#not the greatest at mashups but this simply would not leave my head

[transgenderfivepebbles]

I'm haunted by visions

[florafaunaandeldritchhorrors]

so @sicklyscribe tagged me in a challenge to share the last 7 sentences of my WIP, and i went “oh no! i have added sentences here and there to you can never go home again but i can’t remember when or where i last wrote seven sentences in a row”

and then i realized that i actually have TWO wips, one of them is just my emotional support wip that i’m actively planning not to finish, but i just finished draft 2 of the prologue. it’s a fairytale mashup where goldilocks, the miller’s daughter from rumplestiltskin, cinderella (well, this version is named ye xian but pulls just as much from perrault), and sleeping beauty all have their stories going on in the same kingdom.

beneath the cut is the prologue in it’s entirety, because i like it and it will probably never see the light of day as a complete story. the names of every named character are temporary, and i’m still working on using epithets in a way that references ancient epics while sounding natural-ish in english.

Once upon a time, a princess married a young king, and before the year was oft she gave birth to a son.

The royal family invited every noble family in the realm to his naming, and many of them came, though not nearly as many who had attended their wedding. They raffled tickets to the common folk, and those that won got to borrow fine clothing for the evening. And they invited every fairy known to live within a hundred miles, although they expected none to come.

Why seven fairies accepted the invitation, when none had attended a royal naming in a hundred years, is not known to any mortal. Perhaps it was simply that exactly one hundred years had passed, and the fair folk are drawn to such patterns. Perhaps each fairy came to prove some sort of point to the other six. Or perhaps it was the silver glint in the young queen's eyes, which marked her as fae-touched herself, that drew them in.

Whatever it was, five fairies were immune to its pull: Carabosse on her thorny throne, sunset-gold Ilia, moonlight-silver Aylin, sweet-voiced Canachante, and Sycorax of the sapphire-blue sea all politely declined the king's invitation, citing other commitments.

And so, on the night of the naming, the king set out seven plates of solid gold for the guests of honor, and the young prince received seven gifts.

Adamante gave him a diamond crown, almost as cold and beautiful as the fairy herself.

Veiled Candor of the crystal fountain gave him the ability to tell when others were lying, so that he might be the greatest king the realm would ever have.

Farine of the wheat-flowers kissed the babe's forehead and gifted him beauty. When she pulled away his hair was fuller, and his eyes had the faintest hint of silver. Freshwater-spring Coulante followed Farine, as she always did, and gave the prince grace to match his new beauty.

Violente, in her golden armor, promised that the prince would win every battle he fought. As she did, she looked scornfully at Farine and Coulante, making it clear what she thought of their gifts.

Generous Miette--who unlike the others, took a form no larger than a hummingbird--flew up to the crib on gossamer wings, and gave him a golden coin, though she did not say what it was for.

And then it was the Last Fairy's turn. She had no other name, no other epithets. Her face was impassive and her clothes were plain, though made of satin and velvet. When you listed the fairies, you listed her last, and so she was known as the Last Fairy.

She addressed her gift to the parents, not the child: when the prince first saw the woman who was meant to be his queen, he would know at once who she was.

Not long after that, the festivities ended, and each fairy took home the golden plate she'd eaten off of.

Four years later, the queen had another son, and even less of the invitees showed up, and even fewer commoners signed up for the raffle. The king, of course, invited every fairy once again. Diamond-carved Adamante refused this time, but Canachante and her lovely voice accepted, as well as all the others who had come before.

This time, the fairies ate off plates of platinum, and had been thinking about gifts for four years.

Veiled Candor went first, and gave back the plate she had taken the last time, enchanted to always provide whatever food was asked of it.

Freshwater Coulante, four years wiser, gave him wit and intelligence. Powdered Farine again gave beauty, and the babe's eyes glinted silver to match his mother and brother.

Canachante, in her soft, melodic voice, gifted the young prince with a music box that sang a different tune every time.

Miette, blesser of crops, repeated her gift of a mysterious coin, and bloody-minded Violente again promised that he would win any battle.

The Last Fairy promised that the first time he saw a person he could love absolutely, and would love him in return, he would know at a glance.

They took home their platinum plates and judged each other's gifts harshly.

The queen loved her sons very much, but decided to risk another pregnancy for a chance at a daughter. Two years later, one was born. The birth of a daughter was less momentus than a son to everyone but her, and so the king only invited those who had shown up for his second son's naming. The courtier in charge of sending the invites was not insightful enough to realize the fair folk should not be included in that order.

Sea-dwelling Sycorax did not notice that she was not invited, nor silver Aylin, nor golden Ilia. Glittering Adamante felt slighted—was the gift she had given his first son not good enough?—but other matters distracted her.

Carabosse noticed, from her thorny palace. She was not happy.

All of the fairies who were invited arrived, and ate from polished silver.

Candor of the crystal fountain gave back the platinum plate, reshaped into a beautiful mirror that showed the true face of all reflected in it.

Joyful Farine repeated her gift of beauty, and tender Coulante gave the princess wit to match. Violente of the golden vine again decreed the princes would win any battle she fought.

Gossamer-winged Miette broke her pattern, and gave the princess gracefullness.

Melodic Canachante blessed the girl with the most beautiful voice a mortal could have.

And then slighted Carabosse arrived, in a gust of wind and flame. All eyes turned to her, the fairies more surprised than all the mortals combined. "My invitation did not arrive, Your Majesty. Am I not welcome?"

The king paled, trying to guess which univited fairy this was. "Of course you are. Let my servants fetch you a plate, my lady."

"I have not come to eat." Carabosse looked at the cradle. Now that she had been offered hospitality, it was unthinkable that she curse the babe. But that was not her only option. "I have a gift for the princess. On her sixteenth birthday, she shall die, pricked a tip of a spindle, and be freed from this cruel world forever."

"No!" cried the queen, forgetting herself.

Carabosse sneered. "If you were a wiser woman, you would see the value in my gift."

"I am not wise. I am just a mother!"

Canachante whispered in her lovely voice: "Once a gift is given, it is unthinkable to revoke it."

The queen sobbed.

"I am done here," said Carabosse, disappearing as suddenly as she had arrived, leaving the smell of burning wood behind.

The Last Fairy tilted her head thoughtfully. "Cry not, Your Majesty. I still have a gift to give."

The queen did not stop crying.

"The princess will indeed be freed from this cruel world by a spindle on her birthday—but not forever. She shall sleep unbothered for a hundred years, then be awakened by a kind prince. This I promise."

"Thank you," said the king, though what he wanted to do was scream at her for not doing more.

The fairies took their leave then, leaving their silver plates behind.

And that was that, until the king decided to burn every spindle in the land.

[alls-fair-in-pride-and-prejudice]

The Star King’s Labyrinth Part 1

part 2, part 3

As promised, here is part one of my Dragon Prince/Labyrinth mashup fic. Aaravos is in the role of the lovely Goblin Elf king, and my OC Lyra is the lucky poor unfortunate human to be whisked away. The plot of this fic will largely mirror that of the original Labyrinth, but I went ahead and changed a bunch of things. For one, I spent longer on exposition than the movie did. (In which we will see professors Viren and Opeli - which made me wonder if people in The Dragon Prince have last names?)

Rated T on AO3 because cursing. 

