#it has been a LONG ASS time since i wrote this ship holy smokes

[presidentbungus]

you wanna do a sniperspy snippet for me...for little ol me......?

always 🥺

ao3

Sniper's not a huge fan of the weather at this new base--they're somewhere in the Northern US, and he wasn't exactly bred for temperatures below twenty-five, but he finds it's worth braving the perpetual moistness for the new base itself.

It's a drab, rickety old building, just like the lot of them, except this time it's built out of rotting wood that someone puts a new hole in just by walking four times a week. But--but, it's an abandoned factory, aged out of utility for that purpose, and old buildings like this are full of nooks and crannies.

Sniper is some kind of burrowing animal at heart and small spaces have always been a favourite of his, so this is an arrangement that works out well for him. It's something besides sitting in his van playing jazz and thinking about his guns, even if it is sitting in a small dusty room in silence thinking about his guns—and no one really cares for exploring so it's usually a safe bet he'll be left alone.

Usually.

The good thing is that the stairs leading up to this particular room, fulla dusty tables with a nice look out into leaves and just about nothing else, act as a built-in intruder alarm with how creaky the stairs are. The bad news is that right now someone is thundering up those bloody stairs and he's in the middle of making great progress knitting himself a scarf.

It's not exactly Scout who he expects to see turn the corner--mostly because he's usually a lot quieter, has this tendency of sneaking up on people, and Sniper coulda sworn he just heard him calling points, or, laps or... is pitches a baseball thing? Somewhere outside.

But the little bugger is fast enough to make that plausible and more importantly looks like he wants something. "Hey... Snipes."

No harm in starting this off with a nice, round, "I'm busy."

"... Sunshine 'n rainbows," Scout mutters. Then he sees the knitting needles in Sniper's hands--a hideous smirk stretches across his face. "You fast-trackin' your grandma career already? Heh."

Scout brought a smell with him into the room. Something dark, and smoky, that settles itself in Sniper's chest. It's so intensely familiar but he can't quite place it. "What do you want?"

“What, is this weird? Something wrong, big guy?” And Scout gets a lot closer, wringing his hands together in a way he distinctly doesn’t do—

Metal flashes in Scout’s hand—Sniper grabs his wrist with unexpected ease and takes out his own blade, and his kukri glides into Scout’s stomach like a nice hot knife through butter. He lets out a high, pinched wheeze, though the lopsided grin keeps spreading across his face--as the shitty cotton crumpled under his fingers ripples into pinstripes, and the hand on his bicep morphs into smooth black leather.

"Maybe it'd do ya some bloody good to stop wearing that cologne," Sniper mutters. He steps away as much as he can with half his weapon sticking outta Spy--the closeness makes him dizzier than he'd like to admit, the smell of smoke and whiskey.

Spy just wordlessly clutches Sniper like any of this still hurts at this point in their jobs, and a thin line of blood starts trailing out between his teeth.

He already knew it, but the confirmation of it annoys him. "You wanted to get caught," Sniper says, grimly—through what would be a carefully-crafted facade of ambivalence to anyone else, but he knows Spy can look straight through him, read him like a bloody book, so he keeps on pushing the knife through his stomach until he can see the tip come out on the other side, glistening crimson.

Spy coughs for a little while before he seems to be able to work up the breath to respond. "You are not a very good host, are you?"

"Figure there's a bit of a difference between a guest and a bloody intruder, mate."

There's blood all over Sniper's shirt. Oh well. "The fact that you are yet to kill me indicates you are unsure where that line lies…” His eyes flick up teasingly. “Mon ami."

And the right thing to do after that, the professional thing to do, is to pull his kukri out and then shove it into Spy's face until he can't tell the difference between brain and gristle, but he still just keeps standing there with their faces way too close for comfort, frozen to his spot.

Spy notices his hesitation, of course he does. And somehow his smile keeps twitching wider, even as the rest of his face knits itself together with the effort of standing. "You seem to have made your decision."

"Do you have anything to do besides..." He doesn't want to find the word. "This?"

"Dinner," Spy says quickly. "Ah, picnics... weekends away..." He glances up at Sniper long enough to imply, and teasingly: "But no, nothing I can do alone."

"What about sitting here and bleeding out while I go find someone better to talk to?"

"But who is better to talk to," Spy gurgles, "than the man you spend all day on the battlefield ogling through your scope?"

He can't stop the blush from crawling across his face. "Not—ogling is a—I'm just doin' my job."

"And I am very much not doing mine. All I ask is one night." Then that hand shifts over to his chest, trails up to his neck.

"You have a motive you’re not giving here." They both know this isn't true. Sniper already knows he's going to leave this room having promised something he's not entirely sure about, but there's no point in dropping the charade just yet.

"Do you want me to beg, monsieur?" He must not respond quick enough, because he follows right away: "You have no perception of how dire the romantic prospects stand on my team, and you are, regrettably… so very handsome.” Smart fingers pass all the way up his cheek, dip just under the collar of his shirt, like there isn’t a knife in his stomach. “And I know there is something about me that attracts you, and you seem to be completely unwilling to cross the distance on your own, and I will refuse to continue standing for it." Spy pauses for a second to spit the blood out of his mouth and then turns back to Sniper and grins. "Kiss me."

That's the first thing he's said all day that actually makes sense. The next few seconds is a blur; thankfully there's enough blood in both of their mouths that covers up the fact that Sniper has no idea what he's doing and Spy very much does.

At some point Spy's legs buckle and he hits the floor with a loud thump--Sniper doesn't go with him, really takes him a couple of seconds of standing and blinking to figure out what just happened to him, and finally, finally, the image of Spy laying on the ground and choking on his own blood reminds Sniper that he is currently being paid to do a job.

The sound of him pulling his rifle off his back doesn't seem to perturb Spy at all; in fact, his smile still defies physics and finds room to grow, even as he writhes in the ground out of... what can't really be called pain anymore, but instinct.

With a gun-barrel resting on his forehead all Spy does is raise his hand and say: "I will see you on Friday. Shower."

All Sniper can find to say to that is "I shower," but that's muttered in the middle of the gunshot and at that point it's a losing fight. He knows Spy's just getting on his nerves. That's all the bugger does.

Arsehole didn't even bother to confirm that Sniper had any interest in seeing him, but... Sniper knows, with a heavy dose of shame, he probably implied the answer well enough on his own. Piss.

[thisisnotacomp]

R.I.P. MF DOOM

At around 1 PM Pacific on New Years eve I scrolled through twitter after putting my little dude down for a nap. I was looking to take a mental break after trying to keep my 20 month old occupied inside for 5 hours on a rainy ass winter day in Seattle. That is when I read the news of Daniel Dumile’s aka MF DOOM’s passing. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Of all the artists who I have closely followed MF DOOM has to be the most iconic. He was a singular talent that stood high above all but a few others in my book. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. This was not the mental break I was looking for. I took a few mins to digest the news, luckily I had at least 90 mins left of nap time to work through it. 

Since reading the news I was a bit surprised to see the outpouring for this relatively obscure MC. That is not to say DOOM was an unknown figure, quite the opposite. Q-Tip summed it up best saying that MF Doom was your favorite MC's favorite MCs. I expected to hear quite a bit from the legends of the underground and NYC hip-hop community but was a bit taken aback from the articles published by NPR, The Financial Times and many others. Reading them has helped, it feels good to see DOOM get his do. 

DOOM has been a constant presence in my life so long I honestly don't remember when I heard him first. All I know is that it was sometime in 2001. Over the past days I have been listening to a lot of his music and if I had to guess it was the track “Black List” off of Prefuse 73′s 2001 Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives LP. At the time hip-hop made up about 10-20% of the music I listened to. I was more into electronic and rock music at the time and 2001 had some great releases. Here is a short list:

Avalanches - Since I Left You Radiohead - Amnesiac White Stripes - White Blood Cells Herbert - Bodily Functions Jay-Z - The Blueprint Daft Punk - Discovery

But the top 3ish for me that year were: 1. Strokes - Is This It 2. Prefuse 73 - Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives 3. Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein / Aesop Rock - Labor Days

To say there were a few good LP’s released in 2001 would be an understatement. But back to DOOM. I loved that Prefuse album, what he was doing blew my mind. I was also a huge fan of Aesop Rock who like DOOM is one of the best MC’s ever. Hearing DOOM rap on the cut up beat had to be my intro. Now remember this was before you could stream anything, and at a time record stores were over charging for everything. Also remember Napster and the other P2P services were in full effect so if you knew how, you could find just about anything on the interwebs. I did some digging, talked to a few friends and tracked down DOOM’s first LP “Operation Doomsday” and my world was never the same. I still remember hearing lines like: Clang! Crime don't pay, listen, youth It's like me holding up the line at the kissing booth I took her back to the truck, she was uncouth Spittin' all out the sunroof, through her missing tooth I was hooked. From then on out I have been following Dumile ever since. At the time I was in College and had more time than money. Listening to music filled a lot of that time. The money I did have started going to records in early 2002. Back then vinyl was cheap, as everyone was still buying CD’s. I figured if I could just burn a CD where was the value. I can still support artists by buying vinyl so that is what I did. To give credit where credit is due, my buddy Alex was a huge influence. One weekend he brought me to a record on 13th and Pine called Respect Records. They had a ton of underground Hip-Hop and I we hit that place up every time we were back in Seattle. I bought most of my Def Jux and Stones Throw albums from there. Its closed now and I really miss that spot. The owner knew us and what we were looking for. He held a white label copy of Madlib’s Stevie LP aside for me. At the time I thought I had found the holy grail. He also pushed me to Doom. I picked up a few singles there along with Take Me to Your Leader, Madvillian and Special Herbs 1 & 2.

The 2 MF DOOM releases that had the biggest impact on me were Operation Doomsday and Madvillian. The later is still my favorite hip-hop LP of all time and in contention for my favorite LP ever released. Its damn near perfect. I think what makes is so great is its timeless feel. If it dropped today I feel it would be just a relevant. It hasn’t aged a bit, or I should say nothing feels dated which is a rare accomplishment for a 16 year old release. 

03/04 was peak DOOM. Between June of 03 and November of 04 he released what can only be described as an historic run of classic LP’s:

“Take Me to Your Leader” under the King Geedorah alias “Vaudeville Villain” under the Viktor Vaughn alias “Madvillainy“ a joint release with Madlib “MM... Food” as MF DOOM

Along with these LP’s he dropped another one as Viktor Vaughn and half of his Special Herbs instrumental albums. At the end of 2004 there was no doubt MF DOOM was one of the greatest MC’s of all time. In 2005 he released the Mouse and the Mask as a joint LP with Danger Mouse. The album was clearly a way to get DOOM some cash flow from the folks at Adult Swim but its a solid release in its own right. Up until 2005 everything Doom touched was gold. 

After this point, his output slowed down. There was talk of a second Madvilian LP which we are still waiting for along with a host of other side projects. DOOM did a few guest verses here and there but overall things were quite. DOOM’s final full length “Born Like This” was released in 2009. It was a return to form and while it might not be a certified classic like his early works its damn close. 

I put this together to get some thoughts out of my head. Honestly the news of  Daniel Dumile’s passing was a gut punch. He was more than an MC he was an icon for so many. No one wrote rhymes like DOOM. No one in hip-hop has created a universe like DOOM. There will never be another MF DOOM. Here are a few lyrics to prove it. 

“He came with more rhymes than molecules in air”

“What up? To all rappers: shut up with your shutting up And keep a shirt on, at least a button-up Yuck, is they rhymers or stripping males? Out of work jerks since they shut down Chippendales They chipping nails, DOOM tipping scales Let alone the pre-orders that's counted off shipping sales This one goes out to all my peoples skipping bail Dipping jail, whipping tail and sipping ale”

“Already woke, spared a joke, barely spoke, rarely smoke Stared at folks when properly provoked, mirror broke Here, share strawberry morning, gone an more important spawning Torn in, poor men sworn in Cornish hens switching positions, auditioning morticians Saw it in a vision, ignoring prison Ignoramuses enlist and sound dumb Found 'em drowned in cow's dung, crowns flung”

“Don't let the drama getcha In the only genre of music where the fans shoot the messenger Bitch niggas talk behind your back like a catcher Either M-Y-O-B or B-Y-O stretcher”

“Oooo my aching hands, from raking in grands and breaking in mic stands”

“Catch a throatful from the fire vocal Ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull”

“Livin' off borrowed time, the clock tick faster”

“Ever since the womb ’til I’m back where my brother went That’s what my tomb will say Right above my government; Dumile Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who’s to say?”

R.I.P. MF DOOM.