#i almost put q legal trouble or something like that

[xomoosexo]

was this on your future-predicting bingo ?

NO BECAUSE I WANTED TO KEEP IT POSITIVE 😭😭😭😭😭😭 I was thinking it though... I was tempted but wanted to keep it munchy focused 😭

[itisannak]

The Dr. Angel Face Q&A Inventory

. Fetish / Heat / Heat Extended / Dr. Angel Face

Hi loves. SInce I have been getting many questions regarding the Dr. Angel Face fic, I decided to put every question in this inventory.   The questions have a link for the original asks (in the ones that there is no hyperlink, it is because they were part of the previous question.) I will add questions as they come in the future, so the list is going to be updated in the future.

How old is Dr. (Y/L/N)? Is she older than Calum? She was a child prodigy and graduated early (kinda like Maggie Pierce from Grey’s Anatomy). But she is definitely older than Calum. They met while she was in her final year as a resident and they’ve been together ever since. Now she is an attending, so it means she is in her late 20′s (for Dr. Angel Face, I wrote her to be around 28-29). So, I would say she is older than Calum by 4 or 5 years. But I didn’t focus much on her age, to be honest with you.

What is going on in the alternative part? I will not say much because I don’t want to spoil it, but it involves a storyline regarding Episodes 16x09 &16x10 from Grey’s Anatomy.

 Does Calum’s family like Y/N’s family? Does Calum’s family like Y/N and vice versa? The families are not meeting very often, but they do get along pretty well. Remember (Y/N)’s mother calling her towards the end of Heat ? (Y/N)’s parents love that guy, he is funny, charming and overly supportive of their daughter, what is not to love? And Calum’s side of the family nearly worship (Y/N). I will explore more of their relationship on the 4th part of Dr. Angel Face.

 Do fans like Y/N? How is the media treating their relationship? Now, the fans and media are divided. Most of the fans love (Y/N), but there are people who are also mad at her for stealing their fav, or accuse her of not paying attention to Calum just because Cal’s and (Y/N)’s love language is not like the other guys’ and their girlfriends. And of course, like I mentioned on Dr. Angel Face  there have been instances in which people went to the ER and asked for Calum’s girlfriend. As of the media, Calum and (Y/N), definitely have been very low-key about their relationship. In the beginning, it was easier to hide, but after a while, people started to suspect. So, they decided to stop the chase and come forward about their relationship.

 Would Y/N use Calum’s last name after their marriage? I feel like she wouldn’t legally change it. Like professionally, she still keeps her last name (my girl didn’t go to college, medical school, went through internship, residency, fellowship and became this strong ass neuro goddess to change her name, no ma’am.) But, I feel like she would adore being called Ms. Hood or Dr. Hood in her private life. Like her friends would actually start that to tease her but she would actually love it. And Calum would also love to call her Dr. Hood. Like, imagine walking up in the morning and making Calum breakfast, and he goes like, “Oh, thank you Dr. Hood” as she passes him his mug of coffee and he wraps his arms around her waist. Oh my God, I would melt. So, she actually wouldn’t legally change her name, but she would love letting her husband and friends call her by his.

 Does Calum’s family have an issue with the age difference? So, the age difference is not that big now. I mean, on the last part I wrote Calum as his current age (maybe a year older than he is now), and I wrote her in her late 20′s. So, they aren’t that many years apart. But when they started dating, it was kinda weird for both their families to see them together, because they couldn’t see what Calum and (Y/N) had in common. Now, pretty much no one cares about it.

Does Y/N visit Calum while he is on tour? She doesn’t visit as often as the other girlfriends, and whenever she visits it is for just a few days (which is an issue in their relationship and I will DEFINITELY write more about it on the alternative chapter)

 Do they get in trouble when Calum is visiting her on the hospital? I never really thought about it much, but there were definitely times they were caught, not only while going at it, but at times they were just hanging during (Y/N)’s free time, I guess I could put it like that. Now, there will be a scene or two of calum visiting on Dr. Angel Face part 4, so I will be able to give more details then. But they never really got in serious trouble, since (Y/N) was always exceptional while working

 Does Y/N get along with Mali? She has a pretty good relationship with Mali. They don’t see each other very often, because Mali lives in the UK and (Y/N)’s work hours are crazy so it’s not easy for her to leave and visit. But they hang out whenever possible, and since they are so close age-wise, I can easily imagine them being friends.

 Since Calum is a vegetarian, would Y/N be a vegetarian too? It is up to you that one, depending on whether it would be something you’d do or not. Keep in mind that the Dr. Angel Face fic is still a reader insert, just like the rest of my stories. In my head, I don’t really think that she would become a vegetarian if she didn’t want to be, just to please Calum. I feel like she would respect his choice and try to support him and join him on eating more plant-based, but she wouldn’t change if she didn’t feel like it was her choice. Also, a general tip for people out there, don’t change aspects of you just to please your partner, if you don’t feel like changing. You will feel trapped and forced to, and you’ll end up miserable.

 Would they post about each other on their social media? Calum is always very low-key about his personal life and doesn’t really post frequently, so I think that would be a theme in their relationship too. He wouldn’t really post about (Y/N) on Instagram, but there would be occasions when he couldn’t help himself and post a cute picture of (Y/N) cuddling Duke, or a candid of (Y/N) drinking coffee. Now (Y/N) would be a bit more open on Instagram, she would post pics of him or short videos from their daily life, something that the fans would really appreciate. On Twitter though, whenever he would have his little twitter sprees, he would be bombarded with questions about (Y/N), and he would pick one or two of them to answer them in his significant funny way.

 How would their careers effect their relationship? How good is their communication? Do they act as a safe space / comfort buddy for each other? I will touch a lot more on the hit their relationship takes due to their careers, on the alternative part. Basically, the plot for this one will revolve around what would happen if Calum was unable to keep the promise he gave (Y/N) when they first started dating ( “I want to be everything I can be to you.” He assures me; all I can do is stare at his lips, how nicely they move as he talks. “Cal, I told you before I don’t do the dating song and dance, and I told you the reason why. If… If this gets more, are you sure you will be ok with me canceling last minute because of emergency surgery? Are you willing to get into this whole thing?” I ask and he chuckles. “I told you before, I get you. I am willing to do it if you are.” He replies, resting his hand on my cheek. “Are you sure? Between my surgeries and your concerts, the time we will have…” I begin but he places his thumb on my bottom lip. “The time we will have together will be even more precious. I don’t wanna pressure you. If you want me to be just a friend, I understand.” He states, moving to pull his hand away, but my hand wraps around his wrist, keeping it there. “I want you to be everything you can be to me… I really do.” I whisper and his hand slides to the back of my head. “Then I will be everything.” He replies, licking his lips a little.)

Now, on the communication matter, on the main timeline of this AU, both of them make sure to give each other time to calm down (or in most cases, get some sleep to get their heads straight) before talking through their problems. There are a lot of moments when they are silent, to keep from fuming up. Most of the times, when they have a fight, it is because of distance or because they miss each other, so by the time Calum’s back from tour, or (Y/N) is off the service so she is home, the fight is forgotten. On the safety/comfort issue, to be honest, I wanted to include a scene in which (Y/N) had to deal with the death of a patient who was very important to her. I wanted to show how Calum would help her, what his reactions would be to (Y/N) almost breaking down, but the scene didn’t make the cut because I felt like it was too heavy on the course I wanted to take with this story. But definitely, Calum had to deal with (Y/N) being sad, or disappointed, or angry even, about her cases, which caused him to develop a coping mechanism to help her feel a lot better. And (Y/N) had to deal with all the times 5sos got overlooked by the music industry/awards/charts (all tea, all shade, I am looking at you Grammy’s and Billboard)  and the way it affected Calum. Or with how frustrated he would get after sessions in which he wouldn’t perform as he wished, or with all the second-guessing and doubt that comes with putting something new out there (albums, tours, singles, you name it). So I can definitely picture them going through something like that, shutting everything out, holding each other close and whispering words of assurance. Or building a fort and watching movies in it, just to get their minds off whatever it is that is bugging them. Or just staying up talking, drinking coffee, helping each other see things through. I feel like (Y/N) and Calum are this couple that talks a lot, about anything that bothers them. I also feel that they would barely ever fight, they would just discuss things out, try to help each other see the other’s point of view.

 Does Y/N visit on the studio, concerts, video sets or Friends of Friends events? Actually I am planning a studio visit, and a charity concert where Y/N visits him for the 4th installation of the original time line. It is going to be a long part, the 4th one

 They seem to be a very sexual couple? Will there be mentions of experimentation in the upcoming chapters? I would like to explore that on the 4th installment of the main timeline. I feel like this one will be the longest yet since I have so many things I want to include in this story. Maybe I can also include that to the pool party extension. This couple is definitely a fan of public teasing and wearable toys (plugs, cock rings, Lush toys, you name it) I always wanted to show the BDSM experimentation they would be having. I feel like I have written such a healthy relationship for them that the portrayal of a healthy BDSM type of sexual relationship would be a lot fitting. I can tell you for sure there won’t be any depiction of their sexual life on the Alternative chapter I am going to write. I plan for it to be angst and focus on very different things.

  How intense is the alternative part going to be? Is Cal going to cheat on Y/N? He is not going to unfaithful, no. And neither is (Y/N).   The story will revolve around how hard this relationship is for them. (Y/N) is constantly preoccupied with her job, and Calum is away (on tour, promo, studio sessions). The story is going to be a what-if. What if the love they have for each other is not enough? What if Calum has had enough of (Y/N) putting other people above him? What if (Y/N) is tired of Calum being away? What if it is time for them to let go? The story, in regards to time, is going to occur after Heat. I am thinking about starting the story at 2 years they have been together. It will start with a couple of fights about (Y/N) cutting dates early due to emergency, then Calum spending hours in the studio, which results in them not spending time together. So, before he leaves for a promo tour, they decide it’s better they break up. But… that’s not the end of them, of course.

 Who is Y/N the closest to out of the rest of the guys? I think she would be a lot close to Ashton. At first, she wanted to impress him because he is Calum’s best friend, but as they continued talking and hanging out, she would start admiring him, finding him a lot interesting. They share their love for Calum, both of them caring and loving Calum so much they would do anything for his happiness. And they are close, age-wise. I said on an ask before that Y/N is 4 or 5 years older than Calum, so that makes her 2 to 3 years older than Ashton. Ashton would think of her as a superhero (more on that on the Heat pool party extension), always asking her about her cases. Their friendship would be so amazing. I explore more of it on the Heat extension, as well as show Y/N interact with the rest of the gang a lot more on it.

 Does any of Calum’s family members or friends have issues with their relationship and vice versa? I don’t see a reason why anyone would have issues with Y/N. She is a doctor, smart, caring, has a great job, loves Calum a lot and makes him very happy. Joy practically adores her; she is devastated when y/n and calum break up on the alternative part. Calum’s father also likes her very much and he knows that his son made the right choice when they started dating. Ashton and Y/N are practically besties, Luke and Michael find her charming and like her a lot with Calum. In the beginning, Sierra, Crystal, and KayKay thought she would be distant but found out she is actually a cool person. Other friends of Calum are totally ok with her. Y/N’s circle thought the match was a bit weird in the beginning, I mean, she is older and she is a doctor and he is a musician, it is not a lot common. But seeing them together leaves no doubt that they belong together. Everyone who matters to Calum and y/n approves of them, and that is all that matters to them.

 Have they ever found the age gap to be intimidating? The age gap is barely an age gap. They are 4 years apart, it’s really not a big issue. It’s not like she is 30 and he is 18, they are both in their twenties, him mid-twenty and her lat-twenty. I really don’t see why 4 years would be so intimidating.

 Did Y/N move in with Calum or did Calum move in with Y/N? Y/N was having a roommate while she was with Calum, some doctor from the hospital (in Grey’s Anatomy terms, it would be like Arizona living with DeLuca in season 12) so Y/N moved in with Calum before they purchased a house together when they decided their relationship was actually getting serious (that was around their 2nd anniversary)

 What about their anniversary/ valentine’s day/ honeymoon? I feel that they would barely ever have the chance to celebrate those things like ‘normal’ people would. I feel like they would send each other flowers for the sake of it, with cute little notes full of inside jokes or spicy stuff (or possibly both) For their honeymoon, I think they would go on it months after their actual wedding. After the wedding, they would spend the weekend at a luxury hotel, And then, months after, when things would get a little chaotic for both of them (on a previous ask I mentioned y/n dealing with loss and calum dealing with disappointment), they would just take the trip. Somewhere warm and nice. I am thinking Fiji islands, then New Zealand, so they could visit Calum’s roots, and of course Australia. just for a few days, to see Calum’s family and wander around a bit. I am thinking that their honeymoon would actually be a month-long one, them just being together, no distractions, just to sink in the “married life” and set their minds straight. And I think that on the milestone anniversaries (e.g 5 years together, one year married), they would just go on little road trips. They would get a little RV and drive somewhere, finding cute little places to camp out.

 How did the concept of the Dr. Angel Face fic occur to you? I get inspired by so many things. The Doctor Angel Face au was created kinda by accident. I wrote the first part, Fetish while watching an episode of Grey’s anatomy and I kinda wondered how I could fit my characters into the GA universe. The Fetish part was a request so I wanted to give something unique. I didn’t think I could actually cultivate it into a series. Then I wrote the Heat part. I was actually inspired by a Greek Trap song called Caliente (which was the original title of the story). I wanted the story to revolve around the sexual chemistry of the couple, and I actually didn’t plan on it being a part 2 to the Fetish story. But I started writing and the universe I was creating fit so well with the Fetish story, so I made a couple of changes to fit it in. Then people started liking the Doctor AU and asked for more. So I came up with the Dr. Angel Face part. I wanted it to be this cozy, Christmas story but didn’t want to limit it to just it. So, a follower of mine ( @saphseoul​ ) suggested a couple of things I should include into it, like their backstory. Their backstory was inspired by a story Ashton told on a soundcheck about the day the met Andy Deluca (basically, Ashton and Calum were in a car accident but they were fine so they sat on the curb and ate chicken tenders and drank milkshakes). I felt like that would be such a great backstory for them. And of course some parts of them are kinda inspired by the episodes of GA, but I try not to copy them. For the Alternative part of the Dr. Angel Face, I was inspired by something that might sound stupid, but it is actually the truth. I was actually inspired by a daydream. Back in December, I was working on the shittiest job I’ve ever worked, so to cope I built the scenario about the alternative (I quit from the job by the way). It is angsty and a bit torturing, to be honest, but like all my stories, it will have a happy ending. But I can get inspired by anything and everything. I have been writing for 6 years now, for the last 3 I have been writing daily, which helps me keep my inspiration flowing. 

What can we expect from the future parts?

I can tell you that the alternative part is going to be the angstiest and sweetest part ever. Y/N is kinda a broody brat, always trying to provoke Calum (but honestly she is right, she is getting back to him for what happens at the beginning of the fic). And Calum is kind of a bitch but has a great arc. Even though it is an angst fic, I am not going to ruin my favorite couple, so it will have a soft ending. I don’t remember exactly when I have it scheduled for posting, because I have quite a few stories queued. For the 4th part of Dr. Angel Face, the fic begins right after the wedding in the hospital. I plan on focusing it more on them becoming a family (just the two of them plus Duke for this part), and their honeymoon. Plus, I think that I want the fic to focus more on how (Y/N) deals with Calum’s career ( I have in mind to include a Friends of Friends concert, maybe an award show). I consider cutting this part in half so it won’t be too long, so the second part will be more on their plans of having a baby together, including how realistic this would be, how they would handle the responsibility, plus I want to write something into this fic kinda like the Family Cuddles story I have with Ashton. And I have the prequel of the Dr. Angel Face. This will be their story from their meeting to them moving in together. I will also include some storylines of their lives before they got together. Those are my plans for the story this far. I don’t know if there will be more stories after I am done with those, but I sure hope so.

 For some reason, I feel like Dr. (Y/N) and Maggie Pierce would have such a great friendship? Maggie is one of my fav characters (you can’t change my mind, I said what I said) and I think they would be really close. Y/N was also a child prodigy (I mentioned it before and I will write more on it on the Dr. Angel Face Prequel) and I feel they would bond a lot over it. On the Alternative Chapter, I wrote a lot about her relationship with Meredith and now I kinda regret not including Maggie more on it. Y/N is close with Amelia and Meredith so it makes so much sense that she would be with Maggie as well.

 Who’s the hardest character to write? I don’t really have trouble writing for characters I guess (probably because I don’t go in-depth with characters). But I guess I will say (Y/N), since I had to look up medical terminology, fit her in an already existing universe (that of Grey’s anatomy).

Who’s the easiest character to write? The easiest character to write was Calum, hands down. Starting this fic I had already built him in my head so he was really written automatically.

 Favorite scene you’ve written? It is so difficult to pick just one favorite scene. I guess it is on Part 3 (The Dr. Angel Face chapter), their wedding sequence. I think it captures the essence of their relationship, that they don’t need anything fancy to love each other, they just want to cherish one another on any chance they get. Writing that scene felt like writing the core of the couple, it is a lot more than just a wedding scene.

  Hardest part about writing? The hardest part about writing in general is getting the perfect conditions to do so. My house is always noisy and I rarely have a proper workspace, so adjusting to my environment and being able to write unbothered is something I can’t do easily. Also, editing is very hard too.  On the Dr. Angel Face fic, specifically, the hardest part was being able to keep a balance between fiction and realism. I don’t want my stories to feel unrealistic so I always strive to write things you would encounter irl (I hope I am successful at it, I am really trying hard)

 Easiest part about writing? The easiest part about writing the Dr. Angel Face AU is the interactions between the characters, finding the reasoning behind what they do, and how the others react to their doings. You will see next week when I post the Alternative part that everything my characters do is justified by past actions and their relationships with others.

Omg doctor x cal is like my relationship goals!! So mature and healthy relationship. Because they have such a busy life I can see them enjoying the little moments. Like cuddling the first thing in the morning when they wake before work. Coming home together and making dinner together while listening to music. Like they’re the IT couple That they are. I wanted to write a relationship for Calum that would be drama and stress-free. And I wanted the relationship to have its little flaws but them always dealing with them the adult way. I really love the way that relationship has evolved throughout the fic and I am so excited to write the continuation of it. There are going to be so many little moments like those ones in the following parts (well, not in the alternative one, that one is aaaaangstyyyyy) It makes me so happy to see people love that relationship as much as I do. And I wish everyone finds a relationship like this one. Y’all deserve it

 So I read this headcanon that said calum would totally refer to s/o as “the mrs” especially when talking to other ppl about her. I can totally see cal doing that for dr y/n.. talking to the boys, his mom, or in interviews I feel like he wouldn’t do it in interviews because people could misinterpret it as minimizing her and we all know Calum is too smitten with Dr. Angel Face to do that, but with the boys and his family, oh he would do it all the time. And Dr. (Y/N) would adore it, almost as much as she would adore being called Dr. Hood in private (like, not in the hospital, but Calum calling her Dr. Hood while they are being their goofy selves, or Ashton teasing her, oof, she loves it) But I also feel like Calum and Y/N would have a bit of a hard time calling each other “my husband” or “my wife”.  Like, picture that: “My boyfriend is coming home tonight” “I thought you are married…” “Right… My HUSBAND is coming home tonight.”  or Calum calling (Y/N) his girlfriend by accident and (Y/N) playfully correcting him. “You are starring at me. Stop.” “What? Can’t I just look at my gorgeous girlfriend?” “Honey, we are married. I am not your girlfriend anymore.” “Shit, I still can’t believe you are my wife.” Or Calum introducing (Y/N) to new people. “This is my ex-girlfriend, Dr. (Y/N) (Y/L/N).” “He means I am his wife now.” I can’t choose which one is more cannon, so I will be using all 3 in parts 4 and 5

 Rockstar and a doctor dating... what a couple!! Their character development makes them so great and humble ppl. Like typically when ppl make so much money they have to be super flashy and buy crazy expensive Well, Calum gives off that down to earth vibe so, I don’t think he would be with someone who is flashy. Also, Y/N studied medicine and she is a surgeon, meaning she had her fair share of student loans to pay off, which caused her to be more considerate of how to spend money. They truly have a lavish home though and both of them have cars, but they never go above and beyond to flash their wealth. I will describe their house on Dr. Angel Face Prequel and on parts 4 and 5, it is truly a lovely home.

 I think they’re house would be amazing. From what I imagine it’d be beautifully decorated.. simplicity and modern. Calum’s album plaques hanging & her doctorate degree hanging/ or her graduation pictures The have a glass case full of awards and degrees and a wall that is covered with album plaques (Y/N convinced him to actually hang them on a wall and display them in their living room instead of having them laying around). The glass display was built by Calum himself, as a little gift for Y.N once they moved in together. She had her awards and her degrees in a box in her old apartment, so Calum felt like giving her a proper place for them, with Y/N insisting his very own awards to accompany them. There are also a lot of framed pictures of them, kinda hang like a timeline; them being kids, teens, adults, Y/N’s graduations and Calum’s significant performances, album releases, overall achievements. And then pictures of them together, from dates, to anniversaries, to trips, then a few pictures they took of each other, or others took of them together (like candids of their cute little moments). And eventually their wedding and family pictures. A little fairytale hanging and showcased on their wall for everyone to see. The house is simple and has a touch of modern as you mentioned, but It is worth saying that they have made it absolutely personal. Every furniture was hand picked from antique stores or from retailers with a unique sense of style, but keeping a simplicity in every room to be able to decompress after a hectic day. The house took months to finish decorating and furnishing, due to the couple wanted every single thing in the house to have character, so they were looking for specific things. Plus, there was a lot of arts and crafts going on in the house; they painted it together, they built furniture together, they assembled things together. They did it while Calum was in a bit of a hiatus after dropping an album (think about the period after Youngblood and before CALM), so it was more of a project for him to keep busy. But Y/N actually enjoyed building a home with him. It was a sign that the relationship she had with Calum would last. I got carried away with this. I can’t wait until I can talk more about their house in the stories. Mostly on the prequel, since it is actually about what happens between them meeting and them getting married. But also on parts 4 and 5, with them changing from being just boyfriend-girlfriend to being a family (not necessarily having kids, but building more on their existing relationship).

 I just realized how opposites really attract like dr. Y/n cal. Their lifestyles are so different. She was a child prodigy while he was a dropout. They’re so cute Yes, they are a bit different in that area, but they have quite a lot in common. Both are compassionate, considerate, loving people. They have a great sense of humor and a common code of communication and their moral compasses are matching. Plus, Calum legit is a cultivated person (the way he talks, the way he shows himself in the world, reveal that he is educated even though he is a dropout.) So they are both very smart people. They are very cute indeed and they act as a driving force for each other to become better.

 Loved the story (Dr. Angel Face Alternative). Time line confused me a little. It takes place before heat yet the mention of planning for children doesn’t happen until dr. Angel face? It is an alternative, which means that this is a different way their story as a couple could have developed. Any story after Fetish doesn’t happen on the alternative timeline The alternative timeline is: Prequel ——-> Fetish ——> Dr. Angel Face Alternative The original timeline is: Prequel ——> Fetish —–> Heat (+ Extended) —-> Dr. Angel Face —–> Dr. Angel Face Part 4 —–> Dr. Angel Face Part 5

 I’ve noticed cal always has a baby girl in your fics is that intentional or random? Btw I loved the au of Dr Angel face seeing them expecting a daughter kinda made me think how it’d be if they were expecting a boy and how C would be around his baby boy. Huh, I never noticed. I guess every time I picture Calum with a baby, it is always a girl ( I love how soft he is for his mom and his sister, so I can’t help but melt at the thought of him with a baby girl). But on the main timeline, I had planned for him to have a boy. It fits the fic well, in my opinion, and since the part I posted yesterday was an alternative, I chose a girl, to highlight how different the alternative part is from the original AU

 When do you plan to post the fourth part of Dr Angel Face? have you already written it or do you still need to finish it off? Haven’t written it yet, nor even started it. I am doing the prequel first (totally random pick, blame google for randomizing my requests). I will definitely post it in 2020, maybe for Christmas or the 5sos anniversary. I don’t know yet.

 I can’t wait till doctor y/n and cal have a baby. they’d be the cutest parents ever!! They’d be super busy and hectic with their schedule but it would be so great. Calum would be an absolute sweetheart during (y/n)’s pregnancy, taking care of her but letting her do her thing, spoil (y/n) rotten, talking to the baby, visiting (y/n) even more frequently at the hospital to see if she is ok. Oh, he would be the softest dad ever. And then with the baby… he would be so cute and protective. taking care of the newborn to let (y/n) rest, and then when the baby is old enough to go to the hospital daycare, he would visit all the time to spend time with the baby and see the mama. He would take the baby to the studio as well, trying to get the kiddo into music early on. And then when (y/n) would be off service and Calum would be free of obligations, they would just get in the car and drive to the beach, or the woods or a hiking trail and have quality time with their baby.

