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ieryana · 6 years ago

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Dinner with Christians

*** Disclaimer *** - this is tongue in cheek fun. If you take it seriously and get triggered because bew hew you know a Christians then tough shit frankly. Enjoy! ________________________________________________________________

"Fun as in 'naked twister' fun?" he quipped, slightly too hopefully. Felicity shot him one of her narrow-eyed, ‘you better behave’ sort of looks and squeezed his arm. "It's just that I went to a party once and it was full of forty-something swingers and-" "Oh you did not," She admonished with a flap of her hand that signalled that she didn't believe him and that the subject was dead. "Besides," she added, almost as an afterthought, "they're good Christian people, they wouldn't be into anything like that." "They're what?" A look of horror flew across Max’s face. Last time he’d encountered Christians en masse was his Christening, and he’d slept through that. "Flick! Daaahling! Happy New Year!" A horribly ‘faux posh’ voice echoed from the porch. "Tom, Helen, how are you both, awww!" Felicity gushed, hugging her hosts and flashing air kisses that missed by miles. It was at that moment that the girl that was once Felicity Harbour changed….in a way Max hoped he would never see again. The transformation was devastating, dramatic and swift. In that moment, she had become the entity known as Flick. Max stood in the doorway and juggled the beer, a resigned but somehow desperate expression on his face. What had just happened? It was only seven pm and he already wished the night was over. As he walked into the predictably magnolia and laminate hallway he spared a thought for the lads in the King's Arms, drinking, celebrating, happy, and single. Happy New Year indeed. From inside, the stomach-churning soprano 'Walking in the Air' began to filter through into the hallway and he knew that with certainty it wouldn't be long before Cliff made an appearance too. Tom and Helen were pretty as boring as the house. Helen was slightly overweight and dowdy. Straight mousy hair framed a chubby face and she was dressed in a shapeless floral dress. Tom was the sort of guy you would want to beat savagely and, were it not for the fact that it would be something like kicking a puppy, you feared that you would. Sporting a pair of tortoise shell rimmed glasses and a drab loose knit sweater; he’d also adopted a magnificent eye twitch that Max found compelling. Tom would use words like 'cathartic' and 'holistic' a lot and pronounced the word beautiful as 'buuudafull’. Max ground his teeth together and tried to smile. "So Maximillian nice to finally meet you, how aaaare you? We heard you've been mentally ill is that right?" Tom said all in one breathe. Maximillian? Against his better judgement, he shifted the bitter into the crook of his arm and grasped Tom's limp, slightly damp hand, pumping it in greeting whilst brandishing a vaguely threatening fake grin. "No, no it was a week off work for compassionate reasons, some work rela-" "Super! Well, this is my wife Helen…" Tom cut in with a disarming smile and a sweep of his hand. Feeling more than very put out, Max braced himself as Helen approached him for a double air kiss and he was horrified to note a wispy, grey moustache lying in wait across her top lip. She smelled faintly of Yardley’s English Lavender, and that was no great surprise either. Helen also had this irritating habit of talking to you through either closed or wildly fluttering eyelids, it made him wonder whether half way through a conversation he could nip away and come back without being noticed. "Soooo gooooood to seeee yooooou," she whined. Tom and Helen invited them into an untidy living room and introduced them to the others: Jed and Hannah, Campbell and his friend Philip, and Camilla. "Guys, this is Maximillian, Flick's beau – he's recently been mentally ill," Tom was saying, nodding sagely, "So let’s hope he finds tonight's diverse social integration… cathartic." Max raised a hand in salute. "Well, I wasn't strictly ill, but hello." Something told him that the five pints of John Smith's he'd downed before meeting Flick and friends wouldn't be enough. He then noticed Jed was wearing sandals with Argyll socks and briefly flirted with the idea of running away – quickly. Dinner was a bland vegetarian affair that Helen had managed to become tearful over when she discovered that she had burned the crust of the leak and leak pie. The potatoes were more than slightly underdone and the onion gravy watery beyond compare, although the Swede and carrot mash was passable. She seemed heartened by the fact that her eye-watering, sugar-free rhubarb and gooseberry compote was edible, or at least that was the suggestion that everyone had given her by doggedly finishing their bowls. "I think I've just developed a stomach ulcer," Max whispered to Flick, who shushed him tetchily. "Matchmakers and coffee?" offered Tom, as if it was the height of sophistication. "I'll stick with the beer, thanks." Max pointed to his fast depleting stock. The group had barely managed to empty three bottles of predictably cheap wine over dinner. He cracked open another can and tried to get comfortable on the lumpy sofa. "So," Jed was saying, his legs crossed and his hands constructing a pyramid at his chest, "Hannah and I met Campbell whilst on sabbatical in Bratislava in 1999…" "Yea yea, Bratislava’s an awesome country”; Campbell interjected as if anyone was interested in his point. Max rolled his eyes, but thought again about speaking out, leaving the group to embarrass themselves. "Well, it's funny," Campbell continued in his soft, whiney Scottish accent and patted his 'friends' arm, "because Philip and I met during his gap year in Burundi." "Yes I was working with Médecins Sans Frontières as a volunteer nurse." Philip added with a self-satisfied smile. "Oh that's riiiight," gushed Helen. "I heard that you had done a lot of good work in the Third World." "I now do some volunteer work with special needs, but not as much as I'd like to" Philip continued, "in fact I'm a dedicated helper in the community for a great person called Ben Calloe." “Wonky Ben?" Max said. The front room fell silent. To look at their faces so aghast, one would have thought that he had just dropped his pants. "What? Wonky Ben, gammy leg, he comes in the pub." "He's got cerebral palsy, Max," Philip said with the measured patience of somebody trying to break some really bad news. "Yeah but you want to try and race lad, he's pretty quick after a few rum and cokes I can tell you." "You feed him alcohol?" Campbell seemed genuinely horrified. Max shrugged. "He's a bloke not a gerbil. Why shouldn’t he enjoy a drink or two, he’s still a person". He was vaguely aware of Flick tugging urgently at his sleeve. "What, you've never raced a drunken spazz?" "We don't refer to them as 'spastic' anymore." Hannah said gently. "Anyway…" Tom intervened. "Campbell, you were saying about Burundi…" Max's eyes darted incredulously from speaker to speaker, what irritated him more than the inane anecdotes of who met whom and during what Hutu uprising, was the fact that Camilla simply nodded in agreement to every statement and mmm-mmm'd her approval. This further cemented Max's theory that she had nothing to add to any conversation. Anywhere. Ever. Max sighed and cracked open another can. "So Maxi, did your faith helped you through your period of mental illness?" Tom said, some time later, turning his attention across the table. "Sorry, what?" Max jumped awake from the semi-doze he’d fallen into "Your faith, was it a crutch?" Helen asked. "I found that my faith brought me through my darker moments when I was diagnosed with uterine polyps." "Mmm, yah, polyps." Camilla nodded seriously, shooting Helen a tight lipped look of unswerving support and female camaraderie. "Er, no, I'm not a big church goer to be honest." Or at all, but he wasn’t going to admit that. "Awww." The group crooned in an 'oh you poor, silly, ignorant little man' fashion. He noted that Flick looked suitably embarrassed and could not help but feel a little crow of jubilation inside him. "You really should consider taking Christ into your life." Hannah said. "Mmm-mmm, yah. Christ our Lord." Camilla spouted and actually held up a hand in some sort of 'hey Jesus, here I am,' wave. Max drew a patient breath and forced a smile. "No, thanks all the same. I'm happy with my lot and it's not really for me, but cheers." "Don't worry; I'm sure you will regain your faith with Flick's help, she is such a strong woman." Helen sympathised. "You will find that it was the glory of the Lord that drew you out of your mental illness." "Oh, I'm not so sure!" Max replied smoothly. They all looked at him in earnest. "Yes Max… it was. They nodded as one. "Oh yes, Jesus loves you. He loves us all." Hannah intoned. This was getting a little creepy, and Max edged his way along the sofa. "Doesn't seem to love wonky Ben that much does he now," Max replied sourly. "Ah, don't worry, the Lord has His own plan for Ben. His physical illness is part of god’s plan, as was your mental illness." Max slammed his hand down on the nearby table causing everyone to jump and sending John Smiths tins scattering. Camilla stopped mmm-mmming all of a sudden and looked petrified. He stood up and stared at them all. "Look, I'm not mentally ill. I never have been; I had a week's leave of absence after some work related stresses and my mum dying. And before you say it, no, she's hasn't 'crossed over' or 'become spirit' or whatever it is you nut-jobs think and she's not 'in a better place'. She's in a box, in the ground, in Highgate cemetery. Oh and in case you were wondering, I don't want to join your blasted Christian polyp support group or whatever it is. I have been listening to you lot for the past four hours and you have yet to say anything remotely constructive or interesting!" "Maxi, I really don't think this is-" Campbell began to speak, looking pale. "It's Max you irritating Scottish poof!" "Wha-what?" Campbell and Philip both looked stunned, as if some great and unspoken secret had been splashed across the national news. "Oh come off it, people! If these two were any more mince they'd be a Chilli Con Carne." An awkward silence fell across the group, broken only by Philip, who began to weep quietly into his napkin. He glared at them for a few seconds longer before about turning and striding into the hallway. "Jesus Christ! No wonder they threw you lot to the lions!” The door slammed shut in his wake. "Peace be with you…" Tom murmured cheerlessly, smoothing his pullover.

#christians #writing #short story #funny #christian polyp support group #i wrote this back in 2008 and it still makes me giggle #donttakeitsoseriously

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christopherwatsonbooks · 2 years ago

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It’s Okay to Like Dan Fogelberg

I wrote this piece in early January, 2008, a few weeks after Dan Fogelberg died. It took me that time to process my feelings, to determine what I was feeling in the wake of the unexpected news, and the largely indifferent media response. Like sorting through old photographs in a shoebox: unexamined for so long that you’d forgotten they were there, then the moment you raise and regard one the memories and feelings stab you so deeply, you wonder how you ever could have forgotten. I had to sit with those feelings awhile, allow the water to calm a bit before I could record what it reflected.

I published this on my now long-gone blog The Ninth House and it received dozens of positive comments, more than any other piece I’d posted there. Which of course was very nice – not only because of all those hits of dopamine, but also because of the affirmation that there were so many other souls who felt as I did. I post it here now, fourteen years later, in hopes it may find more.

When I first published this, the song links played clips I created. Now they'll take you to Spotify, which notoriously pays artists fractions of a cent per stream. It would sure be nice if everyone who pays this piece a visit would do right by Dan’s estate and purchase a track or an album from an online retailer.

I hope you enjoy the piece.

Chris

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now. The holidays got in the way, but maybe that was for the best. It gave me time to really think about what I wanted to say.

And here it is.

It is okay to like Dan Fogelberg.

Go ahead. You can say it. Here, watch me:

I like Dan Fogelberg. Some of Dan Fogelberg’s music, I loved. And still do.

Dan Fogelberg died of prostate cancer on December 16th, 2007. He was 56. His most recent publicity photos show a good-looking guy, clean-shaven and smiling, the kind of guy who makes middle-aged moms blush and their daughters giggle.

Unfortunately, his reputation didn’t weather the years as well as he. For some folks of a certain age, Fogelberg’s name has become the go-to punch line for jokes about 1970s-era granola-munching, Chukka boot-wearing Sensitive Guys. Many critics loathed him. Rolling Stone’s review of 1979’s Phoenix is so contemptuous, you can damn near picture the author spitting on the album cover.

It’s less troublesome to dismiss Dan Fogelberg, as have most eulogists I’ve read, as that 1970s soft-rock singer-songwriter who scored a few hits than it is to set aside that fashionable prejudice and honestly consider his work. Or, more telling, his work’s popularity.

The fact that so many people evidently aren’t willing to do that – and worse, are dismissing Fogelberg as little more than a footnote to 1970s and early 80s pop – is really getting under my skin.

Fogelberg wasn’t a footnote. From his first album release, 1972’s Home Free, through 1981’s double album The Innocent Age, Fogelberg was regarded as an artist on par with the best of his peers. With Joe Walsh, he was one of the first acts signed by Irving Azoff, who soon went on to manage The Eagles, and he was considered for the spot in that band’s lineup that ultimately went to Walsh.

Reading the liner notes of Dan Fogelberg’s essential discography is like reading a who’s-who of mellow 1970s album rock. He attracted the best session players in the business. The Innocent Age features guest vocals from Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Richie Furay, Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Chris Hillman. If you had any of those artists’ works in your collection, you invariably owned at least one Dan Fogelberg album, too. Probably Souvenirs.

I played Souvenirs and other Fogelberg albums on the air as a rock radio DJ. It wasn’t at all unusual back in the day to hear him played alongside The Eagles, Poco, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, CSNY, Jimmy Buffett, Boz Scaggs, Steely Dan, Neil Young and dozens more 1970s album rock radio core artists. You wouldn’t hear “Longer,” from Phoenix, but definitely “Part of the Plan,” “As the Raven Flies” and “There’s a Place in the World for a Gambler” from Souvenirs, maybe “Crow” from the underrated Captured Angel, definitely “The Power of Gold” from Dan’s Tim Weisberg collaboration Twin Sons of Different Mothers.

I liked to slide The Innocent Age out of its cover right around midnight. I was a college student in the early 80s, paying my way through school as the late-night jock on the town’s sole rock station, a pitiful low-wattage AM that nonetheless had a cult following. By midnight, I knew the hard partiers had already switched to the big regional FM; those who remained with me were studying or stoned, or both. That was my cue to take it way down: Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs,” The Police’s “Walking on the Moon” next, “Hypnotized” from Fleetwood Mac after that, CSN’s “Dark Star” – you get the vibe. When I needed to stay mellow but bring in a little light, I’d inevitably reach for Dan.

The Innocent Age features Fogelberg’s biggest hits: “Same Old Lang Syne,” “Leader of the Band,” “Run for the Roses” and “Hard to Say.” But one of my favorite tracks to play late at night was “Only the Heart May Know,” his tender duet with Emmylou Harris, sweet as a lullaby sent into the night. Not that I never played anything from Phoenix, “Longer” aside. When I did, it was usually my favorite track from that album, the final one, “Along the Road.” Sometimes I made that the final song I played before unplugging my headphones for the night, a final tired smile goodnight wish for my peeps to sleep on.

“Along the Road” may be my favorite Dan Fogelberg song. Definitely top three. Two. It’s pretty high up there.

Of the ten albums Dan Fogelberg recorded and released between 1972 and 1985, two are RIAA-certified gold, three are platinum, four are double platinum and one – his 1982 Greatest Hits compilation -- is triple platinum. That’s more than 15 million units sold, most of them back when they were still called LPs and you had to actually make the trip to a record store to buy one.

Clearly, somebody other than me likes Dan Fogelberg.

Okay, so maybe you don’t. Maybe you agree with the chorus of critics who labeled his lyrics mawkish, overwrought, treacly and clichéd.

Well, yeah. A lot of his lyrics were. I don’t think an objective listener can deny it, no matter how great a fan they may be.

I’ve always thought Dan Fogelberg on balance was a far better melodist than lyricist. His best melodies from those first six albums are gems of craftsmanship, made more impressive by the sheer number of just damned catchy, stick-in-your-brain songs he cranked out. “Part of the Plan” and “Crow” would sound right at home in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s oeuvre, and the hook to “Wishing on the Moon” from Phoenix is every bit as vital as, say, that of The Eagles’ “Already Gone.” Gritty up the lyrics a little, put Glenn Frey on lead with Dan singing the high harmony (Jesus, that voice) and it could be the B-side hit the Eagles never recorded.

But pair those melodies with Dan’s sentimental pen…

I can’t listen to the title track of 1977’s Nether Lands without the word “gushing” coming to mind. Dan’s standing on a mountaintop, beholding all that is below and before him, his heart and soul singing with the joy of the vista and the moment over a bed of woodwinds, strings and French horns, lush as the soundtrack to Sunrise over The Majestic Rockies, in Technicolor.

It’s just so damn over the top. Like Julie Andrews with a flannel shirt and a beard.

But here’s the thing. Not two years before I first heard “Nether Lands,” I’d been a raw-boned 16-year-old lad standing on the Mogollon Rim, southwest of Winslow, Arizona in the foothills of the Rockies. Sleeping under the stars, kneeling to drink from icy-cold Christopher Creek, standing on a pine-framed ridge to behold thousands of square miles of God’s magnificent Earth spread below and before me.

And so when the good Mr. Fogelberg’s high sweet tenor sang over those soaring, shameless orchestral glissandos, my heart sang with him. Because I had been there, and so knew that he had gotten it exactly and absolutely right.

And there it is. The key to Dan Fogelberg’s popularity, and the source of his most frequent criticisms.

Maybe if he’d thrown in some irony, a little cynicism to go with the poignancy. Maybe if he’d invoked whiskey and cigarettes when his woman done left him, rather than cottonwood trees in autumn. Maybe if he’d taken his hand off his heart and grabbed his crotch a bit more. Or at all.

But that wasn’t his thing. It’s clearly not where Dan lived, or what he believed. Not enough to want to write about it, at any rate.

I imagine the Dan Fogelberg who wrote and recorded those wonderful albums as a sweet guy, a gentle soul who recognized the transience of life and so chose to celebrate its moments of sweetness, chose sentiment over cynicism or resentment, even in life’s most heartrending moments. After you were done cursing and getting drunk and assigning blame, Dan’s the guy you’d eventually want sitting across the table from you over coffee or a beer. He’d listen and nod and smile, and you’d know he understood. He’d put it all into perspective for you. He wouldn’t try to make you feel better, but you’d come away knowing you weren’t alone, and that would make you feel better. It made the ache more tolerable, and enabled you to look forward once more.

Short of sitting across that table, Dan’s music on the stereo and a good bottle of wine isn’t a bad substitute. Many times, when my heart and soul ached, for many reasons, it’s what helped me.

I left Dan Fogelberg behind. I never developed a taste for his post-Innocent Age work, and my own music tastes changed as life changed me, carrying me on passing years from Dan and his peers to my current favorites. But I still carry a big torch for those days, and with the advent of iTunes, Rhapsody and the rest have found myself seeking out the music of my youth, reveling in sentimental fondness as I rediscover those songs, and the memories they awaken.

And so, I shouldn’t be surprised that I find myself sentimental over Dan Fogelberg’s death. And so irritated that it has gone so largely unremarked.

Maybe it’s because I’m older now, at that age when so many of those who composed and played the soundtrack to my youth are leaving us, making memories of that time more poignant. Maybe it’s that, because Dan’s music meant something to me, seeing his music dismissed makes me feel as if my youth and feelings are likewise being dismissed.

I imagine it’s all of that.

But also, I’m just plain pissed off at the critical pretentiousness that continues to dismiss Dan Fogelberg even in death, and the ease with which so many people mock him, for no other reason than that. Because it’s easy.

You don’t like his music? That’s fine. If you’ve given his best stuff a sincere listen and it’s not your cup of tea, then thanks for stopping by.

But if you haven’t? Listen to the clips I’ve included here. If you’re intrigued, spend a few bucks and download some tracks online. Or ask a friend, or maybe their granola-munching parents, if they’ve got some Dan Fogelberg you can borrow.

But be warned. You’ve got to kick the furniture out of the way and invite Dan in, if you’re going to appreciate him at all. You’ve got to be willing to let him nail you right smack-dab in your squishy place.

And if you find you like him – well, of course it’s okay. It’s always been okay. You don’t need my permission, or anyone’s. With anything in life, it’s never about what others say. It’s always about what you feel.

A few days after his death, longtime friend Jackson Browne called Dan Fogelberg “an angel.” Writing about him now, listening to him now, having rediscovered him now after all these years, I don’t feel inclined to disagree.

Rest in peace, Dan. And thanks.

#dan fogelberg

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bananaofswifts · 4 years ago

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Taylor Swift Turns on a Facsimile Machine for the Ingenious Recreations of ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’: Album Review

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

By Chris Willman

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

There is no “best actress” award at the Grammys, perhaps for obvious reasons, but maybe there should be this coming year. And the Grammy would go to… Taylor Swift, for so persuasively playing her 18-year-old self in “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” her beyond-meticulous recreation of the 2008 recording that did win her her first album of the year trophy back in the day. It’s impossible to overstate just how thoroughly the new version is intended as an exact replica of the old — all the way down to her startling ability to recapture an untrained teen singing voice she’s long matured and moved on from. It’s a stunt, to be sure, but a stunt for the ages — mastering the guile it takes to go back to sounding this guileless.

There are two different, very solid reasons to pick up or stream “Taylor’s Version,” regardless of whether you share her ire for the Big Machine label, whose loose ways with her nine-figure catalog precipitated this, the first in a six-album series of remakes where she’ll be turning on the facsimile machine. One is to marvel at her gift for self-mimicry on the album’s original tracks, where she sounds as possessed by her younger self as Regan ever was by Pazuzu. The other reason is, of course, to check out the six “vault” numbers that Swift wrote during that time frame but has never released before in any form, which dispenses with stylistic fealty to the late 2000s and frames her “Fearless”-era discards in production and arrangements closer to “Folklore.” Those half-dozen (kind of) new tracks really do sound like modern Taylor Swift covering her old stuff.

But those original lucky 13? It’s the same damn record… which is kind of hilarious and marvelous and the kind of meta-ness that will inspire a thousand more think-pieces than it already has, along with possibly efforts at forensic analysis to figure out how she did it.

It would not be surprising if, as we speak, Big Machine was putting a combined team of scientists and lawyers on the case of the new album’s waveform readouts, to make sure it’s not just the original album, remixed. Honestly, it’s that close. The timings of the songs are all within a few seconds of the original tracks, if not coming in at exactly the same length. The duplication effort doesn’t allow any detours. If “Forever and Always” had a cold open then, it’s going to have a cold open now. If the 2008 “That’s the Way I Love You” had slamming rock guitars with an almost subliminal banjo being plucked beneath the racket, so will the 2021 “That’s the Way I Loved You.” A drum roll to end the old “Change”? A drum roll to end its body-snatcher doppelganger. And if she chuckled before the final chorus of “Hey Stephen” 13 years ago, so will that moment be cause for a delighted giggle now.

Of course, much analysis will be put into whether the new laugh is a more knowing-sounding laugh. And that will be part of the fun for a certain segment of audiophile Swifties who will go looking for the slightest change as evidence of something meaningful. When “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” first came out weeks back to preview the album, there were reviews written that swore she’d subtly changed up her phrasing to put a contemporary spin on the song. And maybe they were right, but, having done a fair amount of A/B testing of the two versions of the album, I found myself feeling like I do when vinyl buffs insist there are significant sonic differences between the first stamper version of an LP and one that was pressed a year later. If you can spot those very, very, very modest tweaks, go for it.

But my suspicion is that if Swift has decided to turn a phrase a little differently here or there on this album, or done anything too differently aside from brighten the sound, she’s doing it more as an Easter egg, for the people who are on that kind of hunt, than anything really designed as reinterpretation. Because the last thing Swift wants most of her fans doing is A/B-ing the two versions, the way I did. The whole point is to have folks retire the OG “Fearless” from their Spotify playlists, right? The Swift faithful were already threatening to rain down damnation on anyone caught sneaking an audio peek at the old version after midnight. What she intended was to come up with a rendering so faithful that you would never have a need to spin the vintage album again. In that, she has succeeded beyond what could have been imagined even in the dreams of the few self-forgers who’ve tried this before, like a Jeff Lynne.

Is there any reason to find value in the new versions if you couldn’t care less about the issues of masters and contracts and respect in business deals that made all this strangely possible? Yes, with the first one being that the new album just sounds like a terrific remastering of the old — the same notes, and you’d swear the same performances, but sounding brighter and punchier just on a surface level. But on a more philosophical one, it’s not just a case of Swift playing with her back catalog like Andy Warhol played with his soup can. It’s really a triumph of self-knowledge and self-awareness, in the way that Swift is so hyper-conscious of the ways she’s matured that she has the ability to un-mature before our very ears. With her vocals, it’s virtuosic, in a way, how she’s made herself return to her unvirtuosic upstart self.

On Swift’s earliest albums and in those seminal live shows — at the time when she was famously being told she “can’t sing,” to quote a song from the follow-up album — there was a slight shrillness around the edges of her voice that, if you lacked faith, you might’ve imaged would be there forever. It wasn’t. That was partly youth, and partly just the sheer earnestness with which she wanted to convey the honesty of the songs. She’s advanced so much since then — into one of pop’s most gifted modern singers, really — that the woman of “Folklore” and “Evermore” seems like a completely different human being than the one who made the self-titled debut and “Fearless,” never mind just a woman versus girl. It wouldn’t have seemed possible that she could go back to her old way of singing at the accomplished age of 31, but she found and recreated that nervous, sincere, pleading voice of yesteryear. And maybe it was just a technical feat, of temporarily unlearning what she’s learned since then, but you can sense that maybe she had to go there internally, too, to the place where she was counseling other girls to guard their sexual virtue in “Fifteen,” or wondering whether to believe the fairy tale of “Love Story” or the wakeup call of “White Horse,” or proving with “Forever & Always” that writing a song telling off Joe Jonas for his 27-second breakup call was better than revenge.

If at first you’re not inclined to notice that Swift has re-adopted a completely different singing voice for the “Fearless” remakes, the realization may kick in when those “vault” tracks start appearing in the later stretch of this hour-and-50-minute album. The writing on the six songs that have been pulled up from the 2008 cutting room floor seems primitive, even a little bit by the standards of the “Fearless” album; there are great lines and couplets throughout the rescued tracks, but you can see why she left them as works-in-progress. But she doesn’t use her youthful voice on these resurrections, nor does she employ the actual style of “Fearless” very strictly. Of course, she feels more freedom on these, because there are no predecessors in the Big Machine catalog she’s asking you to leave behind. Her current collaborators of choice, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, divided the co-producing work on these fresher songs, as they did for the two all-new albums she released in the last year. (The “Fearless” recreations are co-produced by Swift with Christopher Rowe, someone who worked on remixes for Swift back in that era.) They co-produce the vault songs in a style that sounds somewhere between “Fearless” and Folklore”… a more spectral brand of country-pop, with flutes and synths and ringing 12-string guitars and a modicum of drum programming replacing some (but not all) of the acoustic stringed instruments you’d expect to be carried over from “Fearless” proper.

Of the previously unheard tracks, Swift was right — she’s always been her own best self-editor — in putting out “You All Over Me” first, in advance of the album. With its imagery of half-muddy stones being upturned on the road, this song has advanced lyrical conceits more of a piece with the level of writing she’s doing now than some of the slightly less precocious songs that follow. Still, there’s something to be said for the sheer zippiness with which Swift conveys teen heartbreak in “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” which has a lyric that shows Swift had long since absorbed the lessons Nashville had to offer about how to come up with a high-concept song — the concept, in this case, being just to stick the word “mister” in front of a lot of phrases relating to her shallow ex, as if they were honorary titles to be conferred for being a shit, while she employs the “miss” for herself more sparingly.

Some of the remaining outtake songs go back more toward the sedate side of “Fearless”-style material; she didn’t leave any real bangers in the can. “We Were Happy,” the first of two successive tracks to bring in Keith Urban (but only for backgrounds on this one), employs fake strings and real cello as Swift waxes nostalgic for a time when “you threw your arms around my neck, back when I deserved it.” It’s funny, in a good way, to hear Swift at 31 recreating a song she wrote at 17 or 18 that pined for long-past better times. The next song, “That’s When,” brings Urban in for a proper duet where he gets a whole second verse and featured status on half a chorus, and it’s lovely to hear them together. But, as a make-up song, it doesn’t feel as real or lived-in as the more personal things she was writing at the time — and the fact that its chords are pretty close to a slightly more balladic version of the superior “You Belong With Me” was probably a pretty good reason for dropping it at the time.

the 18-year-old Taylor Swift is a great place to visit, but “Folklore” and “Evermore” are the place you’ll want to return to and live, unless you have an especially strong sentimental attachment to “Fearless”… which, sure, half of young America does. It’s not irreconcilable to say that the two albums she issued in the last year represent a daring pinnacle of her career, but that “Fearless” deserved to win album of the year in 2008. Has there been a greater pop single in the 20th century than “You Belong With Me”? Probably not. Did the album also have lesser moments you probably haven’t thought about in a while, like the just-okay “Breathe”? Yes. (I looked up to see whether Swift had ever played that little remarked upon number in concert, and according to setlists.fm, she did, exactly once… in 2018. Because she’s Taylor Swift, and of course she did.) It’s not certain that her duet with Colbie Caillat really needed to be resurrected, except it’s fun, because hey, she even roped former duet partners back into her time warp. But there are so many number that have stood the test of time, like “The Way I Love You,” an early song that really got at the complicated feelings about passion and fidelity that she would come to explore more as she grew into her 20s… and just kind of a headbanger, too, on an album that does love its fiddles and mandolins.

It doesn’t take much to wonder why Swift put up “Fearless” first in this six-album exercise; it’s one of her two biggest albums, along with “1989,” and it’s 13 years old, which does mean something superstitious in the Taylor-verse. In a way, it’ll be more interesting to see what happens when she gets to more complicated productions, like “1989” or “Reputation.” But maybe “Fearless” did present the opportunity for the grandest experiment out of the gate: to recreate something that pure and heartfelt, with all the meticulousness a studio master like Swift can put to that process now, without having it seem like she’s faking sincerity. Let the think-pieces proceed — because this is about six hundred different shades of meta. But, all craftiness and calculation aside, there’s a sweetness to the regression that’s not inconsequential. It harks back to a time when she only wondered if she could be fearless, before she learned it the harder way for sure. What they say about actors “disappearing into the role”? That really applies to Taylor Swift, playing herself.

#taylor swift #fearless #review

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lemonmeringuecry · 4 years ago

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The Cubs at Disneyland

Hi, so I've been trying to do this for awhile (ever since I drew Lo in a Mickey Mouse hoodie) but when the queen herself, miss Hazel, said she needs them to go to Disney... well I wrote this. And drew it. Because I'm me.

So anyway, here's the drawing and below is the fic

Tw for a couple mentions of food but I think that's it

Credit for everything @lumosinlove

Leo bounced a bit on the balls of his feet, goofy smile at full force while he waited to board the plane. He had grown up going to Disney World with his family. Living in Louisiana, Florida wasn’t too far away, and Eloise and Wyatt Knut didn’t let being adults stop them from enjoying the magic of Disney. When Leo was born, his parents were beyond excited about the prospect of going as a family, getting mickey ears, collecting pins, and making memories.

The first time he went, Leo was five, his favorite Disney movie was the lion king, and an expression of pure joy was permanent in his pale, blue eyes. Over the four days they were in the parks he got to go on rides, eat themed sweets, and meet his favorite characters.

After that first trip, Eloise started a scrap book. The book, titled ‘Disney World 2006’, was soon filled with pictures of Leo at the entrance gate, Leo with pineapple dole whip halfway to his mouth, and countless of all three of them taken by the photographers.

A favorite picture of Eloise’s was near the back, this one of her son with Simba. When Leo had spotted the cast member dressed as his favorite character, he all but threw himself at the lion costume clad employee. Leo’s mama had taken many pictures of the two lion cubs together and they were beyond adorable.

There are more scrap books from 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017. Throughout the years of pictures Leo never looks less than ecstatic. Even though New Orleans will forever remain his favorite place in the world, Disney is a close second to home, which is why this trip with his boys is such a big deal for him.

The Lions are currently on a short break in the season after their game against the Coyotes and the cubs are going to spend a few days at Disneyland in Anaheim.

Finn reaches forward to grab Leo’s hand who is standing in line in front of him.

“Sunshine, are you excited?” He asks. Leo tilts his head around to look at his boyfriend and nods eagerly.

“We’ll take that as a yes,” logan chuckles sleepily from behind Finn where he is standing with his head resting on the red head’s back. Evidently waking up at 6:00 in the morning to drive to the airport wasn’t ideal for him.

Leo lets out a low, impatient groan, still bouncing, “I need to be there like right now. Can’t we get on the plane already?”.

“We haven’t even been waiting that long. I think they’re about to call our section though, Peanut,” Finn answers him, trying not to let his amusement show too much.

A crinkly noise cuts off Leo’s response, “Now boarding rows 1-10,” a voice says from over the loudspeaker. Leo stands up straighter and turns to his boyfriends, “that’s us!”

“I know Nutter-Butter, go on, let’s get you to Disney!” Finn says as he pats Leo’s butt lightly, moving him forward, onto the jet bridge.

The boys get settled into their seats, Finn by the window, Logan in the middle for maximum cuddles, and Leo on the aisle for the leg room. For the first half of the flight Logan sleeps while Finn and Leo share a movie, but all three boys are wide awake by the time the flight attendants come around with drinks for the second time. The rest of the flight is spent chatting about practices coming up after the break, things they need for the apartment, and what they are going to do first upon arriving.

Once getting off the plane in California, they take the shuttle from John Wayne Airport to the Disneyland hotels. They are staying in the Adventure Land tower, closest to the park. By this point all three boys are buzzing with the infectious happiness of Disney. After unpacking and getting settled into their hotel room, the cubs proceed with their plans of shopping and getting dinner in Downtown Disney. First thing on the agenda is to procure mouse ears. Logan, Finn, and Leo make their way to World of Disney in order to find the widest selection of ears. Leo has a collection of his own ears at home, including his favorite pride Minnie ears, but for this trip he wants to get new ones along with Logan and Finn. Leo and Finn decide on classic Mickey ear hats, while Logan picks out Minnie ears with a lavender bow. They all get sweatshirts too, as is custom.

After a pleasant evening of enjoying the atmosphere and getting dinner at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen (Leo’s offense towards their attempt at Cajun cuisine is only partially a joke), they call it night. They head back to the hotel, brush their teeth, put on pajamas, and cuddle up in bed. After a busy day the three boys quickly fall asleep, full of anticipation for the day ahead.

Something you should know about Leo is that when it comes to Disney, he is hard core. Their first morning there is an early entry in Disneyland park.

“Rise and shine, party people!” Leo calls as he entera the main part of the hotel room from the bathroom. Logan and Finn are just now waking up, but they aren’t remotely tired. The pure excitement radiating off their boyfriend is contagious as well as the promise of a day of fun.

“Butter baby, how long have you been up?” Finn’s question is alarmed yet distinctly amused.

“Since 5:30,” Leo responds off-handedly. Logan and Finn share a look, then turn it on Leo. Undeterred, Leo spins slowly in a circle in order to show off his carefully constructed outfit. He is wearing his favorite light wash Levi’s, paired with the crewneck he bought yesterday (light gray with vintage looking Mickey & friends). Underneath his sweatshirt he is wearing his Pizza Planet t-shirt, ready for when it gets hot later. Leo’s outfit is accessorized with his new Mickey ear hat, white air Jordan 1’s, and his Tinker Bell lanyard filled with pins from over the years.

“These things take time! Now y’all go get dressed, we have to be in line by 6:45,” Leo says. With that both Finn and Logan get out of bed and into their clothes in record time. On their way out of the room, they pick up their ears and backpacks from the desk by the TV.

After a brief stop at the Starbucks in Downtown Disney, the boys make it into the que of people lining up at the entrance gate. Once 7:00 hits, the lines start to move into the park. As Logan, Finn, and Leo enter, they gaze around in awe. At the end of Mainstreet sits Sleeping Beauty’s castle, tall and glorious. They walk hand in hand down the lane of colorful, old fashioned buildings, chatting excitedly about what to do first.

“Alright babes, what’s up on the agenda?” Finn asks.

“I don’t even know the options, what do you say Le?” Logan continues.

They end up heading over to Tomorrow Land first. They go on Star Tours and Space Mountain while the lines are short, then bounce around Fantasy land as they make their way across the park. Around 8:30 all three boys start to get hungry so they grab a bag or two of beignets from New Orleans Square. After breakfast, they hit their favorites in Adventure land (Finn fucking loves Indiana Jones), Frontier Land (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a fan favorite), and New Orleans Square (Logan might not stop singing ‘Yo Ho a Pirate’s Life for Me’ for weeks).

Around noon the cubs exit Disneyland Park and walk across to California Adventure. After lunch at Wine Country Trattoria the boys bop around Cars Land, Hollywood Land, Pacific Warf and Grizzly Peak. The lines are a lot longer now that it’s afternoon, so they take it in stride and spend their waiting time talking, cuddling, and playing games. They end up going on almost every ride as well as hitting the extra good ones twice like Incredicoaster and Guardians of the Galaxy (still a fan-fucking-tastic ride but Leo misses the Twilight Zone theme).

By the time they finish up in California Adventure for the day, it’s almost time for Fantasmic, and Leo has yet to tell his boys that he got them reserved seats. The cubs meander back to Disneyland but when they start to near Frontier Land Finn picks up the pace.

“Sweetheart, what’s the hurry?” Leo asks with a knowing smile.

“I wanna get good seats for Fantasmic, I haven’t seen it since I was little!” Finn replies.

“Orgasmic? I like the sound of that,” Logan slides in with a smirk.

“Baby, no!” His boyfriends exclaim at the same time. Logan giggles which gets Leo and Finn laughing as well.

“And Finn, I got us seat reservations for the show so no need to rush,” Leo tells him. Finn’s response is to jump on Leo with a fierce hug and a drawn out “Yay,”.

The cubs enjoy the water show immensely, all snuggled up and bundled in sweatshirts once again to fend off the cool evening air. They point out little details to each other��with intertwined hands and gasp aloud at the pretty fireworks. Once Fantasmic is over they do a few more rides, then head back to the hotel, sleepy after a full day. The boys fall asleep quickly again, ready to do it all again the next day.

#my art #writing #lumosinlove #o'knutzy #leo knut #finn o'hara #logan tremblay #disneyland #coast to coast #sweater weather #harry potter fanart #lumosinlove fanart #fanart

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thejolexgroupchat · 4 years ago

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the one where they met in med school - part twelve

silk red boxer briefs and broken bones

Hi everyone!! Hope you enjoy this next part. This one was so much fun to write for obvious reasons. Let us know what you think and what you’d like to see next.

If you haven’t read parts 1-11, go check out our Master List :)

Happy Reading! - @iamtrebleclefstories @doc-pickles and Nat!

———

(February 2006)

Alex felt stupid. Like, if this didn’t go well, he wouldn’t hear the end of it for years. He wasn’t even sure if Jo would like it. If she wanted this. She never said anything about Valentine’s Day, but he assumed it was because back in October she mentioned something about how she’d never celebrated it before. Jo didn’t exactly know what to expect when it came to holidays in general, let alone a holiday that was dedicated to love.

It still kind of blew his mind that he was the first person to ever truly tell Jo he loved her. He was the first person to show her that she was worthy of someone’s care and admiration. There was just so much to love, he didn’t understand how anyone could’ve ever met her and thought otherwise.

So that’s why he found himself doing this incredibly stupid, cheesy thing, because Jo had never had someone make a fool of themselves to show her that she was worth it. He’d written her a card with some of the most romantic and sickeningly sweet things he’d ever said. He bought champagne, lit some candles and littered the bed with dozens of rose petals. He even bought a pair of ridiculous red, silk, boxer briefs that he’d be wearing when she got home after a long day of classes.

He’d just finished the last couple touches when he heard the front door open and Jo’s light footsteps make their way across the small apartment. Alex took a deep breath as he watched the doorknob of the bedroom turn.

“Alex?” Jo stopped in shock staring at the sight before her. “What is going on?”

“Happy Valentine’s Day?” Alex smiled awkwardly and pointed around the room. “You said you’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day and neither have I, so I thought I’d put together something nice. But now that you’re staring at me like that, I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have.”

Jo stood slack-jawed as her eyes scanned the room, noticing the rose petals, the candles, the champagne, a letter with her name on it, and Alex standing in a pair of red, silk boxer briefs, looking back at her with flushed cheeks. She let out the tiniest laugh, “Oh my God.”

“And now you’re laughing at me. Great,” Alex grumbled, face turning hot with embarrassment. “I knew I shouldn’t have done this.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Jo grinned, eyes shining. “I’m laughing because I’m in shock and I can’t believe you’d do this for me. You aren’t exactly the most romantic guy.”

“I know,” Alex sighed. “I know I’m not the most romantic guy and this is probably really weird for you, but you deserve this. You deserve all of this and more. So yeah, I bought champagne and put flowers on the bed, I wrote you a love letter and I’m standing here in these… really tight red shorts because you’re worth it. And if I have to make a fool out of myself to show you that, then I’ll do it.”

Jo’s face softened and she grabbed Alex’s face in her hands, “I love you. And I love that you care so much. But really, Alex you know me. You didn’t have to do all of this. Valentine’s Day is special and has been special for the past two years because I’ve gotten to spend it with you.” She lifted her hands off his face and ran them along the waistband of his red boxer briefs, looking at him suggestively. “Besides, I am a simple girl.”

“Really now?” Alex raised his eyebrows and allowed a sly grin to make its way onto his face. “So… what do you say we forget all the fancy stuff and just have sex?”

“Hold it right there, mister,” Jo placed her hand on his chest and pushed lightly. “At least pop the champagne first.”

“Yes ma’am.”

———

(January 2008)

“Hey! I haven’t seen you around in awhile,” Jo stood next to Lexie at the nurses station, bumping her friends shoulder as she looked her over. “You haven’t been avoiding me have you?”

Lexie’s eyes widened as she turned to Jo, a blush spreading across her cheeks, “No! I’ve just been busy, I’ve been on Sloan’s service so you know how that is.”

“Oh he still finds time to operate in between screwing every nurse in the hospital? Interesting,” Jo chuckled as she pulled the chart she’d come over to grab, noticing Lexie’s lack of response to her joke. “What? Don’t tell me you actually like the guy. He’s a major douche and that’s coming from someone who’s dating Alex.”

“Hey! Watch it,” Alex walked up to the duo, pressing a kiss to Jo’s cheek as he took the chart in her hands. “What’re you talking about? Sloan sleeping with all the nurses?”

“Why are we still talking about Sloan’s sex life?! Why can’t we just drop it,” Lexie’s voice was shrill and loud as Jo and Alex stared at her in confusion. “I have things to do, I have to go!”

Jo watched as Lexie stormed off, head tilting to the side as she tried to decipher her friend's mood. Alex shrugged, turning his attention to the chart in his hand, “Must be PMSing or something.”

“Alex! Come on,” Jo smacked Alex’s shoulder and stared at him incredulously. “Somethings up with Lexie, I don’t know what it is but I’m going to find out.”

Alex rolled his eyes, pressing a kiss to Jo’s forehead before walking away, “Let me know what you figure out Sherlock!”

Jo couldn’t put her finger on what exactly was up with Lexie. She was for sure avoiding Jo now, turning the other way if she saw her in the cafeteria or in the hallways. And the other interns said she’d been leaving as soon as her shift was done, barely saying goodbye to them before jetting out the door.

After knowing each other for almost five years, Jo and Lexie kept very few secrets from each other. The situation at hand however made Jo nervous, worried that maybe she’d done something to upset Lexie. Lost in her thoughts, she almost missed the frantic voice of her best friend as she rounded a corner towards the surgical floor.

“Jo! I need your help,” Jo turned towards Lexie’s voice, finding the brunette leaning out of an on call room with a nervous look. “I messed up, oh I’m so screwed. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier but-“

“I said Torres not an intern,” the voice booming inside the on call room made Jo’s eyebrows sky rocket into her hairline as she met Lexie’s eyes. “Come on Little Grey, I’m dying here.”

Jo tried to peek around Lexie, but the other girl kept herself firmly positioned in the doorway, “Oh my god, are you sleeping with Sloan?!”

“Yes and I think I broke his… you know…,” Jo pressed a hand to her mouth as she realized exactly what Lexie was saying. “Do not laugh! This is not a laughing matter! I need you to get Torres, please?”

“Okay okay, but you owe me so big,” Jo walked away, giggles escaping her as she began her hunt for Torres. “Oh man I’m never letting her live this down.”

Jo continued down the hallways in search of Doctor Torres, frustrated that she was seemingly nowhere to be found. She really did want to help Lexie out, but she had her own work to deal with.

“What’s got you all hot and bothered, Princess,” Jo visibly relaxed as Alex came into her view. “You need me to drag you into an on call room for some stress relief?”

A chuckle left Jo as she shook her head, “No I’m looking for Torres actually. You will not believe what I just witnessed.”

“Torres and I just finished a consult actually,” Alex motioned to the orthopedic surgeon who sauntered up to the duo.

Callie eyed Jo suspiciously as the younger woman wrung her hands. Before she could ask what was happening, Jo blurted out her dilemma, “I found Lexie in an on call room and I’m pretty sure she broke Mark Sloan’s penis.”

Alex and Callie stared at Jo in shock, both too stunned to answer as they took in what she’d just said. A moment passed before Alex broke out into loud laughter, followed shortly by Callie who was struggling to fight off tears as she bellowed with laughter.

“That’s a good one Wilson,” Callie clapped Jo’s shoulder as she wiped at her cheeks. “Oh that’s a funny joke!”

Jo rolled her eyes, turning to Alex with a serious expression, “I’m not making this up! I’m pretty sure that’s why Lexie was acting weird the other day, because she’s been sleeping with Sloan. And now she’s gone and broken the man’s prized possession.”

“That’s her serious face,” Alex pointed out, his laughter dying down as he stared at Jo in disbelief. “Wait, Lex really broke Sloan’s penis?”

“Yes! Will you please go help them,” Jo pleaded to Callie. “I love Lexie but I don’t wanna think about her and Sloan getting it on. That’s too much, even for me.”

“Oh no Wilson, you’re not getting out of this that easy,” Callie shook her head in amusement. “I’ll give you two minutes while I go check on him and call Shepherd or Hunt, but you’re scrubbing in on that surgery.”

Jo’s face dropped in horror as Callie walked away. Jo looked at Alex, “Oh God… I think I might be traumatized after this.”

“I’m never gonna let Lexie live this down,” Alex laughed again. “She always gave us so much shit about our sex lives. She will never hear the end of it from me.”

“I just don’t understand,” Jo shook her head in confusion. “Why Sloan? He’s like… sixteen years older than her.”

“People want who they want,” Alex shrugged.

“No you don’t get it. Lexie has only slept with like six people in her entire life. She’s normally so selective with who she sleeps with. She doesn’t sleep with just anyone,” Jo turned to Alex with raised eyebrows. “That’s why I’m so surprised she ever slept with you.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex scrunched his face and pointed to himself. “I’m great in bed.”

“Yeah but you’re you,” Jo patted his shoulder and walked away. Leaving Alex standing there in confusion.

***

Jo had just scrubbed out of surgery when she found Lexie waiting outside for her, sheepish expression on her face, “Look… Jo—“

“How long?” Jo raised an eyebrow at her friend. “How long have you been sleeping with him?”

“Two and a half months,” Lexie mumbled quietly, avoiding eye contact with her friend.

“Two months! Geez, Lexie,” Jo shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me? I tell you practically everything. Two and a half months? You found out about Alex and I days after we got together.”

“I know,” Lexie banged her head against the wall. “I—He’s my attending. And he’s notorious for screwing anything with a pulse. I just didn’t want anyone’s judgments or opinions. Especially because I was the one who initiated everything.”

“Lex, I’m not just anyone,” Jo leaned against the wall next to Lexie. “I am your best friend. I’m the person you’re supposed to talk to about this stuff. And I know I didn’t have a lot of experience in being someone’s person before meeting you, I do know that these are the kind of things that we should be talking about.”

“I know. And I’m sorry,” Lexie sighed. “It’s just… ever since my mom died last year, I can’t help but clam up when I should be talking to you about what I’m going through.”

“How about this, any time you share something with me, I share something with you. You told me about Sloan so now I’m going to tell you something,” Jo turned to face her friend. “Do you remember back in May when I was a wreck and Alex came to Boston to check on me?”

“Yeah,” Lexie nodded. “I was really worried. You wouldn’t talk or eat. All you did was cry.”

“Well, I had a pregnancy scare back then.”

“You what?” Lexie’s eyes widened.

“And I didn’t know how to deal with it so I just cried for three days before Alex showed up,” Jo looked over at Lexie and let out the smallest laugh. “He was so good about it, too. He held me and took me to buy the test and read the results. Then he told me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling a little disappointed that the test was negative. And… that was the first time he told me that he wants to marry me and have kids with me one day. When we’re ready.”

“Jo that’s—wow,” Lexie reached over and squeezed her best friend’s hand. “We really got to do better at talking to each other.”

“Yeah we do,” Jo agreed.

“I can’t believe you thought you were pregnant and didn’t tell me,” Lexie narrowed her eyes at Jo.

“I can’t believe that you started sleeping with Sloan and didn’t tell me,” Jo countered.

“That’s fair,” Lexie’s face broke out into a grin. “Next time you think you’re pregnant, you better tell me.”

“Who says there’s gonna be a next time?” Jo wrinkled her eyebrows.

“Please,” Lexie scoffed. “With the way you and Alex go at it, I’m surprised that you’ve only had one scare.”

“Oh shush,” Jo shoved Lexie slightly. “Watch out, before you have a scare.”

“Please, my IUD is a faithful friend and she wouldn’t let me down,” Lexie grinned.

“I really hate you sometimes.”

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tegoshigeftw · 5 years ago

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Tegoshige Top 25

“More Tegoshige, please!” - said absolutely noone and I delivered. Well, this isn’t for 5 likes, this is for me. I’ve had this blog for 6,5 years now and I decided to look back on the best it had to offer. This is my rating of top Tegoshige moments, excluding those that tightly involved other members (so the making out had to be left out ;;). The things that made my heart doki doki... It was originally a top 10 but it was getting hard to pick so I decided there literally was no reason to hold back so here we are.

#25 4x9

That one time Tegoshige went on location together (which is already a blessing) and Tegoshi got freaked out because of insects running about and nearly got into Shige’s lap. Nearly. So it heads the list.

# 24 Halloween 2017

Tegoshi was Oiran - an elite courtesan - and Shige was Alex from Clockwork Orange. This was but a short moment but is lasted forever in my mind.

#23 Dropped earring

This was during White final. After the boisterous MC scene where Shige was the couch and Tegoshi was the girlfriend, Shige noticed Tegoshi dropped his earring, picked it up and gave it back to him. Just a minor moment, but Tegoshi was still in girlfriend mode and it was incredibly soft. Video here.

#22 Neverland in Tokyo encore 2017/06/11

Tegoshi got very emotional after he went backstage but the fans kept cheering so they went back on stage again and Tegoshi wouldn’t stop crying so Shige led him softly.

#21 As long as Tegoshi is happy...

Before a live performance, they were interviewed and as it was just after Tegoshi’s birthday, they were asked what they wanted to give so...

S: … (in his best ikemen voice) As long as Tegoshi is happy, that is enough! T: Ahhh! ♥ I am loved! Thank you, Shige-chan! I wanna hug you!~

Video here.

#20 The Spa

It was a photoshoot for Biteki. They were originally in different sandboxes but Tegoshi got lonely very soon.

#19 Hairstylist Shige

Shige has been Tegoshi’s stylist for years, since the early days. You can see it in photos and several DVDs, most notably Live Diamond. Video cut here.

#18 “Shige, thank you!”

The night after the Neverland Tokyo concert, 2017 Shige got a call...

S: After the concert ended, Tegoshi had a party with his friends. And so late at night he suddenly called me saying “Could you come for a bit?” S: He seemed to be serious and he cried so much at the concert. (laugh) I got worried and came over but this guy… he just fell asleep! (laugh) K&M: That’s terrible. S: He woke up once, looked at me saying “Shige, thank you!” and went back to sleep. T: Moreover, I was sleeping in Shige’s lap. [S]

Tegoshi: After the last concert in Tokyo Dome I invited several members of staff and Juniors and we basically did a wrapping up party. I called Shige at 3 AM and he came but I ended up falling asleep in Shige’s lap though I don’t remember that at all. I heard it afterwards but apparently I sang “I’m coming” and Shige sang “Ayame” but I don’t remember a bit… [S]

#17 Neverland in Tokyo 2017/06/10

According to a fan report: At the intro of some song, Shige grabbed Tegoshi by the waist tightly. At first, Tegoshi was playing along but Shige didn’t let go and Tegoshi, not used to being attacked, got embarrassed.

#16 Umeboshi

Shige’s been making umeboshi for years now and his #1 fan is none other than Tegoshi.

S: I’ve been doing it for 10 years. It’s not that I like them, I hardly eat them myself. During the tour our Tegoshi eats quite a lot of them. I leave it (in the dressing room) so after the concert he opens it and eats it. About half of them I make for Tegoshi. [2017.02.08 Moshimono Futari]

Q: If you were to give Christmas presents to the members what would it be?

A: …Well, umeboshi! Umeboshi! Eat my umeboshi and get healthy! I give it to Tegoshi every year though. Ah, but that’s showing “Love”. I give it all the time but it’s a deep love that has a special depth! (laugh) [2018.12.05 TVガイド]

#15 Blue making

This is perfect for several reasons, how naturally this fells, how there’s a perfectly empty chair next to them, and how at the end Tegoshi stumbled and Shige is cautioning him.

#14 That 2013 photoshoot

You know the one. That is all. No comment needed.

#13 Tegoshige Kabe-don and confession

During k-chan news, they played the Prince game and Koyama wanted a kabe-don. So Tegoshi kabe-don’d Shige and told him “I love you!”

The audio available here.

#12 Tegoshi’s kirakira eyes

Back in 2009, Shige had a diary and I’m really sorry he does not anymore because one day after a photoshoot he wrote this:

At that time he had seemed to be already smiling and looking at me Looking at me at such a close distance Is this an effect from DREAM BOYS As compared to before, the distance was so much more closer Tegoshi Yuya Indeed is a prince………….. Oh please won’t you be even a little embarrassed. Just how strong is your heart? Don’t look at me like that………… Being looked at with those shiny eyes…………… The atmosphere will become weird (oдO) ………………………………….. Tegoshi Yuya who has ended the photoshoot using those shiny eyes, had walked towards DREAM BOYS with that pair of eyes Ah~ shiny shiny Tegoshi eyes~ I’ll be waiting for that photoshoot~ I wonder… for which magazine would it be Oh the kira kira eyes

Full text here.

#11 That Taiwan hotel video

We all remember that one. Tegoshi in his bathrobe going out to visit ‘other members’’ rooms but he only goes to Shige’s and gets comfortable on his bed, and gets pounced, and the next thing they show, it’s morning.

#10 Soukon thigh stroking

That time the camerman got very fascinated with Tegoshi’s legs and the other members teased him about it and called him a pervert. Then, Shige decided to stroke those thighs because... well, he can.

#9 Taking a bath together!

- An unforgettable episode that happened on stage.

Kato: Because of a thunderstorm we had to stop the concert. We moved it to a later date. After a break the 4 of us got into tiny bathtubs, 2 in each and it felt sort of like a field trip, (laugh) the bath was warm. [Duet 2015.04]

They also talked about it during an MC at the time.

Shige pretended to climb into the “tub” with Tegoshi. “We were Team… What was it again?” T: Team “We haven’t done our solos yet”. S: And Tegoshi was sliding all over the place and smacking into me. He was such a naughty guy. T: It couldn’t be helped. It’s slippery. K: But baths are nice, aren’t they? Shige answered in a chill voice, “Yeah, they’re great.” [S]

#8 Worldista routine

I think this was during Weeek where they make up different letters with their bodies. Every concert it went differently but several times Tegoshi left his place and went over to Shige. This fancam pictured the time he got on top of him. Or tried to.

Also here’s a report from Nagano, May 25:

Tegoshi goes to Shige and captures him in a hug and Shige hugs him back. Then Shige picks Tegoshi up and carries him like a sleeping child to his original position. [Fanart here]

#7 Showers

Tegoshi is long known to invade other people’s privacy and during the tour, other people’s shower stalls are no exception. There are many recent episodes but here’s one account:

Q2: Shige-chan said in Nagoya when he took a shower Tegoshi appeared right before his eyes but does he do it always?

S: Not… always but he did it quite a lot on this tour. He trespassed about 3-4 times I think. He would enter the shower room I went to really quietly. That’s why I got really startled. He’d get happy he made me surprised and start grinning. (laugh) I would counterattack by pouring water over him.

[Tour Stories from Popolo 2016.09 FUN’S QUESTION - SHIGEAKI]

Then, there’s an important MC from 2008. One time, during the tour Massu wanted to take a shower but as he entered the stalls, he met a naked Shige standing proudly. Shige explained he was only waiting on Tegoshi who earlier danced for him naked. Massu was like “Cool, I’ll leave you to it.”

The full account is here. There used to be an audio of this but I didn’t manage to get it.

#6 DTF ‘ago-kui’

There were many instances during two whole tours and also a SCP performance. Each time seems a little closer and more intimate, but each time looks equally fun on both sides.

#5 Accessible Emma outfit

Now we know that Shige, unlike Tegoshi, is not a touchy kind of guy. So him doing something like this, especially on air, is pretty unusual. Tegoshi said Shige did it a lot backstage too.

#4 “I wanna stir you up”

This line from ‘S’ was a real hit and Tegoshi basically admitted it got him horny. Twice. Detailed posts here and here.

#3 Tegoshi saying they’re basically married

Here’s the video.

#2 Tegoshi knows what’s up

Who do you think has the most sex appeal?

Tegoshi: Shige. His face is handsome like a nobility but he’s also manly. Rather than a shining sexuality his sexuality is monochrome… a deep sexuality. It’s the kind that slowly unravels as you get to know him. [Wink Up, 2013.12]

Who would be a perfect boyfriend in NEWS?

Tegoshi: Wouldn’t that be Shige? It seems like he wouldn’t be clingy but all the while even when he’s silent, in his heart he’d be like “I’m thinking about you properly ♥” keeping a good distance. [Ane Can 2015]

Look with a “female gaze” and say who’s the most handsome member Tegoshi: Alright, I’m switching to female… click! …Hello, I’m Yuko! (laugh) So… for me it’s Shige. The reason is his face and his way of life. His face is up to my taste (laugh) and he doesn’t hesitate in words or in actions. His open-minded way of thinking is similar to mine. It’s refreshing and feels good. [Potato 2016.10]

To name but a few.

#1 Shige radio confession

During k-chan news, they played the Prince game and Koyama wanted one person to say what they liked about the other person and this is how Shige confessed.

K: Do it properly! Seriously. Connect hands “lover style”, look at each other. *giggle* S: Tegoshi has a really cute face. Really cute face and a good voice… K: That’s not it. S: A nice voice and beautiful eyes… K: Something you really like, really like. S: But I really do like it. K: Something more about his personality. S: If it’s about his personality then… even when he complains he still does his job properly.

Sorry, but that’s just... yeah. You have to hear it though. Full transcript and audio here.

#Tegoshige #special

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seoftheart · 6 years ago

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100 things i love about johnny

“his english name means “god is gracious” and it’s derived from hebrew words יוֹ (yo) which is the hebrew god and חָנַן (chanan) which means “to be gracious” and i mean,, true

his korean name is written as 英浩 in hanja characters and they can mean “flower, petal, brave, hero” and “great, numerous, vast” - also true

his lisp

his bad puns and pickup lines

how he donated his voice by recording audio guides to aid artists with development disabilities

how much he loves haechan and taeil :((

how much he loves nct in general

his love for yoona

how he never fails to include both female and male fans when he’s talking so nobody gets excluded

his silky hair

the way he furrows his eyebrows and one side of his upper lip goes up when he says something sassy or tries sounding smart

the little, cute wrinkles that appear on the sides of his mouth when he’s smiling

how hard he works on his chinese and tries to communicate with chinese members in their native language grfsregkajeg

the way he discreetly comforted yeri on enana when she was sick

how he noticed that on the vlive commentary function it said “say something nice” and found it really nice

how he’s really humble about the things he does and his qualities, oh my god !!

he thought his selfies weren’t good and asked for advice and didn’t believe jaehyun and doyoung when they told him his selfies are really good indeed, he was so surprised when they told him!!

his wannabe raps LMAO that rap he wrote in high school still haunts me

he stayed in sm for so long, ever since 2008, but he didn’t give up and made it to debut with nct! he had to watch his friends from exo debut before him while he was left behind but that didn’t discourage him one bit ;((

how he always finds a way to play on enana during the commercial break, and it’s usually playing with the cameras, which is really cute

his smile when he’s talking with the fans

how he always does that dance where he swings his arms left to right constantly while doing the same with hips, in sync with the arm swing and embarrasses others but does it anyway

he always thinks of nct’s international fans!! he always adds a sentence of two in english so everybody understands what’s going on

he has a lot of trouble learning japanese but he still tries so hard ;((

his “boku wa johnny desu”

he’s really shy when someone compliments him, but never fails to compliment others

he has such a nice relationship with enana staff members and always helps them and encourages them

“to everyone out there, i just want to say that whoever’s listening to this is absolutely beautiful, and there’s nothing you need to change about your appearance, you’re already as perfect and unique as you are. don’t let anyone tell you differently. if you ever feel like you’re not worth anything, seek help or change your environment, don’t let the bullies get to you. life is long, life is beautiful. don’t stop right here because of these mean people. live for yourself, live happily, and show them you’re stronger than them.”

saying “bless you” when people sneeze a lot of people overlook, but he finds it meaningful

he always encourages either the nct members or complete strangers when they’re speaking english even though they make mistakes and makes them feel confident about their language skills

that one time he started randomly meowing on enana and made jaehyun laugh

ok but on a serious note tho. johnny likes to,,,meow around. idk if it grew into a (weird) habit of his but he just,,,meows. he meows around jaehyun, he meows around mark, he probably meows around everyone in nct. can i pls get this limited-edition cat too

his super broccoli and super corn t-shirts

his singing voice ;–;

how he never hesitates to do aegyo but regrets it straight afterward so he lowers his head and covers his face with his hands

he said he loves running through the rain when it’s raining and it’s so unusual but cute!

lmao he’s such a hopeless romantic tho, i bet he got that running-in-the-rain idea from a romance film or smth

“to do and regret, rather than not to do and regret”

his hobby is photography and he takes really nice photos which he posts on nct’s instagram!!

his signature is really pretty!! it’s one of the most beautiful signatures i’ve seen an idol have tbh

he plays the piano really well and he used to play it together with jaehyun in their room when they were roommates

during the time he shared the room with jaehyun, jaehyun used to always light up scented candles and it sometimes bothered johnny but he never said anything about it so jaehyun wouldn’t feel bad

also,, he sleeps naked?? but like,, he’s so open with it. he’s like oh? clothes? i don’t wear clothes when i sleep lol and taeil is ????? so c o n f u s e d but johnny is just there, with a big grin on his face lmao

he’s a bit clumsy but it makes him adorable ;-;

his laugh!! it goes from a simple giggle to a high pitched laughter and it’s so recognisable and funny to hear, but it never makes you tired of hearing it

the dimples that appear on his face when he’s smiling, #help

he always gives other members the chance to speak in english if they want to or if they’re confident but never forces them if they don’t want to

how he’s so passionate about photography and he uses his camera more to capture the nature and his members than to take pictures of himself

also. that one photo of a smiley face written on a foggy car window (probably?) that he took is so, so, so important.

seriously, i love the style of photography he is going for!!

how he always participates when nct does volunteer work, like how he went to that school and made meals for children or how he went to a p.e. class and taught the kids how to dance

the way he laughs!! he always laughs in little fits, like, it goes hahaha hahahaha hahaha and it’s a d o r a b l e

how he’s secretly a meme king and loves sharing memes with nct members on their gc but they never reply to him and it’s so sad but so cute fsdjkghs

the way he looks at cameras like they’re the most precious things in the world

he never fails to hype a nct member up!!

how much he loves his family. he doesn’t talk about them a lot but when he does you can see it in his eyes how much he misses his parents. also when he cried when they sent him a video message for his birthday during his smrookies days!!

also when he was so surprised and teared up when his mum sent an audio message to enana back in 2018

“love starts with a smile” - johnny, 170327

he always sees beauty in some things that would usually get overlooked or wouldn’t be seen as beautiful and pretty and he never fails to express how he finds them nice!!

his relationship with mark. it’s not only that they’re english speakers so they’re close, you can see just how much johnny cares for mark. mark is like johnny’s little brother

he has a tendency to say things in a tone someone could find sarcastic but he really means it. he uses these phrases that have grown to be seen as sarcastic only to convey his true feelings and i find it so unique and beautiful (like when he said “it’s beautiful, mark” in the first relay vlive when mark, jaemin, winwin and kun were making standees for the sprouts - one would think he’s saying it just so that he wouldn’t hurt mark’s feelings but if you listen closely enough, you can hear the sincerity in his voice)

how he uses “your one and only” when writing to the fans

also the message on a photocard for the regular-irregular album where he wrote “from your one and only to my one and only” i literally blushed okay.

seriously though, the messages he writes on photocards are so thoughtful and cute, for example on the regulate pc he wrote: “simon says... smile!” and like,, i might have cried.

his face with no makeup on!!!

his thighs that are both muscular and soft, you can’t really tell if he’s really fit or a bit chubby and it makes my heart go whoosh whoosh bc!! my bias!!! is chubby!!!!! and i love it!! !!!!

seriously though, the songs he recommends and/or plays on enana

he says he’s a really clumsy person or it’s just his height so he always bumps into things and i find it adorable even though it must hurt him but how can you not love these small things about this giant man shjsjs

how he sleeps with so many plushies and gives them names and always changes the one he’s hugging at night om g

“pandas. OmG PANDAS” - johnny in ikea

have i already said this but he’s so empathic and compassionate and conscientious and always tries to make people around him feel comfortable with his jokes and warm smiles

he’s also so patient and laid-back and doesn’t get angry so easily, like, someone would probably get angry with yuta were it his phone number that was exposed (even by accident) but johnny was just liek,,,yah it’s okay and forgave yuta and sgjdjsh he’s just so nice :(

how he thinks make-up shouldn’t be limited to girls only and doesn’t believe in gender roles!!

in addition to that, he even appeared in an episode of netflix’s bill nye saves the world that touches on the topic of sexuality & identity and it’s such a big thing for an idol, especially a rookie idol to talk about how kpop is changing the traditional ideas of what gender norms are in such a conservative country??

“just be yourself. i feel like that’s a big point” - johnny in bill nye saves the world

*serious, with a smile on his face* “do you have a boyfriend?” *serious* *can’t contain the cringe and laughter* *turns away in an adorable way*

johnny’s fashion evaluation much?? it’s just him giving weird names to nct’s outfits and pretending to be an expert by giving them star ratings but it’s all just random and it’s so funny shjsh

while we’re at being funny! god of humour!! right there!!!! johnny suh invented humour ok i don’t make the rules

like,, his humour is not the normal kind, i saw many people actually say he’s not funny but LMAO joke’s on you, his humour is the galaxy brain type of humour, it’s like,, a bit dry but it’s so funny if you’re on the same page as him

when he went to ikea with jaehyun to buy a lamp but they only ended up looking at plushies and johnny immediately made friends with two snake plushies, fred and jason. “fred, what are you doing here??” “jason, jason! no, he’s my friend, jason. jason, he’s my friend.” - johnny in ikea, after saving jaehyun from jason’s bite. like that’s so random but it’s working because i’ve melted

him wearing hoodies and putting them over his head while taking photos of his members is so precious and soft!!

the way his pinky kind of drifts away from the rest of his fingers when he’s waving or covering his mouth or doing anything with his hand really

his plump lips and the way they curl upwards a bit and it makes them look so c u t e but they’re also a bit sexy???

he has these scars on his face (a lot of them on his chin) that are almost invisible because of the makeup but i think they’re from pimples, perhaps? but they’re so beautiful and precious and i love them when he smiles and they get a different shape and it’s art?? on someone’s face?????

he speaks so confidently in korean even though it’s not his native language! one would think it is by the way he never stutters or has a loss for words but it’s just because of his never-ending friendliness and confidence that’s a part of his personality

remember the rolling paper event during the 127 1st anniversary party? all of johnny’s messages were the longest ones and were so heartfelt and sincere. he really poured his entire heart while writing those and that only shows just how much he loves his members

his role inside the group may seem unimportant but he’s one of the few people holding the group together. there is taeyong as the leader, but johnny is like a leader from the shadows who puts everyone before himself first - and it is not easy to do

he cares for the foreign members so, so much. out of all the nct members, he’s been in sm the longest and as a foreigner he understands and knows what it’s like to suddenly be in a completely new country surrounded by nothing but strangers. he kept on conversing with ten, both in english and in korean, so ten would feel more comfortable and he’s the main reason ten’s korean has gotten so much better. also, he takes so much patience with the chinese members who have language barriers with both him and the rest of nct and never fails to correct them when they say something wrong or when they can’t think of a word/phrase to say. when they were touring seoul, he was always next to lucas and closely listening to how lucas speaks so that he can help him learn better!!

johnny knows how to flirt and seduce but what he doesn’t know is how to act afterwards so the embarrassment that comes after he says something cringy is just the most adorable think ever (take “do you have a boyfriend?” ig video for an example). he’s just so awkward and he can’t compliment someone without blushing ;(

also oh boy, johnny is just so bad at lying like fksjshksh he can’t keep a secret to save a life. were we, nctzens, not so dumb, we’d get so many spoilers he accidentally gave lmao

while we’re at this, he also can’t have a nice phone because he literally doesn’t care about it, hE THREW IT IN THE FLOOR in that one video, isn’t that enough as it IS

also,,,,,,he put a metal fidget spinner on its screen and somehow expected it not to break?????? just how lovable this idiot is.

he’s so,,,,awkward and cute around girls,,,like,,,,,,,help me. him confessing to yoona (kind of?) is the cutest thing ever and it just fills my heart with love and i!! wanna protect!!!!!

the thing i always look at when i watch enana are his ears because he always fiddles with them and touches the earring(s) and it’s cuuuute

but lmAO somehow the earring(s) always fall out when he does touch them and it’s somehow so,,endearing because he’s so cute jfc

he once said he tries using “thank you” and "i love you” a lot because those words are so powerful and he seems to always want to bring smile to other people’s faces..

also!! his parents call him prince as a nickname and,,well. i might be crying because that’s s o f t

do you know that johnny always tries to wear colourful clothes on rainy days so that he breaks the monotony and the nostalgia of rain?? fdkjhsrgahkdsg

“you can overcome everything with laughter”

also,, have you noticed how he always makes a double peace sign when he’s embarrassed? cute.

#johnny #nct #johnny seo #johnny suh #seo youngho #nct 127 #john suh #john seo #happybirthdayjohnny #happyjohnnyday #100 things i love about #my text #mytext #i love this one man and that man is johnny #i put so much thought into this okay ;(((((#i'll post it on twitter too so know that it's not someone stealing!#<333

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fairytsuk1 · 6 years ago

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melancholic love | 01

• pairing: min yoongi x reader ft other members

• genre: fluff, angst, GuardianAngel!AU

• words: 1,437

• summary: Being a guardian angel is hard, both four year olds and twenty one year olds are quite stupid. Being min yoongi’s angel? That’s easy. It’s as easy to fall in love with him as it is to take care of him. Now, you’re on the same plane to help him achieve his goals of debuting, that is if you can manage when all he wants to do is to kiss you.

a/n: hi, new series! please enjoy, it’ll be three parts and i hope to leave everyone satisfied (but waiting for more!) thank you and i’ll see you soon. also i’m still working on avarice so don’t worry! <3

Wow, things are way different on the ground than from above, taking a left you wondered how humans could remember where to go for everything. When flying above someone, it’s so much easier to find reference points! Man...you could kill to be flying right now. Your leg muscles are definitely under developed.

Looking at your notepad, you smile at the familiar name and address.

Min Yoongi.

Born on March 9th, 1993

In Buk-gu, Daegu.

Your baby! Well, not exactly but you’ve been with him since birth! You were assigned to him and essentially grew up with him. You stayed in the same body of course, angels don’t age. But in all honesty, you loved this man. He was blossoming into a great guy.

Especially with your help, he’s quite dense with ladies and their affection.

Giggling to yourself, you noted that you were close to the building where he worked. Big Hit Ent. You were proud of him, he was writing his own lyrics and overall being successful. Pain grew in your chest when you reminded yourself that you were just here for a mission.

You’re not his friend nor his girlfriend. He doesn’t even know you exist, though you’ve been there all along. Looking back at his file, you clenched your jaw.

Help Yoongi debut with his group BTS, then promptly leave for your next assignment.

How could you just leave him? You loved him, you swore every night that the Gods were cruel for putting you two together. But you wouldn’t have asked for anyone different had you been given the choice.

Now standing in front of the building, you put on a smile that’s been perfected over years of training. Let’s get Yoongi where he belongs, on that big stage!

June 11th, 2000.

Dalseong Park.

Yoongi had been running around all day, the different sights of cute animals gave him more and more energy to see the next ones.

You trailed behind him, enjoying the warm air and slight breeze on your skin. It was a nice day to have a fun outing, especially for the zoo. You supposed he shouldn’t have eaten all the cotton candy. And you definitely shouldn’t have pretended to be the air and moved it within view. Especially now that he was running around like a maniac. But it wouldn’t happen again! You swore. (You were lying, he was too cute).

Running to the next exhibit, you were thankful you had sharp senses. The pebble was big enough to would make him fall!

You sprinted and quickly leashed your arms around his waist so if he fell, it’d be particularly gentle on his body. Letting out a breath of relief, you waved away any pain he may have felt before helping him up. Of course, things had to seem natural so you couldn’t just pick him up, much to your chagrin.

Looking up, Yoongi glanced around his surroundings before staring down at the offending object. It felt like someone or something was there, it really did! Like something protected him or at least helped him to not injure himself. But...there was nothing there.

He couldn’t see you, you knew that already. But seeing him smile at the sky warmed your heart.

Bowing in front of the soon to be group, BTS, you smiled and waved a little.

They’re so cute.

“I’m Y/N! Please take care of me!”

You couldn’t have been prettier. Yoongi stared at you. It felt...weird. Like he was looking at someone familiar but when trying to recall seeing you anywhere, he came up with blurs of nothingness. If you were truly a stranger, why did he feel like you were his best friend or even something more?

Odd. Yoongi bowed as well.

“I’m Min Yoongi, Bangtan’s rapper, songwriter, and record producer,” he spoke smoothly, no stutter in sight, “nice to meet you.”

“Oh! I assume I will be working with you a lot then. I’m here to help with songwriting and producing too! I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”

“I hope so.”

The rest of BTS gave each-other side glances and smirks before introducing themselves as well.

“I’m V. But my real name is Taehyung, you can call me that if you like. Maybe if you’re real good you could be apart of the background vocals!”

You laughed a little and covered your mouth. You? A singer? Well, maybe you were a little good at singing hymns during service. Ah right, stay focused Y/N!

“Well, if you’ll have me. I’d love to work on a song with you all! I’m excited to be working here.”

Bang PD seemed pleased at the interactions. You’re an angel, so it was real easy to impress your new boss. He clapped his hands and you met some more staff members. It was small, the studio and everything. Hopefully your mission wouldn’t fail.

“Which would I like to work with first? Hmm, I have no doubt you both are great. But i’d like to work with Yoongi first if that’s okay with you, Namjoon.”

“Yeah! Don’t worry about it, Yoongi will show you around I’m assuming?”

He nodded and you walked over to his side, watching everyone dismiss themselves.

It was a little awkward walking next to him. In the sky above, everyone kind of minds their own business. But with humans, you knew there should be just a little small talk.

“Sorry but...have we met somewhere before? You feel familiar,” he rubbed his arm and smiled a tiny bit, a habit of his, “I feel like I would remember you if I had met you.”

Yes.

“Ah, no. I think I would’ve recognized you as well. But I wouldn’t mind getting to know you, if that’s alright. We’ll uh...work better like that.”

Since when had you become so bold? You bit your lip and fretted. Was that was the right thing to say or was that even appropriate to say in the workplace at all?!

“I’d like that too. Er, this is my studio, it’s small but you can pull up a chair and I can show you what I have so far.”

Smooth, he can recover quickly. You pulled a small barstool over before sitting in front of his monitor.

“Let’s see what you’ve got!”

Yoongi smiled and discreetly looked over. You were nice and sweet with a touch of excitement. Had an angel just walked into his life?

You’d only seen that look a few time but you could recognize it anywhere. Anyone you knew he liked a whole lot got that look. Good thing you payed attention all those years, now you know how to give the same look back.

December 20th, 2008.

The Min Household.

Heartbreaks were cruel, Yoongi mused. They also hurt a shit ton. Yoongi could’ve figured that out. He lied in bed and wrote endlessly, some of the lyrics were ripped up and trashed while others were stored in the box where he put all the “good ones”. They were all good to be honest.

He hadn’t even noticed he had been crying till the stains appeared on the paper.Sitting up and wiping his nose with his sleeve, he clenched his fists. He shouldn’t be crying. It obviously didn’t mean that much to her if she broke it off over text.

Your heart ached as you sat on his bed and watched him. I’m sorry Yoongi. Heartbreak is just one of those things you can’t solve or fix, no matter how much you wanted to try. Scooting over, you watched him settle into the covers and pull them over his head.

No one should be so sad, especially just days before Christmas.

You rubbed your hand over his figure and listened to him cry and watched his body shake with sobs. The more you stroked his form, the more he subsided.

It felt like warmth you would receive from your mother. But a touch lighter and oh so soothing. Yoongi sniffed and shifted but it remained there to comfort him. It felt so comfortable and right, he’d felt it many times before and this time he just let it happen. He needed it.

“Thank you.”

The rattle of wind against his blinds seemed to get a bit harsher at the mention of those words. He had no idea how or what but he knew that whoever was there cared for him a whole lot.

That same warmth was the one Yoongi currently felt in the studio as your knees touched just the slightest.

That comforting, full of love, warmth.

Who is she?

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britishchick09 · 5 years ago

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ranking all the beatles songs i’ve listened to (so far...)

today marks a month since i made the beatles book, which is when i started to become a fan. now that i’m a crazy beatlemaniac, i’ve been listening to the boys a lot. i’ve heard 35 (technically 34) songs in full, so here’s my ranking of them! :D

35. i am the walrus

scary (sitting on a corn flake sounds nice tho)

34. drive my car

i like the beep beep

33. a day in the life

an okay song with a trippy part that i’m not a fan of

32. day tripper

i’ve heard this since i was little and i was like ‘wait THE BEATLES WROTE THIS OMG’ the tambourine is good and it’s okay

31. come together

a good song with trippy lyrics

30. ob la di ob la da album version

it’s okay. i’m not a fan of the loud ‘BRAH’ and that weird laughing near the end (who even was the ‘thank you’ lady?)

29. twist and shout

it’s a great song (i prefer the one from ed sullivan), but i can’t help but feel bad for john. i can tell he’s really forcing his sore af voice. poor guy! :(

28. revolution

i love the spark it has and it’s like YAS QUEEN LET’S HAVE A REVOLUTION BBY! :D i could do without the shredding guitar in the right channel tho

27. get back

this is another ‘THE BEATLES WROTE THIS OMG’ song. i love the az reference (although it’s crazy tuscon) and it’s a nice mellow tune

26. yellow submarine

what a fun song! :D

25. something

a sweet song with the best music video! :D (and it’s peepo approved)

24. blackbird

this is such a pretty and peaceful song ;)

23. hey jude

this is a relaxing song with a sweet story behind it and a great music video. i don’t really like how the ‘na na naaa’ part drags out and makes the song long af

22. hello goodbye

this was the very first beatles song i heard even though it was from those 2008 target commercials. it’s nostalgic and catchy! :D

21. please please me

a very nice song that has a nice harmonica :)

20. your mother should know

a pleasant song with a great dance number

19. all you need is love

i really like the strings and john’s ‘ALL TOGETHER NOW! in the background’ it would be a great song to sway to at a concert

18. i wanna hold your hand

a classic song with lots of energy

17. eight days a week

this is the 'newest’ song that i’ve heard so far. it’s a swinging tune! :D

16. help

a great song that gives me strong elsa vibes

15. act naturally

this technically isn’t a beatles song, but i’m counting it since ringo sang it with them. it’s a catchy song that fits him well! :D

14. in my life

this is yet another ‘THE BEATLES WROTE THIS OMG’ song. it’s so pleasant! :D

13. a hard day’s night

it has lots of energy and works so well for beatlemaniac chase scenes

12. all together now

this one was surprising since i never thought they’d write a kids song! i love the song’s simplicity and it’s a great bop

11. she loves you

a loud, energetic and fun song. yeah yeah yeah to this one! :D

10. can’t buy me love

it’s a dance-able tune with a great message :)

9. hold me tight

i really like the second half of the song. paul may be out of key, but it works!

8. your bird can sing

this has a lovely melody and i love the giggling take :D

7. please mr. postman

i really like how the backup vocals sound like a girl group and john’s voice coupled with the claps make it so great! :D

6. with a little help from my friends

this song is wonderful (not sure about the high part tho) and it’s always awesome to hear ringo sing! i love the story of the others standing around ringo to support him. it adds to the song in such a sweet way :)

5. octopuses’ garden

my boy ringo gets his own song and it’s awesome!!!!! george was so supportive of it and that’s really heartwarming. this has big spongebob vibes and it’s easy to be transported to the ocean (or bikini bottom). this is such a fun song! :D

4. i saw her standing there

this song is so catchy and upbeat. it’s really dance-able and has so much energy to it! it has strong new dream vibes and that’s a big reason why i love it so much. you can’t go wrong with them, especially when paired with the beatles! :D

3. do you want to know a secret

this song reminds me of snow white and finding out that it was based on john’s mum singing i’m wishing to him is the cutest thing ever! george’s voice was a bit funny at first, but i really liked it and he did a great job. this is an adorably sweet and simple song. :)

2. here comes the sun

this is such a happy and uplifting song that gives so much hope. it reminds me of the ending of frozen, when the ice truly did melt and it has been years since happiness had shone. i love the guitar solo near the end. george does a little voice crack on ‘it’s been years since it’s been here’ in take 9 and i love that! D

and my number 1 favorite beatles song is...

1. ob la di ob la da anthology 3 demo

this technically isn’t a separate song, but i’m counting it as such. this was the only beatles song i had on my ipod for a few years and the first one i listened to as a true fan. i love how it’s quieter than the album version, but still energetic. i love paul’s vocals, john going ‘yes sah take one for the united jumbo band!’ and ‘ob la di ob la da brother!’ are fun bits, the guitar is great, the little ‘la la la la la’s are cute and the beatboxing & saxophone is awesome. it’s the same song as 27, but it feels so different. it’s fresh, without tension and stoned john, it feels lighter, it’s... more alive i guess? the fact that i used it for my animation makes it truly special and it easily takes the top spot. no matter how many beatles songs i listen to, it’ll always be number one ♥

#beatles rankings #wowza this is a lot #it was fun to listen and rank them :D #35-32 is eh 31-27 is sorta like 26-16 is like 15-7 is really like 6-2 is love and 1 is REALLY LOVE ♥#enjoy ;)

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ancientbooshartifacts · 5 years ago

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Do Not Touch On Pain Of Death (This Especially Means You, Vince)

Author: Thieving_Gypsy

Year: 2008

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Howince

It’s been a slow morning in the shop, not even a single customer, so when Howard hears the clomp of Vince’s platforms on the stairs he can’t even be annoyed at how stupidly late he is. He’s too bored to be annoyed. He gets his pencil and notebook ready and waits to be entertained. “Well?” Vince is grinning like the village idiot. “Well what?” “Let’s have it. What happened this time, you Goth Juiced yourself to the wall and had to wait for it to wear off? "No, I was reading.” “…are you ill?” “I ain’t as thick as you think I am.” Howard hears the words first, then he realises Vince is reading them off the stack of paper he’s holding, then he realises what the stack of paper is, and then he wants to die. Casual, he thinks desperately, stay casual, some of those words have more than one syllable, surely he’s not managed to read much… “What’s that you’ve got there?” he asks, as nonchalantly as he can manage, all the while edging down behind the counter towards Vince, to grab the manuscript away and burn it or eat it or anything, but Vince is far too quick, even on his ridiculous shoes. He dances away easily, hooting giggles and shuffling through the pages to find something else. “Je vais lecher ton foutre. What’s that even mean? Oh no, wait, this bit’s well good, where is it… oh yeah, this: ‘In seconds he’s got the kid thrown onto his front, his hands bound to the bars on the headboard with a couple of Moon’s ties. He fucks him roughly until the kid’s in tears, he bites his shoulder and his fingers stab bruises into his hips and he scrapes a harsh red line down his spine with the barrel of his gun and imagines how it’d feel to shoot him in the small of the back’… Yeah, I know I said you’re meant to express yourself and get all your anger out, but I didn’t mean you should write a novel where you basically tie me to beds and rape me at gunpoint.” He doesn’t sound freaked out or pissed off, he’s just laughing hysterically. Somehow, that’s worse. “It’s not you, is it? It’s only a draft, that’s why it’s under my bed in a triple-padlocked box that’s bound with chains and marked Do Not Touch On Pain Of Death (This Especially Means You, Vince). I just borrowed your name until I thought up a better one.” “Yeah right! What do you mean it’s not me? A Cockney ragamuffin who likes Bowie? I’m telling you something, Bryan Ferry’s not gonna be happy when he hears you’ve made him into a child abuser. And Bollo, you know he hates being called a monkey, he’s gonna rip your face off.” They’re on the floor before Howard’s even realised he’s vaulted the counter, fighting like schoolboys, twisted sheets of paper flying everywhere. Vince won’t stop laughing, even as Howard digs his fingers between Vince’s skinny ribs, bruisingly hard, just the final warning before he thumps him square in the middle of his precious face. “You have no idea what makes good literature, you sparkly little tit. If we spelunked the cave of your knowledge it would be a very short expedition indeed, sir, 'cause you’re not even a halfwit, you’d have to go to evening classes to study to be a halfwit - ow, ow!” Vince seems to have too many elbows and knees, jabbing Howard all over like he’s being trampled into the floor by a swarm of women in stiletto heels. He struggles for the upper hand, rolling them over and knocking thngs off shelves, eventually resorting to tickling Vince under the arms to make him let go of the pages, which only makes the laughter even worse. “If you ever read anything with more intellectual content than Heat maybe you’d understand-” “What’s to understand? You fancy me, you wrote dirty stories where I fancy you back, the end.” He’s so ticklish he’s laughing in little screams now, thrashing around on the shop floor like a fish trying to get away from Howard’s merciless fingers, but what he lacks in basic intelligence he makes up for with his vice-grip, honed carefully through years of training himself to make the most of Topshop sales - when he sees something he wants, he grabs it and there’s nothing and nobody in the world that can make him let go. Not even tickling. “Get off, you old freak, you’re creasing my cape, I wanna finish reading.” “You get off, don’t touch me, and don’t touch my things! I never said you could read that!” “You mentioned that gay phase in Spain but I never knew you write pornos, 'specially not about me and you.” He’s weak and sweaty from laughing and fighting. Howard fixes all his attention on getting the last papers out of his hand, but Vince folds them and flings the hem of his cape out the way so he can shove them down the back of his jeans - then he knees Howard gently in the balls, and Howard collapses like it was a sledgehammer, the fight suddenly flooding out of him like liquid from a dropped bottle. He lets Vince grab his wrists and pin them on the floor above his head, because Vince is sitting astride his thigh like he’s riding a horse and his knee is still there at the fork of his legs like a warning and if he moves at all - at all - then the rigid little problem in his pants is going to make itself unmistakably known. Vince has stopped laughing, finally, but he’s still kind of smirking. His hair’s falling into his eyes. He shakes his head to get rid of it, but it falls back in a soft little black swoop, like always. Howard can’t help it, he moves as if to push it back for him and tuck it behind his ear, but Vince’s fingers are still tight around his wrists, putting just enough pressure on for the pointy protrusions on his wristbones to start feeling sore. “As if you’d ever get all dommie like that, anyway! You’re my bitch, it’s the worst-kept secret in the world.” “How dare you, sir?” “See? You even call me sir.” “I call everybody sir.” “Then you’re everybody’s bitch.” “Shut your mouth.” “Go on, then.” He stands up suddenly, whips his cape off, carefully removes the folded pages, and stretches out over the counter, sinuous like an eel, which makes Howard the wrong kind of uncomfortable as well as the right kind. The lights turn him all green under the chin like an underripe buttercup, and he’s smirking like the devil. Howard gets to his feet too, slow and shaking, and he doesn’t quite meet Vince’s eyes but he looks everywhere else, his stupid grinning mouth and the rough choppy ends of his hair and he notices the way his bare elbows and forearms are pressing on the surface and starting to tinge red - anything except how tight his stupid polka-dotted jeans must look on his arse when he’s bent over like this. “What?” “Go on. Let’s have it. Get it out your system. Sir,” he adds, looking back over his shoulder in a calculated mockery of coy. Howard could quite happily wring his neck, never mind anything else, but then Vince wiggles impatiently and it’s out of his system before he can really think about it. * Twenty seconds later Vince is holding a bag of frozen peas to Howard’s sprained wrist and, not unkindly, he says, “Maybe you should keep your dirty bender fantasies in biro and leave the practical stuff to people who know what they’re doing, yeah?”

#the mighty boosh #mighty boosh #boosh #howince #vince noir #howard moon #vince noir/howard moon #howard moon/vince noir #bollo

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gryphons-of-aentha · 5 years ago

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The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 3)

This is the part where everything gets very weird, jarringly fast. I suspect there must be a way to rework some of this to make it cohesive enough with the first two parts to compile it into one story, but for now I’m afraid we’re stuck with massive, strangely meta genre whiplash.

it also becomes more apparent that the reason all this coincides with Earth dates in real time is that I’ve been making a lot of this up as I go for over ten years now.

So Kyran, and shortly thereafter Iadra, who chased him through the portal, suddenly find themselves on Earth circa 2008. Or rather an alternate timeline Earth that was created when some human teenagers with a basement laboratory, and an interdimensional being badly disguised as a talking dog, accidentally tore a hole in reality, which is what Kyran’s hastily-made portal led through. The humans (and space dog) quickly become entangled in the gryphons’ conflicts as it becomes apparent that the connection between their worlds isn’t going away on its own and none of them know how to close it. A couple years and several shenanigans later (during which Talon and Iadra have reunited and befriended the humans and dog-alien, and Kyran has made enemies of them), Aentha and Earth remain strangely linked and everyone starts to notice signs of something strange at work.

(it’s here that I should mention that the humans, in the original series of short stories I wrote documenting this when I was fifteen, were pretty much self inserts of me and my brother for shits and giggles/stand-ins. Due to conflicts with certain potential subplots that have cropped up that I want to use, this is no longer canon, but it means the Wielder is currently not much more than an empty character slot because I haven’t figured out how I actually want to approach him as a character, aka I am trapped in Jonathan Sims purgatory and don’t know how to get out. So aside from things he definitely does because it’s required to progress the plot, there’s basically a conspicuous void there right now. also the sword was originally called the Ancient Katana™ [the ™ is somehow pronounced but nobody can figure out why or how, and speaking the full name causes the lights to flicker even while outdoors] because I was making fun of all the stupid and sometimes kind of racist tropes that crop up with chosen one narratives, but these days I’m not sure where that falls on the line between “making fun of a dumb racist trope” and “just being racist” so I’m shelving that until I get some second opinions on that one)

Unbeknownst to anyone, larger forces are at play in this pseudo-Earth: an entity similar in nature to the Powers of Darkness, but that feeds on narrative tropes rather than suffering and is substantially more powerful, was drawn by the first Rift created by the humans, and has been manipulating events on Earth in order to trap everyone in a repeating narrative that provides it with a consistent energy source. This comes to a head when one of the humans accidentally becomes some kind of Chosen One known as the Wielder (according to the space dog, who is the only one versed in this stuff) by finding a magic sword that can manipulate both interdimensional energy and narrative tropes (among other things). Kyran, meanwhile, has been looking for this sword, because during some events that tore the Fourth Wall (an actual thing in this story) he realized that he’s been cast as the villain in whatever story they’re all stuck in and therefore can never actually win, which he’s becoming increasingly desperate to do since he’s now back in debt with the Powers of Darkness and needs to resolve this situation and focus his attention back on Aentha and overthrowing Shale. The sword can potentially solve both of these problems, and also make him immensely powerful. With the Entity still manipulating everything, this leads to him inadvertently becoming the Wielder’s arch nemesis but gets him no closer to actually claiming the sword.

Eventually Kyran manages to break reality enough to force a confrontation with the Wielder on neutral ground where the Entity’s narrative won’t prevent him from winning, but due to some unforeseen external factors fails again, and gets his soul bound to the sword. This essentially traps him in a pocket dimension unless summoned by the Wielder and renders him physically unable to cause any actual harm to the Wielder or his allies. On the plus side, the Powers of Darkness can no longer reach Kyran, so as long as he’s bound to the sword and by extension the Entity, he’s safe from any consequences he’s racked up. Incidentally, it also cuts off the by-then-considerable hold the Powers of Darkness had over his mind. No longer clouded by the influence of a malevolent multiconsciousness and with not much to do while trapped in the void, he engages in some actual self reflection for the first time in his life and isn’t thrilled with the conclusion (this by no means makes him instantly a better person, but it does gradually lessen the degree to which he’s an abject asshole). He also discovers that due to his gryphonic heritage, he has a limited amount of control and mobility in interdimensional space (though the sword prevents him from going to any physical dimension) and he finds his way to a gryphonic ruin that seems to have once been part of either a temple or a library, and discovers more about gryphonic history than any Aenthian gryphon ever has. The Wielder mainly leaves him to his own devices in there, since they’re still enemies but at this point there’s not much either of them can really do to the other, and while the sword’s power to bind some beings is intended as a kind of familiar mechanic, Kyran is really not the kind of bound creature to be anything but a belligerent hindrance if summoned. Also every time they interact it tends to end with someone getting stabbed.

The destruction Kyran caused in his bid for the sword, meanwhile, created a schism that broke all known gateways between Earth and Aentha, trapping Talon and Iadra back in their own world. Not knowing what happened to the humans or Kyran, and with no way to find out, they mainly just go back to their lives, now living almost entirely on the outskirts, since things between Andolia and the neighboring gryphons are still getting worse. After a year or two they have a son, who they name Iadros (gryphonic tradition is to name the firstborn cub after the mother regardless of the cub’s gender) and mainly stay occupied with that until the political situation gets dangerous enough for the gryphons that they start to consider ways to access Earth again, with the idea that maybe the Wielder’s Chosen One status would help them solve the whole mess, but at the very least to get Iadros out of harm’s way while he grows up.

About five years after the schism was created, circa 2017, they finally find a way back, unknowingly thanks again to gryphons being powerful interdimensional beings who created a number of their own pathways and pocket dimensions between worlds. As it turns out, things have been developing on the Earth side as well. Kyran and the Wielder have, if not become friends, at least reached a kind of truce, since it turns out when rendered unable to be an evil warlock Kyran’s default state is “Genealogy Aunt but make it goth,” and he’s trying to track down the lost origin world of gryphons, partly for something to do while he’s been trapped in a pocket dimension for five years and partly out of the newfound desire to do something non-destructive for once. It’s almost less of a redemption arc than a quarter-life crisis that happens to lead in a positive direction. Anyway, he needed the Wielder and the sword in order to travel to other worlds on the trail of this lost dimension, and has at least agreed to not stab anyone with letter openers in exchange. Probably helps that they’ve all gone from a gaggle of cosmically-overpowered teenagers to slightly more emotionally mature cosmically-overpowered twenty-somethings.

After some time of this, during which more monster-of-the-week things happen in the course of this ultimately fruitless search for the lost world, it becomes apparent that Kyran probably isn’t interested in killing them all anymore and the Wielder offers to free him from the sword (this will not reattach his soul to his body; his soul currently resides in a crystal from which it can’t be unbound, but giving the crystal to him will separate his will from the sword and the Wielder and he’ll be able to travel around physical reality on his own again). He refuses, knowing that both the Powers of Darkness are probably looking for him at this point and the Entity has a vested interest in him remaining the villain, and he’s very certain that he doesn’t have the willpower or actual power to fight them off and they’d end up back at square one. Especially since the whole soul-trapped-in-a-crystal thing makes him vulnerable to specifically that kind of danger. As long as he remains bound to the sword, the Powers of Darkness can’t get to him to call in his significant debt, and the Entity can’t do anything because technically he’s still the villain of the story and is being forced by the sword’s power to not fight the Wielder. Technically. This was the point where I awkwardly realized I’d accidentally set up a perfect gay enemies-to-lovers plot and had to completely rethink the Wielder as a character because I love that trope too much to just not use it.

Anyway, Talon and Iadra aren’t thrilled to learn that Kyran and the humans are on more or less amicable terms now, since their last few interactions with Kyran have done nothing to indicate that having him around will be conducive to safely raising a child and Iadra in particular has still not forgiven him for what he did to Talon, and without five years of context, the fact that the three (four counting the talking space dog) of them are kind of working together now feels like a bit of a betrayal.

There’s no time for this to really come to a head, because their attempt at magic-sword-based rules-lawyering has actually not fooled or appeased the Entity at all, and it’s very set on returning equilibrium. It tries a couple tactics to get Kyran to turn on everyone or vice versa, including but not limited to sending a double of him to Earth to cause problems (it doesn’t work because the sword renders that impossible and they all know that) and trying to provoke the talking dog who still doesn’t really like him into acting on it (he doesn’t because he has a moral compass and better things to do), but the arrival of Talon, Iadra, and Iadros provides exactly the opportunity it thinks it needs, and it finds a way to hijack Iadros. And unfortunately there’s going to be yet another part to this.

#long post

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wordswithkittywitch · 5 years ago

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Inktober 18 - Misfit

The doll from the 2008 Billy and Zoë story “Misfit Toy”, which I never uploaded to the internet so I’ve put the whole thing under the cut. Keep in mind I wrote this eleven years ago and I haven’t edited it since, and because it’s Billy and Zoë it’s set at Christmas. And has ghosts.

And, full disclosure, I do not really remember much about it except that it’s one of the weirder stories in the series.

Misfit Toy

Billy and Zoë were always said to be good kids, not getting in fights, making the sports team, honour roll, debate team, cheer squad, chorus and band. Both moderately popular jacks-of-all-trades, they managed to make prom king and queen even though they were just friends, and got scholarships to the same college. Billy played sports year round, but managed to talk about other things, mainly debating, singing or playing clarinet. Well, not when he was doing those things, as they involved his mouth. He had a tall, muscular build, his features seemingly mismatched. He had soccer legs and basketball feet, baseball arms on a football torso, which his head was thankfully not too small for, his white blond hair contrasting with his frequently red face. Zoë’s body, however, seemed more perfectly constructed. She had toasted mocha skin and shiny black hair, large brown eyes, long willowy arms and legs rippling with muscles and small, athletic breasts that did not get in the way when she cheered, played the flute, lacrosse, tennis or cricket. Both frequently smiled, especially when the life-long friends found out they were going to college together.

"Bloody hell, it's cold!" Zoë exclaimed. "Happens in December." Billy replied blaisély. His friend turned to scowl at him, but failed when she saw his face. White mist streamed from her mouth as she leaned forward with laughter, forcibly not actually doubling over. "My cheeks are red, aren't they?" "You look like you walked into the ladies' bathroom!" she giggled. "Well, Zoë, it's cold." he replied, pulling his scarf up around his face. "When people go out into the snow, it is a known phenomenon- don't pull on my scarf!" Zoë laughed and stumbled away through the slush. "Oh, now you're going to get it!" he warned, leaning over the burm they walked along to grab a handful of snow that wasn't half ice or mud. His friend took advantage of this distraction to push him over the fence of snow and send the young man tumbling head over heels down the slight incline to the park beyond. He sputtered and pushed himself to his knees. Despite the burm, there wasn't really enough snow in the park itself to tumble like that, at least not comfortably. He reached back with both hands. Zoë would eat snow. Suddenly, his hand touched something that wasn't snow or dead plant. He stiffened, and slowly turned where he knelt. "Ready for this one, Billy boy?!" Zoë called, tossing a snowball in his direction. He didn't turn as it whizzed by his head. "Zoë..." he spoke inquisitively. She tensed at his tone, eyes widened. His mouth worked stiffly before he could continue. "Have you ever gotten the feeling that you're in the first scene of a crime show?" There was a short pause before Zoë moved, but then she was up over the snowbank and down with her friend in a moment. She dropped to a knee as she gazed on what he had found. Then she exhaled, as if she'd been holding her breath the whole time and punched Billy in the arm. "Not funny." Zoë scolding, lifting herself from the ground. She extended a hand to Billy. "I don't think so, either." he replied coldly. He seemed deeply offended she wasn't as disturbed as him by what lay before them, limbs askew. "I'm guessing that shouldn't be here." Zoë commented idly. "I don't want to touch it." Billy said flatly. "And I'm not going to. We shouldn't touch it, we should just tell someone it's here." Seeing as he wasn't taking her hand, she strode forward and plucked it idly from the thin blanket of snow. "It's just a doll." she said dismissively. Twisting it in her hand, she examined its face from various angles and checked if its eyes closed. They didn't. "Kinda ugly one, too." It had slightly matted, dark brown curls, porcelain skin aged to an ivory colour , the rose wash to its cheeks cracked. One of its eyes had been knocked back into its head, leaving a black abscess that stared more deeply than it' partner. The dress and hair were sodden with melted snow, and it's unblinking eye stared out , dull blue, far too large as Zoë turned it in her hand. It was not a pretty doll. It had great fat cheeks but mature eyes and the paint on its lips, a faded red hadn't been applied with any sort of precision. He friend looked revolted that she was touching it. She smiled wickedly, mostly to herself. "Ha!" she shouted, pushing it forward and waving it in his face. "Big bad Bill has something he's afraid of! How he will regret mocking my perfectly rational fear of birds!" "Get that thing away from me." he said quickly, stepping away from her. She raised the doll to her face level and spoke in a high, flat voice for it. "I love you, Billy! Let me eat your heart!" "Knock it off, Zoë!" "Okay, okay." she answered, lowering the doll. "We should check if the park has a lost and found. It can't have been here more than a day or two. It just snowed, and the this was right on top of it." She fumbled the doll to her other hand, idly dangling it from a foot mid-process. Its thin satin dress was too old and caked in place from old snow to flip up as she did so, but the hair hung limp. "Why did you say that thing you said when you first saw that thing, though?" Zoë asked, turning up the collar to her jacket. "That thing about the crime show?" Billy stopped and stared disbelievingly at his friend. "Zoë, she was laying in a pool of blood." he replied as if she were losing her mind. His friend looked at the doll, then at the patch of snow they found the doll in, then at him. She looked as if she couldn't decide to be concerned or annoyed. "Uh, Billy..." "It's all over your hands-" "Billy, drop it." Zoë answered, all amusement gone from her voice. She tucked the doll into a pocket of her jacket. It was an unusually large pocket, but it didn't quite fit. While the face was turned away from Billy, meaning that the doll was looking over her shoulder just barely too far for a human to mimic, the head and torso jutting stiffly off her hip, like the grip of a pistol. While the arms were pinned to it's sides by the fabric, the hair hung from Zoë's pocket and swung as she walked. As soon as she took her first step, she wrapped her hand around the doll and supported it in it's post, lest it fall. "We'll see if this park has a lost and found. It snowed night before last, so this couldn't have been here for more than a day." Billy stopped listening to her at this point. He was rattled, terribly rattled, and he pulled his coat tighter around him.

It was too cold to sleep shirtless, but his pyjama top was in the wash. Perhaps, on another night, it would have occurred to Billy that people have been sleeping in teeshirts longer than they've been wearing them without overshirts, but tonight he could not put that much thought into his clothing. He bundled himself into his blankets and replayed the scene in the park in his mind. He wasn't sure why he did so, since the thought of it chilled him more deeply than the air circulating his room. The snow lay in a half inch on the ground, where it was thick, but it looked a good six until you fell in it. You could really forget there was a hedge under the burm on a day like that. He rolled through the slush, not minding that it tasted like sand, laughing with his friend and getting snow caught in his eyebrows. He turned himself upright and swept up was much snow as he could in both hands, scraping dead grass beneath. his eyes met two others, staring, blank, as if dead. He started back and stared at what lay before him. Blood did not run from it, blood cannot run from dolls. But it lay on the pool of blood, staining the delicate lace dress it wore, the scent of it heavy is Billy's nostrils. And Zoë couldn't see it. Not at all. Billy rolled over and pulled the blanket up under his chin. He didn't like dolls in the first place.

When you first fall asleep, and become aware of something other than lying in bed; there is a period of time when you are not yet aware it is a dream, even if you'll remember this before you wake. Nothing seems wrong then. Everything makes sense. You don't wonder why you're doing what you're doing, or where you are, or why you feel so small. Billy's moment lasted only seconds. But the seconds yawned. They ached. He felt as if there was no floor beneath him, but he was still afraid of falling on it. Perhaps it was that he was shrinking into himself, and that's why it felt like the floor was falling away from him. He fell to his knees and forced his eyes open. He was in a hall. It no longer mattered that he didn't recognise it, at least not to his body. It has started to stand back up of its own accord. It was dark, and it was cold, and far longer than it had any right to be. There was one window a few meters ahead and the rest of the hall swiftly dissolved into blackness. His body moved forward, not blinking, steps firm, and his mind repeating, "Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? What is it I'm doing?" His small body stopped by the window and looked out. There was thick, drifting snow, at least a foot and a half of it, but it was hard to judge. Out of the window, there was just a field of snow, rimmed with trees. Nothing made by man touched the landscape, nothing to help Billy judge how high he was, or how deep the snow was, beyond the fact it drifted deeply, cutting valleys into the white. The moonbeams were cobalt on the snowdrifts, too dark to be real light; and silver in the places it remembered that fact. He looked down. This was wrong. He knew he didn't wear a pyjama shirt tonight. He remembered, because he nearly froze off his nipples that way. But from what he saw, he was wearing footie pyjamas with trains on them. That was wrong. And for that matter, his hands were larger. Firmer. The tendons stood out whenever he clenched them. The hands clutching the windowsill were soft, and pink, and at entirely the wrong angle. This was too small. He was too small. He suddenly thought that he must be a child, and somehow this was comforting. That Billy had not changed, but gone away. Billy stepped away from the window and continued down the hall. The part of his head that was protesting he lived in a college town where trees only came in deciduous and even then were so rare they had to put cages around them to keep them from running away. He didn't live in this house. He never did.

He reached the door. His hand extended, but the knob slid away up the door, leaving a deep scratch in the paint. Raising himself onto the toes of his footie pyjamas, Billy reached for the doorknob again. This time he caught it, just above his head and felt it struggle beneath his fingers. The knob pulsed like a heart in his hand, and he wanted to let go of it, run back down the hall and out into the snow, never seeing this door again. But rather than that, he turned the knob. The door swung open on its own, a blast of freezing air blowing his hair back and causing him to recoil. The stairs loomed above him, all in blackness. He could feel the walls pounding in the same beat as his heart as his feet took him up into the lightless attic of their own accord. The stairs seemed to go on forever before him, and soon, he knew, they would go on forever behind him as well. If only he had a candle, a ball of light in this darkness. At least then, he wouldn't have to keep a hand on the cold, dusty wall as he ascended. He would have thought that after a few minutes of this, that seeing a light above him, marking where the stairs stopped, would have given him some hope. This lurching dread in his belly was unexpected. Perhaps it was because he hadn't seen the light when he had first opened the door? Eyes focused on the light before him, Billy took the stairs mutely, staring unblinkingly. The last step was lower than the ones before it, and child-Billy stumbled to his knees, stomach crashing in this sudden break in tension to the point he wanted to vomit. He didn't. He couldn't manage it, but the sensation pulsed at the point where the part that remembered he was Billy thought his Adam's apple ought to be. His breathing slowed faster than he expected it to. As he stared at his plump, soft hands, the light upon them began to fade. He looked up and started at what he saw before him. It was an attic much like any other, weathered wooden beams and a slanting ceiling, cobwebs glowing in the shifting light. One corner of the attic had been rumpled, boxes unpacked and overturned, their contents displayed on top of them. China dolls with staring eyes, armies of silent tinker toys stiff and unwound, frozen for their moment in time. Hundreds of music boxes of various sizes, some with dancers, some with keys on chains, some with nothing at all but a small wooden case with a knob on the side. In the centre was a doll. A very a large doll, lit from under her chin. There was a wooden Christmas pyramid in her lap, one of the ones with a propeller on top that made the figures inside spin if you lit the candles. He's never seen one so large or so intricate. Her knees had to spread as she knelt behind it, holding it like a cherished toy, and her head was held limply at an angle on her shoulder, letting the large fins cut through the air, narrowly missing her head with each turn. There was a single lock of hair which caught consistently upon them, the thin wooden leaves pulling it out and then dropping it onto the on behind it. And all through the layers on layers of the pyramid, different Christmas scenes were depicted in painted woods of various kinds. At the base, a victorian market bustled with people, an old man in a top hat who was probably supposed to be Scrooge storming as much a tiny carved figure could. Above them, dancers swirled in what he believed was the Nutcracker suite. There were nativity scenes, carols brought to life, angels trumpeting, elves at work and children on carousel horses. All so exquisitely carved. He was so fascinated he almost didn't notice the candles burnt blue. His eyes moved to the top tier, two painted figures turned around each other. Not knowing a terrible lot about woods, Billy guessed the boy at being made of pine and the girl of walnut. The girl was holding a doll. The boy's arms were up and his little painted mouth was open in terror. Swatches of pink paint lit his cheeks. Suddenly, Billy knew why he was here. It was that doll from the attic. His grandmother's doll. It was creepy. It had creeped him out before his sister died. She'd liked that old doll so much. She thought it was sweet. But that was a long time ago. A shrinking part of Billy's mind protested he'd never been there before and he didn't have a sister. The rest went on to think about how he'd begged his mother to get rid of the doll, how he swore its eyes followed him. She had met him halfway and put it in the attic, but she wouldn't hear of getting rid of it. It was her mother's before her, and she'd passed it on to his sister. And now, something moved in the attic. If his mother wouldn't believe him, he'd fix it himself. He picked up a snowglobe. The blue light from the dead candles caught in the glitter within. He'd smash the evil thing's eyes out. The doll blinked. It wasn't the kind of doll that blinked, its eyes were set back in its head. The snowglobe slipped in Billy's hand. Billy looked up at the woman holding the pyramid. She blinked slowly in acknowledgement. "What is your name?" he asked nervously. "For the moment..." the woman said slowly. He features shifted as easily as if her were just turning her head, he face shifting, eyes large and reflective as Christmas baubles, mouth small and pouting. "That." Suddenly, with a cacophony of tinkling noise, all the music boxes and tinker toys started at once.

Zoë did not dream that night. She simply lay warm in her bed, cherishing sleep at it most basic form--the return of energy. She did not even stir in the slightest in her slumber. In the morning, she was simply not there. The blankets lay as if untouched, neatly tucked in at the edges. A china doll with matted brown hair and only one eye lay on the pillow.

#Inktober #artists on tumblr #inktober 2019 #stuff Kittywitch drew #inkwork #Billy and Zoë

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thevampslyssa-blog · 7 years ago

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It’s a Love Story- C10

{there will be moments in this chapter, where you're like "oh this sounds familiar!" well it definitely will, because a lot of the second half of this chapters dialogue is from the 3D movie. i was watching it and thought it fit really well with the story and flow of the chapter. so yah. bare with me!}

{July 4th, 2008 Toronto, Canada Nick-15| Mel- 13}

Mel smiled big as she looked at the amphitheatre, she couldn't believe that the boys had come this far and were selling out big venues like this. Actually, this whole Burnin' Up tour was completely sold out.

The past few months since Nick had asked her to be his girlfriend had literally been a never-ending rollercoaster ride. Their first movie; Camp Rock; the Disney Channel Original Movie that they costarred with Demi Lovato in, had came out a few weeks back. That movie was a huge success, something that no one had even imagined would happen... happened.

Melissa had been asked by the boys' management to make a short cameo in the A Little Bit Longer's debut single's music video that was conveniently Burnin' Up. Those couple of days on set were an amazing experience, except for the times that Selena Gomez tried to flirt with Nick... that pissed Mel off.

But now that the summer was here, and the tour was just about to start, Melissa couldn't wait to be on tour with the boys for a few months. As this was their first actual summer tour. They were filming a 3D movie at some point and Nick was constantly writing the next album.

There were days where Nick dropped everything just to spend time with his girl, as in his mind... she was the most important thing, she always would be. But most times, the music had to come first, as it was indeed his job. ——— "Hey Mel!" Joe exclaimed as she walked onto the huge stage, with a JoBro tank top on and cute purple shorts. "Have a nice nap?" he asked, flipping the mic around, almost hitting himself in the head... almost is the key word there.

"Yah, but where's Nick?" she asked, her cute little heart-shaped sunglasses covering her brown eyes.

Joe smiled, knowing she'd ask about her boyfriend, "he's in the back, cooling off and writing with Demi." and just as he finished his sentence he had flung the mic right on his face, "shit!" he exclaimed, groaning loudly.

Melissa giggled, "Joseph, what have we told you about doing that? Now, did you learn your lesson?" she 'lectured' him, patting him on the shoulder gently.

Joe smirked, "Yes I did, Little Mama. Now go find your boy toy." he laughed, pointing to the side of the stage.

As she made her way back into the air conditioning, she put her sunglasses on the top of her head, and blushed as Nick looked up at her; his signature goofy smile on his face.

"Hey angel." he said, scooting over on the couch for her little bum to sit next to him. "I missed you." he whispered and kissed her head before looking back over at Demi.

Demi and Nick were currently working on a song for her new album, called Stop the World, "So if we put the hook here, and those cords along with it, it sounds good, yah?" Demi asked, strumming her acoustic guitar gently.

Nick nodded, grabbing the pen that was sitting in front of him, "what were those cords again?" he asked, and as Demi told him, he wrote them down.

Melissa just sat there in awe as the two collaborated, it really was phenomenal that they worked so well together. "What do you think about this babe?" Nick asked, starting the song as Demi sang so effortlessly.

Melissa clapped her hands and smiled big as they finished right before the end of the first chorus, "I love it guys. it's great." she exclaimed. ———- Later on before the concert, literally right before it:

The violins were heard, the beautiful melody that everyone had begun to memorize ringing through the amphitheatre. Everything seemed like it was going perfectly, but then Kevin was heard screaming, "GARBO LOST HIS PACK!"

Melissa then jumped into action, as she was kneeling besides the boys' lift, and hurried off to try and find it.

Don't understand what that means? Lemme explain.... Because Garbo didn't have his 'pack' that means they don't have the bass playing at that moment, that's not good.

A minute or two later as the violins began to dissipate, Melissa ran back to the lift, "I have it!" she exclaimed, the beloved pack in her hands. she handed it to one of the stage people and then came back in front of Nick and smiled big at him.

"Good luck baby, i love you." she mouthed to him, getting a grin and a "i love you more" from her boyfriend.

The concerts from there on out had been super successful, every fan that had bought a ticket, showed up. As time went on, Melissa and also the boys' mom's birthday had come and go, and the new album's release was getting closer and closer. ———-

{August 8th, 2008, 4:31am Trump International Hotel & Tower New York City, New York Nick- 15|Mel- 14}

Big Rob walked into the the huge conjoined hotel rooms, making his way through the kitchenette, then walked over to the first Jonas' bed, "Hey Kevin, time to get up buddy. Gotta roll." he said, leaning over and turning on the bedside table light.

Kevin sleepily groaned, leaning up and rubbed his eyes, "I know, what time is it?" he yawned, looking up at Big Rob.

Big Rob smiled, "can you get up? I have to wake up the others, it's 4:30 man."

Kevin being the talkative person that he is, kept asking questions, "okay, yah... how long do we have?"

The big bodyguard simply said before leaving the dimly lit room, "5 minutes... living the dream, baby."

The next wake up call on his list was Nick and Melissa, so he slowly made his way to their bed, that of course had a guitar at the end of it, sitting nicely against the frame. "Nick, Mel... how'd you two sleep. Get up guys, we gotta go."

Big Rob leaned over, patting the almost 16 year old on the shoulder, as Nick sleepily spoke, "what time is it?"

"4:30, get up, alright?" Big Rob asked, knowing that getting everyone up and ready quickly was always a hassle, but he quite honestly hoped that Melissa would help get the curly haired boy up.

Melissa leaned over to her boyfriend and kissed his cheek, half coherent. "C'mon babe. You guys have a busy day today." she whispered in his ear, her hand resting softly on his chest.

Nick groaned, "I know... one more minute." he pressed his head against Melissa's shoulder, a hand snaking around her waist, pulling her closer.

"No guys, were living the dream, we gotta go." Big Rob coaxed, making his way into the last room, and definitely the hardest wake up— Joe.

"Hey Joe, gotta get up brother. You gotta move." Big Rob said, once again turning on the bedside light.

Joe; who always caused problems, groaned, "Dude, go away man."

Big Rob simply responded, "No, we gotta go." He did something that he normally never has to do, which is pulling Joe's dead-weight body to the side of the mattress.

Joe's attitude came out as he exclaimed, as Big Rob pulled him, "No, I'm sleeping dude! I'm sleepi—" he was interrupted as the bodyguard hit him with a pillow that Joe wasn't laying on, "Let's go!"

"Why'd you hit me man?!" Joe asked, rubbing his head where he had been 'assaulted'.

"We gotta go." Big Rob stated, then walked back to make sure everyone else was awake.

About five minutes had passed and the four of them were sitting at the huge table in their hotel room. There was so much more food waiting for them then they actually needed.

Kevin was sitting across from Nick, who had Melissa sitting next to her boyfriend, with her head resting on his shoulder. There was Joe sitting at the head of the table, dozing back to sleep.

The eldest Jonas grabbed his fork and clanked it against his water glass, then threw it to Nick who was also trying his hardest not to fall back asleep. Melissa giggled as she felt Nick flinch, and groan softly.

"Okay, so here's today's schedule, 7am, we—" Kevin began as he read the email off his phone, but was rudely interrupted by Joe who seemed to be more awake then he was the minute before.

"EARTHQUAKE!... Just kidding." he laughed, shaking the table, and Kevin rolled his eyes, looking back at his phone, "Yah, yah, so funny..." Kevin mumbled.

A few seconds later, Joe exclaimed again, shaking the wooden table once again, "AFTERSHOCK!"

The waitress that was assisting them that morning, came up with a plate in hand. She smiled at Kevin as she sat it down in front of him, "I'm sorry about him, thank you." Kevin said apologetically to her.

Joe then picked that moment to speak up, "Do you have any peach jelly?" The waitress nodded to Joe and went to her cart to grab the little container of the jelly he requested and handed it to him, "thank you."

Kevin continued on with the schedule, "—7:30, we are leaving for rehearsals, at 8:12, Burnin' Up with the anchors on stage."

Meanwhile, Nick was getting distracted by Melissa, who was eating her cereal, not even realizing that the teen was admiring her.

They had both begun to watch Joe, who was still struggling to get the jelly on his toast, "Joe, are you still listening?" Kevin asked, bringing Joe out of his thoughts.

Joe's head immediately shot up, "Huh? Oh, yah. I am." he said, then looked up at the waitress, who was waiting for him to choose between waffles and pancakes, "pancakes please."

Kevin again went back to the schedule, "...9am, post-show taping. Then 9:15, finish Good Morning America, then we depart for Central Park to finish our music video, we film it in 3D." Joe again was not paying attention to his older brother and was playfully trying to get the jelly on his toast.

Big Rob stood to the side of the table, pointing to the door, for the waitress to leave. "... 3:30pm, CD listening party at the Highland Ballroom, we will perform about 3 songs. Then at 5pm, interviews..."

Kevin looked up at Big Rob, realizing that the waitress had indeed been standing there the whole time, "how long was she standing there?"

Big Rob shrugged, "5 seconds."

Nick then spoke up, and leaned closer to his girlfriend, "She was— Joe, she was standing there because you're like, 'Can i have the jelly please?... like do you have any waffles?... pancakes will do.'" Nick mocked his brother, and Mel looked up at Nick gasping at his behavior and slapped the teen playfully on his arm.

She gave him the look, "he nice to your brother, baby." she said softly, her morning voice coming out fully.

Joe grinned at the young girl, "Thank you Mel, but seriously dude, did you see her buy the quake joke? That works every time!"

Nick of course had to encourage his brother's distractions and continue the conversation, "You've been doing that earthquake thing since you were in like third grade."

Big Rob finally stepped in, stopping the brothers and said, "Stop playing around boys."

Joe sighed, "but what's wrong with 'earthquake'?" he asked his brother, disregarding what their bodyguard had said.

Kevin and Melissa were the only ones who heard the man, and Melissa nodded while Kevin spoke, "Sorry Big Rob, only." and Melissa tried to stop the two boys, "Boys, stop. Listen to Big Rob!"

Nick leaned closer to Melissa, "Just stop doing it." he said.

Kevin rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed over the fact that Joe had wound Nick into his little immature antics. "Guys, guys, stop playing these earthquake games."

Joe grinned over at Kevin, "well i suggest sometime today, Kev picks up some new pajamas." the eldest Jonas gasped, looking down at himself—he was wearing a plaid, fleece robe.

Nick then reached his hand out to Joe to do a bro-ish like handshake, "Ohhhhh!" the two middle Jonases laughed.

Nick looked at his older brother, "you showed him." he said jokingly. All the while Mel sat there looking at Kevin, rolling her eyes.

Kevin who was clearly getting super annoyed, said in a funny voice, mocking the 18 year old, "Ooo, aftershock, can i have your number?"

Big Rob finally interjected the situation, "we gotta go guys."

Kevin looked up, worried, "are we late?" The body guard nodded, coming up to the table, "Yes, let's move."

Joe looked up, his senses coming to, "Where are we going?" everybody didn't know if he was trying to act dumb? But then again... it's teenaged Joe we're talking about here... kissing, well kinda. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Kevin sighed, "Joe, just follow." Everybody began to get up from the table, except Joe, who was still in a daze.

"Which way?" Joe asked, as Melissa and Nick held hands as they walked back to their room to finish getting ready.

Big Rob took this moment to his advantage, and pulled Joe out of his chair, as Joe said laughing, "this way, I'm assuming?" ———— An hour later, they were sitting in a van, Nick and Melissa in the way back, Joe and Kevin in the middle and Big Rob driving. Nick's head was resting back against the seat as Melissa was laying close to him.

Once Nick caught a glimpse of the traffic they were currently stuck in, he sighed, "this is a mess, do you see this? this goes all the way down to Broadway."

Kevin looked back at Nick and Melissa then back at the never-ending traffic, "unbelievable." he muttered.

Meanwhile, Joe was being Joe, paying attention to the game on his phone, "Yes! I just beat my high score."

Nick rolled his eyes, interlacing his hand with Melissa's, "Yah, and were gonna be late for our show."

Kevin looked at Joe, then pulled his phone out of his hand, slipping it into his jean back pocket, "Big Rob, this traffic is killing us. We're on in another hour, guys."

Melissa looked over at Nick, a worried look on her face, but that diminished quickly as Nick leaned over to kiss her lips gently.

Joe who was currently pouting about his precious phone being taken away, spoke up, "There's nothing we can do."

"Helicopter?" Nick asked.

Big Rob replied, "already on it." Kevin nodded, looking out the window, trying to figure out how they'd get out of this situation more quickly.

Joe grinned, "Big Rob, nicely done."

Big Rob placed his hand on his ear and spoke, "Yesir, tenth and Broadway."

Kevin said softly, "that's so close."

"Yah, but we're gonna have to leave the car here." Nick interjected, chewing on his lip nervously.

"Yeah, but guys, i put this car on my credit card." He chuckled, trying to bring some humor to the situation, like he always does. But he was interrupted when there were deafening screams quickly surrounding their car. "—and, why are there fans?"

Big Rob sighed, "we got trouble." he spoke to his in-ear, his voice definitely sounding a bit stressed.

Kevin gasped, "how did they find us?"

Joe cried out, "BIG ROB! NO! EARTHQUAKE!" this time it really did feel like one, at least for them it did.

Nick and Melissa both placed their hands over their ears, and the young girl looked at her boyfriend with fear. As this was the first real mobbing situation of the sorts that she was experiencing.

Kevin looked back at Joe, "Not now! we have to get outta here!" he began to try to open his door, but there were too many fans surrounding them. "I can't get out Big Rob."

Big Rob began to get out easily, which was a surprise, "stay inside you guys."

Joe looked out the windows worriedly, "Where is he going?"

Melissa whimpered, leaning closer to Nick who seemed very conflicted on if he should be helping with his girl's anxiety or trying to figure out a way out.

Kevin began to feel more and more concerned as the seconds ticked by, "I'm trying to get out of the car...." a minute or so later an idea came to his mind, "we have to go through the roof."

Nick nodded, looking at his girlfriend who instantly seemed to calm down a little as he rested his hand on hers. "let's try it, ready?"

Fans began to scream louder as Kevin was the first to slip through the roof, then Joe next and lastly it was Nick and Melissa.

By the time Nick was done helping her out, Kevin looked back at them, and waved them along, "come on!"

Big Rob called out as Kevin tried to get him to come with them, "Go, Go! Save yourselves!"

Soon they were running through the streets of New York City, the fans following after them.

Joe was the last to make it to the helicopter as he had gotten distracted by a few cute girls, we're talking about Joe here, remember?"

Kevin climbed in the helicopter, looking at Big Rob, "how'd you get here so fast?"

Big Rob shook his head, "Don't worry about it, just get in!" ——-

{August 11th, 2008, 11:00pm Trump International Hotel & Tower New York City, New York}

The boys, Melissa and Big Rob climbed in the cramped elevator, as they were on their way to the "album release" party in Times Square.

Melissa was leaning against Nick as Big Rob went over the "ground rules" for how everything would go once they got there. "This is gonna be real out of control, we were told that there are thousands of girls waiting. Once we get there, we do what we gotta do... walk out, and that's it—ya know what i mean? Just stick by each other, and Mel remember, don't let go of Nick."

Mel nodded, her hand not leaving Nick's already. She wasn't planning on letting go of the teen till they made it safely back in the hotel room later that night. ——- The vans began to slow down immensely as they got closer to their destination. Joe was the first one to make a sound, as everyone was clearly in disbelief. "Oh my gosh..." he whispered, "oh my goodness.."

Nick pointed, "it goes all the way."

Joe exclaimed, "it's New Year's Eve. Oh my gosh!" he grinned, getting overly excited.

Kevin grabbed the walkie talkie from Phil, realizing just what Joe had just said, "It's like it's the Jonas Brothers' New Year everyone... it's the Jonas Brothers' New Year."

The vans safely pulled in front of the Virgin Music Store. Kevin of course was the first one to get out, standing on the car for a brief second to wave to the fans. Then Joe and Nick both followed what their older brother had done, doing the same.

Big Rob led the way as they made it into the store, each boy holding onto one another and Melissa was safely in the middle of Joe and Nick.

Everyone in their crew, each bought a album right as the clock struck midnight. Joe was the first one to officially buy A Little Bit Longer, as he walked away from the register, he took the album out of the small baggy, holding it up, "YAHHH!" he exclaimed. ——— 1:30am:

Nick and Melissa were both dead on their feet as they got back to their room, "can i just sleep in one of your shirts babe?" Melissa asked, already stripping herself of her clothes. At this time of night, and knowing what time they had to be up for the next day. She didn't care that she was practically naked in front of her boyfriend.

Nick smiled and nodded to the innocent girl, "sure, angel." he said softly, going over to his suitcase and grabbed one of his extra shirts he kept with him, just for her. "here baby." he said, coming up to her, helping her slip it over her head.

After her face was visible, he leaned down and kissed her lightly. "i love you. thank you for being here with me this summer." he sincerely whispered, his chocolate brown eyes searching her identical ones.

"Anything for you." she responded, after a few seconds, she yawned, kissing him once more. They quickly got situated in the bed, and snuggled into one another, and drifted off to sleep. ———— 💕

#nick jonas #nick jonas fanfiction #jonas brothers #jonas brothers fanfiction #nick jonas imagine

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bringmetolife-pwff · 4 years ago

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Part One : Chapter Twenty-Seven - More Drama

It was finally the weekend.

Meaning that Evelyn could relax. A new year had passed and it was now January 2008. There was something that Evelyn just loved. Being able to do whatever she wanted and be able to relax or enjoy time with her friends and family. She loved being able to be lazy too and sleep in on days she wasn't working.

She was enjoying a nice cuppa hot rose tea until her mobile vibrated.

The Sorting Hat group chat

Ginny (Beatrice): do you girls want to go to the club tonight? Let loose. . .

Hermione (Eugenie): Yes please!!! By the way who made me Hermione?

Fleur (Evelyn): I'm in. And I'm assuming Bea did?

Ginny: yes, yes and yes! Meet you all at Raffles tonight at 9?

Fleur: see you girls then mind if I add someone to the group?

Ginny: go for it. the more the better.

Fleur added Ivy to the group chat.

Fleur changed Ivy to Angelina.

Angelina (Ivy): what the bloody hell is this and why is your name Fleur and mine Anglina, Evelyn?

Fleur: Harry Potter, duh. And we are all meeting up tomorrow night at 9 at Raffles.

Angelina: whose we?

Ginny: oh yes, hi. *emoji waving* i'm beatrice (will's cousin)

Hermione: and i'm the other cousin Eugenie. so you in?

Angelina: Hell yes.

Evelyn had decided to go out to the club with Beatrice, Eugenie and Ivy all having a girls night out. It had been a while since she let loose with no consequences. She was looking forward to tonight. Eve changed into a short mini dress that was red and the sleeves were off the shoulders pairing it with her black heels and wearing bolder makeup. William was now back with the military and she was okay with that as long as he was safe.

They still wrote each other letters and she kept them all in a keep sake box as she would send him boxes of his favourite things along with bits and bobs that he didn't know he would love.

"Is she that daft? What the bloody hell is she doin' here?" Ivy said her with her Scottish accent stronger since she was slightly tipsy.

"What are you going on about?" Eugenie asked searching through the crowd of people before her eyes landed on the blonde who Ivy was glaring at.

Ivy hit it off with Eugenie and Beatrice instantly just as Evelyn thought she would. That was the main reason for inviting her along with the rest of them. Eugenie squinted her eyes as she looked at the platinum blonde woman that was only a few feet away from them and laughing with a group a girls.

"Shut up! Is that?"

"Mhm," she told the brunette with an attitude.

Evelyn was sipping on her cosmopolitan and dancing with Beatrice as they were laughing and having a good time. All of a sudden she feels someone's drink being spilled on her and ice going through her dress making her let out a gasp from the cold. Her once wavy blonde hair now a total mess due to drink and Bea's mouth is hung open in surprise and appalled at who could do that to Evelyn. Surely it had to be by accident?

"You bitch," Evelyn looked at who used to be her blonde best friend.

"Oops, sorry. It slipped?" Blair said but Evelyn knew the truth and so did Blair.

"Wait, Evelyn," Beatrice tried calming the blonde down before an even worse scene was caused.

"It slipped?" Evelyn yelled over the loud music. "It slipped my arse. You did it on purpose just like you slept with my ex-fiance on purpose."

"I don't understand what happened," Evelyn had to shout over the loud music. "You were my best friend and then you did something really shady by sleeping with my ex-fiance and you did it behind my back! What changed? Did you both not have more respect then to at least tell me then hide it from me until I found out for myself?"

"You started sleeping with Jake behind my back! I was only doing what you did to me and then I fell in love with Liam."

"Woah, woah, woah. I don't know what the bloody hell you keep going on about me sleeping with Jake. That never happened."

"Oh please, Evelyn. Quit lying. Just admit that you did what you did and all will be forgiven."

"There's nothing to forgive because nothing happened," Evelyn cried out annoyed that she had to keep on repeating it. "It's like talking to a brick wall," she told Beatrice and began to laugh at the audacity that Blair was saying.

Suddenly it clicked with Beatrice. This was the blonde that Evelyn had told them about. This was the blonde who had been best friends with her since primary school and betrayed her.

"I think it's best if you leave now," Beatrice told the blonde to which she scoffed.

"And who are you? The Queen? I don't have to take orders from you."

"I may not be the Queen but I am her grandchild and I know for a fact that she wouldn't want a bitch like you in the same place as my best friend. So we can either do it the easy way of you leaving willingly or I can have security come and force you out. Your pick."

"I was just leaving anyway but oh Evelyn one more thing," she smiled a sickly sweet smile at her and stuck her left hand out to face her. "Do you like my ring? Liam proposed a couple of weeks ago. Shame you couldn't be there."

On her ring finger for the left hand sat a beautiful yellow sixteen-carat emerald diamond engagement ring.

"Hey, Blair?" Evelyn called out to her ex-best friend and she turned around fast to look at her ex-best friend. "I'm happy for you because at least Liam has someone now who probably actually loves him. I don't know what happened between us but you were my best friend so I hope you're happy."

Blair left with a smirk even though you could see a hint of sadness in her eyes but as fast as it was there was as fast as it went.

"Come on you," Beatrice locked arms with Evelyn. "Let's get you cleaned up and looking a little more presentable."

"I think my dress is ruined."

"Well, we can fix the rest of you."

Evelyn nodded her head and allowed Beatrice to stir them in the direction of the washroom. Thankfully, there was no one in here and everyone else was out there dancing, mingling and drinking. Bea grabbed a kitchen roll and wet it with water from the sink before wiping off the alcohol from Evelyn's face. They used the hand dryer in the washroom to dry her slightly damp hair.

"I think this is as best as I'm going to look," Evelyn frowned. "I'm sorry, I had no idea that she was going to be here."

"You, my dear friend, have nothing to apologise for. I am sorry that you had someone like her as a friend. Why would you be nice to her still though even after she tossed her drink at you and showed off her new diamond ring to your ex-fiance? If I were you I would be a complete bitch to her so that makes you a way nicer person."

Evelyn laughed and shook her head.

"I'm just over it," Eve shrugged her shoulders. "I have a man who I love and made me realise that I probably never did love Liam. I just loved the idea of him and us but its nothing like what I have with William. It's been almost half a year so I just wish she would get over her pettiness."

"Did you just say you love my cousin?"

"Out of all of the things I said that's the one thing you got out of it? Unbelievable," she let out a laugh.

"What? Can you blame me? So have you guys said it to each other yet?"

"No," she frowned slightly.

"Why? You guys are perfect for each other! I've never seen my cousin look at another girl the way he looks and acts around you. Even before you guys were official you were official."

"I don't know. I feel like we aren't on a time line, you know? Besides, it's always nerve-racking saying it first. I just want to make sure I'm completely right about him because my last relationship wasn't exactly stellar."

"I respect and understand that. I thought things were Dave were going great until one day they weren't. I mean we dated for ten years but he didn't want to get married so I broke up with him. The next guy I date I want him to be my last because I don't know how much more heartbreak I can go through."

"Well, one thing I do know is that you deserve nothing but the best because you are the best. But don't tell Eugenie I said that because I love her too," she said causing the other blonde to laugh.

"Don't worry I won't. Besides we all already know I'm granny's favourite anyway," she laughed again causing Eve to as well. "In all honesty though I am so glad that my cousin found you. I couldn't imagine someone else for him other than you. I hope I find that kind of love some day."

"You will because you deserve it."

They hugged each other and walked out as Evelyn was in a better mood than she was when they came in the washroom. The music was blaring and the girls were in a much better mood than when Blair confronted her.

"Are you all righ'?" Ivy asked Eve to which she nodded her head.

"Yeah, now I am. My dress is still soaked but we tried the best we could. Right Bea?"

"Yeah," she smiled sheepishly at them. "Would guys want to get out of this rubbish place? I love it here but Blair being here kind of ruined it for me. What do you say about going back to my place and having a girls night and Evie could get freshened up there?"

"Please," Eugenie said drunkenly making the girls go into a fit of giggles. "Lets."

"You heard the woman," Ivy said with a thick Scottish accent. "Let's go."

The girls left and whilst they were leaving they hadn't thought of the bloody paparazzi being outside. Unfortunately the whole incident with Blair really set them off and it didn't help that Eugenie was drunk.

"You girls look beautiful tonight," the girls kept their heads down and a hand over their eyes as they were walking out, Eugenie was more so stumbling but Evelyn helped steady her - not wanting her to fall.

"You look like a disaster happened, Evelyn! We saw Blair Taylor walk out not too long ago. Did you run into her?"

"I don't know you both put up with the bloody paparazzi," Evelyn told the Royal sisters as she came out the washroom with freshly cleaned pyjamas thanks to Beatrice. "I've had to deal with them my whole life but not like that."

"We don't," Eugenie told them, feeling partially better after drinking loads of water and having a pain pill to help with the headache that might occur tomorrow morning. "We hate them just as much as the rest of you but we can't do anything about it. Granny says it's apart of our life so we might as well get used to it but it's hard."

"Well, unlike you lot, I'm not used to it," Ivy told the girls. "So are we goin' ta talk 'bout them all nigh' or watch Mean Girls?"

"Watch Mean Girls?" Evelyn asked making sure it was alright with the rest of them to which they nodded their heads.

so who saw that coming with Blair and Evelyn? I mean it had to happen at some point.

Why don't you think Blair believes Evelyn?

I go back to work on Tuesday so I wanted to get this up for you all :). I was watching the new Hallmark movie Taking a Shot at Love which was SO good and now watching One Winter Proposal. Anyone else watch Hallmark, especially the Christmas movies? I also watch the Hallmark Mystery channel too.

Hope you all are doing well and happy new year!

also please check out my other books and like and comment if you like them (it would mean a lot) :

- into the woods (paul lahote fanfic) twilight

- winter solstice (sam uley fanfic twilight

- austria (mark sloan fanfic) grey's anatomy

- honeydukes (bill weasley fanfic) harry potter

- ever since la (chris evans fanfic)

- papillon (nate archibald fanfic) gossip girl

- fated (cedric diggory fanfic) harry potter

- mvp (julian edelman fanfic) nfl

also if you are curious this is Blair's engagement ring (which is J Lo's) if you were wondering the inspiration behind it. vv

#bringmetolife-pwff prince William princewilliamfanfic britishroyalfamily prince harry kate middleton romance fanfiction

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