#i think some of the lyrics in this also works pretty well for Alphys and Dings | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

keelywolfe · 4 years ago

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FIC: Drifters ch.7 (spicyhoney)

Summary: Edge and Red have a brotherly dispute. It goes great.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Violence, Rescued Child, Medical Experimentation, Babybones

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Read it here!

~~*~~

Edge had gone long nights without sleep before. As a child, he’d often spent the night curled up with his brother in hidden corners and caves, struggling for any measure of warmth beneath threadbare blankets as they both kept half-awake listening for any telltale footsteps coming their way.

As an adult, he often stayed awake on his own accord. There was always work to be done, whether for the guard or simple housekeeping, and he subsisted on no more than four hours of sleep a night. It was sufficient to replenish his magic and that was all that was necessary. Armed with that knowledge, it made it very difficult to understand why caring for an infant throughout a single night seemed so much worse.

Every two hours, she woke crying for a bottle, with enough accuracy he could nearly set a clock by it. It would start with a whimper and before Edge could even throw back the blankets, her screams would reach their peak earsplitting volume. Even Stretch couldn’t sleep through those wails and the first two times, he’d been the one to stagger downstairs for a bottle. Edge was certain on the last occasion he never opened his eye sockets, and he was torn on whether teleporting in the midst of exhaustion was more or less a danger than the chance he might fall down the stairs.

Rather than test that theory, Edge went to heat the bottle the next time and if he’d thought trying to comfort the baby while waiting for her meal to arrive was difficult, standing over a pot of water trying to will it to heat faster was somehow worse. At least he could attempt to reason with a baby, physics obeyed no rules but their own.

Each time she would drain the bottle and then immediately fall back asleep. The logistics of it were so simple, retrieve bottle, feed baby, then back to sleep. She didn’t even require a diaper change like so many other infants would, so why was this so blasted exhausting. His current belief was that somehow her cry drained energy like some sort of localized version of a vampiric spell and next time he was determined to run a check on himself to ascertain the truth.

But that would have to wait until they’d all gotten some rest. After her last bottle, not only had the chore of washing it out immediately after use been abandoned, so had tucking her into her own bed. In his sleep-deprived state, Edge decided that if she slept by the wall with him between her and Stretch, then she would be safe from being squashed in the night. As a strategy it did work, for about an hour, until Stretch rolled over in his sleep, right off the edge of the mattress to the floor with a loud thump and a louder curse.

Edge managed to wake up enough to check that he hadn’t accidently dusted himself in the fall and then promptly fell back asleep. The child hadn’t woken, that was the important part, and he could only hope that sleeping children didn’t learn foul language through some form of mental osmosis.

When he woke again, it wasn’t to the baby’s cries, but a stream of artificial sunlight coming through the curtains to fall across his face. He cringed away from it, but it was too late. The light was like the angel’s finger poking him directly in the socket, the time for sleep was over, and now he needed to face the harsh light of day.

A bleary look to one side found the bed empty and what remained of the blankets looked as if a tornado struck, not of trash, but one made up of baby’s tears.

Edge peered over the side of the mattress to find Stretch still snoring on the floor. Sleep was perhaps a less accurate description than out cold, he looked as if an alarm clock set atop his skull wouldn’t wake him. On the floor under his mouth was a darkened patch of drool, he was half-tangled in one of the blankets with one bare leg sprawled out across the carpet, toes curling against the cool air, and he did not stir one single inch despite the loudly creaking bedsprings. Plus, the light couldn’t reach him down there. Edge allowed himself a brief instant of rueful resentment before rolling to the other side to deal with the child, who over the course of the evening dwindled from Stretch affectionately calling her a ‘little snow princess’ down to the simply ‘the kid’.

“It’s all right, child, he’ll do better after some rest,” Edge said blearily…to no one at all. The sheet next to him was empty and for a moment, Edge only stared at it uncomprehendingly, cold panic slowly settling in his soul at the unbearable nightmare that was unfolding before him. That Alphys had found them out and come for her, the machine not destroyed enough and instead the portal was lying wide open like a gaping wound as not one, but an army of Underfell Monsters came through.

He shook away that fear before it could take root, dismissing it as impossible. To begin with, her first step would have been to murder them as they slept. Casting aside that panic only allowed a new one to take its place, the mystery of ‘then where is she’ still unanswered.

She was too young to have crawled away, she was nowhere in the room, so that left one last possibility. Edge clambered out of the bed, stepping over Stretch’s prone body as he jerked on the bathrobe and headed out to find his brother.

Who was sitting peaceably on the sofa with his pilfered infant settled contentedly in his lap, staring up at him with wide sockets as her chubby cheek bones puffed out with every suck on her bottle.

Red didn’t even look up as Edge stormed down to stand in front of him. The fury of his glares had never been able to penetrate much through Red’s aura of casual ease. His brother was humming softly, a song that Edge knew the lyrics to quite well and could at least be grateful that Red didn’t choose to share them with the child.

“’bout time you got up, bro,” Red said, singsong sweet. He was laying back against the sofa arm with the baby cradled between his knees. “you was sleepin’ pretty hard up there. kiddo was awake and getting’ ready to start complaining’ when i came in to play fetch.” His tone was easy, but Edge did not miss the sharp censure in his glance, crimson eye lights coolly assessing.

“I wouldn’t count on it happening again,” Edge said coldly. He met his brother’s gaze unflinchingly, waiting until his brother slowly nodded. Apology accepted, as it were, and Red turned his attention back to the baby.

“this little miss is a hungry one.” He gave the bottle an idle tug, grinning as the baby made a querulous noise and clung to it, never pausing in her urgent sucking. “drinks her weight and then some, don’t she. you were the same way, never could scrape up enough chow to keep you happy.” It was fondly said, but Edge only barely kept himself from wincing. He didn’t want to remember days of going hungry, the gnawing, endless emptiness inside his soul, wanted even less to picture the same thing happening to this child.

(never, never, he wouldn’t allow it, he would not)

“I doubt that will change anytime soon. Speaking of which, if you could watch over her, I’ll be going out today.”

“huh?” That got his brother’s attention. “what the fuck for?”

“To find a job of some sort, to begin with,” Edge said, “We can hardly expect the Swap brothers’ to keep paying our way.” He didn’t have the first clue what formula cost, but he suspected that it was not cheap.

“fuck, bro, we’ve been here two minutes and you’re already polishin’ your resume?” Red groaned. “take a day to get settled in, fer cryin’ out loud!”

“There’s no time for that. I was also going to go to the librarby to find a book on childrearing—”

He broke off as Red hooted a harsh laugh. “you serious, bro? you think you’re gonna find an old copy of ‘what to expect with your skele-baby’s first year’? gonna set up some training time with the local moms, mebbe they can teach you their special parenting attacks. you’ll be captain of the childrearing guild in no time, bro, better start working on your uniform now.”

“You—” Edge began and couldn’t continue, only stood listening mutely as his brother’s laughter soured, his words going bitter.

“think i fucked up that bad with you, is that it?”

It wasn’t at all true. He knew very well that his brother did the best he could, he’d been a child himself, he never should have had to help with an infant. He knew that, they both did, but the words refused to come. Before either of them could say another word, spiteful or otherwise, another voice entered the fray, sleep-sodden and mellow.

“you two loud enough down here?” From upstairs and Edge looked up to see Stretch ambling down the stairs, still yawning and rubbing at his sockets. He was only wearing a pair of shorts, the rest of his lanky bones on display from the crown of his skull to his bare toes, and he had no right to look as simply attractive as he did despite the darkened crescents beneath his sockets.

“sorry, sleeping beauty,” Red snorted, “next time we’ll work on our charades instead, how’s this ta start?”

Stretch ignored Red’s upraised middle finger, slouching closer to peer at the baby. “where did the jammies come from?”

Red jerked his head towards the front door where a paper sack was slumped by the various shoes. “your doggo pal dropped off some clothes. didn’t seem to know what to make of me, think maybe he decided blue went for a big fashion change.”

“bet he’ll appreciate hearing about going goth at the next sentry meeting.”

The mention of pajamas made Edge take a closer look at the child. He’d been so relieved to see the baby was safe that he hadn’t even noticed her change in apparel. She looked like a proper baby now, from the cozy footie pajamas to the colorful bib around her neck. The bottle was long since empty, but she hadn’t yet surrendered on the off chance that perhaps a few last drops might yet make an appearance.

Stretch didn’t wait for her to give up on it and simply took it away, scooping her up despite Red’s disgruntled protests, and cuddled her close. “lookin’ good, sugar butt!”

He buzzed a wet, noisy kiss against her cheek bone and she squealed in delight, then hiccoughed, a dribble of milk running from her mouth that dripped down to stain the bib. “uh huh, like that is it, everybody is a critic.” He swung her gently around and Edge automatically took her as Stretch deposited her into his arms, “here, edgelord, the princess needs a bath.”

A bath. That much was certainly true after a restlessness night of milky dribbles.

Edge didn’t move, he only held her uncertainly, shuffling his feet as he reluctantly admitted, “I don’t know how.”

“it’s easy,” Stretch yawned, his spine popping as he raised both arms over his head with a groan, “just bend over. you’ll have to handle it, you’re young and flexible, my back is talking to me like a bowl of rice krispies. wash her like you’d wash your feet. not too hot on the water and there’s bubble bath under the sink. go easy on it or it’ll be like trying to grab a greased watermelon in an ice storm.”

With that direction, Stretch only stared at him expectantly. There was nothing he could say, no protest to be made, and Edge turned on his heel and went back upstairs to the bathroom. He stood by the empty tub, looking down at the baby in his arms. She looked back at him, her thumb firmly in her mouth and her eye lights wide and bright.

So small and delicate, her skull small enough to fit in the cup of his hand. A tiny being composed of fragile bones, it would be entirely too easily for some careless fool to accidentally hurt her. Even if they didn’t mean to, even if they were only trying to help.

He couldn’t do this.

Edge lurched around, heading out the door and ready to call down to Stretch to admit his uselessness when heard his brother’s voice.

“…tryin’ to tell me how to deal with my bro?” So dangerously soft, a warning rarely given for their intended recipient to take care with whatever they said next.

“actually, no, i’m not,” Stretch said. There was a creak of springs as if he’d settled to sit on the sofa. “i wouldn’t do that to you guys. it’s just, he’s not used to all this, so go easy on him, will you? he’s trying really damned hard, he doesn’t need you ragging on him right now about the kid. he thinks the world of you, you gotta know that. so bust his chops about anything else, the baby is off limits. please.”

He couldn’t see downstairs, so he could only imagine what expression was on Stretch’s face that would be enough to make his brother grumble out, “yeah, yeah, honey bun, i get it. lay off until he lands on his feet.”

“thank you. he’s got this, you know. his confidence only took a shake, happens to everyone when they take a step or two out of the comfort zone. give him a little time, he’ll be a whiz. lining up for his best dad coffee mug before we know it.”

“eh, he’s already doing pretty good, ain’t he,” Red said with obvious pride. Edge closed his sockets, swallowing against the sudden thickness in his throat as he listened. “shoulda seen him bustin’ up that lab, kid never hesitated. just grabbed up the little miss and started wreckin’ the joint.”

“i bet. sorry i missed it.” Stretch said, sincerely, and if there was a certain dark satisfaction in those words, it was certainly understandable.

In his arms, the baby began to squirm, and Edge hastily slipped back into the bathroom, quietly closing the door behind them. He settled the baby on the bathmat and turned on the taps, adding a single capful of bubble bath and cautiously checking the temperature before kneeling at her side.

“Ready for a bath?” he asked her, already working to gently strip off her pajamas.

He took her gabbling squeal as a yes and if he, and the bathroom, were nearly as wet as she was by the time she was scrubbed clean, well, that was fine. He’d do better next time.

tbc

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #drifters

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disappearingground · 5 years ago

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The Jenny Lewis Experience

The New York Times July 24, 2014

A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2014, Page 18 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Jenny Lewis Experience.

By Jeff Himmelman

“They’d put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on,” Jenny Lewis said. We were sitting in a restaurant in Laurel Canyon, not far from her home, and she was describing her early childhood with parents who made their living performing as an itinerant Sonny-and-Cher-style lounge act called Love’s Way. “We lived in hotels,” she said. “My sister and I, they would just keep us in the hotel room, and they’d go down and play.” When Lewis was born in 1976, her parents were doing a stand at the Sands. They split up when she was 3, and her mother — herself the daughter of a dancer and a vaudeville performer — took Jenny and her sister to Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley, where she worked as a waitress and struggled to keep her family afloat. “We were on welfare,” Lewis said, before describing the day their fortunes changed, when an agent picked young Jenny out of a crowd at her preschool. “I think mostly because I was a redhead,” she said. “And I was a weird little kid, a weird little tomboy.”

She soon landed her first commercial, for Jell-O, and came under the wing of Iris Burton, an eminent children’s agent who represented River and Joaquin Phoenix and Fred Savage. Lewis started working steadily in commercials, television (“The Golden Girls,” “Growing Pains,” “Mr. Belvedere”) and film (“The Wizard,” “Troop Beverly Hills,” “Pleasantville”), living the surreal and somewhat communal life of a child star in the ‘80s. She spent her days being tutored on set and her evenings at places like Alphy’s Soda Pop Club in Hollywood, which catered exclusively to kids in the industry. At a party there when Lewis was 10, the actor Corey Haim handed her a cassette tape with Run-D.M.C. on one side and the Beastie Boys on the other. “There have been a couple of cassette tapes that have changed my life,” she said, “and that was the first one” — the tape that got her hooked on hip-hop, which eventually led her to songwriting.

I asked Lewis when she first fully realized the role she played in her family, the depth of their dependence on her. “Eight years old,” she said. “I remember the moment. That’s a pretty big thing for a kid to realize. And I remember the power in that.” By the time she was 14 or 15, with nobody to answer to, she could be as wild as she liked as long as she showed up to work and hit her marks. “I was up for it, honestly,” she said. “I loved the work and I loved the people, and it kind of prepped me for what I do now.”

What Lewis does now, the music she makes, is hard to characterize. She is often compared with Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris, and there is a kind of timelessness to the way she writes and sings. But the throwback stuff doesn’t quite capture her. Among some music fans — including many other well-known musicians — Lewis is considered a kind of indie goddess, a stylish performer who defies genre and salts her songs with a sly and off-kilter intelligence. Her first band, Rilo Kiley, signed a major-label deal with Warner Bros. Records in 2005; her first side project, the Postal Service, led by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, sold more than a million copies of its debut; and she has released two well-received solo records since then. Next week, she will release a third, “The Voyager,” her first solo effort in six years. It has been a battle to get it out. Among other things, she has dealt with the death of her father, writer’s block and bouts of insomnia so severe and debilitating that she said they left her almost unable to function for nearly two years.

You’d never guess that from meeting her, though. She talks like a true child of L.A. — the “bro"s and “dude"s flow freely, without affectation — and her go-to traveling costume is a vintage Adidas track suit, Adidas shell-top sneakers and, on the day I first met her, hot-pink lipstick and oversize sunglasses. She lives with her longtime boyfriend and collaborator, the musician Johnathan Rice, up a long canyon road in the hills that separate the San Fernando Valley from downtown Los Angeles. Her house (called “Mint Chip” for its brown-and-light-green exterior) is set into the hillside, looking out over a ravine. There is a rehearsal space with a drum kit, a P.A. and some vintage gear, an old piano in the living room and a vinyl edition of James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” propped up beside the fireplace. Beyond the small pool in the back yard there’s a windowed gazebo that Rice uses as his songwriting space. Whatever you are imagining of the California light and the laid-back lifestyle: yes.

Historically, nearby Laurel Canyon has been synonymous with a certain kind of lush ‘60s acoustic-and-multipart-harmony sound, but Lewis’s musical roots spring from the ‘90s and the smart indie rock of Elliott Smith and Pavement. When she was 20 or so, her acting career wasn’t where she wanted it to be, and she saw that she needed to make a change. “I was the best friend,” she said. “I was the friend, forever. I wanted the big, juicy roles, and they didn’t come to me.” (She read for the part of Bunny in the Coen brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski,” for one, but didn’t get it.) She had known Blake Sennett, another former child actor, since she was 17, and they began writing together and eventually formed Rilo Kiley.

She and Sennett dated and broke up and kept playing together. The relationship was always fraught (Gibbard remembers Lewis screaming at Sennett over the phone during the first Postal Service tour), but Lewis said it gave her the confidence she needed to become a real songwriter. “Through my partnership with Blake, I found a voice within myself that I didn’t know I had,” she said. “It sounds kind of cheesy, but I figured out who I was.” From the first lines of the first song on Rilo Kiley’s debut record, a track called “Go Ahead,” you can hear the DNA of the musician Lewis has become nearly 15 years later — a floating, distinct voice, an unpredictable melody, a wryly subverted rhyme.

The link between songwriting and autobiography is a tantalizing but tenuous one, and Lewis prefers to preserve as much mystery as she can. But she affirms that she has never written anything more personal than “Better Son/Daughter,” one of the strongest tracks off Rilo Kiley’s second record, “The Execution of All Things.” The song is about waking up in the morning and being unable to open your eyes or get out of bed: “And your mother’s still calling you, insane and high/Swearing it’s different this time.” Eventually it opens into an anthem of wounded fortitude, the kind you can imagine cars full of young women screaming along to. The actress Anne Hathaway, one of Lewis’s close friends, told me that she still turns to that song whenever she’s struggling. “It’s become almost like a prayer,” she said.

Outside whatever veiled references she makes in her music, Lewis doesn’t talk much about her mother. She acknowledged that it was a “difficult relationship” and that she didn’t have a “traditional upbringing,” but that was about it. At one point, I referred to a report in The Boston Globe in 1992, when Lewis was 16, noting that she owned a house in Sherman Oaks and a townhouse in North Hollywood. “We lost all of that,” she said, with a blankness I hadn’t seen from her before. I asked her why. “We just lost ‘em,” she said. “I achieved a lot as a child, I supported my family, but in the end we lost it all.”

In 2004, Rilo Kiley toured with Coldplay, but Lewis was still scraping by, living in a small apartment in Silver Lake with an Iranian rockabilly musician she found on Craigslist. In her bedroom, when she wasn’t on tour, she wrote the songs that would become “Rabbit Fur Coat,” her first solo record. The idea for it came from Conor Oberst, the songwriter (also known as the frontman of Bright Eyes) who helped form Saddle Creek Records, which had put out “The Execution of All Things.” “I encouraged her,” Oberst told me. “You know, why don’t you step away from this thing that is obviously causing you a lot of distress and make a record on your own?” Sennett had already made a solo record, which upset Lewis. “I was so jealous if someone else got Blake’s musical attention,” she told me. “I was shattered by it.” She made “Rabbit Fur Coat,” she said, in part to prove that “I can do it too on my own — I don’t need you.”

The songs on “Rabbit Fur Coat” are ethereal and haunted, rooted in deep Southern and gospel-inflected melodic traditions. On the record’s title track, Lewis’s lyrics again invite comparison with her family life:

Let’s move ahead 20 years, shall we? She was waitressing on welfare, we were living in the valley A lady says to my ma, “You treat your girl as your spouse You can live in a mansion house.”

And so we did, and I became a hundred-thousand-dollar kid . . . But I’m not bitter about it I’ve packed up my things and let them have at it And the fortune faded, as fortunes often do And so did that mansion house

Where my ma is now, I don’t know She was living in her car, I was living on the road And I hear she’s putting stuff up her nose . . .

After the record was done, Lewis went on tour with Rilo Kiley. When the band played the Showbox in Seattle in 2005, Gibbard picked her up after sound check. They’d become friends during the Postal Service tour a few years earlier. As they drove around in Gibbard’s car, Lewis played the new songs for him. “I just remember, all hyperbole aside, being completely blown away,” Gibbard said. “It was undoubtedly the best thing that she had done.” The press shared Gibbard’s reaction, and Lewis got more attention on her own than Rilo Kiley had ever gotten as a band. “Everything was so easy for the first time,” she said. “It just unfolded so naturally. And then going out on the road and touring was the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. There was no tension for the first time.” Rilo Kiley would put out one more record, but it soon became clear that it would be their last.

“I want to show you something,” Lewis said. We were talking in her kitchen about her second solo release, “Acid Tongue,” which she recorded over three weeks in 2008 at the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys. The record had a bunch of special guests on it — Elvis Costello, Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes — but the most meaningful one was Lewis’s dad, who died in 2010. In the living room, she pointed out a glass vitrine on top of the piano that held one of her father’s chromatic bass harmonicas. Before the “Acid Tongue” sessions, she hadn’t spoken to her father in years, but she felt comfortable enough with the musical family she had created around her — Rilo Kiley’s drummer, Jason Boesel; Johnathan Rice; some other musicians from the Laurel Canyon set — that she thought she could handle having him around. He played on the track “Jack Killed Mom,” and the reunion helped Lewis forgive him for leaving the family all those years ago. “He was playing lounges in Alaska,” Lewis said of when she tracked him down and asked him to play on the album. “That’s why I never saw him. It was not a malicious thing. My dad was a savant. He never drove a car, he never had a bank account,” she said. “I don’t even know if he realized that he wasn’t around, you know? I think he was just playing his gigs, trying to make a living.”

“Acid Tongue” was also a step toward recording everything all at once, live, to an analog tape machine — instead of in pieces to a computer. It’s a process that Lewis has developed a devotion to, and one that the songwriter and producer Ryan Adams would push to an extreme on “The Voyager.” (After “Acid Tongue,” Lewis and Rice released “I’m Having Fun Now” in 2010, an underrated duo record that failed to get the kind of traction they hoped for.) For the last few years, Lewis had been sitting on many of the songs that would make up “The Voyager,” battling insomnia and struggling to get them down. She ran into Adams in Los Angeles and told him she had some songs she was working on, and he invited her to come by his studio, Pax-Am, on the Sunset Strip. She played a few of the tunes for him on her acoustic guitar.

‘My dad was a savant,’ Lewis said. ‘He never drove a car, he never had a bank account. I don’t even know if he realized that he wasn’t around, you know?’

“My initial impression was there were some really minimal but necessary things that had to happen,” Adams told me. “I could tell that she had sat with them a little too long.” (Lewis agrees: “I was like: ‘Dude, go for it. Help me.’ ”) On the first song that they worked on together, “She’s Not Me,” they changed the key to relax Lewis’s voice, and then Adams and his production partner, Mike Viola, strapped on electric guitars and rolled through the full song, three times, with Lewis playing and singing live with a backing band. Adams pronounced the track finished for the time being and said they would move on, without even listening back to what they’d done. “For Jenny, revisionism wouldn’t have worked,” Adams said. “The version she would play on the couch in the control room, we would just stand there, like, ‘Wow, this is classic songwriting.’ Every time. So that was sort of my mission. How do we get an ‘unmind’ vibe here and then go back later and look at these beautiful raw takes and just splash a little bit of watercolor on them.” Lewis ended up recording the bulk of the record with Adams over 10 days. (She worked on the single, “Just One of the Guys,” separately with Beck before she and Adams went into the studio together.)

“The Voyager” is an older and more direct record than her previous two. Her characters are still drinking and doing blow and cheating on each other, but there is a kind of weariness to it all. One line in particular has caught the early attention of some of her many female fans, during the bridge of “Just One of the Guys”: “There’s only one difference between you and me/When I look at myself all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby.” She has been hesitant to acknowledge what that line specifically means to her. “I wanted to communicate some very basic things,” she told me, without saying what they were. She was already starting to regret having talked about some of her other struggles while making the record, including open discussion of the insomnia that plagued her. “Now everyone’s asking me about insomnia, which I’m terrified is going to happen to me again,” she said. “You can’t think about it too much, and everyone’s asking me about it, and I’m like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ But, [expletive], am I not going to get to sleep again?” You could hear the fear in her voice. “It’s my fault for putting it out there,” she said.

The video for “Just One of the Guys,” which got more than a million views in its first 24 hours online, was made with the actresses (and Lewis’s friends) Anne Hathaway, Brie Larson, Kristen Stewart and Tennessee Thomas. It’s an entertaining video, part Robert Palmer, part Beastie Boys, with the women spending half the time playing a sleek female backing band and then switching into male roles, clowning around in Lewis-inspired Adidas track suits and fake mustaches. Lewis, as herself, holds up a positive pregnancy test, to which Lewis-in-drag-and-fake-goatee responds, “It’s not [expletive] mine.” When she gets to the “just another lady without a baby” line, she smiles at the camera and then dances. It’s a house of mirrors, a romp through emotionally treacherous terrain.

When I visited Lewis in June, she and Rice (she calls him “Rico”) showed me an early cut of the video in the bedroom of their house, with Lewis calling out “bra shot” whenever we caught a glimpse of her cleavage. Driving down the hill toward dinner later, we got to talking, if somewhat obliquely, about the expectations of her female fans and the sexuality that is inseparable from who she is and the music she makes. She didn’t like to talk about feminism, she said, and in particular the trend of women criticizing one another for not being feminist enough: “What does it matter what I think of Lana Del Rey?” In the months before the release of “The Voyager,” Lewis has taken to wearing airbrushed suits for her live shows, rather than the sexier get-ups she used to wear onstage; she has said she feels “androgynous” these days and wants her costume to reflect that. But not always. As we made our way down the ravine, she told a story about the day President Obama came to visit a compound not far from Mint Chip. She wanted to go out for a run, but a Secret Service member stopped her and told her she needed an ID if she wanted to get back through the security cordon. “I was like, ‘Dude, I’m wearing short shorts,’ ” Lewis said. " ‘You’ll remember me.’ ”

After recording and touring mostly with men in the early days, Lewis now consistently seeks out women for her band and even tried to put together an all-female crew for the “Just One of the Guys” video, which she also directed. She said her desire to work largely with women was a response to the dissolution of her relationship with her mom. “The more I surround myself with women, the easier it is to reconcile my past in a way.” It seems to be serving a kind of psychic need, to replace the female relationship that once dominated her life with a kind of surrogate family of her choosing, a family that has stood behind her through the struggles of the last few years.

“I’m happy to see her making records,” Beck told me. “I just feel like music needs her. It needs someone doing what she’s doing. She’s got a special voice, as a writer, and then as a musician. She’s this great combination of so many things.” Conor Oberst shares that view, describing Lewis as one of the most important songwriters and performers in contemporary music. “Go see her play,” Oberst said. “Because we should all feel lucky to be around while she’s doing her magic.”

On a night in early June, at a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, Lewis had her magic all lined up and ready to go. Backstage, she was relaxed, joking with her band and casually doing her makeup in the mirror on the wall. Just before show time, one band member disappeared, but Lewis was unperturbed. “It’s O.K.,” she said with a smile when he showed up, apologizing, just as they were about to go on. “You made it!” She took a sip of red wine out of a plastic cup and then walked up the steps to the stage.

‘I just feel like music needs her,’ Beck said. ‘It needs someone doing what she’s doing. She’s got a special voice, as a writer, and then as a musician.’

To watch Lewis perform live is to understand what Beck and Oberst and other musicians admire in her. “She turns into this other person on stage,” Gibbard said, “this unbelievably powerful performer” — and it’s true. Lewis is both a natural and a pro. Throughout the night, she had big middle-aged guys and teenage girls — “teeny little chickens,” as she called them later — singing along to every word. During the encore, Lewis sang the ballad “Acid Tongue” accompanied only by her acoustic guitar and the rest of her band grouped around a microphone behind her. “To be lonely is a habit,” Lewis sang, her voice ringing out in the near-silent room, “like smoking or taking drugs, and I’ve quit them both. . . . " The audience and her band belted along with her as she finished the line: “But man was it rough.”

It was one of those lovely moments you hope for in live music, when everything in the room connects. But it was also a kind of emblem of where Lewis has been and of where she is now. She has overcome all kinds of obstacles to get here, often with great style, but it hasn’t always been pretty. Whatever demons stole her sleep for these last few years, they’ve surely been with her forever, in one form or another. But they are also what gives such depth and soul to what she does. “I’m not looking for a cure,” Lewis sang, and as she stood in the spotlight at the 9:30 Club, nobody there would have thought she needed one.

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messedupessy · 6 years ago

Note

If you’re still doing the character opinions thing: Asgore 👀👀

Heck yeah but just this one tho aye UwU ❤

favorite thing about them

God there is so many things I love about this poor goat man, like first that he is like such a fucking dad, he is just such a frikking dad gnjegkjgkje, his whole appearance is just something I love so much his design like yes, that he is a good ruler even though he is still a pushover, that he don’t let his sorrow take over anymore for what he knows he needs to do, that he loves gardening, he is a bit dumb but still like smart he is a good man who I srs love who have put himself in one big bad situation that he can’t really get out of so all he can do is push forward and go along with it even though its fucking him up inside rkjegkekjferkjge he is like just too fucking kind but he will do what he thinks is best and stick with it and he so big and fluffy grekjgekjr

least favorite thing about them

That he is in fact such a fucking pushover, like if he just stood up for himself properly things could probably turn out a bit better, and the fact he let his anger take over him at the loss of his kids, like I get that he was filled with anger and grief which is completely understandable, but the fact he still went through with it even though he quickly regretted his words like it sucks, sucks so much because he is srs such a kind man but he just can’t find an alternative to the mess he have gotten himself into because he is such a pushover and got no other idea and just fuck but its so in his character and just yeah I both hate and love it because it makes him so complex and it makes me sad that ppl way too often just writes him off as this bad guy but like what else could he do his kids got killed his wife left him and he had a kingdom he had to make sure held onto hope or else they would end up falling down and die the whole lot of them so he made a sacrifice of his own well being and the death of 6 kids for the sake of his ppl and i hate and love it gnkjgekjge

favorite line

There are several but this one: “Oh… I see! In that case, I’m not sorry, Frisk.” like that whole dialogue is so frikking good rnjkegkjegkje like srs Asgore no xD not sure if I got the correct text tho but yeah he says a bunch of funny and good stuff ye

brOTP

Him and Undyne like srs I love their relationship they are such father and daughter and I adore it af yes, and also him and Gerson they old bros yus

OTP

I really like having Asgore paired up with Sans, Sansgore, its a really cute ship which there should rly be more of bc its good like really good yes

I also will always lowkey still ship him with Toriel even tho they will prolly never end up together in such a way again and also bc it would be pretty unhealthy if they did, but hey still ship it its sad af ye xD

And this is not really a ship but more that I love Alphys crush on him bc hey who can’t help but crush on good old fluffy buns aye

Also him with a fellow Asgore would be really cute have barely ever even seen any of that but darn it would be real cute man grengekjkj

nOTP

Asgore and Undyne romantically like just nah nah nope nope

Also Asgore with Papyrus I dunno why but I am hella meh about it, tho it might change if I find a story etc I like with them but until then its a nah

random headcanon

WARNING TRIGGER WARNING DOWN BELOW

Mhhh that he is very good at pretending he is fine, that he is not extremely depressed and grieving af and the fact he just hates himself so much and is prolly pretty damn suicidal, bc hey killing kids and losing your kids and also your wife who was the only one who could prolly come up with a different way of handling it all really fucking takes one big toll on a guy aye, and i feel like if he was left with like no proper help on the surface after some years of knowing his ppl would be all right without him, he would prolly end up taking his own life or just simply fall down bc he will keep on blaming himself for everything and just yeah the weight of 6 kids deaths on his shoulders is one heavy burden which he have carried for many, many years and even though he tried to persuade himself that what he did was right bc his ppl got all hopeful etc so did he still know it was wrong but what could he do it was working and he just hates himself etc and i feel i am just rambling right now but yeah gkjegkjgekj

unpopular opinion

He is not the fucking villain stop making him into a frikking villain all the time like pls??? especially when it comes to like soriel stuff which i don’t really look at much but when i have found it etc Asgore almost always ends up as the villain and his personality gets all frikking twisted and not him and I hate it, because he is so fucking kind and one big af push over like yes he could totally become a bit jelly over the fact someone else is dating Toriel but he wouldn’t do anything about it bc he is a god damn pushover and would also be happy for her in finding someone else after the first sting, and that he sees himself as the scum of the earth and she deserves someone else than him and so on like srs he wouldn’t do shit as it wouldn’t be his business anyway and just ugh hate it

Like Asgore is not evil, yes he have done bad shit but he did not really have any other choice especially since the only one who could had made him change his mind run off and hid in the fucking ruins when she easily could had made him change his mind but nope even tho I don’t blame her bc she was so upset and disgusted by his actions bc who wouldn’t be but still gnjekgkje

Because both Asgore and Toriel are to blame for what happened bc if they had just done things differently things would had turned out so much better but alas they let their grief and anger take over them both and here we are and like stop making toriel into this paragon of awesome when she is just as much to fucking blame stop pushing all the blame and hate on asgore he is already busy blaming himself jkrengkjgkejr

song i associate with them

This sad bouquet by The Ark, it has been his song for me for like frikking ages now, bc like srs just look at the lyrics:

It took time, took time to develop a conceptA new mebased upon the traits from which I could not fleeIt took time, took time to embrace the natureof my dreamsAll this time just turned into a sad long wait

This sad long tale of moments pass’must come to an end before it is too lateWasn’t born to hate, I was made to lovebut I never knew it was so hard

It took time, took time to accept the factthat one must loseeverything except what you do not choose

It’s taken time, long time and yet more timeit will takebefore my heart is free and brave enough to break

This sad long tale of moments pass’must come to an end before it is too lateWasn’t born to hate, I was made to lovebut I never knew it was so hard

This sad bouquet of forget-me-notthat I threw away is growing scars and dotsIn this weary heart where there’s a bird, so shybut one of these days that bird will learn to fly

Srs it always makes me think of him so much and also been wanting to draw a pic based on the song of him but just never gotten around to it gnjenkgkjge

favorite picture of them

There are way too many good pics that I love I can’t choose gekjgjne

Don’t think I will take more of these but here’s a link to it ye

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menphinasbow · 7 years ago

Text

Character - Yvaine Aradia

Appearance -

Gender: Female

Race: Miqo’te Keeper of the Moon

Height: medium towards the short side

Eye Color: Green

Hair Color: Turquoise with lighter highlights

Skin Color: Pale

Fur: Same color as her hair

Scars: Her fingers are all calloused from using the bow, multiple random childhood and battle scars here and there but most were gotten after she had a healer companion so very few left lasting marks.

The Facts -

Name Day: 15th Sun of the 4th Astral Moon

Occupation: Adventurer, Warrior of Light

Sexual identification: Heterosexual

Romantic identification: Heterosexual

Alignment: Lawful Good

Criminal History: None

Relationship Status: Married

Sweet on: Khit’li Mewrilah

Favorites –

Favorite food: Meat Miq’abobs, all kinds of sweets and cakes

Favorite drink: Hot chocolate

Favorite scent: The ocean, the grass after it rains

Favorite person: Khit’li, Minfilia, Haurchefant, Aymeric, Alphinaud (she really likes earnest and sincere people okay and let’s not talk about how half of these are dead)

Randoms –

Ten facts about your muse:

Grew up as a lost orphan and moved from one family to another, never really having her own. Completely clueless about Keeper traditions and often puts foot in mouth in social situations.

Her lifelong dream was to find a family and she found that first with the Scions, then the Free Company, and finally with Khit’li. She eventually found her real mother too and they’re trying to be a family again.

Approaches everything with a sincerely innocent and heartfelt passion, believes the authorities and laws are unquestionably good and that whatever they ask of her, she must do. That’s kind of how she got roped into being a Warrior of Light in the first place.

Would have died a long time ago if Khit’li did not find and decide to babysit accompany her.

A reluctant hero, she never wanted to be something great or the savior of the world, but when the role was thrust upon her found herself unable to say no, because saving the world.

Because she will help anyone from humans to Moogles (especially Moogles?) who looks at her with pleading eyes and a sob story about their plight. She can spend an entire hour patiently listening to one person’s problem and doesn’t mind delivering one measly letter to the other side of the city for anyone despite the fact there are mail Moogles.

Prefers the use of a bow because she doesn’t inherently enjoy fighting, so that when she has to take people down at least she can do it from afar and as quickly as possible so she can avoid the brutality of it and their last expression doesn’t haunt her nightmares.

She’s easily amazed by little things, having experienced so little in her life before she struck out on her own, and having had little happiness in her life, she daydreams a lot about romance and a future family and happily ever afters. She’s a hopeless romantic at heart.

Her parents were Garlean spies who gave her away when they realized they were fighting for the wrong side so that she doesn’t have to grow up bearing a traitor’s name and they don’t have to worry about keeping her safe when they switched sides. Her actual birth name is Yvaine Mhenravi.

Has no aptitude or understanding of magic at all despite her wish that she could also heal people the way Khit’li does.

Five Things -

5 Things they like:

Companionship. Finding people that she can call her own, who will keep her from feeling alone and unwanted they way she’s felt all her life. Nights spent with her Free Company members and their shenanigans are her favorite beside quiet alone nights with Khit’li.

Children. She’s really good with them and has a natural nurturing side despite not being a mother herself yet. However, she dreams of one day being able to hang up her bow and get settled with a family of her own.

Music. As a bard she really appreciates it and has a talent for it. According to her mother this is a love that she and her late father shared. She’d sometimes make up a song for Khit’li, either just the music or complete with made up lyrics, and she hums when she’s bored, thinking, waiting, and in many other occasions.

Helping others. She genuinely enjoys it and always feels a certain satisfaction herself when she can solve a problem for someone else. Some say it might be a problem or an addiction but that can’t be true.

Exploring. Seeing new wonders and amazing new places makes her feel like a child all over again every time. So far she’s pretty enamored by the east and how pretty everything looks. If only it weren’t so far away.

5 Things they dislike:

Injustice. She absolutely can’t stand it. Will probably do anything to try and fix it right there and then even if it involves doing something dumb.

Oppression. With everything she’s had to deal with in regards to the Garleans, and the recent discovery of their involvement in her parents’ life and her own, she really, really dislikes the Empire.

The cold. Snow is pretty and all, and snuggling with Khit’li was nice that one time in Coerthas, but after spending a long time in Ishgard and its perpetually freezing weather as well as its gloomy towers, she’s almost relieved to have to go liberate a desert city.

Feeling like she’s being treated with kid gloves or deemed too stupid or naive to understand a complicated, nuanced issue. It’s a frustration stemming from a lot of confusion in her childhood due to not getting a consistent education about how things work.

Losing people. The deaths of various Scion members and close friends she’d made during her journey hit her hard and it almost made her walk away from Khit’li, believing he’d be much safer if he weren’t involved with her.

5 Good habits:

Neat

Diligent to learn

Clean

Independent/Self-sufficient

Attentive

5 Bad Habits:

Trusts people too easily

Assumes guilt even when undeserved

Eating too much because everything looks too good (because she never had enough as a child/too afraid to take too much from her adopted siblings)

Sneaking into people’s rooms to see how ‘the other half’ lives

Too passionate/impatient for proper diplomacy (she usually leaves it to Khit’li or Alphy)

5 Personalities they gravitate toward:

Caring/nurturing

Passionate

Justice seekers

Sincere and trustworthy

Loyal

5 Personality types they avoid:

Cold/dismissive

Rude

Fake/duplicitous

Narrow-minded

Prejudiced

5 Fears:

Losing the people she loves and being alone

Failure

Abandonment

That people will realize she is nothing without her bow

That someday her status as a Warrior of Light will take everything from her

Tagged by: @keeperprinceling Tagging : I don’t know who hasn’t done this! @manawalls @sphynxies maybe?

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #yvaine aradia #character meme

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