 Idk why but I feel like the baby would be a carbon copy of calum. His mom has some strong genes Their baby would so well loved, especially with being the first grandchild on both sides of the family. Between the band, y/n family, calum family, and y/n friends they would all love the baby there would be even more privacy now they had a baby. All the fans & media would be dying to see a picture of the baby. Both Mali and Calum are the spitting image of Joy and I am so sure the baby will look like her. (Calum’s baby pictures make my heart melt and I can only imagine y/n trying to recreate them, sending them to Calum’s side of the family so they can collectively have their hearts melt at the sight) That child would be spoiled, everyone showering him with gifts, playing with him for hours. He would be cuddled all the time, especially by (y/n) who when she wouldn’t be working she would not leave him on his feet. On the privacy matter, I agree with you 100%. The Hood-(Y/L/N) family is adamant about not exposing the baby to this world at such a young age. The world is dying for a picture but at best they get a look at the back of the baby’s head. Calum would occasionally answer questions about the baby, but always being careful about what he shares and they would barely ever post pictures with the child, even once he is older. (I can picture Calum posting a picture of his son wearing daddy’s merch, custom-made for him. Or (Y/N) posting a pic of the boys playing with Duke or playing soccer together, and the internet would have a collective meltdown. Of course, that would happen when the baby would be older, like 4 or 5 years old.) (Or maybe Calum would share a picture of baby number one holding baby number two, after completely hiding y/n’s second pregnancy from the world -well, friends and family would know but they would hide it from fans and the media)

 Omg I just read your ask about dr. Angel face and cal!! I’m in love with dad cal the pregnancy will be so cute. I think cal would be protective because with being a surgeon is a difficult job but he knows she can handle herself so he lets her do her thing. The first time they hear the heartbeat on the ultrasound!! And setting up the nursery when they find time!! There is definitely some struggle for Calum during (Y/N)’s pregnancy. He wants to be protective and he wishes she would book fewer hours of surgery, but at the same time, he knows she wouldn’t do something to hurt herself and their baby. He also knows she is a doctor and that she knows a bit more than him. So he sits a bit back and makes sure she feels ok, takes care of her when she is home.  They would both go crazy over the baby’s heartbeat. Calum would be shocked, never having experience with anything like that, plus knowing that’s his kid in there, he would be so emotional. And (Y/N) would also be so enamored by that bub’s heartbeat. I feel like her maternal instinct would only become stronger after that. I can certainly see them looking online for all the furniture (remember, they are trying to keep a low profile), and Calum would invite the boys over to help him. Everyone would just try to show off because everyone wants to be the baby’s godparent (joke’s on them, they already picked Mali for the role). And the walls of the nursery would be covered in paintings because Calum read it is good for the baby’s brain to have visual stimuli early on (one wall would be sea-themed, the other woodland-themed, then a rainforest-themed wall, and an Australian wildlife wall so the baby has an early connection to his root, and the ceiling just has the most amazing universe-themed painting, including constellations, planets, nebulas). Now, depending on their place in the room, the furniture would be of various colors to fit with the theme of the wall behind them. They didn’t want to have a color scheme for the room, they opted for the most colorful room (they both agree that a child’s room shouldn’t be boring, nor monochromatic)

 What scene did you first put down? The first scene I ever put down was from Fetish, in which Y/N walks into their home to find that Calum working on some lyrics. I am lucky that I have a very linear way of writing, so whatever scene you see first on my fic, that is the start of it. Now, if we are talking about Dr. Angel Face as in the self-titled chapter, the first scene I came up with and made a plot for was the scene Y/N gets called and is informed that Calum has been hurt and he is in the hospital. That was the main point of the fic for me, since it was a great opportunity to show the characters interact, how protective Y/N is when it comes to Calum, as well as introduce a bit of a backstory of how they came to be.

 What’s your favorite line of narration? I have so many favorites. Ooof, it is so hard for me to pick just one line of narration and dialogue. I loved the narration of the Alternative part (the whole story is a masterpiece if you are asking me and totally underrated). I feel like that alternative chapter points out all the things that could be wrong with Calum’s and Y/N’s relationship, but also how they would still make things work between them.  I also loved writing their first 2 dates and their first kiss (those scenes are on the prequel, so I can’t wait to share the new part with you)

 What’s your favorite line of dialogue? My favorite dialogue has to be their vows. Oh, my heart hurts when I think about it. Especially Calum’s “ Love does exist, and her name is (Y/N). “ I had a meltdown writing it. And Y/N’s “ My sweetest love, if fate wants me to be with anyone, if fate wants me to be anything more than I already am, I know that it’s you, I know that it is to be yours and you to be mine “… I am still not over it. As you might have seen, I do mostly dialogue in my stories. I feel like it is a better way to show the characters’ reactions and get the story moving.

 Why’d you pick calum for the story? The story started from a Calum request, so I guess I didn’t really pick him. But, I chose to continue this fic with Calum because he is the most fitting. He is compassionate and down to earth and has a very calming aura, which I felt would go great with y/n and her profession. (But let’s be honest here, I picked him mainly because he is my favorite)

 What was the character development process like? I don’t remember ever sitting down and having a plan of how I wanted the characters to develop. I understand how much they have changed from the original concept I had in my head, now that I am writing the prequel and I have to kinda start their relationship and them as individuals from scratch. I think I always let my characters grow through interactions with each other because it really feels more natural than following an arc strictly. If you really think about it, as people we grow and evolve through our interaction with others and through our experiences. And I guess that’s what I do to develop my characters. 

As you were talking about doctor y/n... I think baby bumps are so cute!! I imagine it being so adorable. Especially with her work clothes. She would be such a great mom Y/N waddling around in her all-blue scrubs, like a little penguin is honestly heart-melting. She would get such guilt for trying to balance work and being a mom, especially after going back from her maternity leave. And Calum would feel the same too; just 2 months after the baby was born, he would have to leave for tour and he felt like he was missing out and he wasn’t helping y/n much. It would take them a while to realize that when they are doing what they love and they take care of themselves, they are better parents to baby Hood. They are both such great parents, baby Hood is so lucky on that. He is so much loved by everyone; parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, his parents’ friends. He is a ray of sunshine; according to Calum, he gets it from his mama

[himbowelsh]

Pls Hoosier on Valentine's list!

valentines day alphabet  ( accepting! ) 

A   :   AFFECTION.   how does your muse show affection?

He doesn’t, if he can help it. Unfortunately, Hoosier’s a bigger softie than he likes to admit. His affection shows itself through small gestures   ---   a blanket tucked around someone’s shoulders, food shared, limbs resting casually against each other during idle moments. If Hoosier’s willing to go out of his way for someone, even a little bit, then they matter to him. His smile could make flowers grow, so being on the receiving end of it tends to send the people he cares about a clear message.

B   :   BOUQUET.   does your muse like flowers? which ones are their favourite?

Absolutely not a bouquet man. Doesn’t trust flowers, doesn’t know how they work, and is not inclined to find out.

C   :   CHOCOLATE.   does your muse like chocolate? which one is their favourite?

Abso-fuckin-lutely. Hoosier would shank a man for some cherry cordials.

D   :   DATE.   what is your muse’s ideal date? where / who with / etc?

He prefers to split the bill on any dates, because he’s cheap economically responsible like that. Hoosier’s ideal date wouldn’t involve paying at all; he’d have a great time doing something on just the right side of illegal, like sneaking into a movie (makes the cinema experience 10x more fun) or loitering in a potentially dangerous place. Coffee dates are pretentious, but he really likes coffee, so sometimes you’ve gotta take the good with the bad. He’d love to go to an animal shelter and, like, play with the dogs...  Hoosier’s not a hard person to take out, and he’s satisfied doing pretty much anything, so long as it’s not too boring.

E   :   EMBRACE.   does your muse like hugs? what are their hugs like?

what the hell is a hug   He doesn’t love them  ---  mostly because he’s been on the receiving end of too many of Chuckler’s post-workout sweaty bear hugs, and that’s something you never recover from. Hoosier’s particular about physical affection, unless it’s from someone he really considers His People  ---  even with his closest friends, he can be weird about hugs, though he’ll make allowances for his little siblings. He’s not a hugger himself.

F   :   FLIRT.   is your muse good at flirting? how do they flirt?

He doesn’t, because it’s a lot of effort, and frankly he just can’t be assed. Hoosier doesn’t do charming small-talk; he’s not going to wine and dine someone he’s just interested in taking to bed. If he wants more than that, well...  he doesn’t even know how to go about it, so they better appreciate the drinks he’s willing to pay for. The other partner’s got to carry the conversation, because Hoosier can’t make small talk to save his life. His good looks and bluntness tend to carry him far enough  ---  as far as the bedroom.

G   :   GIFT.   is your muse good at gift - giving or do they struggle to get it right?

He really doesn’t try that hard. The sort of person to literally ask outright, “what do you want?” a week before a birthday...  then, to his credit, he goes out and tracks the thing down. (Leckie once gave him a really obscure book title, just to see what would happen. Hoosier turned up with it. The book had been out of print of years. This was a first-edition copy. No one knows where he got it, how, or if it was obtained legally.)

H   :   HEART.   is your muse quick or slow to give their heart away?

He’s...  slow because the idea scares him. Hoosier and intimacy...  do not mix. On a physical level, sure, but emotionally? He’s gonna glower that idea into submission and keep any pesky feelings that bubble up down for as long as possible. Hoosier does not love the idea of opening himself up to getting hurt, and doesn’t think he’s very suited for romance, so he’d just...  rather not.

I    :   I LOVE YOU.   does your muse find ‘i love you’ easy or hard to say?

Like we just said! Emotional intimacy is a Big Yikes for him! Anyone would be lucky to get an “I love you” out of him once. He’s got to be either very drunk or very sleepy to say it out loud  ---   both times are when he’s at his softest.

J   :   JEALOUSY.   does your muse get jealous in a relationship?

Oh yeah. Hoosier can be...  territorial when it comes to the people he loves. He passionately dislikes anyone getting too close to his partner; there’s being friendly, and then there’s being more, and he’s got strong instincts for when something’s more than friendly. Hoosier makes up for it by being bitchier than usual, glowering at them and being a bit more physical with his partner. He’s rarely one for PDA, but Jealous Hoosier has some points to make.

K   :   KISS.   is your muse a good kisser? why / why not?

He’s a very physical kisser, almost taking ownership of his partner through his lips; Hoosier Smith doesn’t kiss to play around. Hands on the ass, the thighs, gripping the hips as he grinds slightly against them; each breath seems to ripple between the two of them, a shared convulsion, before Hoosier goes right back in for more. He’s a hungry kisser, and a little feral about it  ---  bruises will be left along his partner’s neck, and their lips may be sore for days afterwards, but they way Hoosier leaves them seeing stars makes it all worth it.

L   :   LOVE.   who does your muse love?

He’s very fond of his little siblings, and very affectionate with them  ---  way more than anyone’s used to seeing out of him. Hoosier’s got Big Brother Instincts, even they don’t rear their head that often. He loves his mom and (very old, possibly immortal) grandparents; he’s very devoted to his friends, no matter how he rolls his eyes at Chuckler and Runner’s chaos or bitches at Leckie’s pretentiousness. That’s the thing about Hoosier  ---   he doesn’t love a lot of people, but the people he does love, he wants to keep.

M   :   MOONLIGHT.   is morning or night a more romantic setting?

Night, because he’s never up in the damn morning. Why would someone want to do things before 10am? Not this man. Anything that needs to get done can be done at midnight, or not at all.

N   :   NAUGHTY.   what is your muse like in bed?

He alternates between fierce and teasing, but Hoosier is very, very determined. God, does he love his partner’s reactions...  and he savors them, leading them along for as long as possible, dragging every encounter out until the end. Hoosier’s in no rush to finish; honestly, he has a bit of trouble finishing without his partner, and it’s usually seeing them go over the edge first that gets him there. He’s rough, rougher than he means to be at times; sex is the most energy he’ll ever expend at a given moment, and he turns it into a full-on workout, both parties slick with sweat by the end of it. Sometimes, he’ll just put his mouth to task, trailing it slowly along his partner’s body  ---  sucking kisses into their chest, their stomach, their hips, all the way to their thighs and what lies beyond.

O   :   ODE.   does your muse have a way with words?

Yes. Very succinct. To the point. Knows what the hell he’s saying. Fine with words, thanks.

P   :   PARTNER.   what does your muse look for in a partner? looks / personality?

Someone who doesn’t get on his last damn nerve. Hoosier would do well with a partner who goes with the flow  ---  probably someone more extroverted than him, but who really doesn’t demand much or tax his energy when he needs to just destress. He’d do best with someone low-maintenance. (Too bad the high-maintenance people are so damn attractive.) They have to love animals; they have to be able to keep things neat, because he hates a messy house; he’s fine with almost any quirk they might have, so long as they put up with his in return. He loves people who can sing...  and people who laugh at their own jokes really shouldn’t be as attractive as they are.

Q   :   QUESTION.   would your muse ask the big question or expect their partner to?

He’d ask as soon as he comes to terms with the idea...  which’ll take a while, not gonna lie. His partner asking first would completely take Hoosier by surprise. He wouldn’t be expecting it, wouldn’t know what to do with it, and his off-the-cuff answer would be, “what the fuck”.  Promising omen of marital bliss right there.

R   :   ROMANCE.   is your muse a romantic or a cynic?

Definitely on the cynical side. He’s...  afraid of romance, a little bit, and definitely doesn’t imagine himself as anybody’s Prince Charming.

S   :   SWEETHEART.   did your muse have a childhood sweetheart?

He didn’t, really. Little Bill Smith had way more important things on his mind, like taking long naps, stealing cookies, and hiding in places where his mama couldn’t find him. Bigger priorities on his mind.

T   :   TRUE LOVE.   does your muse believe in true love?

...  nah, probably not. It’s not something he gives a lot of thought to, because thinking about love in general leaves him feeling half-starved and irritated. True love...  well, to be honest, he’s got no clue what it is.

U   :   UNREQUITED.   has your muse had their heart broken?

...  let’s say he hasn’t and call it even. He’s not gonna talk about it.  (He hasn’t, but he’s been on the cusp of loving people who didn’t love him back. Caution is learned; if you go to the edge of a cliff and almost fall off, you’re in no hurry to dance on that edge again. He learned to fear love without ever feeling the full sting of rejection, cause he’s just proactive like that.)

V   :   VALENTINE.   how does your muse feel about valentine’s day?

A complete waste of time, unless there’s chocolate involved. Chocolate for him. Get him chocolate, please.

W  :   WEDDING.   would your muse get married? why / why not?

Mmm. I mean. He’s not going to not get married, if the opportunity arises, but it’s also, like...  a lot of effort, everybody makes a big deal out of it, it costs a lot of money, and, like...  if all his siblings get hitched, does his Mama really need him to, too? (If Hoosier gets to the point where he’s head-over-heels in love with someone, enough to want to spend his life with ‘em, yeah, he’ll get married. But he’s prefer a quiet ceremony, no muss or fuss, to a big white wedding.)

X   :   XOXO.   does your muse use / like pet names?

Absolutely never... unless he’s in the mood. An arm tucked around his partner’s chest or waist, and a muttered “darlin’” against the side of their neck, is Hoosier-speak for ‘let’s get someplace private now, before I take my pants off right here.’

Y   :   YOURS.   does your muse get protective easily?

In, like, the laziest way possible. He’s perfectly willing to sit back and watch the fireworks, glowering as some fool gets bolder and bolder with the person he cares about...  but he’s not apathetic, he’s waiting. As soon as the bastard crosses a line, Hoosier’s on his feet and swinging. He doesn’t say anything; he just puts an end to the situation, with a few well-placed hits. Cross Hoosier Smith’s people at your own risk.

Z   :   ZZZ.   how many people has your muse slept with?

...  do you really want to know the answer to this question? It’s...  a lot. Many people. An amount that should maybe concern him. He couldn’t count if he tried, but the number is probably in the double digits. (How? He literally never goes out! Hoosier’s got ways, okay. When he feels like having sex, he will find someone willing and eager. It’s never a challenge to convince them. The job gets done.) Don’t ask, cause he’ll just smirk and say nothing.

[jess-rewatches-prodigalson]

Episode 7: Q&A

Let’s just dive right into this. Spoilers are heading your way. 

1:00 - Malcolm why did you try to talk to the strange man in the dark?!?! It’s not safe you giant doofus. 

1:33 - Gil looks very annoyed and concerned here. This is a man who would ground Malcolm’s ass if he could. 

1:51 - See how Gil’s hands are on his hips? That’s exactly the position Malcolm was in when he was talking to Dani when he was high. Coincidence? I think not. Pretty sure Malcolm is subconsciously trying to imitate Gil whenever he can because Gil is Malcolm’s definition of a good man. 

2:24 - Another instance when Dani directly asks Malcolm if he’s okay. 

2:35 - Edrisa is one strange lady. She doesn’t even look mildly grossed out by the state of those bodies. 

3:53 - Check out JT’s face here. He looks somewhere halfway between annoyed with and concerned for Malcolm. Gil on the other hand is too busy trying to keep Malcolm from jumping off the deep end to be annoyed with him. 

4:25 - Does anyone else find it odd that mother and daughter are sitting so far apart on this bench? I mean, I know they’re fighting right now but still. 

5:00 - “I am far more worried now.” She should be. Ainsley is trying to out manipulate Martin. That’s concerning because a) Martin is a dangerous psychopath and b) Ainsley, to a certain degree, is exhibiting behaviour that probably reminds Jessica of Martin. 

7:00 - I’m starting to believe that Edrisa might be on the autism spectrum. She seems to have trouble reading the mood of a room. She often rambles. She is socially awkward. She talks with her hands a lot. She is very intelligent. She’s a functioning adult but many people with autism are functioning adults if they had proper support as children. Then again, it’s possible she grew up in a home with stereotypical Asian parents who forced her to study most of the day and severely limited her opportunities to socialize in a non-academic setting. 

7:11 - hahaha Gil’s face here. He’s like “Why do I like these two freaks? Why do they look borderline excited in the middle of this morbid situation?”

7:46 - I love the moment when Gil and Malcolm realize that they’re looking for a serial killer. Gil looks guilty. Like he’s blaming himself for not noticing that this murderer was loose sooner. Malcolm looks upset too but it looks like he’s more upset about the effect this is having on Gil than he is about the fact that there’s a serial killer on the loose. Both of my boys need a hug. 

8:23 - They are waaayyy too lovey-dovey inside of Ainsley’s serial killer father’s prison cell. Like did they forget that they’re inside of a psychiatric facility for murderers?!? 

9:00 - The fact that this interaction between Tevin and Ainsley is possible annoys me. I know it was necessary to forward the plot BUT why would two different secure doors be randomly wide open when a guard is moving a dangerous prisoner through the halls? I’m sure those doors are legally required to be heavy enough to close by themselves if no one props them open for safety reasons. (Just my small annoyance. Carry on.)

10:00 - hahaha I love JT. He clearly cares about Malcolm but he also doesn’t know what to say to a dude who is so manic and troubled.

10:22 - I love Dani going on a rant. It’s really sweet. It’s almost as if she knew that if she went on a rant Malcolm would be able to calm down and focus. Look at Malcolm’s reaction to her rant. He immediately calms down and tries to comfort Dani. He refocuses on the case. They are really good for each other’s mental health. They ground each other and I’m so grateful that they’re in each other’s lives.

11:05 - If Edrisa is technically part of the team - why doesn’t she just walk into the room? Why does she wave through the window to get Malcolm’s attention?

11:51 - We have reached a tipping point in Malcolm’s mental health. He just willingly admitted that he’s not okay. Someone sound the alarms. This will not end well. Our boy is going off the deep end....but at least he’s self aware? 

12:00 - The first part of this interview (before Malcolm shows up) is hard to watch. It hurts to watch Martin twist everything into a positive about himself. It hurts to watch Ainsley try to twist everything in the opposite direction. These characters are more similar than I’d like to admit. They’re both obsessed with their outward appearance to the world. They’re obsessed with their own success. They’re driven by ambition. Sure, Ainsley is capable of empathy, and I don’t think she’d ever kill anyone but she’s definitely narcissistic. More so than Malcolm, whose isn’t narcissistic so much as he is obsessed with finding out the truth. More so than Jessica, who really just wants to be less lonely since the world abandoned her twenty years ago. 

13:20 - This is a really interesting point that Martin brings up. He’s technically mentally ill. Does he deserve sympathy for it? I mean, he killed people. I have anxiety disorders and chronic depression. I have a bipolar uncle. A narcissistic grandmother diagnosed with manic depression with psychotic elements (actually, in a lot of ways my grandmother is like Martin Whitly). I understand mental illness. But the second that someone kills another person...that’s where my sympathy ends. At that point I don’t care if you’re mentally ill - you took someone else’s life for pleasure. You shouldn’t be getting fancy therapy and an all-expenses paid trip to a psychiatric hospital. You should be getting the electric chair. (Sorry if this is getting political - I’m generally against the death penalty but psychopathic serial killers and child abusers are the exception to my stance).

13:38 - The darkest of nights?!?! Martin you are making me so angry right now. You sleep like a baby. You have no conscience. That’s literally the definition of a psychopath. You have no dark nights. Your son on the other hand. UGH. 

14:10 - *sigh* look at this. He’s making everything about him. In doing so he’s actually belittling his daughter and her career choice. What kind of a loving father does that?

15:44 - This little moment when Ainsley tells Malcolm that she’s staying is concerning to me. She is so desperate to find her father’s affectionate side that she watches her brother interact with him. She genuinely believes that she is the least favourite child.

16:30 - In this scene Martin says he’s never been to the Bronx. But by the end of this episode we find out that Martin briefly worked at St. Edwards Hospital in the Bronx. Just more proof that Martin is a liar. I don’t know what else to tell you. 

17:10 - Look at that face. That is a man who doesn’t care about his son. That is a man who will say anything to keep Malcolm in the room. To play with Malcolm’s head. That is not a father. That is a monster. Look at how sad Malcolm looks by the end of this interaction. How upset. How scared. He is genuinely starting to believe that he might’ve helped his Dad hurt someone. 

18:56 - Ainsley’s excitement to walk back into that room is concerning. There is ambition and there is obsession. She is obsessed. It isn’t healthy. 

19:25 - “I’d like to discuss one more. Malcolm.” This scene absolutely shatters my heart. For multiple reasons. a) Ainsley just put her career before her brother. She is intentionally starting a conversation that she knows will upset her brother (in front of her brother) because she believes that it will get the results she needs. This is one of the reasons I believe Ainsley is the Whitly child most similar to Martin. AND b) look at Malcolm’s reactions. He is utterly heartbroken. He feels betrayed by his sister. Embarrassed that his father knows about his diagnoses. Embarrassed that this discussion about his mental health is being filmed for television. He looks so sad and defeated here. I just want to hug him. AND FINALLY c) Martin is incapable of even acknowledging that his action have had any sort of negative impact on Malcolm. 

20:15 - And there he is. The most honest form of Martin Whitly. Angry. Explosive. Violent. Things aren’t going his way and that’s unacceptable to him.

20:53 - Another moment that annoys me about this episode. How convenient is it that the alarm starts going off JUST as Martin finishes his little outburst? It’s just timed a little too coincidentally. I know I know. It’s necessary for the plot and the time constraint of the episode. 

21:24 - Look at that. Three people concerned about your shaky handed boy. My heart is full. 

22:18 - Ainsley and Malcolm laughing over their Mom’s phone calls is cute. BUT I feel like Malcolm should be a little more upset with Ainsley right now. I know they’re in a lockdown situation and he probably doesn’t want to fight with her in case that something bad happens to one of them but still. Siblings fight. She treated him poorly. He should be mad at her right now. Malcolm’s acting like nothing happened.

23:55 - Martin is the worst. He really refuses to answer his children’s relevant questions until the camera is rolling. Ugh. Mr. David is not getting paid enough to deal with this family.

25:40 - It’s absolutely disgusting that Martin is so unconcerned when both of this children are in danger, in his presence. Also can someone please explain to me why there was a crow bar in the camera equipment bag? Like for real? That’s not a thing I can see Claremont security approving to enter a serial killer’s cell.

27:00 - It’s not often that I believe that Malcolm is the most rational person in the room (excluding Mr. David of course) but Ainsley and Martin are positively crazy in this scene. Ainsley is desperate and scared but Martin is manipulating her. At least Malcolm has enough common sense to keep a knife away from a serial killer. 

28:34 - The flashback. Martin is holding Malcolm’s hands, guiding the knife. Did Malcolm fight his father before this moment? Was Malcolm drugged into submission? I really need to know more about this. Malcolm looks terrified in the flashback though - he definitely didn’t take the knife willingly.

29:00 - Look at Malcolm’s face. That is pure terror. That is internal conflict. He wants to help his sister. He would do anything for her because he’s her big brother and big brothers are protective. BUT he’s also terrified of giving his father a knife. AND he’s terrified of the flashback that he just had. Look at Malcolm’s face when Martin takes the scalpel. Holy crap. That boy is not sleeping tonight.

31:02 - Another instance where I really don’t support Ainsley. Video tapping the un-consented surgery (yes it was an emergency, I know) performed by a serial killer on her boyfriend. Like. Dude. No. So not appropriate. But she’s doing it a) to try and earn her father’s love and attention and b) she thinks the story will help her career. It’s all about her. And that scares me. 

32:45 - JT and Dani look concerned again. They’re like “What’s the dumbass going to do now?”

33:00 - I love this scene. Gil and Jessica. This conversation is sweet, and intimate in a way that only people with a shared concern can be. How many conversations do you think they’ve had over the years about Malcolm and Ainsley? They’re both worried about their kids. It’s precious and I love it. Also - another example of how Jessica’s heart is in the right place. She really does love her children. 

35:15 - New York Direct News?!? I thought Ainsley worked for American Direct News? Did Malcolm purposely use a different network name? 

35:55 - Is Malcolm giving that look to Ainsley or Martin? I can’t tell. 

37:40 - I feel you Jessica. I feel you girl. He’s playing with both of your children’s hearts now. You are justified in being livid.

38:18 - Concerned Papa Gil for the win! :) <3 

39:24 - I’m really glad that Malcolm is at least aware that his father is playing with he and Ainsley.

40:55 - I love how this episode ends. A rare, intimate moment between Malcolm and his mother. A softer side of Jessica we rarely see, comforting her upset son. Followed by a confused, terrified and equally vulnerable side of Jessica going to the basement.

Dang. This one got long. Sorry. Thanks for hanging out. I’ll post again soon. 

[quanf99]

Sovereign Citizens, and the Definitely Not Real Global Domination Pandemic

It was 12:40am when I got out of bed to check my mail box, behind yet another fridge magnet from Josh Frydenberg was a postcard from the Protector Party, a political awareness group warning of a ploy by governments to control the masses through the current coronavirus pandemic, or something along those lines. The Protector Party are tied to the resurgence of sovereign citizens, members of society who believe they may choose exemption from the laws of society, a right supposedly outlined in the Magna Carta. While fringe political beliefs have always floated around, they're gaining traction in Australia after strict lock down laws imposed by the Andrews government. I was familiar with such ideas, but this was the first time I'd encountered said ideas in my mail box. I decided to look into sovereign citizenry some more, who were they? And what gave them the right to leave insane post cards in my mail box?

For many residents of Melbourne, Dan Andrews tough lockdown laws herald the rise of an all-powerful authoritarian state. These laws have made it illegal for people to visit other households, or leave home past 8pm, they force Melbournians to wear face masks when leaving home. Democracy is truly at threat when I can't order from the McDonalds drive-thru at 12am. Fighting on the frontlines against totalitarianism is a group calling themselves sovereign citizens or, Freeman of the Land. Freemen argue that laws only apply to corporations, which on their terms include the government. Birth certificates are a contract with the government as corporation and only apply to a person if he or she consents to it. This sort of imaginary legal argument has existed long before the coronavirus  pandemic and Dan "Stalin" Andrews' lockdown, cropping up whenever somebody gets summoned to court for unpaid driving tickets. Recently these pseudo-legal ideas have gained traction via Facebook groups. Through social media, thousands of middle-aged Australians are rallying behind the cause, who else will defend our rights to get pissed in the backyard on a Friday night. I thought I'd join one of these groups to get a read on the sovereign citizens. I found one group, Truth and the Unknown - Australia, it tends to focus on conspiracy theories in general but has recently shifted to uncovering the facts regarding coronavirus. The discussion surrounding the pandemic comes from livestreams of really intelligent looking people explaining to audiences that, coronavirus is not a virus, that even if it was viruses can't be caught by body, that coronavirus mortality rate is so low, no one should be worried even if they do catch it, despite 894 people dying in Australia. Unsurprisingly almost all of the information posted in Truth and the Unknown - Australia, contains no sources backing up any of the information provided. Discussion then shifts to memes explaining how 5G internet connections weaken the body making it more susceptible to coronavirus, a virus that isn't actually a virus, and even if it was you can't catch it. Further down the rabbit hole, GMO foods, vaccines causing autism, Rockefellers and Freemasons, government ties to Satanic cults and Bohemian Grove. All of this was mildly funny and maybe a little disturbing, but I was having trouble finding any concrete political ideas from any of these sovereign citizens. I decided to get in contact with the man who first sent me down this rabbit hole, that's when I got in touch with John Tiger Casley, leader of the Protector Party. Mr Casley is an older man, he speaks in old Australian figures of speech which find a balance somewhere between endearing and condescending, responding to you with phrases like "Alright young fella". Mr Casley used to be a history teacher, he now resides in Brighton presumably retired, spending his time making YouTube videos and sending people weird post cards. I asked "What do you think the end goal supposedly is for this deep state?" to which he replied "I believe their goal is psychopathic humanoid control over human bodies via violent injections and 5G, as well as human perception through media propaganda and AI." Q: Do you think this current climate of politics, sovereign citizens, and a general openness to these ideas will result in positive changes to politics in Australia? J: I believe it depends on the amount of human power given away to the Psychopathic Humanoids in JFK's Monolithic Conspiracy, although I've never known opportunity for political engagement to be higher. Q: How did you first become aware of things like, JFK's Monolithic Conspiracy? J: I began reading, gratefully, the logic, evidence, experiences and suffering of the most amazing mind of this century - David Icke's. While my interview with Mr Casely was interesting it revealed little in the way of concrete political beliefs, again it felt more like I was hearing a conspiracy theory check list be ticked off, rather than any solid politics. I decided to look into David Icke afterwards. Icke is a former football player from the UK, who writes about an inter-dimensional race of reptilians who run the Illuminati and have hijacked the Earth. These reptilians are known as the Anunnaki, ancient Sumerian deities of the Underworld. Again the formula for these ideas feels tried and true, pick an ancient pre-Judeo Christian deity (preferably from Mesopotamia) and center them around a secret shadow government conspiracy to rule the world. Whether its democrats sacrificing babies to Moloch, or underground Illuminati lizard men, the pattern feels obvious. Next I spoke to Zac Galloway, a practicing lawyer with a law degree from University of Tasmania. After moving to Melbourne a few years back, Mr Galloway has become active in promoting the truth about the pandemic through platforms like Facebook. I figured Mr Galloway would have to be well educated if he was a practicing lawyer, and should be able to back up his views better than the average Facebook conspiracy theorist. Q: I'm interested to know, are you connected to any particular groups or organisations? Mr Galloway: I'm not connected with any organisations, although I do follow a few Facebook pages where people share and spread information. I don't believe everything that gets spread in these groups and take most of it with a grain of salt however. Q: Do you believe the virus is real? Or a ploy by the government towards some other agenda? Z: I believe the virus is real but our perception of it is far from the truth. There seems to be overwhelming evidence the virus was man made and originated in a laboratory. Whether this was done intentionally doesn't matter as much to me, I think there's a clear agenda from government worldwide involving mass control and surveillance of the population. Q: Have friends and family been receptive to your message, or do you find a lot of push back regarding your ideas? Z: I find a mix of responses, I've got many people who message me frequently to show support, wishing they were brave enough to speak up. Q: What do you think the rising trend of belief in the sovereign citizen movement says about Australia's current political climate? Z: I think it shows that people are willing to stand up for their rights which to me is a no brainer. There's a very slippery slope between freedom and tyranny and when people voluntarily give up their rights so easily I become gravely concerned. To me it is good that people are willing to stand up for their rights. Although I think much of what he said was shaky at best I was glad someone could give me answers beyond vague gestures to Moloch and vaccines. I don't want to give Mr Galloway too much credit though, perhaps there's something even more troubling in the way he dresses up blatant disregard for the social contract as 'logical reasoning'. It can be harder to discredit arguments about Daniel 'Karl Marx' Andrews using coronavirus hysteria to destroy the economy, when they have more formal validity. And one can't avoid the irony of someone who supports sovereign citizenry, utilising his institutionally given power to practice the law. Regardless of the validity behind  any of the ideas I've gone over here, these ideas and their rising popularity represent something more troubling, perhaps more disappointing. It's undeniable that society is structured to segregate the common person from the powerful, while every day people are led along by the false promise of enough hard and honest work, those born into wealth use loop holes to consolidate their position on the throne. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be mistrusting of governments and those in power, reasons that don't have anything to do with mass mind control, vaccines, 5G towers or ancient sub-terranean lizard people. I spoke to Dr Lauren Rosewarne, cultural commentator and lecturer at Melbourne University. Q: Do you think the popularity of the sovereign citizen movement ties in with the rise of conspiracy theories coming closer to public consciousness? Things like the death of Jeffrey Epstein, or Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Elections? Dr Rosewarne: Sovereign citizens are nothing new in Australia. The internet however, has enabled them to connect, recruit and have a public platform for their views thus giving them greater visibility. Q: Do you think the rising visibility of such a platform, and these sorts of fringe political ideas in general, might suggest deeper political unrest in society? L: I'd be more inclined to say that Covid serves as a rallying cry for these people in a way that few previous events have. Whether that persists as unrest in a post-Covid world, only time will tell. When people take up these conspiracy theories, its disappointing to see how close to the nerve they hit, clearly something larger than everyday people puts us on an uneven playing field. Why then, do we look for answers beyond the real quantifiable structural devices that shape society? There are many complex reasons, the simplest one being that its much easier, much less ambiguous to imagine some sinister, wholly evil force is pulling things behind the scenes. It's easy to laugh at conspiracy theorists, a lot of the things I've seen people post are honestly insane. However, I think it's worth remembering too, that when people start believing these theories, a part of them must recognise the way things are really stacked against us, and from that place maybe we can hope that more people are on the path to greater political consciousness. Or who knows, maybe the democrats really do drink the blood of newborns in exchange for eternal youth.

[qqueenofhades]

Ahem. As discussed, a prompt my good lady...Lucy and Flynn + fake married in Dubrovnik + the inevitable shenanigans...

Okay SO. On the plane over, there was something in the magazine about a website where tourists can go to Amsterdam and fake-marry a local for a day, so their new “spouse” can take them around the non-tourist parts of the city, and then they go their separate ways at dusk and it’s fun etc. I immediately decided that this needed a Garcy AU, for obvious reasons.

Lucy Preston wasn’t really planning on going to Croatia. In fact, she wasn’t exactly planning to go anywhere. But it’s been a rough few months to say the least – tenure meeting cancelled at Stanford, breaking up with Noah, Mom has to go back to the hospital for more tests and it isn’t looking good – and in a fit of late-night frustration, she decided to just fly somewhere over Thanksgiving break and forget about the clusterfuck that was her life for a bit. Somewhere warm, she wasn’t picky. She suggested that Amy go with her, but Amy had work and couldn’t get away, and by then, Lucy had already booked a ticket. She’s heard that Dubrovnik is beautiful, there is a university and a state archive there so she can theoretically disguise it as a research trip, and when she was running through the apparently deeply cursed Frankfurt airport to catch her connecting flight, a text popped up from Amy. Something that she thinks Lucy should try, just for shits and giggles. Some kind of app called Untourist.

Lucy took a look at it and decided that it was basically Tinder for tourists, even if the premise tried to be more classy than that. In short, you can pick a European city from the list (More Locations Coming Soon!, promises the popup), fill in some brief preference Q&As, and be matched with a local, who will fake-marry you in a ceremony complete with photos and then take you on a “honeymoon” for a day in the city. The idea is that you get to have a personal guide, explore places off the main drag – and presumably, if you hook up at the end, that’s a nice bonus, but not one that the app strictly advertises. It sees itself as promoting intercultural connections and lived experiences, rather than anything so ignominious as arranging casual sex with a hot foreigner. Apparently it got its start in Amsterdam, though, so this would not be surprising.

The split with Noah is still raw, and Lucy isn’t planning to use the app for that purpose – or indeed, at all. But after she has landed at the surprisingly tiny airport and has boarded the bus for the drive along the coast road to the city, she downloads it on a whim that she shouldn’t think through and decides it might be fun to have someone to travel with, even briefly. After she’s signed up, created a profile, and filled in her details, she is given two options to match with, and ends up going for the latter: Garcia from Dubrovnik. She thought about Marko from Zagreb, but his profile says that he’s a Dinamo Ultra, and she decided that she didn’t want to spend the day getting a crash course in the finer points of Croatian football hooliganism. Garcia it is, apparently.

Dubrovnik is insanely beautiful, with crystalline turquoise water lapping at towering medieval city walls (souvenir shops every few streets will proudly remind you that they filmed Game of Thrones here), palm trees, red-tiled roofs, old golden-stone buildings, winding side alleys, and sunlight that pours down as rich as olive oil. Since it’s November, it’s not quite as hot as in high summer, and the tourist rush is somewhat dimmed. Lucy sleeps late at her Airbnb high on a very steep side street, as the city is spread out over several hills on the side of the tall blue mountains that rise out of the water, and almost forgets that her fake wedding is today. She jumps out of bed, puts on some makeup (just because she’s not actually marrying the guy doesn’t mean she has to look completely trollish), grabs her bag, and heads down into town, following a winding alley of staircases that are probably going to be a pain to climb back up. She hopes this was a good idea. It was mostly to appease Amy, anyway. Can she cancel, or would that count as leaving Garcia at the (fake) altar?

What the hell, she’s here now, and maybe if she shows that she’s receptive to new experiences, the universe will give her a break. Lucy trots along the palm-treed square above the city walls, finds the door with the Untourist logo by the bell, and steps inside. “Dobro jutro,” she says, which is about all the Croatian she speaks, and most people have been happy to use English anyway. “I’m Lucy Preston, I have an appointment today?”

The slick Unreceptionist greets her, gives her a waiver to sign (bad experiences and/or unsatisfactory spouses are not their fault, any meeting beyond the day is done on personal terms, etc) and they await the arrival of her dashing groom-to-be. It is twelve minutes past their scheduled start time, and the Unreceptionist is making apologetic noises, when the door opens with a bit of a crash and a man who must be Garcia ducks in. He’s tall, dark, and craggy-handsome, probably in his forties, wearing aviator sunglasses, and clutching a takeaway coffee. He addresses the Unreceptionist in rapid Croatian, looks up, sees Lucy, and nods shortly. “Ah,” he says, switching to English. “Right, you’re here. Let’s go.”

“Sir,” the Unreceptionist says, looking as if he’s wondering if Garcia himself read the details and/or the release forms before signing up. “You’re supposed to…?”

“What?”

“You’re supposed to have the wedding ceremony first?”

“I’m supposed to have the what?”

At that, Lucy winces. Feeling as if this might be an opportune moment to interrupt the conversation, and wondering if it’s too late to switch to Marko from Zagreb and risk dying at an Eternal Derby game, she stands up. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Lucy Preston?”

“I know.” Garcia glances at her briefly, up and down, and then away. “What’s this about a wedding?”

“That’s the whole point of the app,” Lucy says pointedly. “Fake-married, take me to places that aren’t touristy, then at the end of the day, go our separate ways?”

Garcia looks briefly pole-axed, then seems to decide that right, well, this is on him for failing to read the terms and conditions. “Fine,” he says impatiently. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

Lucy’s cheeks sting. Making a mental note to give him a zero of five stars on any feedback form that she might have to fill in to rate her experience today, she follows him into the back, where they are joined in a very non-legally-binding ceremony, have their photo taken (Garcia looks like this is a real funeral rather than a fake wedding) and finally are released into the wild, as Garcia (who is a good foot taller than her) strides ahead without waiting. When Lucy runs to catch up, he says, “Nobody told me there was a wedding involved.”

“Did you even read what they wanted?” Lucy’s tone is slightly waspish, but then, he isn’t exactly showering her in that supposedly famous Slavic hospitality. The sweet lady at the Airbnb was much nicer than this. “It was right there in the entire premise. If you don’t want to spend a day taking me around the city, fine, but maybe next time, try to actually – ”

“No,” Garcia says abruptly. “You’re here now. Let’s go.”

With that, he strides off toward the gate in the towering walls, down into the Stari Grad. Lucy thinks the view from up there must be spectacular, but she’s not actually going to get a chance to find out, because Garcia derides them as too touristy and refuses to pay 200 kuna to go up them. (This is something like $30, so it clearly is a lot, but the city sees no reason not to profit off all the Game of Thrones fans.) Nor does he think much of the main drag, the cathedral square, the rector’s palace, or any of the other usual sights. He says that Lucy can call him Flynn, but doesn’t explain why. She thinks it’s his last name, but honestly, she can’t be sure. He has the social skills of a broken-down dump truck.

Finally, since there isn’t much of Dubrovnik, at least the old town, that isn’t touristy, Lucy persuades Flynn to let them go up the walls, though by the face he makes at the cashier as he pays for their tickets, the poor man might be found floating face-down in the ocean later. They climb up to the winding ramparts, gazing out over the Adriatic to one side and the crowded, tiled roofs on the other, and on one steep section, Lucy loses her footing and nearly falls. She wouldn’t have gone over the edge, there are plenty of barriers, but Flynn flashes out a hand and steadies her. It’s the first remotely human or non-dickish thing he’s done, and she raises an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

Perhaps sensing by her acerbic tone that he has not been the world’s most satisfactory fake husband to date, Flynn has the grace to blush, or at least look somewhat chagrined. “I’d definitely get in trouble if you died.”

“Thanks,” Lucy says again, even more tartly. “Guess it’s a good thing for you that you have good reflexes?”

“I fought in the Homeland War.” Flynn glances away. It’s the first personal thing he’s shared about himself, in a casual, offhand way that makes it sound no more remarkable than getting milk from the store. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”

Lucy glances at him. He’s made it clear that he’s not here for the fake marriage, let alone small talk, but she paid a decent amount of money to be here with this tall idiot and he can just suffer it. “Are you from Dubrovnik?”

“I was born in Šibenik.” Flynn doesn’t break stride, obliging Lucy to trot to keep up with him. “Lived a few places around the country. It was Yugoslavia back then, though. War started in 1991.”

“I know,” Lucy says. “I mean, I’m a historian, so I was recently doing some work on 1989 and the U.S. response to the dissolution of the Iron Curtain. Technically, Yugoslavia wasn’t Soviet, right?”

“No,” Flynn says, with a sort of grim pride. “Tito and Stalin hated each other. It was…. sort of an in-between place, I suppose. We didn’t need exit visas, there was a certain amount of social freedom, and Tito liked to market it as neutral, a third country between East and West, combining the best of both and the worst of neither. Of course, he was a dictator, but supposedly a benevolent one. Most people liked him. My childhood was – ” He stops. “Well, my mother was American, anyway. Maybe that was what drew her here. Running away.”

Lucy glances up at him. She has a sense that Flynn doesn’t often talk much about his past, and decides that since they are, after all, only fake-married, she doesn’t need to pry. However, since the subject of his mother has arisen, she holds back as best she can, not wanting to dump the fraught subject of Carol Preston on a strange man who has only just met her and treated her one step above gum stuck to his shoe, but finally needs to talk about it with someone who isn’t Amy. She still isn’t sure Flynn gives a damn, but too bad for him. She mentions that it’s been hard, with the Stanford legacy and the cancer and the expectations that she would accept Noah’s proposal, and she just – well, she doesn’t know. Maybe Lucy understands a bit of Flynn’s mother, whoever she was, whyever she came here. Maybe she too was, or is, running away. Even if she has to fly all the way back to San Francisco at the end of this week, some part of her would be more than happy to fling all her responsibilities to the wind, move into some picturesque old flat in one of those tiny streets, and stay.

They descend the walls after completing their circuit, and Flynn deigns to buy her lunch at a small cafe where the menu is only in Croatian and a sign informs customers that they don’t take euros, only kuna. Lucy allows him to order something for her, and they sit there eating in semi-awkward silence. Then Flynn says, apropos of nothing, “Maria.”

“What?”

“My mother’s name.” He shrugs. “It was Maria Tompkins. She was from Houston. She moved to Yugoslavia in 1970, after the death of her first husband and son. She was traveling through Europe, I don’t know that she intended to stay here, but she met my father, so she did.”

“Oh.” Lucy wonders what it would have been like here in the seventies. Probably still beautiful, though much less developed. So Maria Tompkins fell in love, that was what made a young American woman go Red, a move that must have been regarded dimly by her friends and family back in Texas. With that sort of tragedy shadowing her past, maybe it was easier to cut all ties, to get a new passport, to learn a new language, and never look back. Lucy feels a sudden pang of sympathy with this other woman, this unknown fellow traveler, who too found herself in this corner of the world wanting to leave it all behind. Lucy has responsibilities at home, not least her job (even if they didn’t give her tenure, or at least it’s very much in academic bureaucracy limbo), her sister, her sick mother, all the encumbrances and trappings of real life. She can’t do what Maria did, no matter how much she wants to. And for some reason completely unknown to her – it certainly isn’t the pleasure of Flynn’s company – she does.

They finish lunch and head out. It’s warm enough for November that Flynn suggests they can go for a dip, though he gives her a no-clearly-not look when Lucy naively thinks this will be at Banje Beach, the main spot just south of the walls. He leads her up to the street, where they find his car and get in. It’s an Audi, and she wonders what exactly he does for a living. He has a habit of scanning their surroudings, casually flicking his gaze at passersby, in a way that she doesn’t think stems from his military service alone. In fact, she’s starting to wonder if he joined the Untourist app to case the city and/or scope out people without it being too suspicious. Maybe it’s better for everyone if she doesn’t ask about his job. He might have to suffocate her and bundle her up in a black plastic garbage bag in the boot.

Flynn, it transpires, drives like a bit of a maniac, a habit he shares with most of the other road users (especially the scooters and motorcycles). Lucy has already noticed that Croatians seem to have a rather laissez-faire attitude toward personal safety, as evidenced by their tendency to stand outside guardrails overlooking steep drops, walk the wrong way along busy highways, dart across roads in front of oncoming traffic, and jury-rig anything that isn’t actively falling apart. When she mentions this to Flynn, he shrugs. “Slavs are like that,” he says matter-of-factly. “Especially Croatians. Though if you think we’re bad, you should meet the Poles.”

Lucy laughs despite herself, since that’s the first time Flynn has loosened up to flash any bit of actual humor. Well, that’s not quite true; he is remarkably sassy, has a sarcastic comment for most occasions and especially anything involving a tourist making a fool of themselves, but this is the first time that his humor has seemed gentler, more like he’s actually enjoying himself and poking a bit of self-deprecating fun rather than lashing out at the world. They drive along the cliff road for several miles in silence, until Lucy asks, “When did you move to Dubrovnik?”

“About…” Flynn hesitates, and she senses that there’s more riding on the answer to that question than he wants to let on. “Well, I lived in Zagreb until 2014.”

“And you moved here after that?”

“More or less.” Flynn adjusts the rearview mirror, which doesn’t really need it. After a long pause he says, “My wife and daughter died in 2014. I came here for – well, I didn’t want to stay there anymore.”

“I’m….” Lucy feels taken aback, almost guilty that she’s been so derisive of his inability to read app terms and conditions, his clear aversion to the whole fake-married part. Not that they’ve really been acting like it, anyway, but still. She can imagine it wouldn’t be easy for her, if that ever happened, to stand up and play-act some stupid charade for an American tourist hiring you like a beast of burden, not when you’d had the real thing, not when it was gone. “Garcia,” she says, the first time she’s used that since he told her to call him Flynn. She has a sense that he prefers that, that Garcia is some place too personal where he doesn’t let people go, not any longer. “I’m sorry.”

He glances at her, and for a moment she thinks he’ll snap at her, but he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes on the road, navigating the tight turns with ease, until at last he says, “I’m sorry I haven’t been very much fun.”

Lucy opens her mouth by polite reflex to say that he has, and settles for a noncommital hum. Flynn seems to sense that while he might have worked his way up from zero stars, he’s still a way off from five, and parks the Audi in a pullout. They descend a narrow cliff path to the sea, he reaches out to catch her arm when her feet skid again on the pebbles, and Lucy decides she should probably warn him that she’s clumsy before she really does accidentally kill herself. But if she fell into the sea from here, she has an unaccountable sense that he’d dive in after her, no matter how odd and brusque and grumpy he is. It’s less clear whether this is because he’s starting to like her a little, or because it would be an insult to his professional competence. Maybe he’s in the Mafia.

They reach a small quay where a catamaran is tied up, Flynn strides to it and produces two life jackets, and once Lucy has climbed aboard, he swings on, undoes the ropes, and angles the sails out into the wide blue water, endless as a reflected sky. It must be a busy harbor in summer, and there’s still a decent boat traffic now: ferries, jet-skis, a few sailboats and pleasure yachts. Lucy holds on tight as Flynn carves an expert white wake. “Is this your boat, then?”

“No,” Flynn says. “But I borrow it from time to time.”

“Did you – ” Lucy gives him a very narrow stare. “Did you steal this boat?”

“No!” Flynn looks miffed that she would ask. “I know the owner, he lets me use it when I want to. What kind of man do you think I am?”

Lucy opens her mouth, starts to answer, and stops. Truth is, she isn’t sure. An hour ago she would have said a raging, self-absorbed dick with no social skills and possibly black-market employment, and parts of that are still true, but the rest, well… she can’t say exactly. He keeps letting slip these odd, vulnerable parts of him, almost in spite of himself. His past in the war, his mother running away from her old life, his dead wife and daughter, everything else. She isn’t certain what she thinks of him, exactly, but she isn’t wishing that she picked Marko from Zagreb anymore. If nothing else, Flynn is complicated, and challenging, and oddly easy to talk to, and he hasn’t told her to shut up about the family/work/life drama that she occasionally returns to venting about. Lucy thinks she’ll take that, at least. 

She looks at his hands, large and sun-brown and expertly pulling and tying the knots to trim the sail, as he pulls them to a bobbing halt in the sparkling water and asks if she wants to swim. Lucy didn’t put on her bathing suit under her clothes, but she doesn’t want to go to the bother of making him drive all the way back to the Airbnb. So she strips off her shirt and jeans, and, in just her bra and underpants (hey, they’re married, even fakely), she dives in.

The water is chillier than she expected – this is the southern Mediterranean, it’s never cold no matter the season, but it is November, and she splutters and gasps as she bobs to the surface. Flynn, observing from the high-and-dry comfort of the catamaran, smirks at her, and Lucy gives him the finger. “You dick,” she shouts. “You could have warned me.”

Flynn shrugs, apparently utterly untroubled either by this accusation or by her attitude; indeed, he grins as if he appreciates this feistiness, her willingness to talk back at him and tell it like it is. Lucy spends so much time biting her tongue around absolutely everyone else that this reaction is both unexpected and deeply liberating, and once she’s swum around the catamaran a few times and adjusted to the water temperature, she takes a deep breath and dives down under the pontoons. Then she surfaces on the far side, reaches up, and just as Flynn senses danger and whips around, she grabs him by the back of the shirt and jerks him backward.

He’s wearing a life jacket, of course, so he doesn’t go too far under, but the expression on his face is worth every penny that she paid to the stupid app. He shakes his wet hair like a dog as he surfaces, and she has to say, he looks really good while doing it. “Excuse me,” he says, in a tone of deep umbrage. “Who told you that it was a good idea to start a marriage off by throwing your husband in the drink?”

