#so the idea that that holy musical b@man would still exist in some form is fucking hilarious

[star-realities]

I didn’t even mention that the Vine that’s like this ends tonight Batman or should I say butthead still exists even without people being sure Batman exists so you’re welcome for that also I guarantee at least one of the Robins showed their father at some point ❤️⚡️

I’m oh 100% sure SOMEONE showed it to him. Who got the privilege? No idea. Probably multiple of them.

But the way I can picture his face seeing it- just staring into the camera like he’s on the office or smth LMAO

[tuber-culosis]

I've been reading through a lot of radfem blogs and posts lately. and gotta say, i'm leaning a lot towards radical feminism. And im definitely gender critical.

but one topic I want to talk about in particular is the criticism of Islam.

Which I feel is totally valid considering the current state of mainstream islam and Muslims.

Mainstream Islam (is what you see on all social media, seemingly practised by a lot of Muslims) IS sexist. And homophobic. There's no use denying it, neither do I think I'm a bad Muslim for not supposedly defending my own religion. You have to recognise the flaws in your own system to improve and progress.

Then arises the question why am I still Muslim then/ why do I still practise Islam? If I recognise the way it is practised is sexist and homophobic, which are things I'm against?

The difference lies in my belief that "mainstream Islam" is much different from the root of Islam.

Many (read: a LOT, not all) modern Muslims have been influenced by ultra conservative movements that want to return Islam to the way they believe was practised during the time of the Prophet (pbuh), ie; some centuries back. This is propagated by the ideas of Salafism and Wahhabism that frankly, prevent progress, reform or any sort of growth in Muslim communities.

I personally have witnessed this in my own country, India, where women are increasingly wearing the hijab and even full body covering purdahs, not talking to the opposite gender, men not looking a woman other than their wives in the eye, etc compared to when my mother was a child, when almost all Muslim women dressed in normal comfortable clothes and there were no much gender segregations. (Gender segregation still existed to a certain degree due to conservative Indian culture ofc)

This radicalisation led to the development of ultra conservative Muslims who enforce sexist, homophobic and separatist policies in the name of God.

They claim to want to return to "true Islam" but they add so many unnecessary rules and regulations you have to follow in order to be a "true Muslim" that are almost so impossible to follow I can vouch I have unconciously broken like 50 of them in one day maybe. These "laws" are derived from:

1. The hadith

2. Arab culture

3. Poor translation of the Quran to fit these radical ideals.

Explaining each of these in a little more detail,

1. A lot of practising Muslims might come at me for this one, but I feel that considering the hadith to be a holy source of guidance and believing everything in the Hadith when there are so many contradictions and logical fallacies, is foolish.

For those who have no clue what the hadith is, Islam basically has the Qur'an, which is, as we believe, a holy book revealed by God to the Prophet (pbuh), which acts as divine guidance on how to live life as a good person. It has rules, suggestions, and guidance to take desicions on a lot of everyday matters we face. It was a godsend (hehe pun fully intended) to women, who weren't even allowed to own property back then. Muslims believe that the Quran is guaranteed againt corruption by God, as revealed in one of the verses. Therefore, to a believer, it is THE book to consult, and the verses will never change, no matter how many years pass. There's actually a really interesting way the Quran is coded, so people can know if it has been tampered with or not, if anyone is interested. But the bottom line is, for a Muslim, the verses of Quran cannot be challenged. There are various INTERPRETATIONS of said verses, but the core Arabic text is the same.

Now there is a secondary source of guidance in the form of Hadith, which is literature that claims to record things the Prophet (pbuh) has said in his lifetime. The problem I find, along with other hadith critics, is that it was compiled much later after the death of the Prophet. Muslims argue that these hadiths were passed down in a proper recorded chain of transmitters that can assure the message hasn't been altered or tampered with. The problem is, that the standard used then was just how reliable was a person's memory and how trustworthy they were, and they did not actually judge the actual content of the hadith. So even if a hadith hypothetically said "Kill all the disbelievers", (which, fyi, it does NOT) and it had a reliable chain of recorders, it would be accepted as "sahih" (trustworthy) hadith, even though it clearly goes against the guidelines of the Quran, where it says there shall be no compulsion in religion (which implies you cannot just murder anyone who refuses to believe/ believes another religion). If one actually examined the content of this imaginary hadith, it would be easy to see it's tampered with by people with or without malicious intent (for eg, it might've actually been "You can kill the disbelievers ONLY if they attack you and will not leave you and your family alone") or some may not even remotely be the words of the Prophet, as he only followed the Quran.

Also, the integrity of the Hadith isn't guaranteed by God anywhere in the Quran. To know more about this, I suggest you read this link , and this one.

So yeah, I take hadith with a (large) grain of salt. So I will not be including them in my discussion obviously.

Now a lot of these hadith have been fabricated, as established, or reflect something that was applicable specifically in that time and setting, seeing that the Prophet was an ordinary man who couldn't predict the future or know about all the different cultures of the world.

So even if the headscarf was a part of Arabian attire, that doesn't mean it has to be assimilated into our cultures now. Just because prostitutes used to pluck all their eyebrows out to signify that they are prostitutes (sex work is forbidden in Islam, because of the negative impact on women and society), doesn't mean that women are not allowed to pluck their eyebrows now.

Following these hadith blindly without considering for a moment that hey, these might be outdated, seeing it isn't meant for all time periods like the Quran, and half of these contradict themselves, maybe we shouldn't consider this as an authority on rules in Islam. Personally, I don't believe anything is forbidden that is mentioned as such solely in the Hadith, and not in the Quran.

But the staunch belief in all of these Hadith leads to micromanaging of women, and literally everyone else. Few ridiculous examples include:

women can't pluck their eyebrows

men can't wear silk or gold, and they need to grow beards

music and dance is forbidden (seriously???)

the Prophet married a literal child of nine years (no do not try to justify it as "it was acceptable back then". According to the Qur'an it wasn't. Girls had to be mature enough to reject or agree to marriages and literal children can't do that. There is plenty of research to prove that Aisha (ra), his wife, was at the very least 19 or 20. Again a case of unreliable and maybe purposefully manipulated Hadith. Scholars and people who uphold the theory that Aisha was 9, and hence, child marriage is legal are pedophiles through and through)

I feel that if anything, hadith should be considered with the authority of historical commentary, giving us more context to the times, and should never be blindly trusted just because a lot of scholars say it is a "sahih" (trusted) hadith.

Also a main feature of Islam is that you don't need an extra priest (no offence to religions who have priests) or a scholar to tell you things and intervene with God for you. You have a holy book, your own common sense and humanity, and you pray to establish a connection with God. Scholars are secondary OPINIONS who can provide insight from their knowledge and research to people who want it, but by no means any authority on things, just like hadith.

2. Arab culture and society, especially back the times that radicals want to emulate, was heavily patriarchal. Islam gave women rights and protection, but they were still limited by the cultural norms of that era.

What these people actually want is to return society to Arabic culture in that time period. (Exhibit A: the abaya/purdah for women and khandoorah for men. exhibit B: sex-segregated spaces)

Back then, women were expected to be caretakers and mothers, and men were expected to be the strong masculine protector.

Enforcing said cultural norms into modern day Islam is ridiculous. Saying that women rarely left the house back then, hence women shouldn't leave their houses now is the same as saying there weren't phones back then, so I shouldn't use one now. Would you ever give up your phones? So how about we do the same to women's autonomy and freedom? Adapt to modern times like regular humans?

If women were meant to stay at home, and meant to just rear children, and never meant to be seen in public, and never meant to be seen by the opposite sex, as extremists say "is God's will", then why is none of this found in the Quran? Do you seriously believe that God, describe multiple times as All-forgiving and generous and kind, would ever persecute women to such a fate? If you do believe that, then maybe you need to re-examine in the nature of God that you believe in. Also if you tell me the "it's for their safety" gimmick, I will flip out. It has been proved multiple times that a woman's dressing has nothing whatsoever to do with why men rape.

Sure, Islam advocates for modesty in dressing, for both sexes. Both are called to not stare rudely (many Muslim men seem to forget that part of the verse, strangely), both are advised to dress in modest, comfortable, clean and practical attire. Never once is anything remotely like "YOU'LL GO TO HELL IF YOU EXPOSE YOUR ELBOW, WOMAN". But the way modern Muslims enforce the dress code (some even going to the lengths of saying women shouldn't wear BRIGHT COLOURED CLOTHES, so as to not attract attention!!! I'm looking at you, Mufti Menk), you'd think that God says something much worse than that. Infact God pulls out Uno reverse, and encourages us to dress as beautifully as we want, especially when visiting the mosque.

3. A lot of English translations of the Quran come from Saudi Arabia. A country famous for its conservative practise of Islam. While the original Arabic text cannot be changed, a lot of these translations include information in parantheses that add "rules" based on the above mentioned factors, that a casual reader or a new Muslim who doesn't know Arabic will consider to be authentic rules of the Quran, extrapolated from the verse, and not extra additions that are often derived from hadith. A very good example of this is the headcover verse, which you can see in this link.

Even all the hostility surrounding homosexual people has been derived from cultural influences and one set of verses. From around 6000 verses, just a single set passingly mention homosexuality. Don't you think that if it truly were such a great sin, God would have explicitly forbidden it? Also why would he create such a natural variation in sexuality and then forbid it? Why isn't it forbidden for animals then? Is all-loving God that cruel to create this natural and healthy attraction in them and then explicitly forbid it when straight people get to marry and live life in bliss? (Please don't say that "God also created pedophilia, and that's natural, so by this logic shouldn't we allow that too?" because pedophilia IS NOT HEALTHY, AT ALL. IT'S IS A DISORDER. Unlike homosexuality) I'm also not picking and choosing things to fit my lifestyle, as some might say, as I am straight, and the only reason I support the LGBT community because I have basic humanity?? And they're humans who deserve rights and joy and freedom and acceptance just like the rest of us.

There have been reformed translations of Quran which examine the verse without prior bias against LGBT people, and they have presented an alternate translation, that the verse condemns sexual assault, which happened to be homosexual in the particular story. Check out this link too, which explains how closely examining the words used could change the meaning from one thing to another.

What I attempted to prove in this extremely long post is that the practise of a religion isn't necessarily the reflection of its true nature.

There are progressive open-minded people who believe in Islam because it gives them hope and solace. People who believe because core beliefs of Islam aligned with their own views and simple logic.

NOT to say there aren't religious bigots who will totally use religion to manipulate people into oppressing themselves or other people. There are, there are a LOT of people like that who call themselves "scholars". And there are a lot of people who follow these extremely harmful regressive version of Islam without critically thinking about what they are following.

I've seen a post discussing the meaning of the word Islam, which means submission to God. It said that it implies total submission, without questioning what we believe.

That is an argument used by both religious extremists to further their beliefs, and by the opposite side, who say the religion is oppressive.

I wish to present a view that Islam itself tells us to think critically, to use our brains to question everything and anything we believe. And then to arrive at our own conclusions. And if you're a decent, kind human, those beliefs maybe align with Islam (not saying that if you're not Muslim, you're horrible, that is not what I meant at all). And if the opinion between people differs, there's always logic and reasoning behind every rule that is presented in the Quran. Don't believe me? Here's the verse that tells people not to blindly follow their parents' religion. And here's a list of verses about critical thinking.

The reason we (atleast reformist Muslims) submit to God is because we questioned it, we came to the conclusion that Hey! This is right. I can submit to my Creator by, who is basically the consciousness that created everything and is the source of all goodness, love and strength, because the rules mentioned here make sense and they privde a moral framework for me to base important desicions on. They feel right. And there is logic behind everything written in this.

I don't mean to present Islam as an all-perfect amazing religion everyone should believe and that I'm right, everyone else, especially those liberal atheists who criticise my religion are wrong and WILL BURN IN HELL. I consider Islam a perfect moral framework, and that's my business only. Anyone can follow what they want and it's none of my business. In fact there is no compulsion in religion at all, and people who say Muslim or go to hell are wrong imo.

What I intended was to paint a picture of reformist Muslims who are still out there, who follow the religion because they questioned it. And not the religion as this stringent rule book we all have to follow down to a t, micromanaging every aspect of our lives and living in perpetual fear of hell, but rather this basic moral guide that teaches us tact, compassion and justice, to bring us closer to God spiritually. I wanted to show that the majority isn't always reflective of what I think is the true core of Islam.

I feel that many practises in the name of Islam are highly questionable and should be criticized, but I also want people to know that the people who seemingly represent the religion, are not representative of the entire mass of believers. That sometimes the practises you might criticize might have nothing to do with the actual religion, atleast according to some of us. It was also for fellow Muslims who might be in the same place I was a few years ago, questioning everything I had learnt was part of my religion.

This is also NOT to undermine struggles of people forced to follow Islam and its seeming requirements like hijab. This is not to claim that nope, every Muslim is fine and ok, and we're all peaceful progressive people. In fact I wish to do the exact opposite, to show that people who enforce oppressive policies in the name of Islam aren't actually backed by the religion and neither should they be backed by other Muslims. I'm also not trying to say no one should criticize Islam. Criticism helps us grow. Criticism is necessary to uncover oppression and eradicate it. So by all means, criticize.

I'm so glad I found the subreddit r/progressive_Islam when I did because it helped me a lot, and opened me to other like-minded progressive Muslims, who actively hope to counter the negative effects of Salafism and conservatism that is overtaking Islam.

So yeah, I think I covered almost everything I wanted to talk about and here's a final link that pretty much just states my position on things.

PS idk why this thingy is in different colours it just seemed cooler and less boring to read

[demenior]

Dem’s Big Post About The Spn Fics Part 1/2

aka The Wrap Up to celebrate To Exist Again and To Become a Man now being finished!

(This will be a long post. This is your only warning.)

Admittedly this is a bit of a weird thing to be doing, but I wanted to try it out for 3 reasons: 

I love talking about my own work and 

It functions really well as a self-reflective tool for me to improve on, and 

I can answer some big questions people might have because there was a LOT of worldbuilding in these stories. 

We’ll start off with reflective stuff, and move into the juicier world-building focused stuff later into the post. There will be major spoilers for both fics to come!

To begin with a funny anecdote, Why Did I Write These Stories?

I was beginning to write and work out the story that I wanted to write for Spn (what will now be To Destroy a Man. As I was writing the scene, I realized I had a LOT of ideas and while I was trying to avoid as much exposition as I could, it became quickly apparent that I was needing to create my own au (this scene eventually became chapter 34 of To Become a Man). A short prequel seemed like a good idea, to quickly hash out the ‘prior’ events that I needed to go through so all the readers could be on the same page. While plotting out prequel points, I realized Sam and Dean were going to have drastically different experiences during the same time period, and I was trying to figure out who’s pov would be better for which scenes, and how to keep momentum when they’re going through such radically different types of changes. Ultimately I decided to split their povs, which I also thought would be a fun project! And I naively assumed each pov would take about 2 chapters each, rounding out to maybe 15k total.

I had my ending points: Dean n Cas soul-merged and (basically) married, Cas on the lam from heaven and a complete anomaly, and Sam juiced up full of powers and a weird mix of archangel and antichrist but still 100% human and ready to fight God. 

Now I needed to add weight to these changes, so I wrote 200k of build-up.

Am I proud of these fics?

OF COURSE I AM!!! These are the longest fics I’ve ever written AND finished AND in the fastest freakin turnaround ever (both were finished writing, barring edits, in like 6 months holy shit)

I didn’t write a single scene that I “didn’t” want to write. If I had trouble writing it, as in it was fighting me, I scrapped it. Most obviously was the scene in Dean’s pov where he and Sam were intended to meet some other hunters and Dean declines working with them because he’s nervous about being outed as queer. It was meant to be a good scene! I wanted to introduce some new characters! But it just wasn’t working so I said ‘thank you, next!’. 

But it means this story was an absolute joy to write. Because for a while all I was doing was ‘if I wanted to write one scene into supernatural, what would I write?’ and then just DID that!! It’s why there’s a lot of ‘Salmondean do dumb shit or have really dumb heartfelt conversations’ scenes.

Would I change anything?

If I’d been less eager to start sharing, I might have planned out the story beats a little tighter so there were less ‘soft’ chapters and a draw/pull for people to come back and keep reading. I felt Dean’s story specifically lagged at points and could have used some tighter editing (there was a noticeable lull in directed movement between Dean n Cas getting together, until Sam corrupts Amy).

I also probably would have held Sam’s story until I’d finished Dean’s so I could make the two line up better! Probably could have inserted more scenes into Sam’s fic that way, and made sure things were a little more consistent. In an ideal world one concept I had was to release 1 chapter from each pov every week that would correspond to the same time frame so we’d be getting real-time SalmonDean pov narrative. Unfortunately that didn’t work!

The biggest takeaway overall is for me to focus more on what moves the plot, and to make my scenes do more than 1 thing so I can cut down on wordcount and increase my efficiency. 

Of course every writer will find things they want to fix in anything they’ve ever written, so these are minor “mistakes” at best. I’m so dang proud of these fics. 

Onto more interesting things!

How Did I Put These Fics Together (because it’s different than anything I’ve ever done before)

Normally when I write a story, I plan out the beats I need to hit, see where I need to insert any kind of foreshadowing/buildup, and then write from A to B to C and so on and so forth. Hence, this is why I can normally post things as I complete chapters, because it’s all a linear progression. 

For these two stories, rather than linear plot/a normal story structure, I just sat and free-wrote any and every scene that came to mind and then pieced them into a kinda-linear form like putting a quilt together. You’ll note that this is why there’s not a lot of internal callback or a feeling of sense of time flowing within the fic (save for points where I went back and specifically edited it in). How long does the story take place over? Hard to say! Your author has the barest grasp on linear time even on a good day (how many times did I say ‘see you on [wrong day]’ at the end of chapters lmaaoooo)

This also meant EXTENSIVE editing on the back end once I decided in what order I wanted my ‘quilt pieces’ to be. Hard to say if this is a bonus or a negative!

But I did want to try and capture the vibe of the lives they lead, as a bit of a ‘slice of life’-style story, when the slice of life is the profound weirdness of the Winchester roaming life, and how things are status quo- until everyone almost dies oh shit!! And then they have to keep living because no therapy we die/undie like Winchesters. Do I think I captured this effectively? Hmm. Good question. 

Dem where the FUCK did the inspiration for a lot of the magic and creature weirdness even come from?

Honestly? Music, primarily. And completely mishearing lyrics!

Nightwish ‘Ever Dream’: the line is ‘my song can but borrow you grace’ and because my brain is scrambled eggs on a good day, I heard ‘grace’ ‘song’ and ‘borrow’ in that order and have had, for YEARS, the mental image of Cas borrowing Dean’s soul to power himself up for battle.

From there I’ve always been enamored with the ‘wavelength of celestial intent’ descriptor that Cas drops in s6 for “what he is”. 

I also really like ocean metaphors mostly because I’ve been obsessed with the ocean and things in it since I was like… 5??? So really this was me just rolling with what I know lmao. I love using (somewhat) accurate scientific metaphors for very intangible things!

I was also finishing my degree in biology/ecology while writing these fics and I think it shows

Stars ‘The Night Starts Here’ gives us the series title and the fic titles. Except for ‘To Exist Again’. TEA was almost titled ‘The Upwards Fall’ because I wanted all 3 of the Main Stories to have titles from this song, but I couldn’t make anything else work in tandem with the series name ‘The Love It Takes’ while also working for Sam’s personal story. So Sam, as always, is the rebel <3

Stars ‘Up In Our Bedroom, After The War’ is basically the vibes of the whole story. TFW has been, literally, to hell and back!!! There’s a bit of melancholy and sadness, a lingering dark, but the chance of a bright new tomorrow and a soft start.

Let’s Talk About Themes in The Story! What were you looking to accomplish? 

My earliest notes for TFW are, as follows:

Dean’s journey of self-discovery (who am I when I’m not trying to be Dad?)

Dean wants to settle down! He wants a big family! He wants to be domestic!

Basically: Dean doesn’t want to have a short life of hunting. He wants to live!

Dean’s journey of realizing he’s bi, and him accepting that

Dean’s relationship to Sam is both older brother/parent 

And continuing Dean balancing these roles while also letting Sam be an adult 

Dean’s Big Issues/Fears about never being good enough for people to want to stay with him (these are effectively highlighted in that Cas thinks he’s not useful enough to be wanted)

Sub Plot:

Castiel’s autonomy

Cas’ fall from grace, to trying to restore Heaven, to wrecking it further

He’s majorly depressed by the end of s7 (before purgatory)

Wants to stay in Purgatory but doesn’t tell Dean

Remains depressed after leaving, but resolved to keep living on because he’s clearly meant for something

After the seraphim reveal: does he have free will?! How does he grapple with this? How does he live in a way he can be proud of?

And lastly

Sam gets his powers back CAUSE THATS HOT

where tf did they go????

he got them from Lucifer?????

sleeper agent??????

Sam is The Chosen One

Accepts that he is More Than Human and to celebrate all parts of him

Lucifer and Sam friends?? Work together????

Sam needs autonomy in his choices/his life

If you compare these to the overall arc of TFW within the two stories, I think I got a lot of them! But you’ll also note a lot of these things aren’t concrete goals that are easily measurable (ex: Dean wants to learn to bake pie. In chapter 1 he starts a fire in the kitchen. By the end of the story he finally makes A Good Pie.) part of the lack of concrete milestones was why I felt it was important to tell Dean (and Cas’) story by going back to the point they meet, in s4! Dean’s gradual change towards his feelings for Cas, his relationship to Sam (heavily influenced by the s7 events of this fic) and then his own relationship with himself were such slow burns that I felt it would be a disservice to try and cram a change like that into a timeline like “1 year”.

I felt like these subtle changes and adjustments actually felt a lot truer to life-- people often change in very small, gradual ways over time, even without realizing it and often times not consistently! If only we could all gain skills like the sims, where we can easily level up and remain at that high level of performance! 

So the Guy Who Ate Satan, A Celestial Nuke that Developed Sentience, and Dean walk into a bar…

Sam’s story in Spn The Show has always been a ‘chosen one’ kind of narrative. Sam is living with one foot in the realm of the monsters, and I wanted to bring that back full force! It really makes sense for him that he should only continue to grow in power, might, and magic!! As the story progresses.

Cas also got a power up! I do desperately love in the show that he was kind of a grunt/nothing angel, and so even when he defected to TFW he was a huge help for them, but in the scale of things he was an annoying fly to most other angels. It really worked for the underdog story of s4/5. In this I wanted to give him a power up, and originally it was actually going to be close contact with Sam that eventually changed Cas into something unknown (you can still see traces of this in ch34 of TBAM, where Death remarks ‘Castiel could be [Sam’s] first creation’. But for a combo of reasons: how Sam’s magic needed to have intent, the entire concept of free will and consent, and how much I wanted Dean and Cas to have their effect on each other, I decided to go with the route that Cas has actually always been something angel-adjacent rather than becoming something new. TFW/Supernatural has always been about free will and making your own story, so I amplified that with Cas.

Dean has always been A Normal Guy, which is part of the appeal of him and Sam (2 normal dudes!) taking on the Very Not Normal. As explained above, Sam’s story is ‘normal guy finds out he’s the chosen one’ and so, in a story about very large concepts and huge monsters and acts of magic, I felt it was very important to keep Dean as normal as possible. To the point it became a running gag to me, personally, in that ‘no matter what cool shit happens around him, Dean has to stay as Just A Guy’. And it’s a very humanizing role that allows the story to have the scale it does!

What were the most important themes in your story?

Sam’s Autonomy

I wasn’t even going to include the plot about Lucifer’s death in this story— that was going to come up in a later story, actually! And rather than Sam having ate Lucifer, the original idea was that they’d become a SamandLucifer entity (this harkens back to a concept I wanted to write when Swan Song first aired). 

That storyline would have involved a lot of mental ‘Sam and Lucifer discuss what it means to live, which one of them is more worthy of life and if they do deserve to destroy the world for the pain they’ve been forced to go through, just to create the dichotomy of good and evil for everyone else’ discussions. There would be a lot of talk about how Sam hates and fears Lucifer for the pain Lucifer put on Sam, how Lucifer hates Sam because he and Sam are the same but Sam’s brother loves him anyways, etc. 

Ultimately that was scrapped because Sam’s entire story in the show is always about how the world and everyone around him manipulates him and that he never actually gets to make choices about his own life or body that aren’t influenced or part of someone elses’ design. And that always bothered me that Sam was never allowed to be himself without having to be ashamed of it, and I wanted to make sure that Sam’s triumph of being proud of himself/proudly choosing to exist (again) was evident in his story

In the end I needed Sam to have this visceral win over his tormentor. As the story shows, in this case Lucifer was abused and put into a position where he was incapable of empathy and could only express himself in violence. Sam even understands this! But it doesn’t change the fact that Lucifer tortured Sam in unimaginable ways for thousands of years. 

With that in mind I didn’t like the idea of Lucifer and Sam having “co-ownership” of their new identity, so I made the choice that Sam had to be the survivor. This tied in well with Sam’s new crusade to restore free will to the universe, because he’s breaking the narrative of his own story!

While Castiel wasn’t a pov character, his own autonomy and free will was equally as important. You’ll note that many, many paragraphs and conversations revolved around that theme and that in the end Cas followed himself (and love!) which ensured his freedom of self <3

The Brothers are WEIRD PEOPLE!!!! And Codependent to a Worrying Degree, but It’s Also How They Survive

It’s very hard to show “unusual” relationships when you’re writing from the pov of the two people who don’t think there’s anything weird about their relationship. Sure, they say ‘yeah it’s probably weird that we still share a bed’ but that’s kinda more in line with ‘I had a nightmare and I want to be close to the person who makes me feel safe’. Hashtag normalize co-sleeping when you need it!!!

From there I did try to point out how the boys have a weird perception of lifestyle in the little things they did. 

From thrifting everything from clothes to appliances to books (thrifting is a valid lifestyle! It’s incredibly handy when you’re on a budget.) 

To never actually having condiments or knowing how to use a dishwasher cause they’ve lived in a car, a motel room, or squatted in old houses their whole life.

I tried to have them wear each others’ clothes or casually swap things as much as possible. They live out of each others’ pockets!

Also the brothers are just weird people!! It’s hard to show from their pov, cause they don’t know how far off from normal they are, but like…

Everything about Sam and Amelia was NOT right like holy shit those two were wilding in their grief. They are very lucky things worked out for them and that they got to be hashtag Weird Girls together

Dean explicitly, in the story, gets horny after killing stuff!! Violence has done a number on his psyche and he’s gotten some wires crossed that maybe shouldn’t have been, or maybe could be worked out in a safe space but… uh… how likely do we think Dean is gonna go find a safe space to deal with any of his shit???

LOVE!!! Love is truly what this whole story is all about

If you’ve read the stories, you know how much emphasis I put on love. Love is the strongest force in the Spn Universe! It’s what averted the apocalypse and saved the world (Swan Song), it’s what created free will (Cas’ entire arc!) I love love!!!!

I went out of my way to not put any definitions on platonic love vs romantic love because I think love is love is love and how you express that is the difference. Neither is more powerful than the other because LOVE is powerful!! Sam and Cas are the most important people in Dean’s life and he loves them equally! He shows this by giving Cas kisses and stealing Sam’s socks.

It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when I have to hear explanations like ‘I love you, like a brother’ or ‘I love you, but like, as a friend because I’m a lesbian and you’re a man’ etc etc in media. If you have to continuously define how your characters love each other, then I don’t think you’re doing a good job of portraying their relationship. So you’ll see that I never put those parameters in any conversation. Dean DOES muse that he loves Cas differently than he loves Sam or Bobby, specifically because there is a romantic and sexual tone that his feelings for Cas takes, but not because he loves Cas more or less than he loves Sam or Bobby.

Which means, if you haven’t realized it yet, the Series + Fic Titles are meant to be a complete sentence because the power of love IS the thesis of this series:

The Love It Takes To Exist Again (Sam’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Become a Man (Dean’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Destroy a Man (TBA)

And now for fun stuff. Behind the scenes!!

What’s Something People Probably Don’t Know?

The demonic fungal/hydrothermal vent growth on Sam’s arm was thrown in literally as I was posting the chapter because I had just finished a 48 hour cram session of writing a report on tube worms for an ecology class (I was chanting my tube worm song as I wrote it) and it ended up being a HUGE hit with both readers and myself. But it was so last minute I had trouble fitting it in more throughout the rest of Sam’s story!

