#so make fun of them for their *actual* ridiculous decisions! there are no shortage of options! /lighthearted

[anistarrose]

I was going to make a post saying "Lucretia told everyone the truth there were seven Grand Relics instead of covering her ass and saying there were six because she's a storyteller, and six sounds objectively less cool than seven," but then I thought about it and actually, if you look at the timeline, I think this was probably a very pragmatic or at least tactically safe decision on her part?

When Lucretia founds the Bureau, Junior hasn't been born yet. Lucretia obviously doesn't even know Junior will be born someday. So once she inoculates Bureau members with Fisher — a necessity to staffing the Bureau in the first place — Lucretia can't keep any more secrets from them, with only one Voidfish at her disposal. And crucially, while Lucretia is the Bureau's primary source of info on the "Red Robes," basically all her recruits lived through the Relic Wars.

Upon inoculation, they'll all presumably remember at least some details about the Grand Relics. Obviously no one but Lucretia would know anywhere near everything about each Relic and their properties, not least of all because of a high eyewitness fatality rate, but part of the reason the wars were so deadly was because word of the Relics spread. Everyone in the world knew a few things about them.

So, if Lucretia were to tell her recruits: "oh, don't worry, there's only six terrible artifacts we need to destroy, tee hee!" then it's very possible that assorted Bureau members — especially Seekers, for whom looking into the Relics is literally their job — could start comparing memories amongst themselves, and put together that there was a seventh, leaving Lucretia with no option but to admit that she lied. If I recall correctly, the podcast never explicitly indicates what/how much damage the Bulwark Staff did to the world — but I find it hard to believe that it didn't do anything an inoculated person could later find record of or remember. (There's an admittedly good fanfic premise, though, in Lucretia leaving her Relic in someone's care to make it stationary, like how Magnus gave the Chalice to Jack, or how Barry is theorized to have given the Bell to the Wonderland twins.)

I digress, but the point is, Lucretia may have necessitated a lot of little lies for her future self by admitting there were seven Relics, but trying to winnow it down to six could've easily bit her in the ass, and she was definitely smart enough to realize that. She acted accordingly at the time.

And by the time Junior comes around, then of course she could theoretically use them to erase the Bulwark Staff from her employees' minds — but by then, she's been hiding the Staff under everyone's noses for about a year, and no one has gotten suspicious. So if it's working, why change it? She's no doubt also smart enough to reserve Junior's power for emergencies only — because even if people forget information, they can still retain the feeling they're forgetting something. With people planetside, that's one thing — but with her employees on the moon, from whom she needs unshakeable trust? Probably not worth it.

Overall, it's a deceptively rational decision on Lucretia's part, honestly. And also, yes, seven Grand Relics still sounds way more badass than just six.

[lovestruckay]

WIP Game

Talk about the WIPs you’re intending to work on this year.

I was tagged by @crimsonriley and this looks like a good opportunity to taunt all my readers lot of fun!

I’m going to tag @vesperlionheart, @shyyynobi, and @beyondthemoor to join in on the fun. And, because I absolutely count WIPs as including art, I’m going to tag @yomi-gaeru, @byelawliet, and @maybe-please! <3

I have a number of WIPs (over a dozen) but there are only a few that are going to be actively worked on this coming year.

Homeward

MadaSaku, Time Travel AU, Eventually Mature

[FF - AO3]

This is my most popular fic and my main focus as a writer. It’s an AU where Sakura is thrown backwards in time during the battle between Danzo and Sasuke. The majority of the story so far is her amassing a reputation as a miracle healer and as an incredibly powerful kunoichi. I thought it would be more realistic for Sakura to have to survive and eventually thrive in the past before she came across one of the major clans (well, except for the poor Fuma clan). 

The story has already gotten to the point where she meets Madara and Izuna (in a pretty flashy way). This is my pride and joy and it’s a fic I’m very happy to write. I love writing Sakura as this incredibly powerful and indomitable woman who demands respect wherever she goes while simultaneously being this sweet, openhearted healer and friend. And I love writing Madara as being this powerful, intelligent and calculating, yet kind man who people have to work to earn a way into his heart. I always envisioned Madara as being a man who needed a indomitable woman like Sakura to make him happy. A woman who could challenge him yet encourage him at the same time. And this woman would certainly be Sakura.

Snippets

“But you have blood on you,” she pointed out, taking a step towards him and reaching forward to touch a splatter of blood on the neck of his high collared shirt.

He nearly shivered as her fingertips brushed his clothed collar bone, his sharingan flickering on of its own accord. The world around him became sharp and crisp and the sight of her reaching out to touch him embedded in his mind before his sharingan returned to inactivity in the span of a heartbeat.

“It’s not mine,” he muttered in a tone deeper than normal as he stared at her concerned expression.

...

He turned his head to face her and could feel heat rising to his cheeks as he noticed how close they were, their noses nearly touching. All he could see of her was her half lidded eyes and her dilated pupils, the black heavily encroaching on the sea green of her irises. She stared right back into his lazily spinning sharingan, her own cheeks taking a red hue.

Uchiha MC

MadaSaku, Outlaw Biker AU, Mature

[FF - AO3]

This fic was actually the beginning of me rejoining the fanfiction world. I had written a couple fics but this was the first one I actually went out and posted. It started as a oneshot but I combined it with a couple other WIPs I had and created this awesome story that I was just giddy to write. It has turned out a long longer than I had anticipated although it has been so much fun to write.

It has just begun to rapidly escalate. The story is a little more than halfway done but there is going to be a lot of incredibly intense and “holy shit” moments coming up that are going to keep everyone on their toes! The story is really at a pivotal moment right now so any snippets will give away what’s going to happen. Sorry!

Untitled ObiSaku

[FF - AO3]

ObiSaku, AU where Obito comes back to the village, non-massacre, Mature

EDIT: I posted this fic while I was doing Sakura Week 2018. It didn’t turn out as absolutely filthy as I had previously planned as another fic (a MadaSaku fic - FF, AO3) I wrote decided to take the whole choking kink. While this fic is still smut, it’s not as dirty as I had originally planned.

This fic is one purely written out of spite. Some random user on AO3 was talking poorly about one of my MadaSaku fics and asked if I was going to do an ObiSaku fic too (because that’s soooooo ridiculous). So I replied with a “you better fucking believe it” and put together an outline for this pure filth with a heaping of fluff and plot.

Some aspects of this fic: Rin will be alive but her, Obito, and Kakashi will be non-romantic best friends. How Kushina and Minato will live and how Minato be Obito’s mentor as he trains him to take over as Hokage. Kakashi will still become the sensei for Team 7 and how Team 7 will split up to train individually, Sakura and Naruto going on journey’s with Tsunade and Jiraiya respectively and Sasuke going with Shisui to train with the Military Police. There will be a lot of self hate, kink self-shame, angst, and a wide age difference.

Nesting

MadaSaku, alpha omega beta AU, founders era, Mature

This fic was entirely inspired by the “nesting” phenomenon in ABO fics. And the fact I very much wanted to write a MadaSaku ABO fic.

Sakura is the leader of the famous clan of healers, the Haruno clan. The Harunos are close allies of the Uzumaki clan, hailing from the same region, and Sakura and Mito are such close friends they consider each other sisters. It is because of Sakura’s influence that Hashirama puts fourth a peace treaty in exchange for him healing Izuna (much to Tobirama’s horror). When the village if finally founded, there is a meeting where all of the clan leaders that are allies of the Hidden Leaf join together to discuss the future. And this is where Madara and Sakura finally meet and everyone makes the catastrophic (at least for a city block) decision of trying to drag them apart.

There will of course be ABO smut with mating bites, pupping, womb sex, etc. But a huge aspect of it will be Sakura and her “nesting” behavior as she chooses a place to make her nest and have her pup. Very sweet and fluffy.

Nonsensical

[FF - AO3]

ShisuiSaku, soulmarks AU, Mature

A cute and kind of funny little one shot made because there is a drastic shortage of ShisuiSakura fics. Depending on how long it turns out being I might break it up into smaller bites. It’ll be a non massacre fic with a healthy amount of angst, some super bad first impressions, some happy endings, Sakura being a badass, Team 7 being bffs, and Hokage Itachi.

Here are a coupe snippets although they are very rough because they are part of the outline and not actual written material.

Snippets:

Shisui didn’t get his soul mark until March 28th when he was eight years old.

He had gone to bed that night with clear skin and woke up that morning with his soul mark written across his left pectoral in a flowing, feminine script. He was excited to learn that he did in fact have a soulmate but the fact that the phrase now inked across his chest was the most random, nonsensical bullshit he had ever read in his short life dampened the feeling. Was his red string connecting him to a psychopath?

He couldn’t think of any other reason as to why someone’s first words to him would be “Pants are not ripe water grass bastard”.

What in the hell does that even mean? Was it some sort of secret code? Was she going to be drunk? Was she insane?

...

Sakura has had her soul mark since she was born although she didn’t learn this until she was a young girl.

When she had asked her parents why she didn’t have one, at the tender age of five after her friend Ino had shown off hers, her parents had laughed with mirth, given her a hand mirror, and told her to find it. After a solid fifteen minutes of searching and acts of stretching that contortionists would be proud of, she located her soul mark printed in a small, professional script in the crook where her inner thigh met her hip. While part of her had been disappointed it was in a very personal place, a spot she could never show up, she had been overwhelmingly satisfied with the words on her soulmark.

I didn’t know angels had pink hair”.

Other Fics (may or may not get written)

Broken Trust

ObiSaku, Uchiha MC branch off, lots of angst

Guardians

MadaSaku fic where Impure World Reincarnation is never outlawed and instead becomes a technique for raising “Guardians” to protect the village. Izuna becomes the first guardian and leads to the formation of the village. Madara, Hashirama, Tobirama, all the hokages, Itachi, etc become Guardians and never technically die, instead being treated as well respected protectors

Fighting Dreamers

MadaSaku MMA AU, Sakura “Cherry Bomb” Haruno and Madara “Wildfire” Uchiha

The Chances

MadaSaku soulmark AU, takes place during the war

Three Rejects

NaruSakuSasu, dark fic where the trio runs away from Konoha after suffering through years of abuse and neglect. Sakura is an orphan, stolen from her clan of incredible healers following the massacre of her family. They can only trust each other and only love each other, ends in tragedy for the rest of the world but bliss for them

Wake Up

MadaSaku fic where Sakura, Madara’s wife, is in a coma in the Warring States Era and imagining her life in the future

Like the Ocean

IndraSaku fic where Indra goes on his journey to help the distant village to determine if he would become the next leader of his village and comes across a strange woman on the beach, part of an even stranger clan of healers and mystics who live on the ocean’s edge

Cosplay

I have a new wig from Shippuden Sakura that I’m very excited to try out. I even got a pair of customized boots that are pretty incredible! I even met a Sasuke cosplayer who is so incredibly sweet and is just as into cosplay and Naruto as I am! So you may or may not see me and Sasuke at Anime Matsuri in Houston, TX this year.

[gaychoices-stories-you-pay]

Insta-Wives? (Victoria x MC) pt. 2

Prompt from the amazing @aryn-choices : Prompt 303 from this list -  “We have to pretend to be married.”

Pairing: Victoria x MC (Rory)

Word Count: 1173

Summary: Turns out drinking alcohol with someone you have repressed feelings for leads to bad decisions. Who knew?

Thanks so much for that overwhelming response to Part 1! Hope you enjoy Part 2!

Borrowed this text post

Part 1

“Mmm,” Victoria groans, rolling onto her other side. Her hand lands on an empty bed, but the sheets are still warm. Her eyes snap open with a frown. She takes in the baby blue sheets, the foreign walls, and her frown deepens. This isn’t her bedroom. 

Sitting up, her eyes fall on the bedside table; more specifically, to a framed picture sitting on top of it. In it is a beautiful middle-aged woman standing next to...Rory?

Memories of the night before come flooding back to her and Victoria gasps, lifting the sheets to check - yep. No clothes.

The actress takes a moment to process the situation she’s found herself in before listening carefully for any signs of life in the apartment. When she hears dishes clinging followed by a whispered expletive, she sighs in relief and relaxes back against the pillows. So, she hasn’t been abandoned or kicked out - yet. That’s a good sign, right?

Sore in all the right places, she stretches before sliding out of bed and looking around the room for her clothes. She pulls on her underwear, but the rest of her clothes are nowhere to be seen. instead, she grabs Rory’s red flannel off the floor and shrugs to herself before putting it on, not bothering to button it. 

She hesitates when she goes to open the door, taking a minute to breathe. She knew exactly what she was doing last night when she showed up here. The months that had passed since the premiere of Tender Nothings were...odd, to say the least. She got so used to seeing Rory all the time, even after they finished filming. Interviews, studio sessions, promos, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of things to do leading up to the premiere, and she was so used to the other woman's company, she actually found herself missing her - something she never thought would happen. Sure, she’d always enjoyed their flirtatious banter, but nothing ever came of it...

Until Victoria showed up at her door on a mission. Just because Victoria had accepted her feelings for her co-star didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun with it. And so, when Tender Nothings 2 was finally announced...well, she knew that if avoiding the woman wasn’t going to be an option, then at least they could reunite on her own terms. The alcohol certainly made things easier - in more ways than one, apparently.

She smirks to herself and pulls the door open with a confidence that she doesn’t really feel. Rory’s head snaps to her.

“Hey, Victori-ah, wow...” Rory’s mouth hangs open at the sight of Victoria in her shirt and little else. Victoria smirks harder and saunters towards her seductively. Rory just stands there frozen, mouth still agape, eyes falling to Victoria’s exposed upper body.

“What?” Victoria teases. “Something wrong?”

“Um,” Rory gulps and wets her lips before continuing. “Ch-Chazz is here.”

Victoria frowns and folds her arms in an attempt to hide her exposed skin, failing if the way Rory’s eyes widen is anything to go by. “Your agent?” Rory nods. “Rory, what the hell is your agent doing here?”

“A better question,” Chazz interrupts as he stomps into the kitchen angrily, “would be why the hell is your agent not here?” He quickly adverts his eyes so that Victoria can hastily button up the shirt.

She lets out a breathless laugh. “Um, okay, is someone gonna tell me what’s going on and why I need my agent right now?”

Chazz lets out a long-suffering sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Great, not you, too.” He looks back up and she can see the pure agony in his eyes. “Where’s your phone?” She points across the room to where her pants are strewn across the tv. “Perfect. Check it. I have to go make another call.” Muttering under his breath, he exits the apartment.

Victoria turns her attention back to her co-star. “What the hell was that about, Rory?” The woman in question refuses to meet her eyes. “Rory?”

Rory sighs and holds up her left hand, still adorned with the ring Victoria usually wears on her thumb. “How much do you remember from last night?”

“Rory, is that my ring? What the fu-”

“That is the most ridiculous story I have ever heard.”

Victoria and Rory are both sat on the couch, heads hung like kids being scolded as their agents tower over them. 

“Jackie-”

“Don’t ‘Jackie’ me, Victoria Fontaine!” Victoria’s agent screeches. “I cannot believe you!”

Chazz glares at Rory silently, which is almost scarier than Jackie’s building hysteria.

“Look,” Rory speaks up, “Maybe-”

“Oh, no!” Jackie interjects. “You are the last person I want to hear from right now!”

“Hey!” Victoria snaps. “Don’t talk to her like that!” Rory gives her a grateful smile and her expression takes on a teasing edge. “That being said, personally, I blame you for this.”

Rory lets out an affronted gasp. “How is this my fault?”

“Because, otherwise it would be my fault, and that can’t be right,” Victoria smirks, knowing full well it was her alcohol and her ring that led them here.

Chazz clears his throat. “If you two are about done, we need to figure out how to we’re gonna play this off.”

Jackie snorts. “I wish it were that easy.” At the confused looks she gets, she continues on. “That Instagram post is linked to both your Twitter accounts, and you somehow decided it would be a good idea to make your ‘marriage’ Facebook official. You two already had a huge gay following before this. It’s only been up for ten hours now and it’s already gone viral! People are taking this seriously! #VictoryIsReal is trending on Twitter and Tumblr!”

Chazz taps his chin thoughtfully. “Hmm...well, at least your ship name doesn’t totally suck.”

“Chazz!” Rory shrieks. “Our ship name is the least of our worries right now! We aren’t even together, how can people actually believe we got married?” Rory turns to Victoria looking for backup, only for the older woman to refuse to meet her eyes. Rory frowns at her odd behavior but turns back to their agents. “I don’t understand why this is such a big deal.”

Jackie sighs, finally starting to calm down a bit. “Look. You guys are both out and proud bisexual actresses who are the stars of one of Hollywood’s biggest movies of the year. There are a lot of young girls out there who look up to you guys because of that and seeing you guys find happiness gives them hope. You can’t just be the assholes who put something like that out there because you were wasted and then take it back like it meant nothing.”

The room is silent for a moment before Victoria finally speaks up. “Oh my god, are you serious?” Jackie nods and Rory furrows her eyebrows at the two of them.

“What am I missing here?”

After sharing a long look with Jackie, Victoria sighs in defeat. “We have to pretend to be married.”

[trollandfairy-blog]

The Insane State of M19

MtG has certainly returned to its roots! Bonkers art and OP creatures stand poised to ride us all hard and put us away wet (especially blue, har har har). But seriously, there is some nonsense we should address as a community before these omnipotent bombs tear through us like a hurricane of razor blades:

MANA SINKS

There is no shortage of mana sinking in this set. Have all the lands and nothing to do? FEAR NOT, because these ridiculous cards will having you tap-tap-tapping (....tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tapping) your way to a decisive victory that could rage tilt a zen monk.

^ This mother fucker... Consider the Djinn of Wishes: you’re a 4/4 flyer for 5 cmc, which passes the vanilla test with flying colors (though, to be fair, a 4/4 flyer that let’s you scry for 2 is in this set with a cmc of 6). But then, AT INSTANT SPEED it should be noted, you can pay 2UU to remove a “wish” counter (aight MtG, we’ll accept your flavor) to exile the top card of your library and just... play it. Without paying anything extra. I will certainly be playing this card if I get the chance in all my sealed tournaments--there will be times where I flip the table because I paid twelve mana to play three lands off the top of my library, but at the end of the day I’ll have a 4/4 flyer or at the very least a target for their removal.

I consider Chaos wand a mana sink because in the absence of Dominaria’s bountiful historic ETB triggers (though there are artifact state-based effects), this can doesn’t technically do anything until you’ve coughed up 7 mana. That’s a pretty steep price to pay, especially if you’re on curve and you’re spending turns 3 and 4 to do.... well. Something. I can see the argument being made that in limited formats the spells you’re going to encounter will be 2/3 of the time removal or card draw, and you are guaranteed a hit. You also get to waste one of your opponents spells! Imagine targeting their best creature with their best removal spell. The thought is just shy of orgasmic.

C’mon. Look at that ant. Flashbacks to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids abound. I like auras with large numbers attached almost on par with auras that provide evasion because of the versatility they include, and also because in most cases power disparities between creatures are not terribly huge. With +7/+7 AND trample, this makes your 1/1 literally without equal in the set, which is pretty nuts. Yes, they can and will 2 for 1 you, but if you wait until an opportune moment when they’re tapped out you can suit up your worst card and swing in for 8 trample, which is more than most cards can accomplish. Plus there are some pretty sick abilities that get you benefits from auras, so look out for synergies.

COPY MAGIC IS BACK

This is a weirder one, because it’s a creature enchantment. There are obvious aggressive implications to this aura (making your 1/1 throwaway creature a copy of their 6/6 flying trample card, etc. ), but the interesting thing will be when you have an awesome creature and you play this on their best creature to make it a throwaway copy of their POS nonsense one- or two-drop. Also, I LOVE AURAS. I know they suck, no one seems to want to hang out on Aura Island with me because it’s too easy to two-for-one them with blink spells. But I love them. I love taking one thing and making it another or better than itself.

Why isn’t this a rare, you ask? Because, my friend, it says “creature YOU control.” Which is actually a lot shittier than you might expect--it can be a potent late game draw if you’re already up one boss-ass gamestopper (that isn’t legendary... oh, snap) and can be good for ETB effects. It’ll pair well with the new Man O’ War, which is called Exclusion Mage.

...THE CONFUSING CARDS

This might be one of those times where I eat my words, but what the fuck is this card? I mean 4 cmc for a 4/4 flyer, yes please, but for what? You attack and this is goading them not to block? By turn 4, when this card is the most helpful presumably, you’re not typically swinging for lethal and they just won’t block. Also, how often are people making you discard that this could be useful? I JES DON GIT IT. Give me a Demon of Catastrophes any day over this nonsense.

This card might be less confusing now that I’ve plaed it next to Ajani’s last stand, because it’s basically countering it, but the confusing part about it is why is this at all good or a rare. Do you think MTG R&D legitimately says to themselves “we need junk rares, MORE JUNK RARES” whenever they’re deving?

I was going to have a section on zombies, but honestly that’s its own blog post. I am so excited for this set! Core sets are pretty typically not fun IMHO, but this one is just a set that returns to Magic’s roots. The real roots, not the “new rules, new dynamics, omnipotent bombs” roots that Dominaria hitched its horses to.

[hmel78]

In conversation with John Hackett ...

Whilst John Hackett is probably best known for his work with his brother Steve Hackett (former Genesis guitarist), there is no shortage of other high profile artists with whom John has worked, and in addition he has also enjoyed a relatively successful solo career as a Flautist, guitarist, singer and composer.

John collaborated with Steve on his early albums, “Voyage of the Acolyte” and “Please Don’t Touch” , which led to further recordings and tours of the UK, USA and Europe playing flute, guitar and bass pedals in Steve’s live band ; also extensive tours of Japan and the USA as part of the Steve Hackett Acoustic Trio. Inbetween touring, back home in the UK, you will find a variety of incredible projects which John has been involved in ; as a composer of flute music for relaxation, he has recorded a number of solo and duo albums, plus several albums with Clive Williamson and the ambient group “Symbiosis” which has led to commissions for the BBC. John has performed concerts with international organist Marco Lo Muscio and performs regularly in a duo with classical guitar virtuoso Nick Fletcher with whom he has recorded two albums: “Overnight Snow” and “Hills of Andalucia”. 2005 saw a change of direction with John releasing, to critical acclaim, a rock album of his own songs called “Checking Out of London”, the lyrics for which were written by Nick Clabburn ; An experimental flute/dance album - “Red Planet Rhythm”- with Moodi Drury followed, and then another album of John’s compositions for flute and guitar - “Prelude to Summer”- which featured brother Steve, and Chris Glassfield. It was 10 years before John released his next solo album “Another Life”, in 2015 - which was essentially the rock follow up to “Checking Out ...” with Nick Clabburn once again providing the lyrics.   Thankfully we haven’t had to wait just as long for something else new! It’s September 2017 as I write, and I have just been handed the very first John Hackett Band album in which we see another avenue open up, on the musical map of John Hackett! For this album, John has gone beyond his usual boundary and written the lyrics, as well as the music - and it’s really very good! John is joined by Nick Fletcher on guitar,  drummer Duncan Parsons, and bass player Jeremy Richardson - who contribute their own compositions to the album, which presents us with a deluxe 2 CD album containing the new collaborative studio recording - “We Are Not Alone” -   and a live recording - “Another Live” -  of their 2016 Classic Rock Society gig. We were incredibly lucky to grab a rare chance to catch up with John about the latest release, and find out a little bit about how he arrived at this current stop on his musical journey ...

HR : I read an interview that you did some time ago, in which you describe your creative self as a bit like “Jekyll and Hyde” - in the sense that despite your focus on the classical side of music, you’ve always hung on to your inner rocker - is that still the case? “We Are Not Alone” sounds to me like you’ve found the balance...

Johh Hackett : I think you have gone straight to the heart of what I used to consider a problem … I started out from the age of 12 playing blues guitar, listening to all those amazing guitarists like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimi Hendrix. Then after hearing Ian McDonald play flute with King Crimson I started flute lessons and learned the classical repertoire. I used to think that one day I would have to choose between the two worlds but actually I now see that they can feed off each other.  It is like light and shade. If you have played electric guitar you know how powerful a sound it can be. So that influences my flute playing - I don’t like it to sound weak.

On the new album there is a track called “Blue skies of Marazion” which features guitar and alto flute. It has quite an impressionistic vibe. It is then followed by “Summer Lightning” which starts as a ballad but then Nick’s electric guitar takes it to a much heavier place. It is quite a contrast, and good of you to say that I have found a balance. I have Nick to thank for pushing me to include more flute on this rock album than my previous two.

HR : I’m glad he pushed you to, because it does work! Do you have a preference when writing and performing? Are you more comfortable with classical or rock ; with vocal tracks or instrumentals?

JH : There is no question that having spent most of my life whizzing up and down scales and doing all the daily technical exercises you have to do if you want to play the difficult classical repertoire, I have in the past been more comfortable with the flute. But there is nothing as exciting as being on stage with a rock band. I have never forgotten the buzz I got from my first ever rock gig with my brother’s band in Oslo in 1978. I took a conscious decision some years back to devote much more time to rock, improving my keyboard playing and learning to sing - I say learning to sing as it has been a painful process (both for me and my poor family who have had to put up with all the shrieking and wailing, not just when I am looking at my bank statements …). In all honesty I enjoy all of it, though at 62 it seems ridiculously late in life to be finding your feet. But having spent a good 90 per cent of my working life playing flute, it is frankly liberating and great fun to be starting a second career as a singer/songwriter with my own band.

HR : Well age is just a number, and I think if you’re creative you strive eternally to cover new ground ... which of course for you just now, is The John Hackett band. You’re essentially a quartet and all 4 of you write your own material; correct me if I’m wrong but none of the songs appear to have been written together for the recording - so who decided what was going to be included? Were any of the pieces written specifically for the album?

JH : The strength of the album is that, with only a couple of exceptions, we had performed all the pieces live before recording them. The way it worked is that we would bring suggestions to the rehearsal room and the band would try them out.  As everyone in the band has considerable experience writing and recording this inevitably meant bringing fairly complete compositions. It was soon obvious if a new piece could slot into our current live set or if best kept for a solo project.  With “Never Gonna Make A Dime” for example I had written this as a fairly slow song. I didn’t think it was particularly good. I played it to the guys in a simple piano and vocal arrangement and within a few minutes, like in some cheesy movie, they were rocking it up. It soon became a no-brainer for inclusion in our shows and the album.

“Castles” was a song I had written some time ago and similarly didn’t think it was anything special. I imagined it as a blues number with the kind of energy of that John Mayall’s “Bluesbreakers” album with the young fiery Eric Clapton reading the Beano on the front cover. I had recorded a demo with me playing the guitar solo on a Les Paul I had borrowed from my brother Steve. But when we tried it as a band with Nick playing a blistering guitar solo it was exactly as I had wanted it to sound. So unfortunately there is a sad end to the story –I didn’t get to play the solo, and Steve asked for his Les Paul back!

Similarly Duncan’s piece “Queenie and Elmo’s Perfect Day” was a flute melody I had always liked and wanted to record.  So when we got the band together it fitted in perfectly, especially as it gave the band free reign for improvisation.

“Take Control”, the opening track, I wrote specifically for the band and the album. I wanted something that would go through a number of changes . It is really in two parts the lyric being the link so there is plenty of scope for time signature changes, guitar solos and changes of texture ...

HR : It does have that, in fact the whole album is quite eclectic, which is what I love about it. It crosses genres and has a good balance of vocal and instrumental tracks. 2 out of 3 of the instrumental numbers were written by guitarist Nick Fletcher ; the 3rd in collaboration with yourself - how did you two meet and subsequently begin performing and writing together? He’s quite phenomenal ...

JH : I first heard Nick playing solo classical guitar without the aid of a microphone or Marshall stack in the fantastic acoustics of Sheffield Cathedral . I thought his playing was absolutely wonderful and wondered that day, as you do, if we might ever work together. Like myself, Nick started out in rock, then studied classical guitar so maybe I heard a kindred spirit. We did some concerts together as a guitar and flute duo, but it wasn’t until the release of my previous album “Another Life” that I found out what a fabulous electric player he is. I had decided to play some of the songs solo at the album launch with just me singing and playing  piano but as it got closer to the time I wasn’t so sure if I could make it work.  Anthony Phillips had played on one track of the album called “Satellite”.  I knew he was going to be there that night so I felt a little nervous ... Nick was round at my house, I played him a few songs, he picked up a Stratocaster and suddenly it was so much easier. Duncan joined us on percussion, so we performed as a trio for the launch. And then it was simply, “Well, where’s the bass player? We could form a band!” Duncan immediately suggested his old school friend Jeremy.  So that’s how we all got together - quite by accident really.

HR : The song “Jericho”, which was written by Jeremy Richardson, changes the vibe of the album a little - given that you sing lead vocal on the other 4 tracks, why didn’t you sing this one too?

JH : Yes “Jericho” was written by Jeremy and sung by him, with Duncan, as part of our live set.  It really suits his voice so there was never any question who would sing the lead vocal on the album. On stage Jeremy and I take a fairly equal share of the vocals which comes over particularly on the second CD (it is a double album package) “Another Live” recorded live at the Classic Rock Society in Maltby in 2016. He is a terrific singer with a harder edge to his voice when he needs it, which contrasts well with my sound.

HR : The second track on the album interested me too ; “Never Gonna Make A Dime” tells of your family’s move to Canada - you must only have been a baby at the time, but do you remember it at all? What prompted you to pen the song?

JH : The song is based on our short stay in Canada in 1957. I was only 2 years old so unfortunately I cannot remember it but Steve was 7 and has good memories of our time there. Our dad had gone on ahead to Vancouver to find work while mum, her sister Betty, Steve and I followed by ship. Our mother missed London so much that after just 4 months we came back to London. I have always admired them for taking the risk of going in the first place and then having the courage to return.

HR : Sure, it’s big life stuff! The track features Steve on Harmonica - which isn’t the first instrument that most people would associate with him  ... JH : Ah well , Steve used to disappear for long periods on board ship only to return with loads of cash. My mother asked him what on earth was going on - apparently he had been playing his harmonica to the crew and they had dug into their pockets for him. This must have given him an early taste for the music business. HR : Clearly! Haha. You’re both multi-instrumentalists - were your parents musical at all?  Who / what inspired you become musicians?

JH : It was our dad Peter Hackett who sparked our interest in music. We came back from Canada while dad stayed on for a while to work. He arrived back with an enormous black box which looked more like a coffin but actually contained a guitar. He had played bugle as a boy, then clarinet, and harmonica - though his main interest was painting. Mum didn’t play anything but always showed a great love of music. She is 87 now and still comes to our rock concerts. Steve and I have been blessed to have parents who have always supported us in our music careers.

HR : And your careers have seen you spend quite a great deal of time together over the years. It seems to be the way with brothers in bands together, that it inevitably results in some sort of falling out, and attracts an ensuing media circus! I thankfully don’t see much evidence of that with yourself and Steve - onstage, or offstage - is there a secret to getting on?

JH : Steve in his role as the older brother has always been kind enough to include me. I used to sit in on rehearsals with his first recording band ‘Quiet World’ ; I was there when he did his audition for Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks at our little flat in London - I even got to play a bit of flute for them that day.   I don’t think there has ever been any rivalry between us. I took the decision in my teens to concentrate on the flute, which has taken me in a different direction from him. So although we do work together from time to time, we are mostly involved in our own projects - But when we do get together inevitably we talk music, with all the enthusiasm as when we shared a bedroom as teenagers!

HR : You’re taking the JHB on the road with a handful of shows coming up - do you enjoy playing the more intimate venues?

JH : We currently have dates every few weeks for up until this time next year.  Certainly regarding venues it is always much nicer to play places where you can talk to the audience after.  Their enthusiasm is what it is all about.

HR : What’s your most memorable show to date?

The most memorable gig is perhaps the one for the Classic Rock Society captured on our live CD. It was only about the fourth gig we had done as a band and it felt great that we were being taken seriously by the Society who have always championed new progressive music. More importantly it was the last John Hackett Band gig our friend Steph Kennedy was able to come to - she travelled all over the country with the help of husband Dave and brother-in-law Glen in her final year. A humble reminder in this sometimes brutal world of how music can bring us together.

HR : Absolutely ... And if you could bring together anyone, living or deceased,  to perform with you on stage - a dream line-up - who would it be?

JH : If we were talking football I would probably start with Pavarotti in goal.

Of course, I would have to say my current band - But I wouldn’t mind having J.S. Bach on keyboards as long as he didn’t get any powder from his wig on my synths!

[curlicuecal]

Let’s Be Outcasts (Kankri/AR, Latula/Mituna) ch 12/?

Part 2 of cyber!bunny Apocalypse ‘verse (tumblr)

ch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

read on AO3

Summary: Divergent AU where AR and Li'l Seb get kicked into a new universe with some snazzy new cyborg bodies. They’re still working out the bugs.

In which AR discovers that kidnapping rarely solves more problems than it creates, Mituna breaks out of a lab (with some help), and Seb continues to take good care of his Bro.

Chapter Excerpt:  

Latula hesitates. It’s just the tiniest hitch in the conversation, but considering how effortlessly she seems to follow even your most scrambled utterances, the pause is noticeable.  “It’s an outworld artifact,” she says, breezy and open.

“Wow, no grab-hulmping ass nugs,” you return before your mind can really analyze if sarcasm is the wisest choice for this situation.  

—–

Ch 12.

Latula, you reflect, has the best secrets.  Or possibly acquires the most excellent ones from other people.  Behind the steel door at the back of the ransacked bunker had been a short, damaged shaft, like something for an out-of-service hivestem lift.  Venturing down the rungs in the shaft wall (a feat, in your case, composed of equal parts climbing and falling), you and Latula had emerged into a second, more confined bunker.  The sprawlingly empty labs in the level above had looked aged and deteriorated, fragile.  A hollowed-out husk prone to falling to pieces at any moment—in retrospect you’re probably lucky your lightshow didn’t damage anything structural.  This room has an equal sense of age, but it is shelled from floor to ceiling in metal plates and girders as if were meant to survive a war.

It’s a bit like being in a tin can, if it turned out that tins cans turned down the exterior noise from your metal mind almost as effectively as that underground dropshaft you hid in for a day, and were therefore very quiet.  The perpetual static of Latula’s sigil chip buzzes and echoes in your metal mind, but you get only brief bursts of the distant voices of the imperial drones circling the city.

The tin can is also full of dazzlingly unfamiliar technology.

You want to look at everything.

You shuffle around the tiny room, pressing your face against screens and poking your fingers into circuit arrays like you could absorb the fascinating new patterns unfolding in your brain through your fingertips.  You’ve managed to move a good chunk of this busy-ness from the inside of your head to the outside, your programmed subtasks paying off in scratchy lines of blue and red text that now scroll across your helmet visor, superimposed appealingly over all the other nonsense your metal mind seems determined to dump into your brain at all times.

You clamber over a counter and pause to contemplate a screen that has flickered on at a nearby hub, watching the numbers count down.  That is new.  With one fraction of your attention, you start mapping out the attached equipment, backwards extrapolating toward what kind of function they might serve.  Your lips twitch up a bit as the countdown flicks past 44:44.

The whole lab could be overwhelming, but instead it’s engrossing.  For once you have no shortage of tasks to divide your attention across, occupations to channel the restless tangle of your mind.  The muffled data inflow from your metal mind fades into the background.

It is, it occurs to you, hard to be all one thing, to marshal all the disparate parts of your mind and your body and match up the edges and push them into lockstep with the world.  With your attention scattered you don’t have to try so hard to keep your balance.  Your blue mind purrs acquisitive conquest while your red mind whispers wary caution that it will all be taken away, that you will be filed into place with the rest of this puzzlingly obsolete equipment.  But you’re steady.

Latula makes a grumbling noise from the back of the room, where she has been poking at the largest device, decoupling connections.  “Hey, ’tunz.”

You turn this inscrutable string of syllables around in your head several times.  Oh.  Is that you?

“You happen to know how to hack an object duality function onto sylladex cards?”

You spend another moment of low-key bewilderment trying to decide if this is something you know how to do.  Object duality: carapacian storage system. Programming structure and relationship to sylladex development: …no data?  Did you never know or did you forget?  “No-oh?” you try, anxiously.  And then, with a bit more confidence as you rifle through files and your brain continues to be completely blank on the subject of non-imperial technology: “Oh-no.”  Still, the idea is interesting.  You engage a few of the sorting programs you’ve coded with your helmet, scanning through the ridiculous backlog of data from your metal mind.  You don’t know if any of this clusterfuck could possibly be relevant to working out a technical puzzle, but you don’t know that it couldn’t.  It gives another portion of your attention something to do.

“Right.  You happen to have a sylladex slot that’s oh, say, this big?”  Latula’s hands dryly sketch out the wall-spanning machine in front of her.

“Dong ilven halve a sillydickth.”

“Huh; we gotta hook you up with something.  You know, assuming we ever get out of here, a thing which would be way the heck easier if I had any way of ganking the massive freaking technorelict I came specifically to hunt down.  Damn it, Porz was supposed to be here.”  She frowns at the machine in question, one hand on her hip.  “Maybe we could just… leave it here?  Come back with company and snag it before the ‘net gets back online and that lab full of dead scienterrorists get noticed.  Assuming…”  Her frown tips down farther.  Her eyes glance toward the dropshaft, then back to her machine.

You turn to squint at the device yourself.  Aside from being big, it doesn’t seem particularly more interesting than any of the other artifacts in the room.  Some blackened screens, something you think might be sensors, a row of large glass cylinders that look a little like the carapacian growth chambers from the level above.

Maybe it’s presumptuous of you, but you’re pretty sure she should just take something smaller.   “Walk innit?” you ask.  No.  Although some of those tubes are certainly big enough. “Waltz is’t.”

Latula hesitates. It’s just the tiniest hitch in the conversation, but considering how effortlessly she seems to follow even your most scrambled utterances, the pause is noticeable.  “It’s an outworld artifact,” she says, breezy and open.

“Wow, no grab-hulmping ass nugs,” you return before your mind can really analyze if sarcasm is the wisest choice for this situation.  Who the fuck are you kidding, your mind has approximately nil control over the shit that plops out of your mouth.  You’re just happy when the contents remotely resemble what went into the digestion.

Latula snickers.  “Yeah, okay, it and everything else in this room.  But this is a big one.  There’s only ever been three found like it before and they all stopped working sweeps and sweeps ago.  ‘Least as far as anyone knows.  Outworld technology is property of the government that finds it after all.  The highblood council or whoevs says it up and broke—who’s there to say diff?”

“You?”  No, wait, you think that was a rhetorical question.  Conversation is hard.  And now Latula is giving you an extremely sharp look, oh, oh.  Torn between the desire to apologize and the desire to make her look at you more, you instead wander closer and examine her pet artifact more closely.  Like you, it seems to be at the interface of technology and biology.  Something artificial, but designed to work with living systems.  Not the type of assemblage that could be used to modify a hatchling into a cyberorganic construct, no, you can’t make that fit the structure of the thing, but.

Not the right pattern of parts for the carapacian’s genetic modification projects either.  You thought before it reminded you of the sort of equipment they might use to grow their generations of workers and soldiers, all the various castes of their population.  Something for biological creation, yes, maybe…

“I’d really rather you didn’t overthink this,” Latula says, into your thoughts.  “Or, like.  Try not to pull out any more of your mad insights?  ‘Cause I’m working on being responsible over here and I hella can’t promise that info’d work out safe for you.”

You spend a few complicated moments trying to determine how not to think about something and a few more wondering why this would possibly matter.  In your experience, your thoughts and intentions have very little correlation to any of the things that happen to you.  You wind up just staring at Latula.

“Unless you’d rather I told you?”  Latula asks, not at all like she thinks your decisions don’t matter.  “Because, I mean.  I figure you’ve got as much right to know what’s going down as anyone.  More than.  It’s just...  right now if things go completely ingestible-tree-ovoid shaped you could maybe slide outta it on not knowing and being, like.  Technically stolen lab equipment?  But if I tell, you’re kinda stuck with me ‘til game over.”  She gives you a little fatalistic grin and shoulder shrug.  “Win or lose.  However the hell it all goes down.”

That sounds… really nice actually.  In a flippantly ominous kind of way.  You’ve sort of been figuring your whole life will implode any hour now—a seesaw swing of the pendulum for all the unexpected fortune you’ve been granted in defiance of probability.  You’d spend every second of that time with Latula if the choice was in your fronds to make.

Latula looks at you like she thinks maybe it is.

“But, hey.  Maybe we’ll go down in the fun way ‘stead of the dying horribly way.”  She wiggles her eyebrows and grins and then tucks her hair behind her ear and looks half away from you.  “You want in on this?” It echoes between the twice-two halves of your mind, flesh and metal, red and blue.

(“You wanna get outta here?”)

You dig your teeth in your lip and remember to breathe.  You’ve caught her hand in your own without noticing and that’s starting to be a habit.  She lets you keep it.  So, is she dumb for not realizing by now just how far you would follow her, or are you dumb for never guessing that first invitation might have been for keeps?

There’s a completely nonsensical smile twitching across your face.  For what’s visible beneath the helmet you must look completely deranged, but Latula’s got a smile growing to match.

Your answer tangles with a thrum in your throat and comes out sounding more like a dirty suggestion than a word.

“…Yeah?” Latula says, eyes bright as lit fuses, and reels you in.

Or maybe you’re both really, really fucking smart.

You do eventually  have to pull up for air, only for Latula to spend a giggly few moments testing the bony angle of your jaw with her teeth, following it back to where flesh meets the metal of your left interface.  You even took off your helmet for her, despite how dizzingly like freefall the sensation of losing the control it provides is.  It’s worth it when she tugs you by the hair, tweaks your horn.  When she snickers at the huffy noise you make when you give up on shaking your overgrown bangs from your ganderbulbs.  Latula feels like the very best kind of freefall.

You nuzzle at her face, hair, hands, anywhere you can reach, and her fingers trace fractal patterns back along your jaw and cheekbone, down from the raised headphone-like interfaces you have where ears might be and down along the vulnerable skin of your neck.

“Wow, babez, you are all over circuits.”  One finger plucks testingly at the high collar of your flightsuit and you make a happy, contented noise for her.  “How far down do these go, anyways?”

Hm.  “I four-get?”

“Oh!”  Latula pops back up from your neck to grin into your face, eyes lit up like you just handed her a present.  “…wanna find out?”

The words lick through you like an electric current.  Straight to your nook.  But in a fun way.

You blink again—one, two, three, four—and then tangle a hand in her hair, because yes, okay, good, perfect.  Words not functioning, but no part of you has any confusion on the answer to that question.  Latula folds into you, laughing—and then abruptly keeps folding, her laughter blowing out in a hiss as she turns her forward momentum into a shoulder roll across the equipment-cluttered counter behind you.  Your own breath abandons you with an oomph as your ass cushions hit the floor.  Falling is like your special talent.

Metal and wires clatter to the floor.  Something shatters.  A pale shape skitters by, flitting through the air, dodging debris, and Latula sweeps up her staff—wow, when did she put that down, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen her let her weapon out of arm’s reach before—and scrambles in pursuit.  The point of her staff stabs out once, twice—and then she’s pinned it, just before it could dart into a crevice behind a wall unit.

“Aw, fuck it all,” Latula mutters, frowning at the fist-sized genemod still twitching and oozing blue goo onto the point of her staff.  “I just can’t catch a break tonight.”

Your adrenaline-sped pusher suggests otherwise.  You are (red) panicky and (blue) panicky, but you also just did the psiistorm thing twenty minutes ago and one floor up, so you are mostly just balancing on the panicky in a fun, internal way.  It’s almost comforting in how familiar it is.  And nobody’s dying; that’s nice.  Winning all around.

You scramble for your helmet and take only two tries to get it on.

Better.

Making your way around the counter, you peer past the flashing text on your helmet view screen to squint over Latula’s shoulder at the fluttery, leggity hoofbeast-faced thing.  It has about a half a dozen more eyes than you feel are really called for and looks like something some carapacian geneticuller spliced half the contents of his DNA library into on a whim.   You can’t see anything in particular to make it worth looking at—other than the ungodly suspiciousness of a feral genemod turning up two levels down in a sealed underground bunker lab in time to interrupt your make outs.

It’s a scientifically engineered nookblock, is what it is.

Latula’s eyes dart around the confines of the lab again, narrow and seeking.  You don’t need higher level processing programs to recognize a pattern.  You just wish someone would explain why it matters.

“Think we just got put on a timer,” she mutters.   Your head twitches uncertainly toward the console across the lab, the one with the countdown running on the screen, but Latula’s turning back toward the wall-spanning outworld device in front of you.  She faces it down with more determination than conviction.  “Right.  Get the goods and get gone.  Hm."

You blow out a frustrated breath through your nose.  “’tu-la, what.”

Her eyes shoot to you almost guiltily.  “Um.  So.  Speaking of deetz I haven’t been sharing with the schoolfeed cohort.”  She fiddles the little mutant corpse free of her staff, holding it up by one of the many insectoid legs before flipping it out of sight, into her sylladex.  “It’s possible somebody’s using these to track us.  I wasn’t sure for a while, but the co-inky-dinks are kinda piling up now, and…” her patter trails off, face going inwards-turned.  Her free hand toys with the red scarf concealing her hanging scar. “…I sorta feel like this is all familiar in the bad way.”

Shitty titfucking nose-bulge, you have no idea what any of that means.

Latula’s eyebrows go up and, yep, you are surprise audio-tracking a static-y version of your internal dialogue.  You bite your tongue on the middle of the string of curses exiting your maw, gulping off the runaway flow through straight bodily force.  At least you’ve also cut short the post-make out ‘murder and contemplation of dead things’ portion of the evening.  Small victories.

“Sorry,” Latula says, which has the novelty of coopting your next avenue of verbal stress dump.  “I’m not trying to be cryptic; it’s just like a disease.  I think my life is half lies these days.” She twists her hand in the scarf.  “Or half-truths.  Maybe whap me upside the head or something when it happens.”

Alarming.  No.

Although, with your coordination and her cooperation maybe you could just skip to whapping random body parts together.  Eheheh.

“So, right.  Cards on the recreation platform.  Think you’ve sneaked a peek at like half the deck already.  This obnoxiously complicated dealio here,” she gestures at her giant out-world artifact, “is for making wigglers the un-fun way.  And like I said, this is the super rare, holographic edition kinda item; a lot of people would like to get their claws on it.  So, okay, there’s me and Porz and some other peepz—I dunno if Kurloz counts he’s kind of nuts—and the deal is—“  —but you don’t get to find out if she’s winding up to tell you about her kinky breeding program plans or what.  You don’t actually hear the soft shuff of a misplaced footfall, you just see Latula’s eyes flick toward the dropshaft and your auditory sponges catch up later.  “—the deal is,” Latula continues, voice even as ever, eyes suddenly bright and fixed on you, “I’m going to need to put a save point in this explanation for later.  All these things popping up that need taking care of, you know how it goes.”

As she speaks, she steps back slightly and to the side, like she’s going back to the device, tucks her staff with apparent casual disinterest under her arm.  Caught in her eyes, you turn with her.  It’s only belatedly that your instincts catch up to the way this places your back to the empty dropshaft and whatever made that noise.  Your pumpbiscuit trips and speeds in your chest, red fear and blue fury and you don’t fall to either because you’re watching her sort sylladex cards and thinking about the way your back to the shaft means her hands out of view.

She comes up with a set of finger-sized knives like mawbeast fangs, and something small and metallic, held so the chain won’t clink.  They disappear up her sleeves.  “Sorry to keep expo-bailing on you,” she says, and her voice makes a joke of it.  “…Trust me?”

“Yes.”  Your reply, for once, comes out crystal clear, as sure as your certainty, a perfect line between thought and action.

Latula’s own next line stops halfway out of her mouth, like you’ve startled her.  You watch her pupils flare wide and dark, the teal in her irises brightening in contrast.  Her tongue touches her lip, her breath caught there.  You get a glimpse of her dichotomies again—all vulnerable/dangerous and careful/reckless and hungry/satisfied—and she’s not more honest like this, just different honest, like seeing the flipside of a coin in the air.  

“...oh,” she says, in this naked, bruise-roughened voice that flips your pusher and sends a clench of pity dizzily through your veins.

Just a glimpse, and then the coin revolves and her game face is back in place, determined and calculating and exhilarated.  She leans in toward you, close enough to kiss, close enough to be indistinguishable to an observer.  Close enough you can feel her grin a breath away from your lips.  “Hold that thought, babe.”

A moment later she's sliding past you and into ambush so fast you almost can’t see it.  There’s a flurry of noise from the bunker’s exit, a rustle of cloth and the scrambling metallic sounds of someone ascending a ladder at speed.  Latula disappears up the shaft after her unseen quarry and you’re left blinking after her, hands clutching the item she pressed into them.

You flick your eyes down.

It’s… her sylladex.  On the top three cards are all the components to the device she’s secured so far—everything she could break down small enough to captchalogue.  You stare at the device for two beats more, at all her belongings placed in your hands, and then you reboot a half dozen internal processes and start towards the dropshaft exit.  You struggle the sylladex into assemblage with your helmet’s fetch modus slot as you go.

A flicker of psionic sparks licks the back of your brain, high on adrenaline, half nervy, half pumped.  You check your emotional balance, tweak your programs—and start up the ladder after her.  Above you, the sounds of a fight grow quieter, and you think the confrontation might be done before you get there.  Oh, good.

You’re pretty sure you can keep her stuff safe, but you can’t make any guarantees about this building.

---

next>>

[putris-et-mulier]

I had a hard time growing up with my father cause he does what we'd call tough love I guess, but I'm pretty sure a lot of it was abuse. But I always wanted to have kids and I am really good with em, people always point it out cause theres this idea guys arent supposed to be good with kids, that is ridiculous. But I think I just wanna prove I'd be a better father than him... All the discussion here about abortion and reasons to be a parent and wanting to be kinda savior to your kids it really 1/2

it really made me reconsider why I want to have kids. I don’t think proving I’d be a good dad is enough reason and also seems like a burden to put on the kid… idk if this makes sense. I wouldn’t ask a girl to abort cause thats her decision and I’m bi so I also think a lot about adoption. If I happen to have kids I will try my best to be a good dad but now I think I will wait and try to work out my issues first… that I don’t anything to my father and I dont have to live to prove him wrong.

Firstly, you definitely need to work on those issues before you have children in any fashion, especially adoption, because not wanting disability doesn’t protect your children from becoming disabled

Secondly, you might want to consider adopting older NTAB children because so many don’t get adopted and if they do become disabled they will still have NTAB conditioning so it won’t be like raising a child from a foreign culture but even then you have to make sure it’s the right choice for you

Thirdly, you don’t have to prove anything.

As someone who has always been in and out of hospitals and doctors offices for 30 years I can tell you that male nurses are by far the best and most any female nurse that has worked with one will tell you the same.

There is this misconception that men can’t be carrying or compassion or safe but men who go into that line of work or just sincerely want to be fathers like mine are the absolute best. I know it takes a unique person to be like this, male or female, but in this case I think masculine conditioning is actually beneficial.

Cis women are expected to bear pain better than cis men despite what the social rhetoric says and because they are conditioned to hide pain so often they have less empathy for other people in pain. They are also expected to be in those positions so they tend to be there because it’s expected, not because they actually care.

For anyone out there male or non-binary who is interested in becoming a nurse or caretaker or aides in classrooms and at disabled camps or special ed teacher, or anything involving disabled kids, please pursue this interest!

I have MD and it’s very rare in females so when I went to MDA camp there were just a few of us girls in a cabin but many other ones for the male children. Before McDonald’s bought it and used it as a way to make money off of experimenting on disabled children (I haven’t mentioned that in a while so a lot of you may not know the story) anyway, before that the counselors were all teenagers. There was an adult staff but they were there to supervise all of us, having teenage NTAB counselors be the only ones that took care of us or live with us was absolutely amazing.

We didn’t feel like we were being monitored constantly because everyone was a teenager which meant they were young and cool, everybody wants to be a teenager when you’re a kid. They also treated us like we were just kids, not disabled kids. We were cute and we were just there to have fun around our own people so they were there primarily as counselors, no one had formal training or anything so they hadn’t been taught not to listen to us yet. They all knew first-aid and were told about the conditions but they didn’t know what to do to take care of us so they asked and they listened. It was like this magical place until McDonald’s House™ bought us but things weren’t quite as good for my male peers. But let me put my epiphany in context.

Every single night the teenagers had a huge party. They took shifts on who would stay with us at night so everyone spent at least half their nights getting absolutely wasted and having casual sex in the woods.

There was always one night when the campers all had a “dance” and the counselors were always excited to give us a good time because we were so adorably excited to have our own party with them. And the counselors off nighttime shift those nights partied heavier than ever and those who didn’t want to were more than happy to just sleep with us. They weren’t buzz skills, they were helping people party.

It was the closest thing to a utopia I’ve ever experienced.

None of this would be allowed to go on anymore and it wouldn’t have been at that time either if the adults knew what was going on but we were all in it together, we were all technically kids. Even though our counselors were also kids we were always the safest when they were running things. The type of person who is going to even be interested in doing something like this let alone doing it to that extent is still that type of person even if they are away from home. They partied hard, really hard, and since they had the freedom to do so they took responsibility. Everyone had equal time at the parties and none of them resented us because we weren’t a responsibility, we were just too young to party so everyone who actually wanted some sleep was happy to be there in the cabins with us at night, it was especially fun for us in the girls cabin because each night we had different counselors telling us all the gossip so we ended up knowing everyone’s dirty laundry.

There were a very few teenage campers but they were “allowed” to go to the parties because they weren’t crippled kids, they were other teenagers. This also encouraged the older kids with MD to feel like capable human beings and so they would help look after all of us kids which is an experience every disabled child should have. They were cool because they were teenagers but they were also one of us, they weren’t one of them.

None of them did this because anyone was trying to socialize them or “make them feel important” by giving them “responsibilities” they did it because they wanted to. Everyone was in on it together and everyone wanted to have the best time possible so they chipped in during so they could party harder at night. It probably goes without saying that it was an amazing example for those of us who were younger.

We were observant so we always knew when someone was being forced or “assigned” to look after us but these guys weren’t, they treated us like little brothers and sisters because our bond came organically. We actually had role models that were one of us, going to the camp was one of the first times that a lot of kids realized that they could have the chance to be actual teenagers.

It’s kind of funny, they were young enough that they didn’t have a hard time bouncing back from a night of drinking or going without sleep but it made mornings easier for us children because a lot of them were waking up with something that felt like a bit of chronic illness themselves so they couldn’t have forced us to use all of our spoons first thing in the morning even if they wanted to.

But one night a party had gotten too hardy and so there was a shortage of capable counselors the next morning and the shortage was in the male cabins, the girls could always hang. Our counselors split up to go help get all the kids up which took a lot of time. The counselors that were best taking care of us physically split up amongst all of the cabins and that morning we had some of the female counselors from the male cabins come to help us instead of all of our usual ones.

I got a girl I eventually got an innocent childhood crush on, she was always “one of the boys” but she was so confident that no one would have described her like that, she was just herself and that made her a badass. She was also beautiful but I did have legitimate non-shallow reasons!

I was a lot stronger then so I was taking off all of my pajamas as quickly as I could because we all knew about the situation so I was trying to get undressed as quickly as possible so she could help one of the younger kids but she stopped me from taking my shirt off.

She said that I could keep it on while she was helping me into my pants so I wouldn’t be completely naked. I laughed to let her know it was no big deal and told her that I didn’t mind. That’s what I learned to say to the nurses throughout my life to make them a little less resentful about me but it didn’t work on her.

She looked extremely frustrated and I realized years later she wasn’t frustrated with me, per se, she was frustrated with what I had said. She said, “there’s no reason you have to be completely naked in front of everyone, most people don’t do that.”  I didn’t know what to do because I only learned to make “normal” people feel as comfortable as possible so I tried to tell her it was fine but she cut me off and said, “You know that I work in one of the boys cabins even though I’m a girl? It’s because there aren’t a lot of guy counselors so none of the boys get any modesty. I only help change one thing at a time so the boys don’t feel completely embarrassed and they still get to feel like boys.”

That was language I understood even if the concept blew me away and it’s something that comes to mind quite often.

I suddenly noticed that there were usually only people around us that had vaginas. That had to be weird for the guys. I then noticed that that they were treated like girls, not like NTAB boys. I’ve always wondered if it was any different for the boys who like other boys, because I figured that must make them more uncomfortable.

Disabled people are conditioned to be asexual but a heteronormative asexual. We are expected to get “crushes” and it’s completely safe because we can’t have sex. Why medical professionals think you can’t have sex because you sit down a lot I have no idea.

Imagine how little representation or participation socially that  gender and sexual minority children get, it’s a million times worse when they are disabled. There has been and always will be a huge need for people to work in caretaking positions that aren’t cis women.

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Agriculture Myths

Everywhere you read, you can find myths on every subject available. While there are a few myths that turn out to be true, most are not. Taking the time to research them, most myths are found to have no proof to back them up and are usually started by urban legends. I am in no way making fun of myths, I just want to help us understand they exist and for us to use logical thinking – and maybe to dispel a few along the way. Here are some Agriculture Myths that you may have heard.

Food safety and the agricultural (Ag) industry walk hand in hand, but how much of the Ag side do we really know and understand? I can honestly say I am in the camp of not knowing much at all so this has been an enlightening journey for me. A word of warning though: as always, it is best to do your own research and make informed decisions on your own. Don’t just listen to what others say, find out for yourself.

For the purpose of this discussion (if you haven’t picked up on it) is Ag myths. There are a lot of them. I want us to look at a few of them, look at some facts that can either prove or dispel these myths, and maybe understand where these came from. If along the way we learn a thing or two, all the better. I know I did.

Myth: Farmers are Rich

According to the USDA, farmers may make more on average than the non-farm household but there are factors not usually considered by the general public. As a non-farmer I was blown away by the simple money facts concerning the equipment it takes to run a farm. How does a car payment compare to the payment of a half-a-million dollar combine? Along with all the other machines and equipment, farmers pay more for these necessities then we are aware of. Yes, there are farmers who are well-off financially but the majority of it for the love of what they do. There is a life lesson in there somewhere.

Myth: Pesticides are Killing Us

I refer to pesticides as a necessary evil. Yes, there is an issue but not as much as some would lead you to believe. And the alternative is a food shortage that would lead to millions going hungry. Looking to official reports as well as personal opinions, we can see pesticides are not to a level where eating farm-grown foods will harm the normal consumer. A report in the Journal of Toxicology, Carl Winter summarizes the same: yes, there are levels of pesticides in some food we consume but “the actual risk is tiny.”

One of the fallacies of non-scientific reporting is not understanding levels of pesticides in produce so how can we compare that to safety levels? Mr. Winter uses a three-pillar system which includes: how much are we really getting in our food, how much of a particular food are we eating, and how bad is the amount ingested. This sound logic helps us understand our food is safer than we are lead to believe.

Speaking of doing more research on this important subject, I would ask you to start here. This farming blog not only has a lot of information on pesticides, but can be used as a launching point for further reading.

Myth: Brown Eggs are More Nutritious

The truth is, the color of the shell has to do with the bread of chicken laying the egg. The North Carolina Egg Association (yes that is a real thing) states “The color of the shell is only determined by the breed of the chicken … sometimes brown eggs cost more, but that’s usually because breeds that lay brown eggs tend to be larger and therefore consume more feed.”

Again, I never knew this was a thing. I love learning new things! I hope you do as well.

Myth: Larger Farms are What Feed the World

For this myth, we turn to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the facts. A report done four years ago states that nine out of ten farms are family farms. The FAO estimated that three-quarters of farms producing produce for the world are smaller than 2.5 acres. These family owned farms not only feed themselves but supply others products as well.

“Family farms produce about 80 percent of the world’s food. Their prevalence and output mean they ‘are vital to the solution of the hunger problem’ afflicting more than 800 million people.” The push for policies to protect the smaller farmer are still being reformed and set to the front of the world’s minds.

The next time you meet a family farmer or maybe talk to one you already know, thank them for what they do.

Myth: Brown Cows Produce Chocolate Milk

Wait. What? I must admit, I have used this as a silly joke in the past, as I am sure some of you have. But did you know this was actually a myth people believe? Most of us adults understand how ridiculous this idea is. Farmers use this myth as a way to speak to the silly way non-farmers spread rumors as truth.

We know cows produce white milk and chocolate is added later to make the most delicious drink known to mankind. The point here is to not always believe what you hear. This myth should make you laugh, but think about the ramifications: spreading false information is never a good idea.

In this short, but (hopefully) informative talk, I’ve given just a small sample of Agricultural myths. Trust me, there a more out there. It has always been my stance here to cause you to think outside the box, do more research, and think for yourselves. I am no professional. I do however have a love for food safety and a desire to learn all I can. So read up on our wonderful agriculture families and what they bring to us. Take the time to thank them for their hard work too.

By: Dwight Spencer, Contributing Writer (Non-Lawyer)

The post Agriculture Myths appeared first on Lange Law.

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Bill Otis’ Big Gig

There was a time when being a member of the United States Sentencing Commission was a big deal. But that was before Booker, holding the Sentencing Guidelines advisory. Since then, most judges have come to the realization that the grid was more random numbers than reality, more Draconian aspiration than a reflection of sentences either appropriate under § 3553(a) or some empirically determined aggregation of actual sentences meted out by actual judges.

That doesn’t mean the Commission doesn’t matter. There are still a few judges who refuse to recognize that the numbers on the sentencing grid, and calculations done to reach those numbers, are merely social engineering. And there are the younger judges, who never practiced law before the Mistretta went and screwed everything up, to whom the monstrously long sentences seem totally normal.

But there is one guy for whom the Guidelines were just too lenient, too soft on crime, a gift to the vicious jaywalkers who deserved life, or the more serious criminals who deserved life plus cancer. And it comes as no surprise that he’s finally getting his close-up.

That’s right, Bill Otis has been nominated for the USSC. In the past, when I had nothing more pressing to do and felt a bit masochistic, I would take a stroll over to his blog. Crime & Consequences, to see what sort of lunacy Bill and his partner in crime, Kent Scheidegger, had cooking. If nothing else, it made for a fun juxtaposition between the rational and outrageous.

I was not always kind to Bill. It wasn’t that he isn’t a nice guy to have a beer with. Many people I disagree with can be nice. It’s that he was the bar by which the lunatic fringe was measured. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Bill was nominated by the Trump administration for this position. Mark Obie did a profile on Otis for Slate while some were trying to push a tepid reform bill* through the Senate. Why he thought it a good idea to elevate Otis’ profile remains a mystery.

Now that Otis is nominated,** Mark Joseph Stern at Slate gives a run down of Bill Otis-isms.

In 2016, Otis lambasted President Barack Obama for commuting the sentences of many nonviolent drug offenders, calling his move “over-the-top extremism.” Otis actually goes so far as to reject the notion that it’s possible for drug offenders to be nonviolent, because addicts can die of overdoses. (Prosecutors have increasingly used this theory to bring murder charges against drug dealers.) He dismisses reformers as “pro-criminal” advocates who want to be “nice to drug pushers” by letting “robe-wearing partisans” impose more lenient sentences. And he supports life without parole for juveniles.

Naturally, Otis also despises the Black Lives Matter movement as well as intellectuals and academics who support its goals. He calls them the “Amerika Stinks” crowd and blames them, in part, for a present era “of cultural rot impersonating advanced thinking.” In 2017, Otis asserted that “black-on-black violence—an ugly, everyday occurrence in American cities—wreaks far more damage than police abuses.”

Not even Stern has the words to be hyperbolic about Otis. He’s that over-the-top.

So is this nomination a bad thing or the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Sentencing Guidelines? Maybe this is the nomination the Guidelines needed to finally show how ridiculous and baseless they are, and always have been. Maybe Otis is the nail in the coffin of mandatory minimums. Maybe, just maybe, Bill Otis is the right man at the right time. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Much as Donald Trump has answered that aching question of whether any clueless fool can be president, and you don’t need to know anything about governance, law and the Constitution to hold office, Bill Otis is his sentencing analog. The rhetoric of outrageous extremism does a lot better when screaming in the wilderness, from outside, a good distance away from where the grown-ups make serious decisions.

But put the crazy guy in a position of some power, some influence, and he serves to reveal just how awful, how crazy, his views are. If there is anybody who can fulfill the job of making ever-more-harsh sentences look insane, it’s Otis. If there is anybody who can show how mandatory minimums are the tool of the simpletons, Otis is the man.

Serious people need a foil to remind them just how bad and ineffective tough-on-crime policies have been, and pushing the envelope to even tougher, even more harsh, sentencing may be just the epiphany needed for the other members of the Sentencing Commission to see how the Guidelines have no connection to reality, serve no legitimate purpose and are too damn harsh.

It’s unfortunate that someone like Bill Otis will gain some putative gravitas as a result of his nomination and possible appointment to a position of some significance in criminal law. In a better world, Otis’ name would only grace the pages of SJ on the rare occasion that comic relief was needed. But if he’s going to get a nob from an administration that thought Scaramucci was a good choice of spokesman, at least he should serve some societally useful purpose.

Congratulations, Bill. You got nominated for the gig. Be you, Bill. Please be you.

*The bill is still on the table, but earlier efforts at serious reform were destroyed by well-intended crim justice advocates diving down their mythical “non-violent drug offender” rabbit hole.

**There is no shortage of reasons why Bill Otis’ nomination is a really bad idea. So in response to Zoe Tillman’s announcing the nomination, this reaction happened.

Her bio says “DOJ alum,” and yet her complaint is that “Hang ‘Em High” Otis’ first name isn’t Sally? Because Otis wouldn’t be a spectacularly bad choice is he was a woman?

  Copyright © 2007-2018 Simple Justice NY, LLC This feed is for personal, non-commercial and Newstex use only. The use of this feed anywhere else violates copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it means the page you are viewing infringes copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 51981395c77d7762065ca2c084b63e47) Bill Otis’ Big Gig republished via Simple Justice

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The Just For Laughs shows you need to see

Until July 31, this city will be on comedic overdrive as the jokes keep coming fast and furious. Just for Laughs is easily my favourite Montreal festival because it makes my face ache from too much laughing and who can possibly hate what keeps them happy and howling?

My one issue with the festival? That website of theirs can be a real nuisance to navigate sometimes. Every year I feel like throwing my laptop against the wall while researching shows I want to see because the entire process becomes one convoluted mess. Perhaps it’s not even their fault; it’s just that THERE’S SO MUCH GOING ON!

So I’ll do you one solid this year and narrow it down for you because I’m nice like that. Sure, there are the corporate-sponsored galas and big names like Jerry Seinfeld and Gad Elmaleh, Joel McHale, The Jane Krakowski Gala, The Laverne Cox Gala, John Mulaney performing, and of course the always popular The Ethnic Show and The Nasty Show runs, but it’s the ones that might fly under your radar I’ll focus on here.

Here are my personal bets for JFL and who I’m most looking forward to watching this year! And, as always, there is no shortage of awesome to choose from.

Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room

This deceptively demure Canadian girl now living in London, England, likes to talk about what she left behind in search of better opportunities. Her quirky, occasionally cringe-worthy observations about pop culture will crack you up. I saw her one-hour solo show last year (from the over 25+ shows I saw last summer) and her show was a wonderful surprise and on my Top 3 for sure.

Watch her here as she suffers an acute case of the Beyoncés.

DeAnne Smith: Post Joke Era

I won’t even pretend to be nonchalant and unbiased. I’m a huge DeAnne Smith fan and have been since I first saw her perform at a local comedy club as part of a lineup that didn’t feature enough of her as far as I was concerned. This Canadian-American is the perfect combination of smart and silly and is a fantastic social observer, tackling real issues in a way that makes you listen.

Watch her talk about feminism here and then “deliver you safely to a poop joke, because you’re in the hands of a professional and everything will be just fine.”

Ron Funches: Funch-A-Mania

Ron Funches is one big, lovable, giggling teddy bear who also happens to be ridiculously funny. Seriously go catch his show at the tail end of the festival run if you can.

Watch him talk about weed, his Vision Board, his anxiety, and so much more in this video.

W. Kamau Bell

Emmy-nominated comic and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, like Hari Kondabolu, is part of the new generation of socially conscious comedians who like to discuss race, politics, and social issues while making you laugh. They are smart and they are on point with their observations. And it’s cathartic to laugh about this stuff, because you can’t always be angry or sad.

As host of the CNN docu-series United Shades of America, Kamau travels the country, offering viewers a rare yet eye-opening look inside the various subcultures of American life.

Watch him ask the question: “How do you know it was racism?” in this video.

Kate Berlant

Kate Berlant is an LA-based writer and performer who is deliciously smart and funny. This woman is bright and eloquent and very quick on her feet. I love watching her perform and she never disappoints. I still don’t know why she hasn’t broken through and become more widely known, but I’m happy she keeps coming back to Montreal.

Watch a tiny snippet from a recent Netflix series called Characters, where comedians were given the task of performing a wide array of hilarious characters and she’s obviously making fun of pretentious artists.

Guys We F@#ked: The Experience

Guys We F@#ked: The Experience is being billed as the Anti Slut-Shaming Podcast. Ok, you’ve got my attention. I don’t know either of the co-hosts, Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson, but I’m willing to sit back and watch them bring their hit podcast to life through games, audience participation, rants, stories, stand-up comedy, and never before seen video.

Ali Siddiq: Who Has Good Service?

Yes, Houston comic Ali Siddiq got his start in the business while in prison and lots of articles on him tend to focus on that, but ultimately he’s a very funny — and extremely likeable — guy and his decision to make comedy his career seems to be working out pretty well so far for him.

Here he is talking about jogging in a white neighbourhood.

The Alternative Show and Midnight Surprise

One final tip: if you’re a night owl and can handle staying up late (even on a weeknight), some of the best comedic performances of JFL take place after midnight and always in the city’s very intimate, far-from-flashy, non-mainstream venues. You never know who the performers are and I can assure you that some of the surprises are big names you’d pay much more to see in gala settings. Well worth the slight sleep deprivation.

I’m referring to The Alternative Show with one-of-a-kind Andy Kindler as host for five nights, and Midnight Surprise (Louis C. K., Dave Chappelle, and NBA superstar Blake Griffin are just some of the surprise appearances in the past).

As many shows and comedians as I’ve mentioned here, this is but a tiny smidgen of what’s actually available to you for the next two weeks. Check out the Just For Laughs website and prepare to exercise your funny bone because there’s nothing more contagious than laughter and Montreal’s going to catch a serious case of the funnies for the next two weeks.