#i guess i had an art era where i put incredible effort into all of it

[ssseriema]

i was looking at my old art from like a year ago and i was like damn…. what da hell happened.. like i was drawing so many boobs ……..

[davidmann95]

now that it's over, thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole?

pretenderoftheeast said: So, thoughts on Bendis' Superman and Action Comics' tenure altogether and separately now that it's over?

Anonymous said: Best and Worst things about Bendis' Superman run

Anonymous said: Now that it is over, what are your thoughts on Bendis' runs on Superman and Action Comics as a whole?

Anonymous said: Retrospective thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole now that it's, I guess, done?

Anonymous said: Hey so since Bendis’ Superman stuff seems to be done, what did you think of the run as a whole?

I decided to hold off a bit on writing on this one, if only so that I could reread the Action Comics side of it since Superman stood out in my memory a lot more. But now I have, and as we’re heading into a bold new era of Superman (and it’s coming in fast - just since I made my Superman in 2021 predictions we’ve gotten Ed Pinsent finally reprinting his legendary bootleg Silver Age Superman, Steve Orlando announcing his Superman analogue book Project Patron, an official shonen Superman redesign for RWBY/Justice League, PKJ’s Super-debut turning out far better than I ever expected, Superman & Lois’s first proper trailer largely taking people pleasantly by surprise, and my learning that there’s a Sylvester Stallone Old Man Superman analogue movie titled Samaritan coming out this summer) we’re ready to take a look back with at least a touch of perspective. I’ll lead with complaints, so everybody who’s been waiting for me to say that Bendis on Superman was Bad, Actually, savor this because it’s as close as you’ll get.

The Bad

* I hate to say it, but rereading that side of the run there’s no two ways about it: the structure of Action Comics as a whole is a mess. It baffled me from day one that it was the more acclaimed of the two books for so long - I guess people are hardwired at this point to think of ‘street’ stuff as where Bendis is supposed to be - because it was immediately clear that Superman had a well-defined story he wanted to tell, while Action was the usual Bendis off-the-cuff improvisation. It’s barely even a story in the same way, and it’s certainly not the ‘Metropolis crime book’ people took it as: it’s 28 issues of Superman and his supporting cast stuffed a pinball machine with the Red Cloud pinging off of each other as we wait to see who falls in the hole at the bottom, and partway through Leviathan and the Legion of Doom and 90s Superboy are tossed into the mix to keep it going a little longer. On an issue-to-issue basis it’s frequently really good, but the core plot of the book is *maybe* six issues stretched out over two and a half years.

* I’ve gone into this some before, but structure-wise Unity Saga also has problems: Phantom Planet rules but either it needed to be cut or the back half needed to be a year all its own in order to accommodate the scale of what it’s attempting. It’s got an interstellar civil war leading into the formation of the United Planets, family drama, Rogol Zaar’s whole deal, and Jon’s coming of age, and I’d say only that last one is really properly served. Even Jon forming the United Planets, while contextually somewhat justified in terms of 1. The situation being so far gone he’s the only one who’d even think in those terms, 2. Things being bad enough that these assorted galactic powers would be willing to try it, and 3. Him having the S on his chest to sell it, isn’t at all built up to within the run itself.

* Rogol Zaar sucks. He’s made up of nothing but interesting ideas - he’s an ersatz warrior ‘superman’ of a bygone age of empires up against the new model, he’s the sins of Krypton as a conservative superpower come home to roost, he’s while not outright said to be definitely Superman’s tragic half-brother and the culmination of everything this run does with Jor-El - but none of them manifest on the page, he’s just a big punchy dude with a dumb design who screams about how you should take him seriously because he’s totally the one who blew up Krypton. Even a killer redesign by Ryan Sook for Legion of Superheroes can’t fix that. There are lots of bad villains with good ideas who are redeemed with time and further effort, but I can’t imagine Zaar getting that TLC to become a fraction of whatever Bendis envisioned him as.

* The second year of Action Comics, after establishing itself in its first as one of the most consistently gorgeous books on the stands, leads with Szymon Kudranski’s weak output and then concludes with John Romita Jr. turning in some career-worst work. The latter is particularly egregious because for that first year Bendis writes a really collected, gentle Superman so him getting pushed into being more aggressive should have an impact, but Romita draws such a craggy rough-looking Superman in the first place that it mutes any sort of shock value.

 * WE NEVER LEARN WHAT’S UP WITH LEONE’S CAR, WHAT THE HELL. You don’t just DROP THAT IN THERE and then NEVER FOLLOW UP.

The Good

* Superman got his real clothes back after 7 truly ridiculous years.

* Bendis fundamentally gets Clark’s voice in a way unlike almost any other writer - even all-around better writers of the character almost never approach how spot-on he is with having Superman speak and act exactly how Superman should.

* Supporting cast front and center! He writes a dynamite Lois, Perry, and Jimmy (even if many of Lois’s more out-there decisions in the run don’t end up retroactively justified the way you’d hope), Ma and Pa are more fun than they’ve been in decades in their brief appearances, he manages to turn having Jor-El in the mix into a positive, and the Daily Planet as a whole has an incredibly distinctive vibe to it like never before that I hope is taken as a baseline going forward.

* The non-Rogol Zaar baddies? All ruled. Invisible Mafia and Red Cloud are both brilliant ideas executed solidly if overextended. Zod as Kryptonian Vegeta, Mongul as a generational perpetual bastard engine primed to be incapable of self-reflection, and Ultraman as “what if Irredeemable but he’d never been a good guy and also he was a Jersey mobster” are the best versions of those characters by numberless light-eons. Lex is on-point in his sparse appearances. Xanadoth as a mystical cosmic monster older than time who still talks like a Bendis character is however unintentionally a hoot. The alt-universe Parasite is a more intimidating Doomsday than Doomsday ever was. And Synmar as an alien culture’s attempt at creating their own Superman and messing up the formula when they make him a soldier can and should be a legitimate major ongoing villain coming out of this run.

* Pretty much all the art other than what I mentioned already. Fabok does a good job bookending The Man of Steel and Ivan Reis does the work of his career anchoring Superman (special props to Reis as well for drawing the first ever non-Steve Rude interesting-looking take on Metropolis), and meanwhile you’ve got Jim Lee, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Doc Shaner, Steve Rude, Kevin Maguire, Adam Hughes, Patrick Gleason, Yanick Paquette, Ryan Sook, Brandon Peterson, and David Lafuente doing their own parts.

* Closely related to the art, all the little flourishes with the powers. Super-speed having a consistent visual with the background coloring changing, Clark internally putting numbers to the degrees of force behind his punches and what situations which numbers are appropriate for, ‘skidding to a halt’ mid-flight before crashing through a window, the shonen-ass major throwdowns as portrayed by Reis, how his super-hearing is handled as a prevalent element. Lots of clever bits that added flavor to what he does.

* While Unity Saga has problems, the whole of what Bendis does in Superman as a means of forward momentum for Clark and his world is excellent. The sort of three-act structure of: 

** Clark is led to question his place in things over the course of a few adventures

** Involvement in the larger cosmos and the impact it has had through and on his family makes him realize the answer to his questions is that he needs to step up in a bigger way because there’s no benevolent larger universe to welcome Earth with open arms, nor a cosmic precedent for everything turning out for the best without some help

** As a consequence of the lessons learned by this change in the status quo Clark is inspired to make his own personal change in revealing his identity (with Mythological basically being an epilogue showcasing a ‘standard’ standalone Superman adventure while simultaneously highlighting his new status quo and how it fits in as a summing-up of Bendis’s take)

…does a great job of shepherding through ideas that lend a lot of forward momentum to Superman of the kind he hasn’t seen in a long time. Not perfect, but far lesser stories with far lesser ambitions have made huge impacts, so I’d certainly hope at least some of this sticks around even if, say, regardless of any retcons to the main line there are always going to be stories with Clark as a disguise and Jon as a kid. Oh, speaking of whom,

* KISS MY ASS, EVERYTHING WITH JON KENT RULED

Ahem. Probably a less confrontational way of putting that.

Do I think there was more gas in the tank for Jon as a kid? Totally, making him likeable and viable was the one really good thing the Rebirth era accomplished for Superman and I expect we’ll continue seeing more of it in the future one way or another. But whether or not him being aged up was Bendis’s decision, or working with marching orders to set up the eventually-(kinda-)discarded 5G, the coming of age narrative here is fire. He keeps the essential Clark Kent kindness and bit of Lois Lane cheekiness that reminds you he’s still their kid, which is a combination Bendis is basically precision-crafted to write, but his trials by fire give him a background entirely unlike the by-the-numbers “and here’s how Superman’s great kid grew up to be a great superhero too” narrative you’d expect while still arriving at that endpoint. If superheroes live and die by metaphors then Jon in here is what it means to grow up written as large as possible: leaving home for the first time (and seeming to shoot up overnight!), getting into the muck of how the real world works, being beaten down by authority wearing faces you’ve been taught to trust, scrambling to get through with the whole world against you, and in the end getting through by learning to rely on your own strength while keeping your soul intact and your head held high, and even managing to speak some truth to power. It gives him a well-defined life story with room to go back to and explore the intricacies of each leg of for decades to come in a way Superman hasn’t had since the original Crisis - someone someday is going to write a The Life & Times Of The Son Of Superman miniseries and it’s going to be one of the greats - and negates any question that he’s earned his stature as the heir apparent.

* Coming out of this, Superman’s world is fascinating. He’s out but rather than giving up his day-to-day life he’s openly spending part of his life as CLARK KENT: SUPER-REPORTER and part of his job on the cape-and-tights side of things is now KAL-EL: SUPER-SPACE-DIPLOMAT, Lois Lane coruns a foundation helping people whose personal continuities have been fucked over by Crisis shenanigans, Jimmy Olsen owns the Daily Planet but is still doing Jimmy Olsen stuff because that’s how he gets his kicks, and Jon Kent is going to college in the future. I’m not anywhere near naïve enough to think that’s how things are going to be forever, or shortsighted enough to think there’s no value left in the traditional setups, but god I hope these developments stick around for a long, long time to come and potentially become the new ‘normal’ as far as the ongoing shared universe stuff goes, because it all feels like the right and promising next steps to take for the lives of these characters. However it got here, for all the pluses and minuses along the way even if I maintain the former very much outweighed the latter as a reading experience, Bendis has a lot to be proud of if that’s the legacy he leaves on these titles.

* The recap pages at the desks!

[pilferingapples]

Brick Club, 1.4 entire (retro)

Cosette's story often has such a fairy-tale feel, and it starts with this  section (what should I be calling these chunks of text? the X.X sections as a whole, not the X.X.X ones? Volumes?) .

And yet I'm not at all sure why I get that feeling quite so strongly, in terms of narrative technique.  The initial namelessness of the cast, with Two Mothers echoing the way people in fairy tales are Mothers and Millers and Eldest Daughters?  But if Fantine is presented as if she was s stranger to us again, it's not different than what happens with JVJ, and his story never feels this way.  The  Three Sisters made by Cosette, Eponine , and Azelma maybe? That's a very fairy-tale motif indeed.   Something about the way the inn itself is described..?

Augh, I absolutely cannot put my finger on it.   Still,  something about this passage feels as ominous and certain and doomed  as if the inn was a gingerbread cottage and Fantine was vowing to keep silent for seven years while making shirts out of nettles.

Notes on Various Things under the cut:

-  love that the inn sign is really badly made. I've seen several attempts at it in various adaptations and they're always a disaster and it's excellent, I want a collection.

-  the cart is covered with "the same ugly yellow mud sometimes used to decorate cathedrals".  The cart that is A Metaphor for outdated social institutions.  I see you, Hugo. 

- I will FIGHT Hugo about peasant/working class women's clothing in this era, this outfit would be super charming!  But it's definitely more about utility and practical wear than Fantine's old outfits.   There are roughly a billion dissertations to be written about the way that things working class people do and use are , through history, treated as inherently ugly/undesirable, regardless of how much art and beauty might actually have gone into it; I feel like the classism kinda speaks for itself on that.  And then,since Hugo's already drawn a huge Romantic Aesthetic defining line between the Useful and the Beautiful  in this book, I think  I can fairly just quote Gautier's explanation of the issue -- "Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature" -- and leave this for now.  I suspect it will come up again. 

- Fantine has been "marked by irony" --that is, scarred by her time with Tholomyes.  I do like the way  this new line on her face sounds almost like a dueling scar. Fantine's a fighter in her own way!

- ...Tholomyes is gonna make it to at least 1828, meaning he'll outlive everyone we love in this story except Cosette and Marius.    And he'll do it while being  "always a man of pleasure"--I feel like there's an implicit suggestion that Cosette has a lot of half-siblings in the world, all of them with a story as important as hers, if only people would take them seriously. 

- ...as a Somewhat Taller Than Average woman myself, I am rather delighted by Hugo's obvious terror of women who are Not Tiny.   ( And I realize I'm probably Reaching to think that Mme T might have been much happier and more well-adjusted if she weren't trying to cram her giant self into a tiny box of Ideal Femininity?  Maybe she'd have been much more ok if she'd  been able to go into showbiz and get famous as  a weightlifter or something. )

But I do think there's a real sort of sadness to her introductory chapters.  She had an ideal dream for her own life , and it wasn't even a particularly ambitious one--just a love story, really-- and it's fallen through as much as anyone else's hoped-for Ideal in the novel. She's still trying to hang onto it at this point, but we're already given a glimpse of the future  when she'll not only have given up on that ideal, but come to despise herself for it.  This is no way absolves her of her cruelty towards others, but I think she's a more complex villain (and she is  a villain) than she's sometimes treated as. 

- Fantine does try to lie about having been married, here! ...but she also comes right out and tells people she's making a financial Deal with exactly how much money she has, and how much she's able to give over, before it's all settled.  It's  painful how ill-prepared she is to deal with this kind of economic manipulation (and I think "prepared" is really relevant; she's had no one more naturally skilled or experienced to teach her how to handle these things, and business negotiations, which this is, are incredibly complicated) . 

Seeing how much money Mme T gets for Cosette's fine clothes makes me strongly suspect that Fantine was severely underpaid for pawning her own fancy things--unless, and I guess this is possible, her "putting all her finery" on Cosette  is meant to be literal, and Cosette's current clothes are directly made of Fantine's old fancy outfits. 

- Fantine tries to lie about having been married , and the neighbors *see* her crying as she leaves Cosette, and Cosette must have been well dressed and all for that first months or so...but still, everyone believes the Thenardiers when they start telling the town that Cosette is an abandoned, illegitimate child.  They believe it because Cosette looks the part, and Cosette looks the part because the Thenardiers force her into it.  In so many ways, Fantine is never in control of  the narrative about her child, and What People Say about them does indeed matter more than anything she does--no amount of effort, no show of love, can save her and Cosette when everyone else  has decided they're socially damned. 

...but on the less thematic and more practical side,how on earth are the Thenardiers learning about her marital status? Seriously, was this freely avaialable info?  This  issue is something that comes up several times in the novel and I really have no idea what access to people's family records was like? 

- we get our first negative association with a cat , hm 

- ...workers have "generous impulses", huh?  (also I am not at all sure if the corresponding Bourgeois Respectability is meant to be entirely a good thing, but I'm not sure it's NOT , like I would be with Some Writers? Agh) 

- The Thenardiers' animal souls are : 

French: écrevisses 

Hapgood: crab-like FMA: crabs Rose: crayfish  Donougher: lobsters

Google Translate agrees with Rose, but I wonder if this isn't one of those words that was colloquially used to mean a general category of creatures in its day --Things Like a Crayfish/lobster/crab-- and has come to mean something very specific now?

-  ..y'know, what really kills me about Cosette in this every time is how everyone , *everyone*  in this town really either believes she deserves her abuse, or thinks it's BETTER than she deserves.  This is not happening in secret, behind closed doors, in a private house; it's at the public inn and very blatant. Everyone knows she's out in the cold , first up every morning, starving and beaten, in a home where the other kids somehow have more than enough (because their parents steal it from Cosette, directly).  And not one person in this discount Omelas even thinks it's bad , much less intervenes. It's a point in the Thenardiers'  favor, socially.   This isn't just the gamins of Paris being brushed aside,this is a whole town actively citing horrible child abuse as the Moral and Good Option that elevates the people doing it.  

And in this, I suppose, Cosette shares a history with Valjean-- they're  both put through absolutely horrific abuse , which is not just societally ignored, or accepted with jaded apathy ,  but openly lauded as morally correct.   I hate Montfermeil so much-- but Montfermeil is not really different from Arras, or Digne, or any other place where people think that abuse of the "deserving" is a Good Thing. 

[nopperabounet]

Fish Tank 95 Interview with Higuchi Yutaka Reporter: Okubo Yuka Translation: Lola

 What did you do for New Year's?

We released a single and a tribute album right? And I went to the BUCK-TICK cafe.

Did you? I'm guessing you went after hours?

Nah, during work hours. I was there the day before my birthday to sign things for my 'Ongaku to Hito' column.

And did you get to eat a serious bear themed birthday cake?

I wasn't going to, but then they brought out a birthday platter they made just for me. I'm grateful.

So let's get into "THE DAY IN QUESTION 2019",  if you try to look back it again, what sort of tour did it turn out to be?

I think it went well. Makuhari went well too but, with no tour planned that year, and a whole year with only two shows, I mean that's not very much right, so it felt like an unusual year for me. But that's also the very reason why we wanted to do something different from Makuhari in terms of atmosphere, and I thought we had to make it good you know. And then we got to play at Yoyogi Stadium for the first time so that was fun.

Seems you also got to start off your tour at the Takasaki Arts Theater.

The old music centre has been around since we were kids so it's a historical building you know, but it's grown so much since then, it's incredible *smiles*. It was super beautiful. I think our live at Takasaki went well too.

How did you find the set list and the staging?

I wanted everything to be strong and tight, and I think that came across, or to say it better, we have a lot of songs from different eras right, and I wanted them to be able to flow from one to another seamlessly.

I see. You also varied your set list depending on the venue didn't you?

That's right. We talked about how we wanted to put all our efforts into making every show good even if they happen to be in the same venue.  Like we did two days in Osaka right, and when we talked about how it'd be better to change things up at bit from show to show there, we said well if we're going to do it in Osaka, we should do it for all of them. So that's why we were able to change things up. But of course because it was such short notice, there were some things our lighting director couldn't do. Also, we had a ton of potential songs we could do so we figured why not try to do them all, and in this way each show ends up being a little different, which was good I think.

And it was you, Yuuta-san, that decided on "Muma - The Nightmare" to start with as an image?

That's the thing about having a series of songs, the first one has to have impact. And since we hadn't started a show with it until now, I thought it'd be good. And since were able to keep up the same atmosphere with the flow of the songs, and it all went smoothly, I think it was a great set list.

You also changed the arrangement of "SILENT NIGHT" to make it more grand.

The original has that vocals and guitar only feeling but then Imai-kun changed up the arrangement a bit for me, so it comes off differently than the acoustic version, which sounded good I think. We did "Snow white" too as a winter song, and since these two songs were important to give weight to the center of the set list, these were the two that I thought it best not to change, no matter the venue.

Those two winter themed songs were one of the highlights of the show. Also, how did you find performing "Datenshi" in Takasaki actually, since it was the very first time?

I was nervous for sure. I mean it's always that way the first time you perform something, and the thing is we'd recorded it to be put out as a single in January right *smiles*. I mean for us it was like, "Oh, so that's how it sounds" but that's in great part due to the immense amount of thought put into it by our staff. That's why we did it without making even one mistake *smiles*. I mean it's kinda harsh right to be recording something at the end of December for a release in January. But that was already decided on by the record company so I'm just really grateful to everyone in the staff for making it happen.

So that was in part why you were nervous wasn't it? But how did you feel once you were on stage in Yoyogi Stadium, and looking out at the venue?

I was happy to be able to perform in a place that we hadn't yet in all our thirty years. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid visiting Harajuku. And yet I'd never performed there, so I thought it would be good to do it. I think I'd like to play there again, even if it's not for a "THE DAY IN~".  Because it's a place I looked forward to playing in for such a long time, I hope I get the chance to do so again.

I had also heard that Yoyogi Stadium underwent repairs before re-opening due to having poor acoustics. So I was a little worried about how it would sound the day of the concert, but I needn't have worried at all.

The truth is our PA person doesn't only do work for BUCK-TICK. We were about 18 (years old) the first time we met, and they were working on a Taikan Freaks live, and aside from doing work for BUCK-TICK, this person has worked on speaker systems all over the country. So they've gathered data from venues all over the country right.  So they just know what kind of sound you can have in each place. So whenever we get a lot of praise for how amazing our sound is live, I want to say, "I'm sorry, it's not us! We've just got an amazing PA!" *smiles*

That's the strength of being a part of a team.

Because we didn't have many lives this time, our staff really went out of their way to do their best, and I think that's what made the lives so wonderful. They even added more snow *smiles*.

Was it really that much more?

Well, in Yoyogi there was a ton more. In truth, we wanted it to be like that in every place but it depends on the venue, and some places just don't allow for that sort of thing right. This time most of the places we went to had a theater quality to them which made for a good atmosphere though.

It was your idea to have "LOVE ME" as the last song too, wasn't it?

I may have said this before but, even though it was said that, "But we've done it before" it has been a number of years since we ended with it.  Which to me meant that it'd be even more surprising if we closed with it. I also thought that by closing with this song you're left with a good feeling about BUCK-TICK. And also by starting with "Muma~" and ending with "LOVE ME" you're getting our full range as a band.

When it was over, there were excited cheers for the announcements that were made but, did you get to hear them?

Yeah, because I peeked.

You were peeking?! From where?

I was just on the verge of being seen.

Oh, really? *smiles* I thought it looked like 2020 would be a busy year for you.

Part of that is not wanting to lose momentum. Because we didn't put out an album in 2019 right, so of course this year, 2020 being a new year, we want to be able to give everyone the chance to see BUCK-TICK more locally. I'm looking forward to it.

You've only begun recording the album yesterday, but I hear you've finished your first day of bass recording.

Yup. Just for two songs though *smiles*.

What sort of feeling do Hoshino-san's two songs have?

I feel like the difference between Imai-kun and Hide's songs has doubled, they're great songs. Hide really outdid himself this year. Please look forward to his songs *smiles*.

OK *smiles*.  Have you already heard Imai-san's songs then?

Not yet. But I'm sure he'll dump a mountain of songs on me soon enough, and I'll do my best with them.

Has he not told you either about what the album's theme will be?

Nope, nothing.

There was an uproar on Instagram wondering about it because Imai-san posted that the theme was seven characters.

He didn't tell me anything, I swear! But you know, it does make me happy that Imai-kun can always get people so excited like that. I've also been focused on recording because I want to think carefully about what I'm doing right, and I'm thinking about how things will progress from here, but you know all of that is what makes it enjoyable. At the same time, I was also supposed to do Harata Kenta-kun's birthday live on March 3rd, and I was going to do an ARB cover so I've got to keep that in mind, and so I guess I've just been pretty preoccupied recently.

Because the March 3rd performance was postponed, and that was your chance to show your ARB cover.

It's already been about twenty years since this happened but, I got to do an ARB song with Kenta-kun at an anarchy event you know. Obviously it was an anarchist song. And that's when we bonded over our love of ARB. So when Kenta-kun talked to me about doing this event, of course I thought this was my chance to show how great an influence they had on me, and how much respect I have for them. I wanted to show my appreciation, you know.

While we await news on that front, there's the fanclub only live tour starting in May. Would you kindly offer a message to everyone looking forward to it.[1]

I want to have fun lives. I want to carry that feeling through 2020. And what better way to do that than to start off the year with those who have been so kindly cheering us on all this time. I hope we make it a great success!

    [1] The fanclub only lives were postponed, however they have tentatively been rescheduled for the period of February - April 2021. Please consult the official BUCK-TICK site for further information.

[eldritchsurveys]

904.

The last time you were in the fridge, what were you looking for? >> A beverage.

Do you like clowns? >> No.

Have you answered all of these questions honestly so far? >> There have only been two thus far, and I can't imagine lying on a survey question anyway.

What's the third text in your inbox? >> ---

Are you listening to anything at the moment? >> No.