Cas’ orders? That may or may not have bound him to Dean and removed his free will? Were written into Sam’s story and I went ‘oh SHIT that’s compelling’ and then left them there as a ‘guess I’ll figure that out when I get to Dean’s story lol’

Originally Dean and Cas were supposed to get together after having their souls bonded, and have been in a UST limbo the entire time before that. Mostly because I think the entire concept of ‘we just got married of the soul I guess we should try dating?’ is very funny. CLEARLY the two of them were way more eager to fall in love than I anticipated (thank you Cas for your honesty) but you can still see shades of this original idea here and there (especially in ch35 of TBAM)

I never intended Dean and Benny to connect so well!! Benny was going to reunite with Andrea, she was going to live, and they were going to go off into the world and leave the story. And, uh, here we are. I’m still debating if I need to adjust the relationship tag or not haha. Polyamory is fun, especially when I was planning for Sam to be the polyamorous brother...

Speaking of, I can’t believe I forgot about Sam and his sexuality! If I rewrote TEA I would have had Sam contemplate more on his lack of sexual appetite due to trauma, up until he meets Benny and he gets to rediscover how he wants to be a sexual person

Many of Sam and Dean’s absolutely stupid sibling conversations were lifted near-verbatim from conversations I’ve had with my siblings

And lastly...

Dem where’s Kevin????????????? Where is our sweet baby boy????????

He’s SAFE!! He’s in the Hunter pipeline somewhere cause Sam handed him off to Bobby’s people. He and his mom are safe and at some point they probably got rib sigils like SalmonDean did against angels, but for demons. I didn’t have room in this story for him!!! But my baby boy is SAFE and I want to get him back to university because it’s WHAT HE DESERVES!!!!

To that point: god there were/are SO many characters that I just didn’t include in the story so far because I didn’t feel comfortable including them without stalling the story for them. To that point: pretty much everyone who is alive/dead in s8 is that way in this story, except Bobby who gets to live.

[Check Out Part 2 for reader questions!]

[apptowonder]

Beautiful City -- A Theological Ramble on “Godspell”-- Pt. I: Jesus Musicals and Christology

So I had a lot of thoughts and F e e l i n g s about the 2011 revival of Tebelak and Schwartz’s musical Godspell and I wanted to share some of them here. This is gonna be a pretty disorganized piece (hence the title), but I hope that whether you’re a fan of the show or a reader of my work, you might find at least one thing that resonates or helps you understand why I feel the way I do about this show. To give my thoughts some structure, I’m turning this into a blog post series. This first piece will be divided into two sections: a longer section on theology and a shorter section on personal response.

1. Godspell vs JCS, and a Brief Diversion on Christologies

So one easy hot take is to compare and contrast Godspell with Jesus Christ Superstar, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that came out around the same time. Conservative Christians at the time were not too fond of either of them, but both found a strong audience among secular theater-goers and (presumably) progressive Christians. Tebelak, fwiw, was gay and a lifelong Episcopalian who had considered the priesthood at various points in his life. Webber is an agnostic who says he finds Jesus fascinating as an important historical figure. These facts aren’t meant to favor one writer over the other (although I will explain below why I personally prefer Godspell), but knowing these facts does do some to explain why these shows ended up the way they did while covering very similar subjects.

The general consensus I’ve heard and would agree with is that Superstar is about the interpersonal relationships of Jesus the man, and especially his relationship with Judas Iscariot. Godspell also brings the relationship between Judas and Jesus to the foreground, but Godspell (true to its name) is ultimately more about the gospel itself. About Jesus’ teachings, about the community of love that he created, and a little bit about Jesus the Son of God.

In this respect, I’d like to propose that these two musicals unintentionally illustrate two historic approaches to understanding the person and work of Christ. Jesus Christ Superstar loosely follows a theology of Christ which is aligned with the historic Antiochene school of Christology. 

A. Antioch

(St. John Chrysostom, famed Patriarch of Constantinople and student of the Antiochene School)

The Catechetical School of Antioch was a loose affiliation/institution of theologians who trained many of the prominent clergy in the Eastern churches. It emphasized the distinction between the divine and human natures of Christ. It was most invested in historical readings of Scripture. While the orthodox Antiochene scholars certainly confessed that Christ was both divine and human, they tended to state that the divinity of God the Son was not always accessible to Jesus in his humanity. Taken to the extreme, some Antiochenes embraced the heresies of Adoptionism* or Nestorianism**. The value of this school, however, was the investment in an accessible, anthropological reading of Scripture, and an understanding of Christ that emphasized the transcendence of the Son of God and the humanity of Jesus as one of us.

Jesus Christ Superstar approaches its subject matter with a mixture of both pathos and cynicism (intentional or otherwise). Taking place entirely during the Passion, none of the theophanic moments of Christ’s life are depicted (eg, the Baptism of Christ or the Transfiguration).*** We see only his humanity, and it is a very pitiable humanity. I say this not as a criticism, clearly the show succeeds at producing a great deal of sympathy and poignancy for its characters. The presence of the divine in the show is nearly absent. The Last Supper in both shows is not given its full doctrinal weight, but Superstar tones down the spiritual significance of it more than Godspell does. In Superstar, Jesus notices the indifference of his Apostles and says “For all you care, this could be my body that you’re eating, and my blood you’re drinking.”

Jesus and Judas both talk to God, and imply that God answers, but we are only shown one side of the conversation. When Judas commits suicide and is singing the titular number to Jesus on the cross, he does so as a disembodied spirit whom Jesus is not able to interact with. Rather than the traditional account of Jesus going down to Hades and preaching to the dead, here the dead preach to a human Jesus who is doing God’s will but may or may not be able to hear them. All in all, Webber (though obviously not himself an Antiochene by confession) is showing us a Jesus who is primarily a glorified human with a relationship to God, who is nonetheless not especially divine in his capacities, outlook or body. Where he is connected to divinity, there is a clear separation between his divinity and his humanity

B. Alexandria

(St. Cyril, famed Pope (Patriarch) and student of the Alexandrian School)

The Catechetical School of Alexandria was the other major center for Christian theological training in the early Eastern Church, located at Alexandria in Eastern Roman Egypt. It traced its lineage all the way back to St. Mark, but was most strongly influenced by the teachings of Pantaenus, Origen, St. Clement and St. Cyril (above). The Alexandrians were invested in allegorical readings of Scripture, and the use of “pagan” philosophy in the service of theology. They also emphasized the union of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. Orthodox Alexandrians recognized that Jesus’ divinity and humanity were not consumed by each other, but they tended to suggest that Christ’s divinity and humanity were always operating simultaneously and synergistically, that it was impossible to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Taken to the opposite extreme of the Antiochenes, some Alexandrians embraced the heresies of Monophysitism (i) or Apollinarianism (ii). The value of this school was an investment in a polyvalent, mystical approach to Scripture, and an understanding of Christ that emphasized the saving power of God’s own divinity taking on our humanity in an immanent way. 

Godspell is more invested in the ethical impact of Jesus’ life and ministry. However, it is more willing to blur the lines between the divine and human world for the sake of its message and framing of Christ. We see the Baptism of Christ on stage, and although there is no explicit depiction of the Holy Spirit or the Father, the scene is preceded by John the Baptist’s messianic song, “Prepare Ye,” and is woven in and around the song “Save the People,” a song where Jesus proclaims the coming salvation that God the Father will work in their midst for the benefit of all. This happens while the new disciples are also being baptized and receive a flower signifying their membership in the community forming organically around Christ. Jesus’ presence is charged with the eschatological promise of God being in their midst, which is a more Alexandrian reading that blurs the line between where Jesus the human ends and Jesus the divine begins.

I argue that we also see in Godspell an allusion (perhaps unintentional) to the Transfiguration. There is a scene where the stage lights are off and the disciples hold wave glow sticks around Jesus in rhythmic patterns while Jesus talks about the light within. Even if this is not an intentional reference, the visual language of the scene lends itself to the light of God being present in the midst of the people.

Before the Last Supper, Jesus sings the ballad “Beautiful City,” encouraging the disciples to continue the beloved community after his death. While it is a secularized approach in some ways, there is again that blurring of humanity and divinity where the promised city is coming, is beautiful, marked by eschatological hope, and is still “not a city of angels, but a city of man.” During the Last Supper, Jesus prays the traditional Jewish blessing over the bread and wine, and then has lines which mirror the words of institution for the Eucharist. Whether one reads it as a memorial or a sacrament, Tebelak and Schwartz choose to frame the Last Supper as an intentional institution on Jesus’ part. The table is also bathed in light and smoke, implying divine energy or grace gathered around Jesus and his disciples.

On the cross, in Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus’ last words emphasize his human obedience to the Father: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In Godspell, the words are less literal to the Gospel text, but they lean towards a more divine-human reading of Jesus. He says, “Oh God, I’m dying,” and the disciples respond, “Oh God, You’re dying,” with the dual meaning of expressing despair and acknowledging his divinity. Jesus’ exclamation here is also very in line with Alexandrian theology, which emphasized the idea that if Christ is truly God incarnate, then a part of God did truly die on the cross, and not just a human who represented God or who was carried through his existence by God.

Finally, though both shows are ambiguous on the Resurrection in order to place their emotional cores front and center (iii), Godspell arguably has the more explicit allusion to the Resurrection. While Superstar ends with Jesus’ death on the cross and a final overture, Godspell ends with a stirring reprise of “Prepare Ye,” intermingled with “Long Live God,” again the messianic expectation. Jesus’ body is lovingly carried by the disciples offstage. In the production I saw, they carried him upwards into the house, where a bright white spotlight was shining. Though both the Antiochenes and the Alexandrians would naturally endorse faith in the Resurrection, in a secularized context, the Alexandrian-flavored Christology of Godspell is more comfortable with depicting Jesus’ divinity infusing and breaking into the human sphere of action. As such, Godspell is more comfortable than Superstar with at least alluding to the most awe-inspiring feat of Christ the God-man, his rising from the dead.

2. Conclusions and Pointing to Pt. II

In the end, the earnestness, exuberance and eschatological hopefulness of Godspell won me over, whereas after Jesus Christ Superstar I was impressed but not moved in the same way. The interplay between grounded radical ethics, unironic joy and tenderness, and the sprinklings of luminosity and divinity in Godspell spoke to me profoundly as a queer Orthodox Christian. Watching a filmed version of the stage show, I felt a visceral sense of connection to my faith and my God, one that echoed various points along my spiritual journey where my heart “burned within me” like the disciples on the Emmaus road. Where I was surrounded by friends who were seeking Christ, and the presence of God was an animating energy of love, hope and joy in our midst. In the next part, I want to pick up the Alexandrian lens to begin to talk about what moved me about this musical in particular, drawing on my specific experiences as a queer Christian, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and as someone who inhabits both of those identities simultaneously.

*Adoptionism is the belief that Jesus was entirely human at his birth and that the divinity of the Son of God came and inhabited him at his baptism or later.

**Nestorianism is the belief that Jesus had a human nature and a divine nature, but that the two were entirely separate from one another, with the divine nature operating the human Jesus without experiencing any of the human things Jesus experienced directly.

***The Transfiguration is not explicitly named as such in Godspell. However, I will argue later that it does make an appearance.

(i) Monophysitism is the belief that Jesus had one nature which was an indistinct mixture of humanity and divinity. This belief is not to be confused with its orthodox Alexandrian counterpart, Miaphysitism, which is the belief that Jesus has one nature where the humanity and the divinity are united but do not dissolve into each other. The latter doctrine is the belief of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

(ii) Apollinarianism is the belief that Jesus had a human body but a divine soul/mind.

(iii) Jesus Christ Superstar’s emotional core being the pathos of the character relationships, Godspell’s emotional core being the poignancy and ethos of the gospel and the community of disciples.

[disaster-bay-leaf]

Ok so these were the cutest~ (ㆁωㆁ)

4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 19, 22, 23, 28, 33, 34, 46, 47, 52, 59, 60, 63, 66, 83, 87, 88, 93, 99

I kno I listed like....all of them lmao but feel free to answer whichever you want and ofc you can ask me in return Baybe ( ◜‿◝ )♡

uHUHUHUHU much content for me to answer, im happy bebe 💜💜💜✨

4 - how do you take your coffee/tea?

hm coffee either Very Black No Sugar (for the sleep deprived me) or iced latte three sugars and theres no in between

and as for tea its All Black Teas That Exist, cinnamon-flavoured especially (but basically all teas that come to mind when u think “autumn”), and rooibos!!! okay basically the only oke i dont like is any type of green tea (which is sad because they look cool but my tastebuds said ✨no✨)

6 - do you keep plants?

honestly id l o v e too because i love plants but,,, im kinda horrible at taking care of them though still way better than the majority of my family (research helps) so the only plant i own is kinda a small-palm-tree-looking thing in a bigass glass jar that i saved from my mother’s plant-destructing hands and its mostly doing well (the ends of its leaves are starting to be yellow tho and im worried:((( )

7 - do you name your plants?

yes!!! though the current one was named by my sister and its called “pickett” after fantastic beasts shsjjsj

9 - do you like singing/humming to yourself?

oh god oh dude you have n o idea

i have absolutely n o singing voice but its something i do constantly to give my brain the right amount of stimuli so basically i listen to music 24/7 and hum to myself 99% of that time

12 - whats your favourite planet?

oh i actually didnt think about this for so long but either pluto (hes a planet screw nasa) or saturn (RINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) or venus (girls,,,and libra,,,)

19 - do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw in it?

okay im gonna be completely honest with yall and say that my every single try at keeping a journal failed spectacularly and i lost motivation after like a few months so my only journals rn are my fancy fake-leather-bound calendar to note tests and assessments into, a kinda roughed up notebook that i uses for noting down poems or scribbling or passing notes in class, and a kinda fancy bullet journal notebook that i used as a book of shadows for a while but since my fountain pen died i didnt touch it

22 - are you a morning person?

n o

i am so not a morning person but i wish i could be because honestly dawns are beautiful

but as it is rn im either sleep deprived all the time and loathe every second of being in an awake state or (if i have a few days of schoolbreak) my biological clock moves forward a few hours and i sleep 2am-10am

23 - whats your favourite thing to do on lazy days with zero obligations?

except for the fact that i dont remember the last time it happened, i would probably spend it drawing outside, watching anime with my sister and riding a bike around the forest

28 - sunrise or sunset?

i love sunrises because its so peaceful and everyone is asleep but also i subconsciously immediately correlate them with waiting for a train to take me to school (because thats basically the only time i see them) so its a bittersweet love especially with my fucked up biological clock

but sunsets are really really pretty too and i see them more often so i cant choose

33 - whats your fave pastry?