Tagging: @psijics​ and @king-bito​ (since you were the first I mentioned this idea to I figured you’d want to see I did the thing)

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged for future parts!

~~~

Lyra was already stressed after her physics class earlier that day. She knew Professor Viren strict, but she had no idea it was this bad.

“I have made myself clear in the past, no late work is accepted in my class,” the physics professor said, not even looking up from the work on his desk.

��I’m not asking for credit; I��ll accept the zero. I just want to be able to do the online assignment to make sure I learn the material,” Lyra explained. She needed to master her understanding of gyroscopes to move on to future material, but the online problems were closed the moment the due date hit, and she could not even check her answers. “Please, I was sick. There was only so much schoolwork I could do before the cold medicine knocked me out.”

Professor Viren shot her a withering look from overtop his glasses. “Then perhaps you should have worked on this material earlier so getting sick wouldn’t have been a problem. If you want to succeed, you have to prepare in advance in case of these things.”

Lyra gritted her teeth, wanting to say something like “Since it’s clearly been a while since your student days, maybe you’ve forgotten how hard it is to keep your head above water in the day to day work.” Or maybe even something like, “I know they had only just accepted the heliocentric model when you were in school, but we modern day students have a lot more to cover, so some fucking basic empathy would be appreciated you pretentious asshole.” She held her tongue, only muttering to herself once out of his office, “it’s just not fair.”

At least she had multivariable calc afterwards. It was always entertaining if they went over something with applications in physics, because then they would witness one of Professor Opeli’s legendary anti-physicist rants. “You do not need to understand the underlying concepts. In fact, you’re probably better off not trying to. You just have to do the math and you’ll sail right through the classes. Don’t even bother with physics professors, they’re virtually useless.” she said once. A student said that Professor Viren would probably be offended to hear that.

Professor Opeli simply gestured to her stony expression. “Does this look like the face of a woman who cares what he thinks?”

Any good feelings Lyra had towards Professor Opeli were immediately dissipated once she decided to assign extra work for the fall break. It’s so unfair! Do these people not understand the concept of a break? Lyra wondered. 

The answer, of course, is “yes,” but college professors do not see days off from school as breaks, but more as lost time that must be made up.

Lyra, a fool that did not yet know that expectation is the root of all heartache, had set her hopes on a relaxing trip home for the four-day weekend. She wanted to go to the pumpkin patch and catch up on some reading while drinking hot apple cider. At the rate she was getting homework assigned, it appeared that she would be lucky to get the cider as a comforting treat while she worked.

At least her parents would help her with laundry and meals… she hoped.

But, as we have already established, Lyra was one to set her hopes too high. Her mother had forgotten that her daughter was coming home that weekend and had booked a gig that would require her and Lyra’s father to travel out of town for the weekend. “At least the dog doesn’t have to go in the kennel now,” Lyra’s mother said over the phone.

“Yeah, so on top of all the stress I’m under, I can also spend the weekend picking up dog shit,” is what Lyra wanted to say. Out loud, she said, “yeah it’ll be nice to cuddle with him this weekend.” Which, she supposed, was true. At least she had a furry companion to help ease her stress levels.

After a two-hour drive Thursday night, Lyra decided she could afford the rest of the evening to relax in the empty house. After taking Orpheus the labradoodle out to do his business, she made herself a cup of hot chocolate and curled up with a fantasy romance novel. It was extremely cliché and an easy read – by no means a great literary work – just how Lyra liked it.

It had just enough spooky elements in it to feel suited to the season too, a gothic vampire romance. The heroine rescued by a creature of the night and taken back to his castle (never mind that there were not castles just laying around in colonial United States, where the tale takes place).

Still, Lyra could not completely keep her mind on the story for her stress. She was already considering what online resources she would have to practice with since Professor Viren had such a stick up his ass that he couldn’t even leave the practice problems open to the students. Khan Academy maybe? It was invaluable in her high school days. Did they have college level coursework on there? How would her grades survive if she couldn’t learn this?

Lyra sighed, trying to turn her attention back to the fantasy world in hand. This was supposed to be her one chance to relax and she was not about to waste it. She reached for her mug only to discover the greatest of all tragedies: her hot cocoa had gone cold, and the marshmallows melted into a sticky inconvenience around the rim. Setting the mug back on the coaster, Lyra groaned. Orpheus, awoken from his nap on the floor by the noise, trotted over to Lyra, apparently deciding he needed belly rubs.

Lyra obliged him, making room for him to curl up next to her on the couch. Of course, despite his size, Orpheus was under the impression he was a lap dog, and there had to be careful maneuvering for Lyra to get some semblance of comfort once he decided she was his new bed.

Cuddling her dog had always been comforting in the past, but it was not long before Lyra wondered about her future, and she could fell the loneliness creeping in sitting in the otherwise uninhabited house. She couldn’t blame school stress for her inability to enjoy that moment, now could she? Why could she not enjoy what moments of rest she had? How was that fair?

Lyra could not deny that her grades were falling apart, and she wasn’t even sure that astrophysics was what she should pursue, but if she was not an academic, what was she? What else did she have going for her in this world after devoting her life since elementary school to good grades and academic success? Despite being a junior, she lacked any social connections that lasted more than a few months. Friendships were hard. She could never really figure out where she stood with people, always being as accommodating and friendly as possible to be safe. After the fact she always worried she came across as clingy, which would set the whole cycle of isolation over again.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just run away from all of it?” Lyra mused aloud as she rubbed Orpheus’s ears. He did not respond, since he was a dog, and this isn’t the kind of story where animals start talking out of nowhere. “I guess that’s what I was hoping to accomplish by coming home this weekend, but my problems followed me here.” She inspected the art on the cover of the cheap paperback. “I want a castle. No, not a castle, I just want to run away somewhere that my problems don’t follow me. Where hot cocoa doesn’t get cold and gross and I don’t have to deal with stuck up professors and unreasonable deadlines.”

Lyra leaned back on the sofa, throwing her head back to look to the ceiling. She was not often one to talk to herself aloud, but perhaps it was the need to fill the empty space that made her voice her lamentations. Maybe some part of her, an instinctual part left over from the days when humans had to evade large predators, knew she was not really alone, that someone was listening in.

“I just wish I could leave this world altogether,” Lyra shouted to the (seemingly) empty room.

All the lights in the house flickered for a moment, then went dark, the only light coming from the streetlamps and moon outside. “It is my pleasure to grant your wish, Lyra,” replied a voice from the shadows.

Lyra leapt off the couch in alarm, spinning around to see where the intruder was. From what she could see, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Orpheus confirmed for her that something was wrong, raising his hackles and growling softly. Lyra grabbed a nearby decorative candlestick as an improvised weapon for self-defense. “Who’s there?”

There was no answer in any sort of verbal language, but Lyra felt an instinctual pull towards the entryway of the house. She crept along cautiously, Orpheus keeping close by her. She gave him a soft pat on his head as thanks for his loyalty.

In the entryway, across from the coat closet, was a small end table where keys and other assorted odds-and-ends were kept, with a mirror above it to check one’s appearance before leaving. As Lyra approached, she saw a figure in the mirror alongside her own reflection that became clearer bit by bit, as if emerging from fog.

She knew she had to be going insane at that point. The first thing she noticed about the figure in the mirror was that he was purple with silver freckles across his skin. Then his horns, curving against a head of silver-white hair, became clear through the mist, and Lyra wondered if she was dealing with some sort of demon. The sclera of his eyes was black, and his irises were golden and almost glowed in the dim light. Those eyes carried, like the rest of the figure, a frightening sort of beauty, like lightning that strikes a little too close for comfort.

In the mirror, the strange figure stood next to Lyra wrapped in a black cloak with gold trim. Whatever he was… he certainly was not human. Against perhaps her better judgment, Lyra reached out to touch the glass of the mirror in disbelief of what she was seeing. The figure glanced down to where Lyra’s hand met her reflection and smirked.

The person in the mirror reached forward, and Lyra saw a sparkling violet hand reach out to touch hers on her side of the mirror. She screamed and whirled around, swinging the candlestick. The stranger caught her by her wrist, seeming only mildly annoyed at most.

“Is that any way to greet the one that just granted your heart’s desire?” the stranger asks, with a deep baritone voice like honey.

“Granted… what?” Lyra sputtered, taking a moment to find her voice, and managing to wrench back her wrist from his grip in the process. Lyra realized that at some point in her shock, Orpheus had disappeared. So much for a loyal companion. She took a cautious step back from the very strange man in her house, finally settling on one question to start: “Who the fuck are you?”

The man took Lyra’s hand, bowing and placing a gentle kiss to her knuckles. She tried to ignore the fluttering of her heart at the gallant gesture. “I am Aaravos, king of this realm. You wished to leave your world, so I brought you here.” He stood, snapping his fingers, and the walls dissipated like mist, leaving the two of them standing in a twilit forest.

Lyra looked around, taking in the ethereal surroundings: the lights like tiny multicolored stars hanging in the branches, and the floating bits of stardust around them. They stood on a hillside, and in the distance, atop another hill, a gleaming castle with impossibly tall and spiraling spires reached into the night sky. Surrounding it in the valley below was a labyrinth so large and twisted it could rival Greek myth.

“And… where is here?”

Aaravos leaned against a nearby tree that bended and curved upon his approach to something more comfortable to rest against. “This was once a realm that served as a prison, but those that sent me here underestimated my power and my ability to mold this world into something more suitable. These days, I find I prefer my new home to the one that banished me. You would be advised to stay close to me, and I can help you avoid the areas that still serve as places of torment.”

“Torment??” Lyra laughed, a tense and nervous sound that grated even on her own ears. “This is just a weird dream. I fell asleep on the couch and I will wake up any minute now… right? Right? I just… I want to go home.”

Aaravos’s face scrunched up in confusion, and a darkness took hold of his gaze as he stalked toward her. “Not five minutes ago, you wished to leave your home. I have graciously granted your wish, and now you would rudely refuse my gift to you?”

Lyra gulped, debating whether she should appease this being with an apology, or whether she should try to reason with him and defend her right to go home. When looking up into the face of this man that radiated dangerous power, Lyra’s sense of self-preservation demanded she choose the former. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice quiet and shaky, “I did not mean to offend.”

Aaravos smiled, reaching up to brush his fingers along Lyra’s cheek. The sweet caress made her shiver, though she was not sure if it was from fear or… something else. “Nothing in this world or any other, dear Lyra, is truly free. I will admit I had an ulterior motive for bringing you here.”

Lyra sucked in a deep breath, staring up at Aaravos with as much courage as she could muster. “And what was that, exactly?”

Aaravos grinned. “I am terribly bored, and you little humans are so interesting.” He took a lock of Lyra’s dark hair that had fallen from her bun and twirled it around a finger. “I could get a lifetime’s worth of entertainment just watching how you react to magic that is so commonplace for me. Do you really wish to go back to your dull human world with your deadlines and lonely nights? Reading books about magical adventures instead of having your own?”

Lyra hesitated, tempted by the offer... but it all sounded too good to be true. There had to be another catch, and she knew she could not trust this Aaravos to be transparent. Besides, as frustrating as it was at times, she loved her studies. She loved her family and her dog and she could not give that up forever. “Please, let me go back. I didn’t mean it when I said I wanted to leave. I was just frustrated. Let me go, please.”

Aaravos sighed melodramatically. “Oh, if you insist… I suppose I shall have to amuse myself some other way.”

Lyra almost laughed in relief. She began to say her thanks, but Aaravos cut her off with a look that carried a sadistic glee to it. “Let’s play a game, then,” he said, his tone sharp and without any of the softness it carried moment before. With a wave of his hand, a clock floated above his palm. “I will give you thirteen hours. If, in that time, you can make it through that labyrinth to my castle, I will send you home. If not, you will stay here forever.” With a snap of his fingers, the second hand on the clock began ticking.

“Wait!” Lyra cried, “I never agreed to that! What kind of deal is that?”

Aaravos cocked a snowy white eyebrow. “You seem to be under the impression, little star, that I was asking your permission. No. I have simply informed you of your current predicament. If you wish to return home so badly, I suggest you get moving. After all,” he gestured to the floating clock with a nod of his head, “the clock is ticking.”

In a flash of blinding white, Aaravos disappeared, and Lyra was no longer on the hilltop, but staring at an elegantly carved stone archway possibly thirty feet tall. She stomped her foot and shook her fist at the sky. “YOU BASTARD,” she screamed, “That’s not fair!”

Left with no other option, Lyra stepped through the archway into the labyrinth.

A/N: Opeli’s disdain towards physics professors is based off an actual calc professor I had. The physics and calc professors I had that semester talked shit about each other and their departments. It was great.

Lyra is a college student because an immortal elf hitting on a 21-year-old is less creepy than one hitting on a 16-year-old. In her original universe, Lyra’s parents were bards, so I decided to leave them as vague performers/musicians in the modern world. 

[songasold]

What about an imagine where the reader is an actress in peaky blinders and is dating Tom Holland but while he is in America filing rumours start that she i hooking up with Finn/joe cole or someone and it puts a strain on their relationship. I don’t really know how it would end I just liked the idea. Anyway thanks xx

Omgg I love this it’s a Tom Holland and peaky blinders mashup and I’m about to start crying out of pure happiness - alright let’s do it

_____________________________

Sometimes you still couldn’t believe that you had landed a role in peaky blinders. So many from the people that you admired in the acting business worked on that tv show. Cillian Murphy was always one of your greatest role models when it came to acting. First time you met him you couldn’t even speak to him.

So being on the peaky blinders set was a dream come true for a new and young actress like yourself. Only problem was that you would have to stop flying around with your boyfriend Tom Holland for a while. Of course tom supported you wholeheartedly and was very happy for you landing a part on the BBC show but both of you loved traveling together so it was bittersweet for both.

Everyone on the set welcomed you with open arms and tried to make the experience for you as easy as possible. You developed a very nice relationship with Helen McCrory and she’d always mentor you. You also got along with Sophie very quickly because as people say girls have to stick together.

A relationship that you didn’t expect to grow was the one with Finn Cole. Well you always had a crush on young Michael Grey but you didn’t think the actor would be just as sweet. You developed a very strong friendship with him which involved going out and playing around. You’d be spotted by the paparazzi eating dinner many times and rumors started to grow more and more, day by day.

Tom would text you about it and at first you’d just laugh it off and he wouldn’t be to serious about it either because he trusted you. His beautiful little girl. He loved you. At least that’s what you believed.