“Maybe if I’m drowning you for the life insurance,” Lucy shoots back, before she can stop herself. She has no idea who this woman is, who has gone from being exasperated and shut off with Flynn to – well, she did in fact just throw him in the ocean, but there’s definitely something different about their dynamic now. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call it flirty, whether or not this is listed in Untourist’s terms and conditions (and as well established, Flynn did not read them anyway). “After all, I think we can say that you deserve it. Tragic boating accident?”

Too late, she wonders if this is a bad idea to joke about, since she doesn’t actually know how his wife and daughter died (she hopes it wasn’t that, anyway) but Flynn actually laughs, and it transforms his whole face. They spend a very enjoyable forty minutes swimming around, splashing each other, and hanging onto the side of the catamaran and letting their legs sway in the current. They’re close alongside each other as they do, Lucy is conscious of only being in her wet underwear (it’s not like he can see anything while she’s submerged, but still), and something passes between them as their eyes meet. His throat moves as he swallows, and after a moment too long, he looks away.

They climb back on the boat, Flynn looses the sail and steers them back toward land, and they disembark, Lucy once more watching for investigative purposes as he ties up. They dry off and she pulls on her damp clothes, as Flynn decorously turns his back and waits until she is done. Then they tramp up the bluff to the car (Lucy was thinking about retiring here, since it’s warm and sunny and beautiful and all that, but if she is elderly, all the climbing might be too much) and drive back toward the town center. The sun is getting low, her paid-for day is almost done, and despite the total disaster that was it starting out, Lucy is oddly reluctant for it to do so. As Flynn pulls up in front of the Untourist office, she says convulsively, “Maybe we should… I don’t know. I think they’re closed, anyway. You don’t have to drop me off here.”

Flynn glances at her, then considers it. He could offer to just take her back to her Airbnb (those streets really were not designed for sane drivers, and Lucy can see why tiny Smart cars are popular around here, but Flynn would absolutely not fit into one) and he still might. Then he says, “Well, technically, the day isn’t over. Do you suppose I could take you out for dinner?”

“You….” Lucy coughs. “I suppose you could.”

They find parking, and walk down into the old town, as the moon is rising over the walls, the towers are floodlit, the city gleams in the cooling dusk like its nickname, the “Pearl of the Adriatic,” and they find another cafe where the clientele is mostly local. They linger late over dinner, and Flynn says that he will in fact drive her back when they’re finally done, and as she’s about to undo her seatbelt and get out, Lucy hesitates. Then she screws up her courage, leans over, and kisses him very fast on the cheek. “Thank you,” she says. “I had – I really did have a great time.”

Flynn looks as surprised as her to hear it, but somehow and shyly gratifeid as well. A fugitive smile plays at the corner of his mouth, tentative, tender. For a moment, she thinks he might be about to kiss her back for real, but he clears his throat and holds out his hand instead. “Er,” he says. “Thank you, Dr. Preston.”

Lucy hesitates, fighting her disappointment, and shakes it back. Then she steps out of the car and unlocks the door of the apartment, as he waits to see that she gets inside without random Ragusan fiends materializing from the shrubbery. Even when she does step in, the car idles a few more moments, and she glances back, wondering – or perhaps it’s only hoping – that he’s chastising himself for letting her walk away. Then the car starts again, she can see his dark figure sitting too stiff and straight at the wheel, and she watches until the taillights vanish around a steep turn, and fade into the night.

[amoralto]

Q: Paul McCartney: An Innocent Man? (October, 1986)

(Note: I’ve posted so many quotes and audio clips from this interview in the past (#interviewer: chris salewicz), I may as well post the entire printed interview as well. Still remains one of my very favourite Paul interviews - candid, emotionally fraught, brimming with preoccupations, and all the more revealing for it.

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Paul McCartney curls up on the couch and relives the Beatles’ story for the first time since the death of John Lennon. “He was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn’t a saint.”

by Chris Salewicz

Paul McCartney is 44. He was 20 when his first composition appeared on record. Today he’s just returned from remixing a second single from his new LP Press To Play, his 27th solo or group studio album in 24 years.

He’s sitting on a sofa on the second floor of the building in Central London from which he directs his activities. Outside, on this sunny early afternoon, lie the neatly trimmed lawns of Soho Square; inside a forest of deco mahogany woodwork, a De Kooning on the wall and a chrome and neon-garlanded Wurlitzer jukebox of quite archetypal proportions and splendour. He’s wearing fawn moccasins, yellow socks, and a blue and white striped shirt and trousers and, despite the omnipresent grey hair, he looks in immensely good shape for someone who was still in the studio at three in the morning.

Part of McCartney’s agility as a communicator has been the paradoxical mastery of revealing nothing whatsoever of himself to journalists. This was particularly notable during the interviews he gave for Give My Regards To Broad Street, an almost unprecedented barrage of publicity in which it seemed that the more people he spoke to, the less he said. This was perhaps connected with a comprehension of the transparent unsubstantiality of the work. “Broad Street?” he says now. “You don’t stop things just because they’re not good; if you’ve done a bit of work, you put it out. I mean, if Picasso’s painted a thing…”

Today, however, on this Friday afternoon, Paul McCartney is immensely forthcoming. Possibly this is a reflection of the confidence he feels in his new LP, a work that stands almost on a par with Band On The Run, his finest solo record and one which, in many ways, seems to have a direct conduit to post-Sgt. Pepper Beatles albums.

The interview has a relaxed, conversational tone with no sense of formally structured questions and answers. In the cold light of print, his replies can occasionally take on a tone that seems almost petty in its self-justification, but such an emphasis is completely absent when he’s delivering these words to you in person.

The principle strength of the new LP is the quality of the songs, six of which McCartney co-wrote with Eric Stewart, the former 10cc singer and writer of such classics as ‘I’m Not In Love’, a song that is almost a parody of a McCartney love ballad.

The numbers were written, he says, in the manner in which he would work with John Lennon, sitting side-by-side, watching each other search for appropriate chords.

You’ve been in the studio all night re-mixing tracks from the new album for single release. How do you feel about the new LP?

I like it. I have a lot of trouble saying, ‘I think it’s great.’ I wish I was just a fan and I could genuinely like it without seeming wildly immodest. I can’t be objective yet. It’s going to take me a couple of months. I can listen to McCartney, I can just listen to that. I like that one; it’s growing on me. It’s a touchy subject. You’ve done a thing and there it is, it’s your presentation. You mean to get every bit of it right.

So how do you react to criticism?

When I see bad reviews, it’ll hurt me. I am giving myself a bit easier time in life these days. I’ve gone through so much criticism, and not just from critics. From people like John, over so many things, that like a fool I just stood there and said, ‘Yeah, you must be right.’ All those things I was said to be the cause of, I just accepted that I was to blame. I’m beginning to see it a bit differently now. I’m beginning to see a lot of what they say is their problem, not mine.

John was going through a lot of pain when he said a lot of that stuff, and he felt that we were being vindictive towards him and Yoko. In fact I think we were quite good, looking back on it; many people would’ve just downed tools in a situation like that, would’ve just said: ‘Look man, she’s not sitting on our amps while we’re making a film.’ That wouldn’t be unheard of. Most people just say, ‘We’re not having this person here, don’t care how much you love her.’

But we were actually quite supportive. Not supportive enough, you know; it would have been nice to have been really supportive because then we could look back and say, Weren’t we really terrific? But looking back on it, I think we were OK. We were never really that mean to them, but I think a lot of the time John suspected meanness where it wasn’t really there.

He was presumably fairly paranoid.

I think so. He warned me off Yoko once: ‘Look, this is my chick!’ Just because he knew my reputation. We knew each other rather well. I just said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ But I did feel he ought to have known I wouldn’t. That was John; just a jealous guy. He was a paranoid guy. And he was into drugs … heavy. He was into heroin, the extent of which I hadn’t realised, till just now.

It’s all starting to click a bit in my brain. I just figured, Oh, there’s John, my buddy, and he’s turning on me. He once said to me, ‘Oh, they’re all on the McCartney bandwagon.’ Yet things like that were hurting him, and looking back on it now I just think that it’s a bit sad really.

I saw that thing in The Observer the other week, about the manuscript of the Apple Beatles biography and the vitriolic comments John made in the margins.

I think that shows the sort of pain he was going through. Look, he was a great guy, great sense of humour and I’d do it all again. I’d go through it all again, and have him slagging me off again just because he was so great; those are all the down moments, there was much more pleasure than has really come out. I had a wonderful time, with one of the world’s most talented people. We had all that craziness, but if someone took one of your wedding photos and put ‘funeral’ on it, as he did on that manuscript, you’d tend to feel a bit sorry for the guy. I’ll tell you what, if I’d ever done that to him, he would’ve just hit the roof. But I just sat through it all like mild-mannered Clark Kent.

This was hurting you, presumably.

Not half.

When did you actually get a perspective on it?

I still haven’t. It’s still inside me. John was lucky. He got all his hurt out. I’m a different sort of a personality. There’s still a lot inside me that’s trying to work it out. And that’s why it’s good to see that wedding-funeral bit, because I started to think, ‘Wait a minute, this is someone who’s going over the top. This is paranoia manifesting itself.’ And so my feeling is just like it was at the time, which is like, He’s my buddy, I don’t really want to do anything to hurt him, or his memory, or anything. I don’t want to hurt Yoko. But, at the same time, it doesn’t mean that I understand what went down.

I went at Yoko’s request to New York recently. She said she wanted to see me, I said I was going through New York and so I stopped off and rang her, and she said she couldn’t see me that day. I was 400 yards away from her. I said, ‘Well, I’ll pop over any time today; five minutes, ten minutes, whenever you can squeeze me in.’ She said. ‘It’s going to be very difficult.’ I said, ‘Well, OK, I understand; what is the reason, by the way?’ She said, ‘I was up all night with Sean.’ I said, ‘Well, I understand that. I’ve got four kids, you know. But you’re bound to have a minute today, sometime.’

She asked me to come. I’d flown in specially to see her, and she wouldn’t even see me. So I felt a little humiliated, but I said, ‘OK, 9.30 tomorrow morning, let’s make an appointment.’ She rang up at about 9.00 and said, ‘Could you make it tomorrow morning?’

So that’s the kind of thing. I’m beginning to think it wasn’t all my fault. I’m beginning to let myself off a lot of the guilt. I always felt guilty, but looking back on it I can say OK, let’s try and outline some things. John was hurt; what was he hurt by? What is the single biggest thing that we can find in all our research that hurt John? And the biggest thing that I can find is that I told the world that The Beatles were finished. I don’t think that’s so hurtful.

I’ll tell you what was unfortunate was the method of announcing it all. I said to the guy at the office. Peter Brown, of book fame, I’ve got an album coming out called McCartney. And I don’t really want to see too much press. Can you do me some question-and-answer things?

So he sent all those questions over and I answered them all. We had them printed up and put in the press copies of the album. It wasn’t a number. I see it now and shudder. At the time it was me trying to answer some questions that were being asked and I decided not to fudge those questions.

We didn’t accept Yoko totally, but how many groups do you know who would? It’s a joke, like Spinal Tap. You know, I loved John, I was his best mate for a long time. Then the group started to break up. It was very sad. I got the rap as the guy who broke the group up. It wasn’t actually true.

But legally you had to do that to get out of the contract with Allen Klein, didn’t you?

Yeah, legally I had to. I had to take the other Beatles to court. And I got a lot of guilt off that. But you tell me what you would have done if the entire earnings that you’d made — and it was something like The Beatles’ entire earnings, a big figure, everything we’d ever done up to somewhere round about ‘Hey Jude’ — was about to disappear into someone’s pocket. The guy I’m talking about, Allen Klein, had £5 million the first year he managed The Beatles. So I smelled a rat and thought, £5 million in one year, how long’s it going to take him to get rid of it all?

So I started to resist, and I was given a lot of pressure. The others said, ‘Oh, you’re always stalling’ when I kept refusing to sign Klein’s contract.

But the others suspected you of looking after number one by wanting to bring in your wife’s family as managers.

Obviously everyone worried that because it was my father-in-law, I’d be the one he’d look after. Quite naturally, they said, ‘No, we can’t have him.’ So in the end it turned out to be Klein. And I said, ‘Well, I want out of this. I want to sue this guy Klein.’

They said, ‘You can’t, because he’s not party to any of the agreements.’ So it became clear that I had to sue The Beatles. So obviously I became the baddie. I did take The Beatles to the High Court, which was a highly traumatic period for me, living to front that one out. Imagine, seriously, having to front that one out.

How did you feel through all that?

Crazy, just insane. So insecure. Half the reason I grew the beard.

People often put hair on their faces to hide.

It’s often a cover-up. And I had this big beard and I went to the High Court and actually managed to save the situation. But my whole life was on the line at that point. I felt this was the fire, this was the furnace. It had finally arrived. And we used to get shakes in our voices in court. We used to get the Nixon shakes, something we’d never ever had before. So we went through a lot of those problems. But the nice thing was afterwards each one of them in turn very, very quietly and very briefly said, ‘Oh, thanks for that.’ That was about all I ever heard about it.

But again, John turned it round. He said, ‘But you’re always right, aren’t you?’ See, there was always this thing. I mean, it seemed crazy for me because I thought the idea was to try and get it right, you know. It was quite surprising to find that if you did get it right, people could then turn that one around and say: ‘But you’re always right aren’t you?’ It’s like moving the goal posts.

I mean, it occurred quite a few times because I’m pretty ruthless, ambitious, all that stuff. No more than anyone trying to break into showbiz, but I can be pretty forceful. If we’ve gotta make a record, I’ll actually sit down and write songs. This could be interpreted as being overpowering and forceful.

I’d heard that you were the driving force of The Beatles, but that John would be more interested in doing anything but what The Beatles were supposed to be doing.

Yeah, I remember doing Let It Be and we sat around the table in Apple and I came up with this idea that we should get it on film. I remember John said, ‘Why? What for?’ I explained a bit more. He said, ‘I get it. You want a job!’ Yeah, that’s it! But it seemed strange to me that he didn’t. He seemed quite happy languishing out in St George’s Hill in Weybridge.

I always wanted to make the group great, and even greater. When we made the Let It Be album, and it was a bit crummy, I insisted that we made Abbey Road because I knew what we were capable of. I didn’t think that we’d pulled it off on Let It Be and then with the Phil Spector remix, we kinda walked away from that LP. In fact, the best version of it was before anyone got hold of it: the Glyn Johns early mixes were great but they were very spartan; it would be one of the hippest records going if they brought it out. Before it had all its raw edges off it, that was one of the best Beatles albums because it was a bit avant-garde. I loved it.

So then it was Abbey Road we were doing and I got some grief on that because it took three days to do ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. You know how long Trevor Horn takes to do a mix for Frankie Goes to Hollywood? It takes two days to switch on the Fairlight! I had a group in the other day, spent two days trying to find the ON switch! That’s what we’re into these days, you know.

I’m sure I did piss people off at the time, much as I tried not to. It just seemed to me when we had a session booked it was a cool idea to turn up. Like Sgt. Pepper: George turned up for his number and a couple of other sessions but not for very much else.

George was supposed to have resented you for always getting on his back.

He did resent it. Two examples; one on Abbey Road. I was beginning to get too producery for everyone. George Martin was the actual producer and I was beginning to be too definite, and George and Ringo turned around and said, ‘Look, piss off, we’re grown-ups and we can do it without you fine.’ People like me who don’t realise when they’re being very overbearing, it comes as a great surprise to be told.

So I completely clammed up and backed off: right, ‘OK, they’re right, I’m a turd.’ So a day or so went by and the session started to flag a bit and so eventually Ringo turned round to me and said, ‘Come on… produce’, and so it was like you couldn’t have it both ways. You either had to have me doing what I did, which, let’s face it, I hadn’t done too bad, or I was going to back off and become paranoid myself, which was what happened.

A lot of Wings was to do with that; I’d been told that I was so overbearing. If the guitarists in Wings wanted to play a solo a certain way, I wouldn’t dare tell them that it wasn’t good.

The other example that really pissed George off was when we were making ‘Hey Jude’. To me it had to have a sparse opening and it was going to build. So I started off ‘Hey Jude’ (sings) and George went ‘durnurnawnaww’ (makes guitar noise), and then ‘Don’t make it bad’, and he’d go ‘Derdlederlederdle’ and he was answering every line through the whole song and I just said, ‘No, man, I really don’t want that, it’s my song.’ The rule was whoever’s song it was to say how we did the arrangement for them.

That pissed him off, and I’m sure it pissed Ringo off when he couldn’t quite get the drums to ‘Back In The U.S.S.R.’, and I sat in. I remember sitting for hours thinking, ‘Should I say this thing?’ In the end it always came down to, ‘You should have said something,’ so it’s very hard to balance that. In the end I have to say that sometimes I was overbearing and sometimes they liked it.

Do you have much to do with them now?

I’m just starting to get back with them. It’s all business troubles. If we don’t talk about Apple then we get on like a house on fire. So I’ve just started to see them again. I had a great day the other day when George came down to visit me and for the first time in billions of years we had a really nice time. George was my original mate in The Beatles.

More than John?

He lived near me in Upton Green and I lived in Ardwick Road, and it was like half a mile away, so we took the same bus to the same school — the 500, which was the express — and then we got guitars at about the same time. We went through the Bert Weedon books and learned D and A together and we were quite big buddies then, so that was something I’d missed for all these years. We’d got all professional and Beatles and everything, and you lose that obviously, and he just came down the other day and we didn’t talk about Apple and we didn’t touch an instrument. It was just back as mates, like on the bus. He’s very into trees and planting and horticulture, as I am more now, and so we talked about planting trees. It was great to actually relate as two people and try and get all that crap out the window.

But that seems to be part of the process; he seems to be emerging more now anyway.

We’re all kind of coming to. We all brushed off this whole Beatles episode and sort of said, Well, it’s no big deal. Obviously it’s a big deal… it was a huge deal… if there ever was a big deal, that was it! So I don’t think half of us know what happened to us, really. I can never tell you what year anything was; literally they all go into a haze for me, the years and stuff. I keep seeing pictures of myself shaking hands with Mitzi Gaynor and I think, I didn’t know I met her. It’s that vague. And yet I look as straight as a die in there.

Were you on speed or something?

I don’t think so. I think it was just that life was speeding; you just met Mitzi Gaynor for five minutes and then you’d go and meet Jerry Lewis’s kids. It becomes very difficult after a while to know if you met 50 of them. I keep seeing weird photos of me with people that I didn’t even know I’d met. It’s quite embarrassing. Bowie’s got that problem too; he’s got huge periods of his life where he just does not know what happened.

When the money started to come in, were you aware of that or were you just living your life and you’d hear suddenly you were worth so much?

We used to ask them, ‘Am I a millionaire yet?’ and they used to say cryptic things like ‘On paper you are’ and we’d say, ‘Well, what does that mean? Am I or aren’t I? Are there more than a million of those green things in my bank yet?’ and they’d say, ‘Well, it’s not actually in a bank… we think you are.’ It was actually very difficult to get anything out of these people and the accountants never made you feel successful.

I remember we had the whole top five in America and I decided I wanted to buy a country house. I wasn’t asking for the world. In those days it would have cost about £30,000, top whack, and so I went to the accountants and they said, ‘You’ll have to get a mortgage’ and I said, ‘What do you mean, a mortgage? Aren’t we doing well yet? We’ve got the whole top five in the biggest market in the world! There’s gotta be some money coming in off that!’

They always try and keep you down. So you didn’t actually get much of a feeling of being very rich. The first time I actually saw cheques was when I left Apple, and it wasn’t me that saw them, it was Linda, because we’d co-written a few of our early things.

There are lots of stories about you and money. Miles, once the editor of International Times, who was a friend of yours in the mid-‘60s, told me about finding your MBE and a bunch of £20 notes stuffed into a sock drawer in your bedroom at the Asher house.

Yeah, I’ve heard that story too. I never remember actually having a wad of money like that. Still, it was nice of him not to nick it anyway, wasn’t it? I did know Miles very well. He was my mate. We had many a wondrous stoned evening in his place listening to all sorts of stuff.

That was another of the interesting things. I think that I’ve got a certain personality and if I give charity I don’t like to shout about it. If I get into avant-garde stuff, I don’t particularly shout about that either. I just get on with it. So way before John met Yoko and got avant-garde, I was like the avant-garde London bachelor with Miles in my pad in St. John’s Wood. I was making 8mm movies and showing them to Antonioni. I had all sorts of theories of music — we’d put on a Ravi Shankar record to our home movies and it’d synchronise and John used to come from Weybridge, kind of looking slightly goofy and saying ‘Wow! This is great! We should do more of this!’

I used to sit in a basement in Montagu Square with William Burroughs and a couple of gay guys he knew from Morocco and that Marianne Faithfull-John Dunbar crowd doing little tapes, crazy stuff with guitar and cello. But it didn’t occur to me in the next NME interview I did to rave about William Burroughs. Maybe it would have been good for me to do that.

It’s like Yoko met me before she met John. She turned up for a charity thing, she wanted manuscripts, any spare lyric sheets you had around. Ours tended to be on the backs of envelopes and to tell you the truth I didn’t want to give her any. They were very precious to me and the cause didn’t seem so great. So I said, ‘Look, my mate might be interested,’ and I gave her John’s address, and I think that’s how they first hooked up, and then she had her exhibition and stuff and then their side of the story started to happen.

I feel as though I have to justify living, you know, which is a bit of a piss-off. I don’t really want to have to sit around and justify myself; it’s a bit humiliating. But there are lots of things that haven’t come out. For instance, when they bust up their marriage, she came through London. He was in LA doing Pussy Cats with Nilsson and having a generally quite crazy time of it all, fighting with photographers and haranguing the Smothers Brothers, all because he genuinely loved Yoko and they had a very, very deep, strong relationship, but they were into all sorts of crazy stuff, stuff I don’t know the half of. A lot of people don’t know the half of that. Hints of it keep coming out in books but you never know if you can believe them.

You mean occultism?

All sorts. I certainly did get a postcard from Yoko saying ‘Go round the world in a South-Easterly direction. It’d be good for you. You’re allowed to stop at four places.’ George Martin got one of those and he sort of said, ‘Would it be alright if I go to Montserrat?’, and she said, ‘No.’ Actually, John did the voyage. John went in a South-Easterly direction around the world, but we all kind of went, ‘Sure, sure, we’ll go round the South-East.’ There are so many memories that come flooding in and it’s like a psycho session, the minute I get on this stuff. I’m on a couch and I’m just trying to purge it all.

Linda and me came over for dinner once and John said, ‘You fancy getting the trepanning tiling done?’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ and he said, ‘Well, you kind of have a hole bored in your skull and it relieves the pressure.’ We’re sitting at dinner and this is seriously being offered! Now this wasn’t a joke, this was like, ‘Let’s go next week, we know a guy who can do it and maybe we could all go together.’ So I said. ‘Look, you go and have it done, and if it works, great. Tell us all about it and we’ll all have it.’

But I’m afraid I’ve always been a little bit cynical about stuff like that — thank God! — because I think that there’s so much crap that you’ve got to be careful of. But John was more open to things like that.

Anyway, I was telling you about the marriage break-up thing. Yoko came through London and visited us, which was very nice. Linda and I were just married and living in this big old house in St John’s Wood. She came by and we started talking, and obviously the important subject for us is: ‘What’s happened? You’ve broken up then? I mean, you’re here and he’s there.’

She was very nice and confided in us but she was being very strong about it. She said, ‘No, he’s got to work his way back.’ I said, ‘Well look, do you still love him?’, and she said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Well, would you think it was an intrusion if I said to him, “Look, man, she loves you and there’s a way to get back”— sounds like a Beatles’ song — and I said ‘Would that be OK?’

She said she didn’t mind and we went out to visit him in L.A. in that house where all the crazy things went on and I took him into the back room and said, ‘This girl of yours, she really still loves you. Do you love her?’ And he said he did but he didn’t know what to do.

So I said, ‘You’re going to have to work your little ass off, man. You have to get back to New York, you have to take a separate flat, you have to send her roses every fucking day, you have to work at it like a bitch! Then you just might get her back.’ And he did. I mean, if you hear it from John’s point of view, it’ll just be that he spoke to Yoko on the phone and she said to him, ‘Come back.’

I always found it interesting that he got married a month after you.

I think we spurred each other into marriage. They were very strong together which left me out of the picture, so then I got together with Linda and we got our own kind of strength. I think again that they were a little bit peeved that we got married first.

Was it the kind of thing where there are two blokes who are good mates and one of them finds a girl and then the friendship breaks up?

‘Wedding Bells’ is what it was. ‘Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.’ We used to sing that song, Gene Vincent did it. It was like an army song and for us the Beatles became the army. We always knew that one day ‘Wedding Bells’ would come true, and that was when it did.

Trouble is, in trying to set the record straight I don’t want to blame John. I did this thing recently with Hunter Davies and they pulled out the one line, ‘John could be a manoeuvring swine.’ Well, I still stick to that, but I’d better not say it to The Sun because I’m just going to get hauled over the coals again.

I’ll tell you exactly why I said that. We had a business meeting to break up The Beatles, one of the famous ones that we’d been having — we’re still having them 17 years later, actually. We all flew in to New York specially. George came off his disastrous tour, Ring of flew in and we were at the Plaza for the big final settlement meeting. John was half a mile away at the Dakota and he sent a balloon over with a note that said ‘Listen to this balloon.’ I mean, you’ve got to be pretty cool to handle that kind of stuff.