Do you twitch when your falling asleep? >> Yeah, sometimes. Or I have that sudden falling feeling and jerk awake.

Are your dishes in the dishwasher clean or dirty? >> The dishwasher is either still running or finished running, so, either clean or about to be clean.

Are you at home or with friends more often? >> 98% of the time, I’m at home.

When is the last time you were on a bicycle? >> A year ago? At least? I don’t know. I tried to ride for a while but I’m too out of shape to enjoy it and it was discouraging. And by now, I’m worried it needs maintenance from having sat in the garage through a full cycle of seasons and I’m afraid to ride it.

What have you eaten today? >> A veggie burger and chips, a sandwich, and taco mac with Nuggs.

Would you date someone 15 years older than you? >> ---

Do you own a strapless bra? >> No.

Does the person you like know it? >> ---

Do you care if people hate you for no reason? >> I care in some circumstances, but not all.

Did anything brighten up your day today? >> I’m not sure. My day was pretty okay, though. To my pleasant surprise.

How are you feeling at this exact moment? >> Chill. A bit tired.

Are you someone who worries too often? >> I get anxious about things, but I’m not sure “worries too much” is applicable.

If you could date somebody who would it be? >> ---

Do you ever wonder how other people see you? >> Well, yeah.

What is one good thing you're known for? >> ---

How about one bad thing? >> ---

Are you taller than most? >> Most children, yeah. LOL

When was the last time you sang an ENTIRE song? >> Hmm... oh, I sang along to a Journey song while I was in the shower.

Are you the type of person who likes to be out or home? >> I like to be home.

What time do you normally go to bed? >> Between 10p and 12a.

What is one thing that is currently bothering you? >> My neck is still kind of sore, probably from sleeping wrong the other night or something. It’s getting better, but I also keep accidentally twinging it.

What did you do today? >> Read some of the book I’m on, watched a few episodes of Avenue 5, played some Torchlight 2, browsed tumblr, browsed Reddit. Not in that order.

Do you consider yourself to be attractive? >> No.

What was the last thing that you drank? >> A shandy.

Is anything annoying you now? >> No.

Has anyone ever said i love you to you and not meant it? >> How would I know, unless they told me (and in my experience people generally do not tell)?

Do you regret going out with the last person you did? >> Eh. Not really. Like, it sucks and I hate that the trauma from those interactions is still haunting me and affecting my current relationships, but it is what it is. 

Do you realize it when you curse? >> I mean, more or less.

When was the last time you showered? >> This morning.

Who did you last talk to in person? >> Sparrow.

Do you ever have days where you just don't do anything? >> No. Even when I’m deeply depressed I will move my hands to put on Netflix (and then click “yes” when it periodically asks if I’m still watching), lol. That’s something.

Have you ever been extremely tired but refused to go to sleep? >> Yeah.

What is your favorite episode of True Life, if you have one at all? >> ---

Have you ever experienced something paranormal? >> Maybe.

What's the longest amount of time you've been stuck in traffic? >> ---

Best field trip experience? >> ---

Have you ever been to New York City? >> I used to live there.

If so, is it all its cracked up to be? >> What’s it cracked up to be, exactly? People say a lot of things about NYC, not all of it positive. It also depends on, you know... your socioeconomic standing. Wealthy folks’ NYC is a completely different place from poor folks’ or homeless folks’ NYC, despite being on the same patch of land...

What is the most amount of money you've spent on a meal before? >> I have no idea.

What museums have you visited, if any? >> In NYC: MOMA, Museum of Natural History; in Philadelphia: Franklin Institute; in Chicago: Museum of Science & Industry, Adler Planetarium (it’s also an astronomy museum); in Michigan: Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids Public Museum. Those are just the ones I remember, mind you. Might have been to a couple of others and just forgotten about them.

Have you ever had a group project and one of your partners bailed on you? >> Maybe when I was in school, idk.

What's your worst traveling experience? >> Probably every time I had to take a Greyhound from Colorado to NYC (or vice versa).

Sims 1, 2, or 3? Why? >> I’ve never played the first one. I like the vast amount of custom content resources for 2, the innovation of 3, and the continued innovation of 4. Otherwise, they’re mostly the same to me except the graphics just get smoother over the years.

Have you ever dealt with noisy neighbors or roommates? How did that go? >> Yes. Poorly, obviously, for me anyway.

Who was (or is) the teacher that gave you the hardest time in school? >> ---

Best muffin you've ever had? >> I don’t like muffins.

Have you ever taken a woodshop class? >> Once.

If so, was it required? >> No, it was an elective.

How much time do you spend on Facebook, if you have one? >> Hardly any. I just check it every few days or whatever, for messages mostly.

What area of math are you best at? Worst? >> I don’t know.

How do you feel when you meet someone with the same music taste as you? >> I don’t care if people like the same music as I do, as long as they’re not rude about genres they don’t care for. I like talking about music with people, but it always ends up being this “this genre is better than that genre” or “this era is better than that era” circle jerk and that’s so fucking boring.

What is the strangest thing you've ever seen outside of your house? >> *shrug*

Do you believe in luck? Why or why not? >> It can be a useful concept.

How often do you "half-ass" things (put little effort in)? >> Whenever I don’t have the energy to whole-ass something, but I don’t want to just not do anything at all.

Do you ever feel self-conscious when you eat around other people? >> No. I feel annoyed when I have to eat around other people, because then I have to hear other people eating.

Has a teacher ever made you hate yourself/your work? >> Probably.

How reliable is your internet connection? >> It’s quite reliable.

Have you ever missed a meeting/event that was required/necessary? >> Yeah.

What's something that makes you incredibly nervous? >> I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

What's the latest you've ever stayed up to finish homework/a project? >> ---

If you don't have glasses, how would you feel if you had to get them? >> It wouldn’t bother me too much. Unless my vision started failing really badly, because, you know... I like seeing.

If you do have glasses, how would you feel if you didn't need them anymore? >> ---

How many vegetarians do you know? >> I’m not sure.

Have you ever considered going to art school? >> No.

Is there anyone in your life who consistently angers you? >> No.

How quickly can you write an essay? >> I don’t know.

Have you ever had problems falling asleep in class? >> In high school, i was put on multiple psychotropic/anti-depressant drugs, none of which I actually needed, so they all had pretty adverse effects on me. Including making me fall asleep in class almost constantly.

Have you ever been on the barrier or front row at a concert? >> I usually was.

If you have a job, who is your least favorite coworker/manager? >> ---

Favorite episode of Spongebob? >> I don’t like that show.

Do you have any silly/odd emotional connections to anything/anyone? >> I don’t want to call any of my emotional connections silly or odd. Especially since I have a hard enough time making them in the first place -- I want to encourage and support those connections, not disparage them. :/

Are your parents supportive of you? >> I took this survey almost a decade ago, and my answer then was that he was supportive even if he didn’t always approve. I was really on some bullshit then, I guess... because that’s just not true. He only supported what he thought was appropriate for me to be involved in, and when I invariably wanted to do or be other things, he was dismissive and almost derisive. Being supported in my being and endeavours is not a common theme in my life and it starts with that motherfucker.

How often do you take the train to go places? >> I don’t take it much anymore; the last time I took it was to go to Chicago and back, as an experiment (Sparrow wanted to see if it was truly better than driving there and back). When I lived in the City, of course, I took a subway all the time. Really miss that.

Do you play with your phone in awkward situations? >> I guess I would, if I found myself in a situation I thought was awkward. I usually don’t.

[pixel-cat-1]

I just finished The Outer Worlds

I don’t really ever use this blog for more than reblogging stuff, so this is probably coming out of left field for anyone who follows me, but as you see in the title, I beat The Outer Worlds not a couple of minutes ago. I have some thoughts I’d like to talk about while their fresh, and this is as good a place as any to do that lol

So, what did I think of it? Overall, I think The Outer Worlds is okay game that ultimately fails to meet up in many regards to not only Obsidian’s golden child, Fallout New Vegas, but in some departments even regular ass Bethesda games from years ago. And that’s honestly such a shame, because TOW had so much goddamn potential and yet I finished it and felt practically nothing for the entire last level and final ending sequence.

The main issue I think is that ultimately speaking, TOW doesn’t necessarily do anything different from any other RPG I can think of, and it doesn’t do anything like that super well. 

For example, the combat’s good on a technical level. The controls and mechanics are fun to use (especially the dodge system), but the enemies tend to either range from “complete curb stomp bitch babies” to “bullet sponge that’ll kill me so fast I won’t even know what happened.” Most fights weren’t particularly engaging, and I was basically handicapping myself but not using the companion abilities for about 75% of the game (I don’t know why I never tried pressing the d-pad buttons, but yet again, when I can just shoot shit and huff an inhaler, I didn’t need to think too hard). The disparity of how difficult the game can be is often confusing, and I was more often limited because of my ammo count more so than my ability to play the game.

The RP aspects can be good at times. There are plenty of skill checks that reward you for being a smart little egg, and a part of RPG’s I like is being able to avoid combat and make people happy, and generally make myself useful, so that was fairly fun. Overall the dialogue options and the performances by most VA’s left me not feeling like I was being hindered in acting and responding to situations how I’d like, so at the very least, that didn’t let me down.

The music was overall enjoyable, although very forgettable, and sometimes a bit all over the place: there’s Western-y guitar ambient tracks, also some more techno-y ones? Elevator music that sounds like they got it from a royalty free website. This kinda wish-washyness ties into multiple issues I had with the game I’ll get into further on.

The graphics are good, which isn’t necessarily shocking anymore because every game looks good. There are some aesthetic choices I liked, that being things like the Art Deco style architecture and advertisements from the loading screens. Terra 2 is gorgeous as all hell, with the skybox being particularly amazing (I’ve often fantasized about Earth having rings, so this partially fulfills that fantasy). Monarch is overall also very well done, with making it look and feel like a hostile shithole with ravenous wildlife. The looming gas giant overheard also does a good job of making me feel dread, which is about as much of that feeling I ever got. However, the game never really maintains a distinct “style”, rather it collages a bunch of them at once. Because for all the aesthetic of the Art Deco style that they do for cities like Byzantium. there’s like 10 levels/areas that are just generic as all hell “sci-fi space shit” that you’ve seen before. And then there’s Scylla, which is so fucking boring in design I don’t know why it’s even in the game.

This creates an issue where it’s like they wanted to make the game look Bioshock, but some people wanted something out of Mass Effect. But some people played Borderlands, and wanted to go for the wacky space bandit and hostile environment feel. But they also wanted to stick it to Bethesda, so they made is vaguely look like a Fallout game as well. It’s hard to describe in text, so I’m just gonna post these and show it best I can

^ It looks like space Bioshock here

^ And here it reminds me more of Borderlands than anything else (it’s a lot easier to see if you look at it from the ground, rip)

Scylla is literally just a rock. As far as I can tell, you could probably fucking avoid the damn thing if you avoid side quests. There’s fucking nothing there. Just enemies, a few side quest things, an empty town and a giant terraformer thingy that’s interesting to look at for like 4 seconds. And despite what you’d think, no, there is no low gravity. That would’ve at least made this place have some interesting gimmick or mechanic, but no. It’s just a fucking dumping ground for side quests. God. Fucking. Damnit.

All science-y buildings just look like this for the most part across all levels. It’s not bad, just very generic and same-y.

The Groundbreaker’s fairly interesting, until you realize that all it is is essentially a giant corridor front to back. Actually, scratch that, it’s two corridors! One of which is this Back Bays area overrun with criminals. How do you get to this clearly dangerous and isolated part of the ship? Well a fucking elevator smack dab in the middle of the pavilion of course! So anyone can just go up or down into this apparent no man’s land part of the ship by literally going into it via an elevator. Dear god.

^Monarch definitely has one of the best looking environments in the game, tied with Terra 2 down below

But what absolutely fucks the game overall is despite how much effort they put into making everything look nice (regardless if you actually like it or not), the overall level design in terms of function and whatnot? Mind numbingly boring.

All levels are really small maps with (at most) a handful of major buildings or towns depending on the scale, and the rest is just a bunch of abandoned buildings with some enemies, or a crashed ship or something. There's just...nothing going on with half of these dungeons.

Also the vast majority of buildings have a “Quarantine” sign out front or is locked in some capacity, which means you could have 4-5 buildings in a random batch of them along a road, but only 2 you can explore. And since all the fucking interiors across multiple planets look the exact same, it leads to an incredible feeling of sameiness in a game that has you running around an entire solar system. How the fuck even??? I’d argue fucking Fallout 3 handled this better. At least there was more to do! More overall dungeons and levels! Did I miss something? Am I just fucking stupid and I missed the all the good shit?

Combine this with the wish-washy aesthetics and music, it leads to an incredible feeling of not really knowing what to make of things. You’ll just be sprinting around, shooting all the red things on the compass just to get it over with by Monarch. And when you realize that LMG’s are just...the best weapons in the game as far as I could tell, and there’s no real downsize to them, you’ll just fucking run around gunning everything down while some forgettable track plays in the background until some enemy with a weirdly large health bar forces you to think for a bit before you get back to running around and shooting shit again. 

Despite this though? I still overall enjoyed the combat. I liked running around and becoming the 4th Horseman. Plus with the mechanics overall being fun to use, it wasn’t really that bad. But I can’t say on an objective level I think it’s good for a game to feel like that. Because despite how heavy handed I’m being right now (and will be throughout the rest of this impromptu review), I don’t hate this game. 

Sound design is overall very good. Guns make satisfying shooty shooty bang bang noises, and as I said before, the VA’s are overall very good all around. Parvati stands out as the most interesting character to listen to in general. She has a lot of informal speech patterns that makes her distinct, and is generally a treat to listen talk. At worst, you get a character like Nyoka, who doesn’t sound bad by any real means, but for a lot of her dialogue, I felt they should’ve slowed it down and focused on getting her emotions down. But it certainly wasn’t bad.

Storywise? This game wasn’t particularly interesting. I’m gonna put the keep reading thing here because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played yet and cares about them. Long story short, I think the game was good, but very disappointing given what it could have been. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but often found the lack of anything super special to really hold it back from achieving something I think the gaming industry needed in an era of, ironically enough, hyper greedy corporations with no morals to speak of.

So, what did I think of the story? And I guess by extension, the side quests. Overall, I think the main story was...not very good. There was a lot of good stuff inbetween though, and a lot of side quests and little things definitely were enjoyable. But the plot is just not nearly as engaging as it should be. Given how short it was though, that might’ve been a mercy.

The story, as roughly as I can summarize is, is that you’re a colonist frozen on the colony ship “Hope.” It’s been adrift for 70 years, but you’re woken up by a guy named Phineas Welles (he’s basically Doc Brown, but nicer). The Board (which consists of the 10 companies who own and run the colony/solar system) try to stop him, but they fail, and you’re escape podded onto Terra 2, near a dying town called Edgewater. The pod accidentally kills the contact you were to meet, so now you’re gonna steal his ship and use it to do shit basically.

Along the way, you pick up a ragtag band of miscreants and general shitheads and kill a lot of people and wildlife in a quest to stop the corrupt Board from running the colony harder into the dirt than they already have. It’s very by the numbers, more or less. I guess.

The immediate issue is that, despite being able to join the Board and betray Phineas if you want, there’s absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Not a single goddamn reason, other than for the evulz. This creates an issue where I feel no reason to deviate from the Phineas side of the story. And I know what someone might be thinking “But Pixel! The Board is supposed to be evil!” And I am absolutely aware of that. But the thing is, so was Caesar’s Legion in Fallout New Vegas. And yet, that faction is often considered just as interesting and compelling a faction for the game as the NCR or Mr. House. People will, to this day, still argue over who had the best idea for solving the Wasteland’s issues. Because despite how evil the Legion is, they still had very valid points about the NCR and how horribly corrupt and bloated it was. And there was absolutely an argument to be made about how safe they made their lands for those under their ownership. Stuff like that that makes you actually consider and think about whether or not you're actually making the right choices for the whole of the New Vegas wasteland, and by extension the rest of the Western part of America.

Here? There’s no contest. There is no necessary evils. There is no good reason the Board does anything. No logic, no reason. All they can do is fuck shit up even more, and that makes them such a boring, vague antagonist that there was never a moment in my mind I actually considered working for them. Any potential moments they had to sway me or dashed aside by them constantly proving how they could never actually fix the problems they made. And if that was the intention? Then Obsidian fucked up.

People remember the villains that raise a point a hell of a lot more than they do villains that are just evil for the sake of it (there are obviously exceptions, for an RPG? you need a compelling villain). And that’s why no one will remember this game in a decade. It pales so hard in comparison to New Vegas, it’s not even funny. It’s on par with Fallout 3, at best. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if the whole point of this game was to make a statement against an increasingly morally bankrupt Bethesda.

Let’s look at, per se, Skyrim. Paarthurnax was a supporting character with an interesting backstory: he’s Alduin’s brother, who is the main antagonist. He is a dragon that secludes himself on the top of the tallest mountain in Skyrim, who meditates and focuses on suppressing his inherit evil dragon nature. Despite this nature, he chooses to be good. And he asks a very compelling question.

"What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

In a single sentence, Skyrim asked a more though provoking question than the entirely of The Outer Worlds. And if you played F:NV, then it’s probably weird to hear that, because F:NV was full of moral and philosophical quandaries. So where did it all go?

The thing is, people forget that the Obsidian that made F:NV is dead and gone. The actual people who made that game have all moved on from that company. This is the child trying to replicate the success of it’s parents, without entirely understanding exactly what the parent did to achieve what it achieved.

The biggest difference between F:NV and TOW is that F:NV really forces you to think. TOW just doesn’t require that, at all. 

Phineas good, Board bad. No thinking required.

I think the real warning sign is at the beginning of the game as well. Edgewater, the first town in the game, is dying. People are leaving and the town's also dealing with a disease epidemic. The town’s leader’s answer? Cut off power to the deserters, and force them to work harder despite the fact the town’s basically dying because of the overworking and disease. Despite the fact there’s not even enough medicine to heal everyone, and they have to play favorites with who lives and who dies.

What the fuck logic is this? Why would I ever choose that?

The only other choice, unless I missed a compromise solution (which I would’ve wanted) is to route power to the deserters and finish off the town more or less. The deserters wouldn’t take in everyone though, so a lot of people would die anyways. But even then, she’s still clearly the more competent leader. There’s not a goddamn contest. 

It just continues like that the whole game. I rarely had to think about who I’d side with. because the solution is obvious. The literal only reason I’d side with the corporations is if I was being evil, nothing else.

The best the story gets is when you need to make a compromise on Monarch between MSI (a corporation who got the boot from the Board) and the Iconoclasts (Religious people who are anti corporation). If you work with the second in command of the Iconoclasts, you can depose their extremist, dipshit leader and work out a truce. Which is good! It rewards the player for this too, when these factions come to help in the final level of the game (and when you see specific characters you could save helping out, that also make it feel like your decisions had an impact). You see the two factions...standing next to eachother, which isn’t much, but it’s about as much change you see in the game.

Which is also another thing that TOW fails to accomplish: a sense of longevity with my decisions leads to me feeling that, despite making the right choices, nothing really changes. 

Going back to Edgewater, you’d think after a while, I’d come back and the town would be entirely gone or something, right? 

Nope.

Some NPC’s stood outside the factory forever, as did some guards. There weren’t any lights on. That’s about it.

Well, certainly the Deserters must give me more quests to help out, which can lead to me establishing them and helping them help the Edgewaterers, right?

No. Very quickly you realize there’s very little do or talk about with NPC’s after you do monumental decisions. The only functional difference is an opinion slider, which is another imitation from F:NV that means fuck all. The only in game things it affects is: a) The prices of venders of that factions

b) Whether or not that faction will shoot you on site.

That’s it as far as I noticed. The best idea they had, that being that factions can love you, but also fear you just doesn’t do anything. As far as I could tell, at least.

I’d love to be wrong, because I was so excited to see what would happen to entire settlements and after I helped them. After I made important decisions that’d change the face of the colony. And I felt so disappointing when it became apparent little actually mattered. 

The companion sidequests aren’t too much better. The pacing is so weird, sometimes, depending on how available certain planets are. Parvati’s was especially jarring, despite it being the best written by far.

It basically is you helping her get with an engineer chick from the Groundbreaker. It’s pretty adorable overall, and without a doubt has some of the better writing character wise, but the pacing was so fucking weird. It initially starts with you getting Parvati to talk to her about engineering stuff. They say they’ll email and stuff about engineering stuff. which is neat. So I run around, finish up all the side quests on the ship as I can, then head back to my own ship. I did not go back to my ship at all during this. 

When I come back, Parvati immediately tells me that she and the engineer, Junlei, have been messaging and getting flirty and now she has a crush and it’s just like “Dude, were you texting her while we murdered all those bugs in the engine?”

It’s doubly funny as well, because Obsidian wanted to avoid the player having romanceable characters. Which makes about as much sense as you think. Once source said the reason was that they wanted you to focus on roleplay, and not trying to bang anyone you found hot (okay?). Another just said they weren’t ready for it. And I believe it. As much as I think romance would’ve been another good thing to add depth to this game, I bet you they’d have fucked it up. It’s just funny. Even Fallout 4 had pretty acceptable romances.

Granted the system was fucking basically “Kill shit together until you wanna bang” but fuck, it was something! It also doesn’t help there’s a bunch of cuties all over this game: Huxley stands out as an adorable muffin who becomes a generic NPC at the end of the MSI/Iconoclast questline, despite the fact you can even repair her journal terminal with zero indication at you can do it, which is good! Let me just do things to be nice! But she literally just sits there after you rescue her with a few dialogue options which goes away after the peace deal, and it's so fucking frustrating that I want to enjoy the characters more, but none of them seem to have more than a paragraph's worth of depth to them and it's so sad.

Even the companions are like this. At the beginning I’d try and talk with Parvati about anything, but the only dialogue options would be about getting her out of the party, and that’s it. I can’t ask her what she thinks of things, or of the current quest/situation. There’s such a weird lack of depth in a weird amount of areas, that it felt almost worse than playing a Bethesda game.

I think the penultimate disappointment of the game is, fittingly, the final level, Tartarus. Which is fitting, because it feels very hellish. Not the planet mind you, or the prison which it takes place in, but just the complete lack of anything super special. It’s just the same kind of environments you’ve already run through, but bigger and with more bullet sponge bad guys. Which is funny, because jumping around and killing an army on a purple hell planet that has perpetual lightning storms would’ve been sick as fuck, but nah, gotta run around on Scylla instead of anywhere else compelling.

In my playthrough, MSI, the Groundbreaker, and the Iconoclasts came to help me deal with all the fucking goons, which was mostly cool because I didn’t have to deal with the tediousness of killing every last one of corporate goon myself.

This is about as big of an impact your decisions come to as far as I’ve noticed. Which isn’t saying much.

You meet the Chairman of the Board here, by the way. I just shot him and kept moving. shrugs

There’s also a last minute villain in this Sophia person, who is also apparently on the Board? It’d help if there was a list of the Board people, which could’ve been on a terminal somewhere. Maybe I’m dumb and never found it, which is plausible. 

The final boss fight, (I hesitate to call it that) is just somewhat large robot. It’s a bullet sponge with respawning combat drones flying everywhere and they’re very annoying. I died once after around 10 minutes of fighting, then using Parvati and Felix’s (he’s another companion, he’s also okay I guess) combat abilities I knocked it down and layed into the robot’s weak spot. He died very quickly.

So depending on how you do it, the final fucking boss is either stupidly hard or mind numbingly easy. I don’t know which is worse.

So you go past the dead robot, gun down Sophia in one shot, and save Phineas. You basically become the leader of Halcyon, there’s a F:NV-esque slideshow and commentary about your actions that somehow is worse that New Vegas’s, credits roll, and you sit there thinking “That’s it? That’s really it?”

Yeah, that’s it. 

It’s such a let down, especially because this was supposed to be Fallout New Vegas’s spiritual successor. But all it does it make me want to play that game instead of this one.Which is probably what you should do regardless if you pick this game up or not.

There’s a bunch of other mechanics and stuff I never brought up. There’s technically a character customization screen, but you literally only see your character in the select menu, and there’s no third person. There’s a barber in Edgewater who’s also a doctor, and yet you can’t even get a haircut from him (again, failing to match up to even Fallout 3). 

There’s these Mods you can put on armor and guns, and you find them by the bucket full so you’ll always have those. Just get an aim stabilizing one for an LMG and you’ll be fine. You can also tinker your armor and weapons, making them stronger if you spend credits on it (why not the armor and weapon parts, I’ll never fucking know). You can repair your stuff at a workbench, which is advisable. Just take all the weapons and armor you pick up, take it apart for parts, and never worry about it again. You’ll get money from quests, so buying those parts is meaningless and a waste of money

There’s also hacking and stealth and stuff. Stealth is such a non...thing in the game. There’s no silencers, but since all enemies decided to put cotton into their ears, there’ll be plenty of times I shoot someone, and a guy ten feet away heard fucking nothing. Plus there’s this disguise mechanic where you pick up ID guards and get a hologram disguise that wears out as you walk (passing speech check from suspicious guards restores it), so it’s not like sneaking around was ever a priority. Just put your points into the speech. Stealth is a dump stat more or less. 

Oh yeah, Parvati’s an ace lesbian. Which is nice that they handled that way in a non-dipshit way (you can also identify as ace in certain dialogue with her in her companion questline, which is funny considering they never let you fuck anyways, so it’s weird that you even have the choice). My only complaint is that they should’ve put this representation in a better game. 

What’s funny is that, despite everything, I don’t even hate this game. I feel a remarkable numbness, followed by a desire for something better. I spent about a week burning through it? If I had more free time, I could’ve finished it sooner probably. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was pretty fun for what it was, but knowing that this is somehow supposed to match up to what F:NV was is sad, and a sign of how bad the gaming industry had fallen. 

The only difference here is that unlike the Outer Worlds, I can’t purge the rot of the gaming industry with a haelstrom of plasma bullets.

Would I recommend this game? I guess. There’s still some fun to be had, but don’t expect anything too major or interesting. Get it on sale, it;s not worth $60 right now. There’s apparently DLC coming out for it eventually? I might play it, and I might post an update to this review, or make a seperate post for that eventually. Depends on how well this one does? Or if the DLC makes me feel enough emotion to type something out like this in 2 straight hours.

[chungledown-bimothy]

Trust Me: Chapter 6

I’m so sorry it too so long- for some reason, I just couldn’t get into Virgil’s head for this one. Thank you so much for your patience <3 

Chapter 1 Chapter 5 AO3 Chapter 7

Warnings: swearing, mention of death/funerals, brief mention of homophobia (it’s as fluffy as this one’s gonna get, y’all)

Word Count: 2023

Tag List: @ccecode​ @emo-sanders-sides-loving-unicorn​ @ren-allen​ @ilovemygaydad​ @bloodropsblog​ @funsizedgremlin​ @raygelkitty​ @roxiefox23​ @thomasthesandersengine​ @spookyingarbageisland​ @band-be-boss-blog​

Thursday

Virgil stared at the empty conversation for what felt the millionth time, trying to find the right words. Fuck it. I need to just do this. Like a bandaid. I can do this.

[To:Patton]- Hey Patton, this is Virgil.

[To:Patton]- From your coffee shop the other day.

Fuck, that was bad. Well, there's nothing I can do about it now. He opened the case files he brought home to review, trying to distract himself, but gave up after about 10 minutes and started watching The Office for the fifteenth time. He was three episodes in when his phone went off.

[Patton]- Hi!! I hope this doesn't come across as pushy or anything, but do you wanna go out sometime? I'm really bad at communicating through text, and I think you're really cute

[Virgil<3]- it totally doesn't. Yeah, I'd love to meet up. What are you up to on Saturday?

[Patton]- Going to the de Young with you, hopefully? I have a membership

[Virgil<3]- That would be amazing!! I've been dying to go see the Monet exhibition.

[Patton]- Me too! I'll pick you up at noon on Saturday, then?

[Virgil<3]- Sounds great!

[Patton]- I can't wait! I guess I don't need to ask where you live lol

[Virgil<3]- haha yeah I guess not. I'll see you then :)

Virgil put his phone down and took a deep breath. Holy SHIT am I really doing this?? Patton's so cute, but I'm a mess. But it's Monet at the de Young, and Patton seems so… good. Like, too good for me. God, I'm really good fuck this up, aren't I?

[Patton]- Take a deep breath; it's gonna be great. There's absolutely no need to worry :)

… Holy fuck I'm so gay. Patton had attached a selfie with a huge smile and a thumbs-up.

-

Saturday

Taking a deep breath, Virgil looked in the mirror and adjusted his tie. He didn't even wear ties to work, but a date to see Monet's works in person deserved better than his everyday work attire, let alone his usual weekend outfit of a t-shirt, an old hoodie with purple plaid patches, and black jeans. He tried not to think about the last time he wore the black tie, but he couldn't shut the train of thought off fast enough.

-

It's raining. Of course it is. He loved the rain so much; it's only fitting it's raining when we have to say goodbye.

"He'd hate that we're all here being sad, you know. He'd say we were being lame and that he deserves something more fabulous. He'd also be pissed that I'm talking to you, not him, at an event about him, even if it is his funeral. So, Remy, you dramatic, self-absorbed ass, I'm standing in front of all of these people, and I'm gonna talk to just you.

First of all, I'm more sorry than I can say. You told me he would be willing to break his rules, and I didn't trust you. You were always right, and I hated that. If you were here, you'd tell me to shut the fuck up and say that I know I love you. I absolutely and completely love you. And that's why it kills me that I couldn't protect you. You weren't just my partner, you were my best friend, and I failed at the absolute minimum. God, Remy, you deserved so much better. I'm sorry I couldn't be better.

But fuck this melancholy shit. You told me once that you wanted to put the 'fun' in funeral. So, everybody," Virgil continued, addressing the crowd again, "as Remy said so often, 'let's cut the shit and drink'. Scandals downtown is ready and waiting for us to fuck shit up in his memory."

-

Coming back to the present, Virgil wiped the tear from his cheek and rolled up the sleeves of his purple dress shirt. Patton's gonna be here any minute; I need to finish getting ready.

Before he knew it, there was a knock at the door. He took a deep breath and was glad he did when he opened the door and briefly forgot how to breathe, because standing there on his doorstep was 5 feet and 7 inches of the most beauty Virgil had ever seen in one person. Patton wasn't the most conventionally attractive- whereas society as a whole prized hard lines and defined muscles, Patton was soft lines and the kindest eyes imaginable. Virgil couldn't explain why, but Patton exuded kindness and trustworthiness. He didn't realize he'd been staring until the sound of a throat clearing startled him.

"Oh, um, I was staring, huh?" Virgil asked, embarrassed.

Patton nodded, blushing. "Yeah, but I was too. You look really good."

"Thanks, you do too, but I guess you already knew that I feel that way." In his efforts to avoid eye contact, Virgil noticed the pin on Patton's shirt- simply reading 'they/them'. "Are those your pronouns?"

"Yeah, they are." Patton's posture immediately shifted- standing straighter and narrowing their eyes. "Is that a problem?"

"Not in the slightest." He smiled when Patton visibly relaxed, their megawatt smile returning in full force.

"Wonderful! Now, let's go see some art almost as beautiful as you. I'll drive." Patton winked and started walking. It took Virgil a second to remember how to breathe, let alone move, but he quickly caught up once he did. He stopped short again when he saw their car- a classic black VW Beetle in perfect condition.

"Holy shit, Patton. Your car is gorgeous."

"Oh my goodness thank you! She was my dad's."

"Like I said, it's- she's beautiful. Maintenance must be a nightmare, though. What year is she?"

"1955. Maintenance isn't that bad- my dad taught me how to keep her in shape after I came out in high school. He thought getting my hands dirty would turn me into 'a real man'."

"Shit, I'm sorry, Pat." They shrugged.

"It's no big deal. Joke's on him- I'm still queer as hell, but now I can keep this beauty in good shape. Get in! She's old, but she won't bite!" Laughing, Virgil got in the car, and they left for the museum.

-

"Monet was a founder of Impressionism as a counterpoint to Realism, which had been popular for about ten years before Impressionism started developing and twenty-four years before the term Impressionism was first used.

Realism grew in popularity with the rise of photography; artists wanted their works to look objectively real, and strove to remove emotion. They largely focused on the working class and depicted life as it was, without any sentimentality or heroism.

Monet never really bought into that. His early works works, though chronologically in the Realism era, were always painted with intense emotion, and he rarely painted people. He began playing with the concept that what we understand of reality is just our perception, and he was far from alone in those thoughts. Marx held that belief as well, going further and saying that all we have in our minds are ideologies, not facts or truths, and they act as filters, shaping everything we experience.

Rousseau died two centuries before the rise of Impressionism, but he summed up the philosophy well when he said 'I feel before I think'. Monet's paintings, while indistinct and 'messy' up close, evoke strong emotion only when one looks at the piece as a whole. We feel it before we get close enough to see and think about what it's really made of." Strictly speaking, Virgil didn't need to be speaking softly into Patton's ear with his hand on their waist, standing so closely behind them that he could feel the movement of their chest with each breath. Neither of them, however, would ever dream of complaining.

Patton reluctantly stepped out of Virgil's embrace and turned to look at him in awe. "That's incredible, Virgil. How do you know all that?"

"Oh, um, thanks. I really like art philosophy, and Monet is my favorite artist. I dunno, something about making order out of chaos is really calming."

"I feel the same way! Life is sorta like a puzzle, or Monet's brush strokes. Each one, taken individually, doesn't make much sense. We all feel and experience things like that, things that are confusing or sometimes even scary. But as we keep going, we find more and more pieces, and things make more and more sense. Feeling like a half-missing puzzle set is okay, as long as we remember the big picture. If any of that makes sense." Patton chuckled nervously, scratching behind his ear.

"No, it made perfect sense. What would you say the big picture is?"

"Well, I'd say it's doing as much good as possible. Whether it's big things, like being a doctor, firefighter, or teacher, like my brother, or small things, like putting a smile on someone's face with a pun or a good cup of coffee. It's our duty as people to make the world around us a better place, however we can."

"That's a really beautiful way of looking at things, Patton." Virgil gave them a small smile. He started to say more, but he was interrupted by the growling of his stomach. "Oh, shit. I was so nervous this morning, I forgot to eat. Wanna go to the cafe and get lunch? My treat, since you still haven't let me pay you back for the coffee."

"I told you, it was a gift! And don't think for a second that I didn't notice that you tipped almost triple what you would have paid if I had charged you." Their smirk was only slightly lessened by the fact that they had to tilt their head back slightly to make eye contact.

"You got me there, but I'm still buying. No, stop that- no amount of puppy dog eyes can change my mind."

"Well, you can't blame a guy for trying." Patton shrugged. "Alright, let's go get some food. You're already almost alarmingly skinny- if we don't get some food in you, you might disappear altogether." Patton started walking backwards towards the cafe, not breaking eye contact.

"Hey! I'm a perfectly normal weight for my height." Virgil started walking too, shaking his head.

"Which is what, 6'3? You need to eat more than the average person, not less. Skipping meals isn't good for you, kiddo."

"I know that. You're just really cute, and I got nervous," he admitted, blushing.

"Flattery will get you everywhere. Now come on, let's eat." They winked before turning around and skipping away. Virgil followed, completely smitten.

------------------------------

"Mr. Dean, a minute?" Logan called after his least favorite student. It was almost 7 pm- students on campus at this hour outside of football season was unheard of, and the last game of the season was weeks ago.

"Greetings and salutations, Mr. Reed. It's JD, though. Mr. Dean is my father." He sauntered to Logan, disdain clear on his face. Logan couldn't be sure if it was towards himself, Mr. Dean, or both.

"Yes, erm, JD, what are you doing on campus so late? Your attendance record in my class alone indicates a disinclination towards being here during school hours, let alone so late."

"That's just the thing, Mr. Reed. No one wants me to be here now."

"Ah, I see. A contrarian. It's not safe to be out here alone, however. The sun set hours ago, and there's a killer on the loose, if the news is to be believed. Come with me, I'll drive you home."

"Thanks, sir, but I'm fine. I'm a fighter, you see. Let the bastard come after me- it'll be the last mistake he ever makes."

"Save the bravado for your peers. I will not take no for an answer- if anything happened to you, it would be on my conscience. My car is in the parking lot. Go." Logan commanded.

"If you insist." He gave a mocking bow before turning away from Logan and walking to the car. If he turned back around, he would have seen a cold, malicious smile spread across his teacher's face. He didn't turn around.

[danfanciesphil]

Some Kind Of Folliful (New Chapter)

Edgelord!Dan x ObliviousBisexual!Phil AU [CHAPTER THIRTEEN] (based off the 80′s classic Some Kind of Wonderful)

Synopsis: Dan has one friend, and only because he was forced into it. Phil is loud, excitable, and irritatingly happy all of the time. Phil seems to find Dan’s perpetual attitude funny, and despite Dan’s best efforts to shun him and everyone else, wants to be around him all the time. That is, until Phil starts talking about Amanda Jones. Word Count: WIP (Estimated 12-15 chapters) updates every Tuesday Rating: Explicit Warnings: Smoking, swearing, heavy drinking, drug mentions, implied prostitution, broken home, class divide/classism, pining, light homophobia, sex

[Chapter One] [Chapter Two] [Chapter Three] [Chapter Four] [Chapter Five] [Chapter Six] [Chapter Seven] [Chapter Eight] [Chapter Nine] [Chapter Ten] [Chapter Eleven] [Chapter Twelve]

[Ao3!]

This chapter is NSFW. Explicit. Sex happens. 

From: Dan To: Louise 13:23pm Can I have the weekend off?

From: Louise To: Dan 13:24pm This better be a damn joke

From: Dan To: Louise 13:25pm I worked the entire school holiday! Double shifts!

From: Louise To: Dan 13:25pm You also skived off two shifts to go get beat up by some rich kid

From: Dan To: Louise 13:27pm Please.

From: Louise To: Dan 13:30pm ughhhhhhHHHH FINE. I will give you today and Saturday off. Only because you never ask so I assume ur either violently ill or have a serious dick appointment.

From: Dan To: Louise 13:32pm :D thanks. srsly.

From: Louise To: Dan 13:33pm I expect details.

From: Dan To: Louise 13:34pm Don’t suppose I could wrangle Sunday too?

From: Louise To: Dan 13:34pm Don’t push it, Howell.

From: Dan To: Louise 13:40pm xxx

*

Despite his best efforts to remain cool and aloof, there eventually comes a point where Dan truly can’t resist looking over his shoulder any longer. He half-expects Phil to be looking right back at him. Instead, Phil is hunched over the small wooden desk in front of him, scrawling onto a pad of paper. His tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth, a tiny pink rose petal, resting on the jut of his lower lip. Just then, Phil looks up, as if he can sense Dan’s break in resolve. His eyes are shining with excitement, which makes no sense, as they are stuck in detention with Mr Richardson for at least another twenty minutes.

Furtively, Phil looks to the front of the room, where Mr Richardson is steadfastly refreshing his LinkedIn page, and then back to Dan. He lifts the pad up to show him, beaming. Centre of the page is a pencil drawing of Dan, slumped over his desk, forehead resting on his hands, in the exact position he’d been in until about a minute ago. Dan rolls his eyes, mouthing ‘creeper’.

Phil puts the pad down, then holds up an index finger to Dan, a signal for him to wait a moment. Dan sighs, pretending that keeping his eyes trained on Phil is some great effort. Truthfully, he’s incredibly grateful for Phil’s presence here. Dan has spent a great deal of time in this very chair, at this very desk, wishing for any kind of distraction or entertainment. Usually he wishes for something banal, like Mr Richardson’s pen exploding, or the stoner kid who sometimes sits in the corner desk to catch his dreads on fire with the lighter he’s always flicking under the desk. But having Phil here is a miracle that Dan had never so much as dared to dream about. He’s a gorgeous beacon of pure light, sat just the other side of the room, all too happy to return Dan’s mildly creepy staring. He holds the pad up to Dan again; this time, there’s a message on it.

Still up for coming over for the weekend? After work obvs. 

P.S ur cute 

xx

Shaking his head, Dan mouths ‘no work today’. The joy of this news lights Phil’s eyes an even more radiant blue. Dan lets the smile teetering on the edge of his mouth fall across his face. A cough startles Dan out of the moment, and he turns to the front of the classroom in time to watch as Mr Richardson strides down the few desks towards Phil. He lifts the pad close to his nose to read it, then sighs heavily.

“Touching,” he says, drily. “But I think Daniel can wait to hear how ‘cute’ he is until after detention, don’t you?”

Mr Richardson lets the pad fall to Phil’s desk with a loud thwack. It makes Phil jump in his seat, adorably.

“How’d you know it was directed at me, Sir?” Dan finds himself asking. It’s too tempting to resist; that little pulsing vein in Mr Richardson’s neck is pounding away as always, just begging to be engorged. “I think he was angling it your way.”

Mr Richardson whirls around to face him. “Would you like for me to double your sentence, Mr Howell?”

“He’s just kidding, Sir,” Phil jumps in quickly, which is probably good as Dan had been about to suggest he and Mr Richardson skip the courting stage and go straight back to his place. “I won’t write any more notes. Sorry.”

With what seems to be a great deal of effort, Mr Richardson lets go of the tension in his shoulders and nods to Phil, then makes his way back to the front of class. Phil sends Dan a look, which obviously reads ‘stop being a prat’, so Dan smirks down at the homophobic graffiti on his desk, and tries to be a good student for the next eighteen minutes.

*

On his way out of detention, Dan is so steadfastly trying to keep his head down and not meet Mr Richardson’s eye that he barrels straight into Megan, the girl he sees in here most days. Her jet black hair is pulled into two ponytails either side of her head; it’s too short to be tied up properly, so they stick out like bundles of feathers, secured by bright pink and purple bobbles. If Dan cared enough to ask her about her unusual style choices - the shiny lime green Doc Martens, the string of ropey bracelets and sweatbands up her wrists, the chunky neon beads she wears around her neck when she can get away with it - he imagines she might say she’s ‘Scene’. It doesn’t seem to bother her that the era of the Scene Kid has, thankfully, for most, been abandoned in the late noughties.

“Shit, sorry,” Dan tells her when he crashes straight into her, hot on Phil’s tail.

She glowers at him. Her kohl eyeliner is thick and scary-looking. “Sorry? That’s rich.”

“Uh, what?”

“You and the art ponce?” She jabs a thumb towards the classroom door, where Phil is lurking, watching Megan with a startled expression. “Really?”

Bewildered by her sudden hostility when he’s spoken less than a sentence to Megan in all the time they’ve been stuck in detention together, Dan just stares. 

“Is there some kind of a problem?”

“After all this build-up between us, you go and date a random dude?”

“Build up?” Dan’s stare becomes a little panicked. He glances at Phil, who appears to be sniggering into his hand.

“You mean to tell me that you're in detention every time I am by chance?” She sneers derisively. “Pull the other one.”

“Um, Megan, is it?” Dan asks tentatively, taking a hasty but hopefully discreet step backwards.

She claps loudly. “Round of applause for the acting skill. Dan, is it?”

“Right, yeah.” He swallows. “I’m sorry but… I’m gay. Did you think…”

Something falls across her pale face, as if she’s been struck. “Gay,” she repeats, voice at a far more reasonable volume now. Her thick eyeliner just looks panda-ish, suddenly. She tugs her chewed cardigan sleeves down over her hands. “Not bi?”

“Nope,” Dan says. Crap, this is awkward. He’s never had to come out to a random stranger before. Although perhaps Megan would argue that they’re close friends. “Just boys.” He glances at Phil. “One boy, actually, now.”

“Oh,” Megan says. She looks hurt. “I thought… because you’re always in here when I am...”

“I’m in here pretty much every day,” Dan tells her. He gestures to Mr Richardson, who appears to have fallen asleep on his own shoulder. “Thanks to my number one fan over there.”

She closes her eyes, shaking her head. “It’s just… everyone’s bi now, y’know? I heard rumours about you some of the guys around town but… I thought you were just playing the long game with me.”

Dan is finding it very difficult to put himself in Megan’s shoes here - he can’t even remember a conversation he’s had with the girl, let alone a moment that might lead her to think he had some kind of romantic interest in her - but he nods sympathetically anyway, hoping it might lead to a faster escape.

“Sorry if I gave off signals or something,” he says, awkwardly.

She shrugs. “It’s okay.”

“Um, I’m sure you’ll find someone?”

She nods, sadly. “I guess. I mean, you did, right? Nobody saw that coming.”

“Yeah,” Dan says, inching around her towards the door. Phil is looking at him, eyes tinged with amusement. Dan sends him a withering look, then turns back to Megan. “Guess if I can snag someone, anyone can, right?”

*

“...you’re like one of those horses with the blinders on,” Phil tells him, hands either side of his eyes in demonstration. “You’re so oblivious to all the people lusting after you every day-”

“Oh, come off it,” Dan interrupts, eyes rolling backwards. “Lusting. Please.”

“Dan, you’re off-the-charts gorgeous,” Phil says. He grabs hold of Dan’s hand and tucks it into his coat. It’s because Dan doesn’t have gloves on - doesn’t own any, even. It’s a sweet gesture, but it makes walking beside Phil a little awkward, especially when other people are walking the other way and have to squeeze past them. “You must see how people look at you.”

Dan shrugs, embarrassed. “Creepy guys at Ozone maybe. Girls, though? Like, actual, reasonably attractive girls. Why the fuck would they want a lanky, perpetually bruised idiot with too many holes in his flesh?”

Phil stops them mid-pavement, pulling Dan towards him, until they’re chest to chest. 

“Because, in an emo, heroin chic way, you’re extremely sexy,” he says, then kisses him. Dan tries to be annoyed that Phil basically just called him a 2002 Pete Wentz, but Phil’s tongue is distracting. It flicks against Dan’s lower lip, where the cut is still healing. “Miss the lip ring, though,” Phil murmurs. “That completed the look.”

“I can prob’ly re-pierce it,” Dan replies, muffled because Phil won’t stop kissing for even a second. “If it turns you on that much.”

Phil laughs, breaking away. “You don’t need a lip ring to do that.”

*

“I don’t like detention,” Phil says, then licks a long line up Dan’s throat.

“No?” Dan gasps out, fingers digging into Phil’s shoulders. He can feel one of the framed, childhood photos of Phil digging into his back, threatening to fall once Phil releases him. “I find Mr Richardson’s lectures on respecting teachers truly scintillating.”

“No, I don’t,” Phil says, pushing their mouths together greedily. “Two hours in a classroom, staring at you, nothing to do but think about all the time wasted that I could have spent doing this.”

“An hour and a half,” Dan corrects, so Phil kisses him harder to quiet him, hands planted on Dan’s hips.

In his time, Dan’s had plenty of selfish, greedy assholes backing him into corners, but nobody he’s ever actually wanted this badly. They’d barely gotten in Phil’s front door before Dan found himself pressed up against the wall of the entrance hallway; they’ve not even taken off their shoes. Vaguely, Dan registers a noise in the distance, and reasons it must be a dog in another room. Phil doesn’t seem to notice the noise, too focused on how far he can slide his hand up Dan’s shirt without removing it entirely. The noise gets closer, and Dan realises blearily, belatedly, that Phil doesn’t own a dog.

Just as this realisation crests, Mrs Lester rounds the corner. “Phil, love is that- oh!”

Phil jumps back at the sound of his mum’s voice, but it’s too late. She’s already seen the worst of it. Dan waits for the ground beneath him to split into a gaping hole into which he can tumble, but presumably because God hates him, it doesn’t happen.

“Mum!” Phil exclaims, breathless.

Dan runs a hand through his hair. “H-hi, Mrs Lester. Kath. Mrs Lester.”

She’s wide-eyed, cheeks rosy pink. In her hands she holds a pair of socks, which she seems to have forgotten are there. “Phil, could I have a quick word?”

Phil tosses Dan a look of apology, then follows him mum through the lounge and into the kitchen. Dan waits for a minute or so, straightening his shirt, trying not to think the worst, and then can’t battle his paranoia any longer. He creeps into the lounge, listening hard to the hushed conversation from the next room. If he stands in the space beside the bookshelf, he can just about make it out, whilst avoiding being seen.