It was the day that Tom would come and you’d go out for dinner, to say that you were excited was an understatement. You had missed him so much, it felt like there was a hole in your heart but plans didn’t quite work out. You were supposed to meet him on the restaurant after work but you got held in. They needed you for an extra scene. You texted Tom that you’d be late but late wasn’t even the right word.

After literally two hours of waiting he decided to go to set himself and see you. He’d have to leave again tomorrow so he didn’t want to miss the chance.

You were just getting ready to leave. Finn was on the dressing room with you and you two were laughing about how you messed up your lines earlier that day. He was watching you as you’d take off your Peaky Blinders make up and sometimes you’d feel him stare but ignored it. You asked him to leave for a little while so you could change into your normal clothes and he nodded opening the door to leave. After he closed it you started taking your clothes off. What you had no idea about is that on his way out Finn bumped into Tom. Your boyfriend was surprised to see him walk out your dressing room and after pushing ahead of him he opened the door and walked in to see you only in your bra and shorts.

“What the– Tom?!„ you grabbed one of the shirts near you out of instinct and put it in front of your chest. When you realized it was your boyfriend, you calmed down a bit but your heart was still beating quickly. “Don’t you know how to knock?! What the hell is wrong with you Thomas?!„

“Just friends? Ha? Since when do friends get naked for each other?„ while he was speaking you put on your white shirt. He’d look at you like you had committed a crime.

“What on earth are you talking about?„ your voice reached the same level as his which was pretty loud considering that you’d never shout at each other.

“What was he doing in here? I just saw him walk out!„

“Who?! Finn?! Ugh Tom he was here for like five minutes and then I told him to leave because I had to change! Nothing happened! Can you calm down? You’re shouting for literally no reason at all!„

“You know I’m sick of you having an excuse for everything!„

“Excuse me?!„

“I’ve been waiting for two hours (y/n)!!! Two hours!!„

“I know! I told you I’m sorry! What was I supposed to do get off work for my boyfriend?!„

“Didn’t seem like you were working to me!” He responded back coldly. Your eyes widened at his answer. He’d always trust you and now he was acting like he was certain you had cheated on him. You scoffed, the belief he had in you was obviously gone. It hurt you to know that this is what he thought of you-that you were short of a slut, hooking up with your co-stars.

“Fuck off Thomas!„ you spat, angry at how he treated you. Your two years relationship clearly meant nothing to him. He softened a little after you cursed him, like he realized that he had taken it to far but he still didn’t let his guard down. “You don’t get to be mad at me (y/n)! You did this! You’ve been telling me to ignore the rumors but you haven’t done anything at all about it!„

“I thought you trusted me Tom!„ You said, your voice loud and cold.

“Yeah I used to!„ he shouted back. Silence filled the room after that. ‘Used to’. He said it so simply, it left you speechless. Neither of you knew what to say and it somehow felt like you weren’t going to get over this.

Tom ran his hand down his face, trying to calm himself. He had never let it shown but all he rumors that had grown about her and her co-star were driving him insane. Being away from her all this times was the worst and sometimes he found himself thinking that maybe it would be better if she had never gotten the part on Peaky Blinders.

You were to happy in the last few months to realize how much it actually bothered him. Only now you could see it in his eyes, his teary eyes and it broke you. You wanted to storm out the room and leave him but something kept you there, standing across him and he stood there, looking at the floor.

You approached him slowly and placed your hand on his shoulder. He didn’t raise his head to look at you and you couldn’t really see his eyes or face but you could feel that he had softened up a bit.

“Tom I love you! I love you more than anything! Finn is only a friend a good friend and if you wanna trust the media instead of me than go ahead but I am telling you the truth.„ your voice got lower with every world you said and cracked a little. “I’m sorry for causing this mess but I have never ever lied to you. Ever.„

You were about leave, so you could give him a little time for himself but Tom grabbed your hand before you were out the door and pulled right in his arms. Tightening his grip on you as tight as he could. You drowned in his chest, in his warmth that you had dearly missed. You pulled your arms around him as well and closed your eyes while listening to his heartbeat.

“I love you too„ you felt him whisper in your hair before he laid his forehead on your shoulder and hid it in the crook of your neck. “I love you so much..I’m sorry..I just missed you and..„

“It’s alright..I missed you too spidey..„ you mumbled

“I didn’t mean-„

“I know..„ you whispered.

___________

Ugh crappy ending Ik but I couldn’t think of anything else sorryyy😭

[rapuvdayear]

1994: “Intro” The Notorious B.I.G. (Bad Boy/Arista)

Strap in, this is going to be a long post (even by my standards). Like, more than 5000 words long.

In the annals of rap history, there are certain periods that are just plain loaded. For example, between 1986 and 1988, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Boogie Down Productions, the Beastie Boys, Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Too $hort, and NWA all released absolute classics that not only redefined the genre, but have become touchstones for the rappers who followed them. 1992-1996 boasts a similar embarrassment of riches: The Chronic, Doggystyle, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), The Infamous, Soul Food, All Eyez On Me, The Score, Ridin’ Dirty, and ATLiens, among many, many more. Smack dab in the middle of that run, 1994 was arguably the apex of rap’s golden era. In any other year, The Diary would’ve taken the crown as the best/most important album. But Scarface’s opus gets unfairly ignored because 1994 also saw two releases that appear on any serious (read: not trolling) all-time top ten list, and are perennially in greatest-ever discussions. I already covered Nas’s Illmatic back in April. And today, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Christopher Wallace’s debut, Ready To Die.

Properly assessing Biggie’s impact and legacy is a near impossible task. No other rapper has burned as brightly for so brief a period. After doing a nine-month bid in North Carolina for crack dealing as a 19-year-old, he was featured in The Source’s Unsigned Hype column—back when it was the still rap’s undisputed publication of record—off the strength of a now-infamous demo tape, a recognition that also helped launch the careers of Eminem, DMX, Common, and others. Big’s come up after The Source nod was similar to that of his contemporaries, like Nas, in that he stole the show on a couple of posse cuts. But while Nas went the “lyrically lyrical” route for a time and, with Illmatic, made an album featuring a Who’s Who of boom bap era producers, Big’s style was harder to pin down. He recorded just two official full-length albums, and only Ready To Die was released during his lifetime; in fact, Ready to Die is now officially older than Big was at the time of his murder, a crime that is still unsolved (and if that’s not a depressing statement about rap, violence, and blackness in America, I don’t know what is). His debut was recorded at a time when the West coast g-funk aesthetic was dominant, and East coast rap still meant “NYC,” which was primarily divided into two camps: the Timbs-and-hoodies style of the so-called New School rappers who could trace their lineages back to the Def Jam superstars of the 80s and Queensbridge’s Juice Crew, and the more “alternative” and Afrocentric stylings of the Native Tongues clique (there was also Wu-Tang, who combined elements of both but were also just weird as fuck). Ready To Die, in this sense, is much more representative of the Timbs-and-hoodies crowd, but it also paved the way toward a much more introspective, darker style of rap focused on violence and material wealth in equal measures that would become the standard in New York for the remainder of the decade. It’s a gangsta rap record with a boom bap sound. And though Biggie was certainly no slouch on the mic—his internal rhyme schemes are complex, and his flow is versatile—he didn’t need to rap fast or sound like he’d memorized a thesaurus in order to distinguish himself, either. His greatest strengths were his lovable-yet-dangerous personality, bawdy sense of humor, and unparalleled skill as a storyteller, which he would showcase to even greater effect on 1997’s Life After Death. Add everything up, and it makes perfect sense why Big is remembered as one of the—if not the—best to ever do it: he emerged at the peak of the golden era, but was also an originator rather than an imitator.

The 2Pac beef, East Coast-West Coast war, and “playas vs. thugs” dichotomy in mainstream 90s rap have all been broken down in painstaking detail elsewhere, with conspiracy theories lurking around every corner (for anyone interested, I think that the best resource for understanding those stories and where Biggie, Pac, and LAPD corruption fit into it all is this 2001 Randall Sullivan article in Rolling Stone). Separating history from hagiography is tough enough in a culture that is built on braggadocio; no rapper worth their salt has ever “let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.” But Biggie’s tall tale/folk hero status is on a different level, arguably even more so than Pac’s, with whom he will forever be linked. Much of that is due to the fact that his career was so short and his talent so undeniable; as distasteful as it is to admit, Biggie’s legacy undoubtedly benefited from his early passing, leaving us with two outstanding, classic albums and a handful of loosies, guest appearances, and posthumous compilations that continue to fuel speculation about the heights that he could have reached. Just as Jimi never made an experimental jazz guitar album and Otis never made disco, Big never recorded Nastradamus or Kingdom Come.

In the final analysis, Biggie’s career is defined by death, but not necessarily his own. Many have observed that the title of his debut album, Ready To Die, was, in a way, a foreshadow of things to come, and that the second, Life After Death, serves as a chilling acknowledgement of what occurred just two weeks before its release. But on a deeper level, a careful listen to both records reveals Biggie’s obsession with death: what he sees happening around him, the ways in which he might die—possibly even by his own hand—and the unanswerable question of whether or not death is the end. Behind all of the jokes, tales of sexual escapades, and reflections on how enjoyable the playa lifestyle can be, at its heart Ready To Die is extremely nihilistic.

That nihilism begins with the cover art, which along with The Chronic is the first rap album cover I can remember noticing. Despite what Nas and Raekwon may think, Ready To Die’s cover probably owes more to Nevermind than it does Illmatic: Nas’s childhood photo laminated over the Queensbridge housing projects on his debut evokes nostalgia for his roots; Ready To Die, on the other hand, is a bleak statement about being born a black man in America. Here’s this cute baby with an afro and a diaper set against a stark white background, and we the viewers are invited to wonder what his future holds. In other words, the point is that every American black male is born “ready to die” because that’s what the statistics tell us (in actuality, the photo model is alive and well). As an 11-year-old American white male from rural Maine, this was completely lost on me at the time. Looking back on it now, I can’t help but feel goosebumps.

The cover also simply yet effectively communicates the album’s narrative arc, such that there is one. Ready To Die isn’t a concept album by any means, but it does chart the life of Christopher Wallace from the womb to the tomb, so to speak. The first sounds we hear on the intro are a heartbeat, a woman in labor, her partner urging her to push, and then a baby crying. The last sounds are of a gunshot, a body falling to the floor, a voice on the other end of the line pleading, and a heartbeat slowing to a stop. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go through it track-by-track; this is one album that is all killer, no filler.

Intro (link above): This is a classic rap album trope: the introductory skit that establishes where the rapper is coming from, sort of like a superhero’s origin story. Maybe this is symptomatic of having recently been listening to only mid-to-late 90s rap, but it seems to me that these sorts of intros used to be more common than they are now. There’s no actual rapping here. Instead we get something very similar to “The Genesis” on Illmatic, a mashup of different iconic sounds from “the culture.” Whereas for Nas it was an excerpt from Wild Style followed by a skit over that movie’s theme, Biggie’s intro is more personal, and more comprehensive in terms of situating him in a time and a place. It begins with Christopher Wallace’s birth in 1972 over the sounds of “Superfly,” followed by an argument between Biggie’s parents about his antics that turns quickly to violent threats while “Rapper’s Delight” (1979)—the birth of rap, officially-unofficially—plays, then Big and a friend discussing a plan to rob subway passengers set to “Top Billin’” (1987), and finally Big being taunted by a corrections officer as he’s released from prison and Snoop’s “Tha Shiznit” (1993) can be heard in the background (this last part is definitely pure fiction; Big’s only recorded stint inside was back in 1991). The point of the narrative is obvious, but the musical choices are also significant. Biggie was part of an emerging generation of rappers who could still remember a time before rap, but who also grew up alongside the genre, their lives’ milestones scored by a soundtrack featuring the likes of The Sugarhill Gang, Audio Two, and Snoop. By 1994, rap itself had changed several times over already, and with Biggie’s entry it was set to change again. This theme continues on the next track…

Things Done Changed: First of all, this is one of the few songs I can think of that takes full advantage of stereo sound as the beat jumps from right to left and back again before the first harmonies kick in. In college, my friends and I used to love driving around with Ready To Die in the tape deck and performing a ritual of sorts to this opening, nodding our heads and pointing to the speakers on one side of the car and then the other (Side note: after college when I moved to Prague, a group of friends rented a car one night for the express purpose of driving around the city and listening to this album in its entirety. We actually got pulled over when we accidentally found ourselves in a Czech police extortion trap and had to bribe our way out, but that’s another story…). “Things Done Changed” is exactly what the title declares: a mix of Biggie waxing nostalgic about the bygone days of his Brooklyn childhood and communicating the harsh reality of post-crack NYC. The “back in the day” rap is another trope, but whereas previous examples like The Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” (1992), Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s “T.R.O.Y.” (1992), and even Nas’s “Memory Lane” (1994) all are accompanied by production that emphasizes the slow, sweet, happy remembrances of things past, “Things Done Changed”—with samples from 70s funk group The Main Ingredient—sounds downright foreboding. The message is that there’s no time to lament the past because it’s over and done with and the future is anything but certain. As if this point weren’t clear enough, the Dr. Dre sample on the chorus—“Remember they used to thump? But now they blast, right?”—and Biggie’s appeal to his contemporaries—“Motherfucker, this ain’t back in the day/ But you don’t hear me though”—eliminate any sense of ambiguity. There are so many great Biggie lines sprinkled throughout (e.g., “And we coming to the wake/ To make sure the crying and commotion ain’t a motherfucking fake”; “Back in the days our parents used to take care of us/ Look at ‘em now, they even fuckin’ scared of us”; and “The streets is a short stop/ Either you slingin’ crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot,” which incidentally was quoted in the cringeworthiest way possible in 2000’s Boiler Room), but one in particular stands out to me: “It make me wanna grab the 9 and the shotty/ But I gotta go identify the body.” A former roommate of mine always loved this part because it encapsulates not just Biggie’s moral dilemma, but in many ways the definitive contradictions of gangbanging and the drug trade: I’m so angry and in pain that I want to visit extreme violence upon the world, but at the same time I have to deal with the fallout of the violence around me in the most intimate of ways. Did I mention already that this album is nihilistic to the core?

Gimme The Loot: This song will always hold a special place in my memory. It was either this or Snoop’s version of “Lodi Dodi” that was the first rap I memorized word for word. In high school, my friends and I used to go out to the cross-country running trails after school to, uh, do what burnouts do, and more often than not would end up reciting “Gimme The Loot” in its entirety at the top of our lungs (I hope that we changed all the ****** to “suckas” or something…). Biggie voices two characters, both plotting small-scale robberies with grotesque levels of passion. For real, some of the lyrics for the album version had to be censored because, well, this: “I don’t give a fuck if you’re pregnant/ Give me the baby ring and the #1 mom pendant.” “Gimme The Loot” is also a perfect example of Big’s style: it’s played for laughs, but the subject matter is darker than dark. I like to think of this as a companion piece to “****** Bleed” from Life After Death—my all-time favorite Biggie track—which is about a much more ambitious robbery that is also full of jokes. In line with the album’s theme, “Gimme The Loot” ends with Big presumably dying in a hail of bullets during a shootout with the cops, “a true motherfucker going out for the loot.”

Machine Gun Funk: Ooh, this beat! As anyone who follows this account already knows, one of my favorite things about rap is how much great music I’ve been introduced to via samples. In this case, “Something Extra” by 70s funk band Black Heat. Easy Mo Bee, who produced this and five other tracks on Ready To Die, doesn’t get the acclaim of contemporaries like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, or Large Professor. But his bona fides are solid—coming up with the Juice Crew—and his work on this album is spectacular. As with “Gimme The Loot,” some of the lyrics in the second verse censored: “For the jackers, the jealous-ass crackers in the blue suits/ I’ll make you prove that it’s bulletproof.” This was, after all, around the time that NWA and Ice-T had provoked outrage—and FBI investigations!—for their anti-police lyrics. “Machine Gun Funk”’s overall gist is summed up in one line: “I’m doing rhymes now, fuck the crimes now.” In other words, Big is just as hard as he was on the ascent, but he’s transcended that life now and is making bank from rap. It’s another well-worn trope that’s become almost obligatory for rappers to talk about now.

Warning: Another funky Easy Mo Bee beat, this time with an Isaac Hayes sample. Biggie relates a story of being awakened early in the morning by a friend who has gotten wind that his enemies are plotting his demise (he also shouts out fellow Brooklynites M.O.P., which is a nice touch!). He demonstrates his capacity for catchy internal rhymes—“They heard about the Rolexes and the Lexus/ With the Texas license plates out of state/ They heard about the pounds you got down in Georgetown/ And they heard you got half Virginia locked down”—and penchant for clever metaphors—“There’s gonna be a lot of slow singin’ and flower bringin’/ If my burglar alarm starts ringin’”; “The criminals, tryna drop my decimals.” There’s also the continuation of the “ready to die” theme with a depressing statement about trust and paranoia: “It’s the ones that smoke blunts witcha, see your picture/ Now they wanna grab they guns and come and getcha.” “Warning” ends with a darkly funny skit of sorts that leads right into the next track…

Ready To Die: I mean, it’s right there in the title: this is the entire album in a nutshell. Big is defiant here and completely nihilistic: “My shit is deep, deeper than my grave, G/ I’m ready to die, and nobody can save me/ Fuck the world, fuck my moms and my girl/ My life is played out like a Jheri curl, I’m ready to die!” And why all the violence? It’s simple, really, a means to an end: “Shit is real, and hungry’s how I feel/ I rob and steal because that money got that whip appeal.” This Easy Mo Bee beat is appropriately eerie, too, flipping the organ from blaxploitation film score legend Willie Hutch’s “Hospital Prelude Of Love Theme.” “Warning” ends with Puffy reciting “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep,” similar to how he would start “You’re Nobody (‘Til Somebody Kills You)” on Life After Death with the 23rd Psalm: both are prayers about death and the afterlife.

One More Chance: This was one of the tracks that Big recorded during the second half of the Ready To Die sessions at Puffy’s urging. While Big allegedly didn’t want to make any concessions to commercial tastes, being the ever-calculating businessman that he is, Puff encouraged him to include a few tracks that weren’t just about robbing and killing. As such, the tone here is a little different from the album up to this point. However, it does give Big a chance to explore another of his signature topics and themes: sex, but in the lewdest way possible (I mean, he raps about shifting kidneys, shattering bladders, and “fuck[ing] her ‘til her nose bleed”). As my friend Jason pointed out to me recently, the skit in the intro is more interesting than it would appear at first, too. Ostensibly, it’s recordings of women on Big’s answering machine who he’s ghosted. However, the second caller doesn’t seem to be someone he’s slept with, but rather a female friend chiding him for being inconsiderate. Who knows whether this is meaningful or not, but maybe just maybe it’s a small subversion of the “g’s up, hoes down” mantra pervading rap? Eh, it’s a stretch. “One More Chance” was remixed and released as a single in 1995, becoming one of Big’s biggest hits. The original version is far superior, though, IMHO. Another minor note: verse 2 contains a cool shout out to Houston’s Geto Boys and the “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” video, complete with the beat switching up briefly to index that song.

Fuck Me (Interlude): A skit featuring Lil’ Kim. I usually don’t like rap skits, but this one is notable for making “Oreo cookie eatin’, pickle juice drinkin’, chicken gristle eatin’, biscuit fuckin’ suckin’ … V8 juice drinkin’, Slim Fast blendin’, black greasy muthafucka” into passable dirty talk. And that’s all I have to say about that.

The What: When Nas said, “My first album had no famous guest appearances/ The outcome: I’m crowned the best lyricist” on Stillmatic, this is the song he was talking about (well, either this or “Brooklyn’s Finest”… yeah, it was probably the latter). Given how rappers have stuck to the formula of paying for the services of more accomplished figures to drive interest in their debuts, it’s a testament to Nas’s and Big’s greatness that both Illmatic and Ready To Die only had one feature apiece: AZ on “Life’s A Bitch,” and Method Man on “The What.” With all due respect to AZ, no one’s mistaking him for a “famous” guest. Meth, on the other hand, had only really been famous for a couple of years at this point, but he was far and away Wu-Tang’s breakout star and would become the first group member to drop a post-36 Chambers solo just two months later. His participation here is also unexpected given the less-famous-yet-still-potent beef that existed between Wu-Tang and Biggie. Collabos and features are often underwhelming; either the guest feels like an unnecessary afterthought, or ends up “murder[ing] you on your own shit.” In this case, though, Meth is able to keep pace with Big and vice versa. Although his chemistry with Redman is legendary and their work together was super enjoyable, “The What” makes me wonder what a Meth and Biggie full-length would have sounded like. Easy Mo Bee laces the beat with the most stonerific production on the album, a laid back, fried melody that samples the outro to Leroy Huston’s “Can’t Say Enough About Mom” (1974). It works!

Juicy: It’s funny, this used to be my least favorite track on Ready To Die, entirely because of the chorus, which I thought was too “soft.” But now that I’m older, I appreciate its anthem-ness and the funky-ass Mtume sample. “Juicy” was, of course, the album’s lead single, but it was recorded toward the end of the sessions because Puff realized that they needed a radio-ready hit if Biggie was going to be a success. As a result, it’s the most discordant track on the album because of its uplifting tone, message of positivity, and nothing in the lyrics about death or dying. Along with “Things Done Changed,” this is the most autobiographical song on Ready To Die. And it’s chock full of quotables: “Time to get paid/ Blow up like the World Trade” (which has subsequently been censored in post-9/11 radio versions); “Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way”; “Considered a fool cuz I dropped out of high school” (that one always resonated with me, haha); “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/ When I was dead broke, man, I couldn’t picture this” (which sounds hilarious now as far as stunting goes); “Birthdays was the worst days/ Now we sip champagne when we thirstay.” Also like “Things Done Changed,” “Juicy” is a nod to the past—the first verse is basically a list of 80s rap influencers—while signaling that a paradigm shift is happening; when Big says, “You never thought that hip-hop would take it this far,” he means for both himself and for the genre as a whole. He probably would have been a star anyway without “Juicy,” but its inclusion on Ready To Die definitely helped drive his early mainstream appeal.