George blew his cool and rang him up: ’You fucking maniac!! You take your fucking dark glasses off and come and look at us, man!!’ and gave him a whole load of that shit. Around the same time at another meeting we had it all settled, and John asked for an extra million pounds at the last minute. So of course that meeting blew up in disarray. Later, when we got a bit friendlier — and from time to time there would be these little stepping-stones of friendship in the Apple sea — I asked him why he’d actually wanted that million and he said, I just wanted cards to play with. It’s absolutely standard business practice. He wanted a couple of jacks to up your pair of nines. He was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn’t a saint.

You got an awful lot of shit for saying “It’s a drag” after he’d been killed.

Yea. I think why some politicians are so successful is that they have a little bleeper box in their heads and before they say something they run things through and they can see it as a headline. If it doesn’t look good they edit it. I have that sometimes, but in moments like that all my bleepers go out the window. I just came out of the place and somebody just stuck the proverbial microphone in the window of the car, which I’m mad enough to have open because, you see, I’m quite outgoing and I was telling the fans ‘Thank you, it’s alright.’ You know. Fab Macca, thumbs aloft, wacky… to me that’s just being nice… that’s just ordinary. I’m not going to carry any can for that kind of shit, for me that was OK… Sticking my thumb up isn’t some armour against the fans, it’s just a perfectly straightforward way of being friendly with people.

But, anyway, I said, ‘It’s a dra-a-ag.’ If I could’ve I might’ve just lengthened that word ‘drag’ for about a thousand years, to get the full meaning. Hunter Davies was on television that night, giving a very reasoned account of John, and all the puppets sprang right up there. I thought it was well tasteless. Jesus Christ, ready with the answers, aren’t we? Aren’t we just ready with a summary? Mind you, Hunter admitted to us years ago that he already had our obituaries written. They’re on file at The Times and they just update them, which is chilling to learn.

The question is, which is the more sensitive: my thing or his thing? He was the one I rang up about ‘manoeuvring swine’ too, so it shows what a buddy he is, he immediately put it in print.

That incident reminded me of John saying ‘We’re bigger than Jesus,’ which was a Maureen Cleave article for the Evening Standard. John and Maureen were good friends and in context it was actually John saying to the church, ‘Hey, wake up! We’re bigger than you.’

But you take it out of context, you send it to Selma, Alabama, you put it on the front page and you’ve got little 11-year-olds thumping on your coach window saying, ‘Blasphemer! Devil Worshipper!’ and I’ll never forget the sight of a little blond kid trying to get to us, and he would have done it, if he’d have got to us. I mean, at 11, what does this kid know of life and religion or anything? He’d just been whipped up.

It’s like Phillip Norman’s book Shout. It’s shameful the way it says that George spent the whole of his career holding a plectrum waiting for a solo. To dismiss George like that is just stupid, nothing less. George was a major influence musically. Trouble is with all these guys, when they come to interview you they come with a clipboard of facts that they’ve got from the files. That’s how Willie Russell wrote his play, John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert. That’s how I’ve become known as the one who broke up the Beatles.

The only thing I’m thankful for is that now the truth is starting to come out, and when I see that wedding changed to funeral, I start to realise that it was John’s problem, not mine.

What was his problem, do you think?

Heroin, a slight problem.

When did you know he was doing heroin?

When he was living in Montagu Square with Yoko after he’d split up with Cynthia. He never actually told us, no one ever actually saw him take it, but we heard. I was very lucky to miss that whole scene. I was the first one on coke in the group, which horrified the whole group, and I just thought, No sweat. The minute I stopped, the whole record industry got into it and has never stopped since.

I knew the time was up when I saw Jim Webb — Up Up And Away! — offering me a toot. I thought, ‘Hello, this is getting way too popular.’

When was this that you were doing it?

In LA, it was Sgt. Pepper time, it was my circle of friends: the William Burroughs, the Robert Frasers, the Rolling Stones crowd, and we’d use it to wake up after the pot. But that was quite shortlived and I hated it. I soon got the message that it was a big downer.

There’s a story that sums up all that drugs thing. When I went out to LA at the time of that Pussy Cats album I was offered angel dust. I said, ‘What is it?’ and they said, ‘It’s an elephant tranquillizer,’ and I said to the guy, ‘Is it fun?’ He thought for a moment and said, ‘No it’s not fun.’ So I said, ‘OK, I won’t have any then.’ That sums it up, you know. You had anything, man, even if it wasn’t fun! You sort of had to do it — peer pressure.

I was given a lot of stick for being the last one to take acid. I wish I’d held out now in a way, Although it was the times. I don’t really regret anything actually. I remember John going on The Old Grey Whistle Test and saying, ‘Paul only took it four times! We all took it twenty times!!’ It was as if you’d scored points…

Real twenty pints a night stuff, isn’t it?

It really is!! That’s it, exactly! Very northern. It’s the same thing. If you get it right with one crowd; of people, it’s wrong with another crowd, so you can’t win, basically. But it was great times and I really don’t regret it. I love a lot of what we did; we had screwed-up moments too, but who doesn’t?

Like Geldof — there’s this guy who does great stuff, but that doesn’t mean that he’s a saint. In fact, it’s often the opposite with these people; it just means that they’ve got Go Power.

I love the story where they finished the USA For Africa record and Geldof is buzzing and Michael Jackson and his family were having a light meal at about three in the morning. They’re all devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and they were all sitting there and Bob walks in and says, ‘You lot fucking disgust me!!’ The jaws just drop.

He didn’t make himself too wildly popular. I think that’s why he got a bit elbowed in the States. They never mention him. It’s the American guy they always mention. I don’t even know what his name is. Ken something. They all thank him. They never say, ‘And by the way, he got the idea off this mad Irish bog bandit.’

How did you feel at Live Aid? The first time you’d been on stage for ages and it all went wrong.

When the mic went? I felt very strange. It was very loosely organised and I turned up not knowing quite what was expected of me, other than that I had to do ‘Let It Be’. So I sat down at the piano, looked around for a cue to go, and there was just one roadie, and I looked at him for a signal. I started and the monitor was off and I thought, No sweat, this is BBC, this is world television, someone’s bound to have a feed, it’s just that my monitor’s off.

Then I wondered if the audience could hear because I knew some of the words of ‘Let It Be’ were kind of relevant to what we were doing. Anyway, I thought, This is OK, they can hear me, they’re singing along. I just had to keep going, so it was very embarrassing. The terrible thing was that in the middle I heard the roadies come through on the monitor, shouting, ’No, this plug doesn’t go here!‘ I thought, Hello, we have problems. The worst moment was watching it on telly later.

The event itself was so great, but it wasn’t for my ego. It was for people who are dying and it raised over £50 million, and so it was like having been at the battle of Agincourt. It’s something you’ll tell your grandchildren about. I know Paul Simon slightly regrets that he didn’t do it. He was asked, but he had other things to do. I very nearly didn’t do it; Bob just badgered me into it.

That’s your mother invoked in ‘Let It Be’, isn’t it?

Yeah, well, I had a lot of bad times in the ‘60s there, and we used to sort of — probably all the drugs — lie in bed and wonder what was going on and feel quite paranoid. I had a dream one night about my mother. She died when I was 14 so I hadn’t really heard from her in quite a while, and it was very good. It gave me some strength. In my darkest hour Mother Mary comes to me. I don’t know whether you’ve got parents that are still living, but if you do… I get dreams with John in, and my Dad. It’s very nice because you meet them again. It’s wondrous, it’s like magic. Of course, you’re not meeting them, you’re meeting yourself, or whatever…

What about ‘Lady Madonna’?

Lady Madonna’s all women. How do they do it? — bless ‘em — it’s that one, you know. Baby at your breast, how do they get the time to feed them? Where do you get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?

Was your mother a very strong force in your life?

Well, I loved her, you know, yeah.

Was it very traumatic when she died?

Yeah, but I’m a bit of a cover-up. There are many people like me in the world who don’t find it easy to have public grief. But that was one of the things that brought John and I very close together. We used to actually talk about it, being 16 or 17. We actually used to know, not in a cynical way, but a way that was accepting the reality of the situation, how people felt when they said, ‘How’s your mother?’ And we’d say, ‘Well, she’s dead.’ We almost had a sort of joke, we’d have to say, ‘It’s alright, don’t worry.’ We’d both lost our mothers. It was never really spoken about much; no-one really spoke about anything real. There was a famous expression: ‘Don’t get real on me, man.’

How did you feel about all the stick Linda got?

I feel sorry for her. She got a lot of stick, more than we admit to.

It presumably affected your relationship in some way?

It made us stronger, really; the thing I’m beginning to understand now about Linda was that we were just two people who liked each other and found a lot in common and fell in love, got married and found that we liked it. To the world, of course, she was the girl that Paul McCartney had married, and she was a divorcee, which didn’t seem right. People preferred Jane Asher. Jane Asher fitted. She was a better Fergie.

Linda wasn’t a very good Fergie for me, and people generally tended to disapprove of me marrying a divorcee and an American. That wasn’t too clever. None of that made a blind bit of difference; I actually just liked her, I still do and that’s all it’s to do with.

I mean, we got married in the craziest clothes when I look back on it. We didn’t even bother to buy her a decent outfit. I can see it all now; I can see why people were amazed that I’d put her in the group. At the time it didn’t seem the least bit unusual. I even had quotes from Jagger saying, ‘Oh, he’s got his old lady up onstage man.’

A lot of people give her stick for playing with one finger, but as a matter of fact they weren’t polyphonic, the Moogs, in those days. You can only play them with one finger; you can play them with five if you like, but only one’s gonna register, so it’s things like that all added to the picture, and by the time she did the ’76 tour with Wings, she was well good at stuff and actually I was quite surprised, I mean, she was holding down the keyboard job with one of the big bands in the world. From knowing nothing! I mean, the balls of the girl!

But along with the public condemnations, there were always millions of people who liked her. Our shows always did OK, and our records occasionally did OK. Occasionally we’d have a whopper burger that’d suddenly make it worthwhile. Then we’d have our big whopper failures, but as long as you measure them against your successes, it’s alright.

How do you feel about the Wings output?

I was never very happy with the whole thing but I’m actually starting to think that it was a bit churlish of me, because I’m meeting a lot of people now who had a completely different perception of the whole thing. I met a nurse recently who was a Wings fan! I mean, forget me, forget The Beatles, she was an actual die-hard Wings fan. I didn’t think they existed.

A lot of the younger people coming up didn’t really know the Beatles history. There are people who don’t know what Sgt. Pepper was. We find it a bit difficult to understand. It’s like not knowing what War And Peace is.So it’s OK. I was never very pleased with the whole thing, but I’m warming to it now. I’m starting to look at it through my own eyes, and saying, Wait a minute. What did we do? Where did we go wrong? Most people would give their right arm for the Wings career, to have hits as big as ‘Mull Of Kintyre’, ‘My Love’, ‘Band On The Run’, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’.

But it came to an end when you were busted in Japan. How did that happen?

It happened because we got some good grass in America and no-one could face putting it down the toilet. It was an absolutely crazy move. We knew we weren’t going to get any in Japan. Anybody else would have given it to their roadies, but I didn’t want them to take the rap. It was lying on top of the bloody suitcase. I’ll never forget the guy’s face as he pulled it out. He almost put it back. He just did not want the embarrassment. But it’s a hysterical subject and I’d prefer to skirt round it these days, because I don’t want any of the pressures that go with it, so I’m telling everyone, stay clean, be cool.

I’m pretty straight. I know what crazy is.

[trillhouse-lh]

You Pervert

> Loan sighed, half-heartedly watching the screen as she lazily browsed an anime streaming site. Normally, she would stick to more legitimate sources, but she’d already watched everything that interested her on Crunchyroll… and quite frankly she just wasn’t in the mood to play any games at the moment. Granted, she wasn’t really in the mood to watch anything either, but she was bored and needed SOMETHING to occupy her time. As if on cue, a knock at the door snapped her from her stupor. > “Wh-who is it?” Loan called out. The door opened to reveal Liena, standing with a laundry basket in hand and a kind smile adorning her chubby face. “Oh… hello, Liena.” She said, returning her younger sister’s smile. Liena nodded in acknowledgement, silently walking over and setting the basket down on Loan’s bed. “Thank you… um, y-you didn’t need to go through the trouble, I would have gone to get them...” > (It’s okay.) Liena signed. (I had to.....Lemy.....dirt.) Loan cocked her head in confusion, and Liena thought a moment before trying again. (Lemy clothes smell bad.) > “Oh… I see,” Loan said with a laugh. “Well, thanks again.” Liena grinned, giving another small nod before hurrying out and shutting the door behind her. Loan looked at the laundry basket, finding that the clothes within were already neatly folded and ready to be put in the closet. It was easy to forget just how much Liena did for the family… Loan hoped that she took some time for herself every now and then. In any case, at least she had something to do now. > She looked back at the screen with a frown, quickly picking an anime at random… ‘Boku no Pico’. The name sounded familiar, but beyond that she had no idea what it was actually about. Still, it was more for background noise than anything, so she simply shrugged and put it on before sliding off the bed.

> Once, Loan may have procrastinated with chores such as these, if she even bothered doing them at all. But as long as she was living under her father’s roof she was determined not to be a nuisance. Besides, she wanted to get better, and sticking to old habits would do nothing to help that. > Loan got to work as the video started, an overly-cutesy theme song quickly filling her ears. ‘So it’s a shoujo series,’ she figured, taking a quick glance up to confirm her suspicions- > ...Oh. It was one of THOSE animes. > Barely a few seconds into the opening theme, the entirety of the frame was taken up by a close-up of a young girl’s butt as she rode her bike, wearing what could only be described as the tightest clothing ever conceived. Loan rolled her eyes. Fanservice was one thing, certainly something she’d come to expect from anime in general... but to get this risque THIS quickly was a clear sign that it wasn’t for her. With a shake of her head, she got back to work; she’d change it to something better in a moment. > Or… perhaps she could give it a chance, at least? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time an anime’s OP was misleading. She frowned, taking another glance at the screen only to be met with yet another close-up of the girl’s butt. She let out a sigh and massaged her temples. She’d seen a lot over the years, but never an anime THIS shameless. > ...Wait. What was that? > Almost as soon as she had noticed it, the scene changed to another. Loan blinked, unsure if she had really seen what she thought she had. Between the girl’s legs, she could have sworn she saw a small bulge… but no, it couldn’t be. She shook the thought aside; it must have simply been an animation error- > Oh, no.

> After a few more quick cuts, an image filled the screen: the girl bound up bondage-style, her skirt hiked up to reveal her white panties… > ...Sporting a clear outline of something a girl should most definitely NOT have. > “O-oh my God,” Loan gasped, her face turning bright red. She was frozen in place, her mind struggling to process what she was looking at. The ‘girl’ in a wet t-shirt. Topless on ‘her’ bed, wearing naught but panties as she pulled off her stockings. Various shots of her completely nude, naughty bits conveniently hidden from view. > Embraced from behind by a very clearly older man, blushing demurely as the man reached around to stroke his... > “...AaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” Loan shrieked, snatching up the controller and frantically trying to stop the video. She couldn’t watch this. Hell, she couldn’t even have this in her history. Was it even LEGAL?! So flustered was she that she managed to do naught but pause it before dropping the controller to the ground. “Oh come on!” She hissed, stooping down to pick it up. > “Loan?! Did you just scr-” Loan froze, her blood running cold and the controller dropping from her hands once more. She slowly turned toward the doorway to find none other than Lyra standing there, staring at the screen with a look of horror and disgust plastered across her face. > “L-Ly… LYRA?!” Loan sputtered, frantically waving her arms as she attempted to explain herself. “I-I swear this isn’t what it looks like…!” Whatever she may have said to defend herself, Lyra wasn’t listening; her lips pressed tightly into a thin line, her hands balling into fists and shaking with anger.

> Lyra had always had her suspicions about Loan. For a girl her age to spend all her time cooped up inside playing games and watching cartoons was unusual to say the least, not to mention the company she chose to keep. > As far as Lyra could tell, the woman had no friends her own age, instead preferring the company of their younger brothers. Well, TWO of them at least: Bobby and, perhaps even more worrisome to the teen, Lemy. She claimed to simply get along better with kids, but then why did she never spend time with Lacy, or Lupa, or Leia? Clearly something was afoot, but despite Lyra’s best attempts she’d never managed to catch her in the act… until now. > “You… you PERVERT,” She hissed, making Loan wince. > “I-I’m not-” > “I always knew you were up to something,” Lyra pressed on. “I can’t believe I’ve been letting you bring Lemy and Bobby in here unsupervised.” Loan’s brow furrowed in confusion, only for her eyes to go wide as the accusation set in. > “W-wait… WAIT! I-I never… I’m not like that!” She pleaded. > “What in God’s name is THIS, then?!” She spat, pointing at the screen. “And a cartoon, no less… looking to indoctrinate them into your sick fantasies, are you?!” > “I-I didn’t know what it was!” > “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t,” Lyra sneered. “You just HAPPENED to put on this pedophilic smut, then?” > “I’m NOT a-” > “You listen here, Loan.” The teen strode up to her sister, making the older woman shrink back in fear. “If you EVER go near any of our brothers again, I’ll make you regret it more than you could ever imagine. Do you understand me?!” > “I-I didn’t…” Loan whimpered; she looked as though she could burst into tears at any moment. Scared of being exposed for what she really was, no doubt. With one final warning glare Lyra turned on her heel and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

> Lyra stopped in the hallway, taking a few deep breaths to compose herself. She often had to remind herself that Loan was a very troubled girl, and had to give her at least some leeway compared to the others… but THIS was a different matter. Despite her warning, a big part of her wanted to report the issue to their father and Ronnie straightaway. Well… their father, at least. Lyra didn’t want to think about what Ronnie might do to the girl. > She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. She needed to calm down and clear her mind before considering her options here. With a sigh, she made her way downstairs. As she reached the bottom step, however, the front door swung open. > “-tellin’ ya, dude, they ain’t so tough.” It was none other than Lemy, Bobby following closely behind. “If either of ‘em had the balls to take me on one-on-one, I’d totally wreck ‘em.” He boasted, puffing out his chest haughtily. > “Yeah… I’m sure you would, Lemy.” His unconvinced younger brother said with a roll of his eyes. “Haven’t you and Hayden already… oh, hi, Lyra.” > “Huh? Oh, hey. ‘Sup, Ly’?” Lemy nonchalantly greeted his sister. The girl crossed her arms, looking down at the two with pursed lips. > “What’s all this about fighting?” Lyra asked disapprovingly; her little brother simply shrugged. > “Hypothermically.” > “...Hypothetically, Lemy...” Bobby corrected him. > “Yeah, that one,” The boy said as he stuck a pinky in his ear, wiggling it to clean it out much to Lyra’s disgust. > “Lemy, for goodness’ sake, go use a q-tip. We’re not living in a zoo,” She chastised him. Lemy huffed and popped his finger out of his ear, examining it for any stray wax. > “Yeah, yeah… c’mon, Beej,” He grumbled, heading past his sister with Bobby in tow. > “See you later, Lyra…” Bobby said. The girl waved, only for something to cross her mind.

> “Wait… wait you two, one moment,” She said; Lemy let out an exaggerated groan, stopping mid-stride and shooting her a look of irritation. > “Alright, alright… what’d I do this time?” Lemy asked. “‘Cause I swear I’ve got an explanation.” > “...I don’t know… what DID you do, Lemy?” Lyra fired back, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. The boys exchanged a nervous glance before an unconvincingly innocent smile crossed their places. > “N-nothing… um, what’d you need, sis?” Lemy asked in a faux-polite tone. Lyra sighed, shaking her head in resignation. She just couldn’t be bothered with it for now. > “Right, well… you two spend a lot of time with Loan, yes?” > “Yeah, why?” Lemy replied. > “I-is something wrong?” Bobby asked nervously. Lyra was about to answer in the affirmative, but she caught herself. > “Has Loan ever… done anything strange?” She asked. Lemy thought about it for a moment before shrugging. > “Not really.” > “I mean… she’s kinda strange anyway, isn’t she...?” Bobby pointed out. “I-in a good way, though.” > “No, no, I mean has she ever done anything that made you feel... uncomfortable?” Lyra clarified. The boys each cocked an eyebrow, exchanging another glance before looking back to their sister. > “...Uncomfortable how…?” Lemy asked. > “I mean, DONE anything… said anything inappropriate, or put her hands somewhere she shouldn’t-” > “W-wait, you mean like ‘bad touch’?!” Bobby gasped, his eyes going wide. “N-NO! Of course she hasn’t…!” > “Yeah, what the heck Lyra? Loan’s not like that,” Lemy agreed. “I mean, she likes to snuggle, but not like THAT.” Lyra frowned and kneeled down to their level.

> “Look… I won’t tell anyone,” She promised. “You can be honest with me. If she’s-” > “She’s NOT,” Lemy repeated, seemingly irritated by his sister’s accusation. > “Yeah… she’s nice,” His brother chimed in. “I like being with her. S-she’d never do anything like that…”Lyra hesitated a moment, her brow furrowing slightly as she studied their faces. Finally, she got to her feet with a sigh. > “...Alright. That’s all… you two can go,” Lyra said. Her brothers exchanged one final look of confusion, shrugging before they turned and made their way upstairs. Lyra watched them go before turning and heading out the door herself. > Lyra sat down on the patio with a huff to mull over the situation. Had she been wrong…? She’d SEEN what Loan was watching with her own eyes… but who would watch something like that without locking the door? > Plus, the woman had been adamant that it was a misunderstanding, and Loan had certainly never been a very good liar. The more Lyra thought about it the more it didn’t add up, and the worse she felt about how she’d treated her older sister. > “Ugh… nice, Lyra. Nice,” She scolded herself, burying her face in her palm.  God, no wonder Loan had looked so upset… she’d accused the poor girl of something awful, not even letting her plead her case. Suspicions or not, she should have at least heard Loan out. But no… once again, Lyra had jumped to conclusions. She groaned and dragged her hand down her face. Her mom and Lemy were right; she really WAS too uptight for her own good. “...I should go apologize, at least...” She muttered as she got to her feet.

> Upstairs, Loan sat downcast at the foot of her bed, staring down at her lap sadly. She wasn’t sure what she should do, or say, or even think about the current situation. Not that she could blame Lyra… were their positions reversed even SHE might not have believed it. WHO WOULD LISTEN TO A NUTCASE LIKE YOU, ANYWAY?

> Loan sighed and shook the thoughts away. Whatever the case, all she could do was let Lyra cool down and try to explain herself again later. For the time being she still had laundry to put away, and she certainly needed SOME sort of task to keep her mind off things. May as well be something productive, right? > The young woman got to her feet and got back to work. However, as she whittled down the stacks of cleaned clothing, she spotted something out of place: all the way at the bottom lay a faded, purple tank top, far smaller than any of the other shirts. > “Is this Lemy’s…?” She muttered; with so many people living under one roof, it wasn’t unusual for some of their clothes to get mixed together by accident. Indeed, the shirt did look to be one of Lemy’s… the baked-in stains were a dead giveaway. “Has this even been washed?” She said with a grimace, bringing the shirt to her face to take a sniff. > ...And, as if on cue, the door swung open. > “Hey, Loan… listen, I…” Lyra trailed off as her gaze fell on Loan; the girl had her face buried in one of Lemy’s recently-worn shirts, taking in a big whiff of the young boy’s scent. Loan sighed as she lowered she shirt. > “Yeah, that’s definitely not… um…” Loan’s eyes met Lyra’s and, for some time, neither moved or said a word. Then the tank top slipped from her hand and she raised her palms in submission, giving a small, nervous laugh. “U-um… I swear, th-this isn’t what it l-looks like…” She stammered as Lyra grit her teeth, her face turning red-hot with fury. > “Y-YOU PERVERT!”

[braindamageforbeginners]

Q: Can I pray for you?

Yes, Godsdammit, go ahead and pray for me. I get that people don’t want to be weird, and, for some inexplicable internet reason, I’m rapidly becoming some weird brain cancer idol/shrine on Facebook and Instagram (which would explain the creepy robo-prayer calls I occasionally get from :prayer centers” (I’m also old enough to remember when “prayer centers” were called “churches” and/or “temples”). So, here’s the deal: even though I consider myself resourceful, lucky (in a weird way), and cunning, there is literally no way I would know whether you’re praying for me unless you specifically ask or tell me. I appreciate consent, but, really, just go ahead and pray. Unless God is like a special delivery by UPS, and I have to be home at a certain hour to take delivery (again, theologically, that would explain an awful lot). My apologies for running roughshod over a good-hearted request and all that, but your own Holy Book* actually has something applicable: “ And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites. are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and. in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men “ One almost feels a screenwriting possibility...

 EXT. GOLGOTHA - DAY - In the background, the followers of Brian are singing an unorthodox but merry song. A crowd gathers around one of the crosses. CHRIST: Why hast thou forsaken me?! CHRISTIAN 1: We haven’t forsaken you, dude. We’re just waiting for the “Kickstarter”pledges to reach the stretch goals before we save you. You okay, Jesus? CHRIST: Oh, rather.** I was wondering, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask for some pliers and a step-stool. CHRISTIAN 1: Yes, since they haven’t been invented, yet. But you seem like you got this. CHRIST: Hang on... CHRISTIAN: See you in three days, dude

I mean, I get that the LDS got into trouble for baptizing Anne Frank, and I’m not advocating that anyone do a post-mortem baptism, unless they can rig me up like “Weekend at Bernie’s,” but, at the same time, Anne probably has bigger, more pressing issues than what is or isn’t being done in her name (especially since we’re still hostile, as a nation, toward refugees and immigrants, which is what the Frank family hoped to be... before the US denied them travel visas). i can only base that on my own experience, but I feel it’d be faster and easier to get forgiveness than permission. I could be wrong, but I’ve never heard of anyone in dire straits getting angry, post-facto, at being prayed for.

So, today marks the second-to-last infusion before, in an ideal world, the Warlocks cut me loose for observation. Again, it’s been an utterly miserable year, but, at the same time, I do feel almost as if I’ll be adrift. When you put every last scrap of energy and potential into a task like this (not dying a horrible death), suddenly having time or energy to do things like carve out a career (or at least make some sort of money on this blog)(again, you guys are only getting a thin dribble of output; there was literally a brief time in my life where had three modes: writing, sleeping, and library).. At the same time, not aggressively and preemptively treating a cancer that is infamous for coming back, is somewhat scary, although I know unending chemo will eventually kill me.

Which brings me to today’s topic, body horror. This is the broad trope/genre of biology horror, usually best-seen in David Croenenberg’s films. It’s not an uncommon sensation for cancer patients to have some distal clump of cells come alive and attack. For most patients, however, that story usually ends with, “And then me arse fell off, and the doctors knew what it was!”(Reminder to self: schedule colonoscopy and/or other recommended preventive/screening procedures, ASAP). For neurosurgery patients - those lucky enough to end the story with, “And then I had neurosurgery,” It’s a slightly different story. For the first few months post-surgery, your sutures hurt like hell - like any major surgery would, I’d imagine. Then comes the longer phase, when they have an odd, itching/stinging sensation. For everyone keeping track, that’s not a continuous sensation - it’ll be maybe a minute or two out of every week, and, when you reach up to scratch, the pain receptors in your scalp will slap you away. After that, you enter the body horror part of neurosurgery, the itchy phase. This is the shortest of the three, and I will admit, horrifying dander is one of the less-offputting aspects of it (you don’t know what relief is until you scratch out self-dissolving stitches). I apologize for that graphic description, but it’s important. So, on November 1 of last year - er, 2017 - I had my most recent neurosurgery (that’s #3, for those keeping track at home). And then, as expected (There’s a reason I started the blog well before any treatment), everything in my life went into hyperdrive, and I didn’t have time to keep track of my new scars (and, really, once handfuls of hair start coming out in the shower, you’re disinclined to investigate further). So, it wasn’t until very, very recently that I realized how very itchy the right side of my head is. Which bodes well for the time frame of entering the recovery period shortly.

I mentioned in a previous post that I never got a PICC or CVS - which are semi-permanent venous access devices - because I had a shunt in my skull last year (2017), and one opening for opportunistic infections every election cycle seems a more-than-generous opportunity. In a year of chemo, that’s generally seemed like the better bet (for me, anyway), even though I have a blood draw every week. Today was the one time I’ve faltered in that decision. I have mentioned that I am notoriously hard to install in IV in  - it’s a horrible feeling when you’re on a first-name basis with all the nurses in the chemo ward; it’s dwarfed when not only can you recognise everyone, but the nurse at your station not only recognizes you, she literally ducks out on-sight and calls Alex over)(the nurse on shift today gets full marks for listening to me  complain about Alex - “He’s not terribly affable or gentle, and way too fast” - and retorting, “Well, that’s men.”). My previous find-a-vein record is seven. I don’t know if that record was achieved today, I stopped counting after four  However, eventually an IV was installed and Keith Richards’ essence distilled into my circulatory system. Then, the second hour, we all waited for my heart to explode (yes, that is exactly what they do, although they have an automated blood pressure cuff to aid their measurements). Then, oddly enough, I encountered a friend from a support group, Which wouldn’t normally be worthy of comment, except she’s a fan (hey, Sarah!), and, based the latest data, the folks who actually use social media and/or social publishing to keep tabs on me/read my stuff are: 1. Close friends and family that are legally obligated to do so

2. Distant friends and family that I probably haven’t thought about in years (hey guys)(if you’re worried that you’re “distant friends and family,” I’ll pray for you)

3. Inhabitants of Narnia or the Hundred-Acre Wood (or wherever people on the Internet live

4. Racing in or out of parking lots as I am leaving

The bad news for today - hopefully - is that this infusion is going to be a bad one, based on how sore I already am, just 3 hours post-infusion. The good news is, I’ve got an Advent Calendar of assorted mostly-legal substances to help my battered psyche onward, I mean, drugs are bad, kids, unless directly monitored and prescribed by a physician.*** Anyway, next week will be the last infusion, hopefully, and, even more hopefully it’ll be followed by a long, uneventful life. That would be ideal, for me; however, since my life is run on the principle of, “What would make the most interesting narrative” I’m going with, “Even odds I’ll come down with Ebola before Monday.”

*My Holy Book is, of course,  Dolly Parton’s autobiography. **In this adaptation, Jesus is played by Hugh Laurie, circa 1993 ***Odd final thought of the day: gateway drugs are real, and they serve as the way out of some amazingly awful other drugs.

[myaekingheart]

INCREDIBLES 2 SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Okay but listen, one of the coolest things about sitting down for The Incredibles 2 was how much female power and not only power but this balance between that and family that I felt from the entire experience? Like not just the movie but the Pixar short beforehand, too.

Bao focuses on a woman coping with her empty nest and shows her being this great mother to a little dumpling she made that is symbolic of her son. It was the first Pixar short directed by a woman and I feel like you can tell the difference between this and ones directed by men just because there’s this particular delicacy, specificity, and raw emotion to it that I think set it apart from other Pixar shorts. You can see the tender care they put into making this both universally and culturally relatable and that’s just great.

And then The Incredibles 2 is so female focused it’s great. Like at the end of the day it’s about teamwork like the first one but it’s so nice to see the women in this film really branch out and get more screen time. Helen’s arc is awesome and so relatable to all working moms, truthfully. She gets so excited about her work and you can see how happy she is but she’s also 110% ready to drop everything for the sake of her family. She’s also got this agency, though, too, and I feel like she’s a more well-rounded character in this one whereas in the first she was predominantly a wife and mother. In this one, she’s still both of those things of course but we get to see her as an actual person outside of that, as well. We learn she used to have a motorcycle and a mohawk and we really get to see even more of her intelligence as she works to figure out the Screenslaver debacle. And then there’s Violet was honestly absolute perfection in this movie. She really blossomed as a character (no pun intended) and we get to see so much personality from her now. Not that she didn’t have personality in the first one because she did but she was very closed off and trying to find herself and her confidence and whatnot. In the sequel, it’s very clear she’s found her voice and her confidence and she’s this strong-willed yet socially awkward character with a short fuse and such intelligence (especially mechanical intelligence? Like first with programming the rocket in the first one, and now in this one it’s about manually turning a large boat). Her subplot with Tony is honestly so incredible, like it’s a little heartbreaking but I love how we see Violet express this wide range of emotion and experience these things everyone who is or has been a teenage girl can relate to. Like coming downstairs invisible to grab the entire tub of ice cream and a giant spoon while crying because your boyfriend stood you up? And having your parents and siblings embarrass you in front of him? Classic teenage stuff. The way all of this tied into the superhero element, though, I think really drove her arc home for me. It connects so nicely to her arc in the first movie, and something Helen says about “Their kids, they haven’t made that choice yet” in regards to Bob encouraging Helen to go through with the superhero advocacy so their kids can have the choice to be supers legally. But in the first movie, you know, she’s this cynical, closed off, emo teenager who resents what makes her different and just wants to be normal, but through the course of the film discovers that what makes her different is her biggest strength and that that is what she’s meant to be, a superhero. In the beginning of the sequel, it starts off with her seemingly having shit together like she gets the date with the boy she likes and her and her family get a chance to fight crime but not without a price. Now she has to try and find a balance between her superhero self and her personal life all while her mother fights to make superheroism legal in the first place. It’s a really tricky situation only further complicated by the fact that Dicker erased Tony’s memory like he did Kari’s but to the point where Tony doesn’t even remember Violet at all. It’s heartbreaking seeing her approach this boy she really likes and thought she finally had won a chance with only for him to be like “Do I know you...?” And then when she finds out it’s all Dicker’s fault, and she decides that superheroes suck and she renounces them completely, trying to destroy her own supersuit. It’s only when her family is in grave trouble that she steps up, puts the supersuit back on, and says “I’m renouncing my renunciation.” And even the family aspect of Vi’s arc is great, too, because not only is she trying to deal with her boy troubles but she’s basically the second in command of the house with Helen gone. When Bob snaps, she gracefully steps in and calls Lucius for backup. She empathizes with her father and there’s this really cute scene with them where he opens up to her about how sorry he is about what happened with Tony, that he didn’t consider how she’d suffer the consequences when he told Dicker to take care of things, and how he just wants to be a good dad to his kids. Violet lets him sleep in (17 hours, mind you-- which reminds me, 17 seems to be a recurring number here since they also mentioned Jack Jack had 17 powers. I wonder what’s up with that?) and makes him breakfast and when her parents are incapacitated, so to speak, she steps up and takes charge of Dash and Jack Jack (though obviously they’ve got some agency and leadership here, too, but Violet was the main source of leadership here). It was so great seeing Violet fight, as well, because she definitely stepped up her game. She wants to fight. She wants to be a superhero and when Helen expresses at the beginning of the movie how she didn’t think that was a good idea because supers are still illegal, she’s kind of bothered by this because “I just thought it was cool fighting crime with you guys.” She’s sharp as a tack and picks up on her parents leaving the motel in their supersuits, what Helen’s new job entails, and when Bob leaves in his own supersuit for the boat at DevTech. She’s a great superhero, a great sister, and just overall a great character and I loved how things ended with her: she both gets the guy and gets to be a hero, this time legally. And then there’s Edna who quite frankly shined in this film. She is as great as she was in the first one but this time, she’s got an amazing character interaction with Jack Jack. The bond those two create in the film is honestly incredible, Jack Jack is such a sassy little nugget and Edna LOVES HIM for it, and because he is probably the most intriguing superhero case she’s even seen. I mean, the kid’s got 17 powers. He is literally a jack of all trades. Can you imagine how hard it must be to design a supersuit that withstands the effects of 17 different super powers??? Also she called herself Aunty Edna and her door is shaped like an E and I think both of those are freaking wonderful. Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of this movie, though, is the villain. I think the idea of DevTech being behind Screenslaver was, quite frankly, a little too predictable but it was the way DevTech was behind Screenslaver that made the reveal so much better. I’m not going to lie, I went into this incredibly nervous because of speculation I had seen and read online about Screenslaver and people being highly convinced it was Winston Deavor under that mask. And to be honest, I think they wanted you to think that. The way they present Winston in the trailers and with how little information Bob Odenkirk gave on his character at the Q+A made you think it had to be him. I even saw a video where someone took a full-body image of Screenslaver and matched it up with a full-body image of Winston to try and prove that their bodies were exactly the same and therefore it had to be Winston underneath that mask. However, when Helen unmasks Screenslaver only to find it’s some random pizza delivery kid??? I was shook, to be honest. The reveal that Evelyn was behind everything on her own was truthfully mind-blowing to me. I got a strange feeling from Evelyn right from the start, right when her and Winston almost started an argument about whether their parents should’ve called on the superheros or hide in the safe room. Honestly, though, I didn’t think much of it except for assuming after that that Winston could potentially have a short fuse/violent tendencies that could allude to him being the villain. Evelyn was such a complex character, though, and I was so happy she ended up being the villain. In the midst of all the “Winston is Screenslaver” talk, in the back of my mind all I could think was “Screw you, I hope Evelyn is Screenslaver” even though my logical side knew that that probably wasn’t possible because, like in that video, Evelyn and Screenslaver did not have the same body type/shape. The thought of Evelyn being behind Screenslaver, however, and using technology and hypnosis and whatnot was incredibly interesting to me. She’s clearly a highly intelligent woman and it’s clear she holds some resentment towards her brother, as well, and even men in general which I thought was an interesting twist (since she and Helen definitely have a 100% feminist conversation at one point in the film about men overshadowing women and women getting the spotlight). I kind of liked how they matched Elastigirl with a female villain, though, because if Winston had been behind the whole thing and it was woman against man it would probably feel a little too political in today’s climate (not that the movie doesn’t have political undertones in the first place because it does, ie the legality of superheroes, gender roles [though Brad Bird said this was not an intentional social commentary, he literally just thought about Bob as a stay-at-home dad with a superpowered baby and thought “God, that’ll mess Bob up”], technology, and even body cameras). I think it was interesting to see, though, because it felt equally matched. Like a way of saying “Women are just as capable of being super heroic as they are capable of being super villainous.” Like we had these two highly intelligent women with a lot of agency and their own moral compasses (and based around family, no less) fighting against each other for what they believed was right and it was honestly great. And I liked how Evelyn kept all of this to herself, too. She played this charade and her brother had absolutely no idea. He literally jumped out of a plane because of his sister and what she had done against his cause. I went through the entire movie thinking his incredible admiration for superheroes had to be some kind of ploy, some kind of facade to cover up what he was really doing, only to find out that he really was just as innocently fanatic and naive as he came off to be. He truly loves superheroes and truly wants them to be legalized. And the new superheroes we meet are great, too. Voyd is wonderful, though I kind of wanted a little more on her and the others even if she was just a side character. I felt like she was marketed like she was going to play a bigger role in the movie but then didn’t get as much screen time as I expected her to. I still thought she was great, though, and I loved how radical she was about Elastigirl, too. It really hits the point home of how there are absolutely other superheroes out there who have been forced underground, as well, and how big Elastigirl was in the golden days to really have so much influence over Voyd, to be this role model for her in a world where people like her are not totally accepted. I don’t know, I’m rambling but damn, it was just so refreshing and exciting to see so many female characters with such a wide range of characterization and personality and agency. It was just wonderful and I loved every second of it.

[hydrogen-news-blog]

Q&A: The Evolution of EvoS

NEV:3 pounces into action By KAYE SHEPHERD Hydrogen News Network, Reporter-at-Large

There’s a new lion king at EvoS, and her name is NEV:3. The latest feline-hybrid dominating the feeds has been touted as the ‘new face of EvoS,’ (and unlike her predecessors, she seems more interested in meeting fans than eating them). In the few short weeks since she was introduced as the latest lancer, she’s already proven herself to be a sales force to be reckoned with, dominating merchandising lines with the aggression of Rask and the kid-friendly cuteness of your neighborhood PuP-toy.

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with NEV:3 and chat about the future of EvoS, working with Dr. Finn, and tips for taking the best SELF-Es in Atlas.

Hi, NEV:3. Did I get that pronunciation right? ‘Neve’ like Rev? Or Dev. Kev. Tev. Lev. Bev. Mev... 

Uh-huh. That’s helpful, thank you. So, you’ve been heralded as the new face of EvoS. What does that entail? A new face. And tail. <NEV:3 giggles> But also, ya know, just bringing awareness to what we’re doing at Evolution Solutions. Every other Trust is so into their secrety secrets. Like, what even goes on at Omni? Not even joking, I think every employee there is a robot.

Like Su-Ren and Tol-Ren? Wait, WHAT?! THEY’RE ROBOTS!?!? I meant metaphorically, but are you serious? 

Yeah. They’re androids. Wow. But like, I saw them holding hands the other day. They’re, like, in love?

It’s all over the feeds. See? People call them ‘Stole-ren’, because they stole our hearts away. Or something. Um. I don’t read that stuff… out loud. That is adorbs. I must be clairvoyant! I sensed the robot thing subconsciously. <NEV:3 laughs>. It must be a cat thing, because pre-transformation, there was this guy in the lab I used to talk to all the time – such a great listener – and it turns out he was just a surveillance bot that Big Boss got to monitor everyone’s productivity! I couldn’t believe it. The bot is still really sweet though. He’s got the most comforting beeps. 

But anyway! Back to your question.

Basically, I’m here now because EvoS wants everyone to know what we’re all about, ya know?

And what is EvoS all about, for the uninitiated? Well, Kaye, it’s a PuP eat PuP world out there. If EvoS has learned anything over the past century, it’s that survival is not a guarantee. Everyone in Atlas is living on finite resources and we have to be able to change with the times. 

With all of the new expansion into the Waste and the proposed reconstruction of the Hyperion gateway, things are exciting right now, but also super uncertain. We can’t know how things will change – only that they will – and we need to be prepared for that. Mega-prepared. Over-prepared.

Like, what if the world outside of Atlas was flooded, like what happened to Oceanus? Wouldn’t it be fifty thousand percent better if we all had fins right away? <NEV:3 laughs> The Doc loves asking that. It’s like, his favorite thing.

The Doc, being Dr. Finn? The one and only. Or, as he would say, the sole Doc.

Excellent impression! I can almost hear it in his voice. He’s quite a character, isn’t he? Oh, de-finn-itely. 

I can see why he enjoys your company. Duh. Everyone does. <NEV:3 giggles> 

Dr. Finn is clawsome! And he’s just being himself, ya know? I don’t know why some folks take it so purrsonally. Like Rask! Rask hates it.

Rask is intimidating. He’s a big softy at heart. We were playing catch the other day! He’s got great aim. Threw a million Rask plushes at me and just would not stop until I had to leave. I kept telling him to throw softer, but he just doesn’t know his own strength. Cute kitty.

Before we get too off-topic, you were saying earlier that we need to be over-prepared for what might come. Are there any changes coming to EvoS that we should be aware of? Preparation is just common sense! It’s like knowing your best angles and having good light before taking a SELF-E. You wouldn’t waltz in with untrimmed claws and ruffled fur and expect to take a purrfect pic, right? No! You’d put on your best face, dress up, strike a pose, and give yourself the best odds at looking amazing.

Your SELF-Es with fans have been a real success for EvoS. My fans are the best! They’re the coolest cats you can imagine – and so photogenic!  

They’re why I’m psyched that there is SO MUCH good stuff coming from EvoS soon. We’ve been experimenting with meowtstanding tech that we got from Hyperbotics, and I think our next creation will be a smash hit. Maybe even more popular than I am, if that’s pawsible. 

Tech from Hyperbotics? So you’re working on a robo-hybrid? Robo-inspired, at least. 

Ooh, I hope I don’t get in trouble for letting the cat out of the bag! I just got my Rez contract. I don’t wanna go back to just 9 lives! But I’ve been DYING to tell someone, so maybe it’s worth it.

It’s refreshing to hear what’s coming up. This is all part of a more transparent, open EvoS, right? Purrceptive! My goal is to shine a light on all the good that EvoS does for Atlas. It’s a new era filled with pawesome people and hybrids and robots and ME!

Well, thank you so much for speaking with us today. It looks like my time is up. However, I know that you wanted to take some questions from the citizens of Atlas. Would you be willing to do that right now? Meow! Errr, I mean, yes! Let me at ‘em! That sounds super fun. 

***

KingPyroJacks asks… “Mew or Meow?” Get meowt of here with that. MEOW!

Omarjairs asks… Who is your favorite band/singer? Also, if you could go on a picnic with only two other freelancers, whom would you go with, why, and what would you eat? There’s this girl-boy band called A+Lass? Have you heard of them? They’ve got this amazing nu-psi dance pop thing going on that I love. Then there’s KID-RAD. She used to be Kid Radamantium, but she got into a whole legal thing with Warbotics. So silly.

Also, I would LOVE to go on a picnic with Rask! He’s a total carnivore, so I would prob just pack some EvoSausage for him and Grow-Packs for me and hope he doesn’t scarf it all down. It’d be a super great chance for us to get to know each other, now that we’re related.

And I miss Quark! It was so fun having Quark at EvoS for a couple months. And since Rask is surprisingly fond of that one too, a picnic with the three of us would work out purrfectly.

XuShinra asks… Who is your Purrfect lancer companion? ;3 Thank you so much for asking! I think my purrfect lancer companion is Dr. Finn. (TBH, he’d be SO JELLY if I said like, literally anyone else. He’s probz mad at the picnic answer furreal).

Kiwi asks… Is Rio your enemy? *looks at you with suspicious eyes* I looooove RIO! I love all animal-kind, robo, hybrid, or anything in between. It’s not RIO’s fault that his friend is a meany.

C4SaberKing asks… Do you like cookies? Are there people who don’t!? 

Oh, wait. There’s that cult in the border-crossing that thinks sugar will melt your brain. Like, they’re not wrong, but furreal, just drink some Brain Plus! You’ll be set for life.

Outflight asks... [Are you] into sports or combat? I looooove shooting hoops. And ultimate frisky. And any other kind of ball game. Track and field – disc toss, lancer throw… I am like, super competitive. 

Mobi_ asks… Favorite dinosaur? That’s soooooo hard! I mean, I know who Big Boss would tell me to pick, but there are SO many awesome dinos. Can it be a 700-way tie between all of them? 

3k1aire asks… Pineapple on pizza or no pineapple on pizza? Why stop at pizza!? Pineapple sandwiches. Pineapple pies. Pineapple cereal. Pineapple vitamins. Pineapple water. Pineapple people. 

Oof, we should probably stop at pineapple people, actually. EvoS tried that once and it was not pretty. Very poky!

Blakadder_ asks... How much do you hate Oz? I actually had a Jimmy 6 toy that I loved. I was SO SAD about the recall. Every time I see Oz, I just want to hug him and cover him in stickers and watch him do his magic tricks. Only of his own free will, of course.

Oz, if you’re reading this, call me, mmk?

TheGamingGenome asks... What are your views on Helio Corps and it's founder, Helio? I was talking to Zuki (who is so fun! I love her), and she says Helio is a great guy, but I wouldn’t really know. He’s so BUSY. He’s basically just a red blur that zooms around Atlas. 

From what I’ve seen, Helio Corps seems to be doing good stuff. Now that those Heli-Orbs are out in the Waste, I can play with my laser-pointers all day every day without worrying about energy limits. Plus, the Helio Corps building is SUPER nice. They have this giant electro-ball thing in the lobby that makes all my fur stand up when I walk by.

HirayaCM asks... Were you born a human EvoS-ised with cat DNA or vice versa? Who'd be the better cat burglar between you and Celeste? For the cat burglaring, I’m pretty meowtstanding at stuff when I put my mind to it. Celeste would be in for some FIERCE competition.

As for my origins, I made myself. And technically, without Dr. Finn’s purrmission. He didn’t like it at first, but he came around eventually! I can be very purrsuasive. =^.^=

[lesbitchka]

(submission)

alright so i’m gonna dump my long long club story in here (cw for q slur stuff, some mentions of prior abuse, kink, drag) this is gonna be really long, i’m sorry! my way of narration is kind of obnoxious

i’m a copresident of my campus’ lgbt group after i was asked by someone in my class to run for office during my first semester at my current college. i’d never been to a meeting before, but i accepted, honored to have been invited. in retrospect, that kind of should have been my first red flag- being asked to step in in an administrative role to a club i had absolutely no familiarity with. i’m a white, autistic trans man who is on the aro/ace spec because of my history of trauma. this will be important later on 

i showed up to the election and was elected handily, because apparently the person i was running against has a history of being abusive? i don’t know anything about that. anyway, at the same meeting, the person who had held my position before me, a nonbinary trans woman, was ousted publically and stormed out of the room, furious. at the time, i wasn’t too bothered by it. this person had a history of posting weird, intimidating right-leaning stuff about “defending someone’s right to free speech all the way up until they act on it”- that includes threats to murder and rape people, in her own words- and mocking club members for mental health problems. all around, a legitimately abusive person that i totally understood why she’d be removed. and over the summer, that was that- no further discussion. 

i moved across the country to the la area to live with my longterm partner over the summer. during that time, we lived in a disadvantaged area that was primarily latinx, close to anaheim, where over the course of the summer we heard a lot of police violence come out of, both on the news and in word-of-mouth from our (primarily trans) friend group. despite being white, this left me worried about police violence towards me for other reasons; ie, i was an unmedicated trans man in a relationship with another unmedicated trans man, subject to different types of police violence should anything happen to our home, which we were sharing with a latinx family. while nothing became of these fears, this, also, will be important 

when i got back on campus, i took up my new position and started getting involved in club affairs. i noticed from a very early point there were some small issues, but nothing that was really a dealbreaker- the club had a strong focus on kink and many board members had a tendency to be very public about their sex lives in advertisements and tabling opportunities for our group, which, while i assumed i was being oversensitive about because of my trauma, i noticed offput several prospective members who investigated our table. when campus police swept through the club fair, equipped and in full uniform, i expressed my discomfort- a holdover from my time in a troubled area, hearing about my white trans male friend face obstruction and hostility when turning to the police in a domestic violence case, having been home for less than a week- and was met by the only nonwhite member of our board explaining that he didn’t feel uncomfortable with the police there, so it was kind of ridiculous that i did and i shouldn’t. which may have been true, but jesus, felt pretty shitty to hear my feelings on the thing were bad. i also requested that we not refer to ourselves as the q*eer club when hosting events and referring to my membership and was told by the same administrator that because he is latinx and likes the word, no one else should have any reason to take issue with it, b/c he was most strongly effected by pulse…? that was his reasoning for why we should keep using the q slur. again, a bunch of small things i could easily brush off, but things that stuck out 

things didn’t get really bad until this semester. over winter break, two things happened. the aforementioned nonwhite board member we had was hired by the school and is no longer legally allowed to be involved in any club’s board. also, i started dating a member of our club, a nonbinary transfeminine person (gonna call them bug for this post) who’s two years younger than me and getting their feet in school. i was feeling really awful after a week-long hospitalization early in the semester and having my longterm partner across the country; they were facing academic difficulties and poverty that will probably keep them from returning next semester, so it arose from mutual need and desire to support one another, with mutualistic understanding of the fact that our relationship is probably on a timeline. bug came into our school hoping to get involved in lgbt activism, so when we had elections after winter break, i encouraged them to try out. 

it’s also worth mentioning that bug was and is one of only three transfeminine club members who would regularly show up to meetings. the other two, who i’ll call mercury and simone, are both older than me; mercury was part of the board before i joined, and simone joined at the same time as bug, due to our awareness of our club’s appearance due to having something like 30 regular attendees and only three transfeminine ones; even now, simone is the only one who identifies as a trans woman, not nonbinary.my roommate, who i’ll call marcie, also joined at this time, becoming our only nonwhite board member. 

so, convergence of events: bug and i start dating, and bug, simone, and marcie all join this club. things are great at first! everyone loves each other, we’re all excited to be working with our friends. i’m overjoyed to have my roommate, one of my best friends, and my brand new datemate working with me on something i’m really passionate about. 

when we try to put together our first event of the semester, though, things go HELLA south. the new director of the board, the boyfriend of the guy i had a couple issues with at the beginning of the year, asks the board what kind of shirts we want for our event: tanks or tees. bug speaks up first, saying that they don’t want a tank because tanks show their shoulders too much and make them feel dysphoric. simone and mercury echo bug’s sentiments; i, knowing that our membership has had some issues with our lack of inclusion for transfemmes, decide to go with the transfemme voices on our board. this becomes the biggest controversy we’ve yet faced as a board. the director becomes enraged, talking about how tanks make him LESS dysphoric, how for our last event he got baseball shirts that make him dysphoric and that he hates (and that he also wears almost every time i see him, hm) so we should make a concession for him to get a shirt he likes. he tells us to vote; me, bug, simone, and mercury all vote for tanks, which means that we have the majority on our seven person board. the situation is now wholly out of control, the director gets angrier and says we’re getting tees anyway, marcie says something off hand about how it’s not a dysphoria contest, which makes bug feel like shit because they brought up the topic of their dysphoria first as a reason they personally wouldn’t wear the shirt if we bought it and then was countered by our director’s claims of how dysphoric tees would make him. simone says that this invalidation of her and bug’s lived experiences and the hostility they were met with for asking for a shirt with transfemmes in mind is transmisogynistic behaviour. remember that guy who got hired by the school? he steps in now to defend his boyfriend and shuts down the conversation (yeah, he’s still in our group chat, despite that being, y'know, illegal.) everyone is furious. more than a few people are brought to tears. 

pretty fucking dumb, right? over shirts. don’t worry, though, we’re heading into some even more ridiculous shit. 

the next time the board talks, it’s to say that we’re obviously all very upset with each other and we shouldn’t meet in an unmediated environment. (spoiler alert: what has come to be known as shirtgate was at the beginning of february and we JUST had a group meeting for the first time ever since that this sunday…) we hold our event successfully despite the fact that half the board isn’t talking to each other. i’m feeling hurt and isolated from my friends and withdraw a bit, spending more time with bug. the board is divided into two tiers: the wider board, and the presidents’ board, which i’m on, and which, coincidentally, is basically just our regular board without transfemmes. ha. the presidents’ board meets and discusses how unacceptable the situation is, attempting to appeal to me to change “sides” because those rowdy transfemmes, right? i’m grossed out and feeling like i’ve been isolated from the group of people i have a vested interest in supporting and stand my ground, officially marking myself as no longer one of the InGroupTM. for the most part, i do nothing as a club administrator from here on out. things are magically out of my hands. hm 

our next big controversy happens when we hold a screening for moonlight, about a week after it won best picture. this is a public event, and many people who are not in our club show up; i assume that all we are providing is advertisement and prepare to enjoy the movie. here’s where me being autistic comes in. the lounge is crowded with people and i’m surrounded by some of my favourite people, including bug, who’s off their adhd meds for now and doesn’t have a lot of impulse control. my friends respond audibly to some of the scenes, cos we’re a bunch of gay kids who’ve rarely-if-ever seen representation for ourselves before. due to being in a social setting where the people around me that i trust, esp bug, are being very emotional and responsive to the film, i can’t really not join in and make noises of excitement too- it’s just the way my aspie brain works, tbh. i feel awesome! this is great! 

it’s not great. the event ends and people are furious, complaining about how the movie was ruined by the talking during a handful of scenes. the board cracks down on me and bug (and, to a lesser extent, simone) for being vocally excited. in retrospect, fair, and definitely something that means i should stay away from crowds more often. however, this was an environment of friends, i thought, not people who’d get really upset with me for unintentionally making sounds of excitement when, for the second time ever, i see gay men represented in the context of a film. marcie is furious most of all, as our only non-white board member, and goes on a facebook rant, vagueing about not just bug, simone, and i, but about our friends and members who were not quiet either. me and bug’s close friend, who i’ll call mirage, is incredibly hurt by this, as marcie uses their non-whiteness to describe why they’re frustrated by this behaviour; mirage is a nonwhite nb kid who was most vocal during a scene in the movie where the protagonist hits a bully with a chair, making an audible joke about it, which they did because they found the scene triggering after they were hit with a chair by a teacher growing up. this was also the moment of conversation marcie had the biggest issue with. bug and i are feeling pretty shitty about our neurodivergences and how the club has previously made promises to be understanding of symptoms, but this seems to only extend to depression and anxiety. the club fractures further. 

we’re basically not talking to each other unless we have to at this point, with bug, simone, and i staying close, marcie, the director, his boyfriend, and their housemate making their own group, and mercury disengaging from all of us entirely. we hold an event. it’s called kink 102 and is the sequel to an event we had in first semester that i missed during my hospitalization, where apparently the director and his boyfriend demonstrated floggers and crops on each other in front of an audience who came to learn about kink, not expecting to be part of a scene. people are very apprehensive about this, especially because we have had several meetings focusing on kink and drag- our director’s passions- and none focusing on, for example, nonbinary people and aroace-spec people in the lgbt community. this becomes a huge point of contention, as several ace-spec people approach various board members and express their discomfort with how overwhelmingly sexual many of our meetings are and how our director seems so keen to involve strangers in his sex life- he has admitted rather freely to being both an exhibitionist and a voyeur. a student makes a public post about how we’ve had two meetings about kink and none about aroace lgbt people. bug steps in and comments a bit snarkily about how much they agree, having heard me, their ace-spec boyfriend, talk a lot about how i’ve been honestly triggered by some of our events; bug is very much not an ace person and is in fact an exhibitionist and voyeur themself, but thinks the issue is this important. i step in as well as a board member, feeling the need to address a public complaint, and reassure them that i would very much like to spearhead a meeting about aroace people, including the different ways it can manifest and how it isn’t equivalent to non-heterosexuality, as the only ace-spec board member. i admit to my discomfort at the environment we often create and say that it’s something we certainly need to work on. 

shit pops off in the chat, but only at bug! not at me! hmmmm!!!! 

bug stops talking in the group chat unless prompted at this point. 

the post goes mostly unresolved; all that happens is bug (and, later, simone, who posted a rather snide comment on the same forum expressing her frustrations with the group as a whole, both backing up me and bug, and as a trans woman who’s been repeatedly involved in drag events now) get CHEWED THE FUCK OUT. simone says something about how we have way too much focus on kink and it makes it seem like we’re saying it’s equivalent to being lgbt. the director loses his shit over this, and says, quote, “Thanks for invalidating my identity. I can’t discuss this further. Erasure of my culture.” which is… a lot, as someone who was abused in the guise of kink by older, paedophilic partners. 

i go to the kink meeting with bug because i want to learn how to tie them up safely and am hoping to learn about knots, but mostly because i feel like if i don’t go, i’ll get yelled at. there is no guide for tying knots. there is a brief discussion of consent, then the director ends up topless, getting whipped against the wall of the student lounge. a friend of mine sits next to me and sucks a fucking pacifier the whole time

we still haven’t met in person in months. this sunday, we finally meet. the director reveals he is resigning and also dropping out of college and tells us it’s mostly because of simone, which, wow, okay, is a lot to hear from someone who i spent hours counceling about whether or not he should go to the inpatient i went to and take a semester off first semester, before simone was ever even involved. the meeting is mostly just that. simone doesn’t come. we have a president’s meeting after, which basically equates to us staring awkwardly at bug until they leave and mercury retreating to their room, cos we hold this at the director and his boyfriend’s house. not weird and awkward, definitely doesn’t feel like we’re having a boys’ club meeting. nope. 

by this point i am distraught. i’m feeling like complete shit because all these people, despite their previous rounds of drama and weird comments, were my friends. i was so excited to work on something i cared about with people i cared about, and now no one even talks to each other. i confess my concerns about everything to the group, and shit gets wild. the director is quick to tell me that things aren’t my fault, but that his issue is with simone and bug. and then he starts getting really shitty. i had previously mentioned how eager i was to protect the incoming freshmen, because my first year of college, i was raped by a trans woman who proceeded to manipulate her way through the lgbt club on that campus to turn people against me and keep me from speaking out, which resulted in my utter academic failure and dropping out. the director begins to tell me that, in my personal goal of keeping freshmen safe, i have made bug entirely dependent on me, that the fact that they don’t talk to half the board anymore is on me, using words and phrases i used to describe my previous abuse to say that, hey, turns out you’re abusive. which… is fuckt, coming from the person who capslocks curse words in the group chat and then has his SCHOOL STAFF boyfriend come in to tell us how justified he is. the boyfriend tells me i never should have expected us to be friends. which i guess is true, but hey, i was introduced to the group by their roommate way back last year, and really didn’t know what to expect at all. i am also told that kink is easily as important as lgbt activism in our history, that it should be considered a part of the acronym, that all these young kids uncomfortable with two three-and-five-year-older people acting out scenes under our banner at our events need to learn their history. any second now i’m expecting our name, LGBTQU+, to grow a k. hilarious that they’re concerned about history now, but me asking us not to use the q slur to describe our members is ridiculous because no one’s bothered by it anymore! 

i meekly offer to step down, but the director says that because he’s leaving and his roommate is graduating, we won’t have a board anymore if i step down, considering bug and simone are ready to leave. the boyfriend and the director lecture me for like five solid minutes about how this is the oldest club on campus and if i don’t stay, it will collapse and that will be on me, basically. so yeah. accusing me of perpetrating the same abuse my ex perpetrated against me, then guilting me into staying to keep our club active- a club that is now reputed for being more focused on kink than lgbt events, for not being welcoming to nonwhite people or trans women (forgot to mention at one point students formed a qpoc group separate from us and the boyfriend was FURIOUS and tried to overtake it, using us, the board that was entirely white except for him :) ), and for being the biggest cesspit of drama on campus. in other words, a club i would very much like to l e a v e. 

i know this wasn’t entirely mogai hell or ace discourse, but there’s shades of every kind of shit in this group, tbh. and i really just needed a place to vent about it. i know we all made mistakes, but jesus, i’m hemorrhaging friends and feeling like dirt, my pals. i just need space to whine. 

oh one more thing, forgot to mention: the director tried to use bug to tell me to get a fetlife, because bug has one, because they’re not ace. also had bug ask me to pose with them naked for one of our event posters to circumvent me talking about how i felt unconfident naked, which thankfully never happened. also seem to think that because bug and i have sex i’m not ace anymore, therefore we shouldn’t talk about ace stuff because we don’t have an ace board member? didn’t know where to put these ones, but yeah! ;) 

ok! sorry for the length of this. thank you for listening! <3 

[eillahsmiles]

Every multiple of 5!

Okay, wow, that’s a lot, but okie dokie, here I go!

Q: 5) A song that inspires me.

A: This one’s difficult. There are so many. I guess I’ll go with Ronnie Dunn’s “Bleed Red”. It just reminds me that we’re all flesh and blood, nobody is better than anyone else. We all have to help care for the earth because it’s all we have.

Q: 10) Do I collect anything?

A: Oh geez. Uhm… I collect MANY things. Some of my bigger collections include business cards, decks of playing cards, vinyl records, foreign/old money, squished pennies. Then there are rubber ducks, pens, pins, rocks, shells, leaves, and other things I know I’m forgetting. One of my friends loves to tell me that I collect collections…

Q: 15) Something I would like to try.

A: Oh, I would love to try some glass blowing. I’ve seen people do it and it looks like a fascinating process.

Q: 20) Something interesting about myself.

A: My true, honest to God, on my birth certificate, last name is Smiley.

Q: 25) Favorite place I’ve traveled to.

A: Oooh, that’s a tuffy. I’ve been to so many places. Hmm… I think I’ll go with…. Yellowstone National Park. I love wildlife and nature in general. 

Q: 30) An embarrassing story about myself.

A: Oh no, I should have seen this coming. Once, years ago, I went to youth camp with my church and they had a (very) small go-kart track surrounded by stacks of tires and one of those car shade shed things for us to stand under. My group went there one of the days and when it came my turn to go for a spin, I happened to choose the one that malfunctioned. I lost control of the go-kart and it went right over the tire barrier and ran into one of the metal poles of the car tent, putting a nice sized dent in it. I was completely uninjured, but did cry from shock. It was my first time driving anything, too. I went back with my church the next year, and the dent was still there. -.-’

Q: 35) Do I have any bizarre talents?

A: Well, I can fold my tongue.

Q: 40) My ultimate (legal)exotic pet.

A: Honestly, I would love to have a sugar glider. They’re so cute and soft and I’ve heard that they make good companions.

Q: 45) Have I ever stolen anything?

A: Oh goodness. Once when I was younger, and I had just started carrying around a small purse, so I was still getting used to not bumping it into things. I went to Walmart with my mom and when I got home I found a little coin purse with the tag still on it in my bag; it must have fallen in. I FREAKED OUT. I almost cried because I had accidentally stolen something. I was too afraid to take it back because I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I still have it somewhere, with the tag still on it, unused.

Q: 50) My favorite ice cream treat.

A: I’ve only had it once, but one time at Marble Slab, they had honey flavored ice cream, and it tasted just like straight up real honey. They didn’t have it the next time I went back.

[asagimeta]

Teen Wolf Episode 6x06- “Ghosted”- Observations And Predictions

Ohhh my God... guys.... this episode was so heavy in Q&As, so many answers!! But also... so... so many questions...... I can promise you all, right now, that I absolutely cannot scratch the surface of all these questions, but that doesn't mean I won't atleast mention a few <3

Ok ok ok let's start with the biggest reveal of the season.... MIRRORVERSE. IS. REAL! And it could not BE more obvious because Lydia literally went through a mirror, the cool thing about Mirrorverse is that there really are no set rules for it, it's very Wonderlandish that way, there's no real way to stare at something implied to be mirrorverse and say "No that can't be mirrorverse it has to be something else" because mirrorverse is very.. well... diverse... and it could be a portal to anywhere really, like the doors in Atem's mind in Yu-Gi-Oh, any given door could lead to any given place, one door could lead to the past, one to an alternate universe, one to a different side to the same universe, etc etc, so MIRRORVERSE CONFIRMED

So the year is 1987, wich doesn't mean much right now but it probably will later, our flashback introduces us to the obvious vibes of the 80s- including Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf", wich was very clever of Teen Wolf- and biggest of all right now is that we have images of the carousel from the opening credits, I'm sure there's more to the carousel imagery than just the horses, and I'm sure it'll be brought up again later, given that they found it was important enough to put into the opening credits

Speaking of Mirrorverse, Lenore actually saw Lydia when she traveled through the mirror, and there's evidence that it could have possibly been Lydia that awoke Lenore's banshee scream to begin with, meaning that this wasn't just Lydia peering through the mirror (ha... puns...) but actually, actively, INTERACTING with the world she saw, this wasn't a vision, it was a legitimate travel to another dimension- in this case, to another time

Man oh man Fake!Claudia's claws are in deep, and the sheriff's refusal to believe anything slightly outside of what he wants to believe are stronger than ever (Sheriff you would NOT do well in the X-Files) and this entire scene hurt my soul on a level that I just do not deserve, I hope that Stiles isn't somehow veiwing this from the other realm or something... anyway, if there is any- and I do mean ANY- bright side to this pain, it's that Scott is finally experiencing what Stiles usually goes through, Scott has a very warped veiw of the sheriff because he and the sheriff work very much in a toxic tango, Scott lacks a father figure and the only one he's ever come close to having is the sheriff- who is like his dad in some ways, he's in law enforcement, he's no-nonsense, etc- but he's also very very different in enough ways that Scott would never compare them, he respects the sheriff and craves his approval as a father figure, likewise Scott is- in the sheriff's own words- "the son he should have had", he's the golden boy who's a goody-two-shoes and always tries to follow the moral AND legal codes, who, in the sheriff's opinion, doesn't get in trouble, who works hard and wants to make an honest living and have the All American Boy Lifestyle of college and a family and whatever, and that is NOT a slam against Stiles in any way, parents often get along better with their child's best freind, in some ways my ex-best freind's mom got along better with me than with my freind, but here's the big thing: The relationship is only part-time, and that's what makes it ideal, if Scott screws somethig up the sheriff  doesn't have to deal with it or even know about it because he's Melissa's kid, and likewise if the sheriff gets mad about something Scott isn't there for him to take it out on, Stiles is, because Stiles lives there and is subjected to it weather he likes it or not, so tldr, my point is, the sheriff and Scott only ever see the best in eachother, and usually Scott is apt to be on the sheriff's side, sweet talk him, preen at his approval, whatever, and generally kind of has an air around him of not understanding- or believing- Stiles when he says or reacts in any negative fashion about his dad, he doesn't see that he's impacting Stiles in a negative way when the sheriff approves of or believes him over Stiles because in Scott's mind if Stiles doesn't get that approval/beleif then there's a reason for it, you can see the dynamic really well with the scene in 5A where Sheriff's "Thank you, son I should have had" line is said, Scott grins and blinks like he doesn't know Stiles was just deeply insulted, and Stiles looks like he's been slapped in the face, because Scott has likely never seen the sheriff at his worst or had to be on the recieving end of his SEVERE lack of beleif, even in season five when Kira was arrested it was KIRA who was on the recieving end of the sheriff's problematic attitude, Scott was only a bystander, now that he's been on the recieving end himself, personally, with no one else around, I wonder if it's going to impact how he sees Stiles and inreacts with him in terms of this stuff in the future, I mean I doubt it, because that isn't really the history of how the show works, especially with Scott, but in a perfect world the next time Stiles presents his father's lack of trust in him towards Scott- in any way- Scott would actually be very compassionate towards him and offer a Stiles-freindly way of helping rather than showing him up (intentionally or not) or, you know, not believing Stiles himself

So why is Chris only infected and not just plain gone? Why is he the only one who the Hunt's weapons didn't kill or abduct? Unfortunately there really isn't any way to speculate on that until we get another example of this happening to someone, until then, sadly, there are just too many variables- too many to speculate over- but it's still a point that needs to be mentioned because... well... it's weird....

This episode also really makes me want all of the Supernatural General AUs .. for... reasons..... *Cough*

You know, I'm wondering if Caanan isn't actually in another dimension by now? The scenes in the town have a different coloring tone from most of reality, wich is what we often see in things like flashbacks, hallucinations, time travel, other dimensions, etc, there are other reasons I think Caanan could be in a different dimension and Lydia being able to travel to the past and be seen by Lenore is one of the main ones, but another is the hallucinations Scott and Malia have- notice that Lydia doesn't have any- supposedly this is caused by "The energy in the town" but that doesn't make any sense, why would energy cause Scott and Malia to have hallucinations? Vivid ones, at that, possibly even premonitions (Theo DID come back to life the same day, he could shoot Malia- or try to- later on and Melissa could easily become an almost-victim of Dug's) If this is an alternate universe/dimension however, then the rules of life change, and suddenly pretty much anything is possible, this is a ghost town, it might be an ACTUAL ghost town- IE: It doesn't exist on our plain anymore and manifested because someone was looking for it, like the Room Of Requirement in Harry Potter- and that means that if this is in fact the case, then pretty much everything goes, a pig could go flying across the screen and it could be perfectly within the rules of the realm simply by it being a different dimension *Wile we're talking about those hallucinations, I just want to say they were really good, very creepy, nice going Teen Wolf

So Dug was implied to be making a tazer, but somehow I just... don't buy that, that seems way too simplistic for someone who's encountered the Hunt before, I think, personally, that he was making something stronger, MUCH stronger... I'm just not quite sure what... but speaking of our old pal Dug, I wonder how much exactly Liam and Hayden told him? About werewolves? Or just about the Hunt? About the fact that people go missing and are forgotten- that they're looking for one of those missing people- or just that they hurt/kidnap people? And why is it that they so easily and willingly told him anything instead of leaving him in the dark? The baby pack DOES certainly have alot of differences in how they handle things from the main crew, and on the one hand, it's a good thing to share as much knowledge as you can with a potential victim... but on the other hand they didn't hesitate at all to share what could have been dire information, they could have spilled a secret that could get them all killed (what if they said "So look here's the thing we're werewolves and..." and Dug was a hunter, for example?) they didn't bother trying to get any other information out of him or see how accepting he might be to the thought of the supernatural, the original pack and the baby pack are very much polar opposites when it comes to sharing information, the original pack (and by this I mean Derek's and early!Scott's) was secretive to a fault to protect themselves, but the baby pack is informative to a fault to protect others, and there HAS to be a balance before someone pulls a //REALLY// unnecessary trigger...

Nine herbs to counteract nine venoms, thanks to @Athenadark - thank you SO much Athena!- we actually have the list of herbs!! According to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Herbs_Charm Argent's medicine isn't just a thing made up by Teen Wolf, the herbs involved are the following (in English, because eh...):

-Mugwort -Cockspur grass -Lamb's cress -Plantain -Mayweed -Nettle -Crab Apple -Thyme -Fennel

In the actual charm the binding agent isn't honey, it's soap, apple juice, water, ashes, and beaten egg... I can see why Teen Wolf would want to save time and just say honey ;) Anyway if anyone wants to define the actual effects most of these ingredients have- and/or the historical/mythological significance about them- please go ahead and PLEASE let me know (message me because I rarely check my notes) because it's four in the morning and I have too much to do on the rest of this list ^^;

So if the Nine Venom thing works... does that mean that Ghost Rider Juice is a venom by technicality or are we just calling it that for lack of anything cooler to call it? There's a Kill Bill joke in here but ... I'm tired, anyway, it makes me REALLY EXCITED to get a little breath more from the beastiary though, nine venoms huh? So that would probably include kanima toxins, the scorpion toxins, and... actually I think that's all we know of in canon that actually has toxins/venoms..?? Makes me wonder where it's been all this time though... with the influx of kanima and whatnot... but anyway I just always get excited about canon lowkey exploring more mythology, like introducing wendigos without focusing an entire season on them and all? I'm a monster-of-the-week girl, what can I say?

So Caleb is a Tulpa, what that means, for those of you not brushed up on your cryptozoology, is that he's essentially a manifestation of beleif, here, basically, the idea is that if you believe in something strongly enough, it'll manifest and become real, let me use Bigfoot as our star Tulpa analogy:

So many-a-time ago people saw some unexplained animal in the woods that was large and human like and they decided "Omg Bigfoot" right? Well the legends about Bigfoot grew.... and grew..... and grew..... and by the time that original unexplained animal was long since identified, there were... still people reporting sightings of Bigfoot with increasingly detailed reports? Why? Because people believed in Bigfoot, so much at that point, that the energy put into beleif LITERALLY manifested a Bigfoot and allowed it to be an actual creature that roams around so it can photo bomb people and get selfies posted on the internet, but because Bigfoot was not quite real to begin with and is only a manifestation of the pooled energy put into beleif, he isn't *QUITE* a living creature the same way, say, a deer is, a deer has to SURVIVE, eat, avoid predators, breed, and you know, one day, die of old age (and I'm being generous) except... Bigfoot doesn't have to do all of that, he can just spend all of his time wandering around leaving footprints and shaking cameras that amatuer hunters put in trees, because, although he may be REAL*, he isn't really ALIVE, there's no biology there, sort of like a sock puppet that moves around of it's own free will, Bigfoot's sole purpose is to be spotted and keep the legend alive, because he's a spiritual manifestation, he doesn't NEED to eat or avoid predators or ever die, there's nothing biological about him to make all of that necessary, additionally, Tulpas operate on something of a different plain than the rest of us, they live in another dimension just like all other spiritual beings do, so just like a ghost can be perfectly visible if it wants to be, can tip over furniture and turn out lights, it exists SOLELY in a *SPIRITUAL REALM*, so things like eating and sleeping and, you know, dieing, again are unnecessary, this is also why you can't catch Bigfoot, he literally lives in another dimension, when people see Bigfoot, they're looking through "The Veil"- the thin sheet that seperates one world from another, the ghost world from this world, this world from the faery world, etc, for most people the veil is too thick to see through but for people who are blessed with The Sight, or when the veil is weak or the creature on the otherside REALLY wants to wave at you, normal people can see through it too

*This is where the argument of what consitutes "reality" comes into play and things like surrealism and philosophy are present, but it's not edging closer to five in the morning and I just don't have the raspberries to go into all of that right now

Bigfoot is admittedly a poor argument because, although he's a very famous example of a Tulpa, there's a really big question of if he's a Tulpa or not, the sheer amount of Bigfoots out there- presented in all kinds of shapes and colors and forms such as the Yeti or Abominable Snowman, presented in all kinds of other cultures that had Bigfoot stories WAY before they ever interacted with eachother- makes it hard to reason that Bigfoot is a Tulpa and not a real species, the Loch Ness Monster is one singular entity living in one singular place and is a much, much better example of a Tulpa, people have been spotting Nessie for well over a century if I believe, no one living creature can live that long, but I'm getting off topic

See, the power of beleif really is a real thing, I mean that in a way that's totally outside of anime freindship speeches and Tinkerbell, the power of beleif is what fuels the placebo effect- in other words, you believe something strongly enough that you make it real, imagine the power of beleif to be like water, everyone has a cup of beleif in them right? If over a billion people pour all of that water into a ditch, that water is going to turn into a lake, and THAT is the short end concept of a Tulpa

The Hunt never gave Lenore her son back, she believed that she made that deal with them as a way of processing what happened, think of it like supernatural surivor's guilt, she had to find a way to reason with herself "Why did they only leave me?" without knowing anything about her powers, at around the same time her increased psychic energy formed a Tulpa- Caleb- to keep her from going insane with greif and loneliness (more than she already had) so in her mind she reasoned that the two were connected, that she sold everyone else out in exchange for her son, it's what kept her in that town- the guilt over doing that- and what kept her from losing her mind more than she did, Caleb is an incredibly weak Tulpa, who can only stay in one place, obeys the wims of his creator, and often fades in and out with the raw psychic power Lenore possesses (IE why you can hear her voice underlying his on several occassions) Caleb was only created by ONE person's beleif- one GALLON of water (Lenore, being a banshee, has much more oomph to her little cup) so enough to make a puddle sure but... not a lake, wich is why Nessie and Bigfoot act so severely differently than Caleb, they're lakes, he's a puddle, moving on

Today on: Teen Wolf Has Potentially Taught Me More About My Mental Health Issues Than Actual Professionals... MUGWORT, wich, thanks again to @Athenadark, is actually in fact an anti-anxiety herb (fun fact, I started using Lydia's advice about holding your breath during a panic attack as of a couple of years ago and it really does work wonders... thanks mental health professionals who never suggested that when I asked, repeatedly, how to calm/stop a panic attack...) it does alot of other stuff too, helping with depression, stomach problems, and menustral issues are the main components, but also it's responsible for lucid dreaming, vivid and even prophetic dreams, and can be used as a hallucinagen depending on how it's broken down, so herein lies my question.... why did they focus on this? Mugwort is the only herb they even mentioned out of the nine possibilities but it isn't like they only mentioned it once, they mentioned it by name atleast two or three times, and Melissa even went to the trouble of looking it up and making note that it controls anxiety.... wich is really, REALLY odd for three reasons: 1. Why bother? You have a limited amount of time here to do the thing and you're going to make the effort to read up and remark on the fact that it helps with anxiety? From a filming perspective this has to be significant or she would have never said anything 2. What does it matter? Again, dire situation here but even aside from that it isn't like she or Argent actually have problems with anxiety in canon (that we know of) in fact, the only one Melissa knows intimately who DOES have anxiety issues is Stiles......... you don't say...... 3. Anxiety is NOT the first thing it's listed as helping with, Melissa' little trip to Google only took a matter of seconds and all she reported back was help with anxiety... but when I looked it up it's been much more advertised as helping with DEPRESSION, and lists help with anxiety as one of the OTHER things it does, the websites I visited listed the main reason for taking Mugwort as a supplement as helping with depression, and helping anxiety is usually listed secondary, there are even websites that list it's help for periods and/or stomach issues before it lists help with mental disorders, and ofcourse, again, that's only as a SUPPLEMENT, when you just Google Mugswort you're much more likely to get the hallucinagen version wich talks mostly about lucid dreaming and alternatives to weed, so what I'm saying here is, Melissa was really unlikely to be able to punch Mugwort into Google and find the FIRST result as "Oh hey this is an anti-anxiety herb" so why...? Well, besides the fact that Teen Wolf actually DOES seem to care about how they treat mental illness (atleast some mental illnesses, like anxiety and PTSD) it's highly possible that this is going to come up again later... maybe in relation to Stiles? I mean I don't know who else it would be related to unless they introduce a new charector with pretty much the sole purpose of whatever... this... is... wich seems really, really rediculous at this point, so if you're wondering why they would suddenly give Stiles something to calm his jitters, why they would make a POINT of it, remember, I DID say there was a secondary, non-health related purpose for taking mugswort.... lucid dreaming and prophetic dreams, sleep and dreaming is a very big thing in Teen Wolf mythology, alot of the seasons feature it to some degree with 3B, five, and six, featuring it most heavily, so what if Stiles needs to have a dream about something specific? Maybe to recall a certain memory that he just can't grasp when he's awake? Or to have a vision of the future? I can see it now, Stiles curled up with anxiety, Melissa off-handedly saying he should try Mugswort because it's supposed to help with that, Lydia popping in with "Interestingly it also causes lucid and prophetic dreams- .... heeeeeey....." ... yep this show practically writes it's self

I would like to take this moment to say that I'm just really glad that everyone still remembers Kira, I was wondering if they were going to somehow try to pawn her off on the Hunt too so that's good that they didn't but... still... sucks that she's gone....

Quick question here... how does Lenore even get food there? I mean she doesn't leave town, obviously, and as per the ancient lemonade she clearly doesn't have some magically stocked kitchen... this is just more evidence that Caanan is in a different dimension, in my opinion

Ok folks it's officially time to talk about Lenore's name, I bet there are alot of Edgar Allan Poe fans out there who are about to eat their computers right now because that's mainly what we'll be talking about- though not entirely, the name "Lenore" is Greek, like alot of names in Teen Wolf, a short form of the name Eleanor, it means "Light", but I'm guessing that isn't the reason why Teen Wolf decided to pursue this name, "Lenore" is popular in Edgar Allan Poe's works, coming up twice in poems about dead beauties, the first is titled "Lenore", wich tells of a beautifull girl who died young, the poem is about her husband at her funeral telling everyone that they should not mourn her death but celebrate her life, and believing that one day they'll be reunited in paradise- a sharp turn from Poe's usual tragedies, Lenore is described as wealthy, young, and beautifull, and is "The queenliest dead that ever died so young", we know Lydia is The Queen in the same way Derek is The King- Lydia is shown as the queen on Parrish's playing card and in Hunt related mythos the banshees usually lead the hunt- and there is also a QUEEN of the Hunt in some legends, aka.... The Morrigan, in addition to all of this, Lenore comes about again in "The Raven"- another tragic tale of a dead beauty and without a doubt Poe's most famous work, this one tells of a man mourning his wife who is visited by a talkative raven who brings memories of Lenore, thus upsetting her husband and having him believe that the raven is an omen of evil, let me repeat that a second... RAVEN.... it's about a raven, it's CALLED "The Raven"... you see where I'm going with this right? We've been looking for our raven for ages and most assume it's Stiles but what if the raven is LYDIA- The Morrigan IS represented often by ravens-? Stiles, as the other side of Lydia's coin, would be something to match, what exacty I'm not sure, it would depend on how they work in the Morrigan + raven + banshee mythologies to blend together and such, but it certainly is food for thought, especially when you start pondering how the "Lenore" poem fits into this, maybe Lydia IS left in Beacon Hills for a short time wile everyone else battles the Hunt/rescues people from the station? This would represent a happy reunion once they're all back, or maybe Stiles dies for a short time and wile everyone else is panicking Lydia just "Hey don't worry I got this" and does something Banshee-y to bring him back, wich not only represents being reunited but also nods to "Don't mourn the dead, celebrate the living"... there's just... ALOT to go on, and I haven't even MENTIONED yet that Lenore comes up in "Dracula", something the meta pack has compared Teen Wolf to for a long time now...

It's so nice having Noshiko back... if only she had Kira with her...... I'm really so confused though about how that sword works, I thought it had to be Kitsune-powered but if Liam can just jam it anywhere he wants...?? Speaking of this scene, I wonder where exactly Theo has been all this time, I mean it looks like he was just literally underground for three months (my scratch pad's note "HAS HE LEGIT BEEN UNDER GROUND ALL THIS TIME? He's filthy, clean him") but that obviously isn't .. you know... really true... I know Teen Wolf IMPLIED hell but it's odd to me that Theo hasn't, you know, mentioned that... or anything about where he was.... I don't know, I don't trust any of this, the one GOOD thing though is that we do finally have someone who legit remembers Stiles (I can hear the Steo fans crying happily in the background) and when he's not being a porchdick, he maybe can help with that, as a general thing, he clearly wants nothing to do with going back to.... wherever.... or being taken by the Hunt, so I'm betting he'll be willing to help in his own twisted little way, speaking of Stiles and Theo.. I get the feeling their reunion is going to be something like this:

Stiles: I'm so happy to be back in Beacon Hills oh my God Theo: Hi Stiles: PUT ME BACK, PUT ME BACK

Anyway, speaking of Theo, it's odd to me that, although his memories of Stiles weren't altered, he had a moment of memory loss about... like... everything else...? He had forgotten that he killed his sister, apparently, wich really makes me wonder where he went and what happened to him, even stranger though is that he acted like he actually CARED about his sister, wich he hasn't since he was a small child- if then even- so I just...???? Why??? Atleast the Doctors came in handy for SOMETHING though by filling Theo in (ish) about the Hunt, wich is apparently worse to be held captive by than Hell ... or... wherever the hell Theo was

Speaking of The Hunt.... I have to admit, this entire "stuck" shennanigan throws me for a big loop, so does the idea that all of their captives are being turned into more riders, there are so... SO many questions here... besides the obvious of how, why, and when, the sticking happened, there are others: Why is only one section of the Hunt stuck? We know there are others going around to other places right now doing this to other towns so why just this one? They obviously don't turn everyone they get so where do the leftovers go? Like, you know, THE ENTIRE LACROSSE TEAM? What's their criteria for choosing someone? Are they being controlled by someone? Is super-charging banshees a side effect or is that the intention to begin with? Is it possible that the people like the lacrosse team are being turned into riders and Stiles and the others in the waiting room are there to be used for something else, like... a position of power maybe? No matter how you slice this orange thoug, you're going to get a big ball of confusion

Back with Scott and the gang, he and Malia seem to be drowning in a basement full of water, wich, ironically, has nothing to do with WHY they're drowning considering that the water seems to be coming from inside their lungs, remember, in Teen Wolf water is tainted/damned/bad, "There's something in the water", I wonder if Caanan has something in the water too or if this is just a manifestation of Teen Wolf's general philosophy on water...? And SPEAKING of water, you didn't think I'd let you go this entire time without mentioning drowning did you? Drowning seems to be a very popular trope in Teen Wolf, a mother drowned her baby according to Lydia in Motel California, wherein Boyd tries to drown himself, Stiles describes drowning with almost an experienced level of detail to Morrel in season two, Jackson rose out of the water as a kanima, Scott was seen drowning in the 3A promos, now there's Caleb and I'm sure I haven't mentioned every instance yet, there's also a popular meta theory that Claudia tried to drown Stiles at one point, remember, she HAS phyiscally attacked him for believing he was killing her, could this be why he knows what it's like to drown? I almost wonder- and by "almost" I mean certainly do- if Lenore is the one who drowned Caleb, maybe by accident or her powers taking over? Interesting that they never said HOW or WHY he drowned, just that he did....

Hey you know how we were just talking about water? Fun fact! The Morrigan prosides over fresh water, particuarly rivers and lakes (there's something about that lake in Beacon Hills I tell you...) She also sees over fate, war, prophecy, and all kinds of other topics, she's represented by/associated with ravens, and is a Tripple Goddess, something we see Lenore represented by in the show (Maiden, mother, crone, Lydia sees her young first, then old in a quick flash, and the majority of the time she's in the middle, this represents the three states of being or  the Triple Goddess) I could honestly do an entire meta on The Morrigan but ya'll.... ya'll... it's almost seven in the morning and I still have things I have to do... so maybe another time, though I have a feeling @Athenadark is going to get there first ;)

FINALLY, can I just say how relieved I am that the Sheriff FINALLY finds Stiles' room? I'm thinking he started having a flicker of Stiles when he touched the keys to the jeep

I will return next week bunnies, until then I have... crap to do... and eventually maybe I can sleep.... TTFN- Ta Ta For Now!

[jordancat]

Q&A: Ezra Miller Talks 'Queer-Ass Family,' Drag Upbringing & How No One's Really Straight

BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

Originally printed 9/13/2012 (Issue 2037 - Between The Lines News)

Twenty is a young age to have already played two characters that couldn't be any more different. But Ezra Miller's done it with parts as Tilda Swinton's evil son in "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and as Patrick, the lovable outsider with swagger and fearlessness in the film adaptation of the coming-of-age novel "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (opening Sept. 28 in metro Detroit) - the boy every gay person wishes he could be. Even Miller.

The young actor talked about not being that kid in high school, breaking label barriers and coming from a "whole queer-ass family" - who dressed him in drag.

What was your high school experience? Were you out then?

Yeah, definitely. But I wasn't shouting it out. I was unabashedly me. I was always having to leave high school, though, because I started working, so that was pulling me out of school. When I'd come back, there was a certain resentment: "You are no longer one of us. You have betrayed our pack." And I dropped out of high school when I was 16 years old because, first of all, the form and function of the schooling system never made any sense to me in the context of education, but also there was some ostracizing at play. At that point in my youth experience, I knew that feeling all too well. I immediately realized that I had just turned 16 and that it was best, and technically legal, for me to flee.

How was it playing a character that you wished you could've been in school?

I came out of the movie feeling like I had a bunch to learn from the character I just played, and then I came to the unfortunate conclusion that he was a fictional character and he didn't exist. I mean, to be able to hold your dignity and your pride, and to be able to empower yourself and love yourself in high school, is a feat.

That scene where you stand up for yourself in the lunchroom was probably something that hit close to home.

Yeah. You picture that moment where you effectively fight back, but then of course Patrick does, in that situation, end up getting held and pummeled and sort of relentlessly beaten on - that's a reality, too. You can cultivate all of the courage and pride and power to stand up for yourself and still get beat to a pulp. I had that experience a few times. That scene was so important to everyone - to (director) Stephen (Chbosky) but really to (co-star) Johnny (Simmons) and myself. Having experienced things like that in our lives, we were really determined to get some bruises to make that fight brutal, the way that sort of peer-inflicted violence is - just horribly brutal.

Bullying is brutal, and it's obviously become an epidemic in the last few years. What do you think young people who are victims of bullying might find empowering about Patrick?

I'm hoping that there could be a theoretical audience member who could watch Patrick in this fearless state of self-preservation and rebellion and come to the thought that anyone who dares to cultivate the courage to stand up for themselves has immediately already won the battle. The second you endow yourself to be your own best protector - your own best friend, your own best lover - you've already won. People can put you through a lot of horrific psychological, emotional and physical conditions, but if you have that for a support system for yourself, by yourself, there's only so much anyone can ever do.

In the movie, Charlie is a troubled loner, but you open your world up to him and affect his life immensely. Who were your queer role models growing up?

My sisters, who were really strong and really empowered and who just were constantly making sure that I felt the love and that I was thinking for myself, but at the same time had my back. They were, for me as a younger person, the only role models I ever needed. My flesh and blood consumed almost my whole frame of perception from when I was a younger child.

So your sisters are queer too?

Yeah. It's a whole queer-ass family! (Laughs) You know, it's pretty much the most ridiculously happy and lucky situation a boy like me could ask for. I really thank all sorts of illusive deities for the family that I have every day.

After seeing you as Frank-N-Furter during "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" scene, something tells me this wasn't your first time doing drag. You were that good.

Thanks, darling! I've definitely dabbled from a young age. Those older sisters of mine actually started putting me through drag school when I was, like, 3. I remember running a lemonade stand and I was all made-up: My hair got did, I was in a dress and I remember getting it going so hard even then that people would come up to one of my sisters and say, "I saw you and your sister selling lemonade today." (Laughs)

Yeah, I've definitely served some time in the mighty and honorable school of drag. When I was in middle school - it was combined with a high school, and the theater department was the same and it was the year that high schools were allowed to do "Rent" - I jumped on Angel really fast, so I even got to dance in drag and rock some pumps. So, I've definitely had some informative experiences.

You owe your sisters some gratitude for giving you drag training.

Really, man! I was such a goofily happy kid when we were doing that. It was such, like, a ridiculous dream come true.

You sound like the polar opposite of your character in "We Need to Talk About Kevin." You were so not Kevin as a child.

Yeah, that's true. But it's good to stretch in many different directions. I'm still convinced I can go much darker than anywhere I've gone so far, and I'm pretty sure there are greater possibilities. I really feel like I've only just scratched a really minute surface.

You develop a small crush on Charlie in "Wallflower." Have you ever fallen for a straight boy before?

I mean, I just never believe anyone when they say they're straight.

The media isn't sure how to interpret your "queer" identity; I've seen you called gay by many news outlets. Why do you prefer queer? And what do you think of just abandoning labels all together?

I think queer is that doorway into the L, G, B and T. Queer is the doorway to where we should all be at. In a perfect Garden of Eden world, we are all pretty damn - I don't know if you say genderless or omni-gendered - but we're all omnisexual, we're all balanced and none of us are participating in a binary. But until that day comes, these labels and these ways that we can identity ourselves to ourselves are all useful, and it's really important that people figure out how to be inclusive and supportive of each and every one of them. That's my feeling on it. I'm queer because I think the way society splits the human being in half is kind of tragic, and I think we should all be as open a book as possible when it comes to loving another human.

Chris Azzopardi is the editor of Q Syndicate, the international LGBT wire service. Reach him via his website at http://www.chris-azzopardi.com.

FROM PrideSource http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=55682

[heatherrdavis1]

The BIG BAILOUT Is Here! Stop the Collapse? NO! Why?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Ayo what is going on viewers of the tube. My name is Tyler and I’m the host of the crypto channel that feels like the KYC. Some of these crypto exchanges goes a little something like this. You have to be 21 to set the bar pretty of your idea. Anya. Hey look for you you just have to wonder how many 12-year-olds are trading on buying hands. You know our moral compass. It’s time for Chico crypto. Well, friends enemies Army members and those neutral folks who watch my channel the moral compass of greed has never been greater in our world. Global economies including the economy of the world’s reserve currency have been put into inflation overdrive and the bailouts are coming. Like I mentioned last week six days ago with this video titled Big Bailout nears for who citizens or corporate U.S.A. and in that video I said the money isn’t coming to the people for years. It will come to the corporations and we will get the scraps. If there is any and all that news about checks and stimulus directly to Americans let them sneakily do exactly that yesterday before the markets opened. The Fed announced unlimited quantitative easing and one of the most unprecedented moves in its history. So before getting into what the Fed just did let’s understand what they have already done and to begin we’ll begin with repos or the repurchase market and that has been in the Fed’s arsenal beginning in late 2019. It’s been getting more frequent and larger throughout 20 20 and then hitting peak levels by early March. Well last week the Fed announced they would be increasing it even further 1 trillion dollars a day an overnight repo loans throughout the month of March and possibly even into April and even before all these repos the government and the Fed announced they would be slashing the fed funds rate to the zero percent two point five percent range dangerously close to those negative territories we’ve been talking about and they would be doing their first batch of quantitative easing where they would be purchasing 500 billion in Treasury securities and two hundred billion in mortgage backed securities. So last week all the bailouts and QE announcements they were for banks hedge funds pensions and more. They are not for us at all. We have no access to any of these benefits for the cheap capital they are throwing around it directly benefit the elite the 1 percenters. And like trickle down is supposed to work. We get the scraps that trickle down from these greedy mother truckers. Well obviously the markets still like that. As the Dow had a horrible Friday last week and over the weekend there was a bunch of chat about a direct stimulus package coming for the American people. But the Senate couldn’t come to an agreement and the talks broke down. But the government they needed to do something. So yesterday they dropped the news of Q E for ever which includes buying Treasuries and agency mortgage backed securities. And according to their statement in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy which basically means they can buy as much as needed which means printing as much as needed. But here is this sneaky thing they did a corporate bailout. According to their statement, there will be the establishment of two facilities to support credit to large employers. The primary market corporate credit facility PMC CCF for a new bond and loan issuance and the secondary market corporate credit facility S.M. CCF to provide liquidity for outstanding corporate bonds. The free. This is not how capitalism and free markets work. These corporations who fail who made bad decisions. A large majority of fracking companies should be allowed to fail as we’re not going to win this oil war. Fracking is dead in the water it can’t be profitable now and it wasn’t profitable before here in the USA. And this is just delaying the inevitable creating another bubble that will pop. And who is going to be left with those crappy assets on their balance sheet? The fed they will now own all the corporate debt in America as we can see from this swift explainer on the primary corporate credit facility PMC Yep their Department of Treasury using the Exchange Stabilization Fund will make an initial 10 billion equity investment in the SPV or special purchasing vehicle in connection with the facility and then from eligible assets they need to be rated as BBB minus or above BBB minus means it’s barely above junk status. And guess which companies are a large majority BBB minus barely holding on to their non-junk bond status rating that fracking companies here in the USA. This corporate bailout move is to save a leveraged debt-ridden house of cards from collapsing as if these fracking bonds moved from BBB minus to the junk bond category. Regulated banks would be forced to sell them creating a death spiral that wouldn’t stop until the only most efficient profitable and robust fracking companies in the US survive. That would be how the normal course of things would go. But we are giving them an obvious bailout and this Washington Post article sums it up nicely. Fracking needs a shakeout not a bailout. So I’m telling your friends this all comes down to one thing and one thing only. Or y’all. Last week when oil prices dropped to the thirty-one dollar level the American fracking companies were in trouble. Well as of yesterday it was down another 10 dollars to twenty-one. The American fractures are on their last drop of oil and it’s exactly why Trump sir is looking to pull out his ultimate weapon the no pass bill bomb this specifically refers to the no oil-producing and exporting cartels act no PAC which was last threatened in October of 2018. And why was it threatened last? While the Saudis had enabled the oil price to remain above the key U.S. seventy dollars per barrel level since January of 2018 when it first hit the key mark and any sustained price above us seventy dollars per barrel was and is regarded by the current presidential administration as being in an area where the benefits to U.S. shale producers of higher prices are outweighed by the relative damage done to the US economy. Well back then we won as we can see after we threatened the no pack bond prices came back down to levels the US was most profitable at. But then they kept going down to levels we didn’t like. And then you know the story all of the oil countries made pact OPEC led by the Saudis America and kind of to Russia and they came back to those 60 to 70 dollars favored US levels. But obviously today we have another oil price war but this time isn’t about high prices. It’s about low prices. So well the no peak bomb even works. Well, it is our ultimate power play and this is what it does. No peak would make it illegal to artificially cap oil and gas production or to set prices as OPEC and Saudi Arabia currently do. So it’s a direct blow to the Saudis of which all our recent past presidents have been oh so friendly with bipartisan and it began with Nixon. It would also do something against the other big player Russia Andrew Ladd no pact would prevent them from using OPEC plus in their oil chess game. Traditionally OPEC doesn’t include Russia while OPEC plus expands alliance to 24 member countries including Russia. And it was formed in 2017. And since the formation, Russia has been using this alliance to manipulate dropping in and out talks breaking down and better no pact would prevent them from ever reviving this alliance. And if they did they would face consequences and deep sanctions from the USA. But let’s get back to the Saudis as a bill would be a major breakup with them. It would most importantly remove the sovereign immunity that presently exists in U.S. courts for OPIC as a group and for each and every one of its individual member states. This would leave Saudi Arabia open to being sued under existing U.S. antitrust legislation with its total liability being estimated. U.S. 1 trillion dollars of investments in the US alone. Yeah if you didn’t know the Saudis own a ton of stuff here in the US. Shoot they are even one of the largest shareholders in Uber. So the US would then be legally entitled to freeze all Saudi bank accounts here in the US. Sees all of its assets in the country like the uber shares and then halt all use of US dollars by the Saudis anywhere in the world. And then if it came down to it the US would then go after Aramco and its assets and funds. It’s still a majority state-owned production and trading vehicle Saudi Aramco is the world’s most profitable company. In 2018 it made more profit than Apple Google and Exxon Mobil combined. How has a small nation like the Saudis whose population is only about thirty-three million people have one of the biggest and most valuable companies in the world? It’s because the US has handed them it on a golden platter since the 70s and the no pick bomb might really be what’s needed to shake things up. And here is the thing that Bill was almost passed early last year. It made its way all the way through Congress to Trump but his support for it was in question. Well guess what. Trump vetoed the bill and then in March of 2018 just after the bill was in Congress that Trump administration okayed nuclear energy transfers to Saudi Arabia which got Congress all ruffled up. So this is a sticky situation for Mr President Day. There is a tool that could actually save the US fracking companies without having to perform a full on bailout. But that would mean the eventual collapse of the US petrodollar and a collapse of the petrodollar system means a collapse of the U.S. dollar in its current global form. The current financial system, in my opinion, has overshot and it will collapse leaving a path of fire destruction in its wake. Is crypto and Bitcoin immune. Well, let me try to explain it’s not finance one point zero has its greedy grubby tentacles deep into the markets. We all know what happened with big macs during the flash crash and guess who is CEO and founder who has access to everyone’s positions on the exchange. Kind of like a casino. Who has access and eyes on everyone’s cards in the casino. Even if they are covered. ARTHUR Hey. Where is he from. Where did he work before. Well this 2018 Bloomberg article tells it like it is board with banking. This former City trader went full crypto. Yeah. Arthur was a former equities and derivatives trader for Citibank and before that Deutsche Bank. Now do you think he left finance one point zero and that world behind? No he did not. I guarantee you is using his bit Max profits and funneling them into large positions in the stock market and that means if we have another tumble like a big one in finance one point zero another death spiral will come from bit next as they need to cover their positions in finance one point zero. It’s obvious that happened last time and it’s obvious it could happen again. But what everyone needs to realize is this Arthur Hayes and bit Max they will go down with the finance one point zero ships selling their accumulated BTC for cash to cover their finance one point zero positions to holders like you and me who won’t sell and bet next it could go under without any BTC which will hurt in the short term but in the long term is exactly what needs to happen. Cheers. I’ll see you next time.

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