“...thought you’d be gone already.”

“Yes, I can see that, love.”

There’s a pause; Dan can hear his own heart thumping.

“So, you and Dan are…”

“Yeah.”

“I see. How long have you been…?”

“Um, about two weeks? Just over.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Mum,” Phil says, clearly embarrassed.

“You could have told me, you know.”

“I was going to,” Phil insists. “I just… I wanted to make sure it wasn’t all going to explode. I don’t wanna pressure him. He’s even told me he doesn’t like people at school talking about us. He doesn’t even care about them. But he likes you, I know he does. I haven’t had a chance to ask him what he’d think about you knowing. If it might be a bit much for him. I’m just- I’m so scared I’m gonna say something wrong and he’s gonna bolt. You know what he’s like.”

Dan frowns. Phil is really worried that he’s going to bolt?

“Okay, I understand your concerns,” Kath says, kindly. “But I still think if he’s going to be staying here, I ought to be aware-”

“Yeah, I know, you’re right. I’m sorry,” Phil says. “But nothing’s changed really. He’s just been coming over for Buffy marathons and hot chocolate after he’s finished work, like always.”

“Hmm, well that certainly was not a Buffy marathon I just walked in on.”

Phil laughs, and Dan thinks he hears Kath tittering too. “Sorry you had to see that. So embarrassing.”

Kath sighs, and there’s shuffling noises. Dan thinks maybe she’s giving Phil a hug. “I’m happy for you, sweetheart. Hope you know that.”

“You are?” Phil’s voice is muffled, like he’s speaking into her shoulder.

“Just took me by surprise is all. I mean, I always wondered if maybe you had a little crush on him…”

“I think, in hindsight, it was quite a bit more than a little crush.”

Another long pause. “Well, Dan’s a very lucky boy, then.”

“You’re really okay with it? He can still come over in the week and stuff?”

“Of course,” Kath replies in that kindly, mumsy voice Dan loves her for. His heart aches at the sound of her easy, ready acceptance. She makes motherhood seem so simple. She’s an open book, filled with endless words of love and support, more than happy for anyone who needs it to rip out a page. She saves the best of her chapters for Phil, of course. But there’s some passages bookmarked especially for Dan, too. “Do be careful with him, won’t you, Phil?” Her voice is thick with concern. “That scary mask he wears might fool some people, but you and I know it’s made of thin, breakable glass.”

Dan frowns again, mildly irritated that she sees him as a fragile little flower, but he has to begrudgingly admit that Kath has never once fallen for his tough-guy façade. The first time he ever met her, he was his usual cagey and brooding self, unconcerned with making a good impression on any parent. But much in the same way Phil had, she wore his shell away with persistent sweetness. She invited him to stay for dinner, and gave him second helpings without asking, then chocolate biscuits with tea. She asked him a thousand questions, and didn’t mind if he preferred not to answer them, but listened intently if he did. She told funny stories about Phil as a kid. She told him to come back anytime he wanted, even though he was basically a dick all night. She’d been unrelentingly nice and caring, in a way that Dan had never before felt from an adult.

“Don’t worry,” Phil assures her. “I think I’d give him the whole world if I could.”

“And… what happened to that Amanda girl you brought round? I thought you were besotted with her?”

Dan’s stomach clenches.

“We’re just friends.” The surety in Phil’s voice is like a blanket Dan wants to clutch to his chest.

“Okay then. Well, I guess I’d better get going,” Kath says in a sigh. “I was just finishing packing.”

“Tell Auntie Pat I say hi,” Phil says. “And stroke Mittens for me.”

Alarmed by the movement he suddenly hears, Dan sneaks back through the lounge towards the hall, managing to make it out just before Phil and his mum exit the kitchen. 

“Phil, just one last thing,” Kath says from the lounge, her voice so quiet Dan can hardly pick it up. “You two will be safe, won’t you?”

“Oh my God, Mum, please-”

“Phil, I’m asking for your own good-”

Dan has to clap a hand over his mouth to stop the laugh escaping.

“Yes, fine, wow, we’ll be safe I promise.” Phil says in a rushed garble. “Now I never ever want to speak about this again.”

Kath laughs quietly. “Fine. You’re sensible, I know. But I am your mother, I have to make sure.”

When Phil rounds the corner, he looks vaguely traumatised. Kath is right behind him, a calm smile on her face. Dan smiles back, unsurely, trying to seem as though he has no idea what they’ve been discussing. Kath crosses the hall towards him at once, and wraps him in her arms. Dan feels a little choked up, but manages to remain composed enough to return the hug, gently patting her on the shoulder. She releases him without comment, for which Dan is incredibly grateful, and then starts up the stairs.

“There’s plenty of food in the house boys,” she says as she goes. “Help yourselves, both of you. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

Once she’s out of sight, Phil begins spewing apologies. “...had no idea, I thought she’d have left ages ago because we were all that time in detention-”

“Phil, it’s okay,” Dan says, laughing. “Mortifying, obviously. But not the worst position I’ve been caught in by someone’s mum. And your mum is by far the coolest.”

“Bit of a mood killer, though,” Phil says, sighing.

Dan grimaces. “Yeah.”

They stand in silence for a moment, both reliving the look on Kath’s face as she’d first caught sight of them.

“Wanna watch a film for a while? Take our minds off it?”

“Absolutely.”

*

Three hours after Kath leaves, and they’re on their second film of the evening - Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It’s not helping ease the tension hovering around them, because Phil had said right at the beginning that he’d always kind of fancied Russell Brand, and now it’s all Dan can think about.

“Would you have sex with him?”

Phil wrinkles his nose. “Dunno.”

“Like, if he was here right now,” Dan persists. “Leather trousers, birds nest hair. Asks you to pop your kit off and join him in the cupboard.”

Phil laughs, playing with a popcorn kernel from the almost empty bowl. “Um, no.”

“No?” Dan turns, avidly interested, as ever, in Phil’s elusive sexual preferences. “Why not? He’s had the experience. So, he’d probably be decent at it, at least.”

“Yeah, well, even so.”

There’s something halting, maybe even reluctant about Phil’s tone. Dan might be imagining it, but he thinks Phil’s mildly uncomfortable with this discussion. Dan decides to prod just one last time, to see if he can get whatever the discomfort is out of him, and then he’ll drop it.

“Is it ‘cos he looks a bit, like, grubby?”

Phil laughs again; his cheeks have turned pink. He flicks the popcorn kernel away. “Look, I’m sure Russell’s great in bed. Fantastic, maybe. But right now, I only wanna have sex with you.”

The breath catches in Dan’s throat. As the unexpected statement sinks into his skin, the tension he and Phil have been stewing in fizzles away. He crawls across the sofa - Dan had jumped to the opposite side of it after a startling reappearance of Kath, hands over her eyes, shouting something about leaving her scarf behind and that she wasn’t looking - until he’s close enough to straddle Phil’s lap. He winds his arms around Phil’s neck and kisses him, slowly, taking his time, because they have oodles of it. 

Phil is eager and responsive in the way that Dan imagines he might have been himself, if his first time had been with someone he actually liked. Dan had been too young to appreciate what he was losing, and to whom; he regrets it immensely. He’s determined that Phil’s experience will be different. This sweet, incredible boy deserves so much more than some vaguely nauseating fuck in the back of a car that’s over in less than a minute, and that the other party won’t even remember. If Dan is honest, he believes that Phil deserves more than anything Dan can possibly offer, but if Dan is what he wants, then Dan will do his best to make it perfect.

They’re just getting into it, just starting to find their way beneath hems and waistbands, when the doorbell rings.

They break apart, a little dazed.

“We could ignore it?” Phil suggests, and Dan is more than on board, so swoops back in to kiss him again.

A minute passes, and then it rings again.

Dan sighs, reaching for the remote to shut Russell up once and for all, then climbs off Phil’s lap. Phil stands a little shakily, smoothing down his school uniform, and goes to get the door. Dan idly flicks through his Twitter timeline on his phone, waiting for him to return.

“Amanda,” Phil says, somewhere in the background. Dan shoots upright, swivelling to look. He can just make out Phil, and a vague, familiar silhouette on the doorstep. Her brown curls give her away.

“Hey,” Amanda says. “Is this a bad time?”

Dan gets up, his feet marching him to the door without his permission.

“Well, actually,” Phil starts to say, but then Dan is at his elbow. Phil blinks at him, worriedly.

“She wanted to talk to you,” Dan says. “She told me. You should invite her in.”

*

“I can leave, if you want,” Dan says, because nobody is saying anything.

Phil sits up straight, staring at him. “No, don’t.”

“It’s okay, I can go for a walk or-”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to both of you.”

They both turn to Amanda, vaguely worried. She’s got her hair in a messy ponytail, and is wearing jeans, which Dan cannot remember ever seeing on her before. He doesn’t remember her being at school today either.

“Okay,” Phil says. “Did you want a drink or something? I’ve got tea, or-”

“No, it’s okay. I won’t stay long.”

Dan stares at her hands, clasped in her lap. Her French manicure tips are peeling off. She’s sat in the exact spot on the sofa where Dan had been perched atop Phil’s lap not ten minutes ago.

“I basically just wanted to tell you both that there are no hard feelings,” she says carefully. She aims a smile at each of them, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “At least on my end.”

“That’s good to know,” Phil says, softly. The guilt is still coursing through him, it’s plain to see.

Dan doesn’t respond. He can feel his fingernails digging into his palm, the way they tend to do when he’s trying to suppress some awful emotion he doesn’t want to feel.

“I really am happy for you both,” Amanda continues. She clears her throat, a tiny, perfect crease between her plucked brows. “I know you feel like you used me, Phil. And Dan, I know you must think I’m, like, the ultimate cockblock.”

You have no idea, Dan thinks privately.

“But I’m glad that, even though I didn’t know it at first, I was able to help you both to get what you really wanted.” In her following sigh, Dan’s suspicions are confirmed; this touching speech is not the real reason she’s here. “But - and again, I’m not blaming you guys - after all that’s happened, I’m sort of... in a tricky spot.”

Phil is immediately alarmed. “Is it Hardy? Is he bothering you again?” Dan considers ramming his fingers in his ears so he can drown out the concern in Phil’s voice. He turns to Dan. “You said you scared him off.”

“How is this my fault?” Dan snaps. “If he’s harassing her it’s not because I didn’t punch him hard enough. It’s because he’s a knob.”

The response is about to trip of Phil’s tongue, but Amanda gets there first. “No, guys, it’s not Hardy. Well, not directly.” She shifts in her seat. “The Elite gang are pretty harsh about anyone that doesn’t follow la regle de jeu.”

“La what?”

“The rules of the game,” Dan mutters; Phil glances at him, surprised. “Their game. Shocker, really. They always seemed such an easygoing bunch.”

Amanda raises her eyebrows at him. “Yes, we’ve established that I’m an idiot for going anywhere near them, Dan.”

It’s infuriating that she doesn’t ever try to defend herself. Dan’s not used to having someone so readily accept their own folly. Her acknowledgments knock Dan’s insults right back over to him, and he’s never prepared to swing his racket in time to catch them.  

“Wait, so, it’s all of them?” Phil asks, clearly not following the game. “The whole Elite gang are giving you trouble?”

“Have you ever seen Mean Girls?” Amanda asks. “It’s not like they’re knocking my books out of my hands, or shoving me into lockers. But they’re bitchy and they’ve got the whole school under their thumbs. Together, they’re perfectly capable of destroying my life, and they seem pretty intent on it.”

“Are you saying that going to Prom with Phil is akin to committing ‘social suicide’?” Dan asks bitterly, putting the Mean Girls term in a fake American accent. “What a touching sentiment.” He scoffs. “I’m so sick of this stupid playground drama. What are we, twelve?”

“Dan,” Phil warns.

“No, I get it,” Amanda says, looking down. “He’s right. It’s completely pathetic. Even when I was taking part in it, I hated it. Keeping up with the Elites was exhausting. The constant battle for Queen Bee. The lies and the backstabbing, everyone secretly despising each other. And being with Hardy was just embarrassing. Everyone knew he was cheating. The whole discussed it,  laughed about it, and I had to pretend like I was too ditzy, too lovesick over him to notice.” She puts her head in her hands. “I thought that, maybe, if I took a huge leap, right back over the tracks, I could escape it. That’s why I said yes to you when you asked me, Phil. I saw a chance at some normalcy and I took it. It wasn’t fair of me, I know that. But in a way, we were both sort of using each other, right?” 

There’s a lull in the discussion; Phil aims a worried look in Dan’s direction. Dan begins chewing the skin around his thumbnail. 

“I’m sorry that I’m even asking this,” Amanda says then. She looks up at Phil, then at Dan, eyes shining. “But I need your help.”

Phil sucks in a breath. “What is it?”

Something in Dan’s chest crumbles and breaks away. It seems so unlikely that Phil could be over her, if he’s this willing to jump to her aid, even now.

“It’s not much,” Amanda says quickly. “School is over in a couple of months. I just want to get through it. Lillian and the others are turning the whole school against me. People say horrible things. They leave notes in my locker. They spread rumours. I’m sure you’ve heard.”

Now that she mentions it, Dan does recall hearing a few strange things about her recently. He hadn’t paid much attention - he’s usually bored to tears by high school gossip - but hearing that she’d been seen leaving the Savoy hotel in a new designer dress on the arm of a seventy year old man, or on the other end of the spectrum, dancing on a pole in a poor, cheap disguise at a seedy strip club two towns over, had caught his attention.

“What can we do?” Phil asks. 

Dan wants to make it very clear right now that he is not, and will not ever be, getting involved in this. His mouth won’t seem to form the words, though. 

“I need friends,” Amanda says. Dan waits, but this appears to be the extent of it. “Just to hold the rumours off a bit. If they think I have people on my side, maybe they’d be less vicious. All you’d have to do is sit with me a few times at lunch, or hang out with me outside of school now and again. Maybe I could come to the café every once in a while? Then you wouldn’t even have to make the effort-”

“Amanda,” Phil interrupts. “It’s fine. Of course we’ll be your friends.”

The relief on her face is too overwhelming to be faked. Even so, Dan is not willing to offer his own services as a friend. It’s taken him this long to be comfortable with having just one. Even Lee is still on a trial period. 

“It’s just until school’s over,” she says again. “I just can’t take it on my own. I thought I could, and I tried, but they’re just… they’re terrible people. Lillian’s sister is in Aidan’s class, I’m so worried about what could get back to him-”

“It’s okay.” Phil’s smiling, happy this has all been cleared up so neatly. “I got you into this mess, it’s the least I can do.” He turns. “Right, Dan?”

Dan tears a strip of skin from his thumb with his teeth. He wants so badly to say no. He wants things to go back to how they were, for Amanda to crawl back to Hardy, who would undoubtedly be all too happy for the only believable beard he’s ever grown to fix itself back in place. But for some reason, Amanda “Elitist” Jones is suddenly hellbent on doing the right thing. Even Dan knows that to refuse being someone’s friend, for two measly months, is a dick move that cannot be justified, no matter how suspicious he might be of potential motives. If he says his no, Phil won’t understand. He’ll be angry. Their weekend will be ruined, and so might be their future.

So, Dan swallows it all down. “Yeah, totally.”

Phil beams at Amanda. “Oh, by the way, I have your jacket.” He stands suddenly, and Dan feels a little ill. “Wait here.”

He jogs out of the room before Dan can beg him to stay, leaving he and Amanda alone. She fixes him with a knowing stare. “You’re not happy with this.”

Dan thinks about lying, but decides against it. “No, I’m not. You could beg anyone to be your friend for two months. The Elites might be getting people to shun you, but you’re still Amanda Jones. Just smile sweetly and anyone in St Anthony’s would do whatever you say.”

“Exactly,” Amanda says. “I want real friends. People who I can actually talk to. Not Elite wannabes that put me on some ridiculous pedestal, only hanging out with me because they see an open position on the throne.”

“I just don’t see why it has to be him,” Dan says, gripping the arm of the chair. 

“Him?” Amanda’s smile is as treacherous as it is sincere. “Dan, I want to be friends with you.”

*

As usual, the dust takes a while to settle in the wake of Amanda’s departure. Phil brings Dan a mug of tea, handing it over cautiously. Still sat in the same position in the armchair, Dan takes it from him, still mulling over all that’s happened. 

“So,” Phil says, perching on the arm of the sofa. He sips from his own mug. “That was unexpected.”

“Mmm,” Dan says. His mind is whirring, producing the kind of noise Phil’s laptop makes when it’s overheating from excess Sims playing. “Guess we’re all besties now.”

“Is it a problem for you?”

Dan considers this, finger skimming around the rim of his mug. “I think... I can get past it.”

Phil nods unsurely, scrutinising Dan’s glazed expression. “You sure? If it really bothers you, we can try and find another way.”

Dan takes a sip of his tea. It’s faintly sweet, because Phil knows Dan too well to believe him when he says he doesn’t take sugar.

“Just don’t fall in love with her,” Dan says into the mug. He means it to come out as a joke, but inevitably it’s spoken quiet and sombre.

Phil puts his mug down, then walks to Dan. He takes him by the hand and pulls him from the chair, then wraps him in a hug. “No chance of that,” he says into Dan’s forehead. “I’ve got something a thousand times better.”

*

“No!”

Dan wakes up with a jolt, hands coming up to cover his face, because shouts usually mean he’s about to get smacked. He hears a quiet ‘shit’ and then arms come around his shoulders; his heart slows gradually, and then Dan remembers where he is, and that he’s unlikely to be in danger of getting pounded in Phil’s bedroom. At least not in any way he’d need to defend himself from.

He lowers his hands, blinking in the darkness. “The fuck?”

“Sorry,” Phil whispers, guiltily. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. We fell asleep.”

Dan squints, trying to piece this together. “So you screamed ‘no’ in my ear?”

“I’m annoyed at myself,” Phil explains. “We’re supposed to be in the throes of passion.”

Dan snorts, falling back to the pillows, exhausted. “Russell’s a bad influence on you.”

Phil prods him in the arm, then falls back beside him. “I’m sorry. I promised you a weekend of sordid, non-stop lovemaking. So far, the two worst people that could have interrupted us mid-sexy-times did, and now we’ve fallen asleep in our not very arousing Elmo and Game Of Thrones pyjamas.”

Dan laughs tiredly, eyes already re-closing. “We’ve got loads of time for all that.”

“Tomorrow I’m gonna ravish you,” Phil warns, though by the sounds of it he’s already half-unconscious.

“I’d better prepare my body for the ravishing ahead.”

Phil swats him in the arm. “You’d better, Howell.”

*

They don’t get up until noon, for no good reason other than Phil’s bed is ridiculously comfy. Dan wakes up with his nose in Phil’s neck, so he presses a kiss there, then another, and eventually Phil stirs.

“Hey,” Dan says, then rolls on top of him.

Phil’s blue eyes blink up at him, wide and surprised by the sudden change in positions. “H-hey,” he says. “What’s-”

Dan leans in and kisses the question away. Somehow, Phil still tastes wonderful, even first thing in the morning. Dan can’t be sure the same can be said about his own morning breath. He lets himself sink into the kiss regardless, hands beginning to wander beneath the covers, skidding over the strip of skin where Phil’s pyjama top has ridden up in the night.

Phil’s breath hitches, and then his hands come to Dan’s shoulders, gently rolling him off. Dan sits up, worried. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Phil says quickly, sitting up as well. The covers fall to his waist. He gives Dan a reassuring smile. “Sorry, just… too hot.” There’s a pause as Dan digests this lame excuse. “I’ll make some tea. Do you want some tea?”

“Um,” Dan says, thrown. “Coffee, maybe?”

“Sure,” Phil says, tossing the covers aside.

He stands up quickly, snatching the mugs they’d used last night from the bedside table. Once he’s left the room, Dan stays put for a second, trying to figure out the next what might have just gone wrong. Eventually, he decides to quell his pounding paranoid thoughts, and follow Phil downstairs. In the kitchen, Phil is whistling away as he clatters mugs and kettles about, happy as a clam. Though he finds this sudden turnaround odd, Dan makes the choies to just forget about it. Perhaps Phil was just hot and uncomfortable in the first few minutes of waking, like he said. Or, more likely, maybe Dan’s breath was actually too terrible to withstand the kissing a moment longer, let alone anything else.

“I’m just gonna go brush my teeth,” Dan calls to Phil, making him jump. He turns, hand on his heart, giggling at himself.

“Cool, do you want some toast?”

“Sounds great,” Dan says, then heads for the bathroom.

They eat toast on the sofa together, watching Good Morning Britain.

Licking the crumbs from his fingers, Dan says, “Piers Morgan’s definitely the kind of guy who’d refuse to go down on his wife, but expect her to give him a twenty minute blowjob.” Dan turns to Phil, who is staring at him dazedly. “Like DJ Khaled. Y’know?”

Phil’s eyes are glazed, fixed on Dan’s fingers. His plate of toast crusts is slipping off his lap.

“Phil?” Dan asks. 

He focuses suddenly, snapped back into the room. “Hm? Sorry, what was the question?”

Dan regards him curiously, lowering his fingers from his mouth. “Don’t worry,” he says, turning back to the TV.

A couple of hours later, they’re still on the sofa, because they’re lazy and it’s the weekend. Dan has his feet on Phil’s lap, his back against the other end of the sofa. They’re watching Jeremy Kyle, one of Dan’s all time favourite shows, and laughing at the ridiculous drama erupting on stage.

“To be honest, if some chick told me my boyfriend had fucked her brother and her Dad, I’d probably tackle him on live TV too,” Dan says. He’s got one arm behind his head, and the other resting across his stomach, idly tickling the skin on show. He turns to Phil, amused by the antics on screen. “So don’t try anything, yeah?”

Again, Phil is doing that strange, distant stare. This time his eyes are firmly fixed on Dan’s abdomen, pupils moving in time with the back and forth of Dan’s fingers. A slow smile creeps over Dan’s face, and realisation dawns.

“Phil,” he says again. His voice is a fair bit lower now. “Phil?”

“Hm?” Phil’s eyes are still trained on his fingers, so Dan pushes them just under the waistband of his pyjama bottoms, and Phil looks up, cheeks pink. “Is there something you want?”

Phil swallows. “I was just…”

Dan sits up, feet lifting from Phil’s lap, and closes the gap separating them. He reaches for the remote, switching off the TV, and brings his mouth to Phil’s ear. 

“You can have me whenever you want, you know,” he purrs. “If the staring isn’t doing it for you.”

A shiver goes through Phil, Dan can feel it. He slides onto Phil’s lap for the second time this weekend, careful to watch his face for any sign he might not be into this. There’s an uncertainty in his eyes that Dan wants to get rid of, so he settles himself atop Phil’s thighs, and brings Phil’s hands to his hips.

“You still up for some…” Dan arches an eyebrow. “Fun?”

Phil swallows again, his hands tightening on Dan’s hips. “Yes.” He sighs, eyes fluttering closed. “Sorry. I’m just… nervous, I think.”

“Of me?”

“No,” Phil says in a breath. Dan can feel his leg jiggling, because he’s sat on it. “I just… I mean, I know you’ve done this a lot.”

“Wow,” Dan says, sitting back a little. “Cheers.”

“I’m just kinda daunted,” Phil explains. “What if I suck?”

Dan has to fight the laugh that bubbles up rather hard, and he doesn’t entirely succeed. “Um…”

Phil pokes him in the side, making him yelp. “You know what I mean.”

“Hm,” Dan says, already sliding off Phil’s lap, onto the floor. He kneels on the carpet, a hand on each of Phil’s knees. “Sounds like your worries have got you quite worked up.” Phil’s mouth has fallen into a little ‘o’. Gently, Dan pushes Phil’s knees apart. “Let me…” Dan bites his lip, holding Phil’s gaze. “Help you to relax.”

He waits just enough time for Phil to have the option of refusing, but he remains blissfully, mercifully quiet, just watching Dan with wide, fluttery eyes. As Dan leans forwards, tracing his tongue along the seams running along Phil’s inner thighs, Dan imagines he can hear an Angelic chorus. He curls his fingers around the waistband of Phil’s trousers, inching them down, eyes locked on Phil’s, just in case he might protest.

“Lift,” Dan whispers once they’ve reached a point he can’t pull them past. It takes a moment for it to register, then Phil cants his hips upwards, and Dan tugs. The dark hair beginning at his bellybutton snakes down, spreading into a tight thicket at the base of a long, thick, flushed cock. Dan can feel his mouth filling with saliva at the mere sight. “Fuck-ing hell,” he breathes, wonderingly, and wraps his fingers around it, forgetting to stop and ask if it’s still okay. “Phil, you’re gorgeous.”

Phil’s hips twitch, and Dan reorients himself, remembering that this is, in all likelihood the first time anyone’s touched Phil this way, aside from his own hand. Dan moves his hand gently, watching the expressions of awe flicker across Phil’s face. He’s breathing in short stutters, hips twitching forwards, like he wants to thrust into Dan’s fist. It takes about a minute of gently pumping his curled fingers up and down, before Dan’s resolve breaks. He leans in, fist still wrapped around the base of him, and swirls his tongue around the head.

Phil sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, one hand flying out to rest atop Dan’s head. “Fuck,” he says, eloquent as ever. 

Dan lets out as snort of laughter, which comes out as a pulse of breath through his nose. Phil tastes so good. He tastes as delicious as he does everywhere else, like he’s got waffle syrup pumping through his veins instead of blood. Dan knows, the second Phil’s flavour spreads across his tongue, that he’s addicted to it. He sinks his mouth over Phil’s length, chasing more, already so blissed out it’s a wonder he can stay focused; he’s wanted this for so long that it’s practically torturous to finally receive it. Like giving a child access to an entire candy store, allowing it to gorge itself, after months of only peering longingly through the locked doors. A whimper falls from Phil’s lips, scraping past Dan’s ears on its way to the floor. Dan pockets it for later, knowing it will be very helpful for the late nights Dan spends alone, thinking about all the many, many ways he wants to make Phil come.

“Dan…” Phil chokes out, sounding strained. Blindly, Dan reaches out a hand, and Phil threads his fingers through it immediately. “Dan, fuck. I don’t think I’m gonna last very l-long.”

Ignoring him entirely, Dan just sinks deeper, unable to suppress a groan, born from the thrill that courses down his spine as he feels the length of Phil’s cock sliding down his throat. He goes slowly at first, letting Phil slip in and out of him gently as he bobs his head. But Phil’s whimpers are turning into needy little whines, his hips are threatening to push further into the cavern of Dan’s mouth. So Dan places a hand on Phil’s upper thigh, and picks up the pace. It’s beyond any kind of pleasure Dan’s ever known, to watch, to feel, to taste, as Phil completely falls apart under his ministrations. He meets Phil’s eyes, holding the gaze because he wants to witness every last second. Phil’s got a hand threaded into Dan’s curls, pushing the hair from his eyes. Dan’s name falls like dewdrops from his reddened lips.

And then, just as he warned, it seems he can’t hold on any longer. He tastes like sweet, sun-warmed rainwater as he floods Dan’s mouth. In Dan’s wildest imaginings of this moment, of which there have been many, he never once dreamed of spitting it out, and now, he wouldn’t do it if you paid him. He swallows all of it down, then lets Phil slip out of his mouth slowly, missing the thick, heavy weight of him on his tongue the moment it’s gone. He sits back on his ankles, breathing ragged, and untangles their fingers.

“Feeling a little less tense?”

Phil still appears to be struggling to glide back down to the real world. He sits up, with some effort, and latches his pupil-blown eyes onto Dan’s. “Come here,” he demands, croakily.

Dan’s never been one to deny Phil, and it would be hopeless to think he could start now. He hops up, clambering back into Phil’s lap happily. The moment he’s close enough, Phil drags him in for a kiss. Dan tries to stop him, knowing he’ll only be tasting himself, but apparently this doesn’t seem to bother Phil. He kisses Dan deeply, hungrily, hands slipping straight under his t-shirt, and then pulling it off entirely. Dan chuckles at his eagerness, and then abruptly stops laughing when Phil reaches between them, to press his palm against Dan’s erection, through his pyjamas. Instinctively, Dan bucks into the touch, hands going for the back of Phil’s head. Phil strokes his thumb across the very spot where the tip of Dan’s cock pokes against the fabric. Dan tilts his head to one side, and Phil’s mouth goes straight for the exposed neck, kissing and biting at it.

“Not fair,” Dan complains, though he’s urging Phil onwards with a hand on the back of his head. “You know that’s my weakness.”

Phil finishes sucking what Dan imagines is a very large bruise, then leans back, eyes sparkling. “I warned you I’d give you another one to match.”

“Lesters always follow through,” Dan jokes, and Phil wraps his arms around Dan’s bare waist, pressing a kiss to his chest.

“Will you come upstairs with me?”

Dan is a little surprised, but he nods regardless. He climbs off Phil’s lap, realising for the first time just how ridiculously, achingly hard he is, mostly because of how lightheaded he feels when he attempts to stand. Luckily, Phil, pyjama trousers pulled back up, takes hold of his hand and leads him up to his room. As soon as they’re inside, Phil shoves Dan backwards, sending him sprawling across the bed.

“Hey,” Dan complains, though he’s laughing. “Didn’t know you were into BDSM.”

“You would look pretty hot tied up,” Phil says unexpectedly, scooting around the bed to dig in his bedside drawer. “But maybe we could try that another time, when I’m less terrified.”

For a moment, the smile on Dan’s face freezes. “You’re terrified?” He watches Phil, concerned. “You don’t have to do anything, you know. We can just leave it for now-”

Phil jumps up onto the bed, pulling off his t-shirt. It’s a very effective method of shutting Dan up, as he’s got a gorgeous body, lean and tapered, with big shoulders and a defined waist. Dan reaches out to grab at him, his hopeless arousal muddying his conscience. 

“I think I’d be terrified even if we waited for the wedding day,” Phil says, which makes Dan splutter. “You’re just…” Phil trails a hand down Dan’s torso, lightly sweeping across the skin, side to side. “You’re unbelievably beautiful. On top of everything else.”

Dan thinks about asking what ‘everything else’ is, but knows all too well that Phil’s misguided notions about Dan’s personality are difficult to listen to. Instead, he asks, “what can I do to make you less scared?”

Instinctively, Dan’s hand lands on Phil’s, stilling him as he brushes over the burn scar on his left side. But Phil reaches down and removes it, then leans down to press soft, careful lips against the shiny pink skin. Dan’s eyes sting.

“Just tell me if it feels good,” Phil says as he leans back up. He plucks what looks like a small bottle of lubricant from the pocket of his pyjama trousers.

“Phil, if you knew how many times I’ve dreamt of you... of this...” Dan starts to say, then shakes his head, smiling faintly. “I don’t think it’s possible for you to not make me come, like, ridiculously hard.”

He looks a little dazed at this information, but Phil nods, then slips his fingers into Dan’s waistband, and pulls. Dan lifts his hips so Phil can slide them off, watching Phil’s expression closely as he drinks in the sight of Dan’s entirely naked body for the first time. Dan’s cock twitches, as if it knows it’s being closely observed.

“Shit, Dan,” Phil breathes. His hands are free-roaming over the miles of Dan’s skin now on show. “I want to draw you like this,” Phil says. He trickles light, teasing fingers from Dan’s sternum to his pelvis. “Would you let me?”

“R-right now?”

Phil laughs. “No, not right now.” He settles into a position, half laid on top of Dan, then sends him a mischievous glance. “I have things to take care of.”

Phil picks up the bottle of lubricant, which has fallen to the bed, and uncaps it. He pours some into his palm, then pauses, and squeezes out a little more. He rubs it between his hands for a moment, then, before Dan can stop him, wraps a hand around Dan’s erection.

“Ah! Shit,” Dan exclaims, laughing a little.

Phil freezes instantly. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just freezing,” Dan replies, still chuckling. “Maybe warm it with your hands a little more next time?”

Phil joins in the laughter, nodding. “Sorry.” 

He doesn’t get a chance to expand on his apology, because right then he starts moving his hand, the slick lubricant creating an indescribable friction, one that pushes a moan from Dan’s throat, has him arching his head backwards into the pillows. Phil drapes over him, hand still slowly pumping around Dan’s cock. He presses damp, messy kisses against Dan’s neck, bracing his face above Dan’s with an elbow beside his head. 

“Does it feel good?”

Dan groans, hands finding Phil’s shoulders. “So fucking good.”

Spurred on by the news, Phil speeds up, at which point Dan’s eyelids screw shut, and he bows forwards into Phil’s neck.

“Look at me,” Phil whispers then. It’s an unexpected command, but Dan does it nonetheless, lifting his head to stare into Phil’s eyes.

He can only hold it for a moment before he has to look away again, but Phil is not having it. He releases his hold on Dan’s erection, which briefly makes Dan want to die. Phil reaches up to tilt Dan’s chin back around, forcing their eyes to meet again.

“Please, I want to see you,” Phil whispers, pressing their lips together. “Will you?”

Tears sting Dan’s eyes, and he’s not sure why. There’s something about this that feels too much, like he’s about to slip under a turbulent, roiling ocean. The press of Phil’s body on top of his is overwhelming; Dan can feel connecting of their skin seemingly at every join, can feel their hearts beating in rhythm, their breaths synchronised. Phil is warmth, and light, and sweet, pure love; it sounds absurd, but pressed together as they are, Dan can feel all of it sinking into him, through his pores, to the sinew and muscle beneath. He feels the incredible swell of Phil’s adoration, and it’s dizzying, maddening to know, deeply, that it’s all for him. 

Phil’s hand wraps back around his cock, and Dan tries with all he has to keep his eyes locked on Phil’s like he wants. But two tears spill over, and he has to shut them, to blink them away. Phil kisses him fiercely, like he’s been missing out on the taste of Dan’s mouth for years. Like he’s been battling far away in some great unknown war, with Dan left alone, waiting for him, and now he’s returned, and he’s determined to drown them together, in the love they couldn’t swim in whilst they were parted.

Something cataclysmic builds in Dan’s chest, something terrifying and enormous, so unfamiliar that Dan wonders if he’s on the brink of death. He feels everything Phil is pouring onto him in this moment through their locked eyes, feels the weight of his suppressed yearning. And then it explodes through him, a tidalwave of blinding, electrifying ecstasy, ebbing out to the very tips of his toes. He breathes heavily, gripping onto the only life raft he has: Phil, still above him, floating on the edge of this tsunami, sure, and strong, and safe.

When it’s over, Dan washes ashore, back into the familiar blue and green bedclothes he’s been curled in so many times. Phil rolls to the side, and Dan crashes onto his chest, limp and utterly boneless.

“Was I okay?” Phil asks, tentative and unsure.

Dan doesn’t think words could ever possibly express the pure, raw, visceral phenomenon that he just experienced, so instead, he leans up, spreads himself over Phil however he can, and tries his best to show him.

(Chapter Fourteen - FINAL CHAPTER - Coming Next Tues!)

[malecsecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @shipnotised!

Read on AO3

*****

My Telltale Heart

“Wow. You look like crap.”

Alec did indeed look like crap, and he knew that; 11am was too early to start a Saturday shift in general, let alone when he’d been up until 4am writing feverishly. He still gave Duncan an incredibly unimpressed glare, though.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do my make-up on lunch break, but I was too busy trying not to throw myself out of the window,” he said, voice as flat as his patience was thin. He ignored Lindsay in the corner, proclaiming that a “mood”.

“Well if you need make-up tips, you can always ask Magnus,” he snickered.

“Stop being a dick to him,” Lindsay said from the depths of her locker.

“Who the fuck is Magnus?” Alec asked.

“One of the new temps lol,” Duncan answered, literally saying “lol” with his mouth and

annoying Alec even more – which he didn’t think possible. “Linds thinks he’s handsome.”

“He IS handsome.”

Duncan snorted. “And obviously gay. He wears makeup. Everyone knows him already Alec, I can’t believe you don’t.”

Alec had already shut his locker – a little too forcefully after Duncan’s comment – and had started making his way out of the room, but turned to address him anyway.

“Like Lindsay said, quit being a dick.” She nodded sagely in the background, validated. “He probably looks better in makeup than you do without. Besides, I never usually learn people’s names unless they’re obviously going to stay and be important to me. But maybe I’ll make an effort for this Magnus – what do you think, Dennis?” He smirked and shrugged lightly before leaving the room and getting back to work. He distinctly heard Lindsay’s laughter behind him.

It was a Saturday though, and he was entirely too busy to give this mysterious Magnus much thought in amongst mentally ranting at every asshole who thought it was okay to leave half empty coffee cups all over his shop. He ran the whole mens floor more often than not, which was fine, he could handle that. What wasn’t fine was the absolute clowns he had been saddled with that day. Surely, it wasn’t that hard to read a label and work out where, roughly, an item belonged? It was fortunate that all the tills were staffed so he wasn’t needed there. He fucking hated the tills.

Obviously, the two new kids with him that day just had to leave dead on time, leaving him to effectively close up the entire floor on his own. By the time 10pm rolled around, he was cursing under his breath. Was it so hard for people to put things back where they’d gotten them from?

“As wonderfully colourful as you’re painting the air, can I offer any assistance?” came a voice from behind him, making Alec realise that his muttering hadn’t been quite as under his breath as he’d thought. He turned, either to justify himself or apologise – he hadn’t quite decided – but the words caught in his throat once he’d saw the owner of the voice. It was quite a voice, and this man was quite the owner. He made the simple all black uniform requirement look haute couture, with a brocade waistcoat over the plain button up shirt, and rings that looked far nicer than anything on display in the jewellery counter on the floor below.

“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” said the beautiful man, offering a hand out to Alec. “I’m Magnus.”

“Alec,” he offered as freely as his smile. He fumbled with the multipack of socks he was still holding before taking Magnus’s hand, holding it perhaps a little longer than strictly necessary. It didn’t seem like Magnus minded.

“We should- are you sure? It’s late,” Alec stumbled out eventually.

“I’m positive. If it’s late for me, then it’s late for you too, Alec.”

“Thank you,” he conceded. “It’s just the rest of this-“ he gestured vaguely to the area around him – “to do.”

There was truthfully only about another half hours work in it for him, but with Magnus assisting him in comfortable silence, they were done in under fifteen. Alec took a moment to slyly check whether he’d have to stay a little longer just to make sure the sections he hadn’t done himself were acceptable – Magnus was new, and Alec had high standards – but it was with relief that Alec noted Magnus clearly knew what he was doing.

“Do you have to get someone to check before we leave?” Magnus asked.

“Normally, yeah, but they trust me to get it right. Thank you, Magnus, I really appreciate it,” Alec said, with a sincerity his colleagues rarely got to hear.

“Well, you definitely don’t look a damsel, but I can’t resist aiding someone in distress,” Magnus said succinctly, with a twinkle in his eye that intrigued Alec. He didn’t make friends that easily, but there was something about Magnus that he really couldn’t quantify. He felt like they could be very good friends, and he found that, unlike himself, he wasn’t averse to trying.

“I’m this way,” Alec indicated, once they’d signed out and left the store. The early November air was biting at this time of night, his ears an unfortunate victim.

“Ah, I’m the opposite. Will I see you tomorrow?”

“No, I got lucky and get Sundays off. Monday?”

Magnus grimaced. “I’m a student, I can only work weekends unfortunately. I guess I’ll see you next week then, Alexander.”

The use of his full name startled him, though not as much as the realisation that he didn’t mind it when it came from Magnus. “Yeah, Um, how did you-“

“Lucky guess,” Magnus smiled. “Do you mind it?”

“I think I’ll let you call me that,” Alec smiled back. “Good night, Magnus.”

“Good night, Alexander.”

And so it was that they spent every Saturday lunch break together. Alec was always scheduled for the long shift, and while Magnus’s shifts only ever started as soon as Alec’s breaks would finish, he was always around an hour early. Alec asked him about it, and Magnus shrugged.

“My lunch options are more varied around here,” he said.

Alec asked Magnus a lot of things, and answered just as many. He took Magnus to Taki’s, a little nearby diner that did amazing spanakopita and other Greek pastries. Thalia, the old lady running the place, had long taken a shine to Alec and insisted on giving him free treats – he accepted, purely on the basis that he’d sneak a good tip in when she wasn’t looking. She knew, and he knew she knew, but they didn’t speak about it. What was important was that she took a great liking to Magnus too, especially when he spoke to her in broken Greek.

“You speak Greek?” he asked, on their first visit there.

“Only a little,” Magnus conceded. “I speak a few other languages somewhat fluently, and figured since I’m good at them, I may as well learn them.”

It turned out that Magnus knew Spanish, French, and Italian (“once you’ve got one romance language down you’ve basically got the others”), a little Greek, a little Dutch, and was fluent in Indonesian. Alec found out that Magnus was actually from Indonesia, though moved as a young teen to America to live with his father. He eventually moved to New York when he refused to join the “family business” – whatever that was, Magnus never specified – and was a grad student studying particle physics now.

Alec, in turn, told Magnus about his family, about sharing an apartment with his siblings and he and Jace working so Izzy could focus on med school. He told Magnus about his mother and Max, trying to help how they could even though they were left with very little after Robert left them. He even told Magnus about Robert, about him being that cold kind of homophobic that tolerated him, but did not accept him.

They spent one memorable Saturday at the very start of December discussing books. Alec didn’t usually allow himself to get carried away in conversation, sweeping hand gestures punctuating his words, but he was talking about something he loved and – well. He trusted Magnus enough to be himself with him, to live a little more freely – similar, but even more so, to how he was with Izzy and Jace.

“I just- stories are such an inherently human art, you know? The best stories echo through time in their original forms simply because humans don’t change all that much, despite era or culture. That’s the goal,” he rambled. Magnus frowned a little, head tilting, and Alec thought that it might have been the cutest thing he’d ever seen a person do – and Max was a cute child.

“Do you write, Alexander?” he asked. Alec froze.

“I-“ he licked his lips, and leaned in. Magnus did the same, and Alec lowered his voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but… yeah. I do. Not even Jace and Izzy know. I don’t know why I don’t tell them, it’s not like I’ll ever get published, but…”

“It’s nice to have something for yourself,” Magnus finished.

“Yeah,” Alec smiled. “You read my mind. Maybe one day, I’ll put it out there, but for now,” he simply shrugged.

“If you ever decide to put your writing out there, I’ll be first in line. Knowing you, I have no doubt it’ll be incredible.”

The sheer belief that Magnus had in him, the trust after only four weeks, broke something down in Alec that he had no idea he’d even built. Suddenly, he wanted Magnus to know him like no one else – or maybe, it wasn’t sudden at all.

He leant down, rummaging around in the small bag he brought with him and pulling out his tattered cheap notebook, flicking it to the most recent page. He carried it with him to work, favoured green pen tucked into the spiral binding, in case inspiration struck him while commuting or on break (he would always leave the store on lunch, even Before Magnus – and wasn’t it something, that Alec was separating his life into Before Magnus and After Magnus?). Alec mostly wrote fiction, short stories, poured out his frustrations and lived his wildest dreams in them, and yet, on that morning’s train, he’d found himself hit with a three-quarter formed idea and rushed to scribble it down.

It was a sonnet, structured like Shakespeare’s ones, and its underlying tone was… hopeful. New beginnings, new bonds, change that was welcome. He consciously made another change now, in sliding the notebook over to Magnus.

“This came to me on the train this morning, so uh – I don’t know if it’s any good. But I trust you to be honest with me if it sucks,” he laughed nervously, hands starting to rub themselves nervously without a conscious thought.

Magnus was silent as he read, and though he read quickly, it seemed to Alec like a whole hour passed, rather than a minute. He watched Magnus read, watched his eyes widen, until Magnus looked up at him with a look on his face of… awe?

“Alexander,” he said, voice hushed. “This is incredible.”

“You… think so?” he replied, blush beginning to rise. Magnus nodded.

“You have a real skill for words, darling. None of the languages I speak could be as beautiful as your own.”

Alec smiled, a soft shy thing, as he gently took the notebook back from Magnus and closed it. He felt impossibly light, a burden he hadn’t realised was weighing on him as much as it had relieved.

“We have to go back now, but – it’d be nice to talk about writing with someone. Can I text it to you, sometime?”

“Absolutely,” grinned Magnus, exchanging numbers with Alec as they walked back to work.

Alec realised, two Sundays after he’d first gotten Magnus’s number, that he had no idea if Magnus was coming to that night’s work Christmas party. He certainly had never made his intentions of going clear, and now Magnus was already at work, so he couldn’t just ask.

Parties weren’t often Alec’s thing, but he did enjoy them now and then, and it wasn’t as if he hated his colleagues or anything. He just felt… out of place. To be perfectly honest, he felt that way most of the time, except around his family, while writing, or with Magnus.

Perhaps it should scare him, that Magnus felt a little like belonging. It didn’t.

He dressed reasonably appropriately for the night, tan wool overcoat and beanie part of his outfit, not just accessories, and charcoal shirt with the top few buttons undone despite the cold. He’d been something of a boring dresser once, before he’d come out, all large sweaters and baggy jeans – but now, while fashion still didn’t speak to him as such, he knew what he liked and how to dress and wore sharp, clean, well-fitting clothes. It wasn’t even a conscious decision, really, but the internet always said you dressed better after coming out and he supposed that had happened to him as well.

He wasn’t out out, but he wasn’t hiding anything either. It was no one’s prerogative to know everything about him unless he wanted them to.

Ten to eight, Alec found himself sat with a bunch of his colleagues waiting for those who had just finished work to join them. Magnus wasn’t already there, and he hoped that he would be showing up with the others, else Alec would probably just head home after the meal and text Magnus all night instead.

That was what they usually did, anyway.

He needn’t have considered alternate plans, though – as Magnus strolled in with the latecomers looking like an untouchable god.

He’d shaved, for a start, and put dark pink highlights in his hair – he’d not had them yesterday at lunch – and he wore a stunning crushed red velvet blazer. Red was certainly Magnus’s colour, Alec thought. He didn’t think about the fact that he noticed how tight Magnus’s pants were, or the fact that Alec couldn’t take his eyes off his friend.

Magnus seemed to be looking for something, and Alec began to stand to greet him, which led Magnus to look his way. He smiled at the sight of Alec, and Alec smiled back, heart leaping, as Magnus made his way over.

“Got you a drink,” Alec said, indicating the two on the table in front of him.

“After that day, I certainly need one. Thank you, Alexander,” said Magnus, resting his hand on Alec’s shoulder as he leant to pick up the drink. “Dark and Stormy?” Alec shrugged.

“It sounded nice, so I thought I’d try it.”

“Good choice, darling. Shall we go be seated?”

They managed to sit next to each other throughout the whole meal, and while Magnus entertained those in the vicinity – like a king holding court, Alec thought, all his subjects enthralled and enamoured – most of their attention was on them alone.

The food was decent, surprisingly good for the place they were in, and the free drinks meant the empty glasses began accumulating steadily. The air buzzed with merriment, and even Alec was laughing freely.

“Hey, everyone’s heading down to Pandemonium now,” Magnus whispered into Alec’s ear.

“Mmm? Are you going with?”

“Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to stop by a store, get some cheap wine, and come back to mine.”

Alec grinned. He wanted nothing more.

Magnus’s place was huge. A penthouse full of oddities and books and incredible art, for a grad student? Even Tipsy Alec was confused by it all, and Tipsy Alec was so much more of a dumbass than Sober Alec. As Magnus closed the door behind them, coming forward to take the bag from Alec’s hands, he noticed the expression on Alec’s face and seemed to read his mind.

“This place is the one gift I accepted from my father. I had… a sizeable trust fund, all legally in my name, nothing he could do about it, and I used it to buy this place after I’d left. I didn’t want to touch his money, but he never wanted me to come here, so - it seemed like a perfectly good ‘fuck you’.”

“It’s a pretty good fuck you, as fuck yous go. You know, I’m surprised you don’t like parties,” Alec said.

Magnus waved his hand nonchalantly. “Oh, I love parties. I’d just much rather hang out with you.”

And fuck, if that weren’t something right there.

Magnus and Alec found themselves sharing just one bottle of wine, far too busy talking to drink, simply enjoying each other’s company when not talking, enough that alcohol simply wasn’t necessary. As a fire crackled in the grate in front of the seating area, Magnus showed Alec his books, told wild travel stories for each trinket, regaled Alec with stories that while they could be those he told when winning friends and captivating hearts, Alec just knew that these were for him and him alone. Magnus had just told a story from his youth where he pretended to be his own father to get out of detention, and that it had somehow worked despite it being a face-to-face conversation, and Alec couldn’t stop giggling, which seemed to set Magnus off laughing too.

“Gods, I was such a little brat when I was with him. Still would be, probably, had I not met Cat and Ragnor and left.”

“Was it hard to leave? With your dad doing… whatever it is he does.”

Magnus’s eyes narrowed quizzically, but warmly. “My father owns a pharmaceutical company that jacks up the prices of literally everything. What did you think he might do, Alexander?”

“Honestly, thought he might be a mob boss, but that’d probably be better,” Alec said. “I see why you want to distance yourself from him.”

“Mmm. You’re one of three people who know about him, here.”

“I’m- Cat, Ragnor, and… me?” Magnus nodded at Alec’s incredulous tone.

“I trust you,” he said, warm brown eyes unwavering from Alec’s own.

“Thank you. For what it’s worth, and this may be selfish, but I’m kinda glad it led you here.”

“Yeah?” asked Magnus, twisting his body round so that he was sat cross legged on the couch, back resting against the arm and facing Alec, who was sprawled out so that his torso lay on the couch, head on the arm rest, and longs legs bent resting on the floor. “Be selfish for a second for me. Why?”

“If you hadn’t realised what a jerk he was, you wouldn’t be in New York. And if you hadn’t cut yourself off… you wouldn’t have needed a job to support you. And I wouldn’t have met you. I’m sorry, if that’s rude, but… I’m really glad I met you,” Alec steamrollered, knowing that if he didn’t get it out now he might never do it again out of stubbornness.

“I’m really glad I met you too, Alexander. Makes being yelled at for not returning things from last year worth it.” Magnus laughed softly then, and so did Alec, a shared experience joining them. Magnus heaved a sigh then, and Alec furrowed his brow.

“Alexander… how drunk would you say you are? I’m completely sober, unfortunately.”

Alec took a second to ponder it, but he needn’t have – they’d been sat there for a few hours, and were only halfway through their shared bottle of wine. The only thing he was intoxicated by was Magnus’s presence, the warmth radiating from him that had little to do with actual temperature and everything to do with the comfort and serenity that Magnus brought him.

“If it makes you feel better about it, I’m completely sober too,” Alec said. “But that’s okay. Being here at 2am is way more fun than any club could be.”

“Good, I’m glad you – that’s good. Alexander, tell me if this is too forward, but…” Magnus trailed off, eyes closed and breathing deeply, as if to steady himself.

“But what?”

Magnus shook his head, and swallowed, before he leant down and forward and pressed his lips to Alec’s.

It was relatively chaste, all things considered, but Alec felt his world turn on its head. Magnus tasted of wine, and chocolate, and home, and Alec closed his eyes and let himself feel. His lips were soft, and as Alec chased them, it hit him that he was halfway to falling in love with the man, and he hadn’t even noticed that that was what it was.

They separated, yet Magnus didn’t go far; Alec opened his eyes to see Magnus still hovering a few inches over him, his own eyes gazing into Alec’s own. Alec’s lips quirked into a smile.

“That was-“

“Yeah,” Magnus breathed out, and returned Alec’s soft, shy smile with one of his own, to which Alec, surprising himself with his boldness, rose up and kissed again.

The difference this time, as they sat up together, was that they could barely stop smiling to really kiss, but neither cared. Their laughter mingled between them in the firelit room, Alec’s admission that he’d never been kissed before at 24 simply encouraging Magnus to kiss him more, barely noticing when the embers started to settle, tangled up in each other on the couch with this new thing between them, that had somehow always been present.

“Stay the night, Alexander? It’s late, we don’t have to do anything, just… stay?”

“Magnus, there’s- there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

No one commented on the spring in Alec’s step the next morning, and he was grateful; he didn’t exactly want to tell them he’d been woken up with a kiss from a man who made his heart sing, after falling asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. That was his alone to rejoice in.

The next two weeks were much the same as their last five; a whirlwind of texts and soft smiles when their eyes met at work, among the many “no, we’re all sold out of those now” to people who left their Christmas shopping until a week before the date and were surprised everything had gone – like it didn’t happen every year. The only difference was that now they held hands over the table at Taki’s as they spoke, Thalia beaming at them whenever they stole kisses while sharing pastries. They didn’t notice that, though.

They spoke more about dating, than before; previously, Alec had always carried a small burden of shame that he’d never been in a relationship, but Magnus, with all his experience in good and bad relationships, never treated it as a set back in any way. He had a knack for making Alec feel comfortable in his own skin.

“I’m covering a shift tomorrow, by the way,” Alec said, after a few minutes of silent contemplation. Magnus quirked an eyebrow.

“My last day,” he said. “Can’t say I’m sad, but the place did bring me you, so…”

Alec snorted. “Run while you still can. I’ll just miss seeing you at lunch every Saturday.”

“Well, I still have Saturdays free. I see no reason why I can’t still meet you every so often – it might do me good to get out of the house and work on my paper.”

“Yeah?” Alec grinned, indescribably happy. Neither of them had defined what was between them yet, and that was okay; it was like they were still the best of friends, with the added bonus of kissing, and yet Alec was still surprised that Magnus, beautiful, kind, intelligent Magnus, wanted to spend time with him, read his writing and told him it was masterful, urged Alec to be a better version of himself simply by being there.

“Yeah,” Magnus grinned back. “Also we should go back.” He laughed at Alec’s groan.

“Ah ah ah!” they heard Thalia shout as they left the café. Alec turned, curious; it’s not as if they’d forgotten to pay – had they left anything? “Look above, just for you two loves,” she yelled happily.

Magnus chuckled. “Mistletoe, Alexander. Shall we?”

Alec laughed, and leant in, and made a note to ring Thalia later and leave his number, so she could send him the photo she very obviously took.

Sunday was like every Sunday, but times ten; he’d agreed to cover someone in the ladies department for a change of pace, and was kinda wishing he hadn’t. He had, at least, made plans with Magnus to get dinner and spend the night, which powered him through the chaotic day.

Before they could escape however, Jia, the store manager, gathered everyone around the doors. Alec groaned inwardly. He’d forgotten that she did this every year, giving them all a speech about how high the quality of seasonal staff was, and how it being the 23rd it was most of their last days anyway, and blah blah blah. Alec mostly tuned it out in favour of his favourite activity – looking at Magnus.

“Gonna miss your lunch date, Lightwood?” Duncan called out once Jia had apparently finished, laughing, though nobody laughed with him. Alec smiled, knowing exactly what he had to, and wanted to, do. He lifted his arm to embrace Magnus shoulders as he moved to his side, not needing words to know what Alec planned, arm snaking around Alec’s waist and hand settling comfortably on his hip.

“Well, now we’re no longer co-workers – I guess Magnus’ll just have to settle for being my boyfriend instead, huh?” Alec raised an eyebrow, daring Duncan to say anything. By the look of his reddening face, he had nothing, suitably ashamed by the smiles on every other associates faces – even Jia cracked a smile, and Alec thought he heard Simon whooping as Magnus pulled his face in for a quick, yet tender, kiss.

“We’ll just have to go on more actual dates, I suppose… boyfriend,” Magnus said to him as they left, Magnus for the last time as a staff member.

They’d agreed not to get each other gifts, Alec thought; and had ended up giving each other the best gift they could possibly have gotten. Alec had a boyfriend for Christmas for the first time ever, and as he held him close, Alec resolved that he’d never let him go.

[torontoarenas]

2018-19 NHL Predictions, Revisited

It looks like I didn’t whiff as badly on my predictions this time around as in years past. At least, as far as the standings are concerned. My individual award predictions, on the other hand...

Five Teams I Most Overrated

Columbus. Whereas I had them winning their division, in reality they finished in fifth in the Metro, taking the second wildcard spot. I still don’t think I was terribly off-base to put them where I did. It turns out that Bobrovsky having a down year (going from a .921 SV% to .913) will hurt a team’s position in the standings. Probably not enough to make up the difference between my prediction and the reality, though, so that’s not entirely it. Who knows with these things?

Los Angeles. I figured they’d miss the playoffs, sure, but I didn’t foresee them being “30th place” bad. And to think this was the team Ilya Kovalchuk came out of NHL retirement to play for! He legitimately thought he stood a chance of winning the Cup with them! Shoulda just signed with Boston, pal.

Anaheim. Another team I thought would miss the playoffs, but badly underestimated by how much. The fact that they were in a playoff spot for as long as they were early on is a testament to John Gibson and John Gibson alone. If he hadn’t fallen apart about halfway through the season, he’d deserve a Hart nomination for his efforts. Hell, come up with a new award just to give to him. Call it “The John Gibson Memorial Trophy for Sisyphean Tasks.”

Florida and Philadelphia. Just kinda the opposite of Anaheim’s situation: they’re both OK teams who were undone by poor goaltending. Guess that sort of thing is liable to happen when your starting goalie’s either a million years old (Florida) or a horrifying rat king of eight dudes, only one of whom is approximately good (Philadelphia). Not enough separation between the two for me to be able to tell which I overrated more, so I’m taking the coward’s way out and including both of them in the same entry.

Minnesota. You have to be a really bad team to miss the playoffs in the West, and I suppose the Wild are one of them now. Good to know for future reference.

Oh yeah, and I also definitely overrated the Maple Leafs, but not to the extent that they’d be in my top five. I’ll just skip right past ’em, so I don’t have to reflect on that fact more than I already have.

Five Teams I Most Underrated

NY Islanders. Despite finishing second in the Metro, I still don’t think they’re good. They were 26th in 5v5 CF% (with a quite bad 47.8%) and were around 20th in 5v5 shots-for percentage and 16th in scoring chances. Better, but still not great. Some of their outperforming expectations can arguably be attributed to new coach Barry Trotz. But more importantly, wouldn’t you know it, they had the highest all-situations save percentage in the league. With a tandem of Robin Lehner and Thomas Greiss, two guys who are historically pretty good but not world-beaters by any means. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but “crummy shot metrics plus a high PDO” isn’t necessarily the most repeatable formula for winning hockey games. Don’t be shocked if they miss the 2020 playoffs, is all I’m saying. For this year, though, they’re easily the team I got the most wrong.

Arizona. Fuck me for not realizing that Darcy Kuemper would turn into a .933 goalie in 2019, I guess. Incredibly, they still managed to miss the playoffs. Although, now that I think about it, maybe it’s not that incredible. I mean, have you seen the rest of their roster???

Calgary. It was the easiest call in the world to predict they’d bounce back from their surprisingly poor 2017-18 campaign, but to imagine they’d finish second in the league? Wild stuff.

Colorado. Sure, I had them finishing last in the Central, which they managed to avoid doing, but also, they qualified for the playoffs despite finishing 17th in the league and having six more losses than wins. This is now the second season in a row in which they’ve made the playoffs with fewer points than the ninth-place team in the East. Folks, they’re not very good. I don’t know what to tell ya.

Carolina. I left them just on-the-outside-looking-in after they disappointed me by missing the playoffs last year when I predicted they’d make ’em. I’d have looked so smart if I had just stayed the course!! Dang it! Ah well. Can’t be too upset about it.

Awards Predictions

Hart: I said Alex Barkov. My choice was predicated upon Florida making the playoffs and the PHWA deciding again to give the award to the best player on a fringe playoff team. Barkov is one of the best centres in the sport, but in retrospect, this was a real Galaxy Brain prediction and I should’ve picked someone more obvious.

Art Ross: I said Connor McDavid. Not unreasonable, given that he won the last two. I just didn’t anticipate Nikita Kucherov going all the way off and setting the record for most points in the salary cap era.

Norris: I said Erik Karlsson. That’s not gonna happen, but hey, remember when he got off to that slow start and a bunch of people started saying shit like “maybe San Jose made a mistake in trading for him”? Those people are dumb and shouldn’t be listened to. Unfortunately, many of them also vote for these awards. Anyway, Mark Giordano’s probably going to win this thing, as well he should.

Rocket Richard: I said Connor McDavid, but Alex Ovechkin, the Absolute Boy, went and did it once again. I’ve really gotta stop talking myself out of the obvious choice. Even as I acknowledge this, I’m still not certain he can repeat. Stay tuned.

Vezina: I said Andrei Vasilevskiy, and I was probably right. So that’s one-for-eight. I’m batting a whopping .125 over here!!

Selke: I said Sean Couturier. I feel like I should’ve gone with Patrice Bergeron yet again, but we’ll see. I could also see Mark Stone winning it now that he’s been traded to a good team.

Calder: I said Andrei Svechnikov. Wrong. It’s definitely going to be Elias Pettersson.

Jack Adams: I said Bob Boughner, for the same reason I predicted Alex Barkov for the Hart. Which is hilarious to think about now. Maybe if Florida had made the playoffs, he’d have been in consideration, but that’s obviously not what happened.

[britneyshakespeare]

lately i keep thinking about the similarities between american comic books and theater, probably my two favorite modes of story telling, i think because i’ve been reading 60s spider-man and sophocles’ oedipus trilogy at the same time.

they’re visual mediums, but in a way that they’re not visually relatable. special effects are mostly limited on the stage, just as a drawing of a scene can only depict a still image, yet very much feel like there is constant motion in how one panel relates to the next. an audience member, must focus on the stage so entirely that they believe they’re looking at a very natural sequence of an events where no one is capable of turning 180 degrees away from your seat, because an actor in that position wouldn’t be able to project their voice. a simple set with no fourth wall is supposed to be a fully realized room. a reader, must look so fully into the art of the book that they believe they are looking into a living, breathing setting of the story depicted, so that they can fill in the empty space in their mind as they go along.

they’re collaborative efforts, too. there’s one person who writes the script, the story line and the dialogue, but there’s also a director, or an artist, or actors, or inkers, letterers, set designers, costume designers. it takes a team to decide what the final product should look like. it’s never just one person’s singular vision; or, almost never. there are exceptions. one-man shows and independent comics by people who write both the story and draw the panels themselves, but those are exceptional because they’re so rare.

they’re both HIGHLY campy, historically. i guess they don’t have to be, inherently, but, like, come on brah. the sense of that meaning of “camp” is almost ALWAYS likened to theatricality in definition, and yet, when you think of golden and silver age stories from marvel or dc, what would else would you call them, immediately? they’re bright and colorful, they tell fantastic stories for which you must suspend your disbelief, they’re deliberately larger-than-life escapism as well as they’re subversions of the idea that you’d wanna live any of these people’s lives. hamlet teaches you that you don’t wanna be a danish prince if it leads to such devastating rifts between your family members, as much as peter parker teaches you that you don’t want to have incredible power and abilities if it costs you any stability in your life, relationships, living situations, and that you have to keep everything amazing about yourself a secret, for the safety of yourself and everyone you love, even though, well, you can’t catch a break for being who you are beneath the mask (and sometimes, for who you are with the mask).

and it seems like in recent phases of the two mediums, that inherent campiness has kind of been tried to be sucked out of it. they both have had hard times being taken seriously as proper literature, and not just idle pastimes for poor, uneducated, illiterate people (though it’s been a long time since anyone thought that about theater, and broadway plays are so esteemed and inaccessible to general audiences now. the modern equivalent of that could probably be film/television, because what are those if not recorded plays that can be later edited?). musical theater aside, most plays are not as extreme and speculative as they used to be. there isn’t as much magic or quarreling with the gods, people speak in plain prose and not a fixed verse and rhyme, like they did for so many centuries. some of the postmodernist metaphysical theater from the likes of samuel beckett could be considered as boundary-pushing as something like alan moore’s legendary watchmen series, in that they subvert all of the staples of those mediums in an inimitable way. and it seems like in the post-80s watchmen era, not all, but a lot of popular comics have tried to be edgier, and more humorless, despite the fact that they’re comic books. it’s started to turn around but it was especially bad in the 90s.

and for visual mediums, the older the story, the more it seems to break the show-don’t-tell rule of visual story-telling. in early and mid-twentieth century comics, to keep up w the story from issue to issue, there’s a LOT of exposition in the text itself, and even things that are happening in the issue tend to move so quickly. though these happen for different reasons. sophocles doesn’t actually show us the scene where oedipus stabs his eyes out and goes blind, because that would require an actor to be able to make that look realistic, so it happens offstage. in the first issue of wonder woman, an american wwii pilot washes up on paradise island, we get the whole backstory of how these immortal women live on a no-males-allowed island and the crimes of hercules, we get to see the american pilot nursed back to health ready to return home, we see an olympian competition to find the most capable member of the island to go into “man’s world” (the united states) to ally against the nazis, and see that the queen’s daughter wins it. and that all happens in, like, 20 pages. so it’s more for the purpose of being concise. so dialogue had to give a lot of information for the audience member or reader to be able to keep up.

i can probably stop naming similarities by now, i’ve made my point. but if i tried for even longer i might be able to come up w more. i have no sweeping grand thesis about these parallels, i just think they’re neat. alright. if you read all of this you probably deserve some sort of prize for putting up w my inane rambling for way too long.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 29/05/2021 (Eurovision, BTS, Olivia Rodrigo, Galantis/David Guetta/Little Mix, Anne-Marie & Niall Horan)

What better way to celebrate the end of a week in which I have been consistently ill and surprisingly busy? Sixteen new arrivals, of course! Shoot me, but first, congratulate Olivia Rodrigo for her second #1 as “good 4 u” gets the album boost to overthrow “Body” this week. I can safely say I think it’ll be there for a while. Let’s just start REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

Sixteen new arrivals and therefore, kind of a bloodbath. Why are there sixteen new arrivals? We’ll get to it. Other than six new arrivals from last week, we have a couple other drop-outs, the notable of which being those that spent five or more weeks in the UK Top 75 – which I cover – or those that peaked in the top 40. Therefore, those include, rather ironically on Olivia Rodrigo’s album week, former #1 “drivers license” (only dropping out because of a silly UK chart rule that only allows three songs per lead artist on the chart), as well as “Don’t Play” by Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals, “Another Love” by Tom Odell, “Calling My Phone” by Lil Tjay and 6LACK, “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon, “Tonight” by Ghost Killer Track and D-Block Europe featuring OBOY and “Miss the Rage” by Trippie Redd and Playboi Carti. I’m not complaining about most of this, sorry, Giveon.

We have no returning entries – thankfully – so instead we can just focus on notable falls and climbers. I guess we’ll start with notable losses, songs that dropped five or more spots from their placement last week, and of course we do have a few of them at least as a result of, say it with me, sixteen new arrivals. The first few of these are all harsh drops because of ACR, which happened to coincide with the rest of the chaos, including “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #24, “BED” by Joel Corry, David Guetta and RAYE at #25, “Friday” (Dopamine Re-Edit) by Riton and Nightcrawlers featuring Musafa & Hypeman at #26, “Peaches” by Justin Bieber featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon at #29 and “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #33. We also have the losses for J. Cole staying surprisingly slim with “My Life” featuring 21 Savage and Morray at #27, “Pride is the Devil” featuring Lil Baby at #28 and “Amari” at #35. The rest are mostly just expected continuous fallers, like “Wellerman” by Nathan Evans and remixed by 220 KID and Billen Ted at #44, “Nice to Meet Ya” by Wes Nelson and Yxng Bane at #46, “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S at #50, “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)” by Fred again.. and the Blessed Madonna at #51, “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe featuring RAYE at #53, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals at #57, “Seeing Green” by Nicki Minaj, Drake and Lil Wayne at #58 off of the debut, “All You Ever Wanted” by Rag’n’Bone Man at #61, “Martin & Gina” by Polo G at #63, “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic at #64, “My Head & My Heart” by Ava Max at #65, Travis Scott’s remix of HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” at #67, “Addicted” by Jorja Smith at #68, “Beautiful Mistakes” by Maroon 5 and Megan Thee Stallion at #70, “Sunshine (The Light)” by Fat Joe, DJ Khaled and Amorphous at #73, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi at #74 and finally “Believe Me” by Navos at #75. Phew.

Now what’s interesting is that we have nearly just as many gains, and they’re pretty unique, big surges in most cases, starting with “Cover Me in Sunshine” by P!nk and Willow Sage Heart at #52 thanks to the album boost that also prompted P!nk’s “All I Know So Far” to creep into the top 40 at #39, “Build a Bitch” by Bella Poarch at #32 off of the debut, “Starstruck” by Years & Years at #31 thanks to a bizarrely uncredited Kylie Minogue remix, “Little More Love” by AJ Tracey at #21, “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #20, “Higher Power” by Coldplay at #19, “Black Hole” by Griff at #18, Majestic’s remix of Boney M.’s “Rasputin” at #16, “Good Without” by Mimi Webb soaring into the top 10 and hence becoming her first at #10, and Olivia Rodrigo getting her third thanks to the album boost as “deja vu” is at #4. I think that’s more than enough that needs to be said about music that was already on the chart last week, so welcome back to the part of this series where I get either increasingly frustrated or exhausted every time I have to list another song.

NEW ARRIVALS

#72 – “Life Goes On” – PS1 featuring Alex Hosking

Produced by PS1 and Mark Alston

So, what better way to start sixteen new arrivals? A generic piano-house club track, of course. PS1 is a New York DJ and for this track with a 90s-esque piano and synth melody, bassy drop and tight, bland percussion as well as oddly-mixed anonymous female vocals made to sound robotic regardless of genuine emotive performance, he’s enlisted Australian singer Alex Hosking as well as co-songwriting from hit-makers GOODBOYS, both of which make remarkably little difference to the fact that despite being a faux-inspirational club track, this song is incredibly joyless and flailing in as pathetic and one-note of a fashion as possible. Yes, that is one exhaustive sentence chugging on as long as possible, but there’s no better way to parallel this disposable garbage than that.

#71 – “What a Time” – Julia Michaels featuring Niall Horan

Produced by Ian Kirkpatrick and RKCB

Niall Horan coincidentally has two unrelated female-male duets debuting with him in this week. Thankfully, Julia Michaels only has the one track debuting, and for the love of God, I can’t even figure out why she has the one, as this is a track from a 2019 EP that flew massively under every radar except seemingly mine as whilst I have listened to this EP, I cannot remember for the life of me liking any of it besides “Anxiety”, which makes sense since Michaels is at best an uninteresting songwriter and at worst an insufferable vocal presence. Regardless, I’m going to assume the surge is due to TikTok or some kind of residual Niall Horan hype, whatever there is of that, and look at this song two years after the fact. Well, for what it’s worth, I appreciate the vaguely folkish guitar riff, even if it’s going to be drowned out immensely by Michaels’ approach to vocal takes, which is to put as little effort into that first take and then multi-track enough for it to sound listenable, particularly on that bizarrely unfitting chorus in which reminiscing on a wonderful, intimate time with your partner is demonstrated by rote piano chords, an awkward string swell and distant, reverb-drenched incoherency on the vocals. I guess I do like the switch in the final chorus as she changes “what a time” to “what a lie” to emphasise the bitterness of that break-up, but I don’t think that bitterness has to soak the entire master because this song is dripping in apathy that I just don’t have any time for personally in my pop power ballads. Wait, Niall Horan was on this song?

Eurovision Song Contest 2021

Whilst I may not do a special episode on this blog for the Eurovision Song Contest, I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to watching and enjoying it every year. This year’s, the first since 2019 for obvious reasons, was hosted in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and was won by an Italian rock band, with the United Kingdom infamously receiving zero points yet somehow more applause than Israel’s performance. Telling. It’s not all politics though, obviously: the reason songs win is not just the lighting, stage presence, vocal performance or grandiosity, but rather the songs themselves, or at least ostensibly so. The winner this year didn’t have the best of any of those factors in my opinion – no, not even the politics – so it’s clearly about a mixture of this success criteria. This year had some particularly good songs and the most consistency out of Eurovision in a while, naturally leading to quite a few new arrivals, also factored in by the charts being weak, so we essentially get an album bomb. Let’s pile up every new arrival related to Eurovision and talk somewhat more briefly about each song, starting with...

#66 – “Dark Side” – Blind Channel

Representing: FINLAND

The Finnish entry this year is one of two heavy rock entries, both of which charted, and this is a genre represented by about one country annually. There’s always a Gothic-influenced or industrial-esque band in the shortlist or national finals if not the semis and international final, but it doesn’t stop them from being some of the most interesting Eurovision contesters. It’s in English and came sixth with 301 points. Is it any good? Well, it’s far from bad with that pumping electronic groove before it’s crushed by metallic, distorted and rather ugly guitars that remind me of, if anything, scene-era nu metal and crunkcore, especially due to the clean and growling vocal dynamic. The song is still anthemic as all hell and if we ignore the dog barking and stuttering vocals, as well as the fact that these vocalists don’t have that much grit to their performance, we can appreciate the clamouring rock track this is, and I’d be lying if I said that final chorus isn’t pretty epic. Next!

#62 – “Voilá” – Barbara Pravi

Representing: FRANCE

The French entry this year is one my staunchly Italian nationalist online friend immediately had a distaste for, and as someone with British citizenship, I am also legally obliged to give this Worst of the Week. Sorry, Barbara but traditions are traditions. It’s in her native French and came second overall with 499 points. Is it any good? Well, like many French entries and French pop songs in general, it’s in a chanson style that adapts very well to the modern western art-pop sound, as Pravi’s cooing vocals are at full focus in the mix as they skate around more subtle pianos, wonderfully elegant strings and this wistful tone that may or may not make sense for the content. What? I’m not learning a word of French past what was grained into me during primary school. Overall, I think this is a pretty great song with a lot of that almost Bjork-esque swell especially in Pravi’s vocal performance that I think makes for a pretty excellent listen, especially by the time that abrupt finish hits. I’d probably prefer it being a bit less minimal and scattered so the hook hits harder but overall this is one of the best Eurovision entries this year. However, she is French so, next!

#59 – “SHUM” – Go_A

Representing: UKRAINE

The Ukrainian entry, always successful enough to get to the finals, was particularly hyped up prior due to its... eccentricity and ended up in fifth place with 364 points. It’s in their native Ukrainian so they might as well be garbling acid both verbally and as a written text, so I guess I have to judge it on the fact that this is pretty bonkers, with a charismatic and energetic vocal performance that yells over triumphant bassy horns perfectly blended with the 80s bass synths but not so much with those chirping flutes that, whilst cool on paper, kind of just give me a headache when faced against this thumping dance beat that remains decidedly strained for most of its runtime, and annoyingly so as it means the song never has that cathartic of a release, at least to me, but what drop it has ends up deconstructed and janky in something that might fit on PC Music but I’m not sure it does on Ukrainian Eurovision. This has something there, but I’m not into it. Sorry.

#47 – “Embers” – James Newman

REPRESENTING: United Kingdom

A catastrophic loss is British culture at Eurovision, and it’s not the first time in this century that we’ve gotten the infamous null points. James happens to be related to the more noteworthy John Newman, but that didn’t avoid a “nil points catastrophe”, coined by Jochan Embley, who reviewed the song for the Evening Standard and is now set in stone as an utter fool as his quote predicting that not to be the case this year is now forever preserved on the Wikipedia page for this very song. Nice one, Embley. We finished at twenty-sixth and Newman should honestly be glad this embarrassment is charting. The worst part of this whole ordeal is that the song’s actually fine and definitely representative of British pop music with its 90s-esque piano, bassy drop and anonymous vocal performance – if any of that sounds familiar – and I do love the plastic brass added here for the sake of bombast. It’s nothing interesting, and a tad too long considering how little it does with its musical premise, but it’s not worse than half of any given Eurovision. Maybe next year we submit a UK drill song, I’m sure that’ll get the people going. Tion Wayne, do you want to take a flight to Italy in 2022? Maybe bring Young Adz here while you’re at it; that could truly be a fascinatingly out of place Eurovision entry but at least one of these countries – probably Russia – would vote for it. As for now, at least this was funny to see absolutely bomb, and Graham Norton become increasingly hopeless for its success as the night went on.

#43 – “10 Years” – Daoi Freyr

REPRESENTING: Iceland

One part of this guy’s backing band tested positive for COVID-19 so they had to isolate and just show the dress rehearsal again but it didn’t stop them from charting and delivering a pretty damn unique entry, as Iceland is known for doing nowadays. It’s all in English and finished in fourth place with 378 points, and is it any good? Well, for one of the whitest concepts in television, this is the whitest song of this year’s entries, starting with some gentle violins before abruptly careening straight into this Daoi Freyr guy monotonously droning over bass-heavy nu-disco straight out of the 2000s with a level of irony balancing out whatever sincerity there is in the quasi-R&B breakdown, and, you know, it’s fun, at least? I do think the stage performance is remarkably more interesting than this funktronica mess in the studio, but this is catchy and inoffensive, two good ways to get people to care about your song in Eurovision, so it makes sense. Also,  that chiptune synth-solo borderline saves this song, even in all its brevity.

#17 – “ZITTI E BUONI” – Maneskin

REPRESENTING: Italy

So third place didn’t chart – sorry, Switzerland – but we do obviously get the winner charting as high as the top 20. The chart’s weak and the lead singer’s hot and probably does cocaine – it’s a recipe for success, especially when they probably have mafia connections and can threaten or buy their way into the charts. Unrealistic and possibly xenophobic stereotypes aside, this is the Italian entry and whilst I was personally gunning for Portugal, who came twelfth, I can see how this gathered 524 points, even if they had to censor the lyrics for the sake of the contest, not that I can tell because I do not know a lick of Italian. Sorry, Ignacio. Anyway, this song kicks ass and rather disrespectfully at that, as the lead singer breathily sings over garage rock-esque guitar licks and some pretty manic drumming that delivers not only a catchy hook but an undeniable groove, assisted by some slick rapping that comes out of the blue in the second verse and honestly fits the song – and the singer – a lot better than it has any right to. Congratulations, Italy – you’ll be paying out the ass for the next contest. Ciao!

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Well, that got a lot out of the way. Not all of it, though.

#60 – “Topshottas Freestyle” – Potter Payper

Produced by Chucks

Potter Payper is basically some guy from Barking, East London, and that’s all you need to sign a record deal with the same label that has Stormzy on payroll so that’s why he’s here. With that said, there’s something deeper here, or at least in the first few lines of this singular verse – without a chorus – in which Potter Payper narrates a street lifestyle, far too common for young working-class British men, retelling what is probably his truth about the consequences of ignoring motherly advices and finding yourself in a situation surrounded by gang violence, drug trafficking and all the paranoia that comes with it. Of course, he then brags about his wordplay, gunplay and fashion, and the rest of the verse just feels aimless with nothing exactly restraining the meandering checklist of clichés, and zilch returning it back to what I thought was going to be the point of the song. I guess this trap beat is okay but this same acoustic guitar and oddly-mastered bass is so common and uninteresting that I find it hard to care. I don’t have an issue with British music being Americanised as that’s just the result of musical evolution and the sharing of culture, but when the only way you can tell this isn’t from the States is the accent does make me question why this is charting amongst Dave and AJ Tracey instead of Lil Baby and Gunna.

#56 – “GANG GANG” – Polo G and Lil Wayne

Produced by Angelo Ferraro

Polo G, after just having the biggest hit of his career with the US #1 hit “RAPSTAR”, follows it up with a Lil Wayne collaboration and thanks to a busy and just misguided release date and timing, it makes a lot less noise than it should. It absolutely deserves that level of attention too, with its chopped-up borderline ambient melody that creates  a perfect foundation for this high-energy bass-heavy trap beat as well as Polo G delivering a lot more energy than on “RAPSTAR” (to the point where I think that’s the reason why his actually interesting songs don’t do as well). The chorus has a pretty great melodic switch-up by the end and whilst the flows are pretty rote, it’s hard to say they aren’t smoothly delivering all of the flexing and gunplay pretty typical of Polo G, and if anything that’s what it’s missing: an extra layer of depth, not that I care of course, because Lil Wayne’s on it. Wayne has been astonishingly great on features recently and this is one of his most impressive features to the point where I could barely write about it on first listen, with some of his slickest flow switches ever and whilst the content doesn’t get any more interesting than pouring his heart out for his lean, his pure charisma outshines anyone who could have been on this track and this means this ends up pretty excellent in terms of 2020s trap-rap. I don’t know when that Polo G album is coming but I hope it has more of this. Also, for the love of God, Wayne, keep this energy up for the next album. I’m begging you.

#42 – “SUN GOES DOWN” – Lil Nas X

Produced by Roy Lenzo, Omar Fedi and Take a Daytrip

As his follow up to “MONTERO”, we have a new, decidedly less sexual Lil Nas X hit debuting again surprisingly low on the chart considering the last single’s success, finally delivering in the musical department as for me, there’s a constant conflict between wanting to like Lil Nas as a character, performer and personality rather than actually enjoying any of the guy’s music. Last time I talked about Lil Nas, I did bring up the Pitchfork album review that questioned if he really liked music and whilst it’s funny, I do see how Lil Nas could have perhaps taken Pitchfork to heart as a result as he practically explains his love of popular music as a way for him to feel like he belonged in a community, which is especially meaningful for a man constantly left alienated because of his own mental health issues as a teenager and struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality, to the point of suicidal thoughts. I just love how the verse ends on a happy note where makes the leap of faith to come out and how now he’s proud of himself, he wants to make sure his fans are proud of him since they’re the people who got him there. For me, those last lines recontextualise the chorus as becoming less about contemplating death but more about ascending to a happier place and rejecting all your struggles that you’ve overcome. It helps that this is all sang pretty soulfully over an almost emo guitar melody with some basic flows but gorgeous multi-tracked vocal melodies accentuated by strings that elevate this song even higher, even if it seems underdeveloped. Sure, it doesn’t have that second verse, but does a victory lap need a re-over?

#38 – “Mask” – Dream

Produced by Perish Beats and Banrisk

Nope.

#22 – “Our Song” – Anne-Marie and Niall Horan

Produced by TMS

Okay, so this is a duet where two ex-lovers – only in the song – attempt to get over each other but end up hearing a song they held special to their relationship and all of the memories and pain comes flooding back. Without the youthful exuberance of Taylor Swift’s song of the same name, this duet should carry some bitterness and resentment but mostly capture a hesitant nostalgia... and despite being oddly Niall Horan-dominated, I guess it does that pretty effectively, or at least would if Niall wasn’t crushed by a misshapen trap beat that drowns this pathetically fluttering guitar loop into a mush that not even Anne-Marie can over-sell. Everything here is so utterly basic that it kind of screws itself over by trying for any energy or passion, and therefore kind of just doesn’t. I’m glad.

#9 – “Heartbreak Anthem” – Galantis, David Guetta and Little Mix

Produced by Bloodshy, Henrik Jonback, David Saint Fleur, Thom Bridges, David Guetta, Mike Hawkins, SONDR and Johnny Goldstein

It really speaks to the power of Little Mix that even with only three members and only one of them not expecting a child, they can bring Galantis back of all people. Although given that Galantis is already a duo, I fail to see why David Guetta needs to be here, and the same can go for any of the other seven credited producers of this song, which actually only includes one half of Galantis! I question if a song ever needs that many, despite the fact that in reality they probably contributed zilch to the song each, just enough to get a pay check. None of that should matter, however, if the song isn’t good and I’ll admit this is far from the worst that any of these guys have delivered, with a string melody and swell not unlike 2015-era house Galantis themselves made, and vocal deliveries from the girls that sound like they were located in vastly different locations from each other (to the point where anyone harmonising with Perrie sounds really awkward regardless of how many vocal manipulation effects you can put on them). For seven producers, that’s inexcusable, but as a song, it’s just a shallow post-break-up song that kind of feels like a dig towards Jesy if anything (although I hope it isn’t). I’m not a fan – I never was going to be – but it works for what it is as this colourful house jam, and not much else. This is Galantis’ first top 10 since 2016, by the way. Yeah, Little Mix are that big.

#7 – “traitor” – Olivia Rodrigo

Produced by Dan Nigro

It couldn’t have been “brutal”? Or “hope ur ok”? Okay, well, if we’re going to have the dullest track on the album bar one I guess we’ll go with the one that follows the “drivers license” formula to a T but without as much passion in the vocals, without as much interesting songwriting quirks and with a whole lot of rote fluff removed far from any indie-girl influence that undercuts what is essentially a teen-pop product. I’m not going to pretend I cannot get caught up in melodrama and embrace that, but this is a slog of a ballad with an almost sing-song, condescending vocal melody in that chorus, multi-tracked and studio-produced to rid her of any of that natural rasp she has when singing live. The song is about being annoyed by an ex finding someone new and the more toxic thoughts that come with being the ex-girlfriend in that situation, but with decidedly low stakes this time around that just make her more unlikeable than relatable. I’m sorry, I didn’t think that album was half-bad at all, but please don’t make this the post-release hit.

#3 – “Butter” – BTS

Produced by Ron Perry, Rob Grimaldi and Stephen Kirk

See, I value my personal information, and I don’t know about you but I’m as scared of these guys as I am Nicki Minaj stans, or Minecraft YouTuber stans, or serial killers, so whilst I doubt my platform is extensive enough to reach that level, I also know that these people are so online that they could easily find me somehow somewhere. With that said, just to clarify, when I say I wish I could “Nope” myself out of this one like I did with Dream because I have consistently little to say about this band, it’s not because I in any way dislike BTS or the band members within, or their record label that manages them and many other K-pop bands which I also do not dislike, or, because I’ve seen this happen, East Asians in general. Is that enough stalling to just say I don’t care about this basic pop fluff? When BTS are in Korean, their lyrics aren’t embarrassing and their production tends to be more experimental or at least catchier, more interesting. I like a fair few Korean BTS songs as a result but I just do not see the appeal in making another stiff, cleanly-produced 80s-esque funk-pop song with some chiptune synths that are admittedly kinda cool other than getting on US radio. There’s some interplay between the boys here but it just leads to a pretty homogenised track where none of them have enough personality to shine through, not even SUGA and RM on the tacked-on rap verse that so awkwardly ends. The synth solo sounds perfectly out of an era of dated 80s synths that I’m not sure anyone other than Bruno Mars actually had nostalgia for, and not even some pretty vocoder can save it. The writing is too clumsy, the production’s not equipped to handle it and there’s not much to speak of in terms of performance. I fear for my life when I say it but I think this is actually pretty bad.

Conclusion

Okay, so, we’re finally finished with this week and God, I’m glad, as there’s not that much quality here to speak of, although what is here is here in droves, so Best of the Week gladly goes to Polo G and Lil Wayne for “GANG GANG”, with “Sun Goes Down” by Lil Nas X following closely behind as an Honourable Mention. In terms of Worst of the Week, it doesn’t actually go to they who shall not or he who should not be named, instead going to the pathetic “Your Song” by Anne-Marie and Niall Horan, with a Dishonourable Mention going to BTS for “Butter”. It’s just “Dynamite” again but with considerably less reason to exist. Here’s this week’s top 10:

If I make it to next week, who knows what’s coming? This is a slower week – hopefully – and I don’t think black midi will chart, though it’d be comical, so I’ll hold off on predictions and just thank you for reading. See you next week!

[kmalexander]

2020 in Ten Significant Photos

Today is December 19th, also known as March 294th, around our house. 2020, man. 2020. I think we can all agree it’s been a terrible year. If not personally, then nationally and globally. And we still have twelve days left. Feels like it’s been forever and yet, somehow, no time at all.

The tradition around here dictates I need to assemble a post wherein I share ten photos from the year representing the most significant moments of my personal past 365-ish days. Normally, I look forward to this, but 2020 was tougher than most. This time around, I wasn’t so eager to ponder how the year went. I didn’t want to dwell on the events that have unfolded. But I did. And below is the culmination of that effort, for better or worse.

The rules are simple but firm, pick ten photos from your past year that are the most significant to you: positive or negative—significance can be found in either. But it can’t be more, it can’t be less. Some moments will have to fall by the wayside—and that’s intentional—culling is essential. It’ll help create a more realistic picture of your year. Some years will be harder than others, and sometimes you’ll need to discover significance in the smaller, quieter moments. The ten are irascible, and they’re relentless. It is the way.

So, enough talk! Let’s take a look at my 2020 distilled into ten significant photos.

The Multnomah Whiskey Library in Portland

We began our 2020 by going on a trip to celebrate Kari-Lise’s birthday. Ah, those carefree halcyon days. Feels like a lifetime ago. This time we took an extensive food-focused trip to Portland and Hood River, Oregon. It was easily one of the best trips we’ve taken together and a wonderful way to celebrate Kari-Lise’s birthday. We ate and drank and tasted so many incredible things. I had planned to put together one of my standard travel posts a few months after we returned, but 2020 had other plans. It’s odd to looking back. It feels like a different era.

Amberlynn being cozy. (Photo by my brother, Nick Alexander.)

Not long after our return from Portland, my brother Nick and my sister-in-law Hallie welcomed their second child, Amberlynn, into the world in February. With Liesel and Blakely arriving last year and Amberlynn this year, I now have three nieces that have all shown up in a very short time. Can’t wait to watch them grow up and spoil them rotten. I’ve yet to meet Amberlynn. (Details why in the next photo. You can probably guess.) But, I’m looking forward to the day I do.

Pandemic hair. Pandemic mask. Pandemic isolation.

So, the obvious one—the COVID-19 pandemic. I could wax poetic about everything that’s happened in the last ten months, but we’ve all been dealing with this. What can I say that hasn’t been said already by a thousand other folks? I am tired of staying at home. I miss my family and friends. At the same time, I know it’s the right thing to do, and I’m blessed that I have a job that allows me to do it. Please do what you can to stay safe and healthy. Be kind. Wear a mask. Social distance. Avoid groups. Get your vaccine when you can. All that stuff.

Not where you want to find yourself at 3AM

2020 was the gift that keeps on giving. Early in the pandemic Tyrant, one of our two old dogs (he’s fifteen!) started having breathing issues one Saturday morning, and we had to take him to an emergency vet. That turned into early morning calls and early morning trips to the pharmacy. The same weekend our other old dog, Suge (she’s fourteen!), had a cyst that burst on her back leg, so she ended up in the doggie hospital for minor surgery. Two dogs. Two hospitals. Many vets. All in the middle of a pandemic. It was an exhaustive and stress-filled four days. Thankfully, both dogs are doing well. Suge is back to her rambunctious self. Tyrant is still sleepy and lazy and gets to take doggy pills three times a day.

Welcome to the CHAZ

Black Lives Matter. I don’t know why that’s a difficult concept for some people to grasp. This summer was similar to summers in other parts of the country. Protests. Marches. Police action. Bits of violence. For a brief moment, Seattle had the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and offshoot of the protests, which drew most of the country’s attention. The outgoing President might have declared Seattle an “Anarchist Jurisdiction” (whatever that means,) but the tales of chaos were greatly exaggerated and largely overblown. Ignore your weird uncle on Facebook. The CHAZ only lasted for a few weeks. Demonstrations there have largely faded away. But the BLM movement rightfully continues, and I don’t think it’ll stop until we see systematic change.

Kari-Lise in front of the titular Night Garden

Kari-Lise revealed Night Garden, her latest solo show at Roq La Rue, and it was wildly successful! It’s strange to have a gallery show in the middle of a pandemic. There was no official opening. No opening night crowds. No afterparty. But the show premiered online and ended up selling out. I feel like I broken record repeating the same thing I do every show, but I think this series was her best work ever. I’m incredibly proud to see how she continues to evolve as an artist. Can’t wait to see what she does next.

Pork chop sandwiches! (Technically pork butt, but references.)

So, I’ve always liked cooking, and this year was no different. If anything, this year I cooked even more, since I had more time at home. I feel like I dialed in my meat-smoking game and got a little better at baking (like everyone else, but I’m still not great.) This little BBQ sandwich was 100% made from scratch. Smoke pork butt. Steamed/Fried sourdough half-way buns. Homemade dill pickles. Homemade pickled onions. Stone ground mustard. Yes, it was delicious. Yes, I made it more than once.

Sunset on the Colvos Passage

In October, we briefly escaped one house to retreat to another. We rented an incredible cabin on Vashon Island, only a ferry ride away from Seattle. We spent a week on the island. We hiked, explored, cooked, relaxed, read a ton, soaked in a huge bathtub, took showers in an outdoor shower. I also took the time to revamp this website. And we were able to do it with proper social distancing! It was a chill and relaxing week away from the world and unplugged from a stressful news cycle. We loved it so much we are planning a return visit in January. So don’t be shocked if a similar photo appears in next year’s list.

I voted! You voted! A lot of us voted!

One of the wildest and most important elections in my lifetime happened, and what an election it was. Records were smashed. Norms were abandoned. Lawsuits were filed and quickly tossed out when no evidence could be presented except for wishes, hopes, and dreams. (Turns out wanting something to be true won’t make it true.) It was great to see so many Americans actively involved in the civic process. King County, Washington (where I live) had an 85% turnout, which I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It made me really proud of my city, county, state, and country. Nice work, America. Let’s keep this trend of civic involvement going.

New floors and a fantastic built in room divider bookcase built by my pal Steve.

It’s hard to encapsulate this in a single image. Like much of the world, 2020 became the “Year of the House” for the Alexanders. This had been the plan for us before the pandemic set in, and we had been saving toward it for a while. We bought this place in 2010, which means we’ve been living in our house for a decade, and it was past time to put a little love back into the place. That means, among other things, new paint, new roof, new floors in several rooms, lots of love pour into the garden, new countertops, that fantastic bookcase in the picture above, and we’re in the middle of a bathroom remodel. It’s been awkward, stressful, and a bit odd at times juggling all this work with the pandemic, but we think it’ll be worth it.

In Conclusion

Looking back at everything that happened in 2020, I was surprised to find how much significance happened even while I spent most of my time here at home. The ten photos above don’t begin to cover everything that happened. My sister-in-law’s father, Tom, passed away, a dear man, and we could only send condolences from afar. Friends and family got sick, and not just from COVID. Pets passed away. People lost jobs. There were the forest fires and the awful weeks of smoke that blanketed much of the PNW. MURDER HORNETS.

But it wasn’t all awful events. New hobbies were found. New skills explored. Moth & Myth continued its wild growth and is leaping into a new phase of business. Friends published books. Friends made art. Friends had shows. Friends wrote new books and game systems. We all learned how to video conference (for better or worse.) There was good to be found even among the muck. I’m not going to miss 2020. It might have been an awful year, but it’s probably been one of the most notable years of my life.

So, how about you? What did you experience in 2020? What are your ten? Assemble them and leave a comment with a link! Let us all know about the significant events in your year.

Want to revisit my photos of past years? The experiences then seem almost charming now. Just click on any of the links below and check out my pictures from that specific year. I find it fascinating to watch subtle changes year over year.

2014 • 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information. Sign Up Today→

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2J650Uv via IFTTT

[danganronpa-imagines]

Ultimate Forensics Doctor

Hello, ravenrainy! I deeply apologize for the very extended delay. I hope you are doing well and are taking care of yourself! Thank you so very much for your submission! Raven Black is so incredibly intriguing, and her qualities really set her apart! I am aware that you requested a stream of characters to react/respond to her, but I only offer my own original character, Yoite’s response. Please accept my sincerest apologies for miscommunicating! Thank you so much once again for this submission! I appreciate it with all of my heart! (I hope my response is not too underwhelming.)

Please do not copy or reuse Raven Black! She belongs to ravenrainy and them alone! Please do not copy or reuse Yoite Inoue! She belongs to me and myself alone! Thank you!

“Raven is rather mysterious, though I believe she is benign at heart.”

Because of her tendency to deceive others, Yoite is not certain how to feel about her, though she believes Raven must have her own reasons for doing so. Yoite deeply respects her dedication to the sciences and studying, a trait that is difficult to cultivate and habits that are even more difficult to maintain. Occasionally, the Ultimate Teacher would approach the Ultimate Forensics Doctor to try and learn more about her and help her out if she should need it.

She hopes to understand and grow close to Raven, simply because Yoite does not want her to be alone and be misunderstood by the others. Together, they enjoy discussing recent scientific discoveries and innovations.

Name:Raven Black Aliases:Doctor R. Title:Ultimate Forensics Doctor Age:17 years old

Gender:Female ♀️

Height:163cm (JP)              5'3" (ENG)

Weight:45 Kg

Birth Date:January 3rd♑

Chest Size:75cm

Blood Type:O,RH-

Execution available:Anatomical model

Likes:Autopsies,Anatomy,Animals,Video Games,Movies,Travelling,Aesthetics,Sarcasm,Science Jokes

Dislikes:Bugs,Condescending people,Physical effort,Doing sports

– Appearence —- Raven is quite a short girl with a slim figure, medium blue hair and dark eyes. Her uniform is a Navy Blue Tshirt,with a black skirt,black knee socks,black boots and a white lab coat. Her trademarks are her lab coat,a scalpel on her ear and her ‘K’ necklace. She carries drugs and basics First Aid gear in her pockets,just in case emergency strikes. Her hands are bandaged,due to various possible wounds she could receive during a problematic surgery,but she is no less skilled with a scalpel. She wears a ‘K’ necklace at all times.It was given to her by her older brother,Kyousuke,before she left to learn at Hope’s Peak Academy. In a Free Time event,she states that most people mistake that cursive ‘K’ letter with 'R’. Her brother gifted her his first katana on her 13th birthday,when she left to study and work abroad as a Forensics Doctor.

— Personality —

Raven is a calm and collected person who loves harmlessly deceiving people for the sake of Hope. Having a fascination with Sciences since very little,she started studying as much as she could,having a strong will to succeed and an ambition to be the very best and have her brother praise her. Despite her cold and logical façade,she loves subtly mocking people,saying harmless lies and faking her emotions. She never experienced any strong emotion until Hope’s Peak Academy/Killing Game took place,where her emotions finally became too comflicting and forgot her morals,letting her feelings take over her ration,potentially putting everyone in danger,in a Class trial.

– Backstory —

Being a sickly child,she was born with a leg-problem that made her have occasional difficulties in moving or running on long distances. Due to this condition,her parents had her home-schooled,then sent abroad,under better medical care and study conditions,where she legally changed her name to a Western one,so she won’t be embarrassed when people can’t pronounce her name,which she hides. When she was young,her brother had already started school and was barely home,and with her being alone all the time,she often wished to live a normal life.This,however,made her have strong beliefs in HOPE,and her brother became her ultimate HOPE symbol,which is why she would often jest and lie,especially to Monokuma,which greatly irks him.

— Trivia —

She chose her name by herself,due to a long-term fascination with death and Edgar Allan Poe. Her favourite book genres are fantasy,adventure,mystery and horror. Her favourite music genre is rock,but often listens to alternative stuff.

She loves aesthetics,so she tries as much as possible to look perfect to her own aeathetic,and whenever she travels,she takes multiple pictures and edits them,posting them on various social media platforms.

Staying inside for so long,her love for computers took the better of her,and she soon became a computer wizz and addicted to video games and the internet,with all its social networks. The occasions where she’s seen without her phone are extremely rare (she becomes highly irritated and nervous,as it was a great way to cope with anxiety).

Her most obvious quirks are biting her lip on aggressively ruffling her hair while thinking,or tapping her fingers and leg when nervous,waiting,or bored.

— Lab –

In her Lab,you can find all the new state-of-the-art medical technology,anatomical models,research inventions and a large variety of medicine. She often spends her time in her Lab as it became her safe Haven,and she can practice her passion with no restrictions,in peace,and nobody can bother her. As a downside,she often forgets to sleep or eat,which makes her weaker,without realizing.

“Hey~!Name’s Raven Black,I hope we can get along well!If you feel ill,please come to me.I’m a doctor,y'know~?”

“You can all escape if you just kill me…?Then just go ahead and kill me!I have no interesting or helpful talent,and my life spawn is below sea level,so I’m basically dead beat for you.”

“This is a school of Despair,so until I can bring Hope to everyone,I won’t give up!”

“My brother is my Ultimate Hope!I can’t give up,not now!Not ever!

“Fukawa might not be a hydrophobe,but she’s definitely not the Hydrophobic end of a lipidic membrane…”

“You…You killed her…why not me…?Why couldn’t you just execute us together…?I…I…am going to have a panic attack,please excuse me”

“*hysterical laughter*Oh,Monokuma,but this motive is rather hilarious!Do you really expect us to kill for such a pueril reason?Bullshit!”

“Your cortex must be rather…lean…neat…with no indentation…How dull.”

“Have your synapses stopped working?Cause you seem to be even more stupid than usual.”

“There are no words in this world that can discribe my complete disappointment.”

“Yes,yes,dangerous amd scary…But did you die?”

“I lie?Why yes,I do,what gave it away?My unphazed face,or my sarcastic tone?”

“*aggravated sigh*Get this OVER it!This Class Trial is so boring and uneventful!The culprit is obvious,the clues are obvious,the crime is obvious…So stop acting dumb on purpose!”

“Hope…Despair…Hope…Despair….Despair…Despair…Des…pair….Fuck!Brother…Brother I…No!Hope!I fight for the Hope!Hope!!”

“Ah I see…I’m a survivor…I’m Destiny’s Child…Then I guess ny talent was not useless after all.More or less.”

“BITCH,I CUT UP PEOPLE!DO YOU WANT TK END UP NEXT ON MY TABLE?”

“I’m calm…yes,I’m calm…don’t worry,I won’t kill anyone.”

“I just saved your life,so better stop acting like a horny schoolgirl and thank me!You owe me your life,so better start licking my shoes!…Of course,I’m only jesting,but you really pissed me off.”

“The plans was neatly planned,but you chose your allies terribly.I could have helped you escape from here…but no matter.As long as a detective is here,nobody has a chance to get away with murder.”

“I don’t know what love is…but what I do know,is that I care for you,and I will do anything in my power to keep you safe.”

“You useless cancerous cell!Sod off!”

“With Despair eradicated,we can start our new era of hope!”

“You think I’m lying?And so what if I am?Is it affecting you in any way?If not,then seal your mandibula shut and run away.”

“You’re lowering the IQ of the whole School,please,shut up,for everyone’s sake”.

“If I were to kill myself,I’d climb up your ego and jump down to your IQ.Instant death.”

If it’s okay,may I have the opinion from: You,Korekiyo,Kokichi,Byakuya,Nagito,Gundham,Chiaki,Kaede,Sonia,Celestia and Rantarou? (I forgot to ask the characyer limit,so just choose who you like from these ones ^^“ Sorryyyyyy) BUT H E Y Have some flowers :3 🌸🌹💐

[nigelgodrichproducer]

Ultraista-era Nigel interview

Magoo: I am curious about how the project came together before you met Laura, when it was just you and Joey. Were you just hanging out between schedules when you were in the same town?

Nigel: Exactly. He and I and another friend named Guss. So many times we just got together and we would be recording or jamming. Most of it we did in London but we are working all over the place. Guss and Joey both have little studios and I have a big studio. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, we just made a concerted effort to get a bunch of backing tracks together. We spoke about a certain aesthetic about electronics and a repetitive rhythm which is played. Obviously electronic music that is repeated is exactly the same. You get a human being in and they can repeat but it will sound different every time. Afrobeat was the reference point. So that’s how it started and then we had an intense 3 day session, like a right ol’ recording party and ended up with bits of music that we would then … essentially what I did was took all the music off and kept the rhythm and started again. That’s the basis of the record.

M: How much of this stuff did you have together before you thought you had to find yourself a singer?

N: Quite a lot actually because we’d done tiny snippets which might have been a minute long or three minutes or whatever. It would be a feeling, a little movement and we would leave it at that and move on to the next one. After a while we would go back and look at things and see how they could build and be structured.

M: Were you at any stage trying to do it without vocals?

N: Originally yeah, it could have been just instrumental. It was a bit of an experiment really just to see how substantial something could be like that.

M: Just to see how it evolves?

N: Yes, because it is always a terrifying prospect to say OK we are going to make some music and find a singer… you’d find a singer first and get them involved. I think it’s very hard to find a singer. With the peculiar relationships that we have… mine and Joeys is such a specific one, once in a lifetime, unique buddy becomes muse becomes .. you know!

M: You have worked with each other for years …

N: Yes, To get someone else in with that chemistry is terrifying. It’s something that is not taken lightly anyway. We only did it because we felt that we would be real pussies if we didn’t try. You know, let’s push this and I think we were very fortunate to meet Laura. She’s incredibly down to earth and rational. One of the most important things about relationships is about being able to communicate with that person.

M: I read about how you put up posters at an art college. You were trying to  find someone who was not even necessarily a musician to sing. Did you actually audition anyone form that process?

N: We actually got replies with music that they had made. We were trying to find someone who was an interesting character, who could sing but maybe hadn’t thought about taking it seriously.

M: An amateur?

N: Exactly. The last thing we wanted to do was have a singer songwriter with their chops together who had their version of what they wanted to do already sorted out. What we did end up finding in Laura, was someone who did have their own thing going, but it was very compatible and didn’t work against what we trying to do.

M: How much did the songs change when she came into the picture?

N: What would happen, is that I would write with her. There are a couple of tunes I wrote myself.

M: With lyrics and melodies?

N: Yeah, lyrics, melodies and me singing and she’d re-do it. We’d improve them and finish them off with her singing then there are things that she wrote over the top of what I’d done and we’d finesse that. Then there’s like a ping-pong thing where you are just throwing stuff at each other and putting it together as you go. There are all sorts of ways of doing it and lyrically it is the same thing. We’d play word puzzles.

M: So did you have that aesthetic before Laura joined, that historic Ultarist poetry movement  (The Ultraist movement was a Bohemian-style literary movement born in Spain in 1918)

N: That was already happening before that word came along. People have said you must have been sitting there with an Ultraista manifesto following the instructions. Well no, it was just a coincidence but it works very well. That word suggested what I was feeling, what I could see along with that music.

M: Do you ever have free time Nigel?

N: Oh I do. I have an awful lot of time to stare at the wall and think about what I am doing. I have a very unstructured life. It’s a blessing and a curse because it can actually drive me crazy but it allows me to drop anything and do something on a whim. I have this amazing studio. I can just run in if I have an idea. A lot of this record was collaborative in that we were all in the same room but quite a bit happened in isolation. I wrote a bit of stuff at home. Laura wrote stuff on her own.

M: Was there a lot of sending files over email?

N: Yes a lot of that. Exactly.

M: When you got to the stage of setting up your own studio, was this something that was ticking away at the back of your head?

N: No, this is not like a career move. I think what happened was that there was gap in the schedule. This stuff had been kicking  around a little bit. It was like let’s get this finished. Am I a man or a mouse?

M: You don’t seem like the kind of guy that is going to have a holiday sitting on a beach drinking cocktails?

N: I really wish I did. I think I really give myself a hard time with time! I have read about so many incredible people, incredibly productive people who describe themselves as lazy… and I think that I am lazy. One of my best friends, Nicholas Godin from Air, who is full of wisdom … says lazy people are the smartest because they always try to get the most using the least effort. I think I am one of those. I’m not like idiots who just work for nothing. There has to be a good economy of your effort. It is very important to being creative. You can’t waste your energy on something that is not really going to contribute to the end result. That goes for anything. If you are a recording engineer and producer, then you know what I am talking about. If something sounds, finished or good, you don’t need to take it apart and put it back together again.

M: I am curious about what kind of hours you work. Will you bash your head against a wall trying to get something done, keep at it. Or are you more … let’s take a break, come back tomorrow and this idea will come to fruition.

N: I think I would answer that question by saying I would probably stop.  Generally what would happen is that I would say stop, this isn’t working and at that moment, something will happen.

M: I always find that I have my best ideas on the toilet. You have that break and have that golden moment, pardon the pun

N: It’s like when people started using Pro Tools, they’d say I miss pushing rewind. When you used to rewind you had this moment to think about things. You don’t get that space any more. I think that I work better at night when everybody else is asleep. The world is quiet, there are no distractions. I am terrible in the mornings as a human being. I am just not a good morning guy. Nothing really good happens until after dinner. That’s fine when it is just me. When I  am working with other people, it’s hard because people don’t all keep the same schedule. Generally the work that I do which is good and happens very quickly is between the hours of 11 and 4 in the morning.

M: I hear quite a bit of Brian Eno in his David Byrne type phase in your work. Is he a bit of an influence?

N: I guess so. I am a big fan of that era Talking Heads

M: The Remain in Light period?

N: Yeah, that was huge to me. It was an incredible piece of work but I’m not a fan of Heroes. There are things I am a fan of and things I am not. Obviously there is an idea behind Music For Airports, the ambient moments which I totally understand and love. I have an enormous amount of respect for the guy but I don’t try to emulate anything he has done and never would. Whereas I would try and emulate Trevor Horn. This is a good example of how things happen actualIy. I try to do Trevor Horn and it sounds like Brian Eno. I understand why you say that. He thinks outside the box. He is not hemmed in by a set of rules he thinks he has to follow. At times he has done things in his career that changed the way that everybody does things.

M: Have you met Brian Eno?

N: I have met him a few times. He is very gracious, a very nice man. The thing that I like about Trevor Horn is … even if it is too pop for me, like Frankie Goes To Hollywood or something, even within this mainstream pop thing, he is incredibly obtuse and bold. Such big, bold things happen that go against the grain and you can feel that intention. That’s the thing I really do try to emulate as an idea, rather than a sonic palate. With Brian Eno … I like the sound of space, the ambience and echo and reverb. I like to see big spaces when I listen to things because I see things when I hear things.

M: Getting back to the Ultraista album … without getting too technical … is that just the way Joey plays, or is there a bit of manipulation going on or a bit of both? To me it sounds like there are a few layers of drums in the way that dance music has multiple loops or some sort of loop and a bit of programming underneath. It feels like you’ve gone for that aesthetic but done it live …

N: That’s exactly right. Basically there are electronics going on that he is playing to which is woven into his sound. Sometimes the drums are being processed through a piece of electronics that is making a rhythm that he is playing to. It’s like they’re rubbing against each other.

M: I just wanted to ask how you go  being on the other side of the glass so to speak, promoting an album?

N: It’s fine. It feels a little bit like uncomfortable but I think that is good. It’s a nice change and it is important to make yourself vulnerable. It’s important not to be afraid of things… and it’s important to just do … stuff! I mean the nature of the business is changing. I think producers are more artists now anyway. I’m not going to just find a band and make a record with them anymore. It’s just not that much fun. I would rather work with people that are my friends, have my input, be upfront and be able to write music. It is stuff I have always done. I don’t know what I will do next. I enjoy the playing, that’s fun.

[thotyssey]

It makes sense that there’s a “Job” in her name, cuz this queen is Working! Currently a digital darling, reality TV starlet and video vixen, the Minneapolis-born burlesque clown gogo queen Glow Job can’t wait to get back to a real life stage… but until then, let’s get on point with this rising drag star.

Thotyssey: Yo, Glow! How is quarantine treating you on this beautiful day?

Glow Job: Hi! It really is a nice day out. At least we got that going for us! But, you know… Quarantine Life. Just when you think you’ve got some rhythm, things change up. I’ve somehow got a lot on my plate, all of a sudden!

Yes, I noticed! How are you liking the strange new world of digital drag?

At first I was really reluctant–mostly because I didn’t want to come across as sad or desperate, even though in the beginning I was. But after realizing there was a way to get in this space beyond just doing a number in my living room–and started thinking outside the box–I started getting into it. That’s not shade. I just saw everyone flood the market, and it was overwhelming. I definitely wasn’t “crushing quarantine” the way I saw others do, and wasn’t feeling inspired either. But the Met Gala got the juices flowing again, and then I just started to create. I did the online challenges, and had some real fun.

And now with Black Live Matter taking the forefront, I really have the time and energy to put my drag to good use and be a part of that movement, too. So, being a part of that and making my drag mean something more: from raising money in Zoom parties, to taking some leadership with online communities, to being out on the protest lines, to producing my own parties. Again, I feel like I have a place in this new world.

[Photo: SidewalkKilla]

Indeed you do! I’ve also been enjoying a lot of the pre-recorded pieces many of the queens have been putting out there, including your clip for the Grace Jones showcase you were part of, where you performed “I’ve Seen That Face Before.” It was really polished, stylized and fun. But it must have been a huge effort putting that together, and shooting with limited access to resources in quarantine.

Well, my style is basically “I have an idea, and I’m gonna wait until the very last minute to do it all.” Seems to work for me! So for that number I figured out the storyline, sort of made a quick shotlist, got into drag and filmed and edited it all in one day, all by myself. I almost forgot I have a background in video editing, and I never had really used it in my drag before. So it was fun to incorporate that skill. But yeah, tripods and ring lights are my new best friends. Also, I already happened to have an accordion from the time five years ago when I thought I’d try to learn that! I have a lot of random stuff in my apartment that sees the light of day eventually.

Werq, Prop Queen! Actually between that clip and your role in Bright Light Light Bright’s music video for “This Was My House,” you are a veritable video vixen of the modern era. 

That shoot was super fun! I love Rod and Bright Light Bright Lights music! I’ve been a fan for a while, and was kind of in awe and starstruck when he started DJing my Retro Factory parties. So I was honored to be in his music video, but also because it is exactly the message I want to spread with my drag. And it’s catchy as hell! We shot that all in one day, and just every hour went to a different location. It was a little party. It’s a little surreal to see it now, ’cause it was shot right before lockdown.

It’s a great video! And I see that you appeared in the third episode of a Bravo reality show, Camp Getaway! I’m not familiar with that yet; what’s it about, and how did you get involved?

It’s a show that basically follows a group of camp counselors–or social coordinators–at this camp in Kent, Connecticut which gets turned into an adult campground each weekend. I’m friends with Glen North, who is one of the featured counselors. He is the only queer cast member, and actually was integral in getting me and another drag queen, Sol, there for their LGBTQ weekend.

That particular weekend was especially cool, and for me personally it came right on the heels of me ending my marriage. You don’t get to see much of my story (and there were so many stories shared from other people that day too, like one guest who decided to live her life as a trans woman thereafter), but it was cool to be in the show and get featured regardless. There was even a contest with Carson Kressley judging… and I won’t give any spoilers, but let’s just say he gave me a real boost of confidence in the choices I was making in life.

I see that you’re a Minneapolis native, and and I’m  guessing that growing up queer and Asian in that predominantly white, hetero-normative city was tough on you.

More than ever right now, I’m seeing how desperate I was trying to fit into a white supremacist normative that I was never going to fit into. All my friends were white. I’m actually half-white, but definitely look Asian. There was no way around that, no matter how much Abercrombie cologne I’d spray on. I think I suppressed so much of who I am, including being gay, that I didn’t truly explore those parts of myself. It wasn’t “tough” because I ignored it, and laughed off any micro-racism or homophobia I felt or saw.

So I overcompensated. I got everyone to like me; I became all the things in high school. But it wasn’t until I was in New York for college that I came out. And it was here, after college, that I started hanging with non-white people. It wasn’t until the last few years that I started exploring drag and gender expression. And it wasn’t really until this past month that I started breaking down how much I was subscribing to a system that wasn’t designed for a small, Asian, non-binary queerdo–and how I was then contributing to that culture. So fucked up. And it’s been tough hearing how silent it is now from my MN peers.

It must be very surreal and upsetting for you to see how things have unfolded in Minneapolis.

Seeing how people are reacting is making it super clear that it isn’t a surprise that that stuff is happening there. So many people just live, acting like it isn’t their problem. It’s super upsetting. I have a couple friends who have really stood up as allies though, and I know a couple are looking to me for guidance and support. So I try to offer that now, at the least.

[Photo: Fwee Carter]

[Photo: Bronson Farr]

[Photos: Fwee Carter and Bronson Farr]

You said you didn’t create Glow Job until recently… what were the exact circumstances of how she got born?

The first time I took my drag to the streets was the Women’s March in DC. It was incredibly powerful showing up in the biggest, loudest, queerest way I could imagine. Then the first time “Glow Job” was fully realized was when I did my first show put on at Bar 9 for an amateur showcase, featuring drag queens and comedians from the NYC gay dodgeball league Big Apple Dodgeball. There were, like, seven of us that wanted to do drag, and Jose Paz / Miss Ogeny just decided to create her own show from scratch. Since then that group has expanded, and I had been going back every so often to perform.

But truly, my drag came from the realization that drag can be whatever I want it to be, and it combines many of the things I am already good at! And now it incorporates my love of circus, gogo-ing, pole dance, painting, photography, video editing, costume design, set design, etc. I have a background in ceramics, so that’s gotta be incorporated next somehow too!

I’m actually just super excited about my drag right now, and where it’s going, and how it’s finding new life (especially when I thought Glow had died this March once Covid hit), so I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m bragging! I just love it so much!

[Photos: Fwee Carter]

 Brag away, it’s well-deserved! How did you come up with that four-“pronged,” butterfly-shaped signature lip that you often have? It’s striking! The only other queen I’ve seen sport something like that is Sandy Devastation.

Love Sandy! Madame Viv once told me I looked like her… just less devastating, lol! I dunno, I just didn’t like how painting my regular lips looked. And I wasn’t looking pretty like I had hoped when I started, so I definitely veered into a more clown aesthetic. I was sort of doing clown work, so it came from that… and it just stuck. It was one of the first decisions I made [for Glow’s look], and the only real original signature aspect I kept. I love them, too; they go well with the name.

You’ve done Viv’s “Hot Mess” drag competition at House of Yes a bunch of times. Do you consider yourself a Brooklyn girl?

House Of Yes is a bit of a home base for me. I had been working the line entertaining people as they waited to get in, and also gave the consent speech for them in my own way. I also did set design, and ushered for them, too. My style, I suppose, is more Brooklyn Drag? Or maybe it’s Sunnyside, Queens drag!

But I’m kind of all over, and doing my own thing. I’m the resident burlesque drag queen with Siren Pack; we performed at Madame X in the Village. I hosted [the party] Ultramaroon at Blue Midtown. And I recently got in Susanne Bartsch’s crew!

[Photo: Chris Sorensen]

Your last digital show with the POC Drag Art Collective (headed by Thee Suburbia) was that Grace Jones tribute, but now when you all return to our screens for a new show on Wednesday, June 24th (on Zoom, with proceeds going towards the Black Trans Protesters Emergency Fund) it’ll be the Solange songbook that gets the star treatment! What an interesting choice! Do you have an idea what you’ll be doing for that?

I have an idea… but knowing me, it could end up being anything. It’s gonna be meaningful, though! Know that!

Then on Thursday the 25th, you’ll be livestreaming all the body-ody as a digital gogo boy for Michael Block and Haireola Grande’s Zoom  party, Elation!

Yasss! Love that! It’ll be super fun, turning a look and giving some energy and moves. Being a professional hype-person is my most natural state. And it’s for a good cause. So yes, very happy to be in this show.

As far as the Bartschland crew goes, you were just part of her BLM fundraiser that earned a whopping $32,000 in donations. And now comes “Pride On Top of the World” on Sunday the 28th, once more care of Zoom! Several Drag Race faves will be in virtual attendance including Latrice Royale, Laganja Estranja, Scarlet Envy and Aquaria. And of course, the large cast of beautiful Bartschies! 

I’m so excited! I’ve been going to Susanne Bartsch parties forever, and always just showed up in typical club kid fashion. She’s nightlife royalty. I can’t wait to be in this one, too! I gotta figure out my look; I feel like nothing is too big with On Top!

Anything else coming up for you?

I’ll be out protesting again on Juneteenth, but on the 20th after more protesting some of us are gonna put up an outdoor show in front of the Barclays at 7pm. And then I’ll be on the front lines again in drag the following weekend with the Bushwig crew, starting at 5:30 in Maria Hernandez Park.

Fight the good fight! So, to end on a light note: whose team are you on for All-Stars 5?

Shea Couleé is perfection! But Jujubee cracks my shit up!

Thank you, Glow!

[Photo: Kenny Rodriguez]

Check Thotyssey’s calendar for Glow Job’s upcoming appearances, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

  On Point Archives

On Point With: Glow Job It makes sense that there's a "Job" in her name, cuz this queen is Working! Currently a digital darling, reality TV starlet and video vixen, the Minneapolis-born burlesque clown gogo queen Glow Job can't wait to get back to a real life stage...