Everyday Struggle: This anthem is still relevant today. They wouldn’t be brave enough (or stupid enough, depending on your perspective) to actually do it, but Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders could totally use this as a campaign song in 2020. The name of the game here is “precarity” and the choices people make just to survive. The sample, from Dave Grusin’s cheesy 80s jazz composition “Either Way” (1980), starts off in a vaporwavish muffle that makes the intro sound like a classic TV theme song. And then immediately we’re vaulted back into Biggie’s bleak, nihilistic take on contemporary life, and his suicidal ideations (a foreshadowing of things to come…): “I don’t wanna live no more/ Sometimes I hear death knocking at my front door/ I’m living everyday like a hustle, another drug to juggle/ Another day, another struggle.” The whole song is about drug dealing, but it’s not all glorification: Big makes it quite clear that a) violence and the possibility (inevitability?) of death are ever-present, and b) it is an endeavor that is fundamentally about preying on one’s community. As he puts it, “Baggin’ five at a time/ I can clock about nine on the check cashin’ line/ I had the first and the third rehearsed, that’s my word,” all of which is to say that he had a clear understanding of the temporal rhythms of government assistance, wage payments, and the financial habits of the unbanked. It’s less of a lament than what appears in other rappers’ odes to “the game,” but I think it’d be remiss to ignore his discomfort with being a participant in an activity that clearly destroys lives and neighborhoods.

Me & My Bitch: Woooooo, talk about a problematic song! This is Kevin Gates before Kevin Gates. On the one hand, you could make a legitimate case for “Me & My Bitch” being the most romantic gangsta rap song ever (which is saying something in and of itself). On the other hand, Big would definitely be cancelled in 2019 for this. The opening line is classic Biggie humor: “I’ll admit when I first saw you my thoughts was a trip/ You looked so good, huh, I’d suck on your daddy’s dick.” But it soon devolves into your run-of-the-mill rap misogyny: “When the time is right, the wine is right/ I treat you right; you talk slick, I beat you right.” It’s all a fantasy—AFAIK Big never had a romantic relationship like the one depicted here—that’s the textbook definition of “ride or die.” Emphasis on “die” because that’s where the song ends up (because of course it does, this is Ready To Die after all). At first, Big tells us, “And if I deceive, she won’t take it lightly/ She’ll invite me, politely, to fight, G/ And then we lie together, cry together/ I swear to God I hope we fuckin’ die together,” which say what you will, that’s kind of a sweet sentiment. But alas, he doesn’t get his wish, as his lover is gunned down by his enemies, collateral in a war against him. Again, his eulogy for her is also kind of sweet, in a perverse way: “It didn’t take long before the tears start/ I saw my bitch dead with a gunshot to the heart/ And I know it was meant for me/ I guess the ****** felt they had to kill the closest one to me/ And when I find ‘em, your life is to an end/ They killed my best friend.”

Big Poppa: Another of the more radio-friendly, Puffy-inspired tracks, and consequently one of the album’s biggest hits (and second single). This is also the closest the Ready To Die comes to emulating 1994’s pop rap zeitgeist as the production on “Big Poppa” is clearly g-funk, complete with a high-pitched synthesizer straight out of Dre’s toolkit. It’s quite the contrast with the previous track, going from “ghetto soap opera” to “big willie playa fantasy.” Overall, “Big Poppa” is solid club song. Also, did Biggie invent the “weird flex” with this line: “A t-bone steak, cheese, eggs, and Welch’s grape”?

Respect: This one’s a nod to Biggie’s Jamaican roots, and introduces another chapter in the autobiography established through “Things Done Changed” and “Juicy.” “Respect” features Jamaican reggae/dancehall singer Diana King on the hook and reggae-ish beat from Poke of the Trackmasters that interpolates KC & The Sunshine Band’s “I Get Lifted” (1975). Even here Biggie pushes the “ready to die” theme as he narrates his birth!: “Umbilical cord wrapped around my neck/ I’m seein’ my death, and I ain’t even took my first step.” Verse 2 contains some more reflection on the uncertainties of the drug game: “Put the drugs on the shelf? Nah, couldn’t see it/ Scarface, King of New York, I wanna be it/ Rap was secondary, money was necessary/ Until I got incarcerated, kinda scary/ … Time to contemplate, damn, where did I fail?/ All the money I stacked was all the money for bail.”

Friend Of Mine: Easy Mo Bee does it again! Another of my favorite beats on Ready To Die. This one’s mostly Biggie-style sexual humor, similar to “One More Chance” only funkier and more misogynistic. It’s Big’s version of “g’s up, hoes down” or “Scandalouz.” The double standard regarding male and female promiscuity is in full effect. Even so, there’s a cleverness to the lyrics; Big’s descriptions are just plain different from other rappers’ (side note: the same argument can be made for Gucci Mane): “I don’t give a bitch enough to catch the bus/ And when I see the semen, I’m leavin’”; “Now I play her far like a moon play a star.”

Unbelievable: Scoring a DJ Premier beat for your album in the 90s was basically confirmation that you were someone worth paying attention to. Nas did it with Illmatic, and Big pulled the legendary producer’s card for this, the final track recorded for Ready To Die. Premo even gave Big a discount, charging him less than his usual fee because he’d gone overbudget already! The sample, from The Honeydrippers’ “Impeach The President” (1973), is well-traveled territory in rap, having been sampled in dozens of songs already by that point. “Unbelievable”’s content is mostly just Biggie boasting about his greatness at all things. And you’ve gotta respect the audacity of sampling yourself, from another song on the same album, giving yourself props (“Biggie Smalls is the illest!”). Even without a clear narrative or any deeper message, “Unbelievable” is a showcase of Biggie’s range of technical skills from internal rhymes—“And those that rushes my clutches get put on crutches/ Get smoked like Dutches”—to sly metaphors—“I got three hundred and fifty-seven ways/ To simmer sauté”—and original adjectives��“car weed-scented.” Big and Premier would link up again on Life After Death for two of that album’s standouts—“Kick In The Door” and “Ten Crack Commandments”—but three tracks still feels like far too few for such a potent combination.

Suicidal Thoughts: Dear lord, what an ending! If you doubted that Ready To Die was nihilistic up to this point, “Suicidal Thoughts” leaves no question as to the tone that Big intended. This is my second favorite of Biggie’s songs, and IMHO his most poignant. I almost feel as if he invented emo-rap here, letting the listener into his tortured psyche in a way that only Pac and Eminem have even come close to imitating. I’ve written about this track and my fondness for it already, naming it my “rap of the year” for 1994. The overall concept is Big calling up Puff to deliver what amounts to a suicide note. As Puffy pleads with him not to go through with it, Biggie enumerates all of the reasons that he’s “a piece of shit, it ain’t hard to fucking tell” and why the world would be better off without him: his criminal escapades, his sense that he’d let down his loved ones, his lies and infidelity. The key passages: “All my life I been considered as the worst/ Lyin’ to my mother, even stealin’ out her purse/ Crime after crime, from drugs to extortion/ I know my mother wish she got a fuckin’ abortion/ She don’t even love me like she did when I was younger/ Suckin’ on her chest just to stop my fuckin’ hunger/ I wonder if I died, would tears come to her eyes?/ Forgive me for my disrespect, forgive me for my lies”; “People at the funeral frontin’ like they miss me/ My baby mama kiss me, but she glad I’m gone/ She know me and her sister had somethin’ goin’ on.” Additionally, this is one of the things that truly separates Big from Pac when it comes to their musings on death and the afterlife: while Pac rapped about heaven and “thugz mansion,” Big seemed convinced that he was headed to hell both here and elsewhere: “When I die, fuck it, I wanna go to hell/ … It don’t make sense goin’ to heaven with the goodie-goodies/ Dressed in white; I like black Timbs and black hoodies.” If “Ready To Die” was a defiant declaration, then “Suicidal Thoughts” is Biggie proving that it was no lie, that he is, in fact, ready to pass on even if it’s his own doing. The beat is handled by Lord Finesse—another boom-bap veteran—and complements perfectly the tension that builds until the final moments: the gunshot, the thud, and the flatlining heartbeat (the sample is Miles Davis’s “Lonely Fire” (1974)).

There’s no denying Ready To Die’s place in the pantheon of rap history. People can debate whether or not it and/or Big are the greatest ever, which is fine, but ultimately meaningless. What we have here is an album that can be enjoyed on many different levels. And even if it is all about death, as with any work of art, it will live on as long as people keep listening to and loving it.

[gunnerpalace]

Welcome to Bleach Rarepair Hell

To paraphrase:

Quark: ... I want you to try something for me. Take a read of this. Garak: What is it? Quark: A literary concept. It's called a rarepair. Garak: I don't know— Quark: Come on. Aren't you just a little bit curious? Garak: Hnhh... ugh... Quark: What do you think? Garak: It's vile! Quark: I know. It's so bubbly, and cloying, and happy. Garak: ... Just like my OTP. Quark: But you know what's really frightening? If you read enough of it, you begin to like it. Garak: ... It's insidious. Quark: Just like your OTP.

So, I’ve recently approached several people individually about Rarepair Hell’s collection of materials. (Yes, Rarepair Hell is also a place; there’s a chat.) But, I figure I’ve gotten a fair number of new followers lately who don’t have the time to go trawling back through old material, and that means it’s time to go on yet another advertising drive! Now if you’re new, you might be wondering what this is all about.

Put simply, below is everything publicly released that I know of that I or someone in the chat with has put out for one of our rarepairs. These tend to be obscure or heavily underrepresented ships that, in general, we’ve fallen for.

Why not have a look? You might be surprised. Italics denote actual fics, whereas their lack denotes fan art or other documents

Kūkaku-Byakuya - KuuKuya / ”Sakura Fireworks”

KuuKuya is one of the rarest of rarepairs. Between FFN and AO3 there’s something like two fanfics and one drabble for them—the fics are almost a decade old, and the drabble involves teen Byakuya. Google reports exactly four pieces of fan art of them from some age long past, of which I’d show you one. When I took over the ship, I decided KuuKuya sounded better than ByaKuu or ByaKaku or whatever, and here we are. Most of these fics (mine, at least) take place in the canon-divergent continuity of Demons of the Sun and Moon, which is why certain details are the way they are (for example: Kūkaku has both arms again).

The KuuKuya Prototype - The small collection of paragraphs that started it all (that is to say, both KuuKuya and Rarepair Hell itself). This was originally a proof of concept, and like the post explains, doesn’t really fit into anything that came after.

KuuKuya Headcanons - A set of headcanons I put together after writing the three fics below, as well as some other material. This lays out just a few of the reasons I think the pair work so well together, as well as some cute scenarios.

Ratio Decidendi - The first proper KuuKuya fic. It’s rather short and to the point. (Original, unedited version here. Bless you, Anon, whoever you were.) @sequencefairy shortly summed it up with: “Byakuya takes Kuukaku to a function. It goes about as well as you would expect. This fic is funny and sweet and a great example of someone who gets character.”

Terra Nullius (NSFW) - The first proper piece of KuuKuya smut, following after the above. (Original, unedited version here.) This is where everything went to hell. @sequencefairy summed this up with “This one… hooooo, this one is not safe for work. I mean, I read it at work, but I would not recommend that other people do that. Again with the spot-on characterization, and I just really always love how clear and immediate the writing is in any of Dux’s fic, and this is no exception.” This fic has caused no end of wild happenings.

Para Bellum (NSFW) - A follow-up to the above. (Original, unedited version here.) @sequencefairy summed this up with “Now, I am super biased about this fic, because I got to watch it come together over the course of a few days, because Dux leaves me presents in our skype chat (it’s really the best thing ever - always leave your friends porn for them to find when they get home from work) and well, I mean, he’s absolutely nailed their dynamic, and I am stinking jealous of how well he captures Byakuya - I can literally hear the man speaking as I’m reading this fic. Also it’s a sparring session that is foreplay that leads to really excellent smut and that’s really all you need to know about it before reading.”

Interstice Gray - An intimate, hazy piece of fluff set some indeterminate time after the above.

Next to Every Great Man is... - Written as a birthday present, much in the mold of the above, highlighting their familiarity with and understanding of one another.

Cozy (@sequencefairy) - A lovely piece of winter-themed fluff, I actually received a hardcopy of this along with a Christmas card!

Untitled KuuKuya Piece (@sequencefairy) - Kūkaku and Byakuya don’t always see eye-to-eye and enjoy a charmed existence, but even when they disagree, you can sense the crackling heat!

Pinterest Board (@sequencefairy, NSFW) - If you ever wanted a mood board for these two, there’s already a pretty great one.

Discussion Chatlog (with @sequencefairy​, NSFW) - A rare exception to not posting chatlogs, this is mostly theorycrafting about KuuKuya, although IchiRuki, UraYoru, and TatsuIshi (see below) also appear.

Yoruichi-Ichigo-Rukia - YoruIchiRuki / ”Neapolitan Ice Cream”

YIR is an AU OT3 that happened purely by accident. The core component, Grounded!, was originally intended to be something of a one-shot sex-comedy whereby Ichigo and Rukia meet not (supposedly) because of the machinations of Kisuke and Aizen, but rather the whimsy of Yoruichi. It then turned out that everyone reading it fell for their interactions. Ichigo and Rukia have always had this cosmic air about them, but we discovered that Rukia and Yoruichi are oceanic, and Ichigo and Yoruichi are tectonic; together, they’re everything from incredibly sweet, to hilarious, to ridiculously sexy.

Grounded! - A Bleach AU Idea Revised - The latest and greatest revision of the concept for Grounded!, this is both a design document and also contains significant portions of the actual fic, which is still being written. It’ll orient you to the setting and happenings of the AU, and hopefully interest you in the interplay that gets spun out as a result!

Planet-Side Spin (@sequencefairy) - Written as a companion-piece and sort-of-prequel to the below, this largely focuses upon Ichigo some six or so months after the events of the above. (Original here.) The tagline sums it up well: “Ichigo misses them like breathing.”

Up All Night to the Sun - Occurring at the end of Ichigo’s trip, Yoruichi and Rukia miss him quite a lot too. (Original here.) Purely fluff.

We’re Dancin’ All Alone (YoruIchi, NSFW) - Yoruichi, Ichigo, and Rukia don’t always wind up together at the same time, but they manage as best they can in other settings. One of the odd things about adding a third partner is you more than quadruple the work (you go from one pair to three pairs and the triad!); one of the joys is finding that all of those combinations have their own interesting and interrelated ways of working.

Heaven in Hiding (@sequencefairy, NSFW) - A very recent entry, with a delightfully sultry atmosphere. 

Fan Art for Grounded! (@gabecebro) A wonderful birthday gift that really sums up the premise of Grounded! as a whole.

Tatsuki-Uryū - TatsuIshi / ”Double Dragon”

TatsuIshi began (for me) as a mashup of TatsuHime and IshiHime into TatsuHimeIshi, and then became its own thought experiment. The least explored of the three rarepairs, it nonetheless has its own particular charms.

Untitled TatsuIshi Piece (Semi-NSFW) - Originally put together to briefly postulate a reason they could even occur, this also shows off some of the fireworks the fly when you put the two of them together.

TatsuIshi Headcanons - Made after the above to further illustrate the point. Much like the KuuKuya Headcanons, this is meant to lay out an idea of how they might behave and interact, along with a few scenarios.

Untitled TatsuIshi Piece (@sequencefairy, NSFW) - I told you about the fireworks? This is like a really great New Year’s bash.

Fan Art for TatsuIshi Headcanons (@mags-duranb) - This was the first piece of fan art I ever received for a piece of fic, and it illustrates one of the standout ideas of the headcanons post wonderfully!

General Fan Art (@mags-duranb) - We were by no means the first people to think of TatsuIshi, of course, and there’s some more lovely art for them here!

There’s much more material that isn’t on this list because it either doesn’t exist in an easily presentable form yet (which is to say, it’s mostly just chatlogs) or is unfinished. This includes everything from one-shots to companion-pieces, and even an AU of an AU featuring YoruIchiRuki in place of the cast of Samurai Champloo (with Yoruichi as Jin, Ichigo as Mugen, and Rukia as Fuu):

Yoruichi: How ironic that Ichigo is symbolized by a cock. Ichigo: I could say the same about you being a fish. Yoruichi: Are you insulting my hygiene, you bastard? I don't recall you complaining about it last night when you had your head down there for an hour. Rukia: Shut up, both of you! How could I possibly be expected to eat all that food? It's ridiculous!

Anyway, there you have it. I hope that you found something on this list that piqued your interest. If you did, I and others are around to chat with about it! Don’t be afraid to join the conversation. Or, to put it another way: