#overall the week seems fairly decent!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

reverieblondie · 1 year ago

Text

Neighbors

Chapter 2: Heroic Spiders

Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 Part 4

Pairing: TASM!Peter Parker x Reader

Warnings: Burglary and knife being held to readers throat.

Summary: First day at work and your trying to keep a positive mindset despite your irritating neighbor messing with you. Whatever you just have to ignore it and keep going!

A/N: Sorry I've been behind on posting, I got sick with the flu for a week and that has made me behind. But I have four fics in the works currently! I am enjoying writing this series its a good pallet cleanser and has been helping me get all my cheesy rivalry romance ideas out. Hope your enjoying it! If you have a request please drop it in my inbox! I love getting ideas and interacting with all of you! If you want to be tagged for this series or anything else please leave a comment asking! Thank you so much for your support!

Word Count: 3,751

Chapter 2: Heroic Spiders

Cockroaches….that damn neighbor must have just been messing with you…

Exhausted, your neighbor's little comment had compelled you to spend the rest of the night checking every surface where a cockroach could be hidden, only to be met with nothing. Maybe he had done it just to stress you out, what a jerk…whatever, just avoid him, that should be easy.

Though you can’t get too wrapped in thinking of your smartass neighbor right now, you need to focus on getting ready for work. The job you managed to land was at a bar in the neighborhood with an owner who seemed nice and paid decently; though you were still on the hunt for a second job, New York is an expensive place to live and your scholarship can only help you so much.

Being a bartender was easy for you, it was one of the first jobs you got when you started going to school, plus there were always bars near campuses. There is also the fact that for your school schedule getting to work nights worked out best for you. Bartending was fairly simple and getting your certification was easy enough, yes you had the occasional creeps at the bar but usually, it was an overall safe environment with people just trying to wind down after their long work weeks. Plus when people are tipsy they tend to tip well, perks of the trade.

Moving to New York for a scholarship has been a whirlwind of unfamiliarity, but bartending is something you knew and were confident in. Plus maybe there would be other people around your age working there, your shot at a friendship with the neighbors wasn’t going well but maybe you could be friends with your coworkers.

Finished getting ready, you gather your bag and give yourself a once over. The outfit looks nice, the hair is done right, and the makeup is nice just the way you like it. This is perfect, you feel confident, and nothing is going to mess up your night!

Walking out of your apartment you lock your door and you hear the creaky elevator doors starting to close. Quickly you call out for someone to hold the door as you run to the elevator, and to your delight a hand catches the door before it can shut. Getting to the elevator you wear a sweet smile ready for whoever held the elevator for you but once the doors open back up your smile sinks into a bitter glare. It’s him….the spider catcher with the grumpy attitude.

As you begrudgingly walk into the elevator you see that his face equally doesn’t look too pleased to be seeing you. A part of you wishes he wouldn't have held the door so you could skip being stuck in the cramped elevator with him, but you don’t want to risk running late on your first day. So instead you must suffer through the awkward silence that’s filling in the space between you too.

Standing there side by side your thoughts are lamenting why this elevator had to be so slow. Trying to keep yourself appear unbothered by him, your eyes go to observe him despite your trying not to. Today he looks a bit less tired and is wearing normal clothes, not his pajamas. His hair is still fluffy but you're starting to think that’s just how he wears it. Also, his brown eyes are covered up by glasses. Danm, he’s got that whole cute nerd thing going for him huh…

As you're studying him his eyes move to you and you quickly avert your gaze feeling flustered to have gotten caught looking. Get a grip girl you can’t think he’s cute he is a rude jerk who called you dramatic, you can’t think he’s cute, absolutely not! Staring straight ahead you swear you heard him slightly snickering to himself, just being so close to him so making your blood boil. Never before has someone bothered you so much but here he is driving you mad.

Shooting your eyes over to him you're making sure to give him a dirty look, one that says, I don’t like your jerk face. Though he’s not paying attention, opting to fiddle around with his camera instead. Looking at the camera you note that it appears to be an older model then some white lettering on the device catches your attention.

“Peter Parker…” you whisper, as you do his head shoots over to you with a confused look on his face. Moving your head at the number of floors you still have left to go, you feel his eyes still on you.

“It’s rude to stare,” you say irritatedly

“Yeah, I know that, do you?”

You whip your head around facing him now, “I wasn’t staring at you, I was reading the name on the camera.”

“I was talking about before you said my name.”

“Well I wasn’t staring at you then either,” -your liar, you were staring…

“Yeah sure…y/n”

Your eyes go wide at him saying your name and you look at him confused. He points down at your bag with a smug look on his face.

“Your school ID is hanging out of your bag”

Looking at your bag you see he was right so you quickly tuck your ID back into your bag. Well isn’t he just clever….

Folding your arms in a huff the two of you fall back into a silence. He messes with his camera once more and you stare straight ahead while irritation grows. Maybe it's the awkward silence or maybe it's your need to have the last word because you can’t help yourself from muttering to him “I didn’t see any roaches….”

He slightly laughs “Yeah your spider friend made sure of that”

“What?! You think I’m going to get them now?!”

He shrugs “That’s why you should be nicer to spiders, they help us in more ways than we know”

“Didn’t realize I was talking to a spider enthusiast….”

“I’m not a spider enthusiast..”

“Could have fooled me…”

The elevator grows quiet again and it seems this time you are going to have the last word. Success. Though as you're standing there you can feel eyes on you turning to give him a dirty look again, he might start thinking that's just how you look. Peter seems completely unfazed by the look you give him as his eyes scan you up and down. As if the elevator wasn’t already cramped now having a guy looking you up and down makes the space feel downright claustrophobic. You can’t help how his eyes on your bare legs make you want to squeeze your thighs together. Is he checking you out right now? Maybe you should scold him?

“You do know that it’s going to be cold and raining tonight right?”

The comment takes you aback for a second, he must be referring to your chosen outfit for work tonight and your lack of an umbrella and coat. A black long-sleeve top paired with shorts and a pair of comfortable tennis shoes is perfect for having to be on your feet all night. You wear these outfits because when you show more skin as a bartender you get more tips, well at the bar you used to work at anyways that's how it worked.

Looking over at Peter you shrug trying to come off as unfazed as possible, “the weatherman said that it wasn’t going to rain a little cold but I can handle that.'' you say matter of factly to Peter.

“Let me guess, the weatherman from channel 12? Yeah, he’s always wrong.” furrowing your brows you look at him confused. One, how did he know what channel you were watching? Two, how was he so sure of himself?

“Well, he’s a weatherman, are you? Unless you're telling me you're a weatherman and a spider expert” You fold your arms and look at him with your eyebrows raised inquisitively.

Peter looks at you eyeing him and slightly giggles to himself, “No I am neither but, I just have a…sense for these sorts of things''.

You look at him and roll your eyes. “Well I am going to go with what the weatherman says, no offense to your weather sense abilities.” for theatrics, you hold up your hands and wiggle your fingers mockingly.

This causes Peter to laugh out loud a bit “Well when you get caught in the rain and you're freezing, just know I told you so.” Peter adjusts his gaze back to the elevator staring at the warped reflections of the two of you with a sly smile on his face.

“Don’t worry about me, I can handle it.”

“Like you handle spiders?”

Smartass….

Before you can give your rebuttal the elevator is stopping with a loud whine and then opening up. In a huff, you exit quickly having had enough of Peter Parker. Sure he may have one this round but next time you will for sure have the last word.

“Can I get a whiskey on the rocks with a twist”

Before the guy could finish his sentence you're already pouring the amber liquid over the singular ice cube in a fresh glass. The final touch is the lemon rind being rubbed onto the lip of the glass cup then dropping the rind into the glass to keep working its aromatic magic. Sliding the glass over you smile at him. Going to wash his used glass you watch through partials as he places a fair tip in the jar for your service. You will be sure to always be quick with his drink to continue to get the good tips.

As you had hoped work was going smoothly, The bar was perfect, manageable with steady business. The perfect blend of just being busy enough that you see new people and keeping the shift going by fast but slow enough that you don’t feel like you're drowning. The best part is that the new boss Gregory was a nice family man who had inherited the bar from his dad.

Gregory and you had started small talk while he showed you the ropes, you learned he had a wife with a son and another on the way. He revealed that he liked to hire college students who needed a flexible schedule. Though, much to your chagrin you were the only college student working at the bar at the moment. The last two recently quit due to them finding different careers with their degrees, a thing you're sure to do as well when you graduate.

Though nobody else was a college student like you, everyone you met was nice and welcoming, making you feel like you could finally get that friend circle you had been craving. Though you need to play it cool, the last thing anyone wants is to be smothered by the new girl desperate for friends. -baby steps for now.

The bar seemed to be a great fit, everyone was nice and all the customers seemed pretty chill. Maybe your luck was starting to finally turn around, maybe this would all work out and everything would go as you hoped.

Maybe…

Taking a deep sigh you stare at the rain as it pours down onto the darkly lit sidewalk that you need to take to get home. Looks like your luck hasn't exactly changed. Resting your head against the front of the bar you hold yourself trying to keep warm as best you could. Seems that your neighbor should think about becoming a weatherman with that accurate weather sense of his. You even checked your phone's weather app and it said the rain chances were low!

Now it's been 30 minutes since work ended and the bar closed and that was 30 minutes of you standing underneath the bar awning alone in a shifty neighborhood. If the rain wasn’t here to hinder you could have been home by now cuddled in your warm bed. No, with how everything was going for you it only makes sense that this is the outcome of your first night at work, and you only have yourself to blame.

Coworkers had offered to stay with you but you knew how exhausted everyone was so you decided to just tell everyone you would call a cab. However, cabs cost money, something that you do not have a large sum of. So here you are waiting, as patiently as one can in a cold night rain storm, with your apartment keys tightly weaved between your fingers due to you still not having bought pepper spray. Maybe you could make a run for it? But you're completely exhausted from your first day so the last thing you want is to go take a sprint back to your apartment, but it might be your best bet.

As you're leaning down to tighten your laces for your run a loud crash is causing you to jump. Startled, you nearly dropped your phone and keys, looking at where the noise came from. It of course came from down an alley of the bar, a dark and creepy alley…

Now there are two things you can do, one is to leave the area for a safe spot, this is the safe and smart option due to it being late at night and you being by yourself with only keys for protection. Then there is the option of being a dutiful employee and making sure that the bar is okay and not being robbed. Taking a moment to think you bounce on the heels of your feet shifting with uncertainty. - You're going to regret this…

Phone in hand and keys in your fist, you're briskly walking down the alley with your head on a swivel as you get drenched from the rain trying to figure out where the noise came from. Damn, your need to be a good samaritan, this is how people get robbed.

Ignoring your inner thoughts as you go further down the alley you come across a broken window from the building next to the bar. Thankfully it’s not the bar and nobody seems to be around, you sigh of relief. So what now? Do you call the police? You could do that but do you want to have to wait around for them to get here? Examining the window you figure the best scenario is to get to a safe area then call them and explain what you heard.

Tucking your keys into your pocket you start walking out of the alley but before you can get out, a sudden hand on the back of your neck has you being shoved into the brick wall of the building's side. Letting out a sharp scream, a hand is covering your mouth and a knife is being pressed to your neck. Eyes wide you feel yourself shaking as you stare at the bloodshot eyes peeking through the ski mask. A part of you wants to fight him off but every time you slightly move the man presses against you harder making you wince from the crushing weight. “Shhh, stop moving and I will make this as painless as possible.”

Shit, Shit… you feel yourself starting to panic at the man's words. What does he mean? Mind scrambling your eyes start to fill with tears, “Drop the bag to the ground and slide to your knees…”

No, No, No! You want to fight, you want to push him away but you can’t muster the energy, your limbs feel like jelly. Dropping your bag from your shoulder you shut your eyes tightly as you lean further into the wall, hoping for the wall to open up and swallow you, for someone to walk by and see you. Anything…please anyone…

Then a thwip noise and suddenly all that weight on your body is suddenly off you and you're sliding to the wet ground. Keeping your eyes shut you don’t dare look as you hear what sounds like grunts and punches. Then what sounds like the drop of something and running away, curling into yourself you're just trying to be invisible, wanting to wash away with the freezing rain. Then a voice, slightly muffled, is cutting through the pour of the rain, “Hey? You okay there….miss?”

Opening your eyes you see the masked vigilante…Spider-man. Squatted in front of you he holds your phone towards you and your bag in his other hand. White lenses watch your shivering body as you slowly nod and reach out to grab your phone.

“Are you hurt?” his voice asks calmly as he studies you, shaking your head he hums to himself before standing up and holding his hand out towards you.

“Good, let's get you out of this rain. You might want to carry an umbrella with you, it gets rainy this time of year.” All you can manage to do is nod absentmindedly as you take his hand as he pulls you to your feet. Staring at the red and blue-clad man as he continues to ramble about the weather this time of year, it's all honestly lost on you as you're still in shock over what happened and what could have happened.

“I don’t have an umbrella…” is all you managed to say. Your soft words stop his rambling and even though you can’t see his face you know it's contorted into a look of pity. You're happy you can’t see behind the heroic spider's mask, being pitied like a child would only make you feel worse in this moment.

“Well, we will have to worry about that part later, for now, let's get you home, huh? Where do you live?”

“Crescent apartments.”

“Okay good, that's a short swing,” you watch as he starts to stretch and roll his hips, tilting your head you give him a look and he chuckles and shrugs. “Swinging is all in the hips, scared of heights?” he holds his hand out to you once more. Shaking your head you grab his hand and he puts your bag over his head before pulling you closer in a careful embrace.

“Just hang on tight and it's best if you keep your eyes closed, the rain might sting your eyes if you keep them open.”

Nodding you wrap your hands around his neck and with a strong arm wrapping around you and a thwip you two are off. Heeding his advice you keep your eyes shut and head tucked into his neck. You can't ignore how even though he's wrapped in a spandex suit, he's still giving off a comforting warmth that causes you to forget all about the rain and the cold you were once feeling. The only thing you are focused on is the sound of the wind past your ears and the rhythmic beating of his heart. It's calming…

In what feels like a quick short minute you're no longer hearing the whooshing and the cold wind is no longer nipping at your bare legs. Keeping your head buried you feel yourself get placed down on your feet as a hand gently pats your back albeit kinda awkwardly but there's a tenderness there. “We have arrived…”

Letting go, you look up at him again, still feeling shocked by everything that happened in such a short time. Opening your mouth you try to think of anything to say as you shield your eyes from the rain, but before you can manage anything spiderman is placing his hand on your shoulder “Get inside and get warm, you might get sick.”

Then with a flick of his wrist, he's swinging off disappearing into the hazy lights of a rainy New York. Standing there you watch with a slack-jawed expression. That was Spider-Man, you were saved by Spider-Man…you have got to start being nice to all these spiders coming into your life.

Mind still hazy from shock, you're on full autopilot as you arrive at your door going to grab your keys from your pocket. You finally look down and your blood runs cold again. You have your keys and your phone…but your bag is gone. Thumping your head against your door you let out a low groan your sure your cranky neighbor is sure to hear, but you can’t care about that now Spider-man has your bag…shit…

Pushing inside your pacing around, how do you get your bag back? Is there a way to get a hold of him? Is there an emergency number? A signal? Walking aimlessly you feel tears pricking at your eyes. Frustration is starting to get at you from what seems to be the worst night of your life. First the neighbor, then the freezing rain, getting attacked, and now your bag is gone with some mystery masked hero! That bag had all your IDs, your money, and your planner!

Twap

Pulling from your panic you Look at your window you see your purse stuck to your window with a note attached. Carefully you approach and retrieve your bag, checking the contents you see that everything is accounted for. Then you read the note:

‘I accidentally stole your bag, my bad! Stay warm!’ with the note you see a doodle of a spider with a smiley face. The little picture makes you chuckle slightly as you scan over the words. Spider-man has nice handwriting, you would assume it would be quick and scratchy but it was actually…pretty…huh…

Reread the note and place it on your nightstand and you trug yourself into your bathroom. As you're starting the shower to warm yourself up it’s then you finally glimpse yourself in the mirror. What stares back at you is a mess, make-up is running, your hair is flat and stringy and your face is puffy from when you were fighting off tears. As you stare in the mirror, you're looking at someone you don’t even recognize… a lump in your throat builds but you try to keep yourself from breaking down. Just remember your mantra- don’t let it get you down…stay strong…this was your dream…this is a great opportunity…

This night was a mess….This whole move has been a mess…

No friends…your neighbor hates you…barely making it by and it hasn't even been a full week…you still have school to worry about, how would that end up getting messed up…

Sinking to the floor, rest your head against the wall trying to keep your tears in.

Maybe this was all a mistake…maybe this move…was a mistake…

Tags:@huesdreamhouse @keiva1000 @spdrwdw @betizda @lunablackcosplay

223 notes · View notes

fanfic-scribbles · 5 months ago

Text

Dinner Date Chapter 33

Masterlist

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

Overall Story Facts:

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Story Summary: Steve Rogers has a girlfriend. A prickly, generally asocial girlfriend, but they make it work. They have more in common than some people might think.

Quick Facts: Romance – Steve Rogers/Reader – Female Reader

Story Warnings: Reader-insert that verges on OFC, written in 1st person past tense

Chapter 33: The Homemaking Sort

Chapter Summary: It’s not too hard to make a house a home. As long as you don’t overthink it.

Chapter Word Count: 2095

A/N: I thought I was almost done with this days ago, but editing it took way too long. I wanna say next chapter will be easier but stuff actually happens in that one and I don’t wanna jinx myself so [fingers crossed]. For now, enjoy the fluff!

Steve’s job was bullshit sometimes, and over the past few weeks it had been back-to-back-to-back-to-back bullshit, where he would pop back home for a bit and then immediately pop back out. Sometimes this was expected, and sometimes he had been sitting on my couch for thirty minutes and we were just working into a really great session of ‘I haven't spent any quality time with you let’s see if we can get through the night completely attached at the mouth’ and making a truly great go of it when his fucking phone rang again.

Not that I was bitter or anything.

In any case, we were making do the best we could in a situation that Steve couldn’t talk about but which seemed to give him deeper creases on his face and a frown that wouldn’t go away.

And so, I was struck with a great idea.

Okay, maybe not a great idea, but it was a pretty good idea. Decent. Or maybe it was terrible. No, it probably wasn’t terrible because even if it all went wrong, I could still fix it at least–

In any case. I had an idea.

Said idea made me stop off at a grocery store right after work, but I had a very specific list for this trip, and the shop I picked was on the way to Steve’s apartment, so it worked as well as it could. The ‘potentially terrible’ part of the plan was the part where I had to cook, which was normally not recommended. Thankfully, though, this particular recipe was a fairly easy soup I had made several times before, so I knew it was good, easy, predictable time-wise, and, most importantly, me-proof.

As soon as I had the ingredients and a couple of loaves of really good bread from a nearby bakery, I scurried over to Steve’s apartment and…let myself in. With the key he had given me. It was more thrilling than I wanted to admit, and the feeling helped buoy me through the initial panic of not knowing where he would keep a stockpot, which turned into, ‘fuck, what if he doesn’t have one,’ but thankfully my Depression-era boy came through, and I was able to start making the soup without any further issue.

Once everything was chopped, poured, and cooking away on the stove, I checked the clock, but I still had plenty of time before he came home. I just had to let him know not to stop at my place.

Me: I’m rummaging through your sock drawer Steve: I keep the good pin-ups in with the tank tops

I…stopped what I was doing to go check. And found only disappointment.

Me: It’s not nice to lie to your girlfriend >:( Steve: Wait Steve: You’re serious? Me: Well I WAS lying about the sock drawer Me: But if you tell me there’s old-timey porn hanging out with your undershirts of course I’m going to go check Steve: That’s fair Steve: What are you doing in my apartment? Steve: Anything fun? ;)

I rolled my eyes. But I did file that thought away for another time.

Me: Nothing I’d call fun Me: Otherwise– it’s a surprise Steve: A surprise???

Oh shit, three question marks. He was excited.

Me: Lower your expectations Me: It’s nothing special Me: Expect an empty kitchen and me passed out on your couch snoring and covered in crumbs Steve: Still a better sight than I’d get otherwise :)

I smiled to myself and turned back to the stove, stirring with newfound determination. This was not going to suck.

I hoped.

I’d gotten a warning text when Steve got close, but my stomach still flipped when I heard the lock turn and the door crack open. I kept my attention on the stove even as I heard him walk in. He didn’t say anything though, and I swallowed my fear. “Hey,” I said and, despite having no idea how he was, one way or the other, I turned to face him. “Welcome home.”

He stared for a few seconds more, from the stove to me and back and forth again (which was maybe a little insulting) but then he smiled. And that smile grew and grew and kept getting bigger as he walked towards me, and part of me was embarrassedly thankful I didn’t have to see just how big it could get before he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in for a tight hug. He dropped his head next to mine and hunched so he could press his forehead to my shoulder. “This is the best homecoming ever,” he said emphatically.

I put my hand on the back of his neck. “The soup might suck. You haven't even tasted it yet.”

He huffed a laugh. “I don’t care.” He kissed the side of my neck and stood back up fully, looking just as happy as he looked exhausted (which was quite). “It’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever had.”

“You're a shit liar,” I reminded him.

“Exactly,” he said and kissed my nose.

I turned away and covered my face. “You fucking dork–”

He laughed and pulled gently at my hands. “Let me see that smile…”

“I’m not smiling; you’re embarrassing,” I said, but I was smiling as I playfully pushed him away. “Go change and then sit; I’ll bring everything over.”

But he didn’t leave, and the way he looked at me– and around– and back at me– made me pause. There was something sad in his expression. “Steve?”

He paused, but shook his head. “It’s stupid,” he said. “Can’t I help with anything?”

He sounded genuine about it, and he was weird like that, so I looked around and took stock of what I had going on. “Um…” I turned back to him. “Get changed and wash your hands and you can cut up the bread. I wanna make sure the soup doesn’t taste like gravel.”

He leaned over me and inhaled from the pot. He let out a little satisfied, “Mmm,” before pulling back. “Sure doesn’t smell like gravel.”

“Oh good, glad I hid the rocks and dirt well enough.” I made a shooing motion at him. “Scoot. Before I eat all the bread.”

It was enough to get him going, and he must have dressed in record time because it felt like less than a minute before I heard the bathroom sink running. In there, at least, he didn’t skimp on the time, and when he came back in, he was dressed in comfy clothes, and with his drooping eyes, he looked almost impossibly tired. I glanced at the soup. “You know, I sometimes make this when I don’t want to have to think about dinner for a week,” I said. “It keeps really well; maybe–”

“No,” he said and straightened up, stubborn as he was. He even blinked his eyes into opening more, which he then used to give me a devastatingly sad look. “I’m really hungry, and I really want to eat it fresh.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, a little taken aback by his effusiveness. “Then, how about you dish the bowls instead? I don’t know that I trust you with a knife right now.”

He went, got the serrated knife from the block, and silently went to work on one of the loaves. I did not miss the smug glance he shot at me. I rolled my eyes. “You are such a jerk,” I said, but I started dishing out the bowls. I made sure to get all I would need for my serving, knowing Steve would be up and down getting seconds and thirds and– well, if it wasn’t still hot, I would have been tempted to just bring the whole damn pot over for him.

“You love it,” he said.

“My taste is almost as deplorable as yours,” I said, not really paying attention as I put his maybe-too-full-bowl aside for when I could grab it with both hands. Which was good, because I almost jumped when he was so suddenly right next to me, grabbing my bowl out of my hands and setting it aside. I turned to look at him and– he was so serious. “Steve?”

He swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said and slipped his arm around me. “I guess I’m just a little sensitive right now. Even when the mean things you say are about you.”

“Okay.” Not like we hadn’t had that discussion a time or two (or thousand) before, and I knew when to leave it. I turned to face him and put my arms up and clasped my hands behind his neck. “What’s wrong? Remember, it’s mean to lie to your girlfriend. Just putting that out there.”

He gave a brief chuckle and even briefer smile. But he didn’t look discontent as he pulled my hips in so that our bodies were pressed together. “Honestly? Right now, I feel really good,” he said, and kissed me. “It’s been a long week and coming home today just…especially feels like coming home, you know?” He then smiled a bit and teased, “Though I did wonder what alternate universe I walked into when I came in to see you cooking…”

I snorted. “Well, don’t get used to it. I’m not the wif–” shitshitshit, “–h-homemaking–” worst save ever, “–sort.” I swallowed hard and looked at his chest, unwilling to see his face in the moment. I didn’t know what had possessed me to say it like that. “But…you’ve been working especially hard, and soup is something even I can do.”

“You do a lot.” He tilted my chin up and kissed me and, thankfully, didn’t mention the weird-ass slip. “Thank you.” He pulled back. “I’ll finish the bread.”

“Don’t ruin it by cutting yourself,” I said as I started to take the drinks and napkins to the breakfast bar. “Any blood you get on the bread, you’ll be eating.”

“Thanks for that appetizing thought.”

“It’s incentive.”

He did manage to get through the loaves without spilling any blood, and the night passed like any other. Except for when he conked out and I had a mini-crisis about almost referring to myself as a ‘wife,’ even in the negative. Because I really, really wasn’t the wife-y type, and even now it wasn’t something I could ever imagine happening, so I wondered what had possessed me to (almost) say it.

Maybe it was weird. People always talked about partners like they intended to one day settle down permanently, and if not, then they knew they were playing the field. I was…neither. Marriage really wasn’t something I thought about. On the other hand, while I never really thought too far in the future about anything, (too concerned with just making it day to day), if I did actively stretch my thoughts out, I couldn’t imagine life without Steve anymore. I didn’t want to imagine that.

Of course disaster was always a possibility, in anything– and I had to pull my thoughts back from the many possible disastrous turns our lives could take– but if we carried on, and nothing terrible happened, then I wanted to stay with Steve for as long as he would have me. Was it weird, then, that marriage wasn’t something I actively desired? I just wanted to be like this, him and me, maybe forever. Ring or no ring.

I turned on my side and watched him, face slack in sleep, and relaxed at how utterly out he was. I slipped my hand over the one he had flopped onto the pillow. His other arm was loosely draped over my side, like it almost always was when we slept together.

Even without marriage, we were as stuck together as any devoted couple, and I didn’t doubt that Steve wouldn’t leave without a damn good reason. And vice versa. I’d just had a stupid slip of the tongue that didn’t really mean anything; people dated for years without bringing marriage up and I was just getting in my head about it. If Steve didn’t care about it, then I wouldn’t have to either, and if he suddenly did, we would just have a talk about it, he’d accept it wasn’t right for me right now, and we’d continue on as normal.

Steve grunted in his sleep and the arm he had loose over me suddenly curled to pull me closer. I smiled, shut my eyes, and exhaled some of the last tension I held, drifting off with the certainty that neither of us were going anywhere.

<<Previous Chapter Next Chapter>>

#steve rogers x reader #captain america fanfic #avengers fanfic #captain america reader insert #avengers reader insert #dinner date

10 notes · View notes

thirddoctor · 4 months ago

Note

I always love seeing your Doctor Who thoughts so I would love to know what your overall thoughts on the most recent season are please! And where do you think it'll go next?

I think I'd have to rewatch it (now knowing where it's going and what it's trying to do) to assess it fairly.

But my individual ep thoughts are basically:

The Church on Ruby Road - decent opener but never tries too hard

Space Babies - cute but also nothing remarkable

The Devil's Chord - one standout scene, the rest is an incoherent mess that hinges on you enjoying a villain performance I unfortunately didn't enjoy

Boom - Moffat being very Moffat, which will either be a pro or a con depending on your point of view, but I loved it

73 Yards - most atmospheric episode we've had in a long time, felt genuinely fresh, but just didn't work for me the way it seems to have for other people

Dot and Bubble - the other standout episode of the season, interesting concept presented in an interesting way with a great performance at the end

Rogue - fun ideas, more great acting from Ncuti, but I thought the romance was a little rushed (and Doctor romance is generally not my thing anyway)

The Legend of Ruby Sunday - a couple of great scenes, the rest is a whole lot of nothing stretched out way too long while the audience is teased by more interesting bait (Susan, Ruby's mother) and instead presented with... Sutekh

Empire of Death - while there's nothing unusual about an RTD finale being messy, at least the others offered a strong emotional core to make you feel like you got your money's worth, whereas in this one the stuff with Ruby's mother is too little too late and made me feel cheated, even as someone who's perfectly happy for her to be an ordinary human

I think the season tries a lot of new and interesting things, and I love that, but it also amplifies all the flaws in RTD's previous seasons, sometimes without carrying over the corresponding strengths, and it's a reminder of how much I would love to see the show run by someone fresh. However, it's certainly an improvement on the previous era, and I genuinely had a good time watching each week.

I'm looking forward to the next season (and particularly the upcoming special), but I hope we get a bit more depth to the new companion and her dynamic with the Doctor. Not sure where things are likely to go--presumably we'll learn more about Mrs. Flood, though at this stage I'm not committed to any particularly theory about her (but I do think the idea that she's dressing up like previous companions is nonsense, much like TV Show Theory was). I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Rogue again, or if the real Susan showed up (unless all of that really was just bait).

I think it's important to remember that these two seasons were planned as one whole, so I will still reserve some judgment even on things I didn't like till we see how it all comes together. It's also possible there was a lot more development for Ruby that was planned for her second season, now that her mystery's resolved, which may no longer happen due to Millie having to step back. If that's the case, hopefully they make the most of the screentime she does get.

Anyway, thanks for the ask! :)

#Replies #goldheartedchaoticdisaster #Ranger shut up about Doctor Who

10 notes · View notes

mcytblraufest · 11 months ago

Note

Question, I am thinking of making a mcyt event myself, and I would just like to know if there is anyway you seem to be able to reach out and gain an audience so well? How do you suggest one would reach out to the demographic they're looking for?

Honestly I think the holiday exchange gets a decent audience because of

a) Already having an audience. This is the third major event that we've run through this blog, and we have over six hundred followers to it, just slowly gained over almost two years. This mod team has a record of events that have run majority successfully, so when we start up an event, people already know that like— this is a mod team who's fairly organized and will get pinch hits for drops, for example.

b) Deliberately designing events to be as broad-interest as possible. Holiday exchanges run in every fandom in this time of year, and we are deliberately open to all of mcyt, despite the matching difficulties that presents, to try and make sure everybody can be included if they want to be. And this is a decently long creation period with a low minimum. We only saw ⅔ of the signup for aufest, which has a higher minimum for creation, and when some of the same mod team did 48 hour exchange (which was still pan-mcyt and a low minimum, just an insane turnaround for gifts), we had about a ⅓ of the signup for the holiday exchange. So any sort of demographic tightening— focusing on a single smp, a single ship, a larger minimum, no art, etc— you're gonna see much fewer people.

So some of what we do to get the word out is just not replicable to every event. HOWEVER, what we do do is:

Tag our promo posts with every tag that seems appropriate for our theme— so like we tag our initial posts with every mcyt fandom over 1000 works on the archive— and also mcyt and mcytblr, and also fandom exchange and holiday exchange. Make sure that if people have followed tags, the post will show up in them.

A new promo post once a week during the promo period, tagged appropriately. It's the same information as last time, just in a new format, and reminding people of the deadline. You don't want to be annoying, so make posts as fun and polite as possible, but it's just a like "hey, this is happening, you're welcome to join!" thing. Things drop out of the tag fast, so you want to come back like hey! Here is a thing!

Reblog the promo post to our own blog once a day, at different times of day so you hit different time zones. One day you reblog it at 11pm, the next day it's going out at 7am. If people have followed the blog (and this is particularly because we have followers of the blog from old events), the odds that they see the promo post goes up.

This one is a bit more wibbly wobbly but try and sure that your promo posts have something actionable on them. If you have a discord, it has a join the discord link on it. If you have a google form, it has the google form on it. If you have prompts the prompts are either listed or teased in such a way that people click through. You CAN have hype-building promo posts that the thing people can do is follow the blog, but in that case you fill it full of teasers or info so people are like "well I gotta see what happens next".

Images are good? Either an image (id described) or as snappy as you can make it ad copy. You have like a second and a half to catch someone's attention in the tag, and you want that initial impression to get as much information across as possible, and also lure people to read more. So if you can communicate either "this person has a graphic designer/artist on the team" or (honestly what I'm usually communicating) "this person knows how to use canva", it helps bump the overall impression of your event as slightly more professional/organized, which increases the likelihood that people click through.

Promo posts are basically advertising, so you want to be informative, clear, interesting, funny if possible, and hook your viewer in some way. With that said, we got a decent amount of notes off of the recursive exchange "this is how you sign up" post because people were just like "you gotta take a look at this shit" so sometimes it just works if you have something worth sharing.

I am NOT professional at advertising this is just basically me having been on tumblr for a decade, so feel free to look at other events to see how they do it. But I hope this helps! And message me your event when it's ready to go, I'd love to signal boost it!

#aggressivenesswhilecrying #ask

11 notes · View notes

liskantope · 1 year ago

Note

I always find your thoughts on dating apps to be super interesting, and I'm sorry to hear about the demoralizing nature of it (which has been precisely my experience, too, for the past couple of years).

It got me randomly thinking, do you feel that one reason the dating sites don't generally work is because, counterintuitively, there's too much to choose from? In other words, the very fact that we know there are so many profiles makes us more likely to pass on people who we might have been willing to give a chance in real life.

I'll admit outright that I'm guilty of that, and it might not be the case with most other people, but I do wonder if the overabundance of profiles on the dating apps has some unhelpful effect.

I hope you have better luck real soon, by the way!

Thanks for the kindness and commiseration! In fact, just in the last couple of years, everyone I hear discussing modern online dating seems to express a disgust with it and seems to feel some degree/variety of hopelessness around it. I was at a meetup event organized by a woman for single men some months ago, the purpose being to discuss what the dating world looks like from men's point of view, and the one thing that we seemed to unanimously agree on was "Online dating sucks!" Part of it clearly has to do with dating apps just visibly getting worse. Just twice in the past couple of weeks there have been snarky offhand mentions (one of them on ACX) of "OKCupid, back when it was still good". And I have the same feeling: it's hard for me to put a finger on precisely which changes in the interface of the dating apps I've been on have made the overall experience much worse than it was even a few years ago*, but it's there.

Anyway, to more closely address your question, I've heard the "paralysis and decreased happiness from having more choices" hypothesis from time to time in conversations (mostly from podcasts) about the modern world of dating. It's a much more generally-applied hypothesis as to why there seems to be more unhappiness (among certain populations) in modern times than half a century ago; I even recall there being a famous TED talk on it. I think this phenomenon must have an effect for some people in some areas of the online dating realm, but my suspicion is that this is mostly a factor for women seeking men through online dating. My impression of most women on dating apps who are reasonably attractive and have some ability to post decent photos is that they have a plethora of men to choose from, a very large percentage of whom will right-swipe them back, so they might as well aim for the top. But then, the men they perceive via very limited digital profiles to be the cream of the crop often turn out to be disappointing in person.

This could be an issue for some non-women not seeking men online as well, I suppose (although from what I hear, my experience of putting tons of energy in desperate hopes of getting a single match every now and then is pretty normal for men seeking women, even men I would consider more attractive than me, and plenty of men who are not me follow the strategy of just right-swiping everyone so your suggestion certainly doesn't seem to apply to them). But I don't really think it's an issue for me: as I said in my last post, the vast majority of dating profiles I see show women don't enthuse me on one or more fairly basic parameters (this is particularly the case on OKCupid, where a lot more information tends to be exposed). This sounds like I'm being very demanding -- and whether I am is a question I ask myself all the time -- but these criteria just don't seem like they should be too much to ask for, although I'm beginning to see why as our history progresses and as I get older it was bound to get harder and harder to find them.

These basic parameters aren't as visible with someone you've just met in real life, and maybe if I met some of them in real life I'd find them more dateable than they appear in a profile, and maybe chemistry would take over powerfully enough for me to be more flexible on certain things than I currently think myself capable of. But admitting this possibility is subtly but significantly different from saying that the multitude of choices presented to me on dating sites raises my standards: I just don't think it has, or that for me the larger number of choices has anything to do with it.

Anyway, I wish you better luck too!

*The closest I can come to explaining coherently is that they are more visibly trying to find ways to get my money. Which I find not only annoying but somehow infantalizing in a way I can't quite explain, even to myself. My attitude doesn't seem entirely defensible when I zoom out and consider that there's no reason dating sites should have to be free: they are businesses that have to stay in business and have every right to try to get me to pay money. There's just some holdout within the last bit of my internalized stigma around using dating sites that makes me strangely proud of how I've never spent a single penny on dating sites in 11-12 years of on-and-off using them. (At the single men's event I mentioned above, one bit of advice some other guys gave to me is "if you're a guy, you have to spend money on dating apps, otherwise they're not going to be effective.")

#online dating #okcupid #the paradox of choice

9 notes · View notes

literary-illuminati · 2 years ago

Text

Book Review 6 – Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

I’m vaguely aware that Bardugo’s a fairly prolific and well-regarded author, but before reading this the only thing of hers I’d ever opened was the book it’s a sequel to. Now, I actually really adored Ninth House, but I’ve had a few people tell me it’s pretty atypical of her work, and the hanging sequel hook at the end was the worst part of it – it was a perfectly lovely self-contained story, really. So, went into this one with a decent amount of trepidation, even if there’s no chance I wasn’t going to read it.

The book absolutely does read and feel like an unneeded sequel - @wearethekat has told me that the series was all planned out ahead of time, which frankly I would not have guessed. The plot was a big disjointed and some of the final act felt like a desperate attempt to tie up loose ends more than an actual reveal. I still just absolutely and totally do not care about Darlington. But overall it was still a fun read? I don’t regret the preorder, anyway.

But yes, plot-wise the story was messy – I actually loved the whole subplot with Alex being low-rent occult muscle roughing up people who owe a drug dealer money, and I would happily have read a whole book centred around that whole mess. But having her entirely coincidentally run into a vampire whose backstory and situation just happen to be key to the reveal of the main plot itself felt – well, just made the author’s puppet strings feel a bit too obvious, I suppose?

Though the main plot itself was always kind of a hard sell for me – which is to say, I thought Darlington was way more interesting as a corpse than as a character. The golden boy hero with the glamorous but burdensome inheritance whose read all the books and knows the proper way to do everything is just a much better part of the narrative after the protagonist panics and gets him killed and is now scrambling to keep things form falling to pieces in his place, y’know? So a book whose central premise is ‘lets go to hell and get him back!’ was, well, less than inspiring. So I might be judging it too harshly – it cohered?

Much like Ninth House, my main issue with the plot is actually just the ending. As mentioned, I recently learned the book was always planned to be part of a series – it still really didn’t feel like it? The obvious setup for the plot of the next book felt like it came a bit out of nowhere at the very end of the denouncement, and frankly it seems like the setup for a fun superhero-lite monster of the week action-adventure cartoon than a dark urban fantasy novel. (Also, I would have forgiven the book a lot if it spent so much time and effort carefully laying out so much hilarious blatant bdsm subtext between Alex and Darlington – not even sub, really, there’s a fiery astral collar involved – and then not actually had a textual romance between them. But if there’s still another book in the series it’s just forward planning and thus far less funny).

Though I suppose one major reason for my lack of interest in a sequel is just that the trend of the series seems to be that the magic is getting, well, higher powered isn’t the right term, but perhaps simpler might be? Which is a shame, because the aesthetics and general vibe of the magic – distasteful and messy in its components, full of elaborate ritual and pomp and circumstance, embedded in time and space and empowered by centuries of ruthless looting and hoarding – is really one of the main appeals of the setting. To the extent that Alex and Darlington can just do magical girl transformation sequences and start glowing, it loses a lot of its charm for me.

Generally tone and mood are a strength of the book, especially when it gets away from the hellfire. Alex is a truly amazing protagonist to be stuck inside the head of, and her general ambivalence towards life at Yale – her visceral disgust at the people and the bone-deep institutional rot combined with her hunger for the privileged, comfortable life of culture and learning and beauty being able to use that rot allows – is a really great throughline to how New Haven is characterized throughout the book. Bardugo’s got a real love for all the historical trivia about Yale and a blistering contempt for the sort of people who really run it and it’s whole existence as an institution – I checked to make sure, but yeah you can absolutely tell she’s an alumnus.

I know I already said as much while complaining but – the way these books do magic is just an absolute joy, it honestly is. Really nails the middle ground between like, fun over the top ceremonial magic, and making/have to drink potions of the most random/rare/disgusting things to keep ghosts from eating you. It’s also just overall a very satisfyingly cynical take on magic, and a kind of bleak look at the whole magical boarding school genre – if there’s a secret school that monopolizes magical lore and teaches it to very special students, of course those students are going to end up secretaries of state and managing partners at big law firms and perennial pop stars. Divine mysteries and the life of the mind are all well and good, but power is power is power (it’s rather Pact-like, in that way, magic isn’t this wondrous escape from/panacea to societal oppression, just another axis it can be reflected through)

Anyways, the actual main draw of this series is the protagonist, and Galaxy Stern never ceases to be an absolute joy to read. In the alternate universe where Darlington is the protagonist and the series has an inexplicably popular tv adaptation everyone would hate her so fucking much. The book was good basically in direct proportion to how often let her be an unhinged spiky bitch with no chill and lie, cheat, steal and occasionally super justifiably murder her way to success. I love horrifically traumatized social climber/imposters, con artists, and people with incredibly overdeveloped Shakespearean senses of payback so much.

The rest of the supporting cast is also fine I guess. Very funny that in a world where the western occult tradition seems to be substantively correct and the entire plot is breaking a damned soul out of hell, Turner appears to be to the first approximation the only actual Christian in New Haven. He’s also got a really fun dynamic with Alex, in a ‘you could make a really weird buddy cop police procedural’ out of this kind of way. Trip is decent comic relief and Dawes, Mercy, etc all fill their narrative purposes.

So yeah in conclusion read Ninth House (...check the content warnings first, maybe), and also the sequel’s needless but pretty decent too.

#book review #Hell Bent #leigh bardugo #sff #ninth house

32 notes · View notes

doorplays · 1 year ago

Text

Door Reviews: Dicey Dungeons (2019)

Weeks ago, I posted on Reddit asking for cozy game recommendations. Someone recced me this game in response. And so I tried it!

Right out of the gate though, I wouldn’t really say this is cozy? Since it requires some thinking and some math. But nonetheless, I played a lot of hours of it, and now I’m comfy enough to give a review! Let’s talk about Dicey Dungeons!

What’s it about? A bunch of people decide to go dungeon diving for a chance at having their wishes come true, but soon realize that navigating the dungeon is more difficult than they anticipated! Also they got transformed into dice?? And must use the power of dice to have a chance at victory and, potentially, escape…

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

Dicey Dungeons is a roguelike similar to the likes of Slay the Spire and Enter the Gungeon, in that you have to explore floors, open treasure chests, and defeat enemies to gain more advantages to get to the final boss of the dungeon and defeat them.

In combat, gameplay revolves around turn-based battle. Each turn, you get a set number of dice that you can use to slot into the equipment you start with. The value of the dice you roll usually influences the amount of damage you deal. Once you defeat an enemy, you get gold, a full heal, and experience. Getting enough experience lets you level up, which gets you dice and other advantages.

As you explore the dungeon more, you gain access to more equipment. You have a maximum of six (6) slots for equipment, and some of them can use up two slots. This manifests in you having to build up your character in a way that deals enough damage to enemies so you can progress through the floors. Typical roguelike stuff really!

There are five (5) unlockable characters, each with a unique playstyle. And as you play, you unlock more “episodes” for each character, which are really just unique rulesets that you can play around with. Some of these episodes change the mechanics of each character in a fun way, and some of them just make things more difficult.

The aesthetics of the game are rather cute! Nice art, fun music, jokey characters. I love Lady Luck’s design too, the epaulettes are a nice touch.

Overall I think the style of the game is… cute! Nice and easy on the eyes.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

There… isn’t really much of a story to speak of. Characters get in a dungeon, slowly realize they’re not gonna get their wish, and now must get out. Really, the story seems more an excuse for the game to have a leg to stand on. But it is okay enough for me not to have any glaring complaints.

The characters are mostly fun and cute. When you get achievements, you unlock their character sheet (sort of), and you get more of an insight into them. There is a certain nice humor to this game, the kind that elicits a little chuckle every time.

I liked the vibe of the final battle though, the scales are big enough, and the gameplay is very unique. I dunno, I don’t think there’s much else for me to say here, really. I find the story and the whole game just okay? Yeah.

VERDICT

Dicey Dungeons is, I would say, a decent game to play on your phone to pass the time. It is a fairly mediocre roguelike by itself. The art is nice, the aesthetic is fun, but the gameplay itself could pop more. Though I have to admit, the characters have unique and interesting gameplay mechanics, but I didn’t really feel any lasting feeling of accomplishment playing this game.

It’s an okay game! Just… nothing to write home about. I’d give this a lukewarm recommendation if you want a game to pass the time with.

Door Rates Dicey Dungeons: 3/5!

#door reviews #dicey dungeons

2 notes · View notes

allthemusic · 2 months ago

Text

Week ending: 15th May

Four songs! It's been a while! And all four of these are pleasingly varied, as a bonus - a sort of sample platter of different stuff that was going on in 1958, from the mainstream to the less mainstream, to the "wait, how did this chart, again?"

Wear My Ring Around Your Neck - Elvis Presley (peaked at Number 3)

No, I also do not know why the ring isn't around your finger. That seems like the obvious place to want somebody to wear your ring. But this song, nevertheless, is all about how much Elvis wants his love to wear his ring around their neck, as an engagement gift: Won't you wear my ring around your neck / To tell the world I'm your, by heck!

No, I didn't invent that slightly awkward "by heck", Elvis really is here mincing his oaths like somebody's grandmother. It's quaint, by modern standards, wholesome, but very much a product of its era. Similarly, the focus on getting engaged and married also feels like a slightly old-fashioned thing, and lines about how They say that goin' steady is not the proper thing / They say that we're too young to know the meaning of a ring feel like they're offering a glimpse into a social issue that we just don't have today. Apprently there was some concern in the 1950s about teenagers jumping too soon into getting engaged? Whereas I feel like nowadays, marriage is more of an afterthought, or is just a little less central of a goal for a relationship - certainly, we've not got songs about getting married young, in quite the same way.

As songs go, it's fine, with lots of guitar, piano and hand claps, which really seem to be shaping up as the sound of 1958. I don't know how many songs this year have involved clapping, but I feel like I've been mentioning it every other week. Which isn't a problem at all, I feel like there are very few songs that aren't livened up by a bit of clapping. And overall, here, the pace and energy does keep things fresh. Elvis and his backing singers are on fine form, and just in general, it's a perfectly enjoyable song. Maybe a little repetitive - I keep thinking it's finished and then there's another chorus! - but it doesn't drag, or get boring. So yeah, decent.

Tom Hark - Elias and His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes (2)

With a group name like this, you know you're in for something special, and so it was with a certain excitement that I hit play on this song, which I was pretty sure was fairly obscure. And we start, intriguingly, with a spoken section, men speaking in a south African language, money clattering onto a table and then suddenly pennywhistles, multiple, playing - wait a minute, don't I know this?

It turns out Tom Hark is a song with an improbably impressive afterlife. It started out as a South African kwela tune, kwela being a genre of street music, played mostly on pennywhistles, with jazz and skiffle influences, that developed in the 1950s. A certain Jack Lerole and his brother Elias made this particular version popular, and were playing in on the streets of Johannesburg when a record producer approached them about making it into a record, which then became a hit outside of South Africa when it was used in a 1958 BBC programme called The Killing Stones, all about diamond smuggling in South Africa, at which point a whole bunch of people seem to have covered it. Then, rather improbably, it was covered in 1980 by a ska punk band called the Piranhas, and from there it was picked up as a football chant, popular to the point where even I - somebody who has absolutely no interest in following football - instinctively knew the tune of this from I guess the school playground? Honestly, I have genuinely no idea where I learnt the Tom Hark tune, but it's a really simple, catchy one, and probably easy to fit lyrics to, so I can kind of see why it works. But yeah, I challenge you to name a less probable hit song!

I like it a lot. There's a cheeriness, the same sort of DIY vibe that you get with some skiffe songs, and like I said, it's simple, a sort of freewheeling tune that sounds particularly carefree and bright. There's something a bit cacophonic about all the penny whistles, which are played breathily, and it's got a sort of rough-around-the-edges charm to it all, held together as it is by a strummed guitar and sheer enthusiasm. It's exciting, possibly just because it's so different to just about everything else out there.

Amazingly, it wasn't even that bit a hit in South Africa itself. Jack Lerole, the brains behind the operation, seems to have gone on to have a fairly extensive musical career, but none of the musicians on the record were really remunerated for this hit, which is bizarre to me, given the success it's clearly gone on to have!

And yes, in case you were wondering, Tom Hark isn't a person. It's apparently a corruption of "tomahawk", the name chosen for the tomahawks that the Lerole brothers would carry around the streets of Johannesburg to protect themselves. The more you know!

Grand Coulee Dam - Lonnie Donegan (6)

And then, from the mean streets of Johannesburg, we're transported to the wilds of Washington state, with a song about the Grand Coulee Dam, a 1930s hydroelectric project on the Columbia River. If this strikes you as an unlikely subject for a song, you're not wrong, and the story of how it happened is kind of fascinating.

The song was originally written by Woody Guthrie in 1941. The dam, at this point, had been in construction for almost a decade, and was almost finished. And it had been pretty controversial, with various locals fighting for a lower dam. So when Woody arrives, he's hired by the local Bonneville Power Administration to write propaganda songs about the whole Columbia River for a documentary that was supposed to drum up support for greater federal regulation of hydropower, showing the benefits of hydroelectric dams more generally. Woody thus arrives, spends by all accounts quite a productive month travelling around and writing songs, inspired by the beautiful setting, only for the documentary to get delayed by World War II. In the end, Woody writes 17 songs, which is still a lot of songs to write about one river, but less than the proposed 26, and none of them see the light of day until 1949, well after the war is done.

Despite this, the song's lyrics definitely hint at World War II, or at least at the sort of patriotic context that Woody was writing in. It's never explicitly stated, after all, but this is a song that just drips in American pride, even from the opening lines, as the narrator sings about how a new wonder of the world now exists in Uncle Sam's fair land.

America, throughout, is a beautiful, wild country, and the song's depiction of nature is genuinely really beautiful. It's not overblown or overly sentimental, but there's something lovely in the description of how the Columbia River heads up the Canadian Rockies / Where the rippling waters glide, / Comes a-roaring down the canyon / For to meet that salty tide, or in the lines about the misty crystal glitter / Of the wild and windward spray.

It's the land that Woody loves the best, and he treats it with a real affection, but he never slips into pining after some idealised, unspoilt verison of it. This song is supposed to be propaganda for hydroelectric power, after all, and so we instead get a song that respects nature but also shows how dangerous it can be, describing how the Columbia River breaks up boats and kills sailors, leading them to dream of a dam. And finally, in 1933, it happens: Now Uncle Sam took up the challenge / In the year of thirty three / For the farmer and the factory / And all of you and me. Taming nature becomes a heroic act, a feat of modern engineering.

It's a decidedly gritty, industrial vision of America, with raw, hard work centred throughout . Even the river becomes a labourer, in the song, as the dam-builder declares river, while you're rambling / You can do some work for me. And so we finish up with a verse about everything that the newly dammed river can power, how now from Washington and Oregon / You can hear the factories hum / Making chrome and making manganese / And white aluminum. It's odd, in a way - I certainly can't think off the top of my head of any other song singing the praises of chrome and manganese - and it's very much a product of its 1940s origins, with other lines nodding to how planes built in the Pacific Northwest went on to be instrumental in the US war effort. There's a subtle recognition, in all this, at the contributions of the American working class, and the respect due to them - it's not bashing you over the head with it, but the love and pride for a decidedly non-glamourous part of the America is absolutely part of the song's appeal, at least for me.

So yeah, the song came out in 1949, and while it wasn't ever quite forgotten, it sounds like it was kept in the public consciousness thanks in no small part to Lonnie's cover, here. It's not a completely wild thing for him to have covered - he's always favoured American folk songs, but for Lonnie, a 1950s Glaswegian, to cover a song so rooted in one very specific American historical and regional context is still pretty odd, the more you think about it. Either way, Lonnie does do a good job. It's more of a narrative, lyric-focussed song than he usually goes for, and he sings it compellingly, painting this interesting, nuanced portrait of a dam that most British listeners have absolutely no reason to care about. But yeah, I think most of the reason this works is Woody Guthrie's writing, which is folksy and idealistic and just scratches a very specific itch. Good stuff!

Lollipop - The Mudlarks (2)

And so, finally, a British cover of an American song we've only just heard. I liked the Chordettes' version of this song, and to be honest, this version isn't very different, so a lot of the thigns I said then hold true here, too. It's a fun bit of throwaway catchiness, and as such, pretty enjoyable.

I have to say, I do think that this version isn't quite as good as the Chordettes', for a few key reasons. I liked the a cappella bits of the Chordettes' version, for example, with all the hand claps. Here, you don't get that, just a much heavier instrumental backing. Plus, the harmonies here are just that little bit less crisp, less complex. And worst of all, it's gone from being an all-female ensemble to a mixed one. One of the things I really liked about the Chordettes was their "girls giggling about boys" energy, and having men joining in loses some of that. Which is a shame, we really haven't had enough "girl groups" yet!

On the plus side, there is something very cool about the effects that the Mudlarks have included here, including a sort of echoey, layered effect on the introduction. It's delightfully trippy, and just that little bit weird - it's a subtle thing, but it's the sort of studio trick that we're hopefully going to see more and more of, going forward. They've kepy the "pop" sound, too, which is absolutely the correct decision, a real memorable bit of silliness.

On a side note, I was also charmed to find out that the Mudlarks, aside from having an excellent name, were a vocal group who originally became successful while they were all still working at a Luxton Vauxhall factory, and just sang in their breaks and off-time. What a fun origin story!

I feel like weeks like this are the best kind of week on this project. We had four songs, a mix of different origins, styles and vibes. We've had rock and roll from Elvis, the biggest star out there at this point, a bizarrely unlikely South African song that has since become a British football chant, a Glaswegian skiffle cover of a 1940s wartime propaganda song about a specific American hydroelectric dam, and a British knock-off cover of a particularly daft American bit of girl-group a cappella fluff. And literally all of it was entirely listenable. Two of the songs were definitely more interesting to me, though, and it'll be hard to decide between them. I think at the end of the day, Tom Hark is more interesting, and mjusically more significant, but if you have to pick one I enjoyed more, just on a gut level, it's probably Lonnie. Sorry!

Favourite song of the bunch: Grand Coulee Dam

#uk charts #1958 #elvis presley #elias & his zig-zag jive flutes #lonnie donegan #the mudlarks

0 notes

starlight-time-machine · 4 months ago

Text

Week in Review

07/14/2024 – 07/20/2024

Sunday

Week 23 of missing Cipher Academy

Undead Unluck was pretty cute this week. It’s great to see that even in this loop, Tatiana still loves Panpanda…I’d love to hug the Panpanda mascot too…

One Piece is so good…get them robot boy…

Monday

Nothing whoops

Tuesday

Chainsaw Man…

After playing it feverishly for the past week, I finally 100%d Kirby and the Forgotten Land (and on Wild Beast mode, too). I’m not a hardcore gamer by any means, and this is what one might call a “game for babies,” but man some of the true final bosses were really tough. The game as a whole was super fun, though – I love games where you look around for collectibles, and this one certainly had those in spades. But I also appreciate that they designed each level in a way where if you had to replay it, you can just speed through it pretty quickly. All the little achievements and challenges were super fun (…most of the time), and I loved upgrading these familiar Kirby abilities into bigger and cooler things. And of course, all the Mouthful abilities are pretty funny. My favourite ability was Ranger – I loved just sniping enemies from afar and using the space blast and auto lock-on to cheese bosses. Speaking of the bosses…this was like the Dark Souls of video games for me, but I surprised myself by actually getting decent at memorizing patterns and dodging attacks (again, the most action intensive game I’ve played other than this is has been button mashing my way through Yakuza 0). And even though the coliseum wrecked my thumb, I had a lot of fun getting through it, and managed to beat the weird final boss orb thing by the skin of my teeth. And of course, all the gachapon figures were super cute and fun to collect. Overall, I’d give this game a 9/10.

I ended up dropping City of Girls because after we got to the theater, the story didn’t seem like it was going to be the vibes I was looking for…and after checking some reviews, I think my intuition was right. It seems like it’s more of a young girls having reckless fun story rather than a Revue Starlight We’re Already On The Stage type story, so I didn’t feel the need to read any further.

Wednesday

The new Oshi no Ko chapter is so annoying lol we’re just hitting all the cliché thriller beats now, huh? First the tragic misunderstanding and now the eleventh hour twist that the true culprit was an actual “crazed fangirl,” okay… After Oshi no Ko wraps up, I probably won’t read anything from this writer again. I’ve just completely lost all faith in their ability to wrap up a compelling story and make good on an interesting premise.

Started reading A Magical Girl Retires, which caught my eye with its gorgeous cover and intriguing premise. So far, the opening chapter spoke to me so much that it was scary, but the actual prose feels a little lacking.

Thursday

Alright, I finished A Magical Girl Retires, and god I wish it was a 300 page novel or a 24 episode anime instead. There really just wasn’t enough time to get to know the characters and see them developing a bond with each other, especially when it came to the light bit of queer love between the protagonist and Ah Roa. I feel like the ending would’ve been a lot more impactful if we had time to properly meet the supporting cast, explore the mystery of the protagonist’s ability before the truth is revealed, and slowly develop the tension of the true antagonist. The prose was also so stiff throughout, and lacked any personality or flair to this story all about beautiful magical girls. I get that they were trying to take a realistic approach to the genre, but if they’re going to have magical items and transformations anyway, I would’ve liked for them to have been written more descriptively. And the message we’re supposed to take away from this story at the end was fairly basic and almost cheesy… The overall themes feel so well considered, though, if you think about the intersection between capitalism and paying the price and how that manifests through our protagonist, so I think there’s a really good skeleton in this book. It was just the execution that was sorely lacking for me. Unfortunately, the best thing about A Magical Girl Retires is the cover art (and also she should’ve been called the Magical Girl of Balance…c’mon the credit card imagery is right there).

I also caught up with the ending of Akuheki and it’s fine. I can see they’re trying to maintain some hints of deviancy and darkness in the main relationship, but it’s just such a far cry from how they were in the beginning, and I’m not invested enough in the characters to be happy for their picturesque happy ending. I liked the bonus chapter with the co-worker and the housekeeper guy, but…c’mon…not even a smooch? Damn… Akuheki had a lot of potential for me in the beginning, and I think my enjoyment of the story peaked around volume 2 or 3, but overall I have to give it like a 6/10.

Friday

Started reading He Who Drowned the World, and I was worried about it not living up to the first book, but then we got a politically-motivated blowjob in the first 50 pages and we are SO back. It was never actually over but we are SO BACK.

Saturday

Touched grass and bought a physical copy of Seishi Yokomizo’s The Village of Eight Graves today.

#week in review #2024

0 notes

zacharyja · 6 months ago

Text

Independent Excursion - Media Reflection - Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium and Jujutsu Kaisen

Jujutsu Kaisen is a very popular relatively newly created Manga series, written and created by Gege Akutami. This series has been featured as a piece of the Shonen Jump weekly Shonen magazine, joining the likes of industry titans such as One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto. This series started in March of 2018, and has since ammassed a staggering 265 chapters, 47 anime episodes, and 1 movie.

After my roommate binge watched the entire first season of Jujutsu Kaisen on his own, he begged me to watch it with him for weeks until I finally caved and decided to check it out. After the first few episodes I was already hooked on it and was wanting to finish the entire series as fast as I could. We then binged the show for an entire day straight and I was caught up to the newest episode by no time. Jujutsu Kaisen also gave me an interesting perspective on Japan as a whole, as much of the show takes place mainly in Kawasaki City, in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan. In chapter 70 of the manga, and season 2 episode 3 of the anime, we see the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan depicted with some of the characters from the show. One of their friends ends up getting kidnapped, and the crew travels to Osaka to rescue them, which explains why they were in this area to begin with. This inspired me to come and visit the actual location as seen in the anime/manga, as I am a big fan of marine life in general and was captivated by this portrayal of the aquarium.

After seeing the show and loving it, as well as its portrayal of Japan overall, I found that it is closely accurate to how I have seen things firsthand during my time in Japan. It makes a lot of sense to conclude that Gege Akutami put a lot of his own experiences into the making of this series, as much of it is realistic.

After seeing how things operate in a University in Tokyo, I can imagine that a High School would be decently similar. So this gives me a pretty decent understanding of how realistic the high school setting and characters of the series are to reality. I can say that many of the depictions are fairly accurate, from the desks, to the classrooms, and even the outfits all seem to fit how Japanese High schools would actually be.

While at the aquarium, Luke and I made it a mission to find a spot closely resembling the actual Osaka Aquarium manga panel, with the shot of the whale sharks in the background. For some context, during this scene, one of the characters, Riko Amanai, is attempting to have a good send off on her last day before being absorbed - more than likely ending her life, for the good of Japan as a whole. One of the places that she goes to is the Osaka Aquarium, and is so impressed by the beauty of the whale sharks and other animals, that she begins to connect with the sheer size of the whale sharks and feels that the world is too big and has too much to offer to be willing to end her life prematurely. I have attached the manga panel depicting this below.

Getting to actually walk through this aquarium and see the whale sharks for all of their gargantuan beauty was pretty life changing, and I can see why Amanai would have changed her mind after being so enthralled in the wonders of these marine behemoths. Being in Japan as a whole has honestly given me a new perspective on the world and life in general. Getting to experience such a different culture so far away from home really shows you how much there is out there in the world that I have yet to explore. I have definitely seen my fair share of new places, but I have never gone somewhere as far away or different as Japan, and it has given me a bit more hope that there is reasons to keep chugging along in this world, as there is so much out there to see and so little time to see it all. There also honestly were not too many slippages between the series and reality, another example is how accurate Shibuya was to real life from the anime portrayal. They did an amazing job of portraying the city and I was pleasantly surprised to see that It was just as grandiose in real life as I had seen in the anime.

#japan #jujutsu kaisen

0 notes

markwatkinsreviews · 8 months ago

Text

MATCH REPORT: READING (0) 1 LINCOLN CITY (0) 1

EFL ONE : Saturday 6 April, 2024 : 3pm kick-off

Like last week, v Northampton Town, it was another blustery, Saturday afternoon in the Thames Valley, albeit with more sunshine.

Prior to today - inform Imps had inched up the table to 6th (and the Play offs) with The Royals (just above the relegation spots) in 18th.

Immediately after - born in the USA - referee, Alex Chilowicz, sounded the first whistle, Lincoln had a couple of quick and decent half-chances and although in the end a draw was perhaps a fair result, in terms of attacks as City's were definitely the sharpest.

As for Reading, they showed plenty of confidence and composure at the back but were slow switching defence into attack, although as the game closed down they were finding useful out balls to Azeez, who had an indifferent game, (suggest) mainly due to him not anticipating the ball coming too him. Femi seemed to make more of an effort 2nd half, but was look slow to react, first.

Baffling how Lincoln City players time wasted throughout so a fairly late Reading equaliser was rough justice. Bindon from a corner on 83 replying to Draper on 72 . Whilst it's usually a positive for a ref only to book three players in a game of football, as two were Reading's, one wonders how he missed the impish fakery that was clear for most of the home crowd to see - both halves. He could have at least booked an Imp who took forever to take thrown on, first half, although it was never a dirty game, so maybe Chilowicz feels justified in the low card count.

Overall, not a great spectacle despite a marvellous Harvey Knibbs goal-line dribble, but it was one of those occasions when the ref should have gone to Spec Savers, he was passively poor, and maybe at least one of three penalty claims for Reading should have been given. Reading's tactical failing (suggest) was not making any subs around the 60 min mark, when Royals were obviously flagging, and Imps on top.

An updated league table sees Lincoln drop one place to 7th and Reading up one, to 17th.

Reading: Pereira, Elliot, Knibbs, Smith, Azeez, Mukairu (Mola 70'), Yiadom ©, Dorsett (Ehibhatiomhan 70'), Bindon, Mbengue, Wing Subs not used: Button, Savage, Wareham, Abrefa, Craig.

Lincoln City: Jensen, Sorensen, Erhahon, Hackett, Taylor (Makama 68') , Bishop, O'Connor ©, House (Draper 51') Rouchan, Mitchell, Moylan (Eyoma 81') Subs not used: Wright, Jackson, Burroughs, Duffy, RDG MOTM = Jeriel Dorsett, played it safe so a neat & tidy performance at the back.

RDG PLAYER OF THE SEASION (My vote for) = Amadou Mbengue

LINCOLN CITY MOTM = No.2 Lasse Sorensen excelled down the flanks.

Attendance: 15,209

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 6/10

Mark Watkins, 6.4.24

0 notes

davidsimon23 · 10 months ago

Text

FitSpresso Reviews 2024: Does This New Weight Loss Supplement Really Deliver?

As an investigative health journalist, I’m always skeptical when a new “revolutionary” weight loss supplement hits the market. FitSpresso is the latest such product to gain attention, with bold claims of effortless fat burning. But does it really live up to the hype? I decided to thoroughly research the facts and conduct my own trial to find out.

What Is FitSpresso?

FitSpresso is a powdered supplement that dissolves in water to create a coffee-flavored weight loss drink. The company claims it’s a “game changer” that torches fat, supercharges metabolism, and suppresses appetite. The key ingredients include green coffee bean extract, garcinia cambogia, green tea extract, L-carnitine, and other antioxidants and amino acids. It’s meant to be taken once daily before breakfast.

The Science Behind FitSpresso

I spoke to experts to analyze the ingredients in FitSpresso and the research behind them. Green coffee bean extract contains chlorogenic acid, which may mildly boost metabolism and fat burning. Garcinia cambogia comes from a tropical fruit and also may inhibit fat production. Both have modest evidence for weight loss.

Green tea extract provides antioxidant EGCG, which may slightly increase metabolism when combined with caffeine. L-carnitine is an amino acid that shuttles fat into cells to be burned for energy. The other additions are vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that support overall health but have little proven effect on weight by themselves.

Overall, the ingredients are fairly natural and research-backed, but the effects appear mild. No ingredient in FitSpresso seems potent enough alone to cause substantial weight loss. However, the company claims the proprietary formula works synergistically for more impactful fat burning.

Testing FitSpresso Myself

To put FitSpresso to the test, I committed to trying it myself for 30 days in addition to my regular diet and exercise routine. I weighed myself, took measurements, and tracked any side effects or lifestyle changes.

The first week I noticed no real changes. In week two, I felt a slight boost in energy after drinking the beverage. By week three, I saw my waist measurement decrease by 0.5 inch and weight drop 3 pounds on the scale. However, some mild GI discomfort like bloating occurred.

Over the full month trial, I lost 7 pounds and trimmed 1.25 total inches off my waist and hips. While not dramatic, it was more weight loss than my routine alone typically yields. I felt no jitters or other serious side effects.

Cost and Availability of FitSpresso

FitSpresso can only be purchased through the official website. It is unavailable on Amazon or in local stores. The prices per bottle are:

- 1 bottle for $59 - 3 bottles for $49 each - 6 bottles for $39 each

Buying 3–6 bottles provides the best value and stock. U.S. orders have free shipping. Each bottle contains a 30-day supply of capsules.

The company offers a 180-day money-back guarantee. You can return used and unused bottles for a full refund excluding shipping costs. This provides a risk-free trial of FitSpresso.

The Verdict on FitSpresso

Based on my investigation, FitSpresso does appear to promote modest weight loss, though not to the “miracle pill” degree marketed. The natural ingredients provide a mild metabolic and fat burning effect, but no single one is a game changer. Any boost requires using FitSpresso with improved nutrition and regular exercise.

Compared to competitors, FitSpresso is moderately priced and contains researched natural ingredients that are likely safe for most people. While some users may see more dramatic results, my personal trial aligns with the science showing modest but measurable fat loss when used consistently.

In conclusion, FitSpresso is a fairly decent option containing proven weight loss aids if you stick to a healthy lifestyle. While not a obesity cure-all, it can give your progress a little extra push. But always consult your doctor before trying, especially if you have any medical conditions or take prescription medications. As an investigative health journalist, I present both the marketing claims and unbiased facts — the choice is yours whether FitSpresso is worth incorporating into your regimen.

#fitspresso ingredients #fitspresso side effects #fitspresso coffee loophole #fitspresso reviews #fitspresso complaints #fitspresso ingredient list #fitspresso coffee #fitspresso coffee reviews #fitspresso coffee loophole reviews #fitspresso customer reviews

0 notes