and isnt that a millior-dollar question dhsjjsjsj

either cinnamon rolls (i absolutely adore them) or that one specific type of cupcake-shaped-thing made out of shortcrust/bread/whatever its called and filled with vanilla pudding

34 - tell us about a stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?

awwww this is cute

okay so basically my two favourite stuffed animals (i still have them, they sit in my wardrobe) were two teddy bears (like maybe 20cm high each of them) and one was pure brown and the other was silver-brown and they had stereotypical polish male names “Waldek” (read. Valdek) and Stefan (i think tho im not sure if i remember correctly, my memory is a feeble thing sometimes

46 - tell us the worst pun you can think of

what dog would never bite you? a hot dog *badumtss*

47 - what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

huh a year ago id say pineapple pizza but i guess i dont hate pineapples that much anymore (tho putting them on pizza is still an abomination) but i think that if id ever want to get rid of anything it would be parsley, i hate that freakin herb (does it count as food tho)

52 - what are your favourite memes of the year so far?

the ever given for sure shsjshjsjsjsjjsj

but bullying tramp stamps is gold and pure tumblr energy too

as for fandom memes: im in love with all keeping-up-with-the-todorokis variations and the fact that the entire bsd fandom looked at fukuchi and said “biTCH” and thats one of the only things we’re unanimous about

59 - whats your favourite myth?

i always liked the kora/persephone myth (though demeter is an overbearing parent to the nth power), loki and thor crossdressing at a party to get mjolnir back, atalanta because shes a queen and id politely ask her to kick my ass, and cassandra because she deserved better, and theres a l o t more because alas i was a mythology nerd but this post is long enough for me not to make this section 20 times longer sjjsjsjsjsjks

but there are a lot of slavic myths that are very cool too, though we dont know that much about them as about the greeks for example

60 - do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?

o o o o h yeah i do like poetry because to create such a beautifully sounding thing with only words someone has to be a genius

some of my favs are: some works of nakahara chuuya (thank u bsd for introducing me to this man’s beautiful imagery in his works i swear to god the descriptions do it for me) (also his poem about having hangovers is a mood like i feel you buddy), the raven by ea poe (i know everyone likes it but hOLY DAMN THE INTER/INTRAVERSE RHYMES ARE LIKE,,, BREATHTAKING) (and aso im a slut for gothic horror), and many more but also That One Poem From Welcome To Nightvale about reaching the island in the west,,, only perfect vibes from it

63 - are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organised or kinda leave them be?

okay heres the thing. for anyone else both my playlist library and my bookshelf would be considered pure chaos of a mad man b u t they actually have a highly focused system which means that i sort them based on their vibes, lovability and (in case of books) their age and whether or not theyre a part of a series so i would say my bookshelf is rather organised (when a quarter of it isnt occupying my desk that is) and my music is more organised than not but sometimes it gets out of control and i have to sort it entirely again

66 - what would your ideal flower crown look like?

either entirely constructed of simple white daisies, entirely constructed of only white roses, or something that probably would win a “how many different coloured flowers can one fit in a flower crown” competition

or something purple (maybe not belladonna)

83 - whats some of your favourite album art?

god i dont know if it counts but hozier’s wasteland baby is probably one of my absolute favourites and no one shall beat that

“thrifted youth” (dalynn) and “standard deviation” (danny schmidt) have very aesthetic covers too

also the iconic p!atd too weird to live, too rare to die! album cover,,, its just iconic what can i say

and last but not least matt meason’s pink-and-black album covers (though bank on the funeral is really pretty too but like,,, “who killed matt meason” d o e s it for me and so does the 2017 tribulation single)

87 - what are some movies that you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?

this is such a hard question because im not a really cinematography-oriented gal but i suppose that (at the risk of not going deep enough into the cinema world):

- the princess bride

- inception

- night at the museum

- SPIRITED AWAY

- forrest gump

- truman show

- E.T. (i cried okay)

- the lord of the rings (because damn me if this isnt one impressive adaptation)

- parasite

and one more personal recommendation: “ready or not” with samara weaving because goddamn i dont usually watch this genre but holy s h i t is it good

93 - whats the hairstyle you wear the most?

honestly just plain hair down (because having curly hair is a menace), split in the middle when i have longer hair and split on one side when its short

also low ponytails or half-up-half-down when im exercising, or double french braids when my hair doesnt cooperate enough to look presentable in any other form

99 - list some songs that resonate with your soul whenever you hear them

this is difficult because my music taste is a goddamn rollercoaster on a good day, but heres some:

- me and the sky from “come from away” musical (this is sort of a test song for my mental stability, if i cry i aint stable)

- dancing after death by matt meason (okay most songs by matt meason except for like,,, hallucinogenics maybe)

- tears and rain by james blunt

- i will follow you into the dark by death cab for cutie

- almost home by mxmtoon

- anything by hozier really but shrike especially

- payphone, the cover by alex g (i cried to this song so many times)

- burning pile by mother mother (can i roast all my problems please)

- long way from home and cleopatra by the lumineers

- autoclave by the mountain goats

oooh that was c o o o o o o o l as fuck thank you sm so much bebe (and sorry for the long post @everyone else)

[himbowelsh]

Ahaha sorry for more shifty/tab but imagine shifty as the little mermaid and tab as the prince? I feel like that would be soo cute!

so, i am  i n c r e d i b l y  sorry this took so long??  i loved this idea so much that it just had to be a fic, and i started it over a month ago, got 500 words in, and my brain just...  roadblocked.  fell into an abyss and could not write another word.  and then last night, for some reason, i sat down with it and just??  knocked it out??  like, 2000 words in an hour.  so hopefully this gives you a taste of this au, because it’d be the sweetest thing, and i love the idea of little mermaid!shifty!!  (please don’t imagine sobel as ursula holy heck)

Before a great storm, the oceans writhe and roil, charged with an energy far beyond the imagination of landborne things. No one can predict what the sea will do; when she lashes out, roaring fury with waves towering high, all are powerless against it. No force in the world is as powerful as the ocean, or as willful. She is alive — alive with sealife as well as her own tempestuous nature — and to underestimate her is the doom of any living thing.

Now, when a body spends their entire life below the waves, they learn the waters easy as breathing. It all becomes familiar after a while. The buzz in the water right before a big storm; the shifting of the tides; how schools of fish swim against the currents, as if they’re escaping something… it all adds up, like the ocean itself is whispering a warning out loud. Bound to be a storm tonight. Gonna be a big one. Get ready.

Above the waves, great storms are something to be feared. To those below, they don’t make more than a ripple’s worth of difference.

Popeye had raised his eyebrows when Shifty declared he’d be going to the surface that night, all signs of an imminent storm be damned. Some things are worth getting tossed around by angry waves for. Last Shifty checked, the supermoon wouldn’t come around again for months, and he needed some fresh supermoon water to last that long. Llŷr knows he wouldn’t be the only one who dared risk it.

He couldn't have predicted the calm before the storm, though. It was rare, in this corner of the ocean — as rare as seeing a ship passing through, which happened once in a blue moon. They weren’t that far off from the coast, but most Man made vessels had better things to do with their time than drift so near land. There were more exciting waters to be found than the quiet currents Shifty called home.

As soon as he surfaced to spot a brightly-lit vessel only a few dozen yards away, Shifty should have known. He ought to have known, and really, he did. Darrell Powers, the voice in his head that sounded much like his Mamma scolded, if you have half the sense Llŷr have a guppy, you’ll make yourself scarce. No moon was worth getting caught by the Men up above. Every Mer was taught to fear them from the moment they could flip their fins. Shifty wasn’t any different — he knew better.

So nothing could explain the strange pull he felt towards the vessel — like he was caught up in a current, drawn closer whether he wanted to or not. The nearer he got, the clearer the great ship became… and it surely was something to see. Like a massive star on the waterline, it twinkled and danced, lit from above with gleaming lanterns strung across the deck. The great wooden hull stretched up from the water, towering overhead; it’s darkness was a stark contrast to the light crowning it. Music carried through the air, over the softly-churning waves — a lively tune, from some instrument Shifty had never heard before. Voices shouted, hooted, hollered; silhouettes galloped across the deck, caught in some rollicking dance. And in the middle of it all, at the center of this storm of Men, was…

Shifty’s breath caught in his throat; the gills along his ribs momentarily stuttered, scales at his neck suddenly feeling dry. He drew even closer, unconscious of his own movements. Treading water along the bow, his powerful, silver-finned tail kept him afloat. Were the ship moving, he might have to work to keep up… but with it anchored, his only preoccupation was remaining unseen. He pressed into the shadows, gaping up at the brightly lit deck. Wide brown eyes followed the man, golden and glowing, as he twirled and danced across the deck.

The grin on his face was near-blinding. His hair was closely-cut, messy, as though he’d run his fingers through it too many times; his white shirt was loosely buttoned, revealing a toned chest. When he tossed his head back, the torchlight caught against the tan of his skin, and he seemed to glow.

So this was a Man. Shifty had never seen one in person before, certainly not this close. Never before had he been seized with the desire to study, to follow the fellow’s movements and keep track of each leap. Not once, in a lifetime of sometimes-questionable choices — thank you, Popeye — had he ever wanted to get close to the world above.

Would being seen by this Man be a bad thing? He didn’t sport any fangs, no malicious gleam in his eye; he wasn’t hurling harpoons or fishing nets to catch ignorant Merfolk unawares. Surely there were bad Men, like all the stories said… but for the life of him, Shifty could not believe this was one. 

He seemed too gentle to hurt anybody. Too joy-filled, too… alive. His soul shone through his smile, and my, was it beautiful. 

The music died down as the song came to an end. It’s absence was drowned out by laughter from above. In the middle of the fray, Shifty’s gaze could not leave that Man, even for a moment. His fellow sailors slapped his back, dancing around him. His grin shone brighter. Clearly, he reveled in the company.

“I’m here,” Shifty breathed, too low to be heard over the noise from up above. “I’m here too. Right below you. Can you feel me?”

Cupping his hands around his mouth, the Man turned, hollering something to the band. Seconds later, the music picked up once again with a new tune. The Man seized a young lady by the arm, reeling her towards him. Together they began to prance across the deck, buoyed by the lively melody.

All Shifty could do was gaze up. The shadowed distance separating that brightly lit deck from the fathoms below created both a veil and a barrier. He could not cross it; to those golden people up above, he did not exist. Something inside of him churned, like the tempestuous sea itself. Feelings he’d never before even contemplated bubbled within him, one after the other, threatening to wash him away. Hunger… no, different. Excitement… yes, but something else too, something stronger and emptier, something aching within him…

Yearning. There it was.

My, how he yearned.

To be held in the golden limelight of that handsome man’s stare; to be met with his smile, to be the one held close to him, leaping and twirling around the deck. Oh, to be among that happy crowd — to be beside him! What would it be like? How would it feel? 

Now, you know that can’t be so, the sensible voice in the back of his mind scolded. Men and merfolk don’t mix. We stay apart for good reasons.

Even so, all those sensible reasons were drowned out by the Man’s laughter, rising above the waves.

The waves — rising. Llŷr’s sake, they were! As soon as the realization dawned on him, Shifty cursed himself for being so careless. In the countless minutes he’d wasted, soaking in the antics of the Men up above, the ocean’s pitch had picked up. No longer were the waves churning ominously; they’d moved beyond that, into full pitch-and-roll. As they lashed the sides of the ship, the people above fought to keep their footing. Laughter rang out louder, raising over the music. To them, it was all a game.

Shifty knew better. He felt it in his veins, thrumming through his blood. The waters were angry. 

Being above wasn’t safe any longer. He ducked below the waves; as the water closed over his head, he half-hoped whatever instinct tethering him to the people above would be severed. No such luck. Instead, something inside of him bellowed, an incoherent roar of urgency. They weren’t paying one lick of attention, too caught up in their own fun. They couldn’t feel the ocean like Shifty could. They didn’t know.

With one flick of his powerful tail, the waters parted effortlessly for him. Shifty surged below the ship like a bullet, finding himself on the other side in seconds. He hovered a safe distance below, gazing up as the great shadowy beast overhead began to thrash.

Buffeted by the ocean’s growing fury, the ship was helpless. As the waves stirred up, they pitched and rolled within it, forced down low in the waves before surging back up on another outraged swell. Though blind to the struggle of the crew above, Shifty could see it in flashes: ropes lashing out for purchase, lantern flames catching and igniting, sails going up in a matter of seconds… and the bodies as they hit the water, flung one after the other from their safe berth into the abyss. From such a distance, they were nothing but silhouettes, thrashing and writhing in the waters above…  but it did not take long for the thrashing to stop. They grew more defined as they sunk. Shifty studied a man’s bearded face as he drifted past on his way to the bottom; his fingers caught in a woman’s loose moonsilver hair. A face drifted by, mouth agape and eyes wide, and for a moment, Shifty was sure he’d been spotted… but the man’s eyes were empty, dull. They shone like black diamonds on his way to the bottom.

This was the natural order of life. Men were not meant for the sea. It would swallow them whole, given half the chance, and still they did not fear it enough. Shifty felt no grief as the souls slowly foundered… only a great hollow in his chest where his heart should have been.

The Man. That golden, dancing Man. Where was he?

A sudden urgency spiked within him. Shifty looked up at the mass of dark forms thrashing in the water above. The ship was a roaring ball of flame; as the sails burned, the waters were thrust into eerie orange oblivion. It wasn’t much light… but as Shifty propelled himself upwards, slicing through the drowning figures, it was just enough. He darted from body to body, too focused to worry about being seen, and moving too fast to register in the minds of desperate, drowning people. He couldn’t save everyone, even if he tried. But that Man —

No, sir, the law of the sea shouldn’t be his undoing. Not a Man like that, so full of life. Not a man who glowed like the spirit of the full moon was within him, shining from the inside-out… Shifty remembered every detail of his silhouette, had a clumsy outline of his face memorized from a distance. He could spot him in a tidal wave; he could spot him in a storm; he could recognize him even in the darkness, where the ocean ends and the abyss begins.

And there  ---  there. He saw him now — just another figure, lurching and thrashing as the waves drag him down.

Shifty’s arms caught around his waist, stopping his descent. The Man was a heavy weight against his chest, violently thrashing — not at Shifty, but at the waters themselves, the only enemy he was coherent enough to recognize. Fighting wouldn’t do either of them much good, but Shifty didn’t give up so easy. Instead, he locked on tight, refusing to let the Man thrash his way out of his grasp, and kicked his tail upwards. They shot towards the surface.

It was one thing to see it from below… but above, the ship was a colossus from hell itself, a great monster in its death throes fighting not to sink below the waves. Flames reached out with rabid tendrils, catching on debris and bodies tumbling over the burning rails; with the rain still holding itself at bay, waiting out this great fury, the ship’s only relief was the sea. Fire waged war against the waves eager to consume it… but against the brutal winds and thrashing waters, it could not hold out for long.

The Man gave one massive sputter, and what felt like a breath. After that, he was nothing but dead weight in Shifty’s grasp.

With fire in his eyes and the sky burning above, Shifty turned his back on the burning vessel, and focused on the task at hand. A body can only do what it can, he told himself, propelling away from the shipwreck. And this fella here has done enough.

Now, it was Shifty’s turn.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Floyd faded back to consciousness to a burning in his chest, and warmth like honey flowing through his limbs.

It took him a moment to gather his bearings, and he collected them all before trying to open his eyes. He was on solid ground — sand, if the grittiness against his bare skin was any clue — and his clothes were soaked. Even the sunlight, beating directly down on his body, could only dry him so fast. From what his hazy mind recalled, he’d gotten one hell of a soaking. His entire body ached, the exhaustion threading through his limbs maybe the only thing holding him together at all… and somewhere, as if from very far away, someone was speaking to him. Someone with a voice like a familiar memory, soft and gentle as a dream.

His eyes fluttered open — just in time to see a silhouette above him startle and dart out of view.

He tried to call for them to wait, It came out as a croak. His throat was scraped ragged, burning worse than his lungs with each breath he sucked in. Vision still hazy, Floyd struggled to force himself up. His body gave out on him not even halfway through the effort. He collapsed back onto the sand with a groan. For the moment, it was all he could do to soak in the sun, and appreciate being alive.

He was alive, somehow. The how’s-and-why’s of that were a mystery. Last he could recall, he was fighting the water, and the water was winning. As panic locked itself around his chest, squeezing the last of his air out in a rush of bubbles, his last hope of survival evaporated with it.

Yet here he was, with fresh air in his lungs and — unless this was some kind of heaven — life in his body. It shouldn’t be possible. Was it… a miracle?

Had he been saved?

“You.” That word did come out clear, at least. With all the energy he could summon, he locked his grip around the mysterious stranger’s wrist. A broad hand went still, hovering just over Floyd’s chest. Floyd tugged it down, so that they were pressing down on him, touching him, even in a small way. When he forced his eyes open again, they were still too blurred to make anything out clearly… he could see a silhouette in plain view, with muscled shoulders and dark eyes looking down at him.

Something in that gaze was so impossibly kind, It brought tears to his eyes.

“You saved me. Saved my life.” He could barely croak out the words, but he needed confirmation. It came in a single nod of the stranger’s head. “Th-thank you.”

For a moment, the stranger said nothing at all. Then Floyd felt another hand press down on his shoulder, massaging lightly into the sore muscles while urging him back down onto the sand. Floyd slumped, all his energy spent; it was all he could do to keep his eyes half-open.

“There, now. You’ve had an awful time, and I declare, it’ll take you a good while to recover. Once you’re well again... you won’t recall this at all.”

“Not true,” Floyd murmured. “I’ll remember you.”

The stranger was quiet for a moment, before heaving a sigh. “You don’t need to.”

“I want to see you again. Want to… thank you.” Floyd’s grip on the man’s hand tightened, weak but earnest. “You gotta let me thank you.”

“So long as you’re alive, that’s all the thanks I need.”

“You… you’re an angel,” Floyd couldn’t help murmuring — and maybe all that seawater was making him delirious, because he usually had much better game. His mysterious savior laughed anyways.

“No, certainly not. I declare, my Mama might’ve been, she was the most patient woman you ever did meet, but —“ He cut off, sighing. Floyd felt a rough-palmed hand caress his jaw. “You’re a very lucky man.”

“Be the luckiest fella in the world... if I knew your name.”

Leave it to Floyd Talbert to still flirt while laying half-drowned on a beach.

The man chuckled again, and his touch left Floyd’s cheek. He missed it immediately, like a bandage torn from a wound and stinging something fierce. He made a murmur of disapproval, but it was no use. The man’s other hand pulled away too, leaving Floyd suddenly feeling alone, deafened by the absence of him.

For a moment, he was sure his savior had gone entirely… until he felt a breath against his ear, and a voice, soft as a sigh.

“Maybe we’ll find each other again. Maybe you’ll know me.”

“I will,” Floyd replied, resolute. “No doubt. I promise you that.”

The presence lingered at his side for a moment longer… and then, a splash echoed from the distance, and Floyd knew he was alone.

It took a long time for him to summon the energy to sit up; it was an even longer time before he could make it to his hands and knees, and crawl his way up the beach. No surprise that his rescuer left nothing behind, not even footprints in the sand… but disappointment rang in Floyd’s chest anyways, to be left without a trace of him.

That night, and many nights afterwards, he stared out at the sea from his bedroom window, and imagined he could hear a soft voice calling for him. A half-forgotten caress tingled on his cheek; a promise rang in his ears.

Floyd Talbert kept his word, and this one he was bound to keep. He’d find his rescuer… even if he had to comb every inch of the sea, and search til his dying day.

The moment he saw him again, he’d know.

[atinytokki]

Here’s my first impressions (aka this is what 2020 is gonna sound like folks)

Alright so I’m really behind today, as some of you know I literally just got back from vacation and it’s also my first day of classes this semester and it’s just craziness. Yes I’m posting the first chapter of Yeosang’s spin-off today. But people seemed to like my first impressions of the last album so I’m going to do them again. Thankfully (?) this album is a lot shorter so I can pause and talk about stuff.

Warning! a loooong post, squealing, incoherent thoughts smashed together, and crying ahead. A lot of crying. Keysmashes included.

Post-MV thoughts before I listen to it again: There’s way too much to focus on and I’ve watched it many many times to look at the choreo and the storyline stuff that’s happening, but this is my first time listening without the video so I’ll notice more musically this time. But first I wanna say; YEOSANG’S LINES!!!! I’ve been screaming for forever that he has a beautiful deep voice and needs to be given parts that compliment it. And wow it finally happened :’) Anyway here we gooo

건배하자 like a thunder!! Can you believe they literally spoiled the entire hook of their next song in Beginning of the End? *flashbacks to my utter confusion when that happened* San sounds amazing and I like the little echoey thingies. Gives it a real nostalgic feel. Jongho already popping off vocally barely 10 seconds in. Mingi’s rap here and the transition to Hongjoong’s— rap line goals. The attitude in that mm-mm made me smile ngl. This prechorus might be my favourite part of the song. Seonghwa sounds heavenly. An EDM drop bringing back that hook, good decision and again it kinda feels nostalgic?? Especially the oh-oh-ohs which are also giving me a pirate drinking song vibe wow 0.0 Wooyoung with that 불러 불러 lol. Yes the Yeosang part!! I love a good post-chorus switchup and he. handled. it. perfectly. There’s even harmony, yall know how much I love harmony. And SINGING RAPPERS AHAHDJAHAK YESSSSS. Back to that glorious prechorus but it’s Yunho’s turn. This chorus is just such an anthem. I’m bopping rn. San in this bridge— he said I am a VOCALIST listen to my beautiful VOICE. Yay the rappers going back and forth again!! It’s like If Without You. Man I can’t believe I get to replay this song forever. 2020 is gonna be lit. You hit those notes Jongho! I’m always blown away by this kid, and that scoop earlier mmmm. Just nodding very energetically right now. Perfect end to the song. 100/10!!!!

Okay I’m pausing before the next one starts because no I am not prepared. It’s just like last time; I know Hongjoong wrote this and I know it’s gonna ruin me but I have no idea how and when and what it’s even gonna be like but anyway, too bad, let’s just go.

Oh kinda futuristic sounding opening with the synths? Yooo the vocal thingy in the background, sounds like a sample of some kind, that is super cool and I hope we get more of it. Ok I paused just to write that, let me unpause. This is gonna be a long one, I can already tell, sorry guys 😅 And the beat changed right before the vocalists came in. definitely a back and forth thing here in two registers, very sweet. Wow. WOW MINGI WOW. This rap is?? It sounds super mature and idk just full of confidence. I’m shook. Ok the chorus. Holy cow this is LIT lit. Nope nope I need to pause and go back. This is so chaotic, I feel like I’m missing things?? I’m listening to that chorus again because there were so many elements there. I just wanna take this song and break it down second by second to hear every single sound hahahah. I’m only catching an odd word or two here as far as lyrics go. Oml harmonies 💆🏻‍♀️ Alright Hongjoong’s rap. OMG if he sounded sassy in Answer this is a whole new level and I LOVE IT. Flow is 100/10. The “are you gonna take me there” gives me chills. This song needs a dance this chorus is TOO LIT. Am I at a rave rn??? Oh thank God the bridge took it back a level. Ok I’m pausing because I think I caught some of the lyrics this time. If I’m not wrong I heard 난 궁금해 저 끝이 궁금해, 더 가까이 조금 더 가까이 ? Which is something like “I wonder, I wonder about the end. Closer, a little bit closer” if I heard correctly. I need to look up the lyrics in full later because Hongjoong has a big brain and his lyrics are always 🤯🤩 Ok unpause. Final breakdown! Yep this is going on repeat the rest of today. Jongho yussss with the ad libs. No it’s over ㅠㅠ Alright this one is already vying for top spot this album. We shall see. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. HONGJOONG GENIUS.

Um so yeah I saw them perform this live for their anniversary thingy and cried so this should be fun. At least I already know the song so how much can it hurt me? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Smart of whoever put this album together to stick this song right in the middle and make us cry between head banging to the other songs. Mingi in the beginning is just 💖💕💘💝💓 San ballad king. I need more ballads from him. Jongho, of course, with perfect vocal control. Oh Seonghwa too, I need more ballads from him. Wooyoung with T H A T part. A tear is forming, I just love this chorus. People are saying the song should be in a drama and I 100% agree. Everyone together FOREVER YOU ARE MY STARRR. The little drum frills it’s so cute :(( Yay Hongjoong, and his cute little voice I’m UWUWU. Wooyoung with the high note and I’m ascending........... Chorus again and this is the real meaning of crying in the club. It just occurred to me that the second verse seemed really short. Yeosang + Hongjoong + that guitar in the bridge is *chef’s kiss*. This is so emotional, do we really need to do this at 4am?!? I’m just gonna vibe for a sec, it’s the last chorus. The ad libs were so perfect and the way it ended— wow. I need a moment.

From my understanding this is a full version of the Precious Overture they gave us last album. Tempted to go back and see my first impressions about that one, but either way i have a distinct feeling my wig is about to be snatched. Let’s GOOO

So far, it’s starting the same. Creepy humming and all. Okay scratch that, we have a vocal melody. Yunho sounds great ugh I’m so proud. Sorry, San’s voice just takes me to another plane of existence or something, how can it be that smooth and gorgeous, someone please explain. Building to something now... Oo. OO?! Hongjoong’s rapping. This is so cool oh wow, and into this vocal part which I believe is the chorus?? wOW wow it’s amazing to hear this having already heard the bgm, this is like a new level of appreciation. It really all goes well. Ah we have a switch up now with Seonghwa. guys GUYS GUYS you know how I feel about switch ups. Sorry I’m going back to catch something. The tempo changed here and really grabbed my attention. The bass is also super cool, it’s actually the same melody as the treasure opening (and the opening of this song) but much lower, I believe. Uh oh guys this might be vying for top spot too. Let’s continue. Ok Mingi’s rap which I’ve already heard. Um I’m confused now. It’s Hongjoong’s rap again? Is this the chorus?? Woah woah hold on I gotta pause. Because. Wait, what?? This is the chorus??!? Yoooooooo bold move! I have no idea what is going on but I love it. Continuing on. Ah yeah ok the vocal part with Yeosang again, so I guess the rap + vocal part is the chorus? Also I neglected to mention but Yeosang is killing this song. Ooh okay this bridge is building some suspense. Feeeelingggggg.... And now a shouted version of the rap for the final chorus. Okay wow I’m impressed that they took it this direction. And Jongho with the ad libs is PERFECTIONNNN. Oop okay they’ve added the revised-lyric Treasure part to the end here. And the lyrics are the same as in Precious (Overture) so I’m guessing we still didn’t find the treasure, good grief. How long is it gonna take to find this treasure 😅. And it ended like that. Well. WOW. Again, I could listen to this on repeat all day. Again, I am deceased. Instant fave.

I’m pretty sure this is the exact same as I already heard on the trailer thingy but we are gonna react to it anyway.

The orchestra really loosens my tear ducts like nothing else. It’s beautiful, who else is doing it like them?? “Did you find your treasure?” Yes, I found ATEEZ 🥺. The way he says “finally found it” . This is Maddox btw. Also about Maddox, hang on I’m gonna pause for a PSA: guys if you don’t know Maddox please PLEASE check him out. He’s doing the amazing narration on this (and Intro too), he’s a soloist under KQ and one of Ateez’s hyungs who they look up to. In addition to his superior narrating talents, he is also an amazing vocalist. If you like R&B and lo-fi music I would definitely recommend him, he just dropped a single called Color Blind, his insta is xxmaddox, he’s a great guy and YEAH that’s all for my plug but go stan him, he is deserving and proof of the fact that KQ artists are talent through and through. Unpausing! The way the orchestra swells and then goes into a piratey sounding theme is so motivating and familiar :))) “Can you hear those voices?” HNGJRKSNDN WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SCARY. This is the Epilogue, it’s supposed to be like the denouement, the falling action!! The bad guys should be gone now! What’s next?? Treasure Ep: Answer to Question? Because that’s what I have after this album! More questions!!! Anyway, the bass here and the humming 👌🏻 100/10 for the instrumental. And in ATEEZ fashion, they leave me thirsting for more.

So that was my first impression/live reaction to the mini album! I think it’s Horizon and Precious fighting for #1 currently. Maybe I’ll reblog with second and third and fourth impressions... Thanks for reading if you got this far! And tell me what your first impressions were and if I missed something big while I was keysmashing. TTFN~

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 167

There’s about nine or ten days left before the Cell Games.   Dr. Brief is busy working on fixing Android 16.    He has specs from Dr. Gero’s lab, but they’re for android 17, and 16 has a completely different design, because 16 is truly an android, and not a cyborg like 17.    Meanwhile, 16 plays with Dr. Brief’s cat.    I’m not sure if it’s safe for the kitty to lick so close to 16′s open wound, but I’m not a robot or a robot doctor or a cat, so what do I know?

Bulma’s mom serves up cake.    Eat, drink, and be merry, I guess.  

Oolong and Roshi start stuffing their gross fingers into the cakes to claim them, and it’s pretty friggin’ gross.   Seriously, I’ve seen Frieza cut in half, but this scene is what really bothers me.    Those two can’t even eat that much cake anyway, so it’s just disgusting.   Chi-Chi is right to want to keep Gohan away from them.

The others all chill out and watch TV.   This looks like a pretty cozy scene.   

I really want to know what the deal is with this show.   

Vegeta can’t sit on the floor like everyone else because he’s the PRINSUVOLLSAYINS or whatever. 

Yamcha gets restless and decides to go outside to train for Cell.    Krillin offers to join him, and then Vegeta gives them shit for being no match for Cell.    Yamcha reminds Vegeta that he’s no match for Cell either, so maybe he ought to keep his mouth shut.   Yamcha’s like “Yeah, welcome to our world.”   And Krillin starts chanting “One of us, one of us.”

Then Bulma arrives, having returned from Kami’s Lookout, and she’s all anxious to see how Future Trunks is doing, to the point where she crashes into these guys. 

This whole part right here just bugs me.    I don’t like how Vegeta gets lumped into a comedy gag like this.    Why wouldn’t he just move out of the way?   Or simply murder Bulma before she could get near?    That’s kind of his bit, isn’t it?  Also, I don’t really see Bulma being this kind of character.    Chi-Chi, sure, but not Bulma.   It just feels off.  

She calms down once she knows Future Trunks is okay, and then Baby Trunks grabs onto his hair.    Everyone laughts.    Well, not Vegeta.   

Never mind that shit!   Here comes Cell!

This whole scene fucking rules.    Cell just smashes his way into a city, makes a giant hole in a TV studio, and when he puts his hand on the reception desk, it deforms as his hand moves towards it.     I’d call this Big General Zod Energy, except General Zod wasn’t anywhere near this cool in Superman II.   

He asks where they film the TV that gets broadcast all over the world, and the frightened receptionist tells him that he needs Studio B on the top floor.   Cell just floats straight up and the floors rip open as he moves towards them.    None of that elevator nonsense like in Movie 7.    Cell just goes where he wants, how he wants.   

Back at Capsule Corp, Yamcha slips on Krilin’s bald head.    Vegeta’s probably watching them from the window.     “They’re right,” he thinks to himself as he watches Yamcha plant his bare feet into Krillin’s face.   “I’m one of them now.”

Meanwhile, Roshi watches aerobics girls on TV, and I guess in Dragon World they film that shit live, because Cell floats up into the studio and ruins the shot.  

They change it to a cooking show, and he’s there too.    

Then they switch it to... I guesss this is some sort of stage musical?   I don’t understand how TV works in this world.    They filmed all of these shows in the same building, live, and aired them on three separate channels?   

I don’t know what this was supposed to be, but it’s not shown from Bulma’s TV, so maybe this one was being taped.   

Finally, he ends up at Studio B, and smashes through the anchorman’s desk.   

Hyperbolic Time Chamber Update: Gohan has a nightmare about Cell killing Chi-Chi and Piccolo right in front of him.    Holy shit!    How does he know what Cell looks like?    How did Goku know what the androids and Vegeta were doing while he was laid up with the heart virus?    

I was telling a friend of mine how this liveblog is helping me recalibrate for the fanfic I’m writing.   I didn’t think I needed it, but this helps me remember what it is I’m trying to work from.    I gave my Super Saiyan OC a lot of reasons to have trouble sleeping, and at times, I felt like that was kind of dumb and cliche.    But now I realize why I did that in the first place.    Nightmares and sleepless nights are par for the course for Super Saiyans.   The only reason we don’t see Trunks having bizarre prophetic nightmares is because he grew up in one.    Showing him sleeping poorly seems kind of redundant, you know? 

Turns out, Gohan had a fever, which isn’t too surprising, considering the extreme conditions of this place.    Once again, Gohan apologizes for not being good enough or strong enough to live up to the expectations he has for himself, but Goku’s totally cool about this.    Goku’s been there, after all.    More importantly, Gohan is far, far stronger than Goku ever was at his age.    To put this into perspective, Gohan probably just now turned 11.    Goku was 12 when Bulma first met him.    As much as Gohan looks up to his dad, I think the reverse applies too.   

Goku tries to tuck him in, and  Gohan murmurs something about his desire to protect the others.    Gohan’s laser focused on this.    He may not enjoy fighting, but he’s completely devoted to the mission.  

Back to business, Cell is here on TV to announce his new tournament, the Cell Games.   First he introduces himself as the monster who killed all those people in Gingertown, Nickytown, and elsewhere.   He says he no longer needs to feed on people, but he will be kicking the ass of everyone who shows up at his tournament in nine days.  

Is that Piccolo’s TV, or Tien’s?    Either way, I find it hilarious. 

Basically, the Cell Game only resembles the Tenkaichi Budokai in the sense that you can lose by giving up, or by falling out of the ring.   Otherwise, it’s a very different format.    Instead of an elimination bracket, it’s a gauntlet match.    Cell stands in the ring, and fights each competitor.    If he wins, the next guy steps up and he fights that guy, and so on.    The idea is to see how many of these fights Cell can win in a row with no time to rest.    In theory, the more fighters who show up, the better chance of them wearing Cell down.   

Perhaps most critically, lethal force is not illegal, as Chi-Chi speculated.  If Cell kills you, you lose, not him.   Frankly, that just makes sense.    In the Tenkaichi Budokai, the idea was to defeat your opponent, not murder him, so lethal force would get you disqualified.    

But the Cell Games are for the fate of the Earth.    If Cell wins, he plans to kill everyone on the planet.   So why should he spare his opponents?  Why should he disqualify himself if he accidentally kills an opponent?  

On the flip side, why should his opponents worry about killing him?    If there was a no-kill rule, and Goku managed to kill Cell, that would technically make Cell the winner, but who would care?   Also, what would happen if Goku managed to beat Cell by ringout?  Would Cell abide by the rules?   He never really explained what would happen if he lost.   I assume he just didn’t see that as a possibility, or maybe he expected his opponents to try to kill him no matter what, so it wasn’t important.  

I’m not the kind of Cell fan who spends a lot of time looking for ways he could reform, although I do feel like it’s a shame that he couldn’t see the value of sparing the Earth and making the Cell Games a regular thing.   Like, let’s say he held this competition, and he survives to the end, win or lose.    Wouldn’t it make sense to stage a followup tournament for next year?     If the Saiyans could give him good sport twice, why not a third time?   And then the Cell Games just becomes this annual event where everyone gets together to see how many fights this bug man can win.   

But the reality is that Cell’s too big a dick for that.    His perfect form was built on thousands of innocent victims, and his tournament ring is sitting on top of farmland owned by a guy her murdered.   He killed that news anchor right before he announced this game, and he closes his announcement by blowing up part of the city he’s in.    Yeah, Cell loves fighting, and you might talk him into doing Cell Games II next year, but he also loves terrorizing helpless people, and he’d be doing that for the entire year until the next event.   I suppose this is what sets him apart from Vegeta and Piccolo.

Anyway, everyone is suitably terrified by Cell’s announcement.    Cell is the first villain to announce his presence to the world since King Piccolo conquered it over a decade ago.   The Saiyan invasion was known to the world, but there was very little understanding of what was going on.   Goku’s role in that battle never made it to the news media, and the other Z-Fghters who did get televised all died in battle.    To the world at large, they just knew that East City got destroyed by aliens, then there was a battle in some remote location, a bunch of martial artists and camera crews died, and then the aliens were gone.   

This is something that’s always interested me about Dragon Ball, because I’m used to comic book universes where the main heroes and their adventures are well known to the public.  I guess Superman was sort of the origin of that whole idea, since he worked for a newspaper, and he was such a powerful character that it was big news whenever he did anything, even in secret.     In some of Superman’s earliest outings, he seemed very interested in keeping a low profile, like he didn’t even want people to know he existed, but the costume sort of undermined that idea.    Eventually, he settled into the formula of being a public figure, and then writing about his own adventures as Clark Kent. 

Other superhero franchises have followed that premise, although it gets kind of strained in places.  If Mr. Fantastic invented a flying car years ago, why does everyone in Marvel still use real world technology?   A lot of fantasy worlds try to sidestep that problem by having the super-powered characters exist in secret.    Harry Potter’s whole deal is that wizards are real, and they have a whole secret society going on under the nose of the rest of the world, although it’s not very clear why they felt it so important to do this in the first place.   The real reason is that J.K. Rowling wanted Harry to grow up in a normal household, instead of some parallel world where everyone knows magic is real.  

Dragon Ball sort of tries to have it both ways.     It’s mostly like the real world, but it can have advanced technology like the Hoi-Poi capsules and hovercars, and then there’s remote parts of the world where they don’t have those things.   Trucks with wheels are still a thing, probably because Toriyama likes to draw real cars and made-up cars and he saw no reason to have to choose.   As for Goku, he just goes in, whips ass, and leaves.    If there’s media attention for his actions, so be it, but he’s not interested in it, so he doesn’t pursue it.    One day the Red Ribbon Army got wiped out, and the world has no idea how or why.    One day, King Piccolo got taken down, and the world found out about it, but they knew almost nothing about the boy who did the job.   One day, Vegeta got sent packing, but he eventually came back, and no one knows who he is, or what happened in between.  

And Goku’s fine with that.    He sees no point in giving press conferences, or explaining What Just Happened to the rest of the people.    He’s a very minor celebrity for participating in the Tenkaichi Budokai competitions, but only hardcore martial arts fans would have heard of him.    I’m a pro wrestling fan, but I’d have to look up the last three winners of the G1.  

And maybe this is one reason I dig this show so much.    Over the years, western comic books have gotten increasingly mired in pointless details.    You look at the new Spider-Man movie that’s coming up, and the general idea seems to be that Spider-Man needs Nick Fury to tell him what to do.    That’s how the comics have been for decades now.    These days you can’t be a superhero without some government agent telling you which way to pull up your tights.    It’s bullshit, but the writers think it’s more “realistic” that way.    Come to think of it, pro wrestling fell into the same trap a while back.    It used to be that you’d turn on wrestling and they’d just show a bunch of matches, and it was taken for granted that some unseen authority booked the card.    Now every American wrestling promotion has to waste time on all these in-story CEO’s, general managers, commissioners, and assistant general managers, and they all argue over which of them outranks the other.   It’s dumb.   Just let them fight.    Dragon Ball’s gonna let them fight.   

[kantuck]

Eternity

"Eternity" By Kantuck Nadie Nata-akon Wednesday, May 8, 2019

"So this is heaven?"

That odd thought was the first thing that crossed my mind. It was at least comforting to know the line of people(?) I was behind, was somewhat short, seeming to lead to a yep, you guessed it, Pearly gates. Self-proclaimed by at least the Christian beliefs.

I had religious studies, but I had no idea what the Muslin faith, or Buddhist, or Tao or the multitude of other religious beliefs spoke of. After all, I was a man of science who held a different view. But I guess what the Methodist instructors told me was still in my memory onion. Anyway...I guess the reaper had a slow day since there was only what? A few thousand all marching toward it.

Finally, I passed someone I took as St. Peter who smiled at me (again according to the Christian faith), and then stood before a glow I took as God. I didn't see a physical being, /but I felt as if he smiled upon me/, and so it begins.

Wondering what's here hmm? Well let me describe, for its easy.

Omnidirectional white. Yes, that's it. Unless I'm meeting someone or by the wall that seems to stretch to infinity no matter where I look, it was white. No forms, no shadows, no nothing. So this could go on, being infinity large or just a box barely wider than my arm length.

But myself. Yeah, I was at least at peace. The cancer that took me was gone, and so the pain the doctors, bless their souls (some may already be here.) helped me with.

However, everything was fine. I met some great laudables of the past (two of my heroes, Dr. King and Dr. Sagan for example) but being as I am, I had trouble with socialization. The shuffleboard and pretty nurses didn't interest me anymore (And I had more than enough of such in the brief time I was in the home.) I merely _existed_ and was this going to my fate?

An eternity of...SHEER UNRELENTING BORDEM?

I remembered suddenly what Dr. Asimov wrote in his final autobiography. Something in the realm of "...it wouldn't be heaven to me, if I could not write..." Seems that even in heaven I didn't have a photographic recall which confounded, and aggravated me no end. Still...The /meaning was there/.

Hmm, there was this obscure story of Sherlock Holmes going to heaven after the Reichenbach Falls of "The Final Problem". Which after he reached heaven, he too was bored to hell -- literally. But after performing a service to St. Peter to help find Jack the Ripper who somehow got into heaven, St. Peter rewarded the great detective by returning him to earth to continue his grand mission.

A morose feeling came over me, and, I couldn't help but to laugh.

"WHAT IS SO AMUSING?" boomed a voice out of the white.

I wasn't surprised at the voice, so with a good-heart question, I looked up and said "Who is this? I've been good!" I half-expected to hear "It's the Lord, Noah..."

It seems that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost -- which ever way he labeled himself as, had no sense of humor, but then...

"Hello sir." Not sure exactly how to address him.

"Hello Mr. Serri."

There was an undetermined amount of time that passed between us which hit me strange. As I understood it, time does not exist here, but yet, if time doesn't exist...then what was I doing just a (moment?) before, while thinking of Bill Cosby? Or Dr. Asimov? Or...ug, time mechanics made my brain hurt, even when H.G. Wells described it to me in a 19th century way.

I broke the silence, "Sir..." I looked around at the unending white "Is this all there is? This for an infinite amount of time?"

The glow didn't change, but the voice had a modulation of surprise. "Doesn't it please you?"

I looked down for some reason. I felt as if I wanted to please him and not disappoint him. "No sir. I'm board. There is no music, no animals, no Earthly beauty."

"You were reminded of what Isaac Asimov, wrote, wasn't you?"

I jerked my head(?) up at him, in which he said,

"No, I don't normally read your thoughts, but it was broadcast so strongly because you have a great deal of affection with him. After all, he wrote to a 12-year-old boy."

I swear I felt him smile once again. "Yes sir, he did, uh, but yeah. What he wrote."

There was a odd tingle as he touched me, and I recalled exactly what Dr. Asimov wrote.

"Don't disparate. He's here as well still doing as he loved in life. Why he even finished his story "Foundation." I believe he called it "The Final Foundation, and now at work on his 500th novel."

I looked wide-eyed at the glow, "Oh how I wish I could read it now."

"I'll put you in touch with him. I know he'd love to have another of his fans reading his works."

"Thank you!' A huge smile crossed my face.

"Also don't concern yourself about Bill Cosby."

I looked away, "He's..." I looked down, "Down there?"

"No. He sinned, but his punishment, although harsh, is finite. His purgatory will end eventually, for he did a lot of good too. You all are sinners, you cannot help that."

I couldn't help but to agree with him, knowing things I did that I wasn't proud of. He surprised me when he added.

"Your first sin was peeing on your father when you were eight months old, and laughing about it."

I looked up at the glow, "I...did?"

That same self smile "You was very young; an infant, so it's overlooked.

I laughed some, the tension lightening. "Thank you, sir." But after a moment(?) I had to ask. "But is this my fate then? To drift around this "heaven" for an eternity. Seeing nothing, meeting only people, yourself. " I smiled, "reading the great works of my favorite authors?"

"Oh no. A poet said, "The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell and a hell of Heaven."

"Milton" I added. Now my memory was indexed and google was working at top speed.

"Yes. Asimov shows that your 'heaven' can be anything you desire.

"Even?" I asked.

"Yes...within limits of course."

I smiled, "Of course."

For a time we didn't speak. He let me gather my thoughts then something from my childhood and adulthood came to mind. "I can't return to Earth, right?"

"Not in a physical sense. That is allowed only for very special cases." There was something like a chuckle "Even Sherlock Holmes was rewarded once."

I couldn't help but to smile. "I could go back however as a spirit?"

"Anytime. Just think about where you'd want to go, what time and you'll be there."

"Even..." I didn't want to even hope, "Even anywhere in the /universe/?"

"Even that. Of course going to other parts of the universe requires knowledge /of the place/. But you can learn that on your own.

A sense of joy, of hope, of desire flooded my incorporate being. I felt something I haven't felt in decades. A childish desire..."I can spend eternity exploring the universe? Go anywhere any /time/?

"Until the Universe dies. After all, this place exists outside of the universe so yes."

I felt like hugging the father, but I held off, almost giddy. I couldn't help but to start laughing. Which I then felt him again smiling at me. "Thank you sir! I only wish I had known this when I came in!"

"Well, you had to make your own mind, make your own decisions. That is one of the gifts I gave you, aside from life and the animals and Earthy beauty as well."

I was too giddy, too happy to feel anything but pleasure. I was babbling "I can spend an eternity learning, and I don't have to worry about breaking my glasses!" Then I tested my new ability, thinking of my home of my childhood. Suddenly there I was.

I was standing in a room. One I recognized as the old family room, and on the TV was a man with a bunch of children in the studio, wearing a brown hat and glasses. "Hellllooooo CARTOONERS!" from a booming voice, and the mascot in a silly brown and green dog-like suit with a big green head on his head, beeping a horn.

At my feet, I had a box of legos that I was assembling, and I could see my aura...an odd thing to see now. A soft glowing blue light around me. I could sense I was enjoying life, not knowing what life was ahead of me.

From there, nothing could stop me. I immediately was transported to the moon and I literally walked over every inch of it. Looking into lave tubes, and deep crevices, and seeing things that would only be seen ultimately when man actually /lived/ on the moon. Later, I flew to Mars and looked over Vikings 1 and 2 and the other probes.

No planet was out of reach; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, the Kupiler belt. I spent a few hundred years exploring our Sol system, watching Man finally getting their head out of their -- ohhh the first FTL ship. I watched in amazement when FTL 1 disappeared. Finding out he appeared where I was, just a moment or so later. (His ship dropped out of warp into the heart of a star a few light-years away.)

As God said, I had to /know/ where to go, so I spent time jumping from the Sol system to the nearest stars. I loved the view of Alpha Centari A, and B. Jumping to Proxima Centari and exploring the planets of it.

By the time a millennium had passed, I had already explored the local group of stars, watching civilizations appear on various planets. Humans hadn't reached out this far yet, and besides these civilizations wasn't anywhere near a post-warp society.

As I watched the various civilizations, some self-destructed into mad genocidal wars, some destroyed by a planetary catastrophe.

Some planets I had to spend decades to even /find/ the people. Beings so primordial who knew how to hide in the very space-time of the universe. These "first-borns" born when the galaxy was forming...then some so incredibly malevolent I was glad I was a being they couldn't detect for I would be afraid of my own existence around them. "Shadows" I heard some called in various languages; I tended to agree.

By an inordinately long time, I finally stood at the event horizon of a black hole.

Energy beings flitted, and hovered just faint centimeters from the point of no return (while I had already explored the very heart of black holes billions of years earlier.)  These energy beings, like basking sharks, was soaking up gravitational energies, the dissipating heat energy of atoms, molecules, dust and asteroids -- sometimes gorging themselves when a stray star drifted too close, and was shredded by the intense gravity.

It was then, this uncountable trillions of years in the future, I finally asked the him.

"Sir? Is this it? The death of the universe is the last amount of knowledge I can gain? Will I never learn anything more?"

As I watched those Black Hole basking sharks, flittering around, desperately trying to survive in a universe losing more and more energy, growing forever colder, darker and empty. I knew I could exist here even longer, for the age of the black holes would exist even uncountable trillions of years more into the future.

Even now, I already was running out of the ability to learn. All I could gain was 'what was alive' and 'spacial locations.' All planets had disappeared, all life aside from these black hole basking sharks and some others existed. But all was mindless, instinct driven life.

"No, Mr. Serri, an infinite time means infinite learning." A feeling of a smile "Just as Asimov said. "Education isn't something you can finish."

"But how? I was sadden by what I could see "My universe is now dead."

"Come with me." he said as he touched me. There was a -- feeling only. One moment we were at the black hole the next back in Heaven, at the site of what looked like a door. He opened it, we stepped though, and in another omnidirectional white area he bellowed "Let there be light."

I smiled, I knew what this was at our feet. A swirling mass of energy, which immediately exploded outward, swelling within seconds, trillions of times larger than we. A whole new universe was beginning to form.

"You just have to wait a few days for the first beings to be born, then you can explore until it dies."

I smiled up at him "Thank you sir."

This time a Cheshire cat smile "Your welcome, Mr. Serri. It's a simple gift."

"A gift of eternity." I thought and watched.

end

[pkmntrainergreyze]

The Emo School (Chapter 1)

Previous Next

Chapter 1: An Emo Box of Misery with Pastel Pink Ecstasy

I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

-Paul McCartney

09/12/01

Finishing up my plate, well, I couldn’t lie about a few scraps of mixed vegetables on it, the boys decided it’ll be fun to move out of the uncomfortable chairs. I couldn’t escape or not recoil from Ryan’s glares. I know what’s up with him, and the dirty look he’s giving is giving me the creeps. He makes me shiver down my spine and I swear one glare from this long legged man makes me want to stop everything I do- heck, if he was some soldier I’d be doing push-ups right now. (oh hallelujah he isn’t)

“Geez, I just couldn’t finish eating carrots right now Ryro. Is that so big of a problem?” He scoffed before lending me his hoodie. As weird as it sounds I need his dang cologne, it smells pretty darn good, but as much as possible I wouldn’t smell the hoodie in front of him and would rather wear it since it’s d*mn cold for me recently. He seemed to crunch the paper bag once he stared at the floor, as if some cockroach crawled nearby under the shade of the table.

Wait, is there?

“…Ryan, is there-”

“Yes, you spilt my milk in my f*cking man purse B-den”

Oh crap

“Congratulations”

He gave me the Tyrone tone of voice. The same blank yet forcefully enthusiastic voice you hear from the man that often wears a business outfit and a tie.

Where’s the escape Trainer button when you need it?

His face… I couldn’t see it under his brushed locks of hair. I’m not sure whether to look or not to look, either way it’ll probably just result to a really bad, salty ending. Sounds like something you see on Walmart eh? Bittersweet I guess? I am not so sure.

Oh F- the bell rang. It’s really torturous to hear it every single day of the week, especially the inescapable Mondays we have here at school, technically, everybody’s school.

Dallon grabbed his bag and left quickly, even faster than Spencer was when he ran over a advert pole drunk, remind to tell you that story sometime, just not today. Dallon’s a pretty straight guy, he’s like this dad who would be so overprotective of his children- or his students in the real world perspective, but when you think of the other side of that trait, he’s making fucking Dad jokes that my own Dad wouldn’t say. My Dad probably has a better sense of humor than Dallon- Dadlon, whatever.

And honestly speaking, he’s probably trying to avoid making any conversation with us, since we’re kind of talking sweet sweet cocaine.

Ahh yes, I’m about to walk back to the same tracks juniors walk to. I’ll probably receive about ten hearty smiles on my way there. Bet you ten bucks.

Alright, I finally forced my feet to walk and leave the table. Reaching for the end of the cafeteria…

Mrs Jackson smiled. One- wait, that doesn’t count as a junior? She looks nasty tho? Fine, stop judging my poor taste alright?

Passing by Ms Fletcher- okay, one. Her small smile is cleary not that visible. She’s the same child writing poems and speech-y crap for the principal to get quote on quote “extra credit” when in reality she’s serving weeks of detention, constant, but hey, she plays the best d*mn pranks in this school, okay, maybe third bestest.

I still played the “Place-posters-with-Pete’s-phone-number-with-the-tag-’call single males now!’” Prank

Walking around Spencer… Taking a glanc- two.

Oh, I forgot…. Whatever, Spencer looks like a kindergarten anyways so either way no points for me.

Spencer waltzed back to 9AM1 aww.

With how much students doesn’t rush to class after the bell rings, it wouldn’t let me reach that sweet sweet bar of full-on-smiles. Fine, future students, I owe you all ten bucks… only if you’re admit to our holy sacred school though.

Ha! I sound like Principal Wentz.

Profit-oriented mindset over one hundred babe.

I just entered the horrifying classroom of 8AM3. Welcome back to the real world my friends. As soon as I pretty much had my presence in the room students came to class. I heard a lot of talk ‘bout me being the coolest, chillest, most laid-back teacher here in the Junior buildings so I guess I have no competition or complaints.

I can already see the small group of students which I have known to be quite shy. They have my music class after Patrick’s theory crap that I don’t really pay that much attention to.

Mr Flowers just nodded along the conversation he’s having while Mr Bowie kept talking about this junior that idolizes him despite walking down outside the halls of my class. They sure have forgotten that I’m not closing the Godd*mn door before the class have their attendance.

My habitual scoff just came by so casually that students think of it as some form of comic relief. I don’t really know how to explain to these lil demons that it’s an attitude problem.

To think that Patrick’s just on my class, 8AM3, right now, teaching them how Do and Re sounds good together makes me feel better on how I’m actually giving the world- 9AM1 rather, a favor for consuming their time studying with my existence. That’s a joke, Patrick’s probably having fun right now.

Well, it looks like it’s about time.

I looked out the window in the similar fashion the students did as well.

Tick tock tick tock.

“What time is it?” Oh god, that voice crack though. I can hear the punks in this class snickering at it.

“Just struck nine” There goes my sunshine haired buddy cham pal.

“Is the cat at home?”

“He’s about to dine”

It’s Josh, this happened yesterday as well, and the day before. He’s teaching that “cat and mouse” game with the students; this time it’s 8AM2, not 8AM1.

Did I already explained to you why I call classes by numbers?

Well, because the real names sucks. No kidding, it’s so overused.

Who would name their classroom “Grade Eight Morning Glory?”, seriously? I want my class to be “Grade Eight Mary Jane”

Has that kind of ring to it, amiright?

Up until now I wonder why on earth Patrick and Frank likes their class names. I mean- those names are decades old. “Grade Ten Patience” seems plain, don’t tell Frank that.

“Sir do we have an assessment today?” Molly asked from the back with her hand stretched higher than Tyler’s current mood. I nodded as they all groaned. Laughing out of- well, sadism I guess? I had the projector connected to the PC and had it on freeze.

There the students saw my desktop wallpaper of a class picture me and the 8AM3 informally had, plus Patrick, Dallon and Spencer. Spencer truthfully looked out of place in this picture, it looks like he had a date with Aubrey Hepburn. Meanwhile Dallon stood there like he’s telling everyone his birthday is today- but he doesn’t have to lie that it’s on May 4th and that he just turned seven. Patrick’s just there, signature fedora on and a small peace sign.

Let’s not forget my entire class though. We have Frank Gioia and Eva in the front with Frank’s hands on her waist as her eyeliner-ed eyes shone against the color black. The Fro power and his friend glasses just stood there with awkward check poses that seems to go back somewhere deep and hidden in the past. Melanie and Ashley just stood there with no expression, except for the other student beside them, which is Jon, who’s doing the same peace sign Patrick’s been keeping up. The rest is can be explained stereotypical-ly; the emo, the shy artist, the jock, it’s just a fun variety to look at.

“Is that cous’?” I saw him pointing at the one with a black hoodie from the corner of my eye.

“Yep, that’s definitely your cousin Adam”

“They all look happy as heck”

“Sir can we take this sort of picture later?”

Another batch of noise.

Anyways, before my brain shuts down to “teaching mode” looks like I have to get back to this thinking normally crap later. Honestly the author just got no idea how American schools work so let her skip this part dotdootdoot. (let’s just say rep-emo isn’t an American Author (badum tsk))

●———————–●

Finally; the end of the day. Organizing my stuff after drinking my cold caffeine that was left in the canteen at break, I finally had my temporary freedom I shall redeem before my world domination.

Speaking about possible world domination if either me or Patrick does it we’ll both have things planned out but procrastinate later on.

Blowing my students a playful kiss when the bell rang I waltz to the exit first, even so I can still hear their laughs and joyful cheers.

Then I saw something- rather, someone I wish I could just avoid for the week.

Christian Tyler Joseph

My feet practically swooshed and I’m pretty sure my sole—and also my soul—said “nope, not today”. I swear, I’m an atheist but I prayed at that very moment. You know that tense feeling those cliché video game main character does when he or she feels the villain’s presence or just something freaky in the ceiling happens? If you’re thinking you are imaging those overused gulp noises that’s actually real, very real.

Yeah, feeling it.

“Oy! Brendo-”

“I’ll pay my debt later Troye!” Thank God I cut him off before he diss me in front of the students.

“For the last time Fivehead it’s Tyler!”

I know. Dude, we’ve been working together for years now and yet you seem dense about it, maybe that’s just because I always act stupid, don’t let that fool you, I am stupid.

Honestly, that poor guy is so easy to tease. If it wasn’t for my distracting use of ’T’-names I would have had a small—small as Tyler could get—fight. I heard a huff from behind my back that obviously came from Tyler himself, yes, I’m stubborn.

●———————–●

A sigh sadly escaped my lips as I flipped to peak into my students’ Assessment grades.

From Ashbridge to Zoroa; all were sorts of disappointment. Even those who got perfect seems fake to me. If Ryan didn’t left me to go somewhere with Spencer he would have said the grades are as fake as diamonds that looks like broken glass.

I’m so unhappy right now. Never thought I’d use that word.

That all changed when I heard the door slid and also a student did the same but in a more humane manner.

          Enter Ashley the student.

She’s that special student who’s quite popular, inside and outside school grounds. She’s literally a celebrity. She seems to get away each time she dyes her hair unlike another student of mine that goes by the name “crybaby”.

Guess who’s her advisor?

Yeah, that’s obviously me, anyone who said “Dallon” deserves a spank… or a slap, that’s just kinky.

“Hey there Mister Urie”

“Hello to you too Ashley, what’s up?”

Unlike other schools, we’re all practically informal here; teachers and students are pretty much close buds that we don’t even have some guidance counselor, I don’t know if that is a flaw or not… I guess Meagan is a counselor, but that’s just Pete’s wife. Going back to Ashley she’s the only girl in my class—well aside from Melanie—that calls me Mister Urie all the time, but that’s probably due to respect, which is quite neat unlike some students.

“I have milk and cookies here, Melanie wanted to give this out and um… She also asked me to give you this note…”

Yeah, that’s Melanie, no one exactly trusts her, except for Tyler and Hal- I mean Ashley I guess.

“Cool, just place it one of the chairs thanks”

She nodded- before I rudely interrupted when the thought rushed back deep inside my skull.

“Wait, what’s written?”

“Umm… It says; Do you like my cookies? They’re made just for you, a little bit of sugar and… lots of poison too” She seems to hesitate on reading it and I have no doubts on why she is.

Honestly, this is one of those times I wish I could pacify her.

I couldn’t blame her actions, she’s been through a lot- like, a whole looot, as edgy as the book written by Pete when he was young (we fortunately got to read it in his office, don’t tell anyone) she has been kidnapped, rough family, drugged and other things I wouldn’t go deeper.

She’s pretty odd, but really a pretty nice person at the same time. It’s like the half dyes of her hair. She, Frank, Eva, Jon, Mikey, Ray and Richie would talk to me all day and I feel comfortable with them.

I honestly like crazy people like her. She doesn’t mind me doing crappy things and she empathize with me, it’s nice to have someone like that ya know?

Hallelujah, I have such great students and yet I’m a sh*tty teacher. I wonder what type of cookies are in there-

F*ck, that pink pastel box looks creepy as Teletub-

I need some breather.

“Hey Ashley can you pass me the coc-”

Oh wait f*ck

She doesn’t know that yet

Oh god that sounds wrong. No I’m not gay shut up… What are you talking about me and Ryan are just friends. No, not even Dallon, shut up. Denial what the- okay I’m done talking to y'all, I’ll tell you about my past with Ryan later, m'kay? Yes I’ll talk about Dallon later too but now you f*cks are just distracting me.

Anyways, she doesn’t know I do cocaine.

“Uhh… what?”

Sh*t, you guys make me sound so bad. Thinking about it, I am the only one to blame if she did knew.

Think Brendon! Think!

WHY AM I IMAGINING SCENES FROM HANGOVER RIGHT NOW?! IT’S STILL 2001.

“Pass me the…. baby powder from the back of the second row shelf thanks”

“Okay… what does it look like there’s a bunch of jars here Mister Urie!” Yelling a bit for me to hear, I felt a drop of sweat coming from my distracting forehead.

“Uhh…. It’s in one of those straight shoote- I mean flower designs in it”

She raised a small glass tube with some flower designs in it. She raised her eyebrow a bit like it’s already questioning me.

I mean, why would someone smoldering with appeal like me would buy flowers? I had enough with people questioning my sexuality so I’m not having that again.

“This one?” She held the love roses tube and shook it. I hope she didn’t suspect me for anything if so then I hope that I ain’t kissing Pete’s *ss for this. Thank past me for buying filtered one and not the transparent, but that’s too early for me to say so.

“Yeah, bring it here. Thanks” She threw it to me and I caught it, fortunately.

“Why would you have it in a flower case?”

Haha…

“I have no containers left, is all”

She nodded once more “I’m pretty sure Principal Wentz would allow ya to use one of the containers in the science room, I mean you’re close to Mister Iero as well right?”

Haha… riiight. I’m pretty sure Mister Wentz or Iero wouldn’t

“Yeah, thanks for the idea and the cookies, tell Melanie the same”

“Yeah, you’re welcome Mister Urie”

●———————–●

“BRENDON!”

That’s Dallon, once more in all his glory. He never seems to stay calm after his week of teaching in this school. His hair looks like his wife quiffed it- whatever people call that hairstyle, maybe I should say hair mess.

“What?” As you can tell, I’m tired as well so long and goodnight Dal, I need some shut eye. This is the same man who almost fell asleep while teaching the opium war, quite surprising that he can be this tense.

“YOU CAN’T DO DRUGS IF THEY CAUGHT YOU YOU’RE IN BIG TROUBLE-”

“SHH!”

Yeah! I would be if you continued yelling.

“Shut up Dallon” I closed the door behind me only to here Dallon handling the doorknob back open.

“Brendon, it’s not healthy”

What is he gonna say? Cardiac arrest? Lung problems? Yeah, I know the side effect don’t worry about it, stimulation has always been a part of me even though I try so hard to deny it. I try to stop each time though so I don’t have to hear this right now.

(Author just searched the side effects of cocaine so this may not be exact, author is not a doctor, author’s life sucks)

“Uhuh”

“No I’m serious! My friend used to do drugs as well and he-”

Oh no. I’m having this talk again am I?

Rolling my eyes back to a distant land called “Nopeland”. I could only hear incoherent sounds of a failed attempt to get me to change my decisions in life. I only found the polychromatic color that matches the walls once more when my eyes landed back to my table.

Smirk.

Grab.

Flick.

“W-cou-hat the h-heck Brendon that’s childish eew is that baby powder or powdered milk? Disgusting”

Nah, that’s coke, have fun cleaning your uniform for tomorrow morning kiddo.

And then- with just one swish and flick- I magically landed back to happy land. Maybe it’s the side effect of cocaine, may or may not be but whatever, I’d like to think that it is for the moment. It’s nice to see someone’s first encounter with coke, if I were to be Van Gogh I’d be painting this view of Dadlon trying to remove the white stains from his crotch right now.

Looks like I have something to write on my Journal huh?

Let’s be real though dear hopefully-future-students; my dairy is a lot more cooler than the Diary Of A Wimpy kid? No? Yeah you’re right, my life sucks. If this were a subject you all would have had all my assessments perfect even on your first day.

I don’t know whether you should take that as a compliment or that states you’re slowly becoming trash- well no, technically all you little eyes are my treasure so don’t go living in the dumps.

“Brendon please help me remove this stuff”

“No thanks”

“Beeeebooo”

“Not this again Dallon”

This is some sick technique in which Dallon uses the nickname “Beebo” to get me to do something. No, I’m not telling you “why Beebo?”.

Fine.

It all started when me and Patrick were teaching the seniors for a bit since Andy couldn’t come due to a winter storm at his place. We were at Patrick’s small enthusiastic explanation about a simple concept when someone boldly called me “Beebo” and it just stucked.

Groaning in the same manner the students of 9AM1 from earlier, I grabbed my handerchief and started rubbing the surface of his sweater that he probably bought last week.

“I hate you”

“Love you too Beebs, now continue helping me will you?”

Geez, I do have a lot to write down today.

Oh crap, he didn’t bought this last week; it says “Grade 10 Hibiscus” so it’s most probably hand made for him from his last advisory class. He got this last Christmas. Crap, I ruined his greatest gift. I am so sorry Dallon. Best not to tell this and the Ashley incident to anyone.

●———————–●

My eyes wondered about when I saw the box Ashley left in the corner.

That pink box…

I swear, I don’t have any idea on what to do with these cookies, they actually smell and look delicious. I guess I’ll never know huh?

“Hey Mister Urie is Richie’s detention over? He asked me to go shopping in Hot Topic today that’s why I’m asking” The next person to ever slide in after class today is Frank Gioia. The emotional kid who doesn’t seem to mind what everyone thinks, he’s a cool dude I swear.

“Oh, he’d be up by no-”

About the box….

As bright as the ideas Gerard drew in his sketchpad (which is full of strange looking people by the way, especially that all white violin girl), my eyes fluttered at the sudden thought that occured.

“Hey Frank?”

“Yeah?” He tilted his head to peak in a bit more. He doesn’t seem to be fazed at the fact I avoided answering his question.

“Want some cookies?”

Silence.

He stared at me for a bit, then back to the box I was supposedly reaching out for him to taste. His eyebrow raised at the sight of it.

“Isn’t that Melanie’s?”

Oh, he knew, that was some fail.

Lie or not to lie?

Nah, lying is pretty much fun if you’re a girl.

“Yeah, Melanie gave it to me earlier”

“Yeah saw it too”

Then another batch of awkward silence followed as we stared at each other, eyes locked with such confusion present on both sides.

“Sure… I’ll take one”

He came closer and took a bite of the chocolate chipped cookies from the forsaken box. He seems delighted somehow.

Well.

Looks like I have a new box to place my ecstasy.

●———————–●

I bumped into Ryan earlier.

He gave me this blank look before leaving me in the halls. He seemed to be carrying another paper bag; two packs of cheese whiz I presume. He didn’t seem to mind me whenever I snoop into his bags, although this time was an exception.

       ⏭️The theater in Brendon’s mind⏮️

Ryan: *looking at his paper bag*

Fab Brendon: What’s that *about to reach into the bag*

Ryan: *Slaps hand*

Ryan: Y o u  a r e  n o t  m y  f r i e n d

Exit Ryan.

⏯️

Trust me, give him a few more days and the two of us we’ll be okay, he wouldn’t exchange our friendship over cheese whiz….

I wonder if he thinks the same about me and Frank Sinatra, if so tell him I’d choose the latter.

●———————–●

On my way home I saw Ray and Mikey talking about Gerard and his small sketchpad they saw behind the bush in which he probably left it.

“How did it end up there in the first place?” They looked as confused as I am, Ray just raised his lips a bit higher to look like he’s pensive for an answer.

“He’s Mister Way after all, he can get like this, right Moikey?”

“Mikey Ray, It’s Mikey. Yes, he does act as irresponsible at times”

Sometimes I wonder if that face shows sadness, disappointment, anger or just plain nothing. It’s a pokerface no one could ever break, not even that time Joe played around with Frank’s chemistry set, I mean, mixing Mountain Dew and chunks of Doritos was funny and all, and Gerard’s reporting skills on that scene made the class laugh even more.

I sure do love this school’s innocent scenes.

Wait I’m going too far, back to Mikey.

“Anyways, do you know where your brother is at the moment?”

He shook his head in reply but Ray nodded it with excitement.

“Yeah he said he’s going to binge watch Star Wars in the cinema”

Mikey’s face dropped a bit before going back to normal. That action probably meant sadness… right?

“He forgot to drive me back home, whatever I’ll just walk”

“I’ll come with you don’t worry, we’re practically neighbors”

“no we’re not”

“shush”

I know that I laughed at that small conversation but I still feel the small strange vibe Mikey’s been radiating, unlike Gerard he would have punched me in the face if he was at the scene and tell me to “stay the *beep* away from my sketchpad!”

Was that beep necessary?

“Do you want me to call Gerard?”

“No, it’s okay Mister Urie”

I shrugged as he denied my random act of kindness, ouch.

“Whatever kiddos, get home safely okay?” “Yes Mister Urie” “Oh, and bring your brother’s sketchpad, he doesn’t want it in my hands”

Mikey raised an eyebrow “Don’t you wanna see what’s inside?”

I mean, it could be anything edge-shock-y so I wouldn’t dare open it.

“N-nah, rather not”

Mikey just nodded and fetched for the sketchpad in my hands.

Then I walked back home, just like they did.

God, I’m stopping drugs. Things like this are more stimulating…. and stressful

[franeridart]

after watching the new episode i was wondering if it possible for TodoBaku or is there moment that show Bakugou doesn't really mind about Todoroki in the later chapter ? and what's your opinion in TodoBaku ? how do you see their relationship ? Thanx :)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh what a good great unexpected question - personally, I don’t ship it romantically one bit, but it is one of my favorite dekusquad/bakusquad relationships - I guess you might consider it something similar to an accidental sort-of-friendship neither of them seem to actually have noticed yet? It’s definitely a unique relationship for either of them, at least… they make it clear more than once that they Do Not Give A Fuck about the other’s personal struggles, I just can’t see them talking and finding sympathy in each other, but that just ends up giving them a kind of blunt and no-bullshit relationship that doesn’t stop them from working together when needed. I don’t know how to properly explain it, honestly, but they’re fun! 

I don’t know how much spoilers you want so I’ll keep this as vague as I can, but they do happen together more than either of them would like, and their relationship is a really amusing one for me - Todoroki actually cracks jokes with Bakugou around, though always with his neutral face and making fun of Bakugou himself when he does, and the way he has of just straight out ignoring Bakugou’s insults and fire-spitting and answering as if they were having a civil conversation is weirdly entertaining tbh

I wouldn’t say that Bakugou “doesn’t mind Todoroki”, but he does end up having way more important things to think about than his one-sided rivalry with him, and once he starts settling things with Deku the narrative mostly moves to push in that direction, which means that every interaction he has with Todoroki is either on neutral grounds or in the middle of forced cooperation, pushing any antagonism they might have to the background, really - also, the more the story goes on the more Bakugou becomes civil with the rest of the class, so there’s that too! Anyway, they’re fun to me, I wish to draw more of them in the future tbh

Anon said:I do laugh at Bakugou’s reaction on the podium bc visually its animated funny. But u r right that the whole thing is fucked. How is that even appropriate to do to him? And it takes until after his fight with deku many arcs later for All Might to say “we maybe sort of neglected this kid’s mental health.” Like wtf. It upsets me sometimes to think just how much All Might just doesn’t even *see* Bakugou. So