into a symphonic instrumental adaptation of Popcaan’s 2011 hit “Only Man She Want,” and soon after, the first two non-Poppy voices you hear are a drop from incarcerated icon Vybz Kartel and audio of Drake’s praise at the first Unruly Fest in December 2018. Though even novice Popcaan listeners already know these affiliations, starting the project in this way is like flexing for the mirror, a moment of self-affirmation before proving it to the world. So it makes sense that the first song on this version of the tape, “Killy Dem Crazy,” is Popcaan trying his hand at Nas and Diddy’s Trackmasters-produced classic “Hate Me Now”—the perfect “fuck whoever don’t like it” gesture." - Lawrence Burney, Pitchfork

33 - Drakeo The Ruler - Thank You For Using GTL

"Since the genre's inception, the voice in rap has been sped up, glitched out, chopped and screwed, slowed and reverbed, all to convey textures and feelings that language alone cannot. On Thank You For Using GTL, Drakeo The Ruler's was shrunk to fuzz, transmitted through a jail phone. The intent wasn't to create a mood, but to create something, to continue a career that was snatched away. At the time, Drakeo had spent most of the three years prior in Los Angeles' notorious Men's Central Jail, and nine of those months in solitary confinement, first battling a murder charge he'd be acquitted of, then a gang conspiracy charge that the prosecution built out of his lyrics and music videos. He was suddenly freed in November on a plea deal, days before L.A. county district attorney Jackie Lacey lost her seat to the more progressive George Gascón. His lawyer, John Hamasaki, told NPR that "if the case had been continued to January, it probably would have been dismissed by [Gascón's] office."

Even when transmitted across a scummy phone line, Drakeo's sneer cuts like a knife. Submerged in static and woven over JoogSZN's brooding instrumentals, his raps feel suspended in a constant denouement, transient and purgatorial, as he probes at the suits trying to end his life. "It might sound real, but it's fictional / I love that my imagination gets to you," he raps on the final track. What isn't fiction are the cruel and convoluted circumstances that shaped GTL, that cost its creators thousands of dollars to record while profiting a billion dollar telecom company, and that continue to take lifetimes away from Black men." —Mano Sundaresan, NPR

32 - Nathan Fake - Blizzards

"Blizzards has almost no breaks or meanders, just relentless club music adorned with beautiful melodies. In taking stock of his music and returning to his fundamentals, Blizzards highlights everything Fake is good at: the way his drums tend to dance in between established genres, melodies that sound like a warped Boards Of Canada record, the constant push-and-pull of dark and light. It's more of a reset than a reinvention, a return to the earnest simplicity that made him a wunderkind all those years ago." - Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor

31 - Dj Diaki - Balani Fou

"The absorption of multiple streams of African electronic music into a western club milieu has been patchy. Where styles like kwaito and gqom have slotted into house and bass idioms, and kuduro has made an impact via diasporic scenes like the one in Lisbon, the harder and faster styles—like Shangaan electro and the emergent singeli sound from Dar Es Salaam—haven't easily found a foothold. When they do appear, they're often an anomalous peak in a DJ set from which it's hard to climb down. But with the current vogue for speedy techno and other hard dance sounds, along with the interest in singeli and other belting East African sounds, Diaki's Crazy Balani couldn't have smashed its way to the dance floor at a better time." - Chal Ravens, Resident Advisor

30 - Caribou - Suddenly

"Dan Snaith’s latest is as sly and layered as ever, but he finds ways to be more direct with his songwriting. There are no bum notes, no wasted motions, no corners of the audio spectrum left untouched. " - Phillip Sherburne, Pitchfork

29 - Deradoorian - Find The Sun

"The LP’s guitar-centric approach is a bit of a surprise, but Deradoorian isn’t a stranger to big riffs. She’s done stints in bands like Dirty Projectors and Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks; more recently, she’s been ripping it up as the vocalist of BSCBR (aka Black Sabbath Cover Band Rehearsals), filling Ozzy Osborne’s shoes alongside artists like Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner and drumming virtuoso Greg Fox. Find the Sun never reaches Paranoid levels of bombast, but it’s easily her brawniest solo record to date. Songs like “Saturnine Night” and closer “Sun” channel the psychedelic swagger of ’70s giants like the Doors and Led Zeppelin, while the rubbery bassline and surging guitar chords of album highlight “It Was Me” bring to mind the likes of Nirvana and Hole—or at least the times when those bands emulated indie pop groups like the Vaselines and Young Marble Giants.

But Find the Sun shouldn’t be mistaken for an exercise in rock worship. The influence of Can looms large, and Deradoorian’s music is still psychedelic, weird, and seemingly primed for a hallucinogenic trip to the outer recesses of the human psyche. With its motorik groove and dramatic talk-singing, “The Illuminator” sounds like a freaky, nine-minute-long outtake from Andy Warhol’s Factory, while the slinky “Devil’s Market” recalls the space-age lounge music once championed by bands like Stereolab. “Saturnine Night” does feature growling guitars, but they’re paired with an unkempt Krautrock rhythm that could have been pulled from Neu! 2, along with a dramatic, PJ Harvey-esque vocal turn from Deradoorian, who belts out brooding lines like “Innocence/In my death” and, simply, “I die.” - Shawn Reynolds, Pitchfork

28 - Thundercat - It Is What It Is

"Left savoring the tasty morsels of 2017's critically-acclaimed Drunk and 2018's Drank (its "chopped not slopped" remix album), it was an absolute pleasure to sink hungry ears into Thundercat's It Is What It Is this year. The bassist born Stephen Bruner blurs genre boundaries, dishing out dizzying acrobatics on "How Sway," beefy funk vibes on "Black Qualls" (featuring Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington and Childish Gambino) and cheeky R&B hilarity on "Dragonball Durag." Coproduced by longtime collaborator Flying Lotus, It Is What It Is drips with curtains of lush vocals. The album chronicles a broken heart's analysis of grief and its subsequent recovery by asking probing questions and finding joy where it can to survive pain, uncertainty, rejection and isolation. It's an enchanting tale of hope and growth in a year that served us heaping portions of gloom and melancholy" - Nikki Birch, NPR

27 - Against All Logic - 2017-19

"That Beyoncé is the first voice we hear on 2017 - 2019 is instructive of the bold new direction. Hers and Sean Paul's vocals are lifted from "Baby Boy" and layered over a crackling broken beat, an uncanny string-like instrument and inviting synth chords. A sample of Luther Ingram's 1972 soul song "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right" appears on track two, a degraded house cut, thus establishing a template of sorts: 2017 - 2019 is an album of stylistic leaps, radiant melodies, difficult-to-place sounds and red herrings. Back-to-back opening tracks with instantly recognisable sample flips, for example, sets up an expectation of many more to follow. Instead, there are none. That is unless you can spot the source of the hip-hop loop on "With An Addict." Jaar casually filters it into the arrangement to create a half-time contrast with the main drums, a rolling footwork/jungle-style pattern that features percussion reminiscent of the "Apache" break. The poignant, daybreak melody caps a track that bundles the album's strongest qualities." - Ryan Keeling, Resident Advisor

26 - Adrian Younge / Ali Shaheed Mohammad - Jazz Is Dead 001

"Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad both have impressive resumes as purveyors of modern soul, jazz, and hip-hop. Younge, a bassist, keyboardist, composer, and producer, has scored films such Black Dynamite and collaborated with artists ranging from Philly soul legends the Delfonics to Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah. Meanwhile, Muhammad was a member of A Tribe Called Quest and has worked on various projects outside that group. Together, Younge and Muhammad formed the Midnight Hour, a versatile band that brought a modern edge to retro soul and jazz sounds." - Rich Wilhelm, popMatters

25 - The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase

"Drew Daniel's latest LP as The Soft Pink Truth, Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase, is a stunner that revels in communitas while flirting with house music and ambient tropes" - Bernie Brooks, the Quietus

24 - Jessy Lanza - All The Time

"The early days of writing All the Time, Jessy Lanza's first album since 2016's Oh No, marked a sea change for Jessy and her creative partner Jeremy Greenspan. After Oh No, Jessy left her hometown of Hamilton to go and live in New York. Written long distance for the first time, across Jessy’s new set up in New York to Jeremy’s home studio in Hamilton, and finishing in the recording studio Jeremy had been working on during this period.

Even though the move to New York and the change in remote working was tough, 'All the Time' has turned out to be the most pure set of pop songs the duo has recorded; reflective and finessed over the time and distance they allowed it. Innovative juxtapositions sound natural, such as rigid 808’s rubbing against delicate chords in 'Anyone Around', unusual underwater rushes underpin Baby Love . Jessy’s voice is treated, re-pitched and edited on songs like Ice creamy and gestural sounds seem to respond to her lyrics in songs such as Like Fire.

A lot of these sounds came from live take experiments using semi modular/modular equipment like Mother 32 and Dfam and Moog Sirin. Jessy says ‘We got all of the machines talking to one another and would run patterns through. A lot of the little burps and quacks and squiggles heard on songs like Anyone Around, Like 'Fire', 'Face', and 'Badly' are from those experiments. That’s when I’m having the most fun, making music and improvising through takes of the song and editing together all the best gurgle sounds afterwards’.

More than previously the lyrics on All The Time were an important focus for Jessy, articulating difficult feeling into her outwardly joyful music. ’Anger is a familiar and safe feeling for me. The album became a conversation with myself about why that is. Some songs refer to real and legitimate things to be angry about; 'Lick in Heaven' takes aim at what the culture expects from women. The cynicism I felt towards the people around me kept coming up and All the Time is an exploration into those feelings and a conversation with myself about other possibilities when it comes to my outlook on life.’

As the final elements of the album were being put in place, everything changed overnight. Her European tour was cut short and she flew back to New York quickly, plans for the foreseeable future dissolved. Whatsmore her lease was up on her apartment and she couldn’t find another in New York due to quarantine restrictions, so she packed what she could into her van and drove to San Francisco to be near her family, stopping on the way in increasingly empty motels as she journeyed from coast to coast.

‘Even though All the Time was written in 2019 the themes feel even more relevant now. Like a lot of people,I’m still struggling with the reality that life is hard to predict and it’s even harder not to make the same mistakes over again, trying to control what i’m able to and leave the rest.’ The cover photo of Jessy in her van was taken before these events , but it’s taken on more importance since. ‘Through many changing situations my minivan gives me comfort. It seems like such an American thing to say.m I realise it’s symbolic of a much larger existential struggle in my own life but regardless I wanted it to be a part of the album cover. Sitting in my van made me feel so comfortable and it’s rare for me to feel that.

All the time has ended up being a triumph, channeling difficult feelings into something that has whit energy and style. " - Jessy Lanza bandcamp page

23 - AceMoMA - A New Dawn

"AceMoMA connect back to their NYC forefathers (with nods to techno dons Derrick May and Jeff Mills), while also keeping a healthy disregard for the past, pushing ahead with palpable enthusiasm and energy. As Stevens explained in that same interview, “[As] brown people making dance music… we needed to create context for what we were doing. So we did.” Like the best moments of a night out, A New Dawn feels like instant history and an instant party." - Andy Beta, Pitchfork

22 - Adrianne Lenker - songs

"As a solo artist or with her band Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker has been at or near the top of my year-end lists for the past five years, more so than any other artist. The simultaneous strength and frailty in her voice attract me to her music. Earlier this year, she told NPR's All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, "I was really sad, and I hit a wall — I kind of hit the bottom of myself and went to a pretty dark and sad space for a while. And the music itself, and writing these songs, was a thing that was getting me through it." The songs on songs were birthed in a one-room cabin in Western Massachusetts' mountains and recorded on an old Otari 8-track. We hear acoustic guitar, her voice, the sound of the cabin and whatever bugs and birds happen to be in the background of the poetic paintings she sings. The intimacy is magnetic" - Bob Boilen, NPR

21 - Trees Speak - Ohms

"The act of driving informs the music of Trees Speak, who take cues from the Autobahn-extolling music of classic Krautrock, specifically Kraftwerk. The roads green West Germany led Krautrock pioneers like Kraftwek to produce smooth, seamless electronic rhythms—but the rugged, dusted Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona leads Trees Speak to a more rough hewn electronic sound." - d mittleman, Aquarium Drunkard

20 - 21 Savage / Metro Boomin - Savage Mode II

"Ultimately, though, ‘Savage Mode II’ feels like a throwback: one rapper and one producer focused on a single creative project. Think Eric B and Rakim; Missy Elliot and Timbaland; Method Man and RZA. Their collaborators, such as Drake and Young Thug (the latter on ‘Rich N**ga Shit’, an anthemic rap about their lavish lifestyles), ably support, stepping in occasionally to craft the project into a more well-rounded shape.

‘Savage Mode II’ allows the Atlanta-based MC the space to make his point and cast all nonsense aside, letting his talent speak for itself. Metro Boomin, meanwhile, further showcases his generational abilities. As a whole, the album is confirmation of two young artists at the top of their game, watching the landscape unfold from the throne they earned themselves four years ago." - Dhruva Balram, NME

19 - Various Artists - HOA 010

"Ahead of the dawn, there could only be us...

HAUS of ALTR presents HOA010. Our second compilation, featuring the future of Black electronic music, and as the music as it exist in its current state. In these trying times, we come together to stake claim on the roots of techno and its potential future. Too Black, Too Strong." - HAUS of ALTR bandcamp page

18 - Emma Ruth Rundle / Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

"Stemming out of an offer from Roadburn Festival organizer Walter Hoeijmakers, mutual acquaintances, and a shared love of each other’s output, May Our Chambers Be Full is the first recorded document of collaboration between Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou. While their solo material seems on its face to be quite disparate, both groups have spent their respective careers lurking at the outer boundaries of the heavy metal scene, the artists having more in common with DIY punk and its spiritual successor, grunge.

May Our Chambers Be Full straddles a similar, very fine line both musically and thematically. While Emma Ruth Rundle’s standard fare is a blend of post-rock-infused folk music, and Thou is typically known for its downtuned, doomy sludge, the conjoining of the two artists has created a record more in the vein of the early ’90s Seattle sound and later ’90s episodes of Alternative Nation, while still retaining much of the artists’ core identities. Likewise, the lyrical content of the album is a marriage of mental trauma, existential crises, and the ecstatic tradition of the expressionist dance movement. “Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.” Melodic, melancholic, heavy, visceral." - Thou Bandcamp page

17 - Mong Tong - Mystery

"For Mystery秘神, they imagined a version of ancient Asia where all of the continent’s superstitions were real, and wrote a record based on how that world would sound. Their songs usually consist of a lolloping bassline, a snakey guitar lead, and campy synths that could perfectly soundtrack both an ‘80s crime flick and a highly stylized video game. Their sound evokes the simultaneous futurism and nostalgia of vaporwave, and the duo consider it “sample-based” because of the post-production process, in which they cut up, loop, and re-pitch their jam sessions into structured songs. All of the percussion is constructed in Ableton; there are no vocals, but they do include a few soundbites from Taiwanese films and TV shows. (“Chakra,” for example, features a bit of a dialogue about the connection between aliens and Hinduism.)" - Eli Enis, Bandcamp Daily

16 - Sada Baby - Bartier Bounty 2

"His voice is at a-near constant sneer to match the furious pacing until the surprising collaboration with Dej Loaf that showcases a smoother version of the 27-year-old rapper. Street anthems like “Trap Withdrawals” approach standard topics of growing up hustling with bombastic brilliance. “Horse Play 2” even samples Linkin Park’s “In The End” and makes it work. Bartier‘s sequel takes all of Detroit’s current hip-hop momentum and propels it to Super Saiyan-level dominance thanks to Sada Baby’s need to experiment." - Patrick Johnson, Hypebeast

15 - Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin kynsi

"Even at nearly an hour in length, the album flies by, dense and vicious and evocative as a novel, as contemplative as the featureless gore of the cover art. I've had this promo for perhaps two full months now; I've listened to it nearly every day since then, often multiple times a day. I've commented before about a spate of records that were battling it out for the number one spot for me this year, and while that number has now expanded, the number then at least was three. One of them was Spectral Lore and Mare Cognitum's incredible progressive black metal split full-length. Another was Sweven's immaculate death metal debut. The third was this.

It's hard to deny that a certain strain of the listenership is right: this isn't black metal anymore. But this is for the best for Oranssi Pazuzu. The past seven years have seen them put out record after record that was better not only than the one before it but of the whole of their work. By Värähtelijä, they were scraping Hall of Fame territory. On Mestarin kynsi, they exceed it." - Langdon Hickman, Invisible Oranges

14 - Sunwatchers - Oh Yeah?

"The album’s title “Oh Yeah?” is at once an homage to Mingus, Thee Oh Sees’ album “Help” (whose Brigid Dawson hand-sewed the tapestry adorning the album’s front cover) and (naturally) the rallying cry of KoolBrave himself - the Kool-Aid Man-as-Braveheart avatar the band adopted as their symbol. The three years since the band’s second album (and TiM debut) “II” was released, has seen the band grace stages across the USA and Europe, enlisting more comrades in their mission of solidarity (sonically speaking) with every show." - Sunwatchers Bandcamp page

13 - Fire-Toolz - Rainbow Bridge

"Rainbow Bridge was made in part as a reflection on the death of Marcloid’s cat Breakfast, which explains in part the way the record swings back and forth between beauty and cacophony. Marcloid’s work as Fire-Toolz has always been about the way that these two emotional poles can coexist, but the way we deal with death is especially complicated. Even the most intense grief is braided with moments of peace and clarity, the beautiful memories of a life well-lived. Rainbow Bridge mirrors the intensity and the confusion of these experiences and shows that even in the direst times, it’s possible to find comfort." - Colin Joyce, Pitchfork

12 - Beatrice Dillon - Workaround

"Chain Reaction meets mid-20th-century minimalism with spectacular results." - Chal Ravens, Resident Advisor

11 - Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia

At 24, Lipa has been working towards this moment for almost 10 years, and her sights are set higher still. A false start in modeling impressed the importance of going where you’re wanted; in Lipa’s case, to Warner Records, who sought a female pop icon to compete with the Rihannas and Lady Gagas of the world. She leveraged her talent as a songwriter, developing an early Dua Lipa single, “Hotter Than Hell,” in the first session with her prospective management team. Her sly swagger and fashion-plate style gave her the presence of someone who’d achieved diva status already. “I’m a bit too far down the line for anyone to try and tell me something,” she said of her creative autonomy in 2017, even before the release of her first record.

But where many of pop’s most recent stars are emphatically emotionally available, Lipa radiates blithe coolness. Her brand is style, competence, taste—this is, in a way perhaps not obvious to those who actually remember the ’80s, entirely tasteful pop music—and the sultry low voice that makes her the star of even a middling Martin Garrix collab. Future Nostalgia is nonstop, no ballads; for 10 tracks, the closest it comes to feeling vulnerable or revealing is “Pretty Please,” a plea for stress-relief sex with an ultra-thick bassline. When Lipa proclaims, “You got me losing all my cool/’Cause I’m burning up on you,” on the Tove Lo cowrite “Cool,” she rhymes it with, “In control of what I do.” - Anna Gaca, Pitchfork

10 - Jasmine Infiniti - Bxtch Slap

"It’s building on that myth of being The Queen of Hell and how as a black trans woman, often just existing in this world feels hellish. The things that I have personally had to go through and that many other black trans women endure, it’s almost as if we are existing in hell already. It’s kind of like, well if I’m already here, I might as well live it up and find the best parts of this existence that I can. It’s about embracing that hell vibe. If I’m already here then I’m gonna be debaucherous and party to all hours of the morning. I want it to reflect that, but also have a little bit of sadness, a little bit resentfulness and a little bit anger, but also happiness and joy. It’s about taking hell and having fun with it." - Jasmine Infiniti, Vice

9 - Actress - Karma & Desire

"Karma & Desire bears the sonic touchstones of his landmark full-lengths like R.I.P. and AZD, but it also represents a profound shift in Cunningham's approach. For the first time, he's invited friends to help out. "I just wanted to give Actress a voice, basically, to use vocal performances from, like, a muse perspective really," he recently told Bandcamp Daily.

Despite several rave-worthy tracks voiced by the LA artist Aura T-09, this is not Actress's vocal house album, nor is it an album of pop songs. Instead, he utilizes the considerable vocal talents of artists like Zsela and Sampha in a signature Actress style, with snatches of stream-of-consciousness vocals rearranged into dreamlike sketches. The New York artist Zsela exhales "Destiny is stuck in heaven," on the burbling "Angels Pharmacy," before reprising the same theme on the very next track, "Remembrance." Just as hazy pads and white noise form motifs in Actress's catalogue, evocative phrases surface and resurface from the murk." Matt McDermott, Resident Advisor

8 - Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake

"Few make rapping sound as purely fun as Lil Uzi Vert. His second album, Eternal Atake, arrived on the heels of a nearly three-year label dispute, yet it still sounds unburdened. The songs traffic in abundant imagination — words and syllables are deconstructed and restacked to form breathless cadences that explode across beats as funky as they are futuristic. When he chants "Balenci" enough times to void it of any meaning on "POP" or when he spits out a multibar hook that skirts repetition altogether (or, really, any qualities that usually make up a hook) as on "Homecoming," it's the chutzpah, but it's also the musicality of it all, the way the melodies are both instrument and a vehicle for lyrics. One of rap's most precise technicians, Uzi has been perfecting this craft since he began his career ascent in 2015, but Eternal Atake prompted us to hear the extraterrestrial — a world within worlds that's all his own." - Briana Younger, NPR

7 - bbyMutha - Muthaland

"Across Muthaland, bbymutha reclaims several words used to jab at her pride: “baby mama,” “slut,” “hoodrat.” She says them with her chest and siphons the negative energy in order to lift herself above the competition. It’s exhilarating, which makes the prospect of her early retirement all the sadder. Rap could use several more voices like hers. If Muthaland really is the last album bbymutha plans on releasing to the public, she’s brought us into her twisted world at its creative peak." Dylan Green, Pitchfork

6 - Jeff Parker - Suite for Max Brown

"The album is a mixture of live improvisations backed by drum loops. This was inspired by Parker’s time as a DJ. “I used to DJ a lot when I lived in Chicago,” Parker recently said. “I was spinning records one night and for about ten minutes I was able to perfectly synch up a Nobukazu Takemura record with the first movement of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and it had this free jazz, abstract jazz thing going on with a sequenced beat underneath. It sounded so good. That’s what I’m trying to do with Suite for Max Brown. Man vs. machine.” - Nick Roseblade, The Quietus

5 - GAIKA - Seguridad

"Brixton’s GAIKA has already proven himself a heavyweight via his releases on WARP Records, where he imbues the moodier end of dancehall, R&B, and Afrobeats with the kind of apocalyptic political vision you might expect from righteous roots reggae. Here, he’s teamed up with Mexico City’s NAAFI label, and eight members of their musical family. The music ranges from a reggaetón canter (“Maria”) to an almost drum-free crawl (“Nine Lives”); GAIKA’s hoarse voice, swimming through glutenous resonant autotune, draws it all together. It draws you into a zoned-out science fiction night time world, a Black Atlantic gothic cyberpunk fever dream that will haunt you long after it’s ended." - Joe Muggs, Bandcamp Daily

4 - Nazar - Guerrilla

"The roughest rough kuduro on Guerrilla lives up to the billing. Over charging horns and erratic snare sprints, "Arms Deal"'s midrange is filled with raging, Pollocky slashes of tapehead noise. "Why"'s 8-bit Sonic synths, Terrordrome trance leads and rap fragments are also fantastic. Guerrilla can be stealthy, too. Take "Fim-92 Stinger," a carnivalesque hip swinger with shades of the slinky batida from DJ Nigga Fox's Cartas Na Magna. It's a rare gem: fun, seductive, somewhat steady. You could even call it celebratory. But when Nazar says, "The ceasefire should at least last until the duration of this song," his pessimism resurfaces. Sure enough, the next track, "Immortal," illustrates what seems like a bullet-time detachment from conflict. It's possible to make out the ambience of the Angolan bush, stray gunfire and casual bravado, but the clearest sounds in its spectral quiet are an amped-up wheeze and the continuous loading of magazines. You're hearing the itch to fight." - Ray Philp, Resident Advisor

3 - Benny The Butcher - Burden of Proof

"With the help of Hit-Boy, Rick Ross, and Freddie Gibbs, Benny has another one for us to mob out to. At one point on this album, he says, “I don’t care about haters/ I only care about what hustlers think.” The proof is in the eating of the pudding. This is not for the meek. This is not for the golf courses. Benny never dives into nihilism. He knows his purpose, but the album is called Burden of Proof because if you are going to be on the streets, you have to prove who you are. Benny has done that and then some. The Butcher is here, and he isn’t respecting old arrangements. He runs this ship now." - Jayson Buford, Consequence of Sound

2 - Yaeji - What We Drew "But while What We Drew is more internalized than past releases, it is not conflicted; rather, Yaeji finds clarity in vulnerability, in the pendulum swing of her humanity. Crucially, the mixtape doesn’t turn its back on one of Yaeji’s strongest traits as an artist: Her music has always been deeply social, and now it is more gregarious than ever in its gratitude for those around her. Some of the best tracks are valentines to the friends and artists who fill Yaeji’s world—and she has been proactive building scenes, from New York to Seoul—and her appreciation for this community feels all the sweeter balanced with her revelations of struggle" - Stacey Anderson, Pitchfork 1 - Various Artists - HOA 011

"Back once again, we assume the role of Vanguard in the war against white supremacy in electronic music. We bring part 2 in a story of black technological expression, from the perspectives of some of its most prolific, alongside much needed new perspectives. HOA010 was a call for a new path. HOA011 we embark.

Too Black, Too Strong." - HAUS of ALTR bandcamp page

[n3rdlif343va]

Yuuri and Viktor going bowling for date night. Viktor completely destroys Yuuri. so on there next date night they go mini golfing... Yuuri rules... But the next date night they go to Lazer tag...... Write who you think would win that one!!!

FINALLY answering this ask!!! And because I had your permission to do so, I have adapted it to fit in the Law Firm of Handsome Nerds series :) Without further delay, I give you… Team Building (also available on Ao3: Team Building)

Their firm was exactly one week old. Boxes had been unpacked, hours of sweaty labor had been put in to rearrange furniture and arguments over who got which office had been resolved by a game of flip cup, played across the conference room table. The letters were finally stenciled on the door and everyone had agreed to Yuuri’s thoroughly structured filing system. They were officially the Law Firm of Katsuki, Nikiforov, and Chulanont, attorneys at law, friends in sarcasm.

The concept had been simple. Three friends, all the experienced attorneys, going out on their own to build a firm based on their combined knowledge and skills. Victor and Phichit would be in charge of networking and bringing in new cases, while Yuuri provided the initial clientele, stealing the majority of his previous clients from the public defender’s office. Reduced rates would be offered to each of these clients, with continued offers for reductions for every client they referred. Phichit was convinced that they would easily be making sustainable money long before their individual savings accounts ran out.

Yuuri had been the most hesitant, although a few drinks and hours of delicious food prepared by the husbands Chulanont had brought him on board. His paycheck from the State was a steady one, but it came with its own negatives and the positives of the new firm outweighed everything his current employer could offer him. At the top of the positive list was the open policy on bringing all of their pets to the office. The idea of having Vicchan circling his feet while working had put Yuuri solidly in the yes column.

So the firm of Katsuki, Nikiforov and Chulanont was born, an infant firm with three incredibly good-looking partners determined to make a name for themselves in the midst of the polluted market of legal counsel.

It was Phichit’s well-intentioned idea that they celebrate their new partnership with the ridiculous concept of team building. Yuuri had googled the phrase, finding workshops and campsites that encouraged it and had immediately shut Phichit down on the potential list of activities. In response, Phichit had volunteered another idea: bowling.

That’s how they all found themselves strapped into Velcro rental shoes, surrounded by loud music and flashing neon lights late on a Friday night. The idea of rock-n-bowl hadn’t appealed to Yuuri since their drunken college days, but he found himself having fun nonetheless. Until Victor had leaned over the back of his chair and laid down a challenge.

“I’m better than you,” Victor taunted, tugging on the back of Yuuri’s hair and making him twist around in his seat. “How about if I win, you have to set up my computer.” The signature smirk was painted over Victor’s face and Yuuri felt the distinct need to wipe it clean off.

“Fine,” Yuuri said, standing to take his turn. “If I win,” Yuuri lifted his ball, eying Victor over the top of it, “you have to build the TV stand that is sitting in my living room.” Turning, Yuuri bent his knees and released his ball. When it struck the pins they shouted in protest, diving for the ground in a pile of ten. Yuuri shot his own smirk at Victor. “Beat that… partner.” The last word had a bite to it, daring Victor to retaliate.

The challenge burned through Victor’s chest and he hopped off the small step, moving directly into Yuuri’s space. “You’re on, counselor.” He flicked Yuuri’s nose before dancing toward the lane to retrieve his own ball.

“The fun has just been sucked out of this activity,” Seung-gil stated, arm slung over his husband’s shoulders as Phichit snorted. Seung-gil wasn’t a part of the firm, but he was Phichit’s husband and therefore invited anywhere they went as a group.

“Let them fight it out,” Phichit watched as the teasing continued, Yuuri mercilessly attempting to distract Victor during his attempt to pick up a spare. The result being a slight wrestling match at the front of the lane, making Phichit chuckle and Seung-gil snort. “They have to get all that tension out somehow!” The pair was now tickling each other, firing off insults in rapid witty bullets.

“Side bet,” Seung-gil turned to look at Phichit instead of the ridiculous ball of sexual tension wrestling fifteen feet away from them. “I say they are together within the year.”

Phichit laughed, loudly and accompanied with a slap to his knee. “Those two?” He threw his head back with unexplained humor. “Oh my gosh, honey, they are so dumb. They have at least another five years of bickering to go before they realize how much they love each other!” Putting out his hand, Phichit shook his husband’s with a cocky smile. “You’re on, sweetheart. And if I win you’re mine for the day.”

“I’m yours every day,” Seung-gil purposefully avoided his husband’s innuendo, smiling when Phichit huffed at him.

“You know what I mean,” Phichit leaned in, running his tongue over Seung-gil’s ear. His husband blushed a fierce red and Phichit sat back triumphantly, eyes traveling back to the struggling mass that was his law partners. The two idiots were now crumpled on the floor alternating pinches and tickles in a fruitless fight for control.

It took them until the lights were being turned on to bowl the final frame of their first game, their progress dramatically slowed by Yuuri and Victor’s insistence on physically fighting between every turn. In the end, Victor beat them all by over forty points and Yuuri spent Saturday afternoon assembling his partner’s computer while Victor gloated from across the desk.

“What is that?” Yuuri leaned on Victor’s office door frame. In their first month they had made enough money to pay their rent and take home a little money for each of them. The flow of clients wasn’t yet constant so they all had time to tweak their offices to their liking. Currently, Victor was hanging a large chalkboard in his office.

“My win board,” Victor said, speaking around the nail that was braced between his lips.

It was a softball, lobbed beautifully into the air and Yuuri couldn’t resist the easy shot. “Why is it so big?” He snickered when Victor glared over his shoulder. “I believe my win-to-loss record is still better than yours.” Yuuri ducked when Victor threw a nail in his direction. “Your aim is as good as your defense work.”

Victor calmly hung his chalkboard over the nail, unwilling to ruin his hard work to pummel Yuuri. As soon as it hung in perfect balance, Victor laid the hammer on his desk and spun to face his best friend. “You better run, counselor.” He laughed as Yuuri yipped and took off running down the hallway. Taking pursuit, Victor could feel the laughter bubbling up. He snagged Yuuri halfway down the hall, bringing them down into a pile of laughter and cursing.

They hadn’t made record-breaking money, but the relief that they hadn’t fallen flat on their faces had kept Victor in an elevated mood. Using the exhilarated feeling, Victor let himself slip back into his younger self, wrestling with Yuuri in the slender hallway, uncaring about the wrinkles taking over his shirt and his one shoe which was lying a foot away from them.

Above them the distinct click of a cell phone camera broke through their physical altercation. Freezing, they both slowly turned toward their third partner seeing the smug smile planted on Phichit’s face. “I’m going to post this to the firm’s Instagram,” Phichit teased, waving his phone in the air.

Making eye contact, Victor dropped Yuuri’s wrists as they both screamed, “get him!” Scrambling from the floor, they chased the laughing Phichit through their small office.

Three days later there were chalkboards hanging in both Yuuri’s and Phichit’s offices, lovingly hung by Victor, despite each of the new boards being half the size of his own.

“Mini golf,” Phichit text to their group chat with a number of emojis that Yuuri didn’t even try to understand.

“Why,” Seung-gil text back without punctuation. Yuuri snorted at Seung-gil’s ability to be deadpan even in text.

“Sounds fun,” Victor responded, the three little dots appearing underneath it. “Katsuki, wanna bet I kick your ass again?”

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed at his screen. Victor had won in bowling, but there was no way he would win in mini-golf. “Nikiforov, last time we played mini-golf you lost three balls in the water and threw your club at the clown hole.”

“Yuuri, you be in charge of Victor’s balls then so he doesn’t lose them,” Phichit added fifteen winking faces and laughed when Yuuri responded with all of the available weapon emojis.

“Ignoring you,” Yuuri responded, taking a second to structure his response, “Ok Mr.-I-can’t-handle-my-own-balls, you’re on. Name your terms.”

“I do just fine with my balls!” Victor’s text appeared so quickly it was as if he had anticipated Yuuri’s joke. “I win, you vacuum the office for a month.” The office cleaning was a set of chores which were divvied each week to avoid the cost of a cleaning service. Victor had pulled vacuuming which wasn’t the worst chore, but was a chore nonetheless.

“You’re on,” Yuuri replied, “and if I win, we switch chalkboards, since I need the bigger one anyway.”

“Over-compensating?” Victor shot back attaching eggplant emojis to his text.

“Who bought it in the first place?” Yuuri sent his message while snickering into the bag of his hand.

“Again, I ask…. Why.” Seung-gil’s text had Yuuri fully laughing at his desk as they continued to argue back and forth to set times for their next round of team building.

When Saturday afternoon rolled around, the four of them stood in the middle of the mini-golf course, surrounded by little kids, frustrated parents, and annoying teenagers. They had already been scolded twice for their inappropriate language and Victor was on his second ball.

“What’s the score?” Yuuri asked, lining up his shot on the ninth hole, wiggling his ass for comic effect.

“You are winning,” Victor huffed, arms crossed over his chest. “Cheaters never prosper, Yuuri.” Proving his own point, Victor kicked Yuuri in the foot and tripped backwards being caught by a giggling Phichit.

“Is that so?” Yuuri tossed back nonchalantly. Staring straight at Victor, Yuuri swung his club and sunk his ball into the hole in one shot.

“For fuck’s sake!” Victor exclaimed, tossing his own club onto the ground.

Yuuri won by 14 strokes, they almost got kicked out twice, and Victor relinquished his larger chalkboard after three solid days of whining about his loss.

Yuuri was sitting behind a stack of files, feeling overwhelmed as he delved into the detailed word of personal injury. He had signed up for a conference taking place later in the year and hoped he could fake it until he received the training and continuing education that the conference would provide. Sighing again, his head snapped up as Phichit knocked on his open door.

“I acquired two interns,” Phichit leaned against the door with his arms folded over his chest.

“Acquired? Phichit it sounds like you fucking bought them!” Yuuri shook his head as Phichit howled with laughter.

“Of course not! Only you, Yuuri!” Phichit laughed again. Composing himself, Phichit cleared his throat. “They are ending their first year of law school so they need experience and are happily working with us without pay. I’m trading them conference room access and studying assistance.” Yuuri hummed in response, not particularly caring as long as he didn’t need to be involved in the process. “You know what this means, right?”

Glancing up at Phichit’s excited face, Yuuri moaned and banged his head on his desk. “Phichit, no!”

“Phichit, yes!” his law partner yelled, pumping a fist in the air. “Team building, here we come!”

Which is how they found themselves, along with their two interns who looked bewildered, strapped into laser tag gear at ten p.m. on a Thursday night. Phichit attempted to sacrifice himself to the team he deemed the “intern team,” leaving Victor, Yuuri, and Seung-gil on the same team.

“Nah uh,” Victor declared loudly, “I can’t be on the same team as Katuski. Bets don’t work if we are on the same team.”

“No bets!” Seung-gil and Phichit yelled in unison, making the interns, Yuri and Otabek jump. “We are here for fun, you two!” Phichit eyed them carefully, flicking a finger between them. “This is an activity to make us a better team.”

“Besides,” Yuri added, glaring at Victor, “you are the tallest, so you are an easy target, I don’t want you on my team.” Yuuri roared with laughter until Victor shoved him into a wall. Kicking his foot out, Yuuri caught Victor behind the back of the knee, dumping his best friend on the ground. “On second thought,” Yuri shoved Phichit into Seung-gil’s arms and yanked Yuuri to the side with himself and Otabek. “We’ll take him.”

Victor pouted from the ground, his acceptance of Yuuri’s offered hand filled with grumpy salt. Leaning over Yuuri, Victor narrowed his eyes. “If we win, I want my chalkboard back.”

Yuuri laughed, stepping back to stand with Yuri and Otabek. “If we win, I get the couch.”

A shocked look appeared on Victor’s face. “You wouldn’t!” He placed a hand over his heart, mockingly acting as if he had been mortally wounded. “That couch has sentimental value to both of us!”

Rolling his eyes, Yuuri stuck his hand out. “Take it or leave it, Nikiforov.” Smirking when Victor grabbed his hand, Yuuri quirked an eyebrow in his direction. “May the best man win!”

“I intend to,” Seung-gil added, smiling slightly before dragging Phichit away to their base.

In the end, Yuri was a ringer no one saw coming, mercilessly killing off the other team with repeated and skilled fire. His score was so high that it left the other members of the firm staring at the scoreboard in disbelief. Yuuri’s team easily won and he silently gloated through dinner about his future use and possession of the worn blue couch that had once existed in his shared apartment with Victor.

Victor refused to get off of the couch while Yuuri and Phichit attempted to move it from his office the next day, resulting in them giving up and calling him a baby. “A baby with a couch!” Victor yelled triumphantly from his office, dodging the handfuls of the firm’s pens as they were launched at him by his partners.

The war of thrown office supplies, spurred on by Victor’s retaliation for being bombarded with pens, left their office a complete disaster and the three partners a flushed, humor exhausted mess. Sinking back into his chair, smirking at the pile of disorganized supplies scattered through his personal office, Yuuri decided that joining his friends in this adventure was the best decision he had made in his life.

And thus through humor, friendship, and curse-laden sarcasm, the Law Firm of Katsuki, Nikiforov, and Chulanont came to be.

[kristablogs]

America thrived by choking its rivers with dams. Now it’s time to undo the damage.

Dams fueled america’s growth by choking its rivers. Is it time to restore nature’s infrastructure? (Brian Klutch/)

The fish is nearly three feet long, and as it swims unhurriedly past the viewing window in Lower Granite Dam, Theresa Wilson glances up from her knitting. “Chinook,” she says, tapping her computer keyboard once to record its passage. The salmon pauses as if to be admired. Its mottled scales flash as it moves against the current of the Snake River. Then it darts away, bound upstream to the place where it was born.

Salmon and trout are anadromous: They hatch in rivers, spend their lives at sea, then return to their birthplaces to reproduce and die. Here on the Snake in eastern Washington, that means traversing four hydroelectric dams, an arduous undertaking few complete.

The Lower Granite is the last barrier between this chinook and its spawning grounds. It is one of 13 salmon and trout species in the Pacific Northwest that the federal government lists as threatened or endangered. The concrete and steel structure in its way stands 151 feet tall and spans a gorge, its turbines sending froth churning downstream. Clearing the wall requires that a swimmer ascend a spiral structure called a fish ladder to a resting pool, where a viewing portal lets Wilson keep track of them for University of Washington biologists and others monitoring the impact dams have on piscine populations.

According to legend, the Snake brimmed with so many fish when the explorers Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805 that one could walk from bank to bank on their backs. Today the animals pass so rarely that Wilson spends much of her eight-hour shift making socks.

As recently as the middle of the 20th century, nearly 130,000 adult chinook returned to these waters in a single year. Around 10,000 made the journey in 2017, a dip that threatens the health of the river and all it sustains. More than 130 species of insects, birds, fish, and mammals—from bears in the Teton Range to orcas in the Pacific—rely on salmon for food. Even plants and trees benefit, drawing nutrients from their waste and remains.

Across the nation, the scenario repeats. Atlantic sturgeon, once a hallmark of the eastern seaboard, can reach only about half of their historic spawning grounds. Some 40 percent of the 800 or so varieties of freshwater fish in the US, and more than two-thirds of native mussels, are rare or endangered, in part because man-made barriers have altered their ecosystems. Reservoirs disrupt currents, altering water’s velocity and temperature. That can harm its quality and interrupt the reproductive cycles of aquatic creatures. Stanching a river stops the distribution of sediment and the formation of logjams, two things critical to creating healthy habitat. It also eliminates floodplains and natural meanders, both of which prevent the banks from overflowing.

America was shaped by its rivers—more than 250,000 in all—and since Colonial times we have bent them to our will. The Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees dams owned by the federal government, lists more than 90,000 in its national inventory. Tens of thousands more remain unregistered. “Think about that number,” then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt told a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in 1998. “That means we have been building, on average, one large dam a day, every single day, since the Declaration of Independence.” The best of them generate power, facilitate navigation, and slake our thirst. But many, perhaps the majority, are no longer essential.

The falling cost of renewable energy and continued decline of manufacturing renders many of these structures unnecessary. Others require expensive maintenance. Seven in 10 are more than 50 years old and many are falling into disrepair, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which pegs the cost of upgrading the 17 percent it deems a “high hazard” (meaning a failure could kill people downstream) at $45 billion. Overhauling the rest will cost many times that. In response, a growing number of scientists and environmentalists have called for razing dams that are obsolete or dispensable and letting more rivers—nature’s original infrastructure—once again run free.

Many of those advocates consider the Elwha River 50 miles west of Seattle a model. Salmon and trout had all but vanished before the National Park Service breached two dams there in 2014, reviving the waterway and surrounding wilderness with little effect on power supplies. Restoration champions believe the same will happen on the Snake, where they’ve waged a decades-long fight against the Corps, regional politicians, and farmers who argue that the hydroelectric power it generates remains essential and that knocking the system down might not save the animals.

As pressure mounts to “free the Snake,” the Corps and others are considering similar projects nationwide, a trend that could reshape what Duke University hydrologist Martin Doyle calls “our riverine republic.”

“We’re shifting our priorities, and we’re left with this relic landscape that’s no longer applicable,” he says. “Where that legacy infrastructure gets in the way or causes problems, let’s undo it. The future of 80 percent of dams is very questionable, or should be.”

“The future of 80 percent of dams is very questionable, or should be.” - Hydrologist Martin Doyle (Brian Klutch/)

The snake meanders 937 miles from its headwaters in Yellowstone National Park through Idaho (where it remains one of the most unspoiled aquatic habitats in the West) and into Washington. There, it wends another 141 miles across a region called the Palouse—5 million acres of otherworldly dunes and golden wheat fields—before joining the mighty Columbia River.

Bryan Jones grew up here, near a town called Dusty, on land his great-grandfather settled a century-and-a-half ago. The family has always grown wheat, and their farm now covers 640 acres. In a good year, Jones will harvest 18,000 bushels. Washington is the country’s fourth-largest producer of the crop, which we mostly export.

The Army Corps of Engineers built four hydroelectric dams here on the lower Snake River between 1961 and 1975, deepening and widening the channel to accommodate barges headed to Portland, Oregon. “I think we were sold the promise of this new way to ship our grain, and we thought that was a good thing,” Jones says. For years, boats provided a cheaper alternative to trucks and trains. But the locks at Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite dams weren’t the boon many expected, and barging declined as costs rose. Today, less than 3 million tons head downriver each year, a decrease of 26 percent from the industry’s heyday in 2000.

Jones is the rare farmer who favors razing the structures. He can make an economic argument—he believes transport over land makes more financial sense—but at the heart of his opinion lies something simpler: He misses the landscape of his childhood. “All up and down the Snake River there were sandy beaches, and orchards in the riparian area,” he says. “I can remember my grandmother having a table out here in the yard full of boxes and boxes and boxes of peaches. Everything from tomatoes and green beans, and beets and beans. There were melons, alfalfa fields.” He also recalls the abundant wildlife. Much of it is gone now, flooded by the reservoirs between the dams, he says.

So too are most of the fish. All four salmon and steelhead species found in the Snake are classified as threatened or endangered—a trend seen throughout the Pacific Northwest, where the US government manages 31 dams. Their decline prompted President Jimmy Carter to sign a law in 1980 authorizing Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to develop a plan for saving them. The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal nonprofit that sells electricity generated by the dams, has spent an average of $220 million per year on habitat restoration and hatcheries since 2007. It has also given an average of $77 million annually to the Corps and other agencies, helping finance what Corps spokesman Joe Saxon calls “the world’s most advanced fish passage systems.” Spillway weirs and ladders, both of which resemble water-park slides, help guide the animals over each dam. Workers pump small juveniles, called smolts, out of collection pools and into trucks and barges that carry them downriver. Cooling systems maintain reservoir temperatures to protect the creatures. Saxon says more than 99 percent of adults and 95 to 100 percent of youngsters survive the trip past the structures.

But those numbers reveal only part of the picture. Critics often characterize such claims as “akin to dropping a goldfish from a 100-floor skyscraper, seeing it is still alive at floor 75, and concluding it’s OK,” says Helen Neville, head scientist at the advocacy organization Trout Unlimited. Dams and reservoirs tax migratory fish by altering their route to and from the sea. This is especially hazardous for smolts. Rather than riding a swift, cold current downstream, they spend time and energy navigating the warmer, slower water of a reservoir, where they face greater odds of becoming something’s dinner. Should they escape unscathed, a 2014 study by the US Fish and Wildlife Service found that reaching the ocean takes youngsters an average of two weeks longer than it did before the dams went up. The same analysis shows the added stress kills nearly 1 in 4 migrating fish. Those that live to see the Pacific face threats there too, of course. All told, in recent years, fewer than 1 percent of juveniles that made it to the ocean have returned upstream to spawn. Before the Corps built all that hydroelectric infrastructure, the rate was 6 percent; biologists consider 2 percent sufficient to maintain a sustainable population. “They are truly straddling extinction,” Neville says.

That prompted 55 scientists from throughout the US to sign a letter in October 2019 calling for the demolition of the structures. They base their plea on five federal court rulings since 1994 directing dam and waterway managers to consider additional measures to protect the wildlife and take a closer look at removal. (The Fish Passage Center, funded by Bonneville Power to monitor piscine populations, has said breaching could quadruple the number of salmon returning to spawn.) The agencies involved must complete a court-ordered environmental-impact study—the latest of many—in 2020, but it probably won’t end the debate. Many farmers, fearing a rail monopoly, don’t want to lose the barges, and some regional politicians join the Corps in arguing against doing away with an energy source that, running at full-tilt, could power a city the size of Seattle. Currently, though, the dams provide just 4.3 percent of the region’s power.

Dismantling the structures might be the most cost-effective option. Each of the 24 turbines in the lower Snake system has exceeded its 50-year life span. The Corps signed a $115 million contract in 2016 to install three at Ice Harbor Dam. Meanwhile, the region’s hydropower prices have climbed 30 percent since 2008, making Bonneville Power electricity more expensive than juice from other sources. A 2018 study by the NW Energy Coalition, an alliance of 100 public and private entities, found that solar, wind, and natural-gas generation could provide the same backup reserve, and building the needed infrastructure would add just $2 to customers’ monthly utility bills.

Political will for removal appears to be intensifying. In April 2019, US Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho called for a serious look at it, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation allocating $750,000 to study how best to assist communities that would be affected by the dams’ elimination.

In addition to the threat posed by dams, anadromous fish face an existential threat from climate change. In 2015, high water temperatures killed 96 percent of the Snake’s returning sockeye salmon. But those who favor breaching the barriers agree that unleashing the river will cool the water, create more spawning habitat, and give the imperiled creatures better odds of survival. And that, they say, can only help the Snake overall. “I hope those dams come down,” Jones says. “I’d love to see it in my lifetime. Every species that can get to the river and catch a fish is going to thrive.”

Mike McHenry’s soggy Belgian Malinois, Ginger, stands at the edge of the Elwha River in western Washington, whining softly. He holds her back from a pool where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny salmon fry shimmer in the sunlight. They are just a few months old, and before long, they will begin their journey to the sea. McHenry releases the dog, and she bounds into the water. The wee fish scatter.

McHenry has spent more than three decades as a biologist and habitat manager with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Their ancestral land has been radically reshaped since the removal of two hydroelectric dams allowed the river to run unfettered for the first time in more than a century.

The waterway begins in a snowfield high in the Olympic Mountains and flows 45 miles north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. For millennia, the river ran thick with salmon and trout. As many as 400,000 adult chinook, coho, and other species returned annually to spawn, making it one of the richest anadromous fish habitats in the nation.

That changed in 1910, when the Olympic Power Company erected the Elwha Dam to power timber and pulp mills in nearby Port Angeles. In 1927, it built another, called Glines Canyon, 8 miles upstream of the first. Beyond flooding Klallam religious sites and a verdant floodplain, the structures, which lacked fish passages, reduced spawning grounds to the river’s first 5 miles. Salmon populations plummeted in response. During the 20th century’s waning years, the system produced a negligible amount of electricity—​about half the energy requirements of a single local mill—and its owners had decided that making it more fish-friendly was too expensive. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed a bill authorizing the Interior Department to buy the dams for $29.5 million, tear them down, and restore the habitat.

The National Park Service spent almost two decades planning the $350 million project. The biggest challenge was managing the immense amount of sediment: Some 33 million tons of silt, gravel, and rock littered the two reservoirs. A free-flowing river moves a lot of earth; letting it all go at once would wreak havoc downstream. Work started in 2008 with construction of a treatment plant to filter the Port Angeles water supply. Beginning in 2011, crews partially drained the lakes and slowly emptied them by dismantling the barriers in 10- to 20-foot sections using a crane and a barge-​mounted excavator. The final chunks of concrete and steel fell in 2014.

That done, the Park Service worked with the tribe on the agency’s second-​​largest habitat-​​restoration project ever. Biologists, botanists, and volunteers planted tens of thousands of indigenous trees, grasses, and other plants on floodplains denuded by the reservoirs. Salmon and trout ventured upstream within months. Still, officials augmented their meager numbers with animals raised in hatcheries. Although the water remained cloudy for more than two years, the dirt and gravel eventually settled, creating sandbars, beaches, and a vast estuary at the river’s mouth near Port Angeles.

Researchers snorkeling the length of the Elwha in 2018 counted 15,000 steelhead trout, about twice as many as a decade before. Otters have followed the fish upstream. Birds and large fauna like deer and bears, which had dwindled alongside anadromous species, have reappeared in unprecedented numbers. The floodplain, rejuvenated by all that nutrient-rich sediment and new growth, teems with life, and logjams—​some created by the river, others by McHenry and his team—​provide refuge for smolts. He points out elk droppings among the alder trees, and a salmon carcass hauled ashore by a predator.

Removing the dams inarguably revitalized this riparian zone. Restoring the habitat, McHenry says, did more than save the fish. It also created a natural defense against flooding, opened the river to greater recreational opportunities (federal and tribal officials will consider allowing salmon fishing in 2021), and resurrected woodlands and shorefront. “Damming a river’s about the most egregious thing you can do if you want to mess it up,” he says. “You can argue there are services you get out of that. But at least in this part of the world, and, I guess, in my value system, I think the services a wild river offers way exceed damming it.”

For more than a century after it was dammed, the Elwha met the sea at a rough cobble shoreline. Today the free-running river has created a wide beach of fine, ashy sand dotted with shrubs that provides habitat for shellfish, beavers, shorebirds, and other creatures. None of the computer models the federal government ran before the project predicted this. “About 3.5 million cubic yards of sediment were plopped here,” McHenry says, “and now we have an estuary ecosystem where there wasn’t one before.”

Not only can young fish make the transition from fresh to salt water, the estuary attracted enough Dungeness crab to support a robust fishery. Just offshore, a long line of floats marking the location of traps runs parallel to the beach. The operation provided an unexpected economic boost.

Of the 1,605 dams toppled nationwide since 1912, the two on the Elwha remain the largest, according to the advocacy organization American Rivers. Some 1,200 have come down in 46 states and the District of Columbia in the two decades after the Interior Department’s Babbitt, who led the agency under President Bill Clinton, made river restoration a priority. In 1999, the Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine, became the first major hydroelectric dam razed by the federal government. The structure, built in 1837 to power bygone grain mills along the Kennebec River, nearly killed off the herring, striped bass, and sturgeon. Today the waterway draws sport fishers, and the city gained a popular riverfront district with a park, pavilion, and kayak and canoe launch.

To keep the momentum going, American Rivers is working with public agencies and private organizations to bring down dozens more dams throughout New England, and restore riparian habitats across the nation. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is considering the future of two dams at St. Anthony Falls, where the Mississippi River flows through Minneapolis. Authorities hope to breach four others on the Klamath River in Northern California within the next few years, a move that would reclaim 300 miles of salmon-spawning habitat.

Major projects like that attract a lot of attention, but the cumulative impact of many more-​modest removal plans could yield equally profound ecological and economic dividends. “You can get a lot of species recovery and some very diverse ecosystem recovery with much-smaller sledgehammers,” Doyle, the Duke University hydrologist, says. Now that the usefulness of these man-made barriers has run its course, it is time to let the rivers they restrain return to theirs.

This story appears in the Spring 2020, Origins issue of Popular Science.

[scootoaster]

America thrived by choking its rivers with dams. Now it’s time to undo the damage.

Dams fueled america’s growth by choking its rivers. Is it time to restore nature’s infrastructure? (Brian Klutch/)

The fish is nearly three feet long, and as it swims unhurriedly past the viewing window in Lower Granite Dam, Theresa Wilson glances up from her knitting. “Chinook,” she says, tapping her computer keyboard once to record its passage. The salmon pauses as if to be admired. Its mottled scales flash as it moves against the current of the Snake River. Then it darts away, bound upstream to the place where it was born.

Salmon and trout are anadromous: They hatch in rivers, spend their lives at sea, then return to their birthplaces to reproduce and die. Here on the Snake in eastern Washington, that means traversing four hydroelectric dams, an arduous undertaking few complete.

The Lower Granite is the last barrier between this chinook and its spawning grounds. It is one of 13 salmon and trout species in the Pacific Northwest that the federal government lists as threatened or endangered. The concrete and steel structure in its way stands 151 feet tall and spans a gorge, its turbines sending froth churning downstream. Clearing the wall requires that a swimmer ascend a spiral structure called a fish ladder to a resting pool, where a viewing portal lets Wilson keep track of them for University of Washington biologists and others monitoring the impact dams have on piscine populations.

According to legend, the Snake brimmed with so many fish when the explorers Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805 that one could walk from bank to bank on their backs. Today the animals pass so rarely that Wilson spends much of her eight-hour shift making socks.

As recently as the middle of the 20th century, nearly 130,000 adult chinook returned to these waters in a single year. Around 10,000 made the journey in 2017, a dip that threatens the health of the river and all it sustains. More than 130 species of insects, birds, fish, and mammals—from bears in the Teton Range to orcas in the Pacific—rely on salmon for food. Even plants and trees benefit, drawing nutrients from their waste and remains.

Across the nation, the scenario repeats. Atlantic sturgeon, once a hallmark of the eastern seaboard, can reach only about half of their historic spawning grounds. Some 40 percent of the 800 or so varieties of freshwater fish in the US, and more than two-thirds of native mussels, are rare or endangered, in part because man-made barriers have altered their ecosystems. Reservoirs disrupt currents, altering water’s velocity and temperature. That can harm its quality and interrupt the reproductive cycles of aquatic creatures. Stanching a river stops the distribution of sediment and the formation of logjams, two things critical to creating healthy habitat. It also eliminates floodplains and natural meanders, both of which prevent the banks from overflowing.

America was shaped by its rivers—more than 250,000 in all—and since Colonial times we have bent them to our will. The Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees dams owned by the federal government, lists more than 90,000 in its national inventory. Tens of thousands more remain unregistered. “Think about that number,” then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt told a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in 1998. “That means we have been building, on average, one large dam a day, every single day, since the Declaration of Independence.” The best of them generate power, facilitate navigation, and slake our thirst. But many, perhaps the majority, are no longer essential.

The falling cost of renewable energy and continued decline of manufacturing renders many of these structures unnecessary. Others require expensive maintenance. Seven in 10 are more than 50 years old and many are falling into disrepair, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which pegs the cost of upgrading the 17 percent it deems a “high hazard” (meaning a failure could kill people downstream) at $45 billion. Overhauling the rest will cost many times that. In response, a growing number of scientists and environmentalists have called for razing dams that are obsolete or dispensable and letting more rivers—nature’s original infrastructure—once again run free.

Many of those advocates consider the Elwha River 50 miles west of Seattle a model. Salmon and trout had all but vanished before the National Park Service breached two dams there in 2014, reviving the waterway and surrounding wilderness with little effect on power supplies. Restoration champions believe the same will happen on the Snake, where they’ve waged a decades-long fight against the Corps, regional politicians, and farmers who argue that the hydroelectric power it generates remains essential and that knocking the system down might not save the animals.

As pressure mounts to “free the Snake,” the Corps and others are considering similar projects nationwide, a trend that could reshape what Duke University hydrologist Martin Doyle calls “our riverine republic.”

“We’re shifting our priorities, and we’re left with this relic landscape that’s no longer applicable,” he says. “Where that legacy infrastructure gets in the way or causes problems, let’s undo it. The future of 80 percent of dams is very questionable, or should be.”

“The future of 80 percent of dams is very questionable, or should be.” - Hydrologist Martin Doyle (Brian Klutch/)

The snake meanders 937 miles from its headwaters in Yellowstone National Park through Idaho (where it remains one of the most unspoiled aquatic habitats in the West) and into Washington. There, it wends another 141 miles across a region called the Palouse—5 million acres of otherworldly dunes and golden wheat fields—before joining the mighty Columbia River.

Bryan Jones grew up here, near a town called Dusty, on land his great-grandfather settled a century-and-a-half ago. The family has always grown wheat, and their farm now covers 640 acres. In a good year, Jones will harvest 18,000 bushels. Washington is the country’s fourth-largest producer of the crop, which we mostly export.

The Army Corps of Engineers built four hydroelectric dams here on the lower Snake River between 1961 and 1975, deepening and widening the channel to accommodate barges headed to Portland, Oregon. “I think we were sold the promise of this new way to ship our grain, and we thought that was a good thing,” Jones says. For years, boats provided a cheaper alternative to trucks and trains. But the locks at Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite dams weren’t the boon many expected, and barging declined as costs rose. Today, less than 3 million tons head downriver each year, a decrease of 26 percent from the industry’s heyday in 2000.

Jones is the rare farmer who favors razing the structures. He can make an economic argument—he believes transport over land makes more financial sense—but at the heart of his opinion lies something simpler: He misses the landscape of his childhood. “All up and down the Snake River there were sandy beaches, and orchards in the riparian area,” he says. “I can remember my grandmother having a table out here in the yard full of boxes and boxes and boxes of peaches. Everything from tomatoes and green beans, and beets and beans. There were melons, alfalfa fields.” He also recalls the abundant wildlife. Much of it is gone now, flooded by the reservoirs between the dams, he says.

So too are most of the fish. All four salmon and steelhead species found in the Snake are classified as threatened or endangered—a trend seen throughout the Pacific Northwest, where the US government manages 31 dams. Their decline prompted President Jimmy Carter to sign a law in 1980 authorizing Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to develop a plan for saving them. The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal nonprofit that sells electricity generated by the dams, has spent an average of $220 million per year on habitat restoration and hatcheries since 2007. It has also given an average of $77 million annually to the Corps and other agencies, helping finance what Corps spokesman Joe Saxon calls “the world’s most advanced fish passage systems.” Spillway weirs and ladders, both of which resemble water-park slides, help guide the animals over each dam. Workers pump small juveniles, called smolts, out of collection pools and into trucks and barges that carry them downriver. Cooling systems maintain reservoir temperatures to protect the creatures. Saxon says more than 99 percent of adults and 95 to 100 percent of youngsters survive the trip past the structures.

But those numbers reveal only part of the picture. Critics often characterize such claims as “akin to dropping a goldfish from a 100-floor skyscraper, seeing it is still alive at floor 75, and concluding it’s OK,” says Helen Neville, head scientist at the advocacy organization Trout Unlimited. Dams and reservoirs tax migratory fish by altering their route to and from the sea. This is especially hazardous for smolts. Rather than riding a swift, cold current downstream, they spend time and energy navigating the warmer, slower water of a reservoir, where they face greater odds of becoming something’s dinner. Should they escape unscathed, a 2014 study by the US Fish and Wildlife Service found that reaching the ocean takes youngsters an average of two weeks longer than it did before the dams went up. The same analysis shows the added stress kills nearly 1 in 4 migrating fish. Those that live to see the Pacific face threats there too, of course. All told, in recent years, fewer than 1 percent of juveniles that made it to the ocean have returned upstream to spawn. Before the Corps built all that hydroelectric infrastructure, the rate was 6 percent; biologists consider 2 percent sufficient to maintain a sustainable population. “They are truly straddling extinction,” Neville says.

That prompted 55 scientists from throughout the US to sign a letter in October 2019 calling for the demolition of the structures. They base their plea on five federal court rulings since 1994 directing dam and waterway managers to consider additional measures to protect the wildlife and take a closer look at removal. (The Fish Passage Center, funded by Bonneville Power to monitor piscine populations, has said breaching could quadruple the number of salmon returning to spawn.) The agencies involved must complete a court-ordered environmental-impact study—the latest of many—in 2020, but it probably won’t end the debate. Many farmers, fearing a rail monopoly, don’t want to lose the barges, and some regional politicians join the Corps in arguing against doing away with an energy source that, running at full-tilt, could power a city the size of Seattle. Currently, though, the dams provide just 4.3 percent of the region’s power.

Dismantling the structures might be the most cost-effective option. Each of the 24 turbines in the lower Snake system has exceeded its 50-year life span. The Corps signed a $115 million contract in 2016 to install three at Ice Harbor Dam. Meanwhile, the region’s hydropower prices have climbed 30 percent since 2008, making Bonneville Power electricity more expensive than juice from other sources. A 2018 study by the NW Energy Coalition, an alliance of 100 public and private entities, found that solar, wind, and natural-gas generation could provide the same backup reserve, and building the needed infrastructure would add just $2 to customers’ monthly utility bills.

Political will for removal appears to be intensifying. In April 2019, US Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho called for a serious look at it, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation allocating $750,000 to study how best to assist communities that would be affected by the dams’ elimination.

In addition to the threat posed by dams, anadromous fish face an existential threat from climate change. In 2015, high water temperatures killed 96 percent of the Snake’s returning sockeye salmon. But those who favor breaching the barriers agree that unleashing the river will cool the water, create more spawning habitat, and give the imperiled creatures better odds of survival. And that, they say, can only help the Snake overall. “I hope those dams come down,” Jones says. “I’d love to see it in my lifetime. Every species that can get to the river and catch a fish is going to thrive.”

Mike McHenry’s soggy Belgian Malinois, Ginger, stands at the edge of the Elwha River in western Washington, whining softly. He holds her back from a pool where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny salmon fry shimmer in the sunlight. They are just a few months old, and before long, they will begin their journey to the sea. McHenry releases the dog, and she bounds into the water. The wee fish scatter.

McHenry has spent more than three decades as a biologist and habitat manager with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Their ancestral land has been radically reshaped since the removal of two hydroelectric dams allowed the river to run unfettered for the first time in more than a century.

The waterway begins in a snowfield high in the Olympic Mountains and flows 45 miles north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. For millennia, the river ran thick with salmon and trout. As many as 400,000 adult chinook, coho, and other species returned annually to spawn, making it one of the richest anadromous fish habitats in the nation.

That changed in 1910, when the Olympic Power Company erected the Elwha Dam to power timber and pulp mills in nearby Port Angeles. In 1927, it built another, called Glines Canyon, 8 miles upstream of the first. Beyond flooding Klallam religious sites and a verdant floodplain, the structures, which lacked fish passages, reduced spawning grounds to the river’s first 5 miles. Salmon populations plummeted in response. During the 20th century’s waning years, the system produced a negligible amount of electricity—​about half the energy requirements of a single local mill—and its owners had decided that making it more fish-friendly was too expensive. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed a bill authorizing the Interior Department to buy the dams for $29.5 million, tear them down, and restore the habitat.

The National Park Service spent almost two decades planning the $350 million project. The biggest challenge was managing the immense amount of sediment: Some 33 million tons of silt, gravel, and rock littered the two reservoirs. A free-flowing river moves a lot of earth; letting it all go at once would wreak havoc downstream. Work started in 2008 with construction of a treatment plant to filter the Port Angeles water supply. Beginning in 2011, crews partially drained the lakes and slowly emptied them by dismantling the barriers in 10- to 20-foot sections using a crane and a barge-​mounted excavator. The final chunks of concrete and steel fell in 2014.

That done, the Park Service worked with the tribe on the agency’s second-​​largest habitat-​​restoration project ever. Biologists, botanists, and volunteers planted tens of thousands of indigenous trees, grasses, and other plants on floodplains denuded by the reservoirs. Salmon and trout ventured upstream within months. Still, officials augmented their meager numbers with animals raised in hatcheries. Although the water remained cloudy for more than two years, the dirt and gravel eventually settled, creating sandbars, beaches, and a vast estuary at the river’s mouth near Port Angeles.

Researchers snorkeling the length of the Elwha in 2018 counted 15,000 steelhead trout, about twice as many as a decade before. Otters have followed the fish upstream. Birds and large fauna like deer and bears, which had dwindled alongside anadromous species, have reappeared in unprecedented numbers. The floodplain, rejuvenated by all that nutrient-rich sediment and new growth, teems with life, and logjams—​some created by the river, others by McHenry and his team—​provide refuge for smolts. He points out elk droppings among the alder trees, and a salmon carcass hauled ashore by a predator.

Removing the dams inarguably revitalized this riparian zone. Restoring the habitat, McHenry says, did more than save the fish. It also created a natural defense against flooding, opened the river to greater recreational opportunities (federal and tribal officials will consider allowing salmon fishing in 2021), and resurrected woodlands and shorefront. “Damming a river’s about the most egregious thing you can do if you want to mess it up,” he says. “You can argue there are services you get out of that. But at least in this part of the world, and, I guess, in my value system, I think the services a wild river offers way exceed damming it.”

For more than a century after it was dammed, the Elwha met the sea at a rough cobble shoreline. Today the free-running river has created a wide beach of fine, ashy sand dotted with shrubs that provides habitat for shellfish, beavers, shorebirds, and other creatures. None of the computer models the federal government ran before the project predicted this. “About 3.5 million cubic yards of sediment were plopped here,” McHenry says, “and now we have an estuary ecosystem where there wasn’t one before.”

Not only can young fish make the transition from fresh to salt water, the estuary attracted enough Dungeness crab to support a robust fishery. Just offshore, a long line of floats marking the location of traps runs parallel to the beach. The operation provided an unexpected economic boost.

Of the 1,605 dams toppled nationwide since 1912, the two on the Elwha remain the largest, according to the advocacy organization American Rivers. Some 1,200 have come down in 46 states and the District of Columbia in the two decades after the Interior Department’s Babbitt, who led the agency under President Bill Clinton, made river restoration a priority. In 1999, the Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine, became the first major hydroelectric dam razed by the federal government. The structure, built in 1837 to power bygone grain mills along the Kennebec River, nearly killed off the herring, striped bass, and sturgeon. Today the waterway draws sport fishers, and the city gained a popular riverfront district with a park, pavilion, and kayak and canoe launch.

To keep the momentum going, American Rivers is working with public agencies and private organizations to bring down dozens more dams throughout New England, and restore riparian habitats across the nation. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is considering the future of two dams at St. Anthony Falls, where the Mississippi River flows through Minneapolis. Authorities hope to breach four others on the Klamath River in Northern California within the next few years, a move that would reclaim 300 miles of salmon-spawning habitat.

Major projects like that attract a lot of attention, but the cumulative impact of many more-​modest removal plans could yield equally profound ecological and economic dividends. “You can get a lot of species recovery and some very diverse ecosystem recovery with much-smaller sledgehammers,” Doyle, the Duke University hydrologist, says. Now that the usefulness of these man-made barriers has run its course, it is time to let the rivers they restrain return to theirs.

This story appears in the Spring 2020, Origins issue of Popular Science.

[emotionalfister-writing]

Fterotós

Chapter 1

I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in the shed but my curiosity had gotten the best of me. I walked up to the rotting wood doors and wrenched them open. Instantly I was hit in the face by a cloud of dust. I let out a loud cough and swiped at the air. I took a look in and gasped, it was beautiful.

Natural light streamed through the stained windows, illuminating the glass bottles on the neatly organized shelves. Slowly I walked in. Everything was in perfect condition, just dusty. It made sense, no one had been in the workshed since dad died.

My dad used to be a woodworker, until he was involved in a shop fire at his work. I was three years old. I don’t remember much about him, so I live with him through stories.

My mother used to tell these hilarious stories about his work and life. One time he had spent all night on a little carving he wanted to give to my mom on her anniversary. She begged him to get to bed but he wouldn’t tell her why he was staying up. She eventually snuck into the workshop and got a glimpse at the most amazing present she had ever seen, a carving of him and her at their wedding.

Now it sits on a shelf above my mothers bed, and I can totally agree, its beautiful.

I stand here in his workshed and I see how beautiful this place is. I walked in a circle, examining the mason jars full of tools and the decorations in the room. Slowly I sat on his bench, and I felt a wave of grief. I stood up and dusted off the bench.

“I miss you dad...”

I turned to look at some of his carvings. One caught my eye, it was a crow perched on a wolf’s back. The crows wings were very detailed and the wolf was beautifully shaped. I picked it up and spun it around. It was about the size of my palm.

“Fterotós! Dinner!” My mom called from the open kitchen window.

Quickly I pocketed the little carving and yelled “Coming mom!”.

I shut the shed door and jogged back to the house.

Me and my mother lived in a small, blue, one-story house. Our backyard was large and my mother had a bountiful vegetable garden. I liked picking tomatoes and snacking on them during the day.

We lived in a small town called Cedar with a elementary and high school, but I had been homeschooled since I was four.

I walked in the door and sat the table.

“Hey, wash up.”

“Oh yeah!” I got up and washed my hands at the sink. We were having my favorite, Chicken and Cheese Pasta; a family recipe.

She was at the stove, flipping chicken onto plates. My mother was the sweetest person I knew. She had very black hair and bright green eyes, just like me; except my hair was short and really curly.

I piled my food onto a plate and sat down. It smelled absolutely delicious.

“So bud, how you ready for school?” My mom asked me.

“Im a little nervous but excited...”

“Being nervous just means you care, its a good thing. Im sure you’ll do great.”

“I just... no one but you has ever seen...”

“I know.”

Now I want you to think about something, imagine you have giant birds wings. They might be fluffy or slick, long or short, light or dark, just imagine. Now imagine never knowing anyone else with these wings, except for the rare exception of less than 0.01 of the population. /Now/ imagine having to lug those things around everywhere you go, not being able to hide these giant, heavy backpacks of feathers.

Yeah, well thats me; and don’t even get me started on baths.

See, I was born with wings. It’s a very rare, recessive trait that only less than 0.01 percent of the population of the world have.

My wings allow me to fly at least, because my wings are jet black crows wings. Other people, like Jeane Collins or Marcus Lane have different wings. Jeane Collins was the first person to ever have hummingbird wings, and they are beautiful. Marcus Lane has giant eagle wings and he can do amazing flying.

But I don’t think wings are terrible. I can literally go anywhere, just at the cost of my breath.

Plus, I had to teach myself to use these things. Just guess how many times I fell out of trees and into lakes... too many.

This is why I was homeschooled. My mom wanted me to go to a public school but I refused, I didn’t want to be known because of my wings unlike other celebrities. The only times I went flying was when I was in the woods or it was nighttime.

Tomorrow I’m starting high school, and I’m fearing for my life.

Im pretty quiet and shy, and these wings are gonna draw ALL the attention to me... great.

We’ve talked to the principal and all the teachers and they’ve made accommodations for me, now I feel like a bother.

I decided I needed to go for a fly to relieve the stress.

I quickly ate my food and washed my plate.

“Hey mom, I’m gonna go out, ok?”

“Thats fine, be back by eight. You’re gonna need a shower and a goodnight sleep.”

“Sure thing!” I said, walking out the door.

I walked across the yard and bent knees. I spread my wings and... flew.

I flew over trees and creeks. I rose up to the clouds and let go, plummeting towards the earth. I released my wings just in time to glide over the river and to the farm fields.

I slowed down and landed in a wheat field in the center of a large clearing. I spotted a nearby barn and flapped my wings so I could get on top.

I placed my feet down onto the tin, which made a soft “ting” sound, alerting the birds on the gablets. Although they were surprised they didn’t fly.

Birds weren’t really bothered by me unless I bothered them, so I’d just ignore them and be on my way.

I sat down and look towards the west. The sun was setting over the trees. The field glowed with its light.

I relaxed onto the roof. That’s when I noticed something... large moving at the edge of the clearing.

I sat up and tried to make out the figure. It wasn’t human, it looked more like a bear... no a dog. A wolf! It was a wolf? Whats a wolf doing in Cedar?

I stared closer and it looked at me. I jumped up and began to panic. Was it going to hurt me?!

It looked at me with its eyes... its bright, amber eyes. Than it turned and bounded back into the woods.

I stood there, on the roof of this barn, frozen for what felt like forever. I still couldn’t comprehend what I had just saw.

I turned towards the town and took off, flying back home.

[Authors Note: This is my favorite peice, and it’s only chapter one. Hope you enjoyed! Questions and Comments welcome!]

[dawnajaynes32]

HOW Design Live 2017: A Recap (Part 2)

Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a full recap of HOW Design Live by Maureen Adamo. Check out Part 1 here.

HOWies, as conference attendees call themselves, share a language designers really don’t get to use all that often. Creative folks can work a little to get some of the design-speak to rub off in client communications, or maybe help a significant other understand a frustration with the Google clip art they used to make the logo for their Meetup group. Though there’s always a ceiling there, and you can really only expect a fellow designer to dig into the conversation about why you never ever use that typeface.

The HOW Design Live 2017 conference presented designers with a chance to use that language in a dialogue largely focused on four themes: honesty or authenticity, seduction or the role that love plays in communication, change and the technologies that can revolutionize design in the coming years, and the boldness designers can bring to their work and life to create bigger impact in the areas that matter to them.

Thursday

Design Thinking is Bullsh*t

Natasha Jen, Pentagram

“The ultimate operating system will be our minds.”

OK, so, as someone who’s dabbled in work with startups and played around the think-speak that comes with the territory, I admit there have been aspects of the design thinking philosophy that felt pretty good on the surface. Like, finally, people are beginning to see design is more than a pretty face! But there’s always been this tiny bit of unease with it that I couldn’t really pin down, and Natasha Jen helped put that to rest.

Design thinking is not design. It sounds a lot like it, though, with the ‘d’ word right at the beginning, so the confusion is understandable. Have you ever tried to ferret out the actual definition? It’s incredibly self-referential and circular and Natasha Jen throws out all the cliches and bywords that never communicate anything concrete: solutions, alignment, co-creation, traction, ideation, deep design (???), radical innovation and user outcomes, among others. Design thinking, she says, is literally trying to think like a designer. “Design thinking packages a designer’s way of thinking for non-designers in a strict methodology so that anyone can solve design problems.” 

Jen goes on to say that real designers surround themselves with evidence, since they’re always studying artifact and interaction. She says design is too complex to be distilled into a single methodology, and goes on to imagine some pretty radical futures for what design looks like when it’s actually designed, forecasting that the next great interface will be no interface.

5 Things Keeping You from Being a Great Creative Director

David Lesué, Workfront 

“‘A’ players hire ‘A’ players; ‘B’ players hire ‘C’ players.”

David Lesué immediately apologized for the assumptions baked into his conference title. A) Who says you’re not already a great creative director? And who says he can tell you how to be a better one? B) It’s not really what he meant to say anyway. A more accurate description for his talk, he said, would be something like “Five misconceptions about being a creative director and five replacement beliefs.” It’s not as sexy, but it’s real.

With such a straightforward premise, the question begs to be answered. What are these misconceptions and beliefs?

Great work speaks for itself
 Lesué says not so, that all work needs translation. Clients won’t naturally understand the work, because it wasn’t made for them, it was made for their audience. Concepts and ideas need to be explained so clients won’t pass on the best solution because it doesn’t feel right to them.

Process kills creativity
 Think this instead: Just enough process unlocks creativity. You can figure out how to automate what he called the “roadie work,” the drudge production and organizational tasks, with good habits (like consistent file naming and project/task intake) and task management so that you have more time to pursue higher level thought.

It’s my job to the best
 Nope, it’s your job to make your team better. You can’t be afraid to hire people who show more skill as a designer, or a whatever, than you have. The focus as a creative director is on building the best possible team.

The client is always right
 High five, yeah? Instead of deferring to clients indiscriminately, Lesué says you get what you put up with and that you’re constantly training clients on how you’d like to be treated. An example: Lesue’s team works in a consistent cadence, so clients are familiar enough with the group’s flow to know any project requests have to be made ahead of their weekly planning session to make it into the schedule in a timely fashion.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right
 Instead of sweating every last detail of every project that hits your desk, be uncompromising when it matters. Another example: Lesué doesn’t ask his team to hit home runs with they’re asked to clean up the company dodge ball team logos that have been designed by other departments.

How to Cheat: Creative Domination Through Villainy

Stefan Mumaw

“We’re given a box to work in. We must learn to circumvent the rules and cheat.”

Stefan Mumaw donned a black ensemble, complete with mustache and eye patch to teach designers how to be wickedly creative. He presented three steps, with exercises. First, you need to think like a villain. “Villains know the rules so well, they know how to get around them.” Second, you should live in the leading, which can be translated as, “What does the creative brief not say we can’t do?” And third, you need to understand the end game. A simple way to cut to the heart of a project’s goal is to ask “Why?” And Stefan suggests asking it three times. When you get to the third answer, you’re probably dealing with the really important objectives and the hows and whats you started with can then be bent to your evil designs.

Make What’s Important to You Important to Others

Jeff Greenspan

“We need to steal back, and we need to steal everything.”

Jeff Greenspan was tired of the media monotone and lack of good questions around the Edward Snowden issue. He decided to create a conversation the media could pick up on by installing a 400-pound bust of the outlaw on top of a park monument. We, too, can provoke debate over issues that matter to us. Though Greenspan highly recommends you have a lawyer on standby; the guerrilla installation almost landed the stunt’s co-creators in jail.

Using his training in advertising and communications, Greenspan launched other projects — some with less serious ramifications to his freedom — to continue to challenge assumptions prevalent in mainstream conversation, including issues of privacy and white-collar crime, with art. (Not all his work of such enormous gravity, he’s also the originator of the Hipster Trap.)

When attempting cultural subversion on your own, Greenspan says you need to be clear about your project’s goals and not be beholden to how you think events will unfold. Some things will fall into place in fortuitous happenstance, as he described in his Snowden project, that would have been impossible to plan for and can strengthen your statement if you’re able to go with the flow.

Friday

Speak to be Heard: Communicating Your Best Ideas

Eleanor Handley

“We come into the world knowing how to use ourselves, and somewhere along the way we constrict ourselves.”

You’re already good at communicating. You just forgot how to do it. Kind of like how we were born weird and open and passionate and creative, and then life happened and we pretended to be different people. To help us start using our voices again, Eleanor Handley reminds us that how we sound is more important than what we say — a concept any Eddie Izzard fan would be familiar with.

Spoken communication is more physical than we allow for and she offers three rules: It comes from using more of ourselves, not less (don’t confuse being authentic with being small), great communication comes from focusing more on the other person, and you do not need to feel confident to project confidence. So there’s no reason to delay your public speaking career until you feel like a big enough badass, ok?

Handley says since we have most control over what we do, more so than being able to stop a particular thought or feeling in the moment it happens, we can work to improve communication with specific actions and habits. Do some deep breathing exercises before a presentation, make sure to warm up your vocal cords (you can pretend you’re talking into a cell phone to sneak this into your schedule, if you need), and remember to pause anywhere there is a natural stop in your speech, like periods or commas between lengthy phrases. The silence isn’t as long as it feels like it is to you, and it gives you a moment to breathe and think about the words that come next.

Saturday

Master the Art of Seduction

Pum Lefebure, Design Army

“Pum, don’t think of yourself as a designer. Think like a seducer.”

As a perfectionist in recovery, it took me a while to realize how true it is that our vulnerability is what allows us to connect. So, I was immediately pulled into Pum Lebefure’s talk when she described a scene in which she was watching an H&M ad she created and acted in. She was gazing into her own giant face on the glowing screens in Times Square, then looked at everyone around her and realized, “Nobody cares!”

The market is beyond noisy, so she told herself she needed to launch an all-out campaign of seduction. She says the journey to purchase has now become the journey to fall in love and brands should learn how to flirt, romance and seduce, because consumers are looking for more than a happy transaction. When it’s done, she says, good design has to entice all the senses.

Change. Change. Change.

Alina Wheeler

“He was always leaving the earth, always going other places.”

An obsession with David Bowie is a unique kind of gift, especially when you’ve studied the man and the magician to the extent Alina Wheeler has. The session she presented was an electrifying homage to his genius and his legacy, imparting his life and art as one who has gone before to show us the way. The musically-punctuated presentation rocked through Bowie’s many personas, encouraging designers to become masters of their image, inviting the continual reinvention of identity and passions. Possibilities are endless, Wheeler and Bowie say, and nobody does it alone. Build creative collaborations, and use them as fuel for your own fires. Always keep moving and know when to come, know when it’s time to go. And because the legend made what he loved up until he knew it was time to go, he lived it well: “It’s never too late to become what you could have been.”

What Happens Next

David Carson

“If you want kid art, have a kid do it.”

I wish I knew for sure what David Carson thought was next. I heard his presentation went 45 minutes over time, and I had to duck out at the 15-minutes-over mark. Without having the benefit of that last half hour or so, it seems the thru-line of his commentary, as he playfully walked through slides on his extremely unorganized laptop, was about the honesty, transparency and humor with which he does his work — which is also the way he seems to view the world. He shared found art he had captured and unabashedly enjoyed (a wide array of visual puns and tomfoolery) as well as his advice on how designers might have careers as long and illustrious as his (comparison mine). Every image was perfectly captured with philosophical design epigrams: 

“It’s important to put things where they don’t obviously want to go.”

“Just do it, but don’t always center it.”

“Never snap to guides.”

“My Helvetica poster was done in Franklin Gothic.”

And some of his direction was a little more … direct:

“Be open to things you’re not expecting while you’re working.”

“Don’t mistake legibility for communication.”

“The time you spend on the work is proportional to the time consumers will spend with it.”

It was especially amusing, as I listened to him describe his pieces, to remember all the conversations I’ve had in which the desired outcome was essentially the reverse-engineering of something David Carson has done. And when you hear Carson talk about his process and how he arrives at his destination, it’s just not possible to do what he does backwards, sideways, bent over or upside down. What he does is who he is, and that’s essentially what he’s asked us to do, too. Carson asks us to put ourselves in the work and get more personal. He says, “Nobody can pull from who you are like you can.”

Closing

This year was amazing and was again so much more than I could absorb with one set of eyes and ears. The Draplin pop-up shop returned to the exhibit hall mid-day Thursday to much fervor and excitement. The whole HOW community banded together to make sure Justin Ahren’s Wheels4Water fundraising campaign exceeded the week’s $10,000 goal, providing clean water for more than 250 Ugandans for life.

And when it comes to the big ideas, the message to take home, it seems like thoughts on strategy and technique, seats at the table (though we still want those, please), ROI, etc., were upstaged by a not-too-overwhelming, but sincere plea. At varying degrees of intensity, the experts, design leaders and visionaries I could cram into five exhilarating days of reconnection, was for more. Our design leaders and legends want more from us. They’re asking designers to be the more that we want to be. The more that has a voice, the more that gives and shares and grows, the more that boldly goes into the future designers are innately equipped to know how to get to when things get complicated. At the very least, it’s a vivid enough dream to wake us every day for the next year with the question, “What would be great? What would be amazing?”

The post HOW Design Live 2017: A Recap (Part 2) appeared first on HOW Design.

HOW Design Live 2017: A Recap (Part 2) syndicated post

[theevilglasses]

Crowds

By Marshall Bowles

           Concerts. Michelle and I loved going to them. The swaying of human bodies jammed together trying to get as close as possible to the stage, everyone hoping to capture some of the magic made by the musicians. Michelle and I were always there, side-by-side, our sweat and breath mingling with the rest of the people around us. The music itself didn't matter: country, rock, pop, metal. It was about the people around us and the energy we all created together.

           Before each show, she would look up to me with her big blue eyes and say, "Promise that you won't leave my side."

           And I would say, "I swear. I'll never let you go." Then I would kiss her forehead.

           Michelle was funny, pretty, and she laughed at my jokes, but she wasn't perfect. She had it rough growing up. Her father wasn't around, and her mother was the queen of verbal abuse. Michelle started using alcohol to cope when she was in high school, and she was twenty when she had her first DUI. By the time we met she was sober, mostly.

           She fell off the wagon four days before she disappeared. It was a Wednesday, and I came home from work to find the front door of our rental house unlocked and cracked open. A trail of clothes led from the foyer to the bedroom, where I found her naked and passed out on top of the covers. An empty bottle of vodka sat on the bedside table.

           When she woke I hugged her and she started crying. "My mom called me today."

           "Are you ok?" I said, gritting my teeth. Michelle's mother was a worthless old witch.

           "She asked me for money," Michelle said. "But I told her I wasn't going to give it to her anymore." She leaned into me and I could feel her tears on my neck. "She said she should have gotten rid of me before I was born."

           I held her like that for a long time, gently rubbing her hair. Her tears dried up, and she leaned back and looked into my eyes. "I'm so, so sorry, Mike. I needed a drink and I couldn't fight it. Do you hate me?"

           "Shh," I said and pulled her closer. "I love you. I'm not going anywhere."

           I took off the rest of the week from work to spend time with her. By Saturday, she was smiling brightly like she normally did. "Are you sure you still want to go?" I said. We had tickets to see Blink 182 that night.

           "Yeah," she said. She hugged me tight around my waist and pressed her head to my chest. "Thank you," she said softly.

           The concert was in an old warehouse that had been converted into a music hall and bar. Michelle and I got there an hour early, and we posted up right in front of the stage, waiting for the show to begin. Something in the air made me a little uneasy, but I couldn't place it. Michelle sensed my mood. "You okay?" she said.

           "I don't know," I said, looking around the room. "Something doesn't feel right."

           "Hey," Michelle said, smiling at me with her sparkling eyes. "Promise you won't leave my side."

           I smiled and kissed her forehead. "I'll never let you go."

           The room filled up while the opening act played, and it was packed by the time Blink took the stage. My discomfort only grew worse, and I felt the odd detachment from reality that only comes from dreams. The air turned thick and heavy, like I was swimming in mud. The people around us pressed in too close, and the music was wrong. Every song was in a minor key.

           I kept watching Michelle out of the corner of my eye. She was singing and dancing as always. My impulse was to drag her outside to where it was quiet and safe, but I didn't. I was just being crazy, and I didn't want to ruin her night. I held onto her hand tightly, keeping her close to me.

           Then Blink launched into the signature guitar riff of their song "What's My Age Again?" The crowd went insane, their screams louder than at any other time so far that night. Then time seemed to slow down. The music and voices blurred together and faded like they were far away. The bright lights of the stage were gone, and the ceiling was shrouded in darkness.

           Something slammed into me from behind. I stumbled forward against the sweaty back of a guy in front of me, and I fell down on one knee. My arm was twisted back behind me at a weird angle because I wouldn't let go of Michelle. Somewhere deep down I knew that I had to hold on to her.

           Michelle yanked my arm and I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. I almost lost my grip, and she squeezed so hard I thought my fingers would break. I turned to look at her, but I couldn't understand what I saw. In my face was the chest and shoulders of a man's torso, dressed in a pale blue tank top. His neck extended out, and instead of a face, it was fused into the hip joint of someone else.

           I was surrounded by a clump of body parts that melted together like candle wax. A leg connected to a chest at the knee. A shoulder turned into a hip, and the skin color smoothly faded from one part to the next. Portions of clothing were mixed into the mass, fused to each other in the same random way as the bodies. Nowhere in the mix could I see a face.

           "Mike! Help me!" Michelle screamed. The jumble of bodies between us blocked my view. Her hand was slipping out of mine, and something was pulling her away.

           "I'm coming!" I said. I punched with my free hand, hitting any and every thing. I rammed my shoulder at the torso in my way. Its skin and muscle absorbed my blows like firm pillows, but it didn't move. I placed my foot on a hairy knee growing out of a neck and craned up to look over.

           Michelle was on the other side, desperately clinging to my hand. The mass of bodies behind her bent together to form some kind of tunnel close to the ground. One of Michelle's legs stretched back into that hole, like something had her, but it was too dark down there to see.

           Michelle looked up and our eyes met. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Don't let me go."

           A slender, gray tentacle emerged from the darkness of the tunnel. It snaked up around Michelle's waist. She looked down when she felt it wrapping around her and screamed. I pulled on her hand with all my strength, but it was pointless. In one swift motion, the tentacle yanked Michelle away and down in the darkness.

           "No!" I yelled. I crawled over the bodies toward the hole, punching the flesh in my path. In my haste, I put my foot in the wrong spot and slipped, falling face first into the floor. I blacked out for just a moment, and when I opened my eyes four guys were holding me down on the floor. One of them had a bloody nose.

           "Get off of me," I yelled. I struggled against them, but I couldn't move. They held me down until two huge bouncers arrived, and I was hauled kicking and screaming into the alley behind the building. "You have to let me back in," I said. "Something took my girlfriend."

           The cops showed up and I tried to tell them what happened, but of course they didn't believe me. Who would? They figured I got drugged out of my mind, started attacking people at the concert, and that Michelle must have ditched me. They locked me up for the night. I wanted to believe them. What I saw wasn't possible. I convinced myself that the cops were right, and I held onto the thought that it was all just a bad dream.

           I got out the next day and took a bus home, but Michelle wasn't there. All of my calls went to her voicemail, and she didn't answer any of my texts. I went back to the police station and tried to file a missing person's report, but they just threatened to lock me back up again. I grew more desperate with each passing day. When the cops finally realized that Michelle was actually missing, they pegged me as the main suspect. But with no evidence and no leads, they finally gave up and quit looking.

           The most important person in my world was gone. I quit showing up to work and eventually got my termination notice in the mail. My days were spent in the apartment staring at the empty places where Michelle should have been. Her head resting on the pillow on her side of the bed. Michelle standing in my way in front of the sink when we were both trying to get ready in the morning.

           One day I got a good look at myself in the mirror. I had not shaved in weeks, and I couldn't remember the last time I showered. Michelle would have been disappointed in the sad sack that I became. Then I felt a burning anger rising up from my gut. Something took her from me, some monster killed her. I made a promise to myself that I would find out what it was, and I would kill it.

           For two years I combed through every missing persons report I could find, looking for anything remotely similar to what happened to her. The details were always sketchy, and I had to do a lot of reading between the lines. I believed the key was to focus on cases of people who suddenly disappeared in crowded, public spaces.

           I emailed a woman in Seattle who lost her boyfriend during an environmental protest. He was a former heroin addict who was working hard to get clean. They were standing together on the street holding signs. She looked away for a moment, and he was gone when she turned around. She never saw him again.

           There were others. A guy in Kentucky lost his brother while they were at the track, betting on the races. A man's teenage son disappeared from beside him in the stands at a college football game. A woman's mother vanished at a country music concert. A man's husband was taken from him in Times Square on New Year's Eve.

           All of the victims were addicts at one point, but they had beaten their habits. In the days right before they disappeared, each one of them had relapsed. It always happened in a public place with plenty of potential witnesses who never saw anything. With that theory, I came up with a plan.

           I volunteered at a rehab facility, and that's where I met Chelsea. She was a recovering meth addict, emotionally vulnerable, and in desperate need of a boyfriend. She slept with me the same night we met, and we started dating right away. She was the perfect bait.

           She relapsed in the second month we were dating. I found her at the apartment of one of her trashy friends. She was tweaked out of her mind. Chelsea fought against me, but I hauled her out of there and told her it was for her own good. I locked her in my bedroom for two days.

           She actually thanked me when I let her out. I felt a pang of guilt, but I brushed it aside. Chelsea was my key to finding out what happened to Michelle. As a "reward" for her being so strong, I bought tickets to an EDM concert that weekend. She was really into that kind of crap.

           On that Friday night, we stood in a crowd of people jammed close together near the stage. They were scantily clad, sweaty, and dancing with the rhythm of deep base coming from the speakers. I held onto Chelsea's hand tightly, and she looked at me and smiled. She yelled something to me over the music. I think it was, "I love you."

           It happened when the main act, Vorpal Geyser, came on stage. The crowd went wild, and everything started moving in slow motion. I looked around and saw that I was no longer surrounded by people. They had been replaced by the mass of body parts melted together. I still held Chelsea's hand, but she was being pulled away. I dropped to my knees, rammed my shoulders into the creature, and crawled across the concrete floor following Chelsea as she was pulled away.

           My hand touched something soft. It was a bicep, and at the crook of the elbow it connected to an ankle. I was in a tunnel made of disjointed body parts of the creature. It was dark, and I could barely see Chelsea's face even though I still held her hand. She screamed for help, but her voice sounded so far away.

           What was I doing? This was madness. I should have never allowed myself to go this far, using another human being as bait. Even though I couldn't see them, I knew there were tentacles wrapped around Chelsea. I tried to pull her back anyway, but just like with Michelle, she was snatched out of my grasp.

           I followed, scrambling down the tunnel until it ended in a steep drop at the edge of a giant cavern. The walls stretched away into the distance, every surface made of writhing human parts. A pale mist hung in the air below, obscuring the ground. The stalk of a giant gray mushroom rose out of the mist. It was as thick and as tall as a skyscraper, and its surface was covered in small twitching white specks.

           Chelsea was carried through the air by a long tentacle that grew directly out of the mushroom stalk. She was beyond my help now, and I could only listen to her faint screams. The tentacle pulled her into the main body of the mushroom creature. She kicked and slapped the surface, but her hands and feet stuck to it like hot tar.

           The mushroom skin oozed over Chelsea, absorbing her until only her face remained. Her skin slowly turned to the same gray color as the mushroom stalk, and only her eyes remained. Oh god, those eyes. All of the tiny, flitting specks covering the creature were human eyes.

           Then out of the thousands covering the monster, I was drawn to one pair of deep blue eyes. Michelle. She saw me, and I could sense that she recognized me. In that moment I felt her pain and fear, and the weight of the lost life that we would never share. She was trapped in eternal torment with no hope of redemption. I screamed.

           Her eyes looked at me with a sense of urgency. She wanted me to go, to get away from this hellish place and back to safety. I looked at her one last time and mouthed the words, "I love you." Then I turned away like a coward and crawled out. The tunnel shrank as I went, the walls closing in and threatening to crush me. I wormed my way out through the last few feet, the exit by then barely wider than my shoulders.

           I fell out onto the concrete floor back in the real world, my empty heart beating from the exertion. Vorpal Geyser launched into another song. I knelt there on the floor and cried. It would have been better if Michelle was dead. I wished I was dead. Someone eventually grabbed my arm and guided me out of the crowd.

           I tore my rotator cuff holding onto Chelsea, although I didn't feel it at the time. The doctor gave me a prescription for Vicodin to help with the pain, and it was easy to keep taking it even after I was physically recovered. I wanted it to help me forget, to take away the emotional pain. It took me a year to quit.

           I should feel guilty for what I did to Chelsea—and I do, a little—but mostly my thoughts are consumed with Michelle. I can't stop seeing her tormented eyes, my beautiful girlfriend absorbed as part of that creature. I promised I would never leave her side.

           Mary is a single mother of two, and she's never broken a rule in her life. We met online and started dating not long after. Earlier this week, I intentionally relapsed using the bottle of Vicodin I had secretly stashed away. Mary took off work and stayed with me for a couple of days to make sure I got clean.

           We're going to a concert this weekend.