#so so many times some of which are even more recent like the walls era

[secretmellowblog]

Les Mis Canon-era Paris Photographs: Jean Valjean and Cosette’s route to escape Javert, in Pictures!

Jean Valjean's escape through Paris is Victor Hugo's way of mourning the Paris he knew from before his exile, the Paris before the modern renovations.

Hugo wrote Les Mis from exile in Guernsey, at the same time as Paris was undergoing a series of massive renovations. The "Old City" of medieval Paris that Hugo loved was being replaced by the “New City" of Baron Haussman. The dark medieval labyrinth lit by oil lamps was being replaced by modern wide streets and standardized architecture lit by gas lamps. Victor Hugo is nostalgic for the Paris he remembers before his exile-- so Jean Valjean is able to escape Javert using things unique to the Old City. He escapes through a labyrinth of tiny medieval streets in a neighborhood Hugo claims was destroyed during the renovations; he climbs over the convent wall using the rope from an oil lamp, the very oil lamps that were being replaced by the more modern gas lanterns. The dark maze hides him from police surveillance in a way modern streets cannot.

A man named Charles Marville photographed Paris shortly before many (though not all) of the renovations occurred. In this post I'll go through all the different streets mentioned in the Valjean-Javert Paris chase chapters, and provide Marville's photographs whenever they the image has been labeled with the name of the street. Note that there may be some inaccuracies. Some street names changed over time.

Here is a map of what the chase looks like, taken from the book "Paris in the Times of Victor Hugo."

A quick overview: Jean Valjean starts in a slummy half-built suburban area. This area is highly associated with the King; the royal Jardin des Plantes is nearby, and King Louis XVIII often rides by in his carriage during the afternoons. After travelling down a bunch of streets, "zigzagging" back and forth, Jean Valjean decides to cross the Seine over the Bridge of Austerlitz (a bridge named after one of Napoleon's victories.) Then he reaches the areas of the city near the Faubourg Saint Antoine that are more associated with working class rebellion. From there he enters a dark isolated half-built medieval neighborhood near marshes and timberyards, with narrow mazey alleyways, that Hugo mostly made up. Hugo pretends this medieval neighborhood used to exist, but was destroyed like many others during the recent renovations. Now that we've gotten the overview out of the way, let's go more specific!

The chase starts out in "the old quarter of the Marche aux Chevaux." At the time, this was a less inhabited and poorer area of Paris; it's described as basically a slum. Here are some of Marville's photographs :

Then we're told "Jean Valjean described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed. He combined in various manners, with cunning strategy, the Rue Censier:"

"and the Rue Copeau," (according to the map I linked earlier, the Rue Copeau is now the Rue Lacepede. Here is Marville's pic:)

"the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor and the Rue du Puits l’Ermite. There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it."

"As eleven o’clock struck from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont:" (note: this refers to the church of Saint-Etienne)

"he was traversing the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, situated at No. 14." (Jean Valjean sees Javert and the police following him on this street, because they're visible in the light of the lantern from the police station.)

"He took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed on account of the hour,"

"strode along the Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois

and the Rue de l’Arbalète, and plunged into the Rue des Postes."

"At that time there was a square formed by the intersection of streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève turns off." (Note: these streets are labeled Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, but not Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, so they may be different streets! But I'm putting them here anyway.)

"It is understood, of course, that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is an old street, and that a posting-chaise does not pass through the Rue des Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Pots." (Annotation: Hugo's bein silly and making little puns. He's snarkily pointing out the "new saint-genevieve street" is old, and the post street rarely has post-chaises/carriages go through it.) (Jean Valjean hides in the shadows and watches to see who shows up in this big square intersection of streets. In the moonlight, he recognizes Javert.) "He slipped from under the gate where he had concealed himself, and went down the Rue des Postes (which I shared a picture of previously), towards the region of the Jardin des Plantes." (Note: the Jardin des Plantes is a royal garden. Here is a modern photo from Wikipedia.)

"He left behind him the Rue de la Clef,

"then the Fountain Saint-Victor, skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the quay. There he turned round. The quay was deserted. The streets were deserted. There was no one behind him. He drew a long breath.

He gained the Pont d’Austerlitz." (The Pont d'Austerlitz, named after Napoleon's victory at the battle of Austerlitz, is a very famous bridge. Marville has no photographs but here's an 1830 engraving:)

"The bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right. He directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was necessary to risk himself in a tolerably large unsheltered and illuminated space. He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had evidently lost the scent, and Jean Valjean believed himself to be out of danger. Hunted, yes; followed, no." Here's the quai by the pont-au-change-- a different quai, but gives you an idea of what the areas around the Seine often looked like.

(Then Jean Valjean sees Javert and the other police on the Bridge of Austerlitz, following him. He hurries towards the darker alleys of the city.)

"A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and narrow and seemed made expressly for him."

Here's an abandoned timber-yard-ish looking picture:

But Marville has no photographs of this street. I'd have to double check, but iirc this is the part where Hugo starts to 'make up' more street layouts. I wouldn't be surprised if this street really WAS made expressly for him (meaning Hugo made it up.) "The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la Râpée, is one of those which recent improvements have transformed from top to bottom,—resulting in disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings have been effaced. To-day, there are brand-new, wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas, there; progress, as the reader sees, with its antidote."

(Here Hugo talks about the Haussman renovations directly, claiming that if his street layouts are "inaccurate" it's because these are some of the Old Medieval Streets that were razed during Paris's recent renovations. He goes on for a while comparing Petit-Picpus to various other areas that were changed during the renovations.)

"Le Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets were not much built up. (....) Such was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution snubbed it soundly. The republican government demolished and cut through it. Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. To-day, it has been utterly blotted out."

The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre;

and at Lyons, by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière, at the sign of Prudence.

Petit-Picpus had, as we have just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on the left the name of Little Picpus Street, and on the right the name of the Rue Polonceau. The two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as by a bar; this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur.

The Rue Polonceau ended there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards the Lenoir market. A person coming from the Seine reached the extremity of the Rue Polonceau, and had on his right the Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue and was called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot." Here is @everyonewasabird's attempt to puzzle this out:

It was here that Jean Valjean stood."

Then Jean Valjean escapes by pulling down an old oil lantern, strung up by ropes. Hugo notes that this would have been "impossible if the streets were lit with gas, the way they would be after the renovations. This picture shows an old oil lamp strung up by ropes:

Finally, Jean Valjean climbs over the wall into the Petit-Picpus convent. This convent is fictional. Hugo pretends it used to exists but is no longer around-- another relic of the early 19th century that has been lost over time.

TLDR:

Jean Valjean's escape through Paris is Hugo way of mourning the Paris he knew from before his exile, the Paris before the modern renovations. To quote Volume 2 Book 5 Chapter 1:

The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself, has been absent from Paris for many years. Paris has been transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen, which is, after a fashion, unknown to him. There is no need for him to say that he loves Paris: Paris is his mind’s natal city. In consequence of demolitions and reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is possible that when the author conducts his readers to a spot and says, “In such a street there stands such and such a house,” neither street nor house will any longer exist in that locality. Readers may verify the facts if they care to take the trouble. For his own part, he is unacquainted with the new Paris, and he writes with the old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he beheld when he was in his own country, and that all has not vanished. So long as you go and come in your native land, you imagine that those streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those windows, those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you; that those walls are strangers to you; that those trees are merely the first encountered haphazard; that those houses, which you do not enter, are useless to you; that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on, when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to you; that you miss those roofs, those doors; and that those walls are necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered those houses which you never entered, every day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements. All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible to you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you love them; and you call them up as they are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change: for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the face of your mother.

[deliciouskeys]

Cozy Corner Kinktober 2024 prompt #27: Temperature Play

Butchlander; Rated... G? But honestly has horror elements so probably not G. TW: I'm not going to say agere, but some kind of unhealthy mental state is portrayed.

This was originally supposed to be a joke fill of this prompt and ~500 words. Instead, it became >4k words and not funny at all, I'm sorry to report.

Just a quick (needless) note: This is set presumably some time after S4E5 where they get Stan Edgar out of prison for a hot minute, but in some sort of alternative timeline where all the turning points of S4E8 either haven't happened yet, or won't ever happen because of a canon divergence. Aaand that makes it sound more complicated than it needs to be. Carry on.

Butcher isn't sure if there's anything new he could learn about Homelander by going to the compound where he grew up, but it can't hurt to check. Stan Edgar tipped him off about the secret location, a nondescript office building with a largely empty ground floor and sham offices to act as a front in the windows, but underground there is a facility that goes six stories deep. It's close to the landmark Edison Labs in West Orange, NJ.  It's not a long drive from the city for Butcher to make. An afternoon trip-- he can be in and out. Stan assured him there was only one security guard on every floor and Butcher has a bulletproof vest and several guns hidden in his coat, so he's prepared to breach the facility, maybe grill the scientists he finds in there, although he has doubts he’s find many who worked there in the era he’s interested in. But right now the parking lot is completely empty. Odd, because Stan said the facility was still in pretty heavy use, though nothing like the heyday of the seventies and eighties.

It's too risky to park in the lot and be that conspicuous sole car, so Butcher leaves his car far away and walks. Something feels off. There doesn't seem to be a single person anywhere on site, although maybe he's doing something very stupid by just walking up to the facility's door in broad daylight. Maybe he's about to be snipered off of some other building or even the roof of this one.

There's no one anywhere that he can see. He tries the door and it opens, against his expectations. There's a security desk behind what looks bulletproof glass, but it's smashed or melted on one side and there's no one there. There’s caution tape in a lazy X across the elevator which Butcher doesn't even tear away before pressing the only button, the one with the down arrow, because he has no expectation that it will do anything. But the elevator dings and its doors open. And against his better judgement, Butcher pulls the tape off the wall edges and enters and goes straight for the lowest floor. B6.

His instinct says something is seriously wrong. Stan described a very different scene to him. This building looks abandoned and as if something violent happened. When the door opens to the B6 level a strong smell of bleach hits Butcher hard. The place looks empty, but there's still scientific equipment. Butcher can't tell whether it's modern or not, but something about the scene looks like people have been here recently. He steps out cautiously, half expecting a gun to cock and press into the back of his head, but there's no one around. Where's security? He saw a camera on the way in, and it wasn't obvious if it was on or not. There aren't even any cameras visible on this level.

Butcher's not one for getting scared, but there's something decidedly creepy about the place and how empty and silent it is, aside from the hum of some machines that are apparently still on, and the air being circulated through the ducts. Yet more evidence this building is in use, at least occasionally. It looks hastily abandoned, but there's no way it's been abandoned for years. He approaches the wall where there's a framed picture hanging up. Three scientists in lab coats, maybe four, if the woman with the big 80s hair is also one, although she looks like someone from corporate. But what Butcher's eye is drawn to is the child in the middle, dressed in a white nightgown. He stares at the face, at first not even certain whether it's a boy or a girl, but slowly coming to recognize the features that would later morph into the face of the man he's been so obsessed with over the years. It's completely uncanny. It was one thing to hear Vogelbaum wax sentimental about Homelander as a five year old, but it's quite another to actually see a picture before puberty really hit. His expression looks pouty, sullen. He's certainly more than five years old here, which means they had already "gone to work on him" for a few years, whatever Vogelbaum meant by that ominous sounding phrase.

Butcher takes a picture on his phone and looks around for more. He's got his curiosity to find more on the one hand, but he's also quite sick to his stomach. This all feels wrong. The place is hideously depressing, and Butcher's mind is starting to play tricks on him, thinking he hears someone or something lurking, maybe on some floor above. He wishes he'd brought someone else along. He can't believe he's chickening out but he doesn't think he can take any more of this. There's a heavy red metal door that's ajar, almost inviting him to look inside, but Butcher has never had such a strong premonition to leave without investigating any further. He heads toward the elevator, is about to press the button to go up when the elevator suddenly starts ascending, making a ding noise as it passes each floor.

Maybe it's just programmed to return to the ground floor, Butcher tells himself, but there's cold sweat running down his back. He presses the button anyway, sees the elevator reach the ground floor, pause, and then head back down again. It feels like it takes forever. Butcher cannot wait to get back up, leave this claustrophobic stuffy underground hellhole behind, go back to his car and never ever come back here again.

The metal elevator doors open and Butcher steps back when he sees none other than Homelander standing in the elevator.

"Long time no see, William. I'm so flattered you decided to investigate where I grew up!" Homelander walks out, effectively blocking Butcher's path to get inside, so Butcher stands still. 

As scared as he should be to see Homelander catch him in the act of snooping around this lab, he's almost relieved to not be alone in here. He'd prefer to be on the highway, hauling ass back to the city, of course, but this is how it's playing out.

Homelander raises his eyebrows dramatically. "Or at least that's what I assume you were doing. Hm?"

Butcher shrugs. "More or less."

"If you're wondering how I knew you were here, Vought Analytics kindly tipped me off when they caught you on camera. Pretty ballsy, just walking right in." Homelander grins, then takes a look around. "Wow, they really cleaned this place up since I last visited. Although the bleach fumes don't seem to air out very well from this level."

Butcher has no idea what to answer, or where this conversation is meant to be going.

"You want a tour? Or… what, a dramatic reenactment of my childhood, or…?"

Butcher stands still, mulling over whether there's any chance he leaves here alive, and whether what he says has any bearing on that.

Homelander takes it upon himself to start narrating some kind of demented walk-through without waiting for an answer. "Well, here…" He spreads his arms and gestures around. "Is where I spent all my conscious childhood years until they finally started letting me out at sixteen."

"You lived here?" Butcher asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

"Oh yes, all my time. In here. I don't remember seeing the sun or open skies until I was probably ten years old, and very rarely. I had books about the outdoors, I dreamed about it. But I never saw it." Homelander's smile falters, then reanimates itself. "So yes, not only did I spend most of my life on this floor, I actually spent quite a bit of the time just locked away in here…"

He gestures toward the ominous red door. Butcher follows him inside even though he takes one longing look at the elevator, knowing there's no way Homelander would let his captive audience just walk out.

The room seems blindingly bright compared to the rest of the floor, white walls everywhere, reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. It feels cold and clinical, and Butcher has a suspicion that the white paint is a thin layer over reinforced metal. It's completely empty.

"Yes, this room is where I slept, ate my meals, did my studies, took my shits. And if they felt like it, where I was just abandoned for days when they working on something else and couldn't be bothered with me." Homelander stops roving the room with his eyes and fixes them on Butcher, standing akimbo. "Well? What do you think?"

Butcher wonders if Homelander actually expects an answer. It seems like he's really waiting. "Mate… I think the whole thing is fucked up beyond belief. That's what I think."

Homelander smiles, and the smile almost looks genuinely friendly. "That's what I say! But as a child, I didn't know anything else, you know? They told me I was special and this is what they needed to do, and that this was an acceptable way for me to live, and who was I to argue with them? They didn't like it when I complained about anything. It was frowned upon. Moving on…" 

Butcher is all too happy to obey Homelander's beckoning gesture and follow him out of the claustrophobic little room. Butcher was never a believer in vibes, but the whole place makes him uneasy.

"Here's the table where the scientists who worked on this floor took lunch. They used to talk and joke and laugh, and I think listening to that banter was probably how I learned to sound like I was raised in a normal family. I could watch them out of the window in the door if they didn't cover it up with metal because they wanted privacy. I never got any privacy. There were four cameras in that tiny room, one in each ceiling corner, and my whole life was recorded. I wonder if they kept all those tapes. Must be the most boring footage in the world, so they probably recycled them unless I did something interesting. I should say that every birthday they did allow me to sit with them at the table and have my piece of cake and they'd all pretend we were friends and that we were celebrating my birthday and not their own milestone that they were congratulating themselves for. Back then they might have even been celebrating my real birthday, before the corporate one they came up with in committee that fit the television schedule well. Not that I remember what my real birthdate was. They didn't really emphasize dates or give me access to calendars or anything… I never had a good grasp on how much time was passing…."

Homelander really sounds like he's talking to himself at this point, processing something, face twitching as his efforts to smile keep drooping into a more sinister expression with bared teeth. He trails off and sighs at some point. "I'm sorry, where were we?"

Butcher just stares at him.

"Sorry, am I boring you?" Homelander asks, and his face is cold and collected again.

"Not at all, unfortunately," Butcher answers. "I don't know what the fuck they were doing to you, but it's sick. A company can't own a child."

"Oh it's completely illegal," Homelander says, laughing, and his face is friendlier again, an amiable smile playing on his lips. "But you don't make trillions of dollars without breaking a few people, am I right?"

"Why are you still working for Vought?" Butcher asks, suddenly feeling angry. It feels like anger on Homelander's behalf, which is a new emotion for Butcher and he's not sure he likes it.

"I'm not working for them," Homelander says. "I took over the entire thing. They're working for me."

"Keep telling yourself that. How do you know they're not raising another little supe like you, somewhere out in some other secret facility. Maybe tens of them. Maybe torturing them until only the strongest survives?"

"I- I'd know about that, as a board member."

Butcher hears the falter in his voice.

"Anyway. Sometimes Barb- the head of the lab would let me walk around the lab and sit at this table when the rest of them weren't having lunch and working. She used to give me pen and paper to draw and write, but… I guess eventually they didn't let me anymore when I kept drawing things they didn't like… One of the lab members, Joe, I think was his name, Joe Nesbitt, yes. I should remember them all, but it's not like they wore nametags and didn't always introduce themselves depending on how closely they worked with me. But Joe had this dog he'd bring in. I thought it was the most adorable thing I had ever seen. You have to remember, I didn't ever get to see other children or pets or anything except these labworkers and janitors. Everything else was just from books. Well Joe was bringing his dog in, even though I don't think Vogelbaum or Barbara approved at all. He'd let me play with the dog, which was… pretty remarkable if you think about how little they trusted me to control my powers back then. I wasn't supposed to touch the dog of course. But if I sat on my heels in the middle of the floor, the dog would usually come and want to play, and pounce on me, and even lick me. And I wanted to pet it so bad, but I just kept my hands behind my back to remind myself not to ever touch it. I played fetch with it, even though they weren't happy that I was making the dog run around the room. Eventually they told Joe to stop bringing the dog, that it was inappropriate and distracting to everyone. He was an actually kind guy. I remember they were discussing it, maybe thinking I couldn't hear behind the door of the Bad Room, but the Bad Room only blocked my vision, not my hearing. He said he wasn't bringing the dog in for himself, that he was bringing it in for me. That he thought I desperately needed a pet to take care of, to develop my personality properly. I remember when I listened, my breath hitching, wishing so hard they'd let me have a pet. But they said no, that it was an unnecessary distraction for me too. But he was right of course. A pet would have been so good for me. I should have told them I wanted a pet. I should have insisted. But instead I thought I shouldn't ask for something if they didn't want me to have it."

It's a bit bewildering to hear so much sadness pour out of this cruel, deplorable shitstain of a supe, but it's so hard not to feel something for him. Being here is creepy, and it's bringing out strange memories in this guy.

"I don't know what happened to Joe. I think he ended up getting sick. Died of cancer or something, even before I was twelve. Wouldn't be surprised if working here wasn't good for a mudperson's health, and yet so many people seemed to work here forever and carry on with their pointless little lives just fine."

"Maybe we should go upstairs…" Butcher says, cautious about saying anything that will make Homelander snap out of whatever mood this is, and maybe snap completely.

Homelander smiles. "No, we can't leave before we see the oven."

Butcher has had the sinking feeling all along that this is all one prolonged monologue before Homelander executes him, and now he knows the method by which he will die. Well, it was a good run, he guesses. He eyes the elevator, but there's just no way. Maybe getting lasered in the back is going to be less painful than whatever Homelander has planned for him, but he just can't force himself to make a break for it, his legs feeling strangely leaden. Maybe he's become hypnotized by the story, being able to imagine it all the more vividly now that he's seen the childhood photograph on the wall.

"This is where they burned me, to build up my resistance to heat damage. Probably weekly if not more often. I don't know why they had a window. I guess to watch the progress inside? Not sure they would have seen anything happening other than me crying my little eyes out. All the window allowed me to do was watch how people were just going about their work, except for the couple who were directly involved in baking me in the oven. No one gave a shit that I was suffering."

Butcher raises his eyebrows when Homelander leans down and starts taking off his boots. By the time he's taken off his cape and starts opening the magnetized flap of his top half, Butcher can't help himself any longer. "What the hell are you doing right now?"

Homelander turns toward him sharply. "I want to show you. I want to show you exactly what they used to do to me. It won't hurt me now that I'm an adult. It hurt back then, but it won't hurt now. They got rid of my sensitivities that way."

Butcher can barely follow what he's saying. "Are you … going into the oven?"

Homelander nods nonchalantly. 

"You completely off your rocker? There's no way it's still operational anyway. What the fuck's the point?"

"Oh it's operational," Homelander says. "I saw it in action a few weeks ago."

Butcher is so confused he finds himself literally scratching his head, trying to make sense of what's happening. It feels like that fairytale where someone has to trick the witch into looking into the oven to push her in, except this witch is hopping into the oven himself, fully aware of what he's doing. Or maybe not fully aware, since he seems to be in some weird giddy nostalgic fucked up spiral.

Homelander is already naked by the time Butcher shakes those thoughts away.

"Why the hell do they still have this oven? Doesn't that mean they're still doing this to other kids?" Butcher asks.

Homelander shrugs. "Maybe they use it to bake glassware now. You know, to sterilize it? I have no idea. They were using the Bad Room to store all their old broken and outdated equipment, so who knows. It's empty now though. They cleaned it out pretty thoroughly…" 

Butcher doesn't like the smile on Homelander's face. It looks crazed. And it's not surprising, since he's determined to do something absolutely nonsensical. Butcher really needs to leave this building. There's some terrible energy or feng shui or juju or whatever people call it in here. Butcher felt better energy in the Tower of London as a child.

Homelander walks in through the oven's door.

"Why do you have to be naked for this?" Butcher asks.

"Because this thing gets over 1000 degrees inside. There's literal gas flames that come through the panels. My suit's built against the elements but I don't know if it'll hold up to that."

Butcher just can't help himself anymore. "And why the fuck do you feel the need to get in there, again?" What is he saying? Why is he offended by the idea of Homelander doing something so stupidly reckless. He probably knows he won't be hurt. And what if he is? Since when has Butcher ever worried about a supe hurting himself by doing something moronic? But something about spending his time down here, listening to Homelander's disturbing stream of conscience, makes Butcher feel like he's the designated driver, like he's strangely responsible for whatever happens next.

"I just want to show you." Homelander motions him over. "Shut the door and turn on that button on the side. The numbers above the knob tell you the temperature it's set to reach."

Butcher shuts the door, staring at Homelander's face through the thick transparent window, made of who knows what material. 

"Well? Go on." Homelander's voice sounds very faint and muffled from inside.

Butcher stares at the panel. "1200C" is what the knob is set to. What the hell is he doing? And why is he hesitating? He hits the button, surprised at the immediate swell of guilt he feels. He hears the door automatically bolt locked, and watches as the back wall splits like some heavy duty metal Venetian blinds, revealing a wall of flames right behind them.

Homelander's expression is manic. "Doesn't hurt like it used to," he announces, loud even through the thick glass, and yet when Butcher approaches the door to watch what's going on inside, Homelander is hugging himself and cowering and wincing a little bit, scrunching his eyes shut. Doesn't look painless.

Butcher glances back at the elevator. Well, here's his fucking chance. Even if Homelander is capable of breaking the door open, Butcher might have time to take the elevator and bound across the lot and be long gone before he manages to do that.

He starts backing up, still watching Homelander inside, flames all around him. Butcher doesn't believe in Heaven or Hell, but it certainly looks like Homelander is in one of those two places. Butcher's so close, so close to just turning around, walking towards the elevator, and getting the hell out of there. But Homelander looks up at  him and his eyes widen when he sees how far Butcher has distanced himself. It looks like it finally dawns on him that he gave Butcher the perfect escape while trying to relive his demented childhood traumas.

Butcher can't do it. In spite of every rational thought telling him not to walk back, he walks back to the panel and shuts the oven off. The door remains locked, probably a safety precaution since the inside temperature is still scorchingly hot. Homelander stands near the window, eyes big and round, and it's fucking uncanny but Butcher can't unsee the child version of his face etched into his current features.

Maybe he should leave now. At least he's turned the oven off, right? That has to be enough. "Is the door gonna unlock on its own?" Butcher verifies, hoping the answer is yes and that he can leave with a clear conscience.

"You have to override the safety from the outside. It won't open from the inside after being powered up." Homelander says, and Butcher can't tell if he sounds sheepish because of how quiet and muffled he is behind the glass, or because he's embarrassed about trusting that Butcher will stay and do all the honors.

But Butcher does stay and do the honors, mad as it all is. The door unlocks and opens, a rush of extremely hot air blowing into the rest of the room, fortunately far enough away from  where Butcher is standing that he only feels the air gust and not so much the temperature. Homelander traipses out of the oven, arms still wrapped around his torso.

"Looks like it still hurts from where I'm standin'," Butcher says. Homelander is looking at the ground and says nothing before picking up his suit and trying to put it back on, hissing quietly when anything touches his skin.

"You're an idiot." Butcher can't help himself. He's in complete disbelief. "Why on earth did you think that was a good idea?"

"It hurt more as a child," Homelander declares, as if that answers the question. But he seems to be regaining his composure. No harm no foul with these supes, even if you stick them in an inferno. "I just needed to convince myself that it wasn't as bad as I remember it."

"I'm sure it was as bad," Butcher says. He still doesn't know what happens next. As much as he's calling Homelander an idiot in his thoughts, he might be the bigger idiot for staying down here and saving him from himself. Now he might pay the ultimate price.

"I think that's all I have to say about this place…" Homelander says. "Funny. I killed a lot of the people who could verify that all the stuff I'm saying they did to me is true. Now maybe no one will ever know. And I'm fine with that. You don't have to remember anything I told you here. It's dead and buried in the past and has nothing to do with the present."

"I think it has something to do with the present…" Butcher can't help but counter.

"Doesn't matter. I'm thinking about the future, About Ryan and all that. And how I'll make sure he never goes through anything like I did." Homelander's face twists into anger again. "Did I even need to go through all that? It still hurts. It still fucking hurts. Maybe they didn't inure me to anything. Maybe they just told me they did and I believed them. Maybe it was all one big waste of time that could have been avoided."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Butcher says.

Homelander sniffs something like a laugh without any mirth, walks towards the elevator and presses the button to go upstairs. Butcher hesitates to follow, not quite believing that his ordeal is over.

"Well?" Homelander sound impatient after he walks in and holds the elevator by sticking out his arm, waiting for Butcher to make his way in. "Or were you planning on trying to find secret documents or something?"

"Nope," Butcher mumbles. Maybe he should, but he's not about to stay down there any longer than he has to.

"They took all the important documents once they cleared the place out. They had to do a bunch of cleanup anyway after my visit. Think they took everything important and stashed it away from busybodies like you."

"Left that picture on the wall," Butcher says, not sure why he's engaging in this conversation, but it's surreal to stand with Homelander in an elevator and openly discuss his efforts to get intel on him. "Maybe you should have taken it with you."

"Oh that thing, with Barbara and the rest?" Homelander makes a sour face. "Should have thrown it out. That's a chapter of my life I don't ever want to think about again."

Butcher doesn't know who Barbara is but guesses she must be the woman in the picture. He, for one, is glad he has a copy on his phone. Something about it is haunting but very very evocative, like he sees the man in front of him in a new light, and he didn't think that was possible after all the research and study he's already done on him over the years, and how crystallized his hatred has become.

Butcher is tempted to get down and kiss the ground when they finally walk out of the building, grateful he's no longer six floors down below.

"Don't come snooping around Vought properties," Homelander tells him His tone sounds official, like the voice he uses to give PSAs on TV. Not at all like the broken, slightly stuttering voice that was recounting his childhood down in B6.

Butcher flinches away when Homelander takes off without any warning, pushing off the asphalt and launching himself into the sky with a completely unnecessary sonic boom. He watches him fly towards Manhattan and slowly makes his way to where he left his car, checking his phone to make sure he did save the photo from the lab wall.

For safekeeping. Nothing stranger than that.

AO3 link

[prettyoddfever]

I just wanted to say, I love your blog. You post so much information that’s not only interesting, but also validating, as someone who sees 24/7 misinterpretations of the band’s history on TikTok (I have an account where I post edits there). I first became active in the Panic fandom literally as the band was splitting up, which was just /amazing/ lol, but I took a huge step back from fandoms/online communities related to my interests when I started college. I recently came back around a year or so ago, because I enjoy making edits and wanted to indulge in my interests again, only to find out that 90% of Panic-related content online has just been overrun with misinformation/Brendon-haters etc. It was honestly jarring for me because so many of the things people claim as evidence of Brendon being horrible (That he assaulted and abused Ryan, that the band split up because Brendon forced Ryan out, that Ryan was basically forced out of the frontman role, etc…), are just so crazy to someone who knows that’s just not accurate! Your blog has reassured me that I am not crazy and the way I remember things is not a figment of my imagination lol. Even though I was very young when some of these things were happening, my older sister was OBSESSED with Panic and I was into whatever she was into, haha, we still reminisce to this day. I have been literally harassed on TikTok for commenting “in defense” of Brendon Urie underneath a post where someone insisted that every time he got near Ryan on stage, it was without Ryan’s consent. I knew that Brendon had “got cancelled” but I had no idea that people were that serious about it… When half of the things they claim aren’t even real. I know it’s not their fault that they’ve consumed misinformation, but there is no changing people’s minds, even with evidence, which is sad to me. It really sucks that newer fans of the band have such a bitter, twisted narrative around the band’s early eras and the split. But so many of the things they reference happened before they were probably born, yet they swear they’re more knowledgeable than someone who was kinda there…

Anyway, I’m sorry for the wall of text, I just needed to get that out and I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your blog! Not only is it just fun to read, but it really takes me back to my growing-up years, and it’s refreshing to see a take on PATD that’s more “normal” in my eyes.

You put this so well oh my goodness. 100% yes to everything you said. I've heard similar things from some other returning fans over the past couple years and I just relate to all of it so much. I mentioned at the bottom of this post how I drifted away from the Panic fandom for about a decade and coming back was so confusing at first. But trying to wrap my mind around everything also helped me understand modern politics in a way, though? Like now I can see how it's totally possible that a large crowd of people can literally invent their own reality, readily believe whatever they hear in their echo chamber, and then willfully ignore facts, evidence, and firsthand accounts if those contradict the narrative they'd prefer to believe.

Sometimes I'm sad for some newer P!ATD fans who could easily spare themselves a lot of stress & perceived injustice by simply learning about the real band & members. But they're free to focus on whatever they want, I suppose. I'd rather spend my time focusing on fun memories and organizing my little Special Interest mess lol. I’m also happy to clarify stuff or try to answer questions if people are genuinely curious... it’s fun to see others who are interested. Anyways, I'm so glad you're still a fan of the band! Sorry it took me months to reply. And I love your wall of text because it means you care. 🧡

[jbaileyfansite]

Interview with Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer from GQ Hype

Filled with cozy, Hemingwayesque signifiers of midcentury masculinity (think: taxidermy and artfully-tattered boxing gloves), the restaurant seemed perfect for a breezy, late-autumn hang in the West Village.

But there’s one problem: Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey have burgers on their minds. And while this place boasts a surplus of dead animals nailed to the wall, it somehow only serves snacks and salads in the afternoon. And as Bomer points out, Corner Bistro—a pub that, in his opinion, serves some of the best burgers in town—is just a six-minute walk away.

The British-born Bailey—who, in his black sweater, floppy beanie and overstuffed backpack, looks more like a backpacker who just rolled out of his hostel rather than one of the streaming era’s top heartthrobs—waxes rhapsodic about In-N-Out, the California burger institution, which he recently tried for the first time.

He asks the suave, Old Hollywood-handsome Bomer, who spends most of his time in L.A. with his husband and three teenage sons, where In-N-Out falls on his personal burger index. “Our boys are really good judges of burgers,” Bomer says, and for them, In-N-Out is up there—but so is the burger at Corner Bistro. And how can we send Bailey—the Viscount of Bridgerton himself—back to London without tasting New York’s best?

Our location, midway between Stonewall Inn and Julius, two of New York’s most historic gay bars, is apt. The project we’re here to talk about—the epic new Showtime series Fellow Travelers, in which the pair star—tips its hat to the legendary 1969 riots that happened in Stonewall, but goes even further, telling the story of gay liberation in the second half of the twentieth century.

Part epic love story, part political thriller, Fellow Travelers begins in 1950s Washington, D.C., with an illicit affair between the strapping Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Bomer), a State Department official savvy to the ways of power, and the earnest, energetic Timothy “Tim” Laughlin (Bailey), the kind of wide-eyed idealist who goes to D.C. wanting to change the world. When they first meet, Tim is a conservative Catholic boy; his passionate, intensely erotic affair with Hawk both liberates him and throws him off his path.

Through the decades-spanning run of their relationship, the series takes us from the Lavender Scare of the 1950s—when a McCarthy-era policy that institutionalized homophobia expelled many “sexual deviants” from government, resulting at one point in a suicide a day—to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

The series is based on the Thomas Mallon novel of the same name. But where Mallon’s book generally focuses on the 1950s and the explosive romance between Hawk and Tim, the series expands the Fellow Travelers universe to reach through the decades and cover the Vietnam War protests of the '60s and the White Night riots of 1979.

“It's been taught that LGBTQIA+ history begins at Stonewall,” says Jelani Alladin, the actor who plays queer Black journalist Marcus Hooks in the series. “It’s a kind of false narrative. Queer people have been around taking a stand for themselves since the beginning of time.”

It feels like a disservice to call a series so sexy and so compelling as educational. But Fellow Travelers does serve as an important history lesson for younger generations who may not fully understand the battles fought before their time. “It was a really dark period in American history that obviously we're not taught in school,” says executive producer Robbie Rogers, who prior to his work in film and TV was the soccer player who became the first openly gay man to compete in a North American professional sports league. “We're not taught LGBT history.”

When the first episode of the series came out in late October, a viral clip showcasing Bailey and Bomer in a particularly kinky sex scene had Gay Twitter shuddering with excitement. In the scene, Bailey’s Tim uses his power as a sub to persuade Bomer’s Hawk to take him to an important D.C. party. “I’m your boy, right?” he tells Hawk. “Your boy wants to go to the party.” In surely one of this year’s hottest scenes on film or TV, we see Bailey hungrily suck on Bomer’s toes and gamely attempt to put his foot in his mouth. Earlier in the series, Hawk gives Tim the name “Skippy” after thoroughly dominating him in bed, a gesture of affection as much as of ownership.

Sex is a powerful, world-shifting force in Fellow Travelers, but it’s also a Trojan horse. While the early episodes bristle with erotic energy, every exchange between Bomer and Bailey is about power as much as it is about sex. And the further you go into Travelers, the more you realize what’s really at stake when these two hit the sack.

“Even in the ‘50s, they had joy,” Travelers creator and writer Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia, says. “You might be struggling, but that doesn't mean every moment of your life you're a victim of oppression. Behind closed doors they had a life—it's just that at any moment, the police could come through those doors and ruin that life.”

That unapologetic approach to queer desire is still pretty revolutionary in a big-budget prestige series on a major network. Gone are the days when gay characters were allowed to exist onscreen as long as they adhered to respectability politics. In Fellow Travelers, the queer characters are allowed passionate, unapologetically freaky pleasures.

“There's no shame attached to that,” Bailey says. “And I do think Matt's character detonates something in Tim. It's a gift to meet someone [who does the] radical act of helping you feel less shame and understand that intimacy that can be explored in so many different ways.”

Religion is a big theme in Fellow Travelers. Hawk is bound by covenant to his wife; Tim struggles with Catholic guilt. And like many queer people, Bomer and Bailey themselves have both had to negotiate religion within their queer identities.

“It took me a long time to dismantle it and to question what I was being told,” Bailey says. “Religion is interesting because it’s the voice of the shame but also [a source of] relief. There was this person that I could speak to—and I definitely did have that full conversation with a higher power. But the contradiction is brutal. To really lean into that as a gay kid who's not born into a gay family, you see both sides of what religion can provide, which is scathing judgment—as I felt it looking back—but also a real space for catharsis and nourishment.”

Bomer says he has an individualized approach to religion: “It's something that I've found for myself over years and years of exploration. It's just highly personal that way.” Bomer is proud to have raised his kids in a truly intersectional environment. “They go to an Episcopal school, but they're in school with Muslim kids, with Jewish kids,” he says. “We gave them that experience and then let them find their own way from there.”

On the way to Corner Bistro, Bomer gives Bailey a capsule tour of gay West Village. “That’s an iconic lesbian bar,” he says, pointing out Cubbyhole on West 12th street. Later, he asks if we’ve ever been to Fire Island. “You can have any experience you want there,” Bomer tells me, when I confess my anxiety around Speedos. “It's not just one thing.”

These streets bring up certain memories for Bomer. He tells us about coming up as an actor in New York in the early 2000s, at one point living in “a renovated crackhouse in Brooklyn.” Later, he worked two jobs to afford a one-bedroom apartment he split with a fellow aspiring actor—none other than Lee Pace, the famous, and famously tall (6′ 5″, if you don’t know), actor and Internet Boyfriend who Bomer has known since high school. “I’ll tell you how long I've known Lee Pace,” he says. “I’ve known him since he was shorter than me, when he was 14 and I was 15.”

As gay men are wont to do, trust that the group veered off-topic to talk about vocally-prodigious divas. Bomer has just seen the Broadway production of David Byrne’s Here Lies Love, which tells the story of the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And when he finds out that I grew up in the Philippines, he tells me how much he loves Lea Salonga, the Tony-winning Filipino Broadway star who appears in the production.

We ask Bailey if he’s familiar with her. “Do I know Lea Salonga?” he asks. “She was Fantine!” he retorts, referring to her role in Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary.

From there, we fall into a Filipino diva rabbit hole, talking about former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger (currently appearing in a well-received West End production of Sunset Boulevard that Bomer tells Bailey they must catch together), Mutya Buena of the Sugababes (an iconic U.K. girl group that Bailey and I separately saw live recently), and Darren Criss (who Bomer directed on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story—technically a straight male, but one who earns diva status for his formidable vocals and the dance he did in a red speedo on Versace).

As we near the pub, a thirty-something woman walking hand in hand with her man does a hilariously convincing impression of the Distracted Boyfriend meme at the sight of Neal Caffrey and Anthony Bridgerton casually strolling through West 4th Street.

“Her neck!” Bailey says, audibly concerned.

In Corner Bistro, with sandwiches and coffees in hand (Bailey decides on a classic burger and a grilled chicken sandwich), we settle down in a cozy booth and talk about the points in their careers where Fellow Travelers found the actors, the hard-won representation Hollywood’s queer community has been fighting for for decades, and the LGBTQ+ talents of color they’d like to support on their own projects.

Bomer, of course, has been famous since the early 2010s, when he became a star on the series White Collar, and along with Neil Patrick Harris, proved that openly gay actors could become leading men. Since then, he’s conquered Broadway (The Boys in the Band), won a slew of awards (Golden Globe and Critic's Choice trophies for The Normal Heart) and become a producer and director.

In the past, Bomer has discussed the way doors closed on him even as he was being celebrated for being an out gay actor. When asked about that now, he says, “I choose just to never look back in anger about anything. Ultimately, my career is a lot richer because I decided to be open with who I am.”

“It’s a wave of progress that Matt's been surfing and is at the front of,” says Bailey. “And it's been a real honor to be able to get on my boogie board next to him.”

Before he became a global star mid-pandemic playing the grumpy, furry-chested Anthony Bridgerton on the Netflix juggernaut Bridgerton, Bailey was an award-winning actor in both the West End and British television. Huge fame didn’t find Bailey until his early 30s, so when it did, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish with his platform.

“I feel the responsibility immeasurably,” Bailey says. “I get it when people are saying you create a chair and bring people [to the table].” He talks about the connection between the civil rights movement and the queer liberation. “The Black queens are the ones who really started to fight,” he says. “It's amazing to feel politically activated. And if there's any project to do that, it's going to be Fellow Travelers. It will change the way I see myself in and the world I live in.”

The intersectionality makes the story Travelers is trying to tell even richer—most of all in Alladin’s scene-stealing portrayal of the conflicted Marcus Hooks, a pioneering Black journalist who pushes against segregation as he grapples with his own sexuality. “When I look at older men today, I'm like, You guys have endured so much,” Aladdin says. “From the Second World War all the way through to the AIDS crisis, it was nonstop life crisis after life crisis. To have been able to survive through all that, there needs to be a real, solid weight on the feet of [these characters].”

Part of the pleasure of watching Fellow Travelers is picking up on the cinematic references hidden in each scene. Hawk and Tim’s first interactions evoke the forbidden affair in David Lean’s 1945 classic Brief Encounter. When Hawk’s family settles in suburbia, the show evokes the Technicolor repression of the great Douglas Sirk melodramas. When Hawk and Tim run through the beaches of Fire Island in the ‘70s, that iconic image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing on the beach in From Here to Eternity may flicker in your mind. And in some ways, the series plays like a gayer, hornier The Way We Were—an epic love story tossed on the tides of political change. (In this version, of course, the Barbra Streisand character is an eager foot-licking sub and Redford’s Hubbell Gardiner is a daddy with a pit fetish.) Fellow Travelers allows us to imagine an alternate timeline where queer love has always gotten as much screen time as cinema’s great heterosexual romances, giving other kinds of stories the chance at celluloid immortality too.

In the book, Hawk is described as being more handsome than Gregory Peck. But seeing Bomer in period-appropriate clothing, the Old Hollywood leading man I thought of was Montgomery Clift, the talented and ultimately tragic gay actor who starred in classics like Red River and A Place in the Sun. For a time in the mid 2010s, Bomer was attached to star in a Montgomery Clift biopic for HBO, to be directed by the great gay director Ira Sachs. “Ira is a genius,” Bomer says. “[But] I think that ship may have sailed.”

Still, when I press him about doing it in the future, he lights up. “You know, I’m [now] the same age Monty was when he passed away,” Bomer says. “I always thought it'd be really interesting to do a play about the last night of his life, when he's watching one of his old movies on TV. And he had this man who lived with him and took care of him for the last chapter of his life.There's an interesting play in there somewhere���. Maybe Liz Taylor swings by.”

What’s changed since the mid 2010s is that a lot of Hollywood’s current gatekeepers are queer people who were fighting from the bottom a decade ago. “It's the people, the gatekeepers who are now going, ‘We are going to make this [queer] story,’” Bailey says. “This narrative that gay people have to be closeted in order [for a project] to be commercial and in order for things to be interesting to people—it's been dismantled. But it's slow because it's not just straight people who think that—I think everyone believed that in the system of Hollywood.”

Nyswaner, who has been working in Hollywood since the early ‘80s, has seen that shift up close. “When I grew up in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, I never heard the word ‘homosexual’ spoken aloud,” he says. “There was no conversation that I ever had with anybody about homosexuality. It was not just bad, it was the unspeakable thing—that's how terrified people were of us.”

And while he agrees that, in some ways, it feels like the LGBTQ+ community is once again losing ground on some rights, Nyswaner refuses to accept that there hasn’t been change. “Sometimes I hear people say, ‘Well, we haven't gotten anywhere.’ And I'm here to say, ‘Oh, yes, we have.’ Because actually you can turn on the television and find gay characters.”

Fellow Travelers is the culmination of a dream for a number of the men involved in the series.

“When I met Ron, he was talking about how he thinks about this as his lifelong legacy project,” Bailey says. “And I just said to him, ‘Whoever ends up going on this journey with you, I think it'll be the same [for them] probably.’”

“In some ways, Fellow Travelers is a span of my life,” Ron Nyswaner says. “I was an infant in the McCarthy era. And then I came out of the closet in 1978 and just danced and did cocaine and had multiple sexual partners—we didn't know what was coming, which was the AIDS crisis.” Nyswaner was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1993 for Philadelphia, the landmark drama about an AIDS patient who sues his employers for AIDS discrimination. In a way, the historical span of Fellow Travelers gives the battles fought in Philadelphia their context.

Rogers remembers being a closeted soccer player in the late 2000s, watching Tom Ford’s A Single Man and hoping one day to be able to find love and take control of his own narrative. And Bailey recalls, post-Bridgerton, realizing that he could suddenly write his own destiny and vowing to seek out “a sweeping gay love story.”

Bomer, meanwhile, says—laughing, but seemingly dead serious—that it’s his goal to play a queer character from every decade of the 20th century. “A queer Decalogue,” he says, referencing the Krzysztof Kieślowski classic.

Bomer’s next project might just help him do that. He’s currently producing a Steven Soderbergh film on Lawrence v. Texas, the case that overturned the sodomy laws in Texas in 2003 but started in the 90s.

There are many more stories to tell. And as our interview winds down, Bomer and Bailey start spitballing dream projects.

We talk about All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh, who’s revered for his portraits of gay intimacy. “Andrew Haigh has been a special filmmaker for years,” Bailey says. “I think [his film] Weekend informed actually how I approached the sex scenes in [Fellow Travelers].”

“I’d love to play Jessica Fletcher's queer grandson who moves back to Cabot Cove,” Bomer says, referencing Angela Lansbury’s iconic role in Murder, She Wrote. “He's inherited her house and he finds an old journal in her library, and it's a case she never saw and he takes up her mantle.”

And moments before the restaurant speakers suddenly start blaring George Michael’s “Freedom ’90,” Bailey comes in with a killer pitch: “I’m obsessed with the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of 300 gay lovers in [ancient] Greece. They partnered in pairs, this gay army, and they overthrew a Spartan army… I want to do that as a comedy.”

“Oh hell yes!” Bomer says.

“Just get all the queer actors together,” Bailey says, laughing.

“Lee Pace, everyone,” Bomer says.

“Where would we film it?” Bailey asks.

“Mykonos?” Bomer suggests.

“Flaming Saddles, down the road,” Bailey counters with a chuckle, referring to a gay bar in midtown.

“Oil us up and let’s go!” Bomer says.

Source

[rainintheevening]

West, Part I

Maps stretched out

The day after Peter ships out, the maps start appearing on the wall of the Fifth form common room at St. Maurice’s. Europe as a whole at first, then Italy, the Mediterranean, Greece, Germany, France...

He takes them home with him at the end of the term, Edmund Pevensie does, scatters them over his (and Peter's) room, mixed up with newspapers and letters in Peter's dashing handwriting.

Too many miles to count

He tries to find closer maps, more detail, tracing his finger across mountain ranges and down coastlines. He spans the entire Allied line with his thumb. He'd never felt the world to be so big before, never felt so small. Narnia had been such a small country. How long would it take to sail around the Cape of Gibraltar? How long would it take to fly to Sicily?

Sometimes he does the math. Sometimes he doesn't.

Let's just say we're inches apart

Remember watching the stars with Oreius? How you'd sketch them with your finger so carefully? How we'd lie out in the grass with Era and Philip, in silence sometimes, for hours? There were so many stars out there in the country. Some nights I'm lucky to see stars here. But when I do I imagine you seeing the same ones, mapping your way the way to well, your way to me. Sometimes I swear I can feel you beside me in the dark, little brother.

He lies in Peter's bed, letter in his hand, falls asleep with paper between his fingers.

And even closer at heart

For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Even as his pen moves over the paper, he finds his lips moving too, a begging murmur, mixing with the summer rain heavy on the roof.

And we'll be just fine

He laughs as Lucy places the crown of daisies on his head, and kisses her cheek. He rubs Susan's aching feet as she sits on the couch and reads aloud to them. He fingers his little silver lion against his collarbone, and smiles through the steam rising off his coffee.

Another pin pushed in

The maps on the wall grow a forest of colored heads and tiny flags, and anyone who wants war news or any better understanding of the progression of the European theatre goes to the Fifth's common room.

To remind us where we've been

He takes a map down to the stables sometimes, unrolls it on the table in the harness room, sits patiently as Master Gringham pores over it, searching for the boy who rode his horses like no one else, all of them trying to coordinate themselves.

The horses miss you, he writes to Peter. Have you had a chance to ride recently?

And evey mile adds up

He lies alone in their room, catching the faint murmurs of his parents downstairs, and he can't remember the last time he cried on Christmas, but he's doing it now, hot salt water on Peter's pillow, as Bing Crosby croons on the wireless in the girls' room down the hall.

Please, God, please let him come home safe, please let him be happy, please.

Leaving its mark on us

I was grieved to hear of your wounding, brother, but truly grateful it was not more serious. I wish I could be there, to make sure you were getting proper care and treatment. Be careful, please. But don't be a coward. I'd rather a dead brother, than a coward. But don't die. You're not allowed to die without me.

He means it, every word, that's why he doesn't cross any of it out.

And sometimes our compass breaks

Twelve of them dead, and I alive, and I don't know why, Ed, but I don't know if I can do this, I can't. Not alone. I'd forgotten how much this hurts. I only knew half their names, and I know Badger had four little kids back home, and I don't understand.

I don't understand.

And our steady true north fades

Snow lies thick on the moor, and Ed struggles to open his eyes in the morning. His feet are heavy, his mind moves slow, and he can't get warm. He sits as close to the fire in the common room as he can without setting his clothes aflame. Some mornings he sits with his hand on the black leather cover, but he doesn’t open the book.

We'll be just fine

There's a black and white photograph folded in with the thin paper, and there he is smiling up at them all, officer's cap set at a jaunty angle, shirtless with a bandage on one forearm. Peter hugs a scruffy looking mongrel dog close, hand rubbing the pointed ears, and Ed smiles back at the living shadow of his brother.

We'll be just fine

Warm spring sunshine splashes over Ed's face, and he leans on his spade, brushes mud off his hands, and surveys the dark turned earth of the school's Victory Garden, listens to the first formers laughing as they fling dirt clods at each other.

We'll be just fine

Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire... Peter writes.

We'll be just fine

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge, Edmund answers.

I know that we will

"I miss him so much," Lucy says, and Edmund wraps his arm around her shoulders as they walk, remembering how he closed his last letter with those three words.

I just know that we will

He kneels by Peter's bed, his bed now, and the maps hang all round on the walls, he is surrounded by everywhere his brother is and was and could be, as he bows his head and the evening prayer comes weary and steady from his lips.

They used to say it together.

[musical-shit-show]

“i fucking love you.” “hang up, and tell me this when you’re sober.” Dewey Finn x reader angst? Can go either way. I love ur work so much onh my goodness I can’t get enough

modern idiots

Pairing: Dewey Finn x Reader

Inspiration: Prompt #3 (“i fucking love you.” “hang up, and tell me this when you’re sober.”) from Prompt List 1

Warnings: Cursing, drinking, suggestive dialogue, mutual pining, angst, fluff at the end

Word Count: 2,200

Author’s Note: So, I’m actually embarrassed at how long this took. I think I just hit a wall at soooo many points, but I’m hoping the end result is what the original requester had in mind. Thanks everyone for their patience. I know I’m not the most consistent poster, but I hope to take the next few months to write more and redo my layout to make my masterlist a bit more streamlined. As always, check out my about me page and prompt lists if you’d like to submit an ask. I’d love to get a BJ ask out before the end of spooky season, but unfortunately, I’m drowning in Halloween activities. But definitely stay tuned and enjoy!

“So,” you heard a flirty drawl come from your phone speaker, “Got any fun plans tonight? Maybe…a hot date?”

You snorted a laugh as you surveyed the scene in front of you: a large bowl of popcorn, fluffy blanket draped across your lap, Sex and the City playing on the TV at low volume.

“Oh yeah,” you replied sarcastically, “I actually have a line of suitors out the door just waiting to ask for my hand. It’s all very Regency era.”

“I’ll just pretend I know what ‘Regency era’ means and say…good for you, babe,” Dewey said, making another giggle escape from your throat.

Nobody made you laugh like Dewey Finn. He was your best friend and more recently, your best fuck buddy. You swore you’d never get yourself into a situation like this, but with Dewey it just felt so…easy. Natural.

And if you were spending your time fucking him, you’d have less time to stop and think about how hopelessly in love you were with him. Definitely not the easiest predicament to get yourself out of, but at least it involved good sex.

“Remind me to force you to watch Pride and Prejudice sometime,” you mused, popping a few kernels of popcorn into your mouth, “We need to get you educated, Finn.” Now it was his time to laugh, and you felt your heart flutter as his rich chuckle filled your ears.

“Well, maybe I could come over tonight to get some…tutoring…” he probed. You could practically hear his smirk from the other side of the phone line.

You quickly remembered how disheveled you looked. Even though he was your best friend, Dewey was still a man; And you knew all too well how superficial men could be, no matter how well they thought they knew you.

“Eh, I don’t know,” you said, running your fingers through your hair that definitely should’ve been washed the day prior, “Maybe sometime later this week? I haven’t showered today and—”

“Perfect, I haven’t either,” he cut you off, “We can shower together.”

This motherfucker.

“Very smooth,” you considered. But you couldn’t give in so easily. You knew every time you slept with him, the harder it would be to repress your feelings.

Dewey waited on bated breath. He wanted, no, needed to see you. Not because he had grown accustomed to a consistent booty call, as nice as the arrangement had been.

No, he was finally going to tell you how he really felt.

That he loved you. And way before you had ever shared a bed; he thought maybe he had loved you from the first moment you met. Which sounded unbelievably cheesy every time Dewey thought about it.

But it was true. He was sure of it.

He just felt like the biggest idiot in the world for not telling you before landing in this mess. The no strings attached, friends with benefits kind that you had both agreed on.

It’s what you wanted. And for a while, he tried to convince himself that it’s what he wanted too. That it would just be enough just to hold you, touch you, kiss you.

But Dewey, despite his best efforts, was a romantic. Even if you rejected him, at least he’d put himself out there. The thought was terrifying, but he couldn’t stand the torture anymore. All he needed was for you to actually agree to see him.

“I just don’t think tonight is a good night, Dew,” you said finally. He furrowed his brow. You had never passed on a hangout, not even before you two had started hooking up. He tried to ignore the knot forming in his stomach.

The line was silent for a noticeably long beat. “You still there?” you squeaked, wondering what was up with him. Surely, he could wait a couple days? Maybe that would be enough time for you to get your shit together and act normal.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, yep. Still here, sorry,” he muttered, “It’s fine, I’ve actually been meaning to go out with Ned anyways so…I’ll text ya.” The disappointment laced in his voice made your heart hurt.

“Dew, I’m so—”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he cut in before you could properly apologize, “I, uh, gotta go.” And then the line went dead.

You felt your guilt wrap around your heart and constrict it like a python. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to see Dewey per se, but you didn’t know how to be around him any more without spilling your guts and confessing.

And the thought of being rejected and losing his friendship was too much to bear. If suffering in silence was the way to keep him in your life, you’d happily take that torment.

Getting up from the couch, you swung open your fridge and eyed the two unopened bottles of wine you had bought weeks earlier. You quirked an eyebrow to your empty apartment, Carrie Bradshaw still monologuing from your living room.

Maybe you wouldn’t be as tormented after a few glasses.

~oOo~

Dewey didn’t feel like drinking. The bar was too loud, the patrons were too preppy, and the beer he was nursing was too expensive.

He made a mental note to never let Ned pick the going out spot ever again.

It had only been a few hour since he last spoke to you, but he had been absentmindedly checking your contact in his messages the whole night. He wanted to text you and apologize for acting weird, but he couldn’t find the words.

He couldn’t escape the sinking feeling that you had lost interest in him; It tore him up inside to think that you didn’t want to see him anymore, or worse, had found someone else.

He could’ve kicked himself for letting your friendship become anything more without him telling you how he really felt. He was a coward, and now the thought of losing his best friend made his stomach turn.

Dewey’s shame spiral was interrupted by his phone buzzing incessantly.

It was you.

And his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

“Hello?” he answered tentatively, rising from his barstool to find a quieter place to talk to you. He found himself running outside, the late summer air still percolating with humidity.

He heard you giggle on the other end, followed by a snort. A snort.

You never snorted. Unless you were drunk.

“Heyyy Dewey,” you drawled. You had already finished your first bottle of wine and had just opened the second. Which meant you were feeling very bold and very honest. “How’s your night going?”

Dewey couldn’t help but let a small smile flit across his face. Even when you were very clearly smashed, you still managed to be polite.

“Uh, it’s going okay,” he said, glancing back towards the door to the bar, “Definitely not as good as yours sounds.”

“Andwhat’sthatsupposedtomean?” you slurred, eliciting a laugh from Dewey. You could feel the confession rising in your throat, burning like bile.

“All I’m saying…” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “is that you seem like you’re really enjoying your night in.” He couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt; Maybe if he hadn’t been so short with you, you wouldn’t have been self-medicating alone in your apartment.

You groaned into your throw pillow, unable to fight the urge any longer. “I’m sad.”

“Why are you sad?”

“Because, I fucked it up. I fucked us up,” You felt salty tears sting in your eyes. It wasn’t like you to be the drama queen, but wine always made you a bit weepy.

He sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Dewey said gently, feeling even guiltier for being so pissy earlier, “I’m sorry. I just…really wanted to see you tonight. But there’s always other nights.”

A small sob caught in your throat at the statement. Though you were happy to know he wasn’t going to kick you to the curb, the weight on your chest wouldn’t let up until you told the truth.

“I-I know,” you sounded so pathetic, but there was nothing you could do to stop yourself. “You’re just…Dewey, you’re my best friend. And I-I was scared, but I’m not scared anymore.”

Dewey shook his head. He really shouldn’t be taking you at your word when you were plastered like this. “Look…you don’t have to do this.”

“But I do, Dewey. I fucking love you.”

He didn’t know what to say. He just knew he couldn’t hear that from you right now, not when you might not actually mean it.

He took deep breath and hoped he was making the right choice. “Hang up, and tell me this when you’re sober.”

Your stomach sank as you heard the piercing beep beep beep that indicated the end of the call.

~oOo~

Dewey shuffled into his apartment hours later, leaving Ned behind at the bar with the rest of his friends. At least one of them was having a good night.

After hanging up with you, he tried, really tried to take his mind off of what you had said. But he couldn’t. Every time his thoughts lingered, your words played on a loop over and over.

I fucking love you.

It didn’t seem real. It almost felt like a prank, though he knew you could never be that cruel. But that nagging feeling told him that it was just the alcohol talking, and that you’d call him up tomorrow for a very awkward conversation.

He sighed heavily, switching the TV on to distract himself. His calloused fingers drummed on his knee rhythmically, a nervous tick he had picked up after years of band practices and rock concerts.

He contemplated grabbing another beer from the fridge; he wasn’t even a little buzzed, but maybe taking a page out of your playbook would act as a temporary cure to the unease he was feeling.

His thoughts were again interrupted by his phone buzzing.

You again.

Only this time, he contemplated letting the call go to voicemail. He wasn’t sure how drunk you’d sound on the other end, especially after he ended your last call so abruptly.

With a deep sigh, he picked up. “Hello?” he answered hesitantly.

“Hey,” you replied. To Dewey’s surprise, you sounded stone cold sober. “Can we talk?”

He felt his entire body tense.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we can. You sound…better?”

You couldn’t help but snort a laugh. Your head was pounding, your stomach was churning, and your eyes were watering from embarrassment. “Yeah, never better,” you deadpanned.

You couldn’t help but gulp, swallowing your shame. “I’m uh, actually here,” you stumbled awkwardly, “Like, at your place.”

Before you could even think of what you’d say next, Dewey’s door swung open and he stood in front of you, wide-eyed and clearly shocked at your presence.

You both stood in a rigid silence for a moment, unsure of what to say given what had transpired earlier that evening.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” you squeaked.

He couldn’t help but give you a once over, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Running his fingers through his dark brown hair, he blurted the first thing that came to mind.

“Did you mean it?”

You blinked stupidly. “Did I mean it?” you had to repeat his question just to let it sink in.

“Yeah,” he doubled down, “Did you actually mean it when you said you loved me? Or was it the booze talking? Because honestly if it was the booze talking, I’d completely understand, I mean shit, I say things I don’t mean all the time when I’m hammered, just ask Ned—”

“Dewey—”

“—I mean seriously, I was being such a fucking jackass earlier, but it’s only because I’d never thought you’d be into me the way that I’m into you, and—”

“Dewey!” you said again, finally cutting off his rambling, “Breathe.”

He took a shallow breath.

“I meant it,” the words tumbled from your mouth, “I love you. And I’m sorry that it took me getting completely shitfaced after our fight for me to finally tell you. I really was scared of losing whatever we had, and I totally get it if you don’t feel the same way and—”

“Now I gotta shut you up, babe,” Dewey said, his voice smooth despite his cheeks being flush.

He grabbed your waist and pulled you towards him, placing a surprisingly gentle kiss on your mouth. You had kissed Dewey hundreds of times since you began hooking up, but there was something different about this one.

It felt like he wasn’t holding back anymore, and neither were you.

Just as you started to deepen the kiss, he pulled away. “And if it wasn’t obvious, I love you, too. And I really am sorry for tonight.”

Your heart swelled at hearing him reciprocate, and you threw your arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, too. I guess we were both being idiots, huh?”

He nodded, and you giggled. “Maybe…we could make it up to each other? Say, right now?”

You smirked, and kissed him one more time for good measure. “That’s the best idea you’ve had in months, Finn.”

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thanks for reading! as always, like/comment/reblog if you enjoyed!

:)

[itsclydebitches]

Am I the only one that feels like that Maya!RWBY would get washed by Poser!RWBY, combat-wise? Comparing the scenes from Poser-era to Maya-era, and I find that Team RWBY in the former had better weapon usage and Semblance/Aura versatility than the latter - especially when you look at each of the trailers (I know it's 'Rule of Cool', but still...), not to mention much more coordinated team attacks. Like, Beacon!Weiss is proficient in Time Dilation and Elemental Glyphs while being a proficient fencer; in comparison, Maya!Weiss is just... a summoner. That's it. Like, she's written as if she has no other skills. 'Blek' is knocked down so easily these days and uses her Semblance as a means of escape; Blake, on the hand, not only is a proficient swordswoman but shows versatility with a Kusarigama, marksmanship, and double wielding. Oh, and that's not including her masterful use of her semblance to create afterimages to pull off blitzkrieg combos, and later infuse them with Dust for surprise feints. And how can I forget her fucking aura slashes! Yang, is tankier in Poser, and she uses her Semblance as a last resort/'uno reverse' - letting her CQC skills do the talking; meanwhile, "Yang" just... activates her semblance at the drop of a hat, ruining that surprise factor while slowly becoming heavily reliant on both it and her "weapon upgrades" (which are, in reality, downgrades since her previous explosive rounds were much more versatile in comparison). And Ruby... I can't really say much except that scythemanship-CQC combination and semblance usage were more dynamic. I know it's partly due to Monty and Shane's insane animation skills, but I feel like there's more to it than that. Sorry, these are just my observations.

Wholeheartedly agree. I mean yes, we're all continually acknowledging that we can't have the choreography and vision of the Monty years, but even beyond that recent fights have, for the most part, been shockingly forgettable for me. An immediate exception to that is Ironwood vs. Watts (which uses the environment really well) and I liked portions of the WBY vs. Chessman fight from V9E3, but on the whole the girls feel nerfed despite the claims of, "We're full-fledged huntresses now, capable of beating some of the best in the world."

To add to what you've already got above, some details that immediately spring to my mind are:

Yang repeating the same combat mistake that she made back in Volume 3, resulting in "dying" rather than losing an arm

Ruby now using her semblance primarily to travel (within Atlas HQ, out of the Red Castle, etc.) rather than pulling off cool dodges, ping-ing off of things for extra speed, or creating a tornado-like effect as seen in the food fight. As mentioned many times in the past, sometimes it's not even used for an obvious need, like scaling the mountainside while fighting Cordovin, because the story wants a 'cliffhanger.'

One of the reasons I liked the chessman battle was because we had some actual team attacks, but recent Volumes are still weighed down by separating the teams - even when the story claims that's the key to victory (AKA Ace Ops battle).

This extends to moments like YJB just taking turns against the Hound, or Neo standing there dumbly as Oscar runs the length of a hallway to punch her.

I rarely feel like fights are won with any exciting flourish or narrative satisfaction anymore. (Which is another reason why Ironwood vs. Watts works so well for me: destroying your arm as a massive 'fuck you' to what your enemy thinks you're capable of withstanding to catch them unaware in their confidence is AMAZING.) I still think about Weiss summoning a wall of ice for Harriet to knock herself out against and I'm like... really? That's it?

Ruby doesn't really use her sniper rifle anymore. I loved that she used that to obey Qrow's "Stay back!" command while still trying to help. That used to be another way to slow descent, get in quick shots between swings, help an ally like when she hit Nora with the lightning dust...

I could go on. So many of the new fights are just plain boring to me. Think about how much is solved through the Big Powers now. Ruby takes out The Apathy with her eyes (though I put that in only to establish the pattern. I do like that the emotion-based grimm was defeated via care for another, not fighting.) The Hound goes the same way. Oscar sets off an explosion of magic against Salem. Winter Maidens up to blast Ironwood, etc. They're all incredibly easy wins that, for the most part, just require the magic wielder to stand there and shoot the Powerful Magic Beam at the enemy. Meanwhile, other potentially well-choreographed fights are seeped in narrative problems, like Qrow and Tyrian vs. Clover. Now toss in moments like Blake begging Ruby for help, or her and Weiss being unable to get up the vines, or them straight up forgetting that Cinder is in the city (because strategy is as important as power) and yeah, OG!RWBY would wipe the floor with them.

OG!RWBY is made up of a prodigy child wielding "one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed," a sword master capable of manipulating time, her teammate's powers, versatile glyphs, and her family's dust supply, a tank who supposedly went on a journey to better harness her ability to absorb and redirect energy (which as you say used to be an awesome surprise, not a response every time Yang gets mildly annoyed at someone), and the child of combat activists who, by her own admission, had to fight early and well to survive outside the Kingdoms. Team RWBY now feels like they're powerful primarily because a) they claim they are and b) they've got various forms of magic in their back pocket.

[riftdancing]

Prompt! Coming home for Siyoh.

Home.

"Home is a shelter from storms- all sorts of storms." Siyoh could still hear her Mother's lovingly spoken wisdom echoing in her velvety curled lobes. But in truth, home had gathered so many more meanings over the course of her eventful life.

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." Growing up, Siyoh had never understood the meaning behind her Father's warm spoken, half purred words. Yet, perhaps in this instance, Sasja's words resonated with her now more than ever before. As delicate monochrome finger tips reached into powdery white baking flour, sprinkling it like snow across the countertop, Siyoh Mari found herself contemplating the last few years of her life.

Home was a mixture of meanings, and a handful of places. Some which ceased to even exist any more, snuffed out by the flame and cinders of a long war which had now passed. Gingerly the keeper's dainty fingertips would begin to knead a bit of dough against the flour speckled countertop.

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." It was her adoptive mother's voice now, echoing sentiments in that lovely thick Thavnarian accent of hers. A more tender, broken, and memory shattered pewter haired keeper latching on to the woman's every sentiment in wake of losing everything she'd had prior. It was at this point Siyoh remembered their first Starlight together with her adopted family.

She hadn't remembered anything after the shipwreck. Not of Doma, nor her family, or even of Azuma and their extended family. Nothing. But there were hints scattered across her mind like the various sprinkling of flour keeping the dough from sticking to the counter top as she shaped it. Cooking served as a gateway to her past and unlocking the memories she'd lost. She'd poured her heart and soul into baking during that Starlit season. The keeper's adoptive family waking to find Siyoh curled up near the warmth of the kitchen hearth, her back to the counter, flour in her hair, smudging her cheeks, and their kitchen coated in hundreds of red currant tarts she'd spent hours baking. But she had remembered Aanya's laughter, and the soft sweet song of Azuma's chores that night. She would never forget them again.

Then, upon their reuniting, Siyoh recalled Azuma's wisdom about their home. "Peace- That was the other name for home." The pair fought hard for it in their own ways. Throughout the revolution, peace had been what the pair truly wanted. Peace and freedom. A small smile lifted the corner of the keeper's painted lips as she rolled the dough out across the counter into semi thin sheets. Peace and freedom they later achieved. Though they had lost much, they had gained so much more in this new found era of peace and freedom. Both Azuma and Siyoh had lost their families, but in each other had created a new one.

"Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there." Kokoya had spoken the words to her under her breath one night, frustrated with Siyoh's long absences after she'd taken up trading again, following in her Father's footsteps. Yet, Kokoya and Azuma both would learn to suffer the opaline wayward miqo'te's absences in time. Especially with all the gifts Siyoh would bring them upon her homecoming.

Yet, in recent months a curveball had taken her in a different direction. A fiery, feathered, passionate one at that. And all at once, as Siyoh cut various Starlight related shapes from the dough, laying them out upon cookie sheets, she found herself pondering the definition of home once more. The walls of Firelight Trading Company headquarters had housed her more often than any other in current months, as work (among other passions) required her to be more present than in the past. It's why this time, Azuma had traveled off and on to spend more time with her.

But these were just walls. Where she laid her head to rest on the rare opportunity she did so. ...Yet a house did not equal a home, and perhaps that's where this long line of thought was leading the soft silver visage who gently slid cookie laden sheets into the oven.

"You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow. Sometimes you can never go home again, but the truth is... you can never leave home. So it's all right."

Because the truth was?

Siyoh was already home for the Holidays.

𝓓𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓶𝓫𝓮𝓻 𝓟𝓻𝓸𝓶𝓹𝓽𝓼 -> -> -> Feel free to shoot me an ask like this one!

Thanks for the ask, @shroudkeeper! (this one really hit me in the feels)

[tainted-harmon]

Violet’s bedroom Pt. 2

I did a post the other year in detail on Violet’s bedroom her eclectic style (click here if you haven’t seen it). I mentioned a lot of items on that post and also talked about the fact her bedroom is eclectic, meaning she has a collection of different styles, tastes and ideas. Some of it could even fall under bohemian (the noun, not place). The Anthropologie Karakoram rug is an example of that - it’s exotic and handmade. Many of her clothing is also bohemian style.

I also mentioned recently in a separate post (click here) that her bedroom is actually a pale, duck egg blue not green or teal. It’s explained in the post about how the lighting and times of day effect the appearance and hue of her walls.

Bohemian

Some of the items in her room that could fall under Bohemian style are her Karakoram rug, her two moroccan pouffes. Most people don’t mention the fact that she has two more Moroccan pouffes (she has a black and purple one). She also has a beige patchwork one.

Industrial

She has a few items that are classed as “industrial” style - the wall lighting, her black wire bookshelf, the copper wire basket near the chalkboard and other desk lighting in her room. Industrial style means aesthetic or items that are commonly used in old factories, building materials etc.. A common theme in industrial style is wire/metal and exposure, such as exposure of brick walls.

Other furniture/items

Her yellow marble top dresser has a floral pattern on the woodwork which is commonly seen in antique French marble top dressers. But there’s no way of verifying where the dresser is from, but it’s one of my favourite pieces in Violet’s bedroom and no one ever talks about it! I think it’s so beautiful.

Between the lamp and gum ball machine is an antique style open wooden jewellery box. Throughout the season there are different items on her dresser, from loose jewellery to her IPod dock.

On top of her marble dresser next to the gum ball machine she has an old looking desk light. The exact light used is called "Jumo GS1 Table Lamp, 1960s" I always assumed they glued on the doll to the base of the lamp for the show, after researching the lamp there is a white switch that sticks up on the base of the lamp where the doll head is attached/placed on. So she uses the doll’s head to switch it on. 💀 I also wonder if the lamp was supposed to be a left over item from when nurse’s stayed there due to the “60’s” era style lighting? (The lamp was actually made in the 60’s)… Just a thought.

Also, when researching this lamp it stated it as “industrial style”. There’s still many of these secondhand lamps for sale, mostly from European countries as it is of French origin.

Another item that never gets mentioned is the wire mannequin that is to the left of chalkboard!

Another less talked about item is her vintage black floral bin. They are typically a style from the 50’s and hand painted. You can commonly find them secondhand on places like EBay with some beautiful paintings.

I might do a Pt.3 another time as I have hit the maximum image limit.

[rynekins]

Welcome, friends, to the Sideshow Bob Awards! Recently I did a few polls about certain elements of Sideshow Bob episodes, and now I shall give some commentary over the results!

Why did I do this? Eh, funsies, but I’ll always look for an excuse to ramble about Sideshow Bob.

First up is the Award for Humor. Which Sideshow Bob episode is the funniest? Black Widower makes Honorable Mention. While an important episode with a lot of notable moments, I might not personally rank it amongst the funniest. Though Bob’s dry wit (as always) wins me over, and Bart explaining Bob’s plan to Homer, worthy of a chuckle.

This overall ranking, out of all of the polls, I agree with the most. Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming has some stellar Bob moments: Bob on helium, mimicking the Colonel, his pathetic attempt to kill Krusty, and who could possibly forget the Air Show Rant.

“Air Show? Buzzzzzz-cut Alabamians spewing colored smoke from their whiz jets to the strains of Rock You Like a Hurricane? What kind of country-fried rube’s still impressed by that?!” As for the Air Show Rant, I am also giving it the Award for Best Quote. Unfortunately, this poll did not have much engagement. I expected people to be shy, and I suppose I should have made it a normal poll for people to vote on instead of asking for more direct input, but there are simply too many good Bob quotes to narrow it down! How could I possibly? I had not the strength. His exasperation with his peers, mocking elitist tone, the venom, the sass, the hip swaying and crossing of his feet, going wall eyed and throwing his arms out cuz he always gotta be extra, if there is a perfect Sideshow Bob quote that exemplifies his character it would be this one.

Aside from that, mocking the military and garbage television, this episode offers a ton of laughs, worthy of at least Third place.

Brother From Another Series takes Second, and has a different brand of humor, but the kind that always gets me. It’s supposedly written like an episode of Frasier, which means the script is chock full of one liners from two guys too smart for their own good, constantly trying to one-up eachother. You wonder how both Bob and Cecil could ever end up in Springfield, an environment of pure dumbassery, and it clearly has had an effect on them (they must have drunk the water). Personal favorite moments are the boys with the slack-jawed locals, “especially Lisa, but ESPECIALLY Bart”, and “utterly hopeless”.

To no one’s surprise Cape Feare takes the crown. It often makes top 10 lists for its humor alone, and with good reason. This episode is packed with jokes, funny drawings, and goofiness, with running gags so memorable and powerful that they would get callbacks even 30 years later. The idiocy is at an all time high, both with Homer and Bob, which frankly is necessary to balance out the more sinister and rather tense scenes. Homer scaring Bart, the rakes, the drive through the cactus patch, The Rakes, “Hello Mr Thompson”, THE RAKES. This episode is iconic, and I completely understand why.

Next up we have the Award for Animation. For our Honorable Mention, we have Bob’s official debut, Krusty Gets Busted. I’m glad to see some love for season 1, when everything was experimental especially with the animation. The linework, expressions, poses, models, colors, everything seems off by today’s standards, but you can see the effort and love put into it. There’s something beautiful about how rough it looks because you know what a struggle it was to make it work. And it does work. But I’m biased toward things that are hand drawn.

In Third for this category, the award goes to Gone Boy, the complete opposite of Krusty Gets Busted. We have the modern era, the clean colors, the characters staying on model, a lot of the stiffness that a lot of people don’t care for. However, there are moments that feel like a return to form in this episode. My eyes lit up when I saw Bob’s face as he encountered Milhouse. Then the dance he does as he sings is song-o. The wintery environment, a few ambitious angles, some great character acting. It’s proof that newer episodes have their beauty too. I only wish that the hallucination sequences went harder. Imagine, if you will, they suddenly went Courage the Cowardly Dog mode on you and changed mediums, turned into something more experimental and maybe truly nightmarish. This episode was great, but it could have been legendary. I am grateful for the feast we got. In Second, Black Widower returns, which dare I say has been robbed. Yes, I think it should have been First. This episode is gorgeous, but as I have established, I liked the earlier, rougher animation.

Every single frame of Bob’s rant on MacGyver is absolutely wild, as is the skipping through the flowers. The colors in the night scenes. The glow from the explosion. There’s so much character here, so many expressions and extra motions with hands in scenes, even when no one is talking. The weight in Bob’s hair when he throws back his head for a maniacal laugh. What this episode’s got is flair. Once again, Cape Feare takes First. I can see why, because it is a very good looking episode. One of the best. Oh, how I wish the show still looked like this (the latest Treehouse Ei8ht made me crave what we have lost). But I must wonder if it might be taking the number one spot because of how memorable it is with other factors. No doubt it’s funny, with a lot of well done and imaginative scenes. Bob’s lil dance during his work out comes out of nowhere and is hysterical. You think for a minute that the episode is going to cheat you when the elephants are trampling him off-screen then it pans down to show you the exact moment one steps on and off his skull. The increasingly elaborate set and costume designs for Bob’s theatrical performance. There is a lot of artistry to appreciate here. It’s cinematic even. Then again, a lot of the cinematic moments can be attributed to its source material: the 1991 movie Cape Fear, some moments directly inspired. Not to say that all of the work was done for them, certainly not. They put their own spin on things.

Perhaps the placement is deserved. The shot that goes from Bart’s window, flying over all of Springfield, to Bob’s prison is particularly impressive. There’s a lot of juicy saturation and shifts in color reminiscent of shots from Krusty Gets Busted and Black Widower. It’s safe to assume that I’m drawn more towards character details, and little things like all the lower angles we get from Bob work well in conveying menace, as if we, the audience, are in danger

This concludes Part One of the Sideshow Bob Awards, In Part Two I will cover Best Song and Best Mystery. As for intermission, picture THE RAKES!!!

[old-school-butch]

‘But you misunderstand my argument - I don't actually think Israel is a decolonization project - I was responding to claims that Hamas' action is some form of resistance to 'settler colonialism' which, since Judaism as a faith is indigenous to the region, is nonsense.’

Except it’s not nonsense at all. The Zionist project was conceived to be a settling of the European Jewry in Palestine initially. No other groups who make claims to their people having lived in a place in the past to justify this kind of state building are taken seriously, nor would they be. This would be like the Roma population going to north India and attempting to set up a state by displacing the locals. They are genetically and ancestrally tied to that land, so why not them, too? Shall we all go back to where our ancestors of a couple centuries, even millennia in many cases, originated from? Is that the logic we defer to to decide what is and what isn’t settler colonialism?

"The Zionist project was conceived to be a settling of the European Jewry in Palestine initially"

The struggle for Jewish self-government goes back a liiiiiittle further than that. Maybe you've not read the Bible but you can track a straight line between 'the LORD said unto Moses, go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, let my people go' to 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." which happened when the Bablyonian Empire rolled into town. Another four? five? empires later you finally have the Hasmoneansn and Maccabeans self-governments weakening under Roman rule and finally the fall of the second Temple era. Which led to approximately another 2000 years of attempting to return to Zion. But Jews remained living in the area the entire time, the goal of Zion is self-government, to create a nation safe for the Jewish people.

"No other groups who make claims to their people having lived in a place in the past to justify this kind of state building are taken seriously"

What do you think is happening in Myanmar? What do you think Nunavut self-government is about in Canada? The idea of a homeland is pretty old, but modern American politics has an overly simplified view of land claims - either you can prove you were the first humans there ever or you're a settler/colonist who doesn't deserve to be there.

Except when it's about Jews in Israel. When I point out that by this logic Jews have an old erclaim to the region than the later Arabian colonizers, then I'm told the history is either too old and doesn't count, or not real because there's no documentation going that far back in history, or the (actually far more realistic) argument there are a number of ethnic groups and religions that can track extremely long timelines in the same general region because the story of human history is older than our ability to write it down. So I agree with your last point, that while there are obvious impacts of colonialism and conquest, it gets really absurd to imagine that the only place anyone really belongs is wherever they're from 'originally'.

Anyway, Israel has only recently hardened its stance and officially became a 'Jewish state' - 20% of the population are Muslim and many Druze, Bedouin, Circassians and Christians live within its borders. I'm not happy about this recent change and I'm sure those minorities are not as well.

I'd characterize the Arab-Israeli conflict as mostly religious in nature, at its core, not ethnic or even territorial. Islamism is a trans-national movement with the goal of creating a caliphate as a super-state, something the surrounding Arab states find increasingly alarming as they search for stability, but they are content to let it grow in Palestine as long as Israel remains the focus of their grievances. If Israel ever falls, do you think there would be peace in the region? I don't. Look at the wall Egypt is building on their border with Gaza.

[strywoven]

no one at all: me, dropping a new ( mha/bnha ) verse: ................. 🧍

don't ever say i don't do nothing for y'all ( i'm doing this for exactly 2 people ) . another yappening incoming, so it'll be under a cut. it's unspoken in this post but verona, sloan, and kadai have roles in this verse SOMEWHERE ... i shall get around to expanding upon that later anywhere between 6-10 months weeks. anyways, tw for: self-mutilation, mentions of abuse & neglect, murder, etc. proceed with caution if that's not your vibe.

Some say that “the family home is where the deepest resentments grow”. Often, we never realize how true that is until there’s no undoing the damage which has already been done, collected over years spent in suffocation within these walls that held onto each miserable memory made.

In a word, the Rolavs seemed altogether normal; just another average, nothing-special, nuclear family with everything to hide. Yet you see, NAMES BURDEN WEIGHT ( at least, that’s what tradition might say ), and this one is no different. “Rolav” is a surname belonging to a long-lived clan of villains ( a criminal organization, shall we say, which operates off animalistic creed & specializes in hunting, in eluding the public perception ) . With trace roots back to SCOTLAND - a heritage boasted in their savage disposal of requested/required quarries - the family itself is oftentimes regarded as an “INVASIVE SPECIES” by other criminal families of the villain underworld ( however, are regarded with no less respect ) . The Rolavs are - or were - a prominent player, as far as powers go. However, in recent generations, the heritable Quirk most notable to the clan - “ALL-FIRE” - has become unstable, unpredictable, rendering most progeny currently with it, entirely unable to properly utilize it to its fullest potential. Which brings us to the current era, where Ceres Rolav, the standing patriarch of the family, is desperate to have a child that would carry the Quirk and manifest it IN FULL, just as it was generations ago. The issue being, there’s no guarantee that it would ( at least, not without destroying the child in the process; but, to secure the bloodline, sacrifices are necessary ) .

Per tradition, the Quirk would likely pass down to the FIRSTBORN SON who would then be raised to inherit the clan itself and assume the role of patriarch ( & to effect, he shall also inherit the name “BRAZEN HART” ) . However, Ceres’ whole world turned over when he was met with a doe ( a daughter ) rather than a buck ( a son ) . In fact, he was disappointed, concerned, even a bit angry. Despite his so-called wife’s protestations, Ceres endeavored to raise the child as planned, AS IF MALE, completely ignoring their birth gender and proceeding to groom them for their role as future patriarch irregardless.

Ceres’ regime with young Kaen was relentless. He was less and less a father and more a stringent authoritarian, impressing upon them the looming demands of their future inheritance ( & nothing less than perfection was ever acknowledged ) . Kaen’s childhood was little more than hours spent being drilled on family history, on family tradition, on family creed -- always ABOUT FAMILY & STRENGTH & HONOR IN THE GLORY OF FIRE . Very few times did their mother stand for them, did she curtail Ceres’ insatiable ire and ambition ( instead, her always-sulking, half-drunk presence made things worse ) . Though, there was one memory that sticks out to Kaen, even now, where their mother told them: “Don't be like me. Don't be like your father. Be better. DO GOOD THINGS.” Words that they didn’t understand the meaning of until many years too late.

Kaen’s peace was found in being able to go to public school, escorted away from the hidden-away estate tucked in a remote location somewhere in the mountains. And considering Ceres made strides to keep his “professional” and personal identities separate, Kaen was able to have a mostly normal school career. It was, at least, until Kaen’s Quirk manifested at age 5, bursting to life in a sudden act of altruism that nearly set several other classmates ablaze as they stood to defend another from getting picked on. Unfortunately, even when the teachers rushed in, Kaen found it INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT to snuff; this, a recurring issue that was never quite solved. Several other accidental incidents of arson occurred in the months thereafter, leading to a meeting between Kaen, their parents, and the principal to discuss “options”. But truthfully, everyone already came to a simple conclusion: to remove them from the school and eventually the public entirely.

Ceres remained with Kaen and their mother for ONLY ANOTHER YEAR before something in him seemed to change the more and more he noticed Kaen’s Quirk evolving. Kaen overheard him telling their mother, “That is my son, I know, but there’s something else in him.” And no sooner had they heard this discussion than they distinctly remember the scene of him walking out the door without so much as a backward glance. Despite everything he put them through, Kaen tried to run after him, only for their mother to grip their shoulder - a little too tightly - and hold them in place, telling them that he was not someone worth chasing nor wasting their tears on.

From bad to worse, Kaen’s life from then began to spiral as their mother did not take well to Ceres outright abandoning her with a child who possessed an out-of-control Quirk. The only signs that Ceres - or even that the rest of the clan itself - still held any regard for her and Kaen were the infrequent deposits of money into her bank account, as if INSURANCE to keep them at least somewhat afloat and sustained in his absence. Otherwise, no matter how often Kaen saw their mother try to reach out to him ( & to other members of the clan ) , Ceres seemed to have fallen off the face of the country. So, it might’ve been fear that drove her to do as she did, drinking so much, ignoring Kaen’s needs, striking out at them again and again and again-- Or perhaps, it truly was her own brand of resentment ( even if misdirected ) .

In those years, trapped in that house with that woman, Kaen became very familiar with the police, having called them on numerous occasions for some sort of help ( or some sort of comfort ) . And what good it did. Nothing ever changed ( & why would it ? ) . Particularly, there was one woman that stood out: Yuna. Yuna had just joined the force, and didn’t anticipate becoming so fixed in the life of a teenager as she did, so keen on trying to “save” Kaen from, what exactly, she wasn’t sure yet, but she knew she had to. She managed to convince their mother to allow Kaen back into the public, under supervision, so they can continue a proper education, and - thankfully - to remove them from the house for at least part of the day before a more suitable solution can be recognized.

Before they know it, it’s the summer, during academic break. Summer makes their Quirk especially active ( heat begets heat, as they’ve realized when they were younger ), and even more so worsens their temper. Kaen was currently nursing a blooming welt on their ribcage from their mother’s recent tirade earlier that evening, and suddenly it all becomes quite clear: you have two options, their father’s voice echoes, you either live or die, that’s the way of things, so make your choice. And they do.

Kaen musters up their courage, compounding it with the contempt which has been building within them for years, and looks into their mirror. They’re gaunt, haggard, beaten-looking-- And there, atop their bedraggled red mane, sits a budding crest of antlers that resembles their father’s. It’s instinctive, then, this sudden surge of HATE which seethes in them, compelling them to grab those awful little horns, beginning to YANK & PULL , their body jerking disjointedly. It hurts, yes, but is this really anything in comparison to what they’ve already gone through? No. They can tolerate it, just a little more-- And with a sickening, awful CRACK , the antlers splinter in their hands, the bone breaking off and falling into their bruising palms, rivulets of blood trickling down their brows and into their eyes. Their reflection grins back at them, own teeth grown sharp and gaze burning in a way they don’t recognize. This will do.

Whatever happened next is not pretty, and most of the evidence was lost in the miles-wide inferno that ensued ( a fire which also engulfed them in the process, yet strangely did not harm them ) . But the remains of the corpse of Kaen’s mother - whatever could be recovered of the near-ashes - divulged the fact that Kaen brutalized her with MAKESHIFT WEAPONS before setting everything in the surrounding area ablaze ( that is, the detectives found the scant remains mangle-twisted around … antlers, of all things, likely wielded like knives ) .

Kaen was just 16 at the time, only an honors-level student in a small, civilian high school located in the foothills ( no-one knew, no-one had any idea that they were capable of such violence when all they did towards their peers was smile & act so kindly ) . The official reports said they had A PSYCHOTIC BREAK and once apprehended, Kaen was put on a hold to be properly evaluated, just to cover the bases. During this time, Yuna approached Kaen, noting that they seemed PARTICULARLY CALM for someone who is facing severe charges and just suffered an intense mental fallout ( in her words, “they don’t look the same anymore. whatever came out of that fire wasn’t the kid i knew.” ) . Yuna told Kaen that it would be a conflict of interest for her to have any involvement in their case, however she intends to give them a lawyer for the upcoming trial. When Kaen asked her why she’d ever do that, Yuna shrugged and said, “Some people are worth making mistakes for.”

The trial which ensued was - in no uncertain terms - the MOST performative in recent history, likely due to their bloodline ( the one they tried hard to reject & deny ) . The publicity from the case set the foundation, putting the Rolav heir into public prominence with the press eating up their image, chasing after their secrets, and hanging on their every word and action ( “the sweetest little killer”, tabloids sensationalized, “seems this is the chip off the old buck, isn’t it?” ) . At the end of a two-month deliberation, they were acquitted, if only because of the grace of their expert lawyer and their own performance in front of the judges. From there, it would be a chance at REHABILITATION. And when flocked by press at the end of it all, asked what they intended to do with their granted freedom, Kaen smiled and replied, “Everythin’. This is jus’ the beginnin’. I’m gonna … DO GOOD THINGS.” This, Kaen even still strives to achieve.

From there, Kaen is granted asylum with Yuna, living with her as the estate is closed and recovered, all effects secured until Kaen turns 18. With Yuna, Kaen is transferred to a different district, and a new high school, but doesn’t escape the newfound infamy. They do, however, finish off their general education with honors, graduating top of their class. And after, they confide in Yuna that they intend to pursue a career in film ( something that had always inspired them & comforted them when they were a child ) . Yuna supported the idea, and remained in their corner even when they began striking out on their own and touching base with agencies over the course of the next year or so.

By 20, Kaen is signed to a prolific agency and already finished filming for their first movie as a titular antagonist ( a role that, although their first, would become their most well-known & well-beloved ) . And today, at 26, Kaen has landed several other roles, 2 of which were primary billing spots in other films. Kaen had successfully rebounded, capitalizing off their perverted sense of fame from their trial to become an actor; the public adores them, aggrandizes them, and yet … FEARS THEM just the same. Now that their heritage ( & unstable quirk ) has gone public, people are more than a little wary of them, and Kaen has been vested with the mantle of, “THE UNTOUCHABLE DOE” , both for their image and for their power and influence; a character that no-one can get close to, that no-one can really be near enough to know in full.

Currently, Kaen’s overarching goal is to track down their clan - rather, their father - and challenge him for the right of the patriarchy ( as they believe it’s owed to them ) , to inevitably return their family “to the light” rather than allow them to live unnoticed in the shadows. However, Kaen truly does not intend to do harm, and does not intend to follow the role of villainy despite what their heritage may incline them to do; they’re not exactly the most moral of creatures, either ( especially not towards themself ) . How their story ends, how they wind up ultimately participating in the unfolding strife between villains and heroes, entirely depends on whom they interact with. So I’ve decided to leave that open-ended. But make no mistake, this entire story is a TRAGEDY, Kaen cannot be saved … Though they can be FREED.

Quirks ( yes, there’s technically 2 ) :

“ALL-FIRE” — Primary — In essence, this is a Quirk of highly potent immolation; All-Fire allows Kaen to set themself or others ablaze without the use of direct physical contact ( lit. actual pyromancy ) . Kaen’s flames are ATYPICAL of most fire-users, manifesting in an array of hues and colors all at once; it is extremely mesmerizing, but also, in practice, a pure-combustion that can incinerate a target to ash if not controlled or restrained properly. As mentioned, Kaen lacks control and even worse, lacks proper Quirk training. Because of this deficit in education, Kaen is UNABLE TO TRULY CONTROL All-Fire, nor have they ever been able to “turn it off” ever since it first manifested at 5. By 16, it continued to evolve and burn through their system unchecked, and for over a decade, Kaen has effectively been BURNING ALIVE . Although this sounds bad ( & it is ) , it comes with an upside: Kaen is impervious to being harmed by fire, full-stop, and is no longer hurt by their own flames ( they are, essentially, a walking inferno ) .

“HETEROMORPHISM : CERVIDAE CARNIVORA” — Secondary + Residual — A deeply foundational and biological Quirk that HIGHLY IMPACTS Kaen's functionality , even if it does not seem to blatantly appear physically as it does for the vast majority of their bloodline. It allots Kaen immense physical endurance , pain tolerance , animalistic instinct + drive ( note: not as a prey-based animal but a predator ) , and heightened sensory and strength. Kaen is a beast hiding in plain sight , even if they don't rightly act nor seem like one. CERVIDAE CARNIVORA grants Kaen deer-like traits ( making them seem outwardly doe-like or fauny ) while complimenting it with internalized carnivorous traits ( the instinct to hunt , the innate drive & fixation on things , a deeply rooted ferocity , etc. etc. ) .

A few notable weaknesses

Self-Restraint = / = Control — Kaen is notable for their demeanor ( composed, docile, calm even under duress ) . However, this is all external, and doesn’t at all match the internal strife they’re consistently combating; a struggle which tends to trigger “flare ups” in their fire, whether intentional or not. It’s never been a secret that Kaen isn’t trained or at all well-versed in how to properly utilize either of their Quirks, but because people - the press, coworkers, etc. - tend to see them be so openly placid, they tend to ASSUME Kaen has everything under control. This is not necessarily the case. Kaen may be able to better contain the range of damage when “accidents” happen, but that doesn’t stop them from inadvertently causing destruction or mishaps if they - at any point - lose their temper, or let their emotions get the better of them.

Water or Ground-based Quirks — Self-explanatory. However, Kaen also cannot swim. At all. Open water makes them nervous and shuts them down ( funnily enough, so does rainy weather ) .

Ice — Not necessarily because of a “weakness”, per-se, but because ice helps to “balance” or otherwise, literally, “chill out” their ever-burning Quirk by lowering the power threshold to a more manageable degree. Using ice on them would hopefully help to neutralize their fire. It’s why they take ice baths consistently.

Darkness — A primal fear. Don’t ask. It’s an easy win if you’ve got this sort of power.

Some other things of note for this verse:

Kaen is a known CELEBRITY , but also considered a civilian. They’re not entitled to use their Quirks at all ( unless for a role ) , and in fact were warned against it by the judges upon acquittal.

Kaen strives to change the narrative of their own lineage. Despite how people look at them, they are inordinately sweet-tempered, kind, and compassionate; they REFUSE to fall in line with the “nature” of their heritage ( & yet, there’s still an emptiness in them, a seething rage just waiting for an excuse to come forward ) .

Because Kaen’s All-Fire has remained constantly/consistently activated, they are regarded as one of the few and far-between case studies in LIMITLESS POTENTIAL , for their body has entirely transcended beyond all physical barriers to maintain an ever-evolving Quirk and it’s manifesting power for years at a time, without stopping.

Kaen has managed to stop their Quirk from incinerating people around them. However, they still give off an IMMENSE AURA of heat, of burning, of barely restrained fire that causes most to recoil and give them a wide berth. Their fire does, however, manifest inadvertently off and on in casual displays ( smoking from their mouth/nose, crackling cinders from their person, burning in their eyes, etc. ) .

As they are restricted from Quirk-usage, if they ever get into a scuffle with someone, they will NOT use their Quirks to fight. Hardly at all. In fact, they will openly mock anyone who uses Quirks against them, taunting them to “fight like a real man” and hit them properly ( another lesson likely learned from their upbringing, the preference for true fisticuffs compared to power-brawls ) .

Kaen has ANIMALISTIC TRAITS thanks to the recessive biological traits from their father’s lineage; sharp teeth and nails, and of course the antlers which sit broken and ungrown atop their head ( they cover these, typically, with a news-boy knit-hat ) . These traits become more prominent the more emotional they get ( re: they look more bestial ) .

Fire is often depicted as a force of DESTRUCTION , but for Kaen it becomes a conduit of RETRIBUTION & PURIFICATION . Take that as you will.

[gauloiseblue]

Red Grave City Gothic

[DMC horror take]

Every city always has its charms, and Red Grave seems to possess the most extraordinary, yet controversial one. This city has hundreds of architecture that clash with each other. The high, and modern buildings are standing proud beside the neoclassical architectures. And the Victorian era houses refuse to rot away, as they stick out in the middle of modern city like a sore thumb. Although they're stunning in their own way, they don't fit into the neon-lit district. As if they're magenta dots on a baby blue shirt. 

Time doesn't seem to work as it should be when you're in the city. When you walk down the street, you'd feel like the air changes when you're not paying attention. The dispute between two different eras of architecture would disorient you, and a wrong turn could lead you to a completely strange alley. As if you've stepped into a different period of time. By accident. 

Sometimes, the people that you pass on the street can look very… peculiar. Sometimes you see a woman with a dress that belongs in the 18th century, and sometimes you see a man with the attire of an old priest. But when you turn away for a second, they disappear into thin air. You couldn't be sure if you've just seen a ghost, or it's a fragment of your imagination. 

At night, the locals warned you not to walk alone. They said the devil lurks in the darkness, and the shadows seem to be longer than it should. One time, you took a walk in the night and spotted a strange man with big eyes, and a smile with hundreds of needles instead of teeth. You haven't gone out at night since then. 

The city embraces its charm, and the locals believe that supernatural beings exist. They know them intimately, and embrace them like it's their nature. But never ask about it to the locals. Because they will stare at you, and their eyes will burn holes into you as they speak. Then nothing, you won't understand anything they said. 

Do not visit the graveyard alone. Never, in any circumstances, come to the place alone. Bring one or more people with you, the more you bring the better. Only come when it's noon, and leave before your shadow is longer than two feet. Don't come when there's no guardian around, and DO NOT visit when there's a recent burial. Because they can't distinguish between the dead and the living. 

There's a rumor that many gates of hell are scattered around the city. The demons could get in, and if someone's not careful, they can fall into hell. It might sound like a silly rumor—to keep the kids at home—but the police are tight-lipped about the growing case of missing persons. Every so often, you passed a written warning on the wall; 'don't touch the glowing sigil'. 

In the heart of the city, there's a Grand Hotel which you can never afford a room for one night. Il Chiaro Mondo Hotel is a popular choice among the rich, and they seem to always come for a ball. They dress with feathers, fur, and gleaming ornaments on their bodies. Some of them don't bring anything, some of them bring a suitcase, or a child. When you observe the kids, you see the contrast between their expressions and the adults. They're void of any excitement. 

The crime rate in this city is relatively high, even though the politicians always advertise the city as a safe haven. Everyone is aware of the crimes that happened recently, but don't know anything at the same time. You may ask any person you meet about the news, and they'd tell you about an incident. And yet, when you ask the next person about it, they wouldn't have a single clue about it. The only time you got to see the case was when you watched the policemen seal a crime scene. You swore you saw the glimpse of mangled flesh behind the makeshift cover. But the next day, there's nothing about it in the newspaper. No one knew about it except you. 

Everyone knows about the legend of the house on the hill. They told you that a God once fell in love with a human, and they lived there with two sons. But tragedy befell them, as the house caught on fire one day. Everybody knows about the mother's demise, but no one knows about the fate of the sons. Your friend once told you that they're twins, whose names are on the tip of your tongue. 

The subway has become a part of the citizen's life. Everyday, people travel by underground train. And you're no exception. The locals know the routes like it's on the back of their hand, and the stations don't have a board anymore. Even if they have, they're beyond damaged, and the words are illegible. People seem to come and go, and you begin to notice that you rarely see a familiar face. It's not until the train moves, that you catch a sight of your departed relatives on the window. But… you don't know if they're from outside the window, or what you see is the reflection of where you're standing. 

Of course, not every place in this city is dangerous at night. Pawn's Avenue is one of the safest places to be when you can't sleep. The bright billboards and neon light up the city like a Christmas tree, and made the stars shy away from the spotlight. One night, when you're feeling down and unable to sleep, you visited one of the bars around there. By a stroke of luck, you met a man with hair as lucent as silver. He was a charming man, and irresistible. By the end of the night, he gave you his name. You can't remember his name. 

Be careful of what you wish for. Doesn't matter if you say it out loud, or you whisper it with the smallest voice, do not tell the wind. No one will ever know who's listening, and what kind of being they are. Because your wish will come true, but it won't come without a price. If you're lucky, you'll only lose your things, but if you become greedy, you'll lose something unimaginable. Do not say your wish, even when the voices inside your head tempt you to. 

It is said that if you wake up at night, something else's watching you. It's just a myth, you reminded yourself many times. But your eyes would open, and you'd see the exact same hour everyday. 2.01 AM. Sometimes you could sleep back again, but sometimes you woke up drenched in sweat, shaking. It's just a myth, you said it to yourself. But you didn't sleep again that night, as you kept thinking that you'd die if you closed your eyes. 

As the sun rises up, you begin your day with a glass of water. The liquid would taste like a pristine water from the fountain of Gods, and you'd fill the glass for a second time. It's always a mystery why you wake up drained and exhausted. You blame it on the hours you spend on the computer, but it's impossible to cause this kind of fatigue, right…? 

When you're walking into the train station, you lay your eyes on the advertising board. It's relatively empty, as it's not commonly used anymore. You stop and read one of the worn papers. You can only make out a few words; '... Everybody can get what they want… money, women, power, your wildest dream will come true… call us…' It ends there, as the phone number is ripped off. 

Dreams consist of the past recollection in your life. If you dream about a certain person, it means you've seen them somewhere. Lately, you've been dreaming about the peculiar man that you met at the bar. But he was different from what you remember. His coat wasn't red, and his hair was brushed to the back. Sometimes his face was reflected on the window's train, and sometimes he's close enough until you see his brilliant blue irises. He's him, but not him at the same time. Because his name… his name is… 

On your lonely night, you put the music on to fill the silence. It's not wise to play music at night, because some creatures are attracted to the sound. But it always gives you a sense of security, as if you're not alone. Sometimes, you hear a low hum outside your window. As quiet as an owl. And when you listen to the croon, your chest is filled with melancholy that doesn't belong to you. Your friends warned you about the voice outside the window, but you just laughed it off. Maybe… maybe you should've listened to them. 

Oftentimes, for a millisecond between consciousness and oblivion, you remember everything. The moment before you plunge into dreams, you recall the memories you've lost. You recognize his face at the subway, his smell, and his eyes that seem to stick with you all day. And his name, you remember his name. Your lips move involuntarily, and you call him by his name. At that moment, you swear you feel a weight on your bed as you fall asleep. 

[aibidil]

as someone who was a freshman in college in 2003-4, i don’t think i could ever explain to people what it was like to be on the internet when we had flash videos (because regular vid formats were too big) and ebaumsworld and weebl's stuff (but no YouTube!! not until 2005!, a decade before Vine) as the modern meme era began. it's hard to remember how much work we had to put into finding and sharing memes, the exact opposite of now when good content from every platform is reliably shared around and reposted on every other platform. but I'm going to try to explain it for posterity, so gather round, children, for some tales from an elder millennial

imagine this:

you're in your dorm room hiking up your low-rise jeans and a friend sticks their head in and calls you to their room (everyone still had PCs with enormous towers, no portability, this had changed by 2006 when people bought laptops for college) and you gather behind their desk while they open ebaumsworld and pull up a gloriously terribly edited, completely chaotic, short-form video. "Hokay, so, here is the earth, chilling," it says in an inscrutable accent. "What IS this?" you ask and your friend goes, "SHHHH!" "Damn, that is a sweet earth you might say. WRONG!" You watch the video forty times on repeat, laughing harder each time

A few days later you're the one calling your hallmates in because you've discovered a video (please note YouTube DID NOT EXIST, this was on Newgrounds.com, which I somehow do not even remember) of a kid your age from New Jersey dancing to a... Moldovan pop song no one has ever heard before? You watch it five hundred times until you know all his dance moves and still have no idea what the song is or who sings it, but you will die for this boy from NJ as he is now your favorite person on the planet and you can sing every word as best you can without knowing the language

you go home and your brother is like, "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN MAGICAL TREVOR?!?!?!" and your friend from another university is like "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN BADGER BADGER SNAAAAAAKE?!?!" and thus meme biodiversity is ensured

a few years later it looks like this: you log on Facebook, which you need a .edu email address from a select list of elite colleges to register for, and there's no news feed...the only thing that exists is your friend list and you can post things on your own or someone else's wall. There are no parents or businesses or celebrities or organizations on Facebook. People complain about their parents and professors with impunity and no worry of it ever getting back to them. Half your friends have a fake Facebook account masquerading as a professor or a fictional character or a statue on campus. On a friend's wall they've posted that they can't stop laughing at an early YouTube video of toddlers and before you know it, you've added "that reeeallly hurt Charlie, and it's still hurting" to your vernacular (this video was, at one point, the most watched yt video of all time and was sold recently as a fucking NFT, I wish I could watch my 2007 self learn and try to process this information)

and because this specific type of virality was still new but reliably shared in these ways, you could be pretty sure that everyone in your physical and digital orbits would know the same memes—but that no one in an older generation would have any clue, because of the way things were shared and structured. which is different from now, because our digital spaces are more siloed, because there's so much, so many memes, that my partner and I constantly reference memes that the other hasnt even heard of because meme uptake has to be limited just for functionality within different online spaces. To the point where we both had a gif for "Why not both?/both is good" but his was the taco commercial and mine was the road to el dorado and we literally live in the same house and have all the same irl experiences.

it's both similar to and completely different from the way we share and reference memes now

And now you're in your late thirties and you try to share these classics with your kids and they just look at them like that's the shittiest video I ever saw and you don't know how to explain to them that their admittedly much better quality memes literally wouldn't exist without these precursors but they just think you're lame forever

and you're like, "I'm going to go hang with Hawaii"

[zmzebra-writes]

Alkakurei age shuffle au thoughts...

Music era events have been pushed up a year to give alkakurei characters more time to settle into their new positions (give suddenly younger characters a chance to have pivotal pre-story moments). Also some parts have been given more thoughts than others since this was originally made to focus more on some characters over others.

Alkaloid

Hiiro: (19-20) Rinne's older brother and the next in line to be the village monarch. Ever since his younger brother ran away suddenly, he has been waiting for the perfect opportunity to find him. When his father fell ill a few months prior, Hiiro declared his first action as monarch was to rescue his brother from the city. He is determined to destroy anything in his way of his mission.

Aira: (18-19) Ex-idol, currently a producer studying at Yumenosaki. He switched tracks during his third year and is staying an extra year to finish getting all the credits he needs to graduate. After a lack of work and basically getting fired from ES, Aira decided that maybe the stage wasn't for him. With the advice of Anzu, Aira steeled himself to instead support his favorite idols from the sidelines and become the greatest producer.

Tatsumi: (16-17) Skipped a few years and entered high school early after proving his skills as an idol Kanna-style. He is a year ahead of Jun and Kaname so Obbligato still occurs as originally described to avoid disturbing the other mainline characters. Despite returning to idol activities, he is avoiding returning to school for reasons he will not elaborate on. Other idols tend to treat him as older than his years even if he is still younger than them.

Mayoi: (15-16) After he was found living in the walls, Mayoi was enrolled at Yumenosaki as an idol. This is his first year being a proper idol, though he has spent many years observing them and helping them from the shadows.

Crazy:B

Kohaku: (20-21) Started working as a solo idol three years prior to shadow Tsukasa. When Tsukasa discovered his cousin was working as an idol a year later, he offered him a place in Knights which Kohaku declined for a long list of reasons. Tsukasa keeps this offer open, however. Kohaku was never a popular idol (being popular was never his goal), but his popularity has been waning in the past year like the other solo units. He's considering this a sign that his time in the light is running out and is making plans to go out with a bang so his nosy cousin won't try any last minute moves.

Niki: (17-18) Currently not an idol because he has worked so hard to stay in school and dang it, he is getting his diploma no matter what Rinne tries to pull. In his free time, he works at Cafe Cinnamon and the ES cafeteria to earn more money to feed both himself and Rinne.

Rinne: (15-16) Came to the city a year ago after snapping on the village and running away from home. He dreams of becoming an idol and has spent the past year working on making his debut to minor success. He hopes that Crazy:B will be his big break.

HiMERU: (???-???) Kaname would be turning 17 this year. Kaname lied about his age to get accepted into Reimei's middle school division earlier and thus enters Reimei in the same year as Jun. HiMERU, serial identity liar, didn't see an issue with this. HiMERU is currently working his best to act as HiMERU including pretending to be 17-18.

General Notes

Aira is assigned to produce Alkaloid and act as an Anzu proxy in Eichi's experiment to manufacture idols. He ends up dorming with the other three during the summer to make sure Hiiro doesn't do anything crazy and to help bond with the idols.

During the first summer, Alkaloid and Crazy:B only have three members each.

Kohaku is the only idol in Crazy:B who lives in the dorm since his apartment lease recently finished and he declined to renew it. Rinne lives at Niki's apartment and only goes to the dorm when it looks like food is running low and he doesn't want Niki sacrificing calories for his sake.

Kohaku plans to use Crazy:B as a way to self-destruct and force himself to go back underground without hurting the Suous or Oukawas. Admittedly, this not a well thought out plan until Rinne began sharing ideas for how Crazy:B could succeed and meet Cospro's impossible goals (through live crashing and lying). Over the summer, Kohaku unintentionally bonded with Rinne and HiMERU enough that he restructured Rinne's plans so that he could secretly take all of Crazy:B's sins and "die" with them, leaving his unitmates free to continue being idols. Rinne is unaware of this plan until the last minute ("you said we were all in this together!") since he never considered someone not wanting to be an idol and wanting to go back to their family.

Hiiro and Rinne have an unusual relationship due to their swapped positions in the village. Despite Hiiro's attempts to treat Rinne as his beloved younger brother, Rinne is observant and quick to understand his position in life. Nothing Hiiro could've done would have prevented the ticking time bomb inside of Rinne.

Not that Hiiro actively tried very hard. Hiiro can be a bit unobservant when he doesn’t want to see something and while he presents as a clever person (who aces all lessons), he still doesn’t want to see the worst in the village, and thus simply ignores how they say he should treat Rinne. So long as he doesn't actually treat his younger brother as disposable, then he won't feel that way, right? They can just live happily as brothers with Hiiro as the monarch and Rinne supporting him at his side. Or so Hiiro thought.

[whileiamdying]

The Fiery Sounds of the Monterey International Pop Festival

Revisiting the event’s memorable set list, 57 years later.

June 18, 2024

Ravi Shankar onstage at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967.Credit...Ted Streshinsky/Corbis, via Getty Images

By Lindsay Zoladz

Dear listeners,

Fifty-seven years ago today, the Monterey International Pop Festival — the three-day event that arguably invented the modern music festival — concluded in a blaze of glory. That Sunday boasted quite a bill: Ravi Shankar mesmerized the crowd with a set of ragas that lasted more than three hours. The Who obliterated the calm with a proto-punk set which ended when Pete Townshend smashed his guitar. Jimi Hendrix attempted a one-up by lighting his on fire. The headliners the Mamas & the Papas had the unenviable task of following all that.

I’ve had Monterey Pop on the brain recently, since last month I published an in-depth piece about the life and legacy of “Mama” Cass Elliot. (I began the essay with a self-deprecating joke that Elliot made onstage at the festival, which took place just six weeks after she’d given birth to her daughter.) The story of Monterey Pop is entwined in the story of the Mamas & the Papas: The group’s leader, John Phillips, was one of the organizers of the festival, and he even wrote the event’s de facto theme song, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” which was recorded by the folk singer Scott McKenzie. The Mamas & the Papas were perhaps the most famous band on the bill at the time, but that would soon change. The festival — like D.A. Pennebaker’s era-defining, fly-on-the-wall documentary “Monterey Pop” — was a snapshot of the precise moment when the prevailing sounds of folk-rock began to give way to a louder, gnarlier kind of rock ’n’ roll practiced by Hendrix, the Who and another of the weekend’s breakout stars, the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin.

One of the things that makes Pennebaker’s documentary so valuable is the fact that it captured, in vivid liveliness, so many musical luminaries who would soon be gone: Joplin, Hendrix, Elliot and Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash before the film was released. Pennebaker and his crew shot these artists in intimate, immediate close-up, pioneering the visual language of concert documentaries to come.

Today’s playlist revisits some of Monterey Pop’s legendary set list, specifically focusing on the songs performed in Pennebaker’s film. It’s a mix of live cuts and studio versions, of flower-child folk and rabble-rousing rock. It is unlikely to inspire you to go full pyromaniac like Hendrix, but just in case, you might want to have a fire extinguisher handy.

1. Scott McKenzie: “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”

What’s the best way to promote a festival you’re trying to plan at the last minute? Write a hit song urging people to come, of course. Penned by John Phillips and recorded with haste by Scott McKenzie (it was released just a month before Monterey Pop), this ode to San Francisco was at once a generational anthem and an advertising jingle. That’s viral marketing, 1967-style. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

2. The Mamas & the Papas: “California Dreamin’”

By all accounts, the Mamas & the Papas’ performance at the Monterey Pop Festival was not their best; in Pennebaker’s film, it’s clear they’re struggling to stay in sync and that Michelle Phillips’s microphone did not seem to be working at all. But because of John Phillips’s involvement in organizing the event and his group’s headlining spot, the Mamas & the Papas remain some of the festival’s most prominent figureheads.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

3. Simon and Garfunkel: “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”

Backed only by Paul Simon’s acoustic guitar, the dulcet tones of Simon and Garfunkel closed out the festival’s opening night. Their set, which included this ode to New York’s Queensboro Bridge, contrasted with some of the weekend’s heavier, harder rocking performances to come.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

4. Janis Joplin: “Ball and Chain (Live)”

Though Big Brother and the Holding Company and its lead singer Janis Joplin were some of Monterey’s biggest breakout stars — the band got a record deal with Columbia on the strength of its performance — their initial Saturday afternoon set had not been captured on film. When it became clear that Joplin’s ragged rendition of Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain” (performed here in 1970 at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium) would go down as one of the weekend’s highlights, she and the band were given a two-song encore slot the following day, which Pennebaker and his crew were sure to film. That bonus performance resulted in one of my favorite moments in Pennebaker’s documentary: an awed reaction shot of Cass Elliot watching Joplin and mouthing the word “wow.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

5. The Who: “My Generation”

The Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were bigger in the U.K. than the U.S. in June 1967, but after Monterey that would change for both of them. A friendly competition existed between these two acts, and they decided to flip a coin to determine who would go first — and who would get to make it seem like they had invented the idea of destroying one’s guitar onstage. The Who won the coin flip, and their kinetic performance of set closer “My Generation” ended in destruction.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

6. Otis Redding, Booker T. & the M.G.’s and the Mar-Keys: “Shake (Live)”

Yet another of the festival’s breakout stars was Otis Redding, who was backed by not one but two great groups: the session brass players the Mar-Keys and instrumental Memphis soul powerhouses Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Redding’s performance was so electrifying that Pennebaker later released a stand-alone short film, “Shake! Otis at Monterey,” documenting the entire set.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

7. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Wild Thing (Live)”

Knowing that he now had to upstage the Who, the wily Hendrix acquired a small container of lighter fluid and hid it onstage. The rest — his groundbreaking, earth-scorching performance and the sacrificial conflagration in which it ended — is rock history.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

8. Ravi Shankar: “Dhun (Dadra and Fast Teental) (Live)”

Though the Indian sitarist Shankar’s hypnotic set took place earlier on Sunday, Pennebaker wisely used it as the finale of his film, underscoring the “international” descriptor in the festival’s title and providing an ecstatic comedown to the weekend’s long, strange trip.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube