#i had to go through so much paul is dead videos because of that one weird rumour that tara is paul??? i just ??? amazing!

[bbbrianjones]

“HE BLEW HIS MIND OUT IN A CAR... HE DIDN’T NOTICE THAT THE LIGHTS HAD CHANGED”

TARA BROWNE [04.03.1945-18.12.1966]

“He looked like something that had fallen from the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. He was like a king in his own terrain. He was miles ahead of his years. I’d never met anyone like him. He was completely unique.” - Glen Kidston, a friend of Tara’s

“He was this charming, very young-looking, rather frail-looking child. Very blonde, with big eyes and I think clad in something that put me in the mind of Little Lord Fauntleroy. And he was dancing in a very wild and deranged fashion. I’d never clapped eyes on him before and I thought, “Who is this strange flower that’s suddenly sprouted in the garden?” - Christopher Gibbs

“It was like a death knell sounding over London. I think it was a definite turning point for a lot of us. It was the end of the sixties for many people. To have someone who was so full of life and so full of joy suddenly taken from you, it made you very pessimistic and cynical about the world, which is what we'd all been trying so hard not to be.” - Marianne Faithfull

[fashionteahouse]

Can I please request a Paul x reader where he’s sending her snapchats of him while she’s out for a girls day with Kim and Emily and when they get home everyone starts teasing him about always trying to get in the readers pants😂

Alright 😂 hope you enjoy :)

cybertwee - paul x reader

The day was nice. The nice weather alone put Emily in a good mood to go out and have a girl’s day with you and Kim. Kim and Emily were your two best friends.

Kim picks you and Emily up, music blaring while you all sang along like you all were in concert. You decide to record a snapchat video, to simply showcase your fun. You add it to your story.

You all pull up to the go-to nail salon. You didn’t want to get much done, just something to polish up your finger nails to them look fresh and neat. Walking in, the smell of nail polish and acetone fills the air. The sounds of people chattering and sights of people getting dolled up.

The lady from the front desk greets you all with a smile. “Hi. Walk in or appointment?”

Emily greets back with, “Hi. We’re walk in.”

The lady nods and asks you all to wait for about 10 minutes before finding workers that were free. You are all okay with this, not in a rush to go anywhere anytime soon.

You sit in the middle of Emily and Kim and scroll through your phone to pass the time. You were in the middle of reading something when your phone vibrates.

Paul sent you a snap!

Displays on the top of your phone screen. You open the app and see what his snap entails of. It’s not long, maybe about five seconds long in total. It’s just him lounging without a shirt of course and he’s moving the camera to get his best angles. The smoothest thirst trap, of course.

You didn’t realize Emily had stopped talking to Kim about nail colors until, “Oh god is that Paul?” she asked in a playful tone.

You nod and chuckle as Kim asked, “What?”

“Already starting with Y/N. We haven’t been out of the house more than an hour.” Emily explains.

Kim shakes her head and laughs.

Since you were sitting in front of the window, you capture your angle, shoot your best picture, taking advantage of the good lighting.

Not even a minute later, he sends another one, it’s him recording himself again but he angles it at a certain part, going lower with the camera, teasing. He captions it with, “miss me?”

Before you could respond he’s already typing. He slides up to your story and responds with two heart eyed emoji’s.

“Earth to Y/N”. Kim says to you, wavering her hand a bit to bring your attention back to the present environment.

“Yes?” you reply.

“Come on, the lady is ready for you.” Kim says and points to a woman motioning you to come on over. Kim and Emily are already situated and walking to their spot with their designated nail tech.

“Did you pick a color?” the woman asks you.

You were too entrapped into what Paul was sending you to the point you didn’t even pick one.

“No not yet.” you sheepishly reply.

“It’s okay, you can pick it out later, let me just get you started.” The lady replied with and removes your existing polish that’s already on your finger nails. She then starts to cut down your nails some to even then out.

Your hands are now soaking in the small bowl, to soften up your cuticles so the tech can cut them. The nail tech gets up and gives you a wheel of colors for you to choose from. You opt for your favorite color because you haven’t quite made your mind up.

She dries your hands, cut your cuticles and tells you to wash your hands, dead skin evident on your fingers. You walk to the sink and wash them with soap and water. After you dry them, you don’t see the nail tech yet so you send Paul a snap with your fingers subtly showing.

“Mind helping me pick out a color?”

You sit back down and Emily and Kim are finishing up. Paul sends another one.

He tells you which color and finishes it off with:

“I want to see how they look when your hands are on me”

”You’re still going back and forth with him?” Emily asks.

You slightly jump and she laughs at your reaction and eyes the new color you picked out. “Let me guess, that’s what he chose for you?”

“Yes. Now leave me alone.” you say playfully.

Emily is done and she sits in an empty chair next to you and watches the nail tech apply color and make conversation to prevent boredom. Your nails are finished and you join Kim to dry your nails. When your nails are dry, you send him a picture of the finished product.

You all get back into the car and decide to do some clothes shopping. You want to just get a few basic staple clothes. You two are walking through the store, looking through different items when your phone buzzes again.

Paul sent you a snap!

Lights up on display once again.

“Y/N!” Kim says to grab your attention once again.

“Should I get this blue top? Or this red top?” she asks for your opinion.

“The red”. You quickly say, so you can see what Paul has sent you. She doesn’t notice the urgency in your voice, so she goes off into the fitting room to try them on just for last confirmation.

You open it. It’s a picture of him and he just says:

“I have an idea of what they can wrap around.”

You snap him back another selfie snap with clothes in the background.

“Come on Y/N..Will you take a break from Paul and get some clothes?” Emily says.

“Fine, fine.” you say and actually look through clothes.

Kim comes out and it turns out that she actually likes how the red top looked on her.

You look at a lace top and immediately like it. It’s not too revealing but it looks very classy and delicate.

“Im going to try this on.” you tell the girls.

“Try not to get lost in there.” Kim teases while Emily laughs and you roll your eyes.

You try on the top and it fits perfect. It looks how you would’ve thought it would be.

Paul sent you a snap

You open it, now that you’re alone and it’s a video of him with a few fingertips teasing the top of his shorts and it captions:

“Try something on and let me see.”

You send him a video of you showing off your top.

A knock is on the door.

“Y/N. Are you okay in there?” Kim asks.

“Yeah! I’m coming out now.” you reassure her.

You come out and show them what you put on.

“Cute!” Emily and Kim say in unison.

After getting a couple of more items, you all are ready to head back to the house. You all walk in and everybody says hi and welcome back. Emily immediately shows off what she got and asks Sam if he likes her nails. Kim does the same with Jared.

Paul comes to you and hugs you as if he hasn’t seen you in 2 whole years. “Did you have fun?” he asks you. You just nod and look back at him.

“She did. You should know.” Emily says and snickers.

“What are you talking about?” Sam asks in confusion.

“Paul kept snapping Y/N. It was hot and heavy.” Kim teases. Everyone besides you and Paul start laughing.

“Was that what you were doing? I caught him a couple of times posing.” Quil says.

“You were really interrupting our girl’s day just to let Y/N know how much you want to get in her pants.” Kim says and laughs again.

“Yea so?” Paul just says and the snickers from everyone didn’t die down not a bit.

[paintedgrilledcheese]

Cheese's 100 follower special part 1

(Thank you all for following me and sticking around to see what contents I post!!! For hitting triple digits I'm doing special posts. This one is all about the cut and unused content ideas/plans for RPs.)

(For the people who wanted to be tagged: @ilovefukuchi @myluckymoon @caffeiiine )

Each unplanned idea will be in character order of when I first created them.

Levi

There's a lot with Levi when I first made him. At first there wasn't a proper backstory for him other than that he was a traumatized guy.

Levi was already arrested in his backstory before, so my whole goal with him was to get him arrested again and sent back to prison.

This would have triggered a rescue mission, or a prison escape (in my head I made Sayaka and Oscar go save him)

On the same topic of rescuing Levi, I have this old idea I played in my head where Levi was supposed to be kidnapped by this ability user that had the power to trap people in this video game. Bro Levi would have been in a little cage like Princess Peach.

If Levi was ever brought back to prison I would have created a little headspace segment for him (kinda like omori)

Ross

At first, Ross wasn't supposed to be a military captain. Instead, he was going to be some doctor to kidnap Levi back for experiments. This was changed to fit the backstory more.

Ross and Levi were supposed to have this big fight at one point.

And Ross was supposed to die by Levi finally killing him but in a bitter sweet goodbye.

Dr. Ikari

He was supposed to be the more cold doctor, but instead, he gave a more "I don't give a crap attitude."

He was going to help capture Levi, only to calm him down.

Nothing much about him other than a potential death.

Cooper

Oh boy, there is so much for Cooper.

At first, Cooper wasn't going to be brought back entirely. All because the og Cooper was dead and it would have ruined some of Levi's character development. So instead, I made this Cooper from a different universe.

At first, I was going to have him wander around and ask multiple people, "Are you my master?" But on the first one with Shibusawa, I had him settle with him for a long time.

He was almost gay or bi, but I gave him a female love interest. (Also his "love" for Shibusawa was more so a obsession than actual love.)

Big one‼️ Cooper at one point before he killed X, was going to go back to X. Either through by getting fired or just plain manipulation.

There were going to be multiple times in which he got kidnapped but those never happened.

At one point, he was going to snap, but that never happened as well.

Richard Connell

He was going to be more of an evil, bad guy with a god complex. Now he silly.

Fiona Delgado

She was created to flirt with an older version of Shibusawa. That never happened.

She was supposed to work at a normal boring job but I changed it to be the Port Mafia.

Hunter

Was going to die, never happened.

He was going to be a cool priest, but now he works for the Special Operations Division.

Dr. Paul

Was supposed to hunt down every vampire and try to kill then all.

Perhaps give him a potential love interest in which the irony of it is that the love interest is a vampire.

Felix

He was supposed to be more angry and charming, but he's just some goofy guy who yells at his rival and is actually a lot more friendly.

He was supposed to be ability-less but him having a cool sword as his ability sounded cool.

At one point, Lance (from Prime Softwares) was going to change Felix's "programming" and make him go on a murder rampage. Possibly a really intense boss fight with X.

Prime Softwares

Lance was supposed to die (he's barely alive but he's alive)

Lance and Grian were supposed to have this discussion and Lance would have threaten to deactivate Grian.

At one point, Grian would have completed a mission, but Lance would deactivate him anyways for a more new and improved model.

So Grian was almost a box of scraps for anyone to take.

The whole thing with the androids was to learn how to fuse ability user's blood into androids so androids could have said ability from the user. Basically weapons.

Because Lance wanted to take over the world with these androids.

At one point Grian was going to turn on Lance and attack Lance instead.

[ghost-with-most]

𝕬𝖘 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖛𝖊, 𝖘𝖔 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖔𝖜

chapter 2;

tw: mentions of somebody disappearing

After meeting Johnny the days went by without a trace of him, it was as if he had disappeared from the face of the earth. 

To add to that, something weird was going on. There were days where David just couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. 

Whether it was on the boardwalk, in a bar, or damn, even during a kill in an isolated area of the beach or a dark alley - he always felt a pair of eyes staring a hole in his back but, when he turned around, nobody, or nothing was behind him.

He was starting to get a bit frustrated and it reflected in the way he was treating the others. He was moodier - as if he wasn’t already - snappier. He was also a bit more paranoid than usual. Something was clearly going on.

The others were weird too. Always on edge. 

The thing is; they all felt it. They all felt those eyes stalking them in the dead of night as they were doing whatever. 

Dwayne was alert, more than usual. At the slightest sound he would jump and stare into the darkness. He would look frantically in the shadows for someone or something - he always found nothing. 

Paul was paranoid, what if somebody was spying on them? What if they knew they were vampires and they wanted to hurt them. Maybe he should stop smoking so much weed.

Marko was pissed off most of the time. The fact that he couldn’t pinpoint what the source of that sensation was, was frustrating him. He would kill his victims with far more anger, lashing his frustration on them and sometimes on the boys too.

This, of course, led to a lot of discussions and petty arguments. Whether it was Dwayne being paranoid when Marko almost got himself burnt alive because he almost didn’t make it in time to the cave after a kill, or whether it was Marko being angry at Paul for one particular joke of his or Paul not understanding why everyone was so calm, or David being angry at everyone for the slightest inconvenience, the slightest delay, everyone was on edge, at their throats. 

It got so bad that sometimes they wouldn’t even talk to each other. 

Even Max would soon find out how much on edge they were.

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

They were at the video store, all together. David was talking to Max about what was going on and the others were roaming around.

“Man, I feel weird even here. And it’s certainly not because of the poor choice of horror movies in this place. Really chucky in the slasher movies’ section?” Paul said.

“You feel weird everywhere, smoke less weed. It’s getting to your head.” Marko snapped.

“And yet you don’t seem to have a problem smoking it.” Paul responded as he shot his head toward him.

“You still smoke more than me.” Marko replied. And another argument began. 

Dwayne tried to stop them “C’mon kids be nice to each other.”. But it was no use. 

“What does quantity have to do with this weird…feeling anyways? Besides, you are being a bitch these days. Guess you should try having less dick up your ass, Marko!” Paul snapped.

Marko, snapped his head towards him and stared, then launched himself at Paul. 

That’s when David and Max interrupted the conversation to separate the two and then drag them to the back to have a more private conversation. 

“I leave you for 5 fucking minutes!!” David shouted at them. Then turned to Max “See? This is what I was talking about.” 

Max nodded “I’ll look into it, but I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. You’re just going through a phase. You all worry about each other. Go have fun together and it’ll pass. Besides, there are no hunters around for now, but I have taken some precautions.” He went inside again and when he came back there was a kid with him. He had shoulder length hair and a blue jacket. 

“Why don’t you take care of him and show him around?”

His presence kind of helped the guys as now they had to actually worry about something (or rather someone), but actually what did the trick was Max’s words. The fact that he had dismissed their worries made them believe that was, maybe, a quickstep.

His name was Laddie. They welcomed him with open arms and after a few days the mood changed. 

Dwayne was like a dad to him and he was in charge of the more practical aspects of taking care of him - providing for him in any way possible, teaching him how to read, looking after him.

Paul and Marko were essentially his playmates. He played tricks on the others with Marko, while Paul took him to some questionable events (concerts and forbidden sections of the video store) - much to the dismay of Dwayne. David was all in all neutral, after all he was just a kid, it was of course a new preoccupation to the list, but he didn’t mind that much and he was better with them than if he was alone. 

So they started going out with lighter souls and while the feeling was still there, it seemed that things were going well.

Except… 

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

One particular night the group had gone on the boardwalk together. 

Dwayne felt like staying close to David. Maybe he would wander a bit and have fun with Laddie, but at the same time he wanted to keep himself and everyone in range of vision.

The others had decided to wander off into the crowd. Marko and Paul wanted to let loose. With this newly found peace they wanted fun, they craved it. 

David wasn’t particularly worried, as he watched Marko and Paul disappear in the crowd, but he was vigilant . 

He waited a bit and then told Dwayne that he would go looking for a victim. 

“Wait for me here.” and after Dwayne gave him the heads up he needed, he headed towards the sea of people.

That day it seemed there were more people than usual, probably because it was the middle of July. A really hot July. And people (or rather humans) just loved going out on summer nights. "I almost feel bad for them" he thought as he scanned person after person to find his victim. 

But as he was caught up in his search he suddenly stopped. The feeling had come back and this time it was stronger than before. It felt big and dark and it felt like it would hurt him. Hurt Marko and Paul. 

He decided to see if they went back to Dwayne on the beach.

“Did you see Paul and Marko?” David asked Dwayne.

“No, I last saw them when they said goodbye.” he responded. 

“Fuck”. 

He tried to contact them telepathically to make sure that they were ok. Nothing. 

“It doesn’t feel right”, Dwayne could see the worry on David’s face. He had known David for so long that he had learned how to discern the emotions that he tried to hide because he was the leader, because he had to protect them, because they were brothers, because he loved them and he would risk it all for them if anything happened.

But as he was thinking Dwayne felt the same dark sensation lurking, alerting him. He was scared, scared for Marko and Paul. He looked at laddie and he was scared for him too. What if it could harm him? 

“We should go looking for them.” Dwayne said.

“Yes. You go left and I go right.” 

“Follow me bud.” he said to Laddie.

And they were off into the crowd. They looked for Paul and Marko everywhere. Attractions, shops, diners, places to get drinks, even clubs, record stores, vhs stores. Nothing. And the feeling was always there, all too present for both David and Dwayne. 

David was starting to get more erratic, he could contact mentally Dwayne which was a good and a bad sign. The fact that he could, meant that he wouldn’t lose him, but why couldn’t he contact Marko and Paul? He was constantly checking on Dwayne. 

And Dwayne, on the other hand, was just as anxious. Constantly checking on Laddie too. 

They agreed to head back to the beach. 

They constantly tried to contact them but there was no response. 

David was about to suggest to Dwayne to contact Max when he saw them. Paul and Marko were by their motorcycles. 

David was furious with them and he stormed their way. Followed by Dwayne. 

The feeling had changed, it was less heavy and it almost felt as if it was…amused? It was like a gentle laugh and it infuriated David even more. He didn’t like being made fun of. By whatever. 

“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU TWO BEEN, UH?” he screamed at them

“We just went around some stalls and grabbed some drinks” Marko replied “No need to get so pressed about it.”

“We couldn’t contact you, Marko, both of you.” Dwayne tried to ease the situation.

“And the feeling was back” David continued with a serious tone. 

“Oh come on David, you’re just paranoid.” Paul replied with an annoyed tone.

“We didn’t feel anything, besides even Max said that it’s nothing to worry about. Let loose a little” marko finished his sentence and there was a pause.

David got closer to him and he grabbed his jacket David was furious with a rage that he couldn’t describe as his.

“Paranoid, uh? Do you think it’s funny? Do you even know what could happen to us if we were found by…” but before he could continue

“Hey, guys what’s up!” a familiar voice chimed. “Oh did I interrupt something?”.

It was Johnny. 

David turned around to get a look of him; he was wearing a white tank top that looked like he had cut himself, a leather jacket and a pair of blue denims and dirty sneakers. In his left hand there was a plastic glass of beer that he brought to his lips to drink all the while looking at David with a glare that he could quite make out. It was mischievous and smug. 

“Hey, J where have you been?” asked Paul excitedly getting close to him. 

While Paul grabbed his right arm in a handshake he answered “I’ve had some work to do.” 

Johnny looked at the others “and you guys? Where have you been? Oh hey little bud.”

Dwayne got closer too “The usual, having fun… what work did you do.” 

“A family friend. I work at his club.” he answered 

“Oh really, I’ve been to a lot of clubs, which one?” replied Paul.

Now Johnny had the attention of everyone. Marko and David too, after they cooled down. 

“His club is The Lily.” 

“Oh really!?! I’ve always seen the craziest stuff go down there.” Paul hollered. Johnny smiled, not exactly pleased with the statement.

“So you guys are down for any fun?” he wanted to change the subject

“Hell yeah!!” they all hollered. 

Except for David he was behind the others looking at the scene. 

As they got closer to the life of Santa Carla, Johnny started to be left behind, slowly finding himself closer to David.

“So did you find your sister?” David asked while looking in front of him as to check what the terror twins and Dwayne were doing. Laddie was running around but he stopped to listen. Marko quickly glanced at them, he had heard the question. 

“No, not yet. But I’m not worried, she’s a tough cookie. We’ll find her.” he answered. 

“How long has she been missing?” he continued, not looking at Johnny yet. 

“Almost seven months.” his tone was less cheerful than before and he chugged what was left of his beer. They still hadn’t looked at eachother.

“And why did she leave?” Laddie had found enough courage to ask the question. 

Johnny took a deep breath. “Touchy subject” David thought to himself. He turned slightly to his right to look at Johnny's face. He was clearly hurting a bit.

But as he was studying him, he turned around too, to look at him,and he could have sworn that when Johnny locked his pale blue eyes with him, David felt Johnny’s heartbeat quicken.

“We don’t know bud. A lot of stuff happened, all at once. Maybe she wasn’t ready. Sometimes people just want to leave, but it’s not forever.” he said as he looked away.

“Do you have a picture of her? Maybe we’ve seen her.” Marko chimed and with that Johnny was brought back to reality as he shook his head.

“Yes actually,”Johnny replied, fishing in one of his back pockets to take out a wallet “here you go” he said as he opened it and five photos came out. They were in one of those plastic things where you could put more than one picture and it would open falling down. The sight had caught the attention of the other boys too. 

The first picture was one of a little girl, dark hair and a missing tooth smiling wide. 

The second picture was one of a girl, still with dark hair-the same that the kid and johnny seemed to share apparently- and bright eyes though the colour was impossible to decipher as the pictures were in black and white. She was smiling and she was waving at the camera. David felt weird looking at her, maybe it was because of the cross necklace around her neck.

The third picture was one of a girl, sitting on the front porch of a house wearing a white dress, she had a cigarette in her hand and she was looking at the camera, she had the same penetrating stare of Johnny but with a set of untamed hair.

The fourth picture was one where the four siblings were all together. The kid, the brunette, Johnny, the wild haired girl and a blonde girl. They were all smiling except for the blonde. 

The last picture was a picture of the blonde girl. Her face looked concentrated, she wasn’t looking at the camera, but in front of her. Her blonde hair was lit up by a ray of sunshine that came from behind her. Her nose was pronounced, a kind of nose that some would describe as European, her eyes were big and her eyebrows slim, slightly scrunched, her mouth seemed to be dark in colour, but the black and white was unforgiving. She wasn’t wearing fancy clothes, but she looked elegant, maybe it was her posture.

“The first is Sonny, in a few months she’ll be twelve. This is when she had lost one of teeths. What’s your name bud? ‘Cause you two could get along” he turned to Laddie.

“I’m Laddie.” he said excitedly, then he turned to Dwayne who encouraged him, probably to remember what to say. “Nice to meet you, you are the buzzcut guy that fights like a beast.” 

Everybody laughed. Clearly he had picked up on one of the conversations between the guys. But Johnny didn’t mind.

“Yeah, sound fitting. Anyways the second one is Hagata. She's ok, a sweet girl. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. She moved here with me”. Johnny saw Paul open his mouth “No she’s not the one missing.” he said with a soft chuckle.

“Third is Lydia…” 

“I like that one!” Marko interrupted.

“First she’s my sister. Second, chances are she won’t like you. She’s a pain in the ass.”Johnny replied sternly.

“Hard to get, sounds fun!” Marko replied and Johnny shot him a glare that could kill 100 men instantly, his cold eyes brighter than ever. But he turned back to the pictures.

“Fourth is us at our old house, a while before Mo disappeared.” David looked at Johnny; he looked at the girl in the picture and there was no denying he was sad. He lifted his eyes to look at David that was on his left and he felt it again: his pulse had quickened. Maybe he liked him.

“And this must be her then.” Dwayne pointed at the last picture.

“Yes it’s Morgan. She’s always been quiet, but my god Sonny adores her. She misses her a lot. Kinda reminds of you and the little bud, Dwayne.” 

“Damn she’s hot!” Paul exclaimed as he got closer since he was left a bit outside of the circle that had formed. Everyone laughed. Even Johnny, a cringed and slightly pained laugh.

He put away his wallet, and there was a small pause.

“We haven’t seen her but if we do we'll let you know” David reassured Johnny. 

He got closer to him and again he felt his heartbeat pick up. He put his right arm on his shoulders and his heart didn’t stop running. 

“Let’s go have some fun, shall we?” and as the others hollered and screamed with excitement they got lost in the crowd.

[the-firebird69]

Train - "Drops Of Jupiter" (Official Music Video)

And he's the bastard child of the universe my husband says it's because the max forced us to do it and they paid quite a bit but they don't really care they're weirdos now they do they get angry but they had to do it and they think it's 100% and this guy keeps asking and saying is a kid and he doesn't look like this is not a race he doesn't understand. We never talked to you and never Incorporated you we don't have you do stuff like you think or not your friends since you've turned on everybody meaning we never were we had a parallel a little one and now we have nothing he keeps saying these freaking songs and say the stupid s*** you're a nutcase Trump and you need to be fired and they won't you're hanging around their necks and they're half dead threatening us I've had it with this crap drops of Jupiter we went through what that is apparently you're calling yourself Zeus and you blow your own brains out tripping and you hit yourself with the shotgun and it is you and you do it parsley dead again and she gets it in her hair and you're calling Lily Jupiter no they're calling her me cuz you're nuts and she looks like Melissa for years and was actually sitting there with garth okay that was his sister but seriously she looked a little like me but not too much but you're an idiot. The blood from yourself gets into Willie's hair Lily her hair and some idiot is trying to marry her thinking that it's me and something happened to my husband is figured so you can get this whole church full of s*** heads who are such evil sinners that they should all be burned immediately and it's so stupid and yeah Paul dodos is the evil one for Christ's sake and they say they're fighting over this some sort of empire and we're not really fighting over it you know we're not fighting ballem it's too small he is too small his force is too small but he's trying for stuff and he says how does it work there in Saturn and their candy cans and has to do with George and two houses and he's Giants and he says this it's actually about the movie says so yeah you're sitting there telling the truth to find it to be a little strange. He looks up and says good God this is weird and he told her and they said what are we doing he knows what can we do what else can we do and it's his son and people have found evidence and proof all over the place and I'm sorry I dropped your house last week it broke into about 15 million pieces just kidding it looks like your house. So he's asking her about the house for like a week and she said there's a whole bunch to get crushed and they're like a mile into the Earth and he goes and he looked it up I'll find out the footprint was 10 miles long and said people can do that I said yeah Dave and so he started to say this these guys are fighting and since I wonder if it's better to build your house on Rock probably not he started laughing and said yeah that's great so we're having a fun time and they're fighting each other and it's bja and Trump others are getting ready to defend it's a huge war right now and it is Thursday going on to Friday and his rent day and he should be okay. More things are coming up but right now they are battling

Hera and you're welcome Zeus

Some very emotional thing for the two this guy is an a****** and he needs to be stopped but he's seeing things we need out there singing them he's got an odd questions but we don't like that but they even answered and it happens to him is gross and people are making it happen. There are a few things going on

+there is a war and bja is trying to get to the bunkers and stashes and caches with huge armies and they're going at it and he is sending more and is trying to get to Earth with ships and then stopped and Trump is and they're stopped it's a giant war they both had around 0.5% out there and they're pretty much gone through those and then they brought 1% in each and those are cut in half and they have 1% more each so it's 4.5% total and they're down to 3% roughly it's a little lower now and I hear 2.5% and I used to send more that's a lot if they lose just that they are going to be broken in half almost off Island and on Islands Derek being cordoned off they can't get big forces off right now they need ships and they're fighting each other and bja has Star blazers and stone chips too and about 800 billion total versus $700 billion of trump the fighting is intensifying and there's other wars going on down there the max are at the clones and the corners are at the max and it's a huge war nings have made some progress and breached for Bunker complexes in three areas so roughly one each and two bunker complexes in one area each of those areas has about five complexes so they're not really getting head but they have information three out of the four are in Europe and Northern Europe the others are experiencing heavy fighting constantly and the economy is starting to come back cuz they need stuff and they're ordering things and making it happen and getting involved. They have enough information now.

#earlier there about 200 billion more shifts off Titan and 300 billion of DGA both were cut in half they're fighting fiercely now and we think they both might disappear, off of the tall ships that is they have 100 billion each of three parties and they're all down to around 20 billion it'll be out shortly, at Mars they had 100 billion each and they're down to 10 billion each that would be out shortly in total they have about two trillion chips left and pretty soon last they sent a few hundred billion to Earth in total and they're still trying to get here and they are going to resupply their war and we think they'll knock another $500 billion out to be down to 1 trillion by tomorrow morning quite easily and that will start to go and the pseudo empire has two trillion but they usually win but they're not big enough right now to stop them and tell me if it's doing the job and he's trying to raise shifts desperately he's trying to get shifts yet and is going on now soon it'll be over

Thor Freya

Olympus

[emptymanuscript]

Oh, hey, look at that:

This video starts off with so much of my favorite exemplar villain. And goes on to many of my other favorites. But, to remind everyone, this video I trot out every election season is also Paul Weyrich.

Man, he was something, wasn't he.

He is so very "concerned," not for the people whose human rights we ARE violating but for what could happen if the mess he created got turned around on him. Basically, he didn't want what Bush was doing (and Donald Trump is currently promising to do) unless it is a lock that a Republican is doing it. And he knew it wasn't a lock.

What a villain.

But it is really worth emphasizing that although Weyrich is dead, he died in 2008, his vision of minority authoritarian pro-business, pro-Christian control is very much alive and well.

The excellent Heritage Foundation video at the top mentions the talking points memo that goes out to everyone.

This is no joke.

It's the underlying reason you see stuff like:

Sinclair botched this one and got caught. Because it was too long a script and too easy to trace.

But if you've ever noticed that all of the sudden, everyone on the right is using the same buzzwords on the same topics, they come from these think tank memos. If you're on the list, you just get a memo.

I had a friend who was, for a little while, on the list. He got a DAILY memo. Every day they sent him the talking points memo. And he could read along as he watched the newscasts. The talking points were all generally the same. Again, they're usually much smarter than the Sinclair message, it's usually no more than a sentence or two and mostly emphasizes HOW to say things, what words to use for certain concepts.

The memos are very short. And at the end of each memo, it references another memo.

So the Daily Memo was about a page. Easy enough to read, reference and memorize. And if you need more information, go read the Weekly Memo again.

And if you need more than the Weekly Memo provides, go read the Monthly memo.

If there's a big emergency, a memo of the moment will get sent to you and mention reading the Daily Memo for more information.

The information age has given the Republicans the perfect way to hide the connection between the body of itself and the many heads of the hydra. It's all in private email lists. I'd bet good money they've even done it better now and it's all on Discord servers with the page rigged so you can't right click and print screen and they can know exactly who can sign on.

Because they don't JUST send this stuff out. You have to know someone. You had to know someone on the list to sign you up for the list. That's how my friend got on it while he was on it. And there's some kind of renewal system which we don't know, so people get kicked off to prevent leaks. Because the last thing you want is some kind of mashup like the Sinclair crapshow. It is absolutely meant for the faithful and the powerful.

Do they believe this stuff?

Some do. Some don't. It doesn't matter. Because they say it. And they walk people through it.

That's a big part of Fox news' power. There are literally hundreds of millions of dollars per year for smart people just to sit around and try to think up how to convince people how to think the way the Think Tanks want people to think. They send their ideas out and that gets made into the memo. And it gets passed to everyone who matters. Every day. More if necessary.

And Fox News obeys the memo. Not reading it like the Sinclair message. Again, that was a botch. Nope, it starts off in the morning with somebody mentioning that "some people" are saying X. Around lunch time they start asking, hey, what do you talking heads think about X that some people are saying. In the afternoon, it's look, so many people are thinking X, we have to take it seriously. Then it gets to later shows with the big guns who bellow about how YOU should think X. The next day, assuming the message doesn't get overwritten, the morning show statement that some people are saying X is actually true this time, because YOU are now saying it because of the messaging from the day before.

No one it totally immune to this cycle. This is the Overton window in action. It is legitimizing a stance by moving it from non-existence to a standardized take in nothing flat. It's taking viewers from here's an idea, here's support for the idea without a push except to acknowledge that the idea exists, here's an "authoritative" support for the idea (and while they've generally cut it now, they used to also get the worst believable person they could find to support the counter argument so opposition would gain the air of stupidity against the talking head who was good at defending a thesis they had been practicing for hours). Then they push an appeal to the masses, go along with everyone. And finally they make an appeal for you to act - think this way we want you to. Which is only made after a whole slew of arguments, framed the best way money can buy brains to frame it, to convince you. So, it's darn effective.

Lots of sources no longer definitively means lots of INDEPENDENT sources. The GOP and Heritage Foundation are pioneers in abusing that loophole.

And, yes, that IS why you have to vote. That is why it is important to make statements against Republican stances. That is why it is important to poke holes in that logic. Because there is a huge force of money, power, and influence behind their message. And that is a problem.

Not just for liberals, democrats, and/or anti-Republicans. It is, as the Sinclair mashup pounds home, a threat to American democracy because it is lots of disparate tiny voices trying to argue with a giant well oiled messaging machine. It is an entire gargantuan system meant to move the country against its better judgement and will to a self harming position.

Is there some massive deep conspiracy to steal the next election?

It depends on how you define conspiracy.

If you define it like thieves all connected and colluding together for a giant heist like an Ocean's 11 movie. No. That's not happening.

If you define it like stochastic terrorism where Trump just mentions how a certain people are bad and suddenly, for some apparently random reason, hate crimes against those people spike. But it's all people that not only don't know Trump, they don't know anyone who knows anyone who knows Trump. They were just "inspired" by him to actually act the way he wanted but only talked about and never did or told them to do himself.

Then, yes. They are absolutely doing that and making damn sure that their voice carries in such a way that everyone who could possibly benefit their goal by acting hears the passive aggressive order to do so. They spread the message daily. Literally. More if they have to.

Our world is not an accident. It is the result of decades of relentless and profoundly difficult work being done by people who are good at that job, even if they're idiots in every other way.

And if that is not the world you want, then, yeah, you have to put some kind of effort into opposing them.

It's also worth noting, in spite of the negative tone, that there is work and effort happening. There is more push than there has ever been and it is getting stronger to match their work. So it's also time to keep hope.

We absolutely CAN stop them.

We absolutely CAN undo the damage they've done.

It's just going to take DECADES. The same as it took them.

You don't have to finish the work. Better: it isn't possible to finish the work. AND you still have to do it. Because the work has to be done. There will be no miracle. There will be no great savior to ride in and fix it all. It's just a lot of steady hard work. Which isn't fun but has the benefit of being something we can all do. And we can all pick up the slack from each other. We don't have to be the great savior with a miracle at hand. All we have to do is work as much as we are safely able to do and then pick it up again. Slow and steady. Every time.

Remember, 70% of the US voting population is not Republican and doesn't like their policies.

70%.

We are the majority in that regard. Not a tiny majority. The real majority. And if the majority of us agree that we don't want Paul Weyrich's America enough that we all show up, all this scheming is going to be nothing but a Trump speech. A lot of bloviating, braggadocio, hot air, and bullshit that, in the end, does absolutely nothing.

But agreement is necessary. You have to pick a side and mean it. You've got to decide that it is more important to vote for the possibility of a different world than to give up hope that this world is awful.

Vote.

And vote in the way that will make sure Republicans can't win.

That's it. Those are the choices in the non-ideal world we live in.

[kimhargreeves]

Teach Me- Christian Lorenz x Reader

Summary: You've been friends with the men from Rammstein, throughout the years you've gotten closer to them but haven't been successful with the guy who you've known for years, Christian also known as Flake. One day you ask him how to play the piano and he teaches you more than that. (Warning: Smut)

(Decided to write my own one shot cause there's a huge lack of Rammstein fics, like why?! I've been dying to read more but no one will write. Flake is underrated so I decided to write about him. Richard will be the next one.)

Today has been an extremely rainy day. Rammstein had to cancel one of their concerts here in Berlin, so that meant they had a free day, to relax and do whatever they want. I was excited for today since I'm the one who sells their merchandise at concerts, but I could tell the boys were bummed about today.

They wanted to play today and give the fans a memorable show. The fans love them and so do they but the boys so need a day or two to relax every now and then.

"It's fucking raining outside so much." Till said looking through the window and cursing more in German.

"It's not to bad, I like the rain and so does (Y/N)." Richard came to sit next to me and wrapped his arms around me.

Richard had always been a flirt to me, but he did it for a reason because he knew who I've always had a crush on. "Quit picking on her, Kruspe

"You're too overprotective of her sometimes." Paul said and Christoph nodded.

"She's like a second daughter to him." Oliver muttered to his band mates.

"I am not! Well, are you all hungry or not?! (Y/N), has let us stay in her apartment until we confirm when the show will start again."

Till and all of the guys were going to leave to being some lunch. We were planning on developing another music video and we're still trying to figure it out. "Okay, well be careful." I said grabbing my notes and sitting back down by the table.

"Flake!" Richard shouted. We each looked back and saw him laying on my couch with a book covering his face.

"He's dead."

"Nah, he just feel asleep..I think."

"Let's leave him then. (Y/N), make sure he doesn't burn the house down." Till said shutting the door close.

I chuckled when I heard them shrieking and running away to cover themselves by the rain. "Finally, they're gone." I heard him say from the couch.

I turn around and see him lifting the book he was once entranced by. "I thought you were asleep." I raise an eyebrow at him and saw him adjusting his glasses back on his face.

"I didn't feel like going out, I'm tired and want to rest."

I smile to myself and fought the urge to laugh. "You look like a crazy person, what are you thinking about?" Christian as I like to call him, asked me in a serious manner.

"Remember when I used to annoy you all the time? All you wanted was to be on your own or be in a quiet place."

Christian let's out a small chuckle and remembers it as well. "You were such an annoyance when little, you still are."

I threw him my pencil I had in hand and laughed, he's lucky he's wearing glasses. Back then when I was a child, my parents were mostly working so they knew Chris's family, he wanted money for a piano so they made him work. And that work was to take care of me, I was about 10 and he was 15 at the time.

I made his life a living hell back then. "I couldn't help it, you were the only friend who stuck around."

"I didn't really considered you as a friend." He blankly says back while reading something in his book. I pout and ignore what he said.

"Anyway if we hadn't remained close then I wouldn't be here working for the band. If I recall, I was the one who insisted on you joining Rammstein since you were unsure."

I blush and remember the many times we spent together. He was older than me but I always liked having him around, he was always so distant from everyone but me, well sometimes.

"We've been through a lot together." Heh I also remember the many times I used to dye his hair and he'd be afraid of me since I accidently almost left him blind.

I gather my notes and tried to come up with a scenario matching the lyrics. Being creative was a big thing for the band, I'm lucky that I work with them but many times it's hard. Their lyrics and mostly their videos are controversial which made some people send us hate messages.

Till did say to keep things controversial and true to what the band stands for. I sigh loudly and got up from my place on the table and sat down by the piano.

"I can't seem to get inspired..who did you say is directing this video?" I ask without looking back and reading the sheet of note in front of me.

"Jonas Åkerlund. He's already directed a previous music video."

I place my hands on the keyboard and began to badly play the notes. "That sounds horrible."

"Hey! I'm doing my best, I'm not an expert like you. If you're so proud of yourself why don't you show me how to play." I suggest and stood quiet since I knew I asked him many times to teach me but he'd always refuse.

I nearly jumped up when I felt him behind me and Christian placed his hands on mine. "These are the correct notes." By this point I was no longer paying attention to the notes, but on him. I felt like a school girl again and felt my face turning red at how close I am to him.

"You spent an entire year in music class and never learned how to play piano properly." He sighs and now sat next to me.

"Your teacher was different than mine, yours was talented and mine would always fall asleep in his own class. The poor guy was in his seventies."

"Now watch how I play it." Christian was certainly an expert on it, he'd always be the best at playing the keyboard on stage.

I listened to the beautiful melody coming out of the piano and remained silent. "Speaking of highschool, I remember you used to flirt with many boys..and girls." I notice a small blush appear on his pale cheeks.

"I-I didn't flirt with everyone, besides it was to grab someone's attention. You see he was older than me and he never seemed into me so I gave up."

That was the truth. I made it seem like I was interested in in some people to try and make him jealous, but he never showed any signs of that or liking me back. So, I stopped flirting with him too and tried to focus on school back then.

I knew he didn't want to go out with someone younger than him at the time, so like always he remained to himself. It kinda hurt when I saw the rest of the guys of Rammstein later on, getting married and having kids. Everyone has kids now expect for me, maybe I am destined to be alone.

I glanced back and saw him tense up. He knows that I am talking about him, but he remained playing the piano. "Now, okay those right there and try to keep up with me." He said staring straight at the notes. So, I did as he told and we began to play piano together.

Of course I missed a few notes but he didn't mind it, that's what I also love about him. He's always been patient with me, always stood behind so I could catch up with him.

"I don't want you to get upset, but this video we're about to shoot is going to be...different." he cleared his throat and that made me stop playing.

"I know most of you are into bdsm." I waved it off and smiled. "It'll be like the last time, with you in dog collars? Or maybe-"

"It's something different..I don't think you being behind the scenes will be appropriate." He slowly said.

"We're adults, I'm sure I can handle it."

He hummed disapprovingly and stopped playing. "Okay, I'm sure you will." He turned to me and smiled. I lightly gasped when I felt his hand on my cheek and saw his dark eyes through his thick framed glasses.

"You haven't been paying attention again." He rolled his eyes but kept a smile on his face. "You haven't changed one bit. How about I teach you something else? Something that's going to be in the music video" Christian seemed uncomfortable in his seat for a sexind.

Before I could respond he quickly stood up and stood behind me now and held my both hands and placed them back on the keyboards. "Lightly press your finger here and this one over there." He gently held my hands and made them hit the correct notes.

Without noticing it I was playing correctly without help, but his hands were now gone. I gasped and felt a tingle in my stomach when I felt him kissing the back of my neck and his hands playing with my chest and cupping my breasts. I was now regretting not wearing that jacket. No! this is what I always wanted.

I blush and took a shaky breath when I pulled my hands back and felt one of his hands under my shirt and the other parting my legs and teasing my entrance through my underwear. I moaned when I felt his fingers rubbing my entrance starting to get me wet, I tightly grabbed his wrist to try and push him away but the pleasure was too much. No wonder why his fingers are so talented.

"Schau wie nass du bist, meine liebe." Christian whispered in my ear and he slowly inserted another finger inside of me and started pushing them in and out in a fast pace.

He made me stand up and pushed the seat away with his boots and pulled me closer to him. One of his arms tightly held my waist from behind while this other hand was playing with me. I cried out and was close to my release when he pulled his fingers out and began to undress me instead.

One of his hands was on my neck and it remained there when he pushed me on the bed, we made it to my small bedroom. I moaned and closed my eyes when he began to play and lick my nipples until his other hand came and played with the other one. I reached down and began to unbutton his tight jeans but when I was about to pull them down he grabbed both of my wrists and began to tie them up.

He began to undress himself and got rid of the leather jacket he had been wearing and threw it over by the corner. My eyes wandered down his bare toned chest, sure he wasn't as strong as the rest of the guys but he was perfect to me. He continued pinning me down to the bed and only in his boxers made my body tingle.

I laid down on the soft cotton sheets of the bed making sure to do as he told me to. He watched me and gave me a shy smile and began to kneel between my legs.

"Wie wäre es, wenn ich diese Muschi ficke?" He parted my legs and pulled my closer to him. I squeezed my eyes shut and moaned loudly when I felt his hot tongue.

He did the opposite of how innocent I thought he was and starts to move his tongue in and out, his nose bumping into my clit making me moan. With my hands bound together I grab his hair tight, he lets out a small moan and continues to eat me out. I cry out and lay my head back when he continues to lick me until I moaned his name and came hard.

Christian gives one last long lick leaving me to cry when he slowly pulls away and cleans his hand below the sheets. I slump back and giggle when I saw that he had still been wearing his glasses, he moves up the bed now, kissing my neck again with a sly grin on his face and finally kisses my lips and I feel him untying my wrists which were now red.

I move my hand down and realized he'd gotten rid of his boxers. My hand begins to palm him. Christian parts my legs once more and stands between them, my mouth falls open when he inserts himself in me and begins with a steady pace. "Please harder." I beg and as soon as I said that there was no going back.

He rested his hands on my hips and roughly began to slam into me. The bed begins rock a bit and I feel tears sliding down across my face from the intense please I was feeling. Christian quickly hooked my legs over his shoulders and slammed into me, making , me scream out his name louder. He thrusted into me mercilessly; his thrusts were hard and fast, he was going deeper then anyone had ever gone and I could feel the knot in my stomach threating to snap.

“Fuck your so tight, it feels so good,” Christian groaned as he buried his head in the crook of my neck, kissing the skin sloppily.

With a few more thrusts, my orgasm took over my body without warning. I screamed out Chris’ name along with some line of profanities that escaped from my lips

“Fuck Y/N,” Christian cried out as made a stop and sloppily thrusted into me again and came moments later.

After a few seconds Christian collapsed on top of me rode, both of our bodies, panting, and sweating.

“I have been waiting so long to do that." Christian shyly stated, now laying next to me. "I did always find your little crush on me adorable." He says smiling and brushing my hair away from my face.

"I'm so happy you finally feel the same." I happily wrapped my arms around him and rested my head on him and began to close my eyes.

[disco-cola]

it just really breaks my heart that i now more and more have to live through a time where so many of my beloved still-alive musicians and actors/actresses from the 60s and 70s die, just naturally of age or common age-related illnesses. it is sad but not that tragic anymore and i mean i am happy some of them got and will get to live to a high age because so many of their peers couldn't and i wanna be prepared if the news hit and not break down as bad as i did with bowie and prince but i never am. for me it will always hit like a punch straight in the face and into the heart because i am so immersed in an alternate reality and rarely ever know or want to know what those people looked like in recent years as it makes me harshly realize that no matter how much i tell myself that "in the big picture of time a few decades isn't much"- it is in one person's lifetime, thirty, forty or fifty years really do make a visible difference. when i think of mick and keith i see them like they were in 1972. same with paul and ringo. when i think of madonna she looks like she did in 1990. i see stevie nicks as her late 70s-early 80s self. the fact that david bowie, charlie watts, glenn frey, tom petty and eddie van halen are dead still blows my mind, my brain just thinks it's too unreal because they're so lively in my world. and the thing is, it has never been so easy to mentally live in another decade as it is right now cause you can really just watch and listen to whatever you want anytime online and there's just a plethora of music and music videos, movies, shows and general film clips and pictures especially from the 70s and 80s. just twenty years ago it wasn't that easy to mentally time-travel and you had to deal with what was on tv or the radio or had to go out and search for and buy what you wanted and i guess i can be grateful for at least that benefit i have now while not being able to experience the real thing.

but it is so painful that even though the 80s, my favorite, came after the 60s and 70s and you'd think that would make the struggle easier as it's less time (definitely easier than when i was primarily into the late 60s and early 70s), so many of its biggest stars are no longer around. michael jackson, prince, whitney houston, george michael all died not even having reached sixty or even fifty. and again i just keep forgetting it and when i read or hear it somewhere i am like fuck. what the hell. a friend sent me a picture of keith richards this morning and i saw it in the little preview window before i opened the chat and was still half asleep and before i opened the message and really looked at the picture and saw it was just a funny meme about him my heart began to race and my breath stopped cause i thought she sent me a screenshot of a news headline that he died. this is how on edge i am on a daily basis. it really ain't fun for me. is there era struggle therapy?

[127-mile]

DANS LES CATACOMBES | IN THE CATACOMBS. the sign above the door was written in french. it read: ARRÊTE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT. - paul aertker, brainwashed.

PAIRING: Hanse x gender neutral reader.

GENRE: Established relationship, horror, angst.

WARNINGS: Mention of bones, drugs and alcohol, non-explicit mention of cults, blood and human sacrifices, mention of deaths, of the use of a ouija board and voices.

PLOT: You thought a walk in the catacombs would be a nice date, but how wrong you were.

WORD COUNT: 1.5k.

A/N: This is part of the Legends never die, the untold stories collab hosted by @nayuyeons. The tags are a lot scarier than the fic.

“At the end of the 18th century, major health problems linked to the city’s cemeteries led to the decision to transfer their contents underground. The Parisian authorities chose an easily accessible site, then located outside the capital: the old quarries de la Tombe-Issoire, under the plain of Montrouge. The first evacuations took place from 1785 to 1787 and affected the most important cemetery in Paris, the Saints-Innocents.”

“The bones, previously left loose, are carefully organized in the walls, on the model of quarrymen’s hagues. On the front, the rows of shins alternate with those of skulls, while behind the facings pile up the remaining bones, often very fragmented by the consequences of their fall.”

“There are 6 million skeletons stored in the catacombs ossuary, which is about 3 times more than Parisians! The Municipal Ossuary of the Catacombs is one of the largest ossuaries in the world.” (i translated these parts from the catacombs website back from my doyoung catacombs fic, i just used them again)

You barely hear the guide's voice, far too busy trying to ignore Hanse's lips on the back of your neck, his hot breath against your skin, and his hands gripping your waist. Several times you have tried to push him away, but the lack of movement does nothing other than to prompt him to stay glued to your back.

"That's not what we're here for." you whisper as you step on his foot hard enough to make him wince.

"I'm bored, I already know everything he's telling us." he responds by letting his arms fall to his sides.

You know, he knows it, you were next to him on the plane when he was reading the catacombs website. But it is an obligatory passage before the special visit begins.

Because yes, it is not a visit like the others.

Normally, the Paris Catacombs tour happens during the day, when the sun is high in the sky, and only the accessible and secure parts are visited, but today is a special day.

The tour takes place at night, and what will be visited will be the caves where strange events are said to have happened.

"Do you think the rumors are true?" he asks in a low voice, he refuses to be heard by the guide, he prefers you answering him, rather than hearing the boring and slow voice of the man who has been doing this for far too long.

"Some people were traumatized by the caves, but they were also drunk and on drugs, so I don't know how much we can believe the rumors."

And the events happened more than fifteen years ago, so water has flowed under the bridges, and who knows if the rumors haven't changed over time.

He nods, and finally the guide starts moving so you take his hand in yours and you follow the group.

"Are we allowed to use professional equipment?" someone asks, and you hear the guide chuckle.

"I do not advise you to do it, the caves are very unstable, we do not want interference, or too strong waves to cause the caves to collapse on us. That would be sad, especially because you signed a waiver that   forbid you from suing us."

Always read the waiver before signing it, you think, looking around. The man stops in a first cave, and he clears his throat. You have the impression that a mere burst of voice could bring the place down. Everything echoes, even your breathing.

“Apparently in the 1980s a cult found a way to get to the catacombs to perform sacrifices. You would like me to tell you that these were animal sacrifices, but no. Authorities found remains of humans that have been drained of their blood right in the middle of this cave."

Looking over the shoulder of the person in front of you, you notice a dark stain on the floor, but it's not strong enough evidence to prove that it happened. It could be a wet stain, or some idiot spilling something on the ground years ago without the guide seeing it.

"Do you have something that has been proven? Because we are wasting our time."

Your eyes widen when you hear Hanse's voice. He really isn't the most patient person when it comes to a guided tour. You suddenly remember when you went through the most haunted museum in the United States, he practically pushed the guide aside to make the tour himself.

You don't blame him, you don't even get mad, it actually makes your heart beat a little faster.

"If you wanted to get to the good stuff immediately you should have entered illegally." the guide responds by continuing the tour.

About twenty minutes pass, the guide tells more stories as strange and impossible as the other. Hanse is getting more and more annoyed, you can feel it by the way he squeezes your hand every time he enters a new part of the catacombs.

"There are loads of haunted places in Paris, why did you choose the catacombs?" he mumbles, and you shrug your shoulders.

"Maybe because you've always wanted to visit them?"

"And here we are in the last cave. This one is dedicated to our impatient young man in the back of the line."

If Hanse had less restraint, he would certainly be insulting the guide, but instead he steps further into the cave. "Come on, surprise us with another made-up story."

"This one is not made up." he says in a firm voice, and Hanse throws his head back laughing. His laugh hits against the walls, and the echo makes you shiver in an unpleasant way.

"So you admit that the others are made up? What are you willing to do to make money." he answers, and you wonder if the guide will hit him when he clenches his fists.

"You gave me your money to hear these stories, so shut up and let the others enjoy."

"Come on baby, let him do his job." you whisper as you take his arm, your head resting against his shoulder.

“In the early 2000s, a bunch of teens decided to enter the catacombs illegally, and they got lost. Unfortunately, when they were found they were already dead. Since then, the people wandering too far away in the catacombs, or people who come to renovate say they hear voices."

Everyone is silent, even Hanse, which is strange.

"A video was found, a video that was never allowed to be shown to the public in an attempt to trace the identities of these people, but the police were allowed to watch it, and informations were leaked."

"In this video you can see the teens running, presumably being chased by someone. Or rather, by something."

Whether this story is true, or made up, your eyes widen, it's crazy.

"Some people can still hear the teens calling for help, screaming and crying because of the thing chasing them."

There is silence in the cave, and you look around, frowning. You don't know if it's because of the story, or some trick played by your mind, but it feels like you are hearing a claw all around you. As if someone was scratching one of the walls.

"Do you hear that?" you ask near Hanse's ear who nods his head.

“People, so called paranormal professionals came with a ouija board. And by wanting to talk to the teenagers, they called something more powerful, something even worse than what caused the teens' deaths."

Your blood freezes when you hear a sudden cry. The scream is so loud, and so close to your ear that you are sure if you turn around you will see someone behind you screaming their lungs out, but there is no one there. You do not feel any presence behind you, and even Hanse who is looking around, does not react.

"What was that?" you ask, panicked.

"One of the teenagers. They want to get out. They are tired of being locked up in the catacombs. And I understand them. It's hard to always be here, to have to listen to the cries of the grieving souls without being able to go out."

A new scream is heard, and this time, you have no choice but to put your hands against your ears to muffle the noise that could make you cry because of how loud and so full of pain it is.

"Stop it, make it stop, please!" someone exclaims.

If you are paralyzed, Hanse seems unable to stay still, he is ready to pounce on the guide who is scaring everyone. Who is scaring you, you, whose heart hasn't even raced in the most haunted places you've visited in the past three years.

"It's okay, we got it, you know how to tell stories, and you know how to scare us, now bring us back to the surface!" he growls, and the other tourists seem to agree with him.

Except that..

Except that when you turn in the direction of the guide, he is gone.

[fatiguing-thoughts]

“Natural” - Chapter Three - Embry Call x Reader

Honesty 

I let Embry drive to the secret spot. I felt it was easier than listening to him attempting to navigate. Also because “you can’t drive with your eyes closed” and I had to have my eyes closed or it’s not a surprise anymore. 

Oh how he is still the giant goof I fell in love with as a child, a preteen, and a teen. Embry Call was the love of my life for as long as I can remember. 

Embry started to blast our shared playlist on my radio. The car ride quickly turned into us belting out our favorite songs together. A dream come true if you ask me, I just wish I could see his beautiful face singing. 

“Can I open my eyes yet?” I asked, turning the music down.

“In a few minutes, we’re almost there, bean.” He rubs a small circle onto the back of my hand with his thumb. 

I felt the heat rush to my cheeks, and I tried to stop the giggle from leaving my mouth-- I felt myself smiling anyway. 

A few minutes pass, and I finally feel the car park. 

“You can open your eyes now.” 

I open my eyes and am met with an unfamiliar treeline. We aren’t parked in a designated parking lot; there aren’t even any signs. 

“Do you know where we are?” I ask him, surprised at how isolated this place seems. 

“Of course. I’ve been here a lot.” 

“Is this where you kill me?” I laugh. 

“Oh yeah, you caught me, bean.” He rolls his eyes. 

“Wait, Em. Quil and Jake said there’s been a lot of bear attacks. Is it safe in here?” I ask in a worried tone. 

“Bean, I would never let anything happen to you. A bear is not on my list of concerns.” He puts his hand on my lower back, continuing to walk us into the woods. 

“Okay, Em. I know you got huge and weirdly strong and everything, but, and no offense, I don’t think you could take a bear down single handedly.” I look at him with raised eyebrows.  

“Oh you’ve gotta stop doubting me. It’s safe here, though. I’ve never seen any bears here.” He smirks, leaning closer into me. 

“Okayyyyy there tough guy.” I chuckle, following his lead. 

We press forward, walking to the mysterious place. 

“It’s about a fifteen minute walk from here, not too bad.” He shrugs. 

“Sounds fair.” 

After about another ten minutes and then some, Embry tells me I have to close my eyes so the surprise isn’t ruined. 

“Em, I can’t hike with my eyes closed.” I laugh. 

“Get on my back.” He offers. 

“No, you absolutely cannot carry me the rest of the way. You’ll die.” Eyes widening out of my skull. 

“No, don’t be ridiculous. Either get on my back or I’m picking you up, bean.” He grins. 

“Em, I just-” 

My words were cut off from the quick swooping motion of Embry picking me up. He picked me up so effortlessly, leaving me surprised. 

“Okay, now close your eyes. We’re getting really close.” 

“Em, how did you do that?” I ask, eyes now closed. 

“It’s quite simple, really. I used my arms and I-” 

“Oh hush, you know that’s not what I meant.” 

His laughter was music to my ears. Hell, his voice was heavenly enough to put me into a slumber. I feel so weird, thinking so intensely about him. He’d probably think I’m absolutely nuts. Though, he seemed to watch every movement I’ve made since we met up, and hangs onto every word I say. 

I rested my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It soothed me, it almost put me to sleep. 

“You can open your eyes again.” He says as he gently puts me down on the ground. 

“Holy shit, Em.” I take in the surroundings around me. 

“You like it?” He asks, like an excited child. 

“Like it? I love it.” I tell him. 

I walk deeper into the clearing. It was surrounded by pine trees and a small river running through the end of it. 

“I thought you would. You always loved this kinda stuff when we were younger.” 

I turn around smiling at him, thrilled to see how much he valued me back then. 

“I did, I still do. I haven’t changed too much. I’m still (Y/N). And you’re still Embry.” I smile at him.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He awkwardly pulls his lips tight, pursing them together. 

 “Em, you’re the same Embry I’ve known my whole life.” I walk over, grabbing his hands and looking up into those deep chocolate eyes. 

“(Y/N), you really feel that way? You think I’m the same?” He asks with unsure eyes peering into mine. 

“Of course. Just a lot taller, warmer, and bulkier. Other than that, you’re the same soul I’ve known.” 

“Oh, bean. I missed you so much. Can I tell you something?” 

“Of course, anything.”

“Remember when we kissed before you left?” 

“I could never forget it.” 

“There isn’t a day where I don’t regret not doing that sooner. Doing it more. I wish that you didn’t go. I wish we weren’t apart for so long. I just wish I told you that I loved you before you left. Or even after, I wish I told you before today.” 

My breath hitched, and I couldn’t feel anything in my body anymore. I was in shock. My whole life I was in love with Embry, and now he’s telling me it was mutual? I always felt it wasn’t one sided, but I never thought I could be so lucky. 

“Em, I wish I knew. I’ve been in love with you since day one. I think about that kiss all the time. I’m so happy you felt the same way, I just wish either of us had the balls to say something. Especially when I was gone. Being so far from you for so long, it hurt. Being back with you, it feels so natural-- it feels so right. Seeing you again, I expected it to feel something… but what I felt when I saw you. I don’t understand what happened Em. It’s like everything around us stopped.” I try my best to explain my feelings. 

“I know, bean. I know. I have a lot of explaining to do today. That happened to me, too; a little more on my end. You being here is the best gift I could’ve asked for. I love you, (Y/N).” 

“I love you Embry.” 

“Can I kiss you?” His lip quivered slightly. 

“Please.” I looked up at him with pleading eyes. 

He bent down, one hand grabbing my waist, and his other holding the back of my neck. I wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling the warmth radiate off of him. 

The kiss was hungry, his soft warm lips intoxicated every fiber of my being. Chills ran up my spine, leaving me weak in the knees. This kiss felt like a thousand suns exploding, I never wanted this kiss to end. 

Embry pulled away a minute or so after the kiss started. Leaning his forehead on mine. 

“Wow.” I breathed out. “I know.” 

“I wanna do that more often, Em.” 

“We can, soon. I don’t want to rush either of us into anything, (Y/N).” 

“I understand. Thank you, Em.” I hug his waist tightly. 

“Of course, bean. I just want you to know everything before you decide anything.” 

“Embry, you have to tell me what’s going on. Did you kill someone?” 

“No, (Y/N). I never killed a person.” 

“Okay, so we’ll watch the sunset on the beach, and you can tell me all about it.” 

“Alright, let’s go back to the car and head over to La Push.” 

I nod and he grabs my hand, leading us back to the car. 

“How do you know your way around here so well?” I ask. 

“I’ve been here a lot.” He looks down at me, flashing me the signature Embry Call grin. 

Jesus, that face makes me weak in the knees, every time. Video chatting with him did it no justice. 

Our walk to the car was one of silence. It was a lot of longing stares at the other, listening to the sounds of nature. Enjoying the peace that Embry has never failed to bring me. 

We get to the car and I drive us to La Push, enjoying another car ride with the company of Embry. 

Getting out of the car, I grab the blanket I kept in my trunk and head down to the beach. 

Embry rolls out the blanket for us to sit on. I plop down and he follows, sitting close to me. 

“So, I just want you to know that I would never lie to you. Everything I’m about to tell you is the truth, and I can prove it. Okay?” He looks at me, dead serious eyes. 

“Alright, Em. You’re making me a little nervous.” I chuckle. 

“No, no. I would never hurt you. Just understand that before I tell you the rest.” 

I nod, worry starting to kick in.

 Hurt me? Why would I think he would hurt me?

“Okay, do you remember those stories that Old Quil and Billy used to tell us? Like when we were kids?” He asks me. 

“Yeah. I loved those stories. I thought they were great.” I smiled.

“I know, I remember you loved them. But, (Y/N), they’re true. The shifters are real. It’s all real. The cold ones, too. All of it.” 

“Em..”

“No, please. I can prove it. I just want you to be prepared.” He looks at me with pleading eyes. 

“Embry, on this hypothetical that it’s all real-- what are you trying to tell me?” I ask. 

“I’m a shifter. Jake, Quil, Paul, all of us. Seth, Leah, Jared, and Sam. We all can shift. We protect the land, the people from the cold ones. I promise I can show you.” 

“Okay. Show me, Em.” I look him dead in the eyes. 

“Well, I have to show you in the woods. These are tribal secrets, nobody is allowed to know. Only those in the pack, and their imprints, of course.” 

“Imprints? I don’t remember that part of the story.” I admit honestly. 

“Yeah Billy never talked about that much, he probably didn’t think we wanted to hear about it as kids.” He laughs a little. 

He stands up, reaching his hand out for me to take. I look up at his face, grab his hand and follow him into the woods. 

We walk a few minutes into the woods, out of sight from the beach. 

“Okay, just stand back for a minute, and just remember-- I promise I won’t hurt you.” 

“I trust you, Em.” I smile at him. 

Though I didn’t necessarily believe him, a part of me felt this was true. I never knew Embry to be crazy, and after all these stories came from somewhere. I just… I never expected it to be anything more than a legend. 

He smiles at me, nodding. He strips down to just his boxers, causing me to put my hand out, covering the lower half of his body from my sight. 

And that’s when his body began steaming. His body shook intensely. 

Before I knew it-- there was an enormous grey wolf in front of me. Standing on all fours, it was over six feet tall. This was a massive wolf. I looked down at his paws, easily bigger than my head. His head, bigger than anything I could’ve ever imagined. 

“Em?” 

The wolf nods, letting out a small whine. Walking over to me with his head low, showing me that there’s nothing to be afraid of. 

“Wow. You’re beautiful.”

I reach out my hand, running my fingers through the soft fur on his head. Scratching behind the ears. 

“So this was the secret? You’re the big bad wolf?” I ask, chuckling at my own stupid jokes. 

Embry took his head, nudging me on the shoulder as a way to tell me to shut up. 

“So, everyone I grew up with gets to turn into a giant wolf superhero, and all I get to do is lick my elbow? Something doesn’t seem fair here.” I laugh. 

Embry’s massive head lays itself on my shoulder, weighing it down enough to almost start hurting my neck.

“So this is what you were nervous about? That I would think of you differently? You’ve become one of my favorite stories growing up as a kid. You aren’t a monster, Em. I think you’re amazing.” I smile at him. 

He takes a step back, looking my in the eyes once more before grabbing his clothes off the forest floor. He runs behind some brush, I heard some bones cracking before I heard Embry shuffling in the bushes. A moment later he returns in front of me. 

“Thank you, (Y/N). I was just afraid of how you’d take this. I didn’t want you to be afraid of me, or want nothing to do with me. I know it’s a lot to take in.” 

“It is. I honestly still feel a little whacked out, but I meant what I said, Em. You are such a light in my life, and you always have been. Em, you scared me before. I didn’t know what to expect but… this is workable. My best friends are shifters, they’re incredible. This is magical, Em.” I smile at him.

He walks over and hugs me tight. 

“Thank you for accepting me, bean.” He whispers into the top of my hair. 

“Of course, Embry. But why are you so worried about the way I would react?” I ask. 

“Well, I’ve been hiding it from my mom for over a year, I just want her to stay out of the drama it brings. I was afraid of hiding it from you, too. But I also didn’t want to lie, I wanted us to stay comfortable. But, it’s a dangerous world. I wanted you to stay being my little bean.” He smiles softly at me. 

“I’ll always be your little bean, Em. I want you to be honest with me, always. No judgment here.” I smile. 

We walk back to the beach as the darkness falls. 

“So, imprinting?” I ask. 

“Ah yes, imprinting. It’s kinda like a soulmate-- whether that be platonic or romantic. It happens after you phase, if you’re lucky. When you first meet eyes with them, everything stops. It’s like all of a sudden, whoever you imprint on becomes your world. It’s not gravity holding you down to the Earth anymore, it’s them. You’d do anything, be anything for them. A brother, protector, a lover… but it’s all up to you. You get to choose this, (Y/N).” 

“Oh wow. So I’m… I’m your imprint?” I ask. 

“Yes, you are my imprint. You get to control it all from here.” He looks at me with a hopeful look in his eyes. 

“Well, Em. I’ve loved you my whole life. This is what I wanted, and if it’s what you’ve always wanted… then why fight it? I agree that we should take it slow but, I want you.” I breathlessly answer him. 

“(Y/N), you don’t know how happy this makes me.” 

I lean up, kissing him on his lips again. This was a feeling I would never get used to.

“Thank you.” He says, almost short of breath. 

“No, thank you, Em.” I lay my head on his warm chest once more. 

We sat back down on the log once more, his arms wrapped around me, keeping me warm. 

“So, can I ask you some questions?” I ask. 

“Of course.” 

“So, how hot are you? Like temperature wise.” 

“Jake said 108.9. So I’ll trust his word on that.” 

“Holy shit. You really are my dream space heater.” I giggle. 

“I love keeping you warm, so it works for me.” He kisses the tip of my nose. 

“Next one, so the cold ones. Those are vampires. That means that they’re real? And they’re here?” 

His face drops, realizing the heavier question. 

“Yeah. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, ever. Ever since the Cullens moved back, we started phasing. Bella’s dating Edward Cullen, yes. But they only feed off of animals, so they call themselves vegetarians, if you will. Anyway, since they’ve come back we’ve had issues with some nomad vampires. One especially keeps coming back for Bella. She’s been running on our land a lot, she’s just hard to catch. We’ve been trying to catch her, too.” 

“So you say catch her, but you’ll be killing her, right?” 

“Yes, (Y/N). She’s dangerous, she’s a rogue vampire on the hunt for revenge and blood. It’s what we were made to do.” 

“No, I know. I just wanted to make sure. Just saying, you said you’ve never killed a person, low and behold you have killed vampires, though.” I tease. 

“Oh, technicalities. They’re already dead. It’s to save everyone.” He nudges my shoulder. 

“I know, Em. But the Cullens, they’re good?” I ask. 

“Kinda. I still don’t trust them all that much but we are civil. We have a treaty.” 

“I see. So who knows?” I ask.

“The pack, the Cullens, Bella, Billy and Harry, and the imprints. Though there’s only three of you guys right now. You, Emily, and Kim.” 

“Ah I see.” 

“I’ll introduce you formally to the rest of the pack tomorrow at our bonfire. You get to come to those.” He smiles at me. Pulling me closer into his chest. 

“Quil’s coming, be prepared.” He tells me. 

“What? How do you know?” I look around for Quil nearby to no avail.

“I hear him and Jared.” Embry tells me.

“From where?” I ask. 

“I don’t know, they’ll probably get here in a few minutes.” 

I look at him in disbelief, wondering how correct he was. 

In the meantime, he explained to me the other perks of being in the pack. The mind connection, the healing abilities, speed, and strength. It was all so amazing, I couldn’t believe it was real. Apparently the “bears” were vampires-- I knew there were no bear attacks.

“Hey what’s up dorks?” Quil interrupts a few moments after Embry told me. 

“No fuckin way.” I look at Embry in disbelief. 

“At least a mile away.” He boasts. 

“So she knows now?” Quil looks between us. 

“Yeah, I know it all now, dork.” I mock. 

“Ooh Embry, you finally joined the imprint club. I’m Jared, I have the best eyesight and I’m the most handsome. I know we’ve met before, but I’m a new man now.” Man this guy was goofy as all hell. 

“Wow, incredible. What an honor to meet you again.” I mocked his tone. 

“You know it, girl.” He winks. 

“Does Jake know you know yet?” Quil asked. 

“Not yet, I assume he’ll find out soon. I’m coming to the bonfire tomorrow.” I smirk. 

“Oh god, we’ll never be able to get rid of you.” Quil says, sitting on my other side and messing my hair up. 

“Rude.” I remark. 

“I haven’t heard a peep out of him since he left with Bella today.” Embry informs us. 

“Oh wait, so she knows because he imprinted on her?” I ask.

“No, you’d think so-- but no. He’s just in love with her, which ropes us all into the drama with her and her leech.” Jared says. 

“Oh, I see.” 

“Yeah, Jake’s pretty sensitive about it. Maybe don’t bring that up to him, bean.” 

“Noted.” 

We sat around, joking for hours. I began to yawn and leaned my head onto Emrby’s shoulder. 

“You tired, bean?” He whispers into my ear. 

“A bit. What time is it?” I cuddle deeper into his shoulder. 

“A little after midnight.” 

“I should probably go home soon, I’ll be too tired to drive if I wait longer.” 

“News flash: you’re already there, bud.” Quil laughs. 

I whine into Embry’s shoulder, sticking my tongue out at Quil. 

I felt Embry’s strong arms lifting me up, carrying me to my car. 

“I’m gonna take you home, okay? Where are your keys?” He asks softly. 

“Inside pocket of my bag.” I mumble. 

I felt him go into the bag, hearing my keys jingle. My car unlocks and I feel Embry put me into the passenger seat, buckling my seatbelt. 

“Thank you, Em.” I mumble. 

“Of course, bean.” 

I don’t remember any of the drive home, as I was asleep for the entirety of it. 

I wake up to Embry’s strong hands lifting me out of the car and walking to my front door, unlocking it with my key. 

“Where’s your room?” He asks. 

“Upstairs, the second door on the right.” I manage to get out. 

We go up the stairs, and he pushes my door open. Embry lays me down on my bed, and tucks me in before plopping my keys and bag on my desk. 

“Goodnight, bean.” He kisses my forehead before walking to my door.

“Em, wait. Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?” I ask. 

“I can do that.” He smiles before slowly walking over to my bed, trying to be quiet in an effort to not wake my dad. 

“Thank you.” I lay my head on his shoulder once he gets into my bed, wrapping my arm around his waist. 

He begins to stroke my hair, and hold me in his arms. 

I could swear that if  there was a heaven, this was it. 

I felt my eyes drooping, unable to stay awake much longer. 

“I love you.” I mumble.

“I love you too, bean.” He kisses my forehead. 

And that’s the last thing I remember before drifting into my peaceful slumber.

__________________________

Word Count: 3635

 I  II  III  IV  V  VI  VII  VIII  VIIII  X  XIR XIE  XII  XIII  XIV  XV XVI  XVII  XVIII  XIIII

[kodavistaa]

F.E.A.R.

Summary: Joygrave encounters a vampire problem after Vampstille gives them a surprise visit.

Notes: This is inspired by this awesome video by The Hoodies (Joywave’s old band) and all the Vampstille lore, of course. I recommended watching it before you read, although this fic does make some changes to the video. Also I originally wrote this as a joke, but honestly I don’t know if it still is anymore, so if this skirts a weird line between comedy and seriousness, that’s why.

Warnings: Vampire murder, cringe, me not knowing how British people speak

“If you guys want anything to drink, we have water, coffee… or tea, whatever you British people drink,” Daniel Armbruster says as the Vampstille and Joygrave guys are casually chatting. To Daniel’s dismay, the Vampstille guys have suddenly shown up at the Joycave, coming back from a vampire hunt, and made themselves at home for the night.

“So how have you lot been?” Diordan asks.

“Things have gotten a bit hectic since Ben left to go into demon hunting, but it’s been good, just the usual ghostbusting,” Joey replies.

“What was that vampire hunt you guys said you were coming back from?” Daniel asks.

“A new clan was causing trouble in Buffalo,” Woody says, “it’s good we nipped the problem right in the bud. Once a clan starts growing it becomes a real pain.”

“Rochester has had more vampire activity recently,” Daniel sighs, “we think they’re just passing by, but I do not want to deal with vampires coming here. Our vacuum isn’t equipped for vampires yet.”

~~~

Crash!

Daniel wakes up groggily and has the nagging feeling that Diordan touched something he wasn’t supposed to mess with.

“I swear if he breaks something,” Daniel mumbles as he puts on his glasses.

He makes his way out of his room and sees Diordan wandering about.

“Hey,” Daniel yells, “I told you not to touch any- ohhhh, you’re not Dan.”

An unfamiliar vampire flashes his fangs at Daniel.

“Noooooo!” Daniel screams, throwing the nearest thing next to him, a cereal bowl, at the vampire, and runs. The vampire pins Daniel against the wall and aims his fangs at his neck, but suddenly drops dead before he can bite Daniel. 

Diordan stands in front of the other, stake in hand, “you okay?”

Daniel exhales, “yeah.”

The window next to them breaks and a few vampires jump in.

“Oh God no,” Daniel whines, “what did you bring with you?”

“Dunno,” Diordan replies, getting his spare stake and tossing it to Daniel, “but unless you want to become someone’s next meal, you gotta fight.”

Woody bursts into the room in his wolf form, taking out one of the vampires. The rest of Vampstille and Joygrave follow, all armed with stakes.

“We’re surrounded, one of them almost got Paul,” Kyle says, “how are we going to get out of this one?”

“How many are there out there?” Diordan asks as he fights off another vampire.

“About 10, but we don’t know if there’s more coming,” Will answers, gracefully dodging a vampire flying at him.

“There’s 7 of us, we can take them.”

“I think you overestimate me!” Daniel screams as he sends his stake into a vampire, “ugh, I really hate doing that.”

Diordan chuckles, “you got it, mate, just do that 9 more times.”

Vampstille and Joygrave work surprisingly well together, taking out vampires like a well-oiled machine. Soon enough, the intruders start retreating.

“How many escaped?” Diordan asks.

“Four,” Woody answers, back in his human form.

“What was that?” Daniel says, exasperated, “were they from the clan you guys dealt with?”

Woody shakes his head, “no, totally different scent.”

“Those vampires were trying to get you,” Will says, looking at the Joygrave boys, “they totally ignored me sometimes. Strange, because I’m clearly the bigger threat.”

The Joygrave guys gulp.

“Could any vampires be after you?” Diordan asks.

“No! We don’t do vampires, if you haven’t figured it out already,” Daniel says, digging through his drawers to find his cross he definitely put somewhere in the Joycave years ago.

“Yeah, he gets creeped out when I’m in my bat form, tries to vacuum me,” Diordan replies, side-eyeing Daniel, “there has to be something else...”

“I think we should follow them,” Kyle suggests, “get a surprise on them before they can recover. We’ll have the equipment from the van with us this time.”

~~~

“Woody, do you smell anything?” Kyle asks.

Woody takes a moment to sniff the wind, “I’m getting 3 vampires, just here recently.”

“You said there were 4 of them that escaped, right?” Joey says.

Diordan peers at a rock with a few drops of blood not yet dried on it, “you think the other one could’ve split up?”

“They could be getting back up,” Will suggests.

They find themselves following the path of the vampires to a rickety and old, but large, mansion.

“Are you sure it ends here?” Diordan asks Woody, to which the werewolf nods.

Kyle opens the trunk of the van, “let’s get suited up.”

Woody leads the group as they enter the house carefully, hyper-aware of any sounds or changes of wind. He motions to a staircase leading down the basement and as they make their way down the stairs, faint music can barely be heard through the walls.

“Do you hear that?” Joey whispers.

Daniel’s face turns pale, “no, it can’t be.”

“What is it?” Kyle asks.

“It’s… it’s,” Paul stutters, “it’s Rock & Roll Part 2.”

“Guys, the EMF is off the charts,” Joey says, pointing at his EMF meter, “it’s a level 5 apparition.”

“What are you talking about?” Diordan asks, confused.

Daniel pushes the group up the stairs, “we have to get out of here, now!”

A red figure flies past them, bringing a gust of wind that almost knocks them off their feet, and Daniel thinks he sees a flash of sparkly gold sunglasses before they all rush into the van, driving off as fast as the van can handle.

“What was that?” Diordan asks exasperatedly.

“Terry Glitter,” Daniel replies solemnly, “it was one of our first experiences ghost hunting. We weren’t even Joygrave yet, we were The Spookies. We were going to a gig, the first one in a long time. It turned out the promoter was a ghost, vengeful and swore to terrorize all musicians... He got our friend, Brandon.”

Daniel sniffles as Joey pats him on the back, “we thought we contained him.”

“We didn’t know about level 5 apparitions then, and our equipment wasn’t the best,” Joey says, “he must’ve tricked us and escaped.”

“Level 5 apparition? Can you get rid of those?” Woody wonders.

Paul nods, “we have the proper equipment now, back at the Joycave, but it’s a ghost trap and it needs to be set up discreetly, which usually means we have to lure the ghost to our location.”

“So you’re going to lure the ghost to the Joycave?” Will asks.

“No! That would be a disaster,” Daniel exclaims, “if he figures out he can unleash all of the ghosts we’ve ever captured by destroying our storage chamber, it would be chaos. Good thing the chamber is super discreet, looks like a Joygrave travel mug.”

Diordan facepalms, “oh my God, I almost opened that.”

“Didn’t I tell you NOT to touch anything? I said that like 4 or 5 times before-”

“There’s a barn we can use,” Joey interrupts Daniel before the mustachioed man goes on a rant, “we just have to find a way to get them there.”

~~~

“Okay, I’m at the barn now, I’ll go check,” Daniel says, hanging up the phone. Walking up the barn, Daniel hears some faint shuffling behind him, but shrugs it off. He goes inside and the door slams shut immediately.

“You must be brave going places alone, especially this barn where there’s no one else nearby,” Terry Glitter’s familiar voice taunts as Rock & Roll Part 2 plays in the distance, “I have to say, though, I didn’t expect you boys to make friends with vampire hunters, but that’s just a small hiccup in my plans.”

The ghost materializes in front of Daniel, leaning on his pickaxe with a sinister smile. A few bats fly around the two, turning into their vampire forms behind the ghost. Daniel takes a step back, bringing out his Portable Joygrave Ghost Vacuum™.

Terry laughs, “you think that thing can get me.”

“No, but this can,” Daniel replies.

An awkward silence ensues and Terry looks around in confusion.

“I SAID BUT THIS CAN,” Daniel yells, annoyed.

A green beam appears from the back of the room slowly pulling Terry into the ghost trap.

“Destroy that trap!” Terry yells at the vampires.

The door flies open and Diordan leaps at a vampire trying to get to the trap. The rest follow in, armed to the teeth with vampire and ghost hunting gear.

Daniel dodges a vampire lunging at him as Will expertly throws a stake at the vampire. A bookcase flies at Woody, which he manages to escape.

“Paul! The ghost!” Daniel yells as Paul gets out his Joygrave Ghost Power Dampener™ and blasts it at Terry before he sends another piece of furniture flying.

“This ghost kind of looks like Paul,” Kyle says.

Diordan shrugs, “I don’t see it.”

“Just imagine him without the sunglasses.”

“Hmm, I don’t know.”

“No, he definitely doesn’t look like me,” Paul adds.

“See!”

“Hello? There’s a vampire problem here!” Daniel yells as he tries to throw a stake at a vampire getting too close to the trap. Diordan knocks down the vampire, ending them with a quick blow.

“Was that the last vampire?” Joey asks.

“I think so,” Will replies, wiping off sweat from his forehead.

Terry looks like he’s fuming, getting pulled into the trap, “you all will pay for this! I will escape and I’ll bring every ghost with-”

“Oh no! I can’t hear you. We’re breaking up, bye!” Daniel yells as the trap closes.

“Successful hunt wasn’t it?” Woody says, back in his human form, “not as much goo as I expected.”

The group laughs, finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Who wants to burn stuff in the firepit?”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Tell Me Everything

Follows Found Out, Akio, Chris Sees, and I’m Here

CW: References to murder, suicide, grief, pet whump, abduction, whump of a minor, ableism, Oliver Branch manages to be creepy even now in brief reference

He’s shorter than Ben thought he would be.

Ben sees him first, but, like of course he does - Akio Nakamura isn’t exactly famous but he has his own youtube channel and is like an Olympic-level athlete, so he’s pretty fucking recognizable... if you’ve spent two days scrolling through every Instagram photo of him on three different accounts that you can find. 

Ben showed up thirty minutes early, because Ben has never been late to a fucking thing in his life and something tells him this is maybe one of the most important things he’ll ever do, even though he doesn’t quite know why. 

Something about it keeps picking at his mind, taking it apart, unraveling him with the reality that someone fucking cared about Chris, before whatever happened. Chris doesn’t remember much, and Ben and Laken had done the googling and searching and shit, trying to get some idea of what the hell could have happened to make someone like Chris - bouncy and full of sunshine optimism even on his bad days - end up at a place like WRU.

They’d found nothing a first. But Ben hadn’t known what he was looking for, then. Now that he knows what to look for, he can’t stop finding things. He feels like a detective or someone who has lost his mind, desperately piecing together a life that was interrupted, like someone disappearing mid-sentence, and Ben is following a trail of the words he said before. 

He finds human-interest stories from ten years ago, digitized articles from old community newspapers. He finds more photos from the gym, photos where the redheaded boy is in the background, or in the front always looking slightly off to one side, rarely smiling for the camera but happy to smile as long as he didn’t have to look right at it.

He finds out Veronica Higgs, murdered in the double-homicide that had destroyed the life of Tristan Higgs, had a facebook page, and it’s marked as In Memorial. So is her husband’s, but Paul Higgs’s page is private and his profile photo is a meme that hasn’t been a thing since…

Since they died.

Something about that makes his throat close up as he scrolls Ronnie’s last few public updates, the scattering of people who have left comments saying they miss her, they’re thinking of her, they hope she’s in a better place. Comments are left on the last post like clockwork, once a year, by the same few people. 

Thinking of you today, Ronnie. 

Saw your favorite bird today!

Hope you and Tris and Paul are happy wherever you are now, Ronnie. I take comfort in knowing you’re still together.

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Ronnie!

Left flowers for you today, Ronnie. Jennifer did a routine this year that uses some of Tristan’s music, we’re always thinking of you!

Thinking of you

Miss you

Hope you three are happy together

Miss you, big sister, always.

One day I’ll stop leaving comments like you’re still here. I was watching the old videos and gosh, I couldn’t help but think how proud we were of our boys back then! Rest in peace. Give Tris a kiss for me. That’s Aimi Nakamura, that’s Akio’s mom. Her profile photo is her with her arms around Akio himself, wearing his leotard and holding up a medal with a bright smile, and a younger teenager who must be his little sister - she’s just wearing regular clothes. Feeling like a stalker, Ben opens the mom’s facebook page in a new tab. He absolutely does not look at the photos of Akio she’s posted. He does not do that at all.

He might do that later.

For now he goes back to Ronnie’s page, sees that her last post was brief, something about looking for a recipe, crowd-sourcing. Tris asked to try baked oysters, isn’t that funny? Only my kid, I swear. He’d said seafood is ‘slime’ except for tuna since toddlerhood, but no, this week he wants oysters. He said he wanted to try something new for once and he might as well go as far from the usual as he could get. I

One of the joys of all of this is how when he gets something in his head, I just go with him, and we see what’s on the other side of the jump, right? Watch him spit it right back out. 

It’s fucking ordinary. 

She posted it a couple days before she was murdered.

That doesn’t seem fair, does it? He just can’t wrap his head around it. She was a good mom taking care of her kid, she got some recipe ideas... but then she never cooked any of them because she just… died?

She died, and Tristan’s - Chris’s - dad died, and then there just wasn’t anybody? There wasn’t anybody to take care of a kid who couldn’t take care of himself yet? Nobody at-fucking-all, to keep Tristan safe and loved when the people who loved him the most were gone? 

How the hell did he go from placed in the care of relatives to just... gone? How did he go from gone to a rescued runaway pet with a new name and a new life? What happened in all that gray space in-between?

Ben blinks back tears.

Whatever it was... could that happen to Jamey? Ben’s whole family has built their existence on holding his little brother together through the ways the world wants to shred everything about him. He’s spent nearly all the life he remembers with his brother’s hand closed in the fabric of his shirt, shadowing him through the world, reminding him that you can’t trust everybody, not everyone has good intentions. 

Ben doesn’t even have to think before he’s moving in front of him to block out the noise and chaos of the world that Jamey just can't filter the way Ben can. He knows that when - hopefully forever from now - their parents die, Jamey’s going to move in with Ben. 

It’s never been a question. He doesn’t want it to be a question.

But... what if Ben wasn’t there? What would happen to Jamey if his Mom and Dad were gone, and nobody was there who wanted to keep Jamey safe? He can’t stop thinking about it. He cycles around and around, and Laken called him yesterday and said not to talk to Chris for a few days, that he saw the video and he’s not okay, and Ben’s not fucking okay, either, is he?

This could happen to Jamey.

Someone could see him, alone and vulnerable, and think, no one will stop me and he can’t stop me either, and then Jamey could disappear and then just not be Jamey anymore, and there wouldn’t be anyone to save him-

Ben looks up from his phone without focusing on anything, sniffing back the pain, the tight feeling in his chest at the idea of his little brother, disappearing into some dark hallway and never coming back. Just some photos on Instagram, a video of two, some mentions on somebody’s In Memorial Facebook page, that’s all that’s left of his silly, serious, annoying, funny little brother?

Like someone turned out the light on Jamey’s life and the world just forgets him, because his family isn’t there to keep him safe and Jamey can’t always tell who you can trust and who you can’t, and… and Chris can’t either, can he?

He just wants to think the best of everyone, he forgives everyone who hurts him so easily, so quickly, like it’s second-nature, like...

Did Tristan Higgs want to think good things about whoever did this, whoever had him erased, whoever handed him off to be turned into one of those blank empty-eyed dolls celebrities and rich people drag around? Did Tristan Higgs trust the person who gave him away to be erased, because he didn’t know not to?

Who the fuck bought him?

How did it all fucking happen?

The bell chimes. Akio Nakamura is right on time.

And he’s short.

He’s got a natural almost-smile on his face at all times, a hint of tan to his skin even now in the early spring, wearing a thin gray hoodie, unzipped over a plain white t-shirt and blue jeans. His muscles aren’t visible, like this, but Ben has seen the videos and knows they’re there, the body of a trained athlete hidden under casual clothing. His hair isn’t as short as it is when he competes, in the videos Ben has already watched over and over entirely for research purposes. It’s a little longer, starting to flop over his forehead.

Dark eyes scan the interior of the store, and Ben raises one hand to catch his attention.

The smile brightens, briefly, with a quick nod - like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, Ben feels that smile as a physical warmth in his chest - and he pushes the rest of the way inside, walking straight over. 

“Hey,” Akio says, and his voice is a little deeper than it seems in the youtube videos where he narrates, and Ben, for one shining moment, completely forgets how to speak his own fucking native language.

His mouth opens and nothing comes out - except maybe kind of a croak, which, please let that not have been audible - and he clears his throat, waiting for his brain and his body to remember how to work together. “Uh… um, h-hey,” He says, finally, and shifts uncomfortably. “You’re-... right. I’m, um. I’m Ben.”

“Yeah. I, I figured, you look just like your profile photo.” Akio laughs a little, dropping into a seat cross from him, sitting casually and letting his eyes roam over the mostly-empty interior of the shop, painted with bright colors and lined with posters about ice cream. 

Ben could not possibly have picked a worse place for a professional athlete to go to… meet and talk about his dead friend, could he? Oh, God. Oh he’s a fucking moron. “Right. Uh, sorry, I couldn’t-... when you asked to meet on the phone, I kind of blanked and this was the only place I could think of-”

“Hey, that’s all right. I like coming here, when I’m off from competing. It’s been a while. Hope you don’t mind if I stick with an iced coffee today, though, I’m not feeling ice cream.” Akio grins at him, and Ben’s knees might buckle if he wasn’t sitting down already. The smile takes over his entire face, lights it up, and it reminds him so much of Chris when he’s really happy, the way Chris smiles with his entire fucking body, not just his mouth. 

“Yeah, it’s… no problem, I’ll order, I picked here, anyway. Just the iced coffee?” 

“Yeah, please. Also, I should warn you - my mom is lurking across the street faking an interest in whatever they sell at Paisley Poses and she’ll probably stop pretending she’s not here and show up before we’re done. She’s… uh. Well, get the stuff, and then I’ll, um, I’ll explain.”

“Right. Got it.” Ben’s grip on his phone is white-knuckled as he stands up, aware of every movement of his body as he walks - and he walks normally, right? Not, like weird? It’s not like Akio is watching him walk anyway, probably - over to the cash register. The cashier, whose hair is dyed a pale faded sort of seafoam green, almost the color of those weird mint shakes you can buy from McDonald’s in April, takes his order with a flat affect, unbothered, uncaring.

Ben doesn’t know what he orders for himself. His mouth moves and words come out and then he realizes he doesn’t know what he just said. 

Whatever it is, he pays for it.

He takes the little number-on-a-stick, and carries it back to the table to wait. 

“Iced coffee it is,” He says a little breathlessly. “Um, it’ll be just a sec. They’ll bring it out with my… with mine.”

Shit, what the fuck did he even order for himself?

“No problem.” Akio’s eyes move over his face, considering. He’s sitting slouched a little, but it doesn’t look quite natural - like his posture is usually so much better and he’s trying to look like everyone else. Ben’s eyes are drawn to his hands, folded over his stomach, over wrinkled white shirt fabric. He has a blood-bruise under one thumbnail.

What a weird fucking thing to notice about someone.

“I-I don’t really know where to start,” Ben admits, slouching himself. He runs his fingers over the textured case of his phone, a charcoal-black with rough edges. Jamey likes the texture on his phone, will just sit and rub the pads of his fingers on it over and over and over again, smiling in a distant way, sitting next to Ben on the couch while Ben watches TV and Jamey, who can go days without speaking and is currently one hundred percent all about how they film movies and tv shows, explains every fucking cinematic trick every camera is using at any given moment.

It’s nice.

It’s how Jamey says he loves you, by sharing what’s up in his head whenever he can, and Ben - when he’s home - always tries to listen. 

“Yeah.” Akio laughs again, and Ben decides it’s a good laugh - strong, and not overly loud, and a little infectious. “Yeah, me neither. I don’t-... how do you even begin a conversation like this? Hello, nice to meet you, what do you know about my dead best friend? I don’t know what to say, just… we don’t even know they’re the same person, do we? Maybe they just look alike. Fuck.” Akio laughs once more, but this time it’s shaky, breathier. “I genuinely can’t decide if I want him to dead or not, I just-...”

Ben takes a breath, thinking of Laken’s voice on the phone yesterday morning, exhausted and rambling after a night of not sleeping, their fear and grief and love for Chris, telling Ben to go ahead with this meeting, but Chris needed time. “They’re definitely the same person,” He says, voice low and quiet. “We, um. He saw the video you posted, and he kind of-... freaked out.”

“Freaked out?” Akio blinks, sitting up a little straighter. His eyes are focused completely on Ben’s face, which would make him blush if he weren’t trying not to look directly at him. “What do you mean?”

Ben swallows. “Um. Just. He’s-... he doesn’t remember. Or… he didn’t. Seeing the video might have… brought some stuff up. Like, a lot of... bad stuff.”

Fuck, I’ve never heard him scream like that. Laken’s voice, rough-edged, laced with their tears. I can’t believe… he needs a few days, he can’t go with you to see this guy, Ben. He’s-... he’s super fucked up right now. I’m so glad his brothers know what’s happening to him because I-I don’t know what to do and he won’t let me anywhere near him. 

Akio nods, slowly, and his hands worry at each other under the table, the smile faded and replaced with seriousness, uncertainty. “Yeah, when you said-... anyway, I looked the company up, and it’s-... it’s weird, I knew about pets, but I guess… I mean, he wasn’t old enough to…” 

“Um… yeah. So, um. I know, but they-... clearly they still did...”

They sit there in an awkward silence, and then Akio pulls his own phone out of his pocket and unlocks it. “Let me show you something. Tris and I shared our passwords for Instagram, way back, and when he-... went… when his aunt took his phone away-”

Ben’s eyebrows furrow. Something about that pricks at him. Miss you, big sister, always. 

“He went to live with his aunt?” Ben asks. The cashier reappears, setting a plain iced coffee down on the table, and Ben discovers he apparently ordered iced coffee with a scoop of ice cream for himself, and that’s not bad, good for him. It’s even his favorite ice cream, vanilla with almond and chocolate chips.

“Yeah, his Aunt Jo, his mom’s sister.” Akio shrugs one shoulder. “I never met her, she never came to meets or anything. Tris always said she was kind of a shit to him and his dad.” Something in his jaw is tightening - and the line of his jaw is catching Ben’s eyes entirely too much for the seriousness of this conversation. He can’t stop himself from looking. “She’s who he went to live with, after. She took his phone away because he was complaining to, um, to my mom and I - my mom and Ronnie, Mrs. Higgs, were… you know, team moms.” He shrugs, and Ben doesn’t know, but he nods anyway. “He was complaining about how she took him out of therapy, and… uh, you know, Tris needed therapy, just-... it helped him to, um-”

Ben swallows. “Self-regulate,” He says, softly. “Redirect potentially harmful stims. Figure out how to filter.”

“Right.” Akio smiles, a little shamefaced. “Sorry, it’s been… fucking years since I had to think about this so much. It’s… I would show my mom his messages, and my mom would call Jo and tell her to get him back in therapy and back to practice, but… you know, the social workers said there was nothing we could do about it. We weren’t family. We made complaints, but...” Akio slumps, closing his eyes briefly. "God, I don't even know if they did a home visit."

Ben closes his eyes. Jamey, trapped with someone who didn’t let him go to his own therapy. Jamey, nonverbal on hard days, trapped with someone who didn’t learn signing to talk to him during meltdowns like Ben’s family did. 

Jamey, trying to say he needed help with his hands again and again but no one’s listening, no one’s even trying anymore-

“Yeah,” Ben says, voice hoarse, and uses a thin plastic spoon with a long handle to get a bite of ice cream soaked in cold coffee taste, letting it dissolve on his tongue to buy himself some time for his throat to open back up. It’s fear in his chest, yeah, but beneath that is a bubbling, simmering fury, a distant anger for a hypothetical that he understands was Chris’s reality. “Yeah. My brother’s-... um, autistic, so I know… I know about it.”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

Ben blinks, caught off-guard. “What?”

Akio flushes, reddening along his cheekbones, and rolls his eyes at himself, slumping back down. “Okay, so, I promise I’m not a stalker, but when you messaged me I looked at your profile to see if you were just a creep. I saw the autism banner, so I looked and you wrote this really sweet thing about your brother-... how old is he?”

Ben almost forgets how to speak again. “He’s-... fifteen. Just turned fifteen. Jamey’s, um, his name is Jamey.”

“Cool. Yeah. So. I’m not a stalker. But, I’m just… listen, Tris and I started training at the gym together when we were like… seven. And I was seventeen when he, when she said… when she said he died.”

Ben’s breath catches. “Shit. She did?”

“Um. Yeah. A month after she took his phone away - we were calling her all the time asking to speak with him and stuff, my mom had kind of threatened to get social services involved again - she called my mom and said he-... um. Sorry if suicide is a thing for you, but…”

“No, I-I’m okay, I just…”

“Yeah. She told us he killed himself. We thought she was lying - oh fuck, she was lying, wasn’t she? - but so... but then you know, she had him cremated, and... I fucking-... I lost my shit, Ben. I didn’t compete, I didn’t train, I just, I just sat in my room for like six months bawling my eyes out and I told my mom it was just like she killed him, taking him away from everything when, you know, he was so sad and scared without them.”

Ben nods, quiet, watching Akio’s face as he speaks.

“My mom offered to take him, have him live with us, but… you know, she said no, and then he-... but he didn’t.” Akio drinks his coffee, absently, and Ben realizes his eyes are red around the edges. “Oh, god, he probably thought nobody cared about him anymore. Oh, shit. He probably thought we stopped giving a fuck. That h-he was al-... alone-”

He’s been crying. He’s maybe going to cry again.

Akio takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “He didn’t know-... shit. He probably just thought, no one’s coming, nobody cares, and… shit. I don’t know what to even think right now, just...” Akio slides his phone across the table. “Look at this. I locked it, when I thought-... but I kept it, anyway. I kept everything, I couldn’t-... I mean it’s just a box of stuff under my bed, but… I couldn’t throw any of it out, because… I don’t know. Somebody needed to, to r-remember him, and she wouldn’t have-... that fucking bitch told us he was dead. And she threw out all his stuff, so I’m... I guess I’m the only one who still has anything, so I just... kept it. Everything. And... this.”

There’s a moment where they both pretend Akio’s voice isn’t trembling.

“What is this?” Ben knows before the question is fully out of his mouth, but he looks anyway. Akio’s phone is still warm from his hand. 

“Tristan’s Instagram account. We, uh, we took pictures of stupid shit a lot back then, and Instagram was, like, super new and all filters all the time, so you just-... but this is his. His mom encouraged him to use it because, you know, sometimes he could show stuff better than he could say it.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Ben tilts his head, scrolling through the images. Most of the photos are just nothing - a cloud, books on a bookshelf, a tree leaf. Ben kind of quirks a smile at all the old Instagram filters right there, like looking in a fucking time capsule. Sometimes there are gymnastics photos, of the gym or of someone training. Sometimes Tristan himself appears in the photo, a blur of constant motion, photos taken by someone else. Photos of dinosaur bones at a museum, seemingly every fucking skeleton or fossil in the place.

“That’s our trip to DC, the team went,” Akio says, and points to a photo of Tristan and Akio, gangly awkward teenagers, standing in front of the Lincoln monument. Akio is smiling, and Tristan is looking up at the sky instead of the camera. “I like to look at this stuff sometimes? I know it’s been… it’s funny, we were talking a few weeks ago about how it’ll be a couple more years when he’s been dead longer than how long I knew him, but he’s not-... he was never dead.” Akio swallows, and his voice catches. When he speaks again, he sounds strained, forcing his voice to stay calm around the emotion that threatens to overtake it. “He was never dead. I keep getting caught up on that, because-... because how did we not know? How did we never… find him?”

Ben pushes the phone back to Akio. “You didn’t know to look,” He says, softly. “How were you supposed to find him if you didn’t know anyone needed to be looking?”

“I guess. My mom feels like shit, she’s been crying since we spoke to you. Well, I have, too. But my mom feels like she… she should have showed up at Joanne’s door and just taken Tristan by force, but, you know, the cops would’ve taken him right back, probably? That’s fucking kidnapping? And I keep telling her not to feel guilty, but she-”

“Yeah,” Ben says, thinking of Laken’s voice on the phone. 

I didn’t know he’d come home early. I keep saying I’m sorry but... He wasn’t-... he wasn’t ready for this and he’s so… he’s so fucked up. He won’t even talk to me. Every time Jake leaves the room we’re scared he’ll hurt himself again. He keeps telling me to find someone else, somebody easier, but I don’t want anyone else, god damn it, I want him! 

“She’s taking it really hard,” Akio says, finally, breaking into Ben’s thoughts. “I mean. We both are. But, you know, I keep thinking I can’t do this but then I think… I want to see him again. I want to see this guy in person, not just in those photos and videos you had. I want to see how he’s doing, he looks-... he looks so good.” Akio coughs, like he’s trying to cover up a sob, not quite managing it. “He looks really good.”

“He is, he’s doing… he’s good. Um, he’s having a hard time with remembering some stuff, but overall... he’s good.” Ben picks his own phone back up, pops back to Ronnie’s page. “What did you say the aunt’s name was?”

“Jo, um, Joanne… something. Sorry, I don’t really remember her last name, my mom would-”

“Botham?” Ben looks up, and god, he kind of wants to hug Akio until there aren’t tears in his eyes anymore. But also that’s a stupid thing to think, isn’t it? But he wants to, anyway. 

“Oh, that sounds right.”

“She left a comment on his mom’s-... I’ve been looking for everything I could find. I’m sorry, I know that’s creepy. But Joanne Botham left like a comment about missing-... hold on.” Ben clicks to open up Joanne Botham’s profile. A woman smiling in a profile photo, with dark hair. Something about the shape of her mouth is similar to Chris’s, but that doesn’t mean much, really. He scrolls down. 

Name, stupid quote from a stupider movie, current city is a while away from this one, like a couple states away, but she could’ve moved… There it is.

The answer to his questions, all of them, all at once, right out in the open.

“Joanne Botham,” He says out loud, “works at WRU.”

“What?” Akio looks up at him.

“His aunt. The mom’s sister, she works for WRU. That’s where Chris was-... where they hurt him. Where they make pets.”

Where they erase people. Where they take someone like Jamey and destroy him and how many versions of my brother are there who weren’t rescued by somebody like Chris’s big brother?

“WRU?” Akio’s face twists, an ugly pain written across it. “They’re one of our team’s sponsors. I’ve never thought about how… oh my god. I, I never liked… I mean, none of us are, like, political about it because you can’t be if you want an Olympic career, not really, but we all kind of hated taking the money. My coach thinks it’s good because it gets people off the street, which is super fucked up, but…” His iced coffee thunks down on the table. 

“What?”

“Oh shit. Oh holy fuck. They’ve been sponsoring us since we met with the old governor - he’s the one who hooked our coach up with their marketing team, and… oh my god. I’m gonna be fucking sick. WRU’s been my sponsor since like… a year after Tristan died-... didn’t die, I guess...”

“You didn’t know,” Ben whispers, staring down at Joanne Botham’s profile photo, scrolling through the profile picture photo album. He’s not maybe the smartest person on earth, but he can put two and two together for four. Tristan Higgs’s parents died, he goes to his aunt - who works for a human pet company - and he’s dead, supposedly, four months later. 

Time passes. No sign of supposed dead boy.

Then Chris, identical in every way, appears with no memory of his life and a thousand traumas to heal from, rescued from something that Ben doesn’t know the details of, but he doesn’t have to. 

Life as a pet, a life that made him terrified of bad weather and scared of people who raise their hands too quickly, unable to say no to anything when he gets scared, nervous about big vans with no windows, someone who says stupid fucking bullshit like silence is better than stammering when he’s upset, who sometimes has screaming nightmares that Laken has to wake him from that he refuses to explain to them...

Meanwhile, Aunt Joanne is putting up photos of herself traveling internationally, buying a new house, a new car, stuff she couldn’t afford to do before.

The math does itself.

It’s fucking true crime textbook, and it’s right in front of his eyes.

Akio’s jaw is working, and his eyes are glimmering again. He looks at Ben, and he looks weirdly lost and young, and Ben reaches out without thinking and grabs onto his hand. Akio grips on tight. His hand is warm, almost too warm, but also it’s the perfect amount of warm. “Do you think-... do you think she-”

Ben thinks about Jamey, scared and alone. He thinks about Jamey - and Tristan, the two of them mixing together in his mind - being dragged away, to be lost and overwritten, because no one was there to stop it.

Because someone did it on purpose.

Because no one stopped it.

“I think maybe she was lying to you because she didn’t want you to take Tristan,” Ben says, softly. “I think maybe she wanted to-... make money on him.”

Akio chokes, and leans forward, and Ben holds his hand as tightly as he can, feeling the other man’s fingers tremble in his grip. “I can't-... I can't even begin to deal with that, I just… So h-how did he end up in college? Pets don’t-... go to school, they’re not capable… are they?"

"Um. It depends, apparently?" Ben doesn’t know how much of this is something Chris would ever allow him to share. But Akio’s eyes raise, and catch his again, and Ben smiles, just a little, in an attempt to comfort. “He was rescued,” He says, softly. “I don’t know how, or when. He’d have to tell you that himself. But he’s, um. He’s just Chris now.”

“He’s just Chris, now.” Akio groans resting his head on his hand. “But not Tristan. So he really is dead, his body’s still just-.. walking around.”

“No,” Ben says, and leans in, getting Akio to look at him again. “He’s not gone. Not, like, the core of him, I think. We knew him as soon as we saw him on your video. We knew the smile, and how he moves, all of it. Everybody in the room knew him as soon as we saw him smile at you. He’s still there, he’s still him. I promise.”

“I knew it was him on your stuff as soon as I saw him dancing,” Akio says, brokenly. “H-he always did get obsessed with those fuh-fucking musicals and we used to make up routines to th-them-” His head drops, shoulders shaking, and Ben puts his other hand on Akio’s shoulder, moves around the edge of the little circular table, so he can put an arm around him. 

“It’s okay,” He whispers. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Akio says, muffled. “It’s not okay. We should have saved him, w-we didn’t know, we didn’t know she would… he probably th-thought we didn’t care... the social worker said it was fine, we’re not re-relatives, we didn’t know he wasn’t dead, we didn’t know he wasn’t gone, I thought I l-lost him and he probably thinks I didn’t even give a fuck-”

“I’m sure he never thought that,” Ben says, softly, and Akio’s hair brushes a little against the side of his face and he tries not to think too hard about how nice that feels, this is not the time or place, Benjamin, stop thinking about his hair stop it stop it stop it.

“We thought... “

“I know. But… you found him, now. He’s found.”

Akio sniffs back tears, mumbling, “Can I see him?”

Ben hesitates. “He needs-... he might need some time.”

Akio nods without looking up, but he leans a little on Ben. “I’m sorry, I’m being a fucking moron about this, making you comfort me and you don’t even know me, but I just-... missed him, and mourned him, and we go to see is parents wh-where they’re buried every year on the day that his aunt said he-... Is he h-happy? Now?”

Ben closes his eyes. That’s what I’d want to know, isn’t it, if it was Jamey. Is he happy now? Does his new family sign, do they know how to calm him down when it’s too much, do they know, do they care, if I’m not there does someone love him as much as we did?

I’d claw my way out of the fucking grave to make sure someone loves Jamey as much as he deserves.

“He’s happy,” Ben says, softly. “He was adopted by the guy who saved him, I think. There’s a whole lot I don’t know, you know, it’s not really my-... my story to, um, to tell. I just know some of it. He’s, um, he’s with someone, and… he’s… he’s happy.”

“Good. I just-... I want to see him.”

“I know. I’ll ask. But his partner... I’m friends with them, and they, um, he’s n-not... not okay right now, so...”

“I can wait.” Akio looks at him, intense, intent, eyes so dark Ben could fall in. “I’ve waited this long, I can-... I can wait a little longer, I just... I just want to see him, when he can see me.”

The bell over the door chimes again, and the two of them turn and look to see a woman who could not be more obviously Akio’s mother entering, looking at them, her eyebrows furrowed in immediate worry when she sees the tears on Akio’s face. “Aki?”

“It’s him, Mom,” Akio says, and she moves to him as if drawn, and Ben fights himself to pull back and away, to watch mother and son. Tristan had this, and lost it, but Chris has it, too. Life, interrupted at the second act, begun again with new actors around the main character. “It’s definitely-... it’s Tristan. But, she-... I have to tell you what happened to him. He, they-they made him a, um, a pet-”

She hitches in a breath, pulls a chair with a loud scrape from another table, and sits, looking Ben over, expression serious. “Tell me,” She says, softly, but fiercely. 

“It’s, um, it’s a lot…”

“I’ve got time.” Ben is reminded of his own mother, in the simple steel flashing under her perfectly styled hair and carefully done makeup. Her eyes are red around the edges, too. She lays a cool, dry hand over Ben’s, and her dark eyes bore into him with focused intensity. “Tell me what happened to our Tris. I want to know what happened to-... I want to know what I didn’t stop.”

Akio looks sidelong at his mother, putting an arm around her, and he’s shorter than his mom but she seems to sag against him, and he can see how Akio takes after his mom, with the same wide mouth that normally seems always on the verge of a smile, the same dark eyes flashing with anger and guilt. “M-Mom, you couldn’t have known, we couldn’t do anything-”

“I could have gone to that woman’s… house, or wherever she was, and taken Tristan right out the door, and I didn’t,” Aimi says, and her voice doesn’t shake, but her face is bright red and her eyes are overbright and glittering. “I could have called lawyers, or the cops, I could have tried to fight for him and I didn’t. Ronnie deserved-” Her voice catches and her hand is over her mouth. Ben watches her eyes well up, her struggle to calm herself, throat working as she swallows and leans into her son’s embrace. “Ronnie… would have wanted someone to fight for him. I want to know what happened because I did the normal thing and not the right thing, because I didn’t let myself see it. I want to know what exactly it is that I didn’t stop when I had the chance.”

Ben sits back, takes a breath. 

“He, um. His name is… Chris now,” Ben starts, slowly. “Christopher Stanton. He’s, um, he’s a sophomore in college, and… he was a human pet, for a while. We don’t know how long, nobody knows for sure, or who had him. I mean, I guess he knows and I think his brother knows, but h-he, won’t… won’t tell anyone who it was.”

Aimi’s whole body shudders, but her face doesn’t change, and her eyes don’t leave Ben’s. “H-how-”

Akio licks at his lips, and hesitantly says, “Ben thinks maybe that aunt they sent him to sold him. She works for WRU.”

Aimi’s eyes slowly close, and her breathing is slow but trembling. The two young men watch her. Akio’s knee bumps his under the table, and he doesn’t think about that, either, except it’s all he’s going to think about for the rest of the day.

“Okay,” Aimi says, after a long pause, and her eyes open again. A kind of perfect calm settles itself across the pain in her expression. 

Ben thinks that this woman is probably fucking terrifying if it’s you she’s angry with and not herself. 

“Mom, if we need to stop, that’s okay-”

“We don’t. Ben-... that’s your name? Ben?”

“Uh, yeah… Benjamin Prentiss, but-... call me Ben.” 

Prentiss, Akio mouths to himself, and Ben hopes, in another weird moment, that Akio likes his last name. 

“Got it.” Aimi leans forward, smacks the table with one hand. Ben flinches. Her jaw sets. She’s definitely terrifying. Like his own mother when they tried to kick Jamey out of school, this is a woman who could stare down the sun itself unblinking and walk away undamaged, if the sun was a threat to her children. “Ben?”

“Yes, um, Mrs. Nakamura?”

“Keep talking. Tell me everything about Tristan-”

“Chris.” He clears his throat. “He’s, um, his name is Chris.”

“... tell me everything about Chris.”

--

Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly  @newandfiguringitout  , @doveotions  , @pretty-face-breaker  , @boxboysandotherwhump  , @oops-its-whump  @moose-teeth  , @cubeswhump  , @cupcakes-and-pain  @whump-tr0pes  @whumpiary  @orchidscript

[shrimpngritcakes]

Buddie prompt #3: 9-1-1 & Lone Star crossover idea

I’m putting this idea here for someone to claim if they wish. It was originally posted on Ao3 (now with additions), but deleted it due to ToS. If anyone wants this prompt, please comment below so I can delete it after you copy it to prevent similar stories.

His breaking point was a kiss.

One he knew he wasn't supposed to see. With anyone else he would feel like a voyeur, but all he could feel was a dark emptiness opening in his chest.

With Eddie’s truck being in the shop for a tie rod that had broken while at work, sending Eddie into a storm of cursing in Spanish, Ana had picked him up for their latest date.

And dropped him off.

If was a horrible fluke that Buck had stood up to look out the window at just the wrong moment. He should have been in the spare bedroom asleep after a grueling 24 surrounded by all the things he had brought with him when he moved in all those weeks ago.

Buck makes his excuses to leave while Eddie is completely confused and trying to get him to talk. Eddie tries to call Buck but he doesn't pick up.

Buck goes to see Bobby and Athena. It all spills out, including not feeling wanted by his parents. Bobby thinks Eddie is being an idiot but keeps this to himself. He suggests a leave of absence for mental health. Bobby receives permission from his superior to place Buck on open ended leave after giving him a brief explanation of the situation. Ending with him saying to Bobby, “That poor boy. If I ever meet that boy's parents…”

Bobby answers, “Get in line, but there may not be anything left after Athena gets them first.”

TK is surprised to find a sleeping Buck in his Jeep in the parking lot of the 126. An off duty Carlos takes him back to his place where he crashes on the couch. Buck has a nightmare and Carlos talks him down.

Owen calls Bobby saying he has his boy and they'll take care of them. He has a plan and discusses it with Bobby. The whole absence makes the heart grow fonder concept.

“Is it mutual?”

“I’m not 100% sure, but…”

“You can't tell Eddie. Even if he begs for answers for his son, you need to stand strong. It needs to be him asking for himself. If this goes wrong… We'll take Buck in here. He'll have a home with the 126. It will take a while, but we'll help put him back together as best we can until he's back on his feet. He won't be alone.”

Bobby wipes at his face, “Thank you."

“Let's hope this works.”

Eddie is worried and confused why Buck never came home. His phone is going straight to voicemail. Now he isn't there for his shift. Another man comes in and introduced as Buck's temporary replacement. Eddie asks Bobby where Buck is, but he won't give him a straight answer. Eddie is shocked as Bobby's tone is harsh and he glaring at him. Bobby later apologized and explains that Buck requested that only he and Maddie know where he is. Eddie tries to dig, but Bobby just shakes his head with a, “I'm sorry, Eddie. I can't tell you.”

Eddie asks Maddie, but she just slams the door in his face. Chim doesn’t know as she's refusing to tell them where Buck is. Chim delivers her handwritten apology the next day to Eddie. It states Buck needs space from everything, but mostly leaves out the part about Eddie (only one or two things that hint, but it goes over Eddie's head).

Athena almost breaks down and calls Eddie a fool before storming away to her police cruiser. She doesn't know where he is because Bobby refuses to tell her (which she finds annoying yet commendable), but she was there for the why when Buck broke down. She'll apologize after Buck and Eddie return. Hopefully together.

Filler with Buck and the 126 and Carlos. Judd takes him out on a horse like he did Capt. Strand. Fill a pothole on how Grace and him are so accepting of TK's sexuality despite being religious.

A Facetime therapy session where Copeland assures him its okay to get away for a while.

Eddie doesn't quite realize yet that he's slowly losing it, but the others can tell.

Paul and Buck have a conversation.

Christopher asking where Buck is because it's movie night. Eddie doesn't have an answer.

Eddie rages in the station gym trying to understand. He almost gets it, but he thinks Buck is jealous of Eddie, not Ana. Cue Hen groaning under her breath, "You almost got it, Eddie. Come on. Keep thinking."

TK, Carlos, and Paul take Buck out to a club. TK talks absentmindedly to the bartender, even showing him/her a picture of Eddie from Insta. Word spreads about the "new guy," Buck. Others keep the “creeps" away from Buck. Buck loosens up a little while there.

Buck Facetimes Christopher on Carla's phone, only for Eddie to walk in just as Buck is hanging up. He sees Buck's panicked/sad face right before he hangs up. He tries to call back, but doesn't get an answer. Carla huffs and shakes her head. "Figure it out yourself, hun. I can't give you this answer. You need to find it for yourself." Cue Eddie even more confused. This is all just about Buck's parents and jealous over Ana... Isn't it?

Roller derby to cheer on Marjan with the bartender flirting with Buck, who is all kinds of flustered. Carlos, TK, and the others tease him mercilessly.

A massive fire where Buck offers his help. Paul gives Buck as sidehug in gratitude.

Eddie almost punching the mechanic because his truck still isn't done.

Marjan takes Buck out to do something crazy because she's Firefox. (Buck is still starstruck). Maybe skydiving or they race each other at wall climbing? Cue competitive banter.

Owen keeping Bobby updated on Buck.

Buck eventually asks for a transfer. Owen asks if this is what he really wants. Buck just shrugs and asks helplessly what other option he has.

(Optional: Bucks gets up quietly at night for a glass of water and stumbles onto Carlos and TK having sex/making out in the kitchen. Buck either flees in embarrassment or is stunned into watching with Carlos and TK aware that he's there. All parties awkward and/or embarrassed the next morning until TK bursts into giggles and laughter.)

Eddie's relationship with Ana is rapidly deteriorating. Christopher has a full on tantrum. Eddie has to koala hug him on the floor, after Ana brings him back home from a not very good date as Eddie's thoughts were on Buck. Ana tries to help calm him down but Chris screams at her about Buck not being around as much as soon as she started dating his dad. “I hate you! I hate you!” He yells her to get out. Ana still tries to talk. Carla snaps at her to leave. She still tries.

Eddie is spiraling. Flashback of that kiss he really wasn’t ready for, but Ana had asked. It dawns on him that that was the night Buck disappeared. Why would Buck leave because of that? Chris is repeatedly asking her to leave, but she's not listening. She's not listening to his son. He finally snaps and demands that she leaves. She storms out. Relationship dead in the water.

Carla can only watch as Eddie breaks from it all.

The original plan has failed, so it’s time for the final attempt. A blatant hammer strike to Eddie's head to knock some sense into him.

Bobby calls Eddie into his office. He shows Eddie transfer papers from Buck along with a list of Buck's possessions to be boxed and shipped. Eddie is speechless. Thoughts of Christopher and losing Buck. He's losing Buck.

He shows Eddie an email he received and Eddie slowly scrolls through, It's full of captioned pictures. Such as:

-Buck staring off into the distance on a horse.

-Buck curled on a couch looking lost.

-Buck looking drool-worthy in club clothes. The caption: “Holy sh@t! If I wasn't already happily taken…”

-Showing Buck blushing as someone talks in his ear.

-Smiling yet not reaching his eyes while dancing.

-Sitting with his head buried in his hands on the engine’s bumper.

-Helping man a hose at a large blaze captioned with “Yes, we had permission for him to be there.” Followed by a picture of someone (Paul, but Eddie can’t see his face as he’s looking at the ground and hidden by his helmet) sidehugging a sweaty dusty still geared up Buck around the neck with a hand resting on his head.

A video. It's Buck spilling everything curled up in someone's arms (maybe Carlos or Grace). “Why am I always alone! What about me?” Mentions of Abby and Ali. His failed dates. Everyone pairing up. Losing part of his sister to Chim after finally having her back in his life after so many years apart. “And Eddie! Eddie… Why does love hurt so much?” mentioning Chris. Etc.

Eddie is shaking. It finally clicks why Buck left.

One more video. It's Capt. Strand and the 126 facing the camera. He knows where Buck is now - Austin, Texas.

“Buck doesn't know we're putting all this together. He’s asleep. We may or may not have knocked him out with sleeping pills.”

They all lay it out for Eddie. Eddie feels all kinds of stupid and blind. “Now, you have a choice here, Edmundo Diaz…”

“Why… Oh my god. This entire time… ”

“Do you love him, Eddie? As more than a friend? Or am I signing these papers?”

A few seconds after Eddie runs out of the room, a sigh comes from the speaker phone. “I'll get things set up.”

“Thank you, Owen. For everything.”

“You're welcome.”

The whole firehouse going up in a cheer after Eddie floors out of the parking lot in his thankfully finally fixed truck. Hen is shaking Chim or vice versa.

Carla agrees over the phone to keep Christopher after Eddie blurts everything out to her, ending with a “Go get him, Eddie.”

“Did everyone see this but me?” Carla is laughing as she hangs up.

Buck sees Owen call TK over and whispering in his ear. Tk has an interesting reaction before running out of the room with his phone already to his ear.

Flashbacks as Eddie is scrolling through his pictures on his phone while on an airplane. How he missed it. How he didn't understand himself. His fall had been so slow he hadn't even realized it until it was almost, or maybe is, too late. His seatmate makes a comment on his happy “family," and it’s a kick to Eddie's already flayed emotions.

Judd is there to pick him up at the airport, which surprised him.

He's dropped off at a club. Judd makes a snarky comment after handing Eddie a hotel room key card through the window. Eddie rolls his eyes as Judd drives off laughing. The bouncer, having seen the Diaz blazoned on the back of his LAFD shirt, waves Eddie inside, skipping the line. The whispering starts as soon as he enters. Word had spread and they had been hoping for Buck. “Is that…”

“I think so.”

He's shocked as the crowd starts to part for him. The music lowers in volume. People are staring and he's embarrassed, etc., but he sees Buck, who TK has made sure looks phenomenal. Taking a deep breath, he squares his shoulders and walks forward.

Buck is dancing between Carlos and TK. He feels Carlos start smacking TK on the back before they pull away from him. They’re both grinning so wide he suspects their faces are hurting. TK is not so quietly squealing in excitement.

A hand covers his eyes from behind. He immediately recognizes the body wash smell. “Eddie…”

Mini conversation/argument, neither realizing the club has gone dead silent, with Eddie yelling “Because I love you, you idiot!”

The entire club loses it with TK whooping, jumping with a fist punch, and laughing.

End there with a kiss, at the hotel room which may or may not get steamy, or Buck telling Christopher he's home with Chris tackling him to the ground.

[with-my-murder-flute]

Initial sketch notes of my historical research on Islamic experiences of the Siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, posted August 6, 2020.  This is the long version of “Why might Yusuf al-Kaysani, who is from the Maghreb, have been fighting at Jerusalem in 1099?”

Trigger Warning: Graphic violence, slavery, and genocide

Notes taken from reading Paul M. Cobb’s The Race for Paradise: An Isamic History of the Crusades and supplemented by Dr. Google. I’m reading Cobb’s book partly because it’s on audiobook (though it is a fricking Audible Exclusive) and partly because it’s written for Western non-Muslim audiences, which helps get me up to speed.

The Old Guard Through History video says Joe and Nicky met during the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099, so I’ve focused most of my research on that.

Historians generally agree that in the 11th century the Islamic* world did not have a “Muslims vs Christians” worldview like the one Christians were beginning to develop. Their experience led them to expect Christians to be allies as often as enemies. Around the 1060s Christians began a new paradigm of religious war against Muslims, which Muslims didn’t really realize at the time--they responded to times when Christians would choose religious affiliation over clear strategic gain as shocking and bizarre, a departure from the status quo

(*Islamic: Society predominantly defined by Muslim rule and culture, but containing people of many different religions)

The Islamic response to the First Crusade was decentralized and diverse. There were a lot of different groups in the Levant*, many of whom had deep divisions, rivalries, and feuds. They mostly saw the Crusaders as a new factor that might affect their existing rivalries with other Islamic states, and were used to being able to broker deals or treaties with Christian groups to turn local warfare to their advantage.

(*Levant: A term used to describe countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially those with traditional religious significance to the Abrahamic religions - modern-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Egypt and Turkey. Comes from the French word for “rising”, in the sense of “where the sun rises”)

Additional term I’m going to be using a lot: “Frank”. It’s the Islamic term for, basically, “Western European” (of both the pagan and Roman Catholic varieties). It’s easier than saying “the Roman Catholics” or “The Crusaders” (which is putting a later cultural construct on people who didn’t call themselves that)

The biggest division of Islamic society in this area is, roughly, the Seljuq Turks and the Fatimid Caliphate. 

In the year 1000, the Fatimids were riding high: They ruled Egypt and North Africa stretching across to the Atlantic, much of the Levant, the island of Sicily, and bits of the Arabian Peninsula around the Red Sea. 

Then in the mid-11th century the Seljuqs came BLASTING OUTTA NOWHERE like holy shit calm your jets and conquered a lot of Fatimid and Byzantine territory (we’re talking the yellow parts of the map, they’ll destroy the Byzantines entirely later)

In addition to losing land to the Seljuqs, the Fatimids also lost Sicily to the Normans (who don’t even GO THERE but anyway), and North Africa through?? Independence movements?? Sheer carelessness??? I’m not quite certain.

The Seljuqs were Sunni, the Fatimids were Shi’ite, I... am not gonna try to explain that whole thing. Here’s a video.

(Small note for Yusuf character reasons: A big motivation behind the move of Ifriqiya [modern Tunisia and parts of Algieria and Libya] out of Fatimid control was that most of their populations were also Sunni)

So the Franks left Constantinople and travelled through what is now Turkey but was at the time the Byzantine Empire, and then moved into Seljuq lands. Most of the fighting in the First Crusade was against Seljuqs--mostly against tribes who fought for themselves, I think? Although in Damascus (which was a huge city the Franks just breezed by in favour of historically significant ghost towns) there was a general jihad preached like “Hey somebody should do something about all these Europeans”, so some of the people fighting were like... random people from Damascus.

While the Seljuqs were distracted, the Fatimids thought they could win some land back from THOSE UPSTARTS, so they snuck in and grabbed Jerusalem.  As Peter Konieczny reports, there are scholars who think the Fatimids thought, partly because they had a lot of experience ruling Egypt’s Coptic Christian population, that they could reach a mutually satisfactory alliance with the Franks, especially since it seemed like most of the Franks didn’t intend to settle in the area, but return to Europe once they ensured pilgrim access to Jerusalem, which had mostly been hindered by banditry in Seljuq-controlled areas. 

When I read stuff just generally about the Fatimid army, it’s described as being composed of two groups:

Berber tribesmen (Kutama and Sanhaja) (I’m struggling to find more info about them)

Mamluks, who are... a cross between slaves and mercenaries? Basically, they were captives from non-Muslim territory (in the Fatimids’ case, mostly Circassia in central Asia) who were brought to Muslim lands and trained as soldiers, but once active as soldiers, were paid and hired by different groups, able to achieve freedom, often gained important government posts, and occasionally toppled the government they served and ruled the roost.

This next bit is based on fairly standard histories of the Siege of Jerusalem that rely a lot on Western sources, like this article by Michael D. Hull and this article by Michael Cartwright. Which... have to be taken with a grain of salt, because medieval military histories don’t tend to line up super well with archaeology or plain logistics. Generally, it isn’t wise to take medieval European sources at their word when they say “the army had 10,000 people” or “they killed every last person”. They’re often written after the fact and with clear biases, and, when it comes to the Crusades, with an imperfect understanding of the culture they’re describing. I’d like to have better sources, but this is where I’m starting from, especially since I have limited access to academic sources during the summer.

So, the standard history says that Jerusalem was taken in 1098 by  Emir  al-Afdal Shahinshah, but by 1099, governor Iftikhar al-Daula was in command of the defenses. and that he had a “garrison of Arab cavalry and Sudanese archers.” Cartwright reports it as “perhaps several thousand infantry and an elite cavalry corps of 400 Egyptians.” I currently have no way of knowing which of these troops were Mamluks and which weren’t.

According to Hull, when the Fatimids in Jerusalem realized they would have to face a siege, they expelled all Christians of any denomination from the city, as well as all Jews “except for those of a sect for whom it was mandatory to reside in the Holy City”. Cartwright reports it as “...all Christians were kicked out if the city. In contrast, the Jewish population were allowed to stay”. Cartwright reports that Jerusalem’s population, 70,000 at the beginning of the year, was lowered to 30,000 by the expulsions (though some people were also coming into the city to take refuge from the oncoming Frankish army). Additional preparations included poisoning wells outside of Jerusalem to deny the Frankish army water, and emptying the land around the city of livestock and people. 

The Fatimids were also expecting the arrival of an army marching north from Egypt to help them out relatively soon, which explains why their strategy was mostly “hunker down and wait” with very limited attacks outside the city.

The Franks came southward down the coast to Jaffa, where they took the nearest port to Jerusalem, and then approached the city.

June 7, 1099: The Frankish army shows up at Jerusalem with about 15,000 people total and less than 1,500 armed knights. They split into two camps, one attacking from the south, one from the north. They were in rough shape and didn’t have any siege weapons, so the Fatimid defenders were able to sit up on the walls, taunt them, and shoot arrows. They enlivened the tedium by sending cavalry units outside the walls to harass Franks who were scavenging for food and water.

June 13, 1099: Some Franks on the north side of the city managed to scrabble together siege ladders and try to climb up and assault the walls; they were repelled pretty easily by the defenders.

June 17, 1099: English and Genoese ships land at Jaffa, carrying siege equipment and fresh supplies. Hull reports that the Fatimids dispatched troops, 400 Arabs and 200 Turks, to attack the supply chain between Jaffa and Jerusalem; Hull reports that the Franks only lost 5 of the force of maybe 150-200 knights, and “all of the archers” (about 50?)

It takes about three weeks to transport the supplies to Jerusalem and for the siege towers to be built; the Genoese played an especially large role in building the siege equipment, and their chief engineer is named as  William Embriaco.

On July 10 the siege engines were finished and wheeled to the walls. That night everyone inside the city and out sat over campfires, showing each other pictures of their families and trying to humanize themselves for the audience to make their impending deaths more impactful

(I kid)

(mostly)

June 13-15: Almost continuous fighting between the Franks, who are trying to move their siege engines close enough to make it onto the walls of Jerusalem, and the Fatimid defenders, who were trying to fight them off and burn their towers down. 

June 15: The Franks breach the walls and begin pouring inside, killing and looting its inhabitants. There is well-documented destruction of Muslim and Jewish holy places, where Muslims and Jews fled for refuge and were killed. This part is. Sickening. Tens of thousands of people dead; the streets running with blood. 

The Fatimid governor and various others (possibly the remainders of the army? Possibly important citizens? Some Jews appear to be in this group?) took refuge in the Tower of David, and were able to negotiate to leave Jerusalem safely. The Fatimid soldiers who left the city that way joined the advancing Fatimid army at Ascalon, southwest of Jerusalem.

It’s unclear who the survivors were--the sources mention people left aside being made into slaves, being allowed to leave the city, or being ransomed by rich relatives outside the city. The fact that we have Jewish and Muslim accounts of what happened during this time means there were survivors

But let’s face it: The survivors were the minority. The majority of people, thousands of them, were slaughtered by the Franks as they took over the city.

Epilogue: The Fatimids tried to take Jerusalem back a month later, and failed. Jerusalem was in Crusader hands.

It’s taken me three days to write this up and I’m ending it feeling really blah and drained by the enormity of this shit. I... 

The Race for Paradise has this bit that talks about two Western ways of talking about the Crusades: 

The Traditional paradigm, where this was a great moment for Christianity, whew we kicked those guys’ BUTTS!

The Lachrymose (Latin for “full of tears”) paradigm, coming to popularity since the Enlightenment, where this was horrific mass slaughter caused by religious zealotry and it was bad and everything was bad 

But the thing is, we can’t actually stop there. Or, that is: It’s not actually useful for our only narratives about the Crusades to be either “Christians kill everyone and it’s awesome” or “Christians kill everyone and it’s terrible”. It’s not true; it feeds into the overall false narrative of “European Christians only interacted with [Muslims/Middle Easterners/People of Colour] very rarely, and only when there was an atrocity happening.” It means we fail to acknowledge all the cross-cultural contacts that happened without an atrocity, and fail to realize that a lot of these atrocities came out of the context of incredibly warlike countries whose economies depended on warfare and conquest.

Another element is... during the 11th century, when all of this happened, the Normans also invaded England. Their conquest was absolutely brutal. England was ethnically and linguistically divided for centuries between a French-speaking colonial upper class, and the English-speaking peasantry. But over the centuries, these two groups came to live together peacefully and build a distinctly new society. Most peoples’ narratives of medieval England are not “a land of massacre, genocide, and ethnic strife”, even though those things definitely happened. We just have much stronger associations with medieval English art, literature, culture, fashion, and architecture than its slaughters.

So basically: The challenge for us in the 21st century is to develop a richer understanding of the past. We know a hell of a lot about battles and armies; we know way less about merchants and farmers, and about the long decades between battles and armies. Military history tells us about waging war, but if we can look past that, we can find out about waging peace.

Now I’m going to go collapse into my bed, and in a day or five I’ll write up a TL;DR version about what I think the likeliest backstories for Joe are (Briefly: probably a Fatimid cavalry soldier or an ordinary person who thought it was safe to be in Jerusalem at the time, and had to defend himself and his servants etc when the city fell)

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

💭- ɟ

Heellooo babies and dear Anons 👋🏼🤗 I’m so sorry for the delay, but I’ve been pretty busy. I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m alive, and as I said I would, even if late I will always answer you. And trust me, I feel so bad for the delay, but I’ve prepared a bonus at the end of the post that I hope will make it up to you 🙏🏼

Now. Without making you wait any longer, let’s move on to the questions Mari sent to me.

I can sure try, dear Anon 🙃 1) Yes, I firmly believe in the theory that Lauren went to Camila right after the concert. 2) Camila ended up in the hospital for the same reasons she’s been there other times too: stress, lack of sleep, dehydration, weariness, and, you know, general weakness because they were overworked. 3) No, she was already gone at that time. That episode was released on November 1, 2014, but was filmed on August 21st in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the ‘Austin Mahone: Live on Tour’. Camren were already official in April 🥳

 I really don’t think she was watching porn, dear Anon. I have two theories on this, but neither of them includes porn. Theory number 1, Camila and Lauren arranged to pull a prank on the girls, not giving a damn about the cameraman. They faked those moans to prank DNA. Theory number 2, it was all true (at that age especially, are more the times when hormones control you and not the other way around 🤣) and they didn’t give a damn about the cameraman and anyone else also for an act of rebellion.

The takeover begins with Ally. While Ally talks to ‘us’, Lauren is shown for literally two seconds while she’s on a video call with someone. At 0:04, you can hear her say something like “Hey, it’s okay, baby”, followed by “I wanna do it” at 0:08. Lauren is no longer seen for the rest of the takeover.

The first “Ahh” said by (in my opinion) Camila, happens at 0:50. The way DNA crack up, and Ally’s cheeks that get so red with embarrassment, I find hilariously funny in itself. As well as the teasing made by DNA towards Camila. But Normani… NORMANI KORDEI HAMILTON, guuurl! And do we want to talk about Ally? The “You too with your water” said in THAT way after Camila’s “Have fun with the movie”? Whatcha mean, girl, whatcha mean? 😝🤣

At 2:05, while Camila is eating, Lauren says something like “Gimmie” to her before Mila reaches out her arm to really give her whatever she’s eating. At 3:00, people hear “Keep going”, while I hear “Don’t stop” with a moan, immediately followed then by the other “Ahh”. Lauren, in my opinion. “Ahh” that Mani then repeats at 3:08 to make fun of them. And no, don’t tell me things like ‘but she hit her head’ because if you see the scene in slow motion, at 0.5 speed, you’ll notice that she doesn’t hit it at all and that she said it to imitate them and make Ally laugh. And then, there’s the difference in the “oww” she says at 3:14 when she hurts herself for real, and you can see how different the two verses are.

Whether it was true, or whether it was a prank, for me this is still a big proof. And this big proof, Camila and Lauren didn’t give it to me per se. Ally, Mani, and Dinah did. Why? Well, because all of this does nothing but show how used to hear that kind of thing they were. So used to it, that not only were they comfortable enough (except for having a camera pointed at their face during this time) but that they even teased them.

I don’t know if they didn’t really notice or if they did it on purpose to get more views and likes. I just know that AwesomenessTV no longer has it in their videos, but the Fifth Harmony page does. Same page that was/is managed by whom? By the same people who still want Camren dead but who exploit them when it suits them best. As in this case because views and likes produce money that ends up in their pockets.

Yes, dear anon, I truly believe that.

The funny thing for me is that Lauren called Paul Martinez her first love when she was much younger. But that only after their breakup. At the time, she even believed that they would’ve gotten married. She explained that they’d been best friends before they got together and that he then broke up with her and that she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and that she was able to move on only when she wrote her first song about how she felt about it on September 17, 2011.

The reality of the situation, however, is different. Lauren really fell in love for the first time with Camila. She realized the real difference later. Lauren and Paul were together for not even two months. They were together for literally only 50 days. That one, I mostly define it as a strong infatuation. First experience of a relationship, even if brief, with someone. First time she has experienced the real pain of a breakup and having a broken heart. And at that age, everything seems more and more intensified and even worse than it is. For Lauren who’s an empath, even more so.

So, yeah. I truly believe that both were the first true and intense love of the other. And no, dear. No one has topped that yet. Neither for one, nor for the other 😉

 If you don’t mind, dear Anon, I would prefer to answer your questions in reverse and start from the second question first because it connects to the first one. That way, it’s simply easier for me to explain to you what I mean 😄

I don’t think so?! I mean, I’ve never experienced love at first sight. I’m a rational person and who follows logic a lot, therefore, if I were to think to want to shout a serious ‘I LOVE YOU!’ on the face of a person I’ve just met and of whom I know absolutely nothing, I’d feel crazy. How could I think I’m already in love with them? It’s something I would think to be absurd because honestly, what the fuck? I’d think of being definitely delirious.

I know what it’s like to look into a person’s eyes and think ‘wow’. I know what it’s like to look into those same eyes and lose myself in them, and feel myself melt, and getting soft, and feel light, and literally feel a passage of energy through my body that turns into goosebumps.

I know that kind of instinct. An instinct that pushes you towards this person, that pushes you not to let them go. You can’t let them go and you don’t want to. You want to know this person. Right from the start. You want to know their interests, what they like, what music they listen to, and everything in between. It’s something you can’t control. You can try, but it’s impossible and it gets you out of your mind. It’s difficult, weird, and exciting at the same time. And it’s different from the normal attraction. The normal attraction is only physical. This is mental. It comes from your mind but is also guided by something else. Something that after, only after, you understand to be your heart. And what does THAT mean? That you’re starting to fall. And after having really got to know the person better, also feeling esteem for them, after that complicity was created, that passion, that intimate and mental connection, that’s where true love is born.

When you see someone for the first time, and you like that someone, you obviously feel attraction. Love, true love, happens over time. And that’s what I think happened to Camila. I think she felt an immediate attraction as soon as she saw her (2012), which turned into a huge crush (2013), and it started with the fall which in turn blossomed into love (2014). Maybe she didn’t understand this metamorphosis right away. Maybe she has understood this over time and maturing. And the moment that she understood it (ex: Terrified, Must Be Love), was also the moment in which she was able to explain it to us and deliver it to us in different songs. Another striking example that comes to mind now is “Seventeen when I started to fall” 🎵.

It was different for Lauren, but the process was similar. She herself said she found her cute initially. I think that the attraction was born when she started to know her better (2012), and that this was already an alarm bell for her because she didn’t want to. And not because she didn’t want to be attracted to Camila, but because she didn’t want to be attracted to a girl again. One with whom she should’ve spent a lot of time together, by the way. So she tried to keep this attraction at bay. But the more she tried, the more it grew. The more she denied herself the desire, the more she got to knew Camila, and the more attracted she was to her. Then she succumbed to the attraction and simultaneously started to develop a crush, and this threw her for a panic loop even more because she COULD NOT have feelings for a girl. She simply couldn’t. And that’s how the 2013’s back and forth started, the ‘Like Friends Do’ situation that led her to start falling hard and the eventual definite falling in love in 2014.

 Good question, dear Anon, a really good question. You see, EL has always puzzled me. In the sense that for quite some time, I didn’t know whether to believe if they were really a friend of theirs, or if it was just a person in the industry who had only worked with them for a certain period of time, or if they were just a fan with a huge luck in guessing certain things.

I think this because many times they’ve contradicted themselves and said very general things that anyone with a good knowledge of the girls and how the industry works could have predicted. I’ll give you some examples. I remember that at first, they said they had a relative in the industry, then they changed and said something like Lauren was one of the most important people in their life. Then they changed again and said they knew a lot about the Camren’s relationship because they were close to them, but that they wouldn’t delve into their private lives out of respect, yet, at the same time, they said about their first kiss and their first time. Um.. like, what?? How does this make any sense? Stick to one version, can’t ya? That alone, already made me doubt their credibility very much.

Another example I can give you is that they said the purpose for the Bad Things music video was to show how straight Camila was and to kill the rumors about her sexuality. But then, they said the video would have hints of her true sexuality and Camren’s too. Um… Again. What?? Not only did they contradict themselves, but they also said something rather generic and predictable. Think about it. If the video was to kill those rumors and straighten her image in the first place, why then would they have agreed to put hints on her sexuality and on something related to Camren? What would have been the point of trying to straighten her image then?? Not to mention that it’s pretty easy to say that we’d find things related to Camren when there are CS who would be able to find something even when there isn’t. Because we know that there were and still are those who find things that are actually completely absurd and non-existent just for the sake of having proofs. So, do you see my point here?

As for who they were, you can rule out most of the industry people who worked with them, and DNA and all people related to them (DNA) for one simple reason: ExposingLaucy was fluent in both English and Spanish. You can rule out Camren because they would never, ever risk being hacked and discovered. And that leaves us to the friends of the Camren’s clique and the fans. Wanna know what makes me think this person was actually a fan? The fact that EL also knew a lot about 1D and that Camila and Lauren’s true friends never got involved in Camren’s world publicly. You’ve never seen Marielle and Sandra or Brittany, Keana, Alexa, and Erica say anything about Camren publicly. They certainly wouldn’t have created an account to expose Laucy when exposing Laucy would’ve meant not helping their friends. And then, come on, they had their own lives to think about.

Now I want you to think about something else too, and I’m gonna take precisely me as an example. In my very first post, ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel’, I created a little skit during which Shaky misgendered Sam Smith. As we all know, it actually happened in real life just over a month after my post. In my ‘PR stunt relationships’ post, I said I was convinced that Shabby had grown his hair out to look like his obsession for years: Matthew McConaughey. Five days after my post, Chauffeur admitted exactly that and of copying his style in general in the Late Late Show interview.

What does this mean? That I knew all this was going to happen? Hell, no. That I’m a white version of Raven Baxter? Maybe 😎🤣 No, but kidding aside, I just said what I thought of him both times. I only expressed my opinions, and the first time I did it through that skit because my gut had always told me that he’d be the kind of guy to be an insensitive asshole like that. And by the way, I was shocked, surprised, and even a little proud both times because I was actually right. But what’s the point? My point is that I could’ve taken advantage of this from the start. I could’ve pretended to be an insider from my first post and prove to you that I was one for real with these two things that I would’ve told you were ‘proofs’. It would’ve been pretty easy. But I didn’t. I would never have been stupid enough to start something so risky with the risk of being discovered as has happened with many other fans. And I never would have done it especially because that’s not who I am. I don’t need to pretend to be something that I’m not, thank you very much 😁 I’m more genuine than that.

Unfortunately, though, there are a lot of people who don’t think like me who have and continue to create accounts pretending to be insiders. All of those accounts are nothing more than fans who crave attention. Fans who pretend to be insiders who have information, without ever proving them though, and who say generic things and who sometimes are lucky enough to guess. That’s all. But EL, had something these other fans didn’t have. My best guess? EL was just a Harmonizer lucky enough to have someone from the industry in their (5H) circle, maybe really a relative as they initially said, who sometimes passed information to them.

 Because Camila was constantly out there working, dear Anon. You know, interviews, performances, tours, you name it 🙃

 I’ve already answered this question, dear Anon. Go check out my ‘🗯️ - ɟ’ post 😄

Yes, dear Anon, they’ve both hurt each other many times, and you can imagine how a parent might feel about seeing their child suffer. I’m not a mom, so I can’t speak from experience in that department, but I can give you another type of example to make you understand and maybe even make you better relate to what I want to tell you.

Imagine having two friends, okay? These two friends, are both your best friends. You care about them in the same equal way. These two friends of yours are together, and every time they fight, they come to you to vent. You unintentionally find yourself in the center of this situation, but not because you get in the way or because you take the side of one of them, but simply because you’re literally the person they go to for venting and to ask for advice. Every time you hear that one of the two has fucked up, you automatically ‘hate them’, in many quotes, for making the other one suffer. Maybe you also try to justify their actions because you know them and love them and you want the two of them to make up, but it’s still automatic for you to feel momentary anger towards them for making your other friend suffer.

Now that you know what I mean, double, triple, even quadruple, that momentary anger because that’s what I think a parent feels. It must not be easy to see your child suffer in general, but to see them suffer for someone you know, who is the cause, must be even harder. Especially in their case that they saw Lauren grow up with their daughter.

Camila’s number one best friend is Sinu. Camila has always told her everything. And Sinu has also always been very present, especially since the beginning of September 2016 when she’s become a permanent presence. Sinu must have seen the developments over the years with her own eyes. And I also think that Sinu and Ale have that kind of relationship where they talk about everything. I don’t know, but I think the Cabellos would have preferred to see her single rather than in that kind of pain in those times of severe toxicity between them. Because those are the periods that Camila refers to in both songs if you notice (I don’t consider First Man in this case).

Don’t get me wrong. I still to this day think Camila and Lauren are considered as daughters by both families. The problem at the time, wasn’t Lauren specifically because I think they would’ve thought it no matter who their daughter was with. And same thing in reverse for Camila for the Jaureguis. Besides, I don’t think the Cabellos consider Lauren a bad person at all, in fact, quite the opposite. The Cabellos love Lauren and the Jaureguis love Camila. It’s always been like this, despite they’ve tried to make us believe otherwise. I think that in those two songs Camila has only blown it out of proportion for the sake of the songs themselves and that’s why it looks more serious than it really is.

 I think the answer is in the question itself, dear Anon 😆 Their problems have always been caused by the lack of communication. So they fixed that. They’ve learned to speak for real. To communicate for real and without keeping anything inside. They’ve learned to listen and not bite each other’s heads off. They’ve learned to put pride aside. And they both have set boundaries. They healed each other the same way they broke each other: together. I don’t think they’re 100% there yet, also because no relationship is perfect, but I think they’ve improved a lot compared to before. Or at least, I hope so since mine are just assumptions.

 No, dear Anon. I never believed that rumor, and unless a picture of them kissing or something like that gets leaked, I don’t think I ever will. I’m sorry, but that sounds way too ridiculous for me to even think about it 🤷🏻‍♀‍

As for your last question, I believe Ari has already answered it herself in 2019. You remember Monopoly, right? Well, that “I like women and men” made me jump from my chair so high, I don’t know how I didn’t break something when I landed on my feet. I don’t even know how I landed on my feet and not tripped or directly fell to the floor honestly 🤣 “I’ve been on a roll, where you been?” dead, Ari. I died after what you said, okay? I knew about Victoria because she’d already come out, but you hadn’t done it yet so don’t ask me where I’ve been because I’ll tell you where I’m now, and I. Am. Deeeaad! Dead.

Ahh… How I wish our Mila would come out in that same so chill way, you know? Without making too much of a big deal out of it 🤩 But anyway. Ari didn’t want to put a label on herself because she never felt the need to, and I respect that 🙏🏼

BONUS

I call it ‘The truth in the lies’.

I was re-reading some old Camila’s interviews when I came across a particular one that made me literally burst out laughing, shake my head, and say what with them has now become my phrase: “The math… The math”. I’m referring to the interview with BBS News titled: Camila Cabello: ‘An absolute force of nature’, published on December 5, 2019.

I copied and pasted the part that interests us: As soon as the Grammys wrapped up, however, Cabello stepped away from the limelight to concentrate on her second album. “She said, 'I’m not going to come out of the studio until I’ve beaten my last album,’” recalls her manager, Roger Gold. In total, it took eight months, covering a period where “other artists were putting out back-to-back albums, only a few months apart,” he says. “So it was hard for us, and for her, to ignore the noise and go into the studio and take the time she needed.”

I’d like to underline the ‘As soon as the Grammys wrapped up’ part (big ass liar 🙄), and the more important one ‘In total, it took eight months’ (to complete the album). I repeat, 8 MONTHS. And that’s the truth. Okay, are you ready to do the math and for the explanation? Good 😏

The Grammys they were referring to were the Grammy Awards which took place on January 12, 2019. Romance was released on December 6, 2019. From January 12, 2019, to December 6, 2019, it’s 10 months. We already know regardless that this would’ve turned out to be bullshit because Camila started recording the album in September 2018, and not January 2019. But just to prove to you even more how much bullshit they said for this album, I wanted to include it anyway.

Would you like to see another proof with the same date? Okay. Now let’s try from January 12, 2019, to July 12, 2019, which is the PR day in San Francisco. It’s 6 months. You can also move the dates by a few days because it’s logical that Camila wouldn’t have recorded the same night as the Grammys and, according to their stupid narrative, Used to This was recorded right after San Francisco and was the last song recorded for the album. Wanna try, I don’t know, from January 15, 2019, to July 16, 2019? It’s still SIX MONTHS and NOT EIGHT 🤣 Let’s go on.

Let’s try to calculate with the actual recording start date now and not their narrative dates.

We know First Man was the first song recorded for Romance, and we know it was recorded in Nashville. Camila was on tour for Taylor Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour at the time. Two dates that interest us on that tour are the one of September 8th in Kansas City, and the one of September 15th in Indianapolis. Why? Because for those five days in between, from the 9th to the 14th, Camila stayed in Nashville. For the first few days, she worked first with Amy Wadge on First Man, and then in the following ones, with Ed Sheeran on South of the Border, which they finished on September 14th. All you have to do to have a confirmation of this is to check out the video C posted on July 12, 2019, where she’s rehearsing her verse with Ed, and the picture she posted on September 14, 2018, and you’ll notice that she’s wearing the same shirt.

Since First Man was finished either one day or two prior, let’s take the South of the Border date as a reference for good measure. Also because as I showed you before, moving the date by just a few days to do the calculation still leads to the same result.

So let’s try, from September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to December 6, 2019 (Romance album release) it’s 1 year and almost 3 months. Soooo, nope. Next.

From September 14, 2018, to July 12, 2019 (PR in San Francisco) it’s 10 months. 🤣🤣🤣 NEXT.

Come on, Faby, when are you gonna tell us the real date that corresponds to the 8 months? Now, babies, now. And I actually can offer you two.

We know that Camila finished Romance in May, and we had even more confirmation when she posted an Insta-story on June 3rd of a Dropbox folder called CC2 with the album already mastered and more than ready. Wanna try with both a May date and this June date? Okay.

From September 14, 2018, to May 21, 2019, that is, the rehearsals for the Señorita’s music video, it’s 8 months and 7 days exactly.

From September 14, 2018, to June 3, 2019, that is, the IG-story of the Dropbox folder, it’s 8 months and 20 days exactly.

We have our winners, guys 🥳🥳🥳

Let’s recap just because:

From January 12, 2019 (Grammy Awards 2019) to December 6, 2019 (Romance album release) it’s 10 months.

From January 12, 2019 (Grammy Awards 2019) to July 12, 2019 (PR in San Francisco) it’s 6 months.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to December 6, 2019 (Romance album release) it’s 1 year and almost 3 months.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to July 12, 2019 (PR in San Francisco) it’s 10 months.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to May 21, 2019 (Rehearsals for the Señorita’s music video) it’s 8 months and 7 days exactly.

From September 14, 2018 (South of the Border) to June 3, 2019 (Dropbox folder) it’s 8 months and 20 days exactly.

Now do you understand why ‘The truth in the lies’? 😏

Aaaaand I’m done 👩🏻‍💻 I hope I made it up to you with this bonus 🤞🏼 Thank you, Mari, and thanks to all of you for your questions, I swear I’m loving them more and more, so please, continue to feel free to send me as many as you want 🤗💪🏼

Remember to be kind, to others and to yourself. Remember to be a good example. Remember to be patient. Stay safe and take care of yourself. I send you lots of love and virtual hugs 🤗🤗🤗 Oh and, of course, keep shipping our submarine 🤣 I love you, babies. Always with love, F ❤️

___

Ten answers for ten anons, that’s a lot of writing to do. Great work, F

[tcm]

Overlooked Bernard Herrmann Scores By Jessica Pickens

His name is synonymous with staccato violin notes that remind audiences of knife stabbing and have made many reluctant to take a shower. Composer Bernard Herrmann is the master behind iconic scores for films like THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (’41) and PSYCHO (’60). The Academy Award-winning composer scored the two films that are often argued to be the best of all-time: CITIZEN KANE (’41) and VERTIGO (’58). His work continues to be reused in pop culture, from his whistling TWISTED NERVE (’68) theme used in Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL: VOLUME 1 (2003) to Lady Gaga using part of VERTIGO’s prelude in her “Born This Way” music video.

Known best for his collaborations with directors Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, other works of Herrmann’s often go overlooked. Below are a few of his scores that are less often discussed.

JANE EYRE (’43)

In this adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine), who is hired by the wealthy Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), works as the governess for Rochester’s daughter which leads to her discovering secrets in the house. “On a project like ‘Jane Eyre,’ I didn’t need to see the film beforehand. One just remembers the book,” Herrmann said in a 1975 interview, discussing this film’s score.

JANE EYRE was Herrmann’s first project with 20th Century-Fox, which started a 19-year partnership with the studio and a long friendship with composer and Fox music director Alfred Newman. Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck initially sought composer Igor Stravinsky to score the film, but negotiations fell through. Producer David O. Selznick and Welles were the driving force behind hiring Herrmann for the project, according to Herrmann’s biographer Steven Smith.

Herrmann’s score has a dark, gothic feel that matches the theme of the novel. New York Herald Tribune composer critic Paul Bowles described the score as “gothic extravagance and poetic morbidities. It contains some of the most carefully wrought effects to be found in recent film scores,” Bowles wrote. According to Smith, Herrmann called it his first “screen opera.” The score foreshadowed work on another Brontë project — his “Wuthering Heights” opera that didn’t see a full theatrical performance until 2011.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND (‘51)

Directed by Nicholas Ray, an adaptation of Gerald Butler’s book Mad with Much Heart. The film follows a rough city police officer, Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan). After Jim is too violent with a suspect, he is sent to a rural area as punishment. His job is to help with a manhunt for the murderer of a child. A blind woman, Mary Malden (Ida Lupino) is the sister of the murderer, and she tries to convince Jim to protect her brother.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND is one of Herrmann’s few film noir scores. Film noir expert and host of TCM’s Noir Alley Eddie Muller said, "Herrmann's score is one of the most distinctive crime scores of the era." In a June 2019 introduction of the film, Muller noted “Herrmann’s score is unlike any other music written for film noir. A dramatic clash of brass, strings and percussion that goes a long way to unify the film’s unusual — almost schizophrenia — structure.”

Herrmann admired Ray’s storytelling and engineered a creative score that illustrated good and evil. For Lupino’s character, Herrmann used the viola soloist Virginia Majewski, who Herrmann advocated to have on-screen credit. Herrmann also had the rare freedom to compose, orchestra and conduct the entire score. The most notable cue is “The Death Hunt,” that has a driving, frantic tempo and can be compared to his later NORTH BY NORTHWEST (’59) score. Muller noted that to make sure “The Death Hunt” cue was effective, Herrmann fought to have the sound mix corrected during the scene so that the barking dogs wouldn’t drown out his score.

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO (1952)

Based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, Gregory Peck plays Harry, a novelist who uses his earnings to travel. While on safari in Africa, Harry suffers an injury that results in a deadly infection. As he lies dying, he thinks back on his life and past romances, and his safari companion Helen, played by Susan Hayward, nurses Harry through his illness.

While some of Herrmann’s most famous scores drive thrillers and adventures, scores like THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO show he can create beautiful, gentle and charming tunes. His cues are dreamy and wistful, matching the mental state of the ill Harry, whose mind travels to the past while on his death bed. Herrmann’s cue entitled, “The Memory Waltz,” is particularly dreamy. Herrmann said he tried to create music of “a highly nostalgic nature” as a man dies and deals with his “emotional past.”

On the film’s release, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther praised Herrmann’s score. “For it is Mr. Herrmann’s music, singing sadly and hauntingly, that helps one sense the pathos of dead romances and a wasted career. A saxophone and a piano in a Paris studio, an accordion on an old Left Bank bar and an arrogant guitarist in a Spanish café—these are also actors in the film. Perhaps they come closer to stating what Hemingway had to say.”

MARNIE (1964)

Marnie (Tippi Hedren) is a thief who suffers from psychological trauma of her past, which comes to a head after she marries a widower (Sean Connery) from a wealthy Philadelphia family who does not readily accept her. MARNIE was the end of an era. It marked the last of seven films that Herrmann collaborated on with director Alfred Hitchcock on, beginning with THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (’55).

Much had changed for both Herrmann and Hitchcock by 1964, including how they were both viewed by Hollywood executives. Herrmann and Hitchcock were being pressured to be more “hip” for 1960s audiences. The studio even urged Hitchcock not to hire “old-fashioned” Herrmann. But if Hitchcock did hire Herrmann, they encouraged him to also have a title pop song, according to Smith. The film was a box-office failure — Hitchcock’s first failure in many years. Today, the film is now appreciated by audiences, but Herrmann’s score still is often overlooked when compared to other Hitchcock titles.

The main title of MARNIE features blaring horns, which sound haphazard against more melodic violins — illustrating the mix of trauma and beauty. A notable cue is “The Foxhunt,” which begins with a jaunty, almost cheerful, tune filled with horns and violins. But the cue turns more haphazard and frantic as it continues. While this was Herrmann’s last completed score for Hitchcock, Herrmann started work on TORN CURTAIN (’66) but was replaced due to artistic differences.

IT’S ALIVE (’74)

The Davies family (Sharon Farrell and John P. Ryan) are expecting their second child. But when their baby is born, he is a monster who kills anyone in his path. The 1970s marked a new era for Bernard Herrmann. He began working with younger filmmakers who appreciated his work of the past. These included Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma. One of these collaborations spawned a friendship with director of IT’S ALIVE, Larry Cohen, who cited Herrmann as a major influence in his career up until his death in 2019.

Herrmann enjoyed the experience with his film because he enjoyed working with Cohen. To add to the eerie, creepy vibe of the film, Herrmann incorporated a Moog synthesizer into the score. He also uses a viola for a mournful note, according to Smith. Herrmann also had fun naming his cues, such as “The Milkman Goeth” when the baby kills the milkman.

Herrmann was set to work with Cohen again for the film GOD TOLD ME TO (’76), but Herrmann died in 1975 before he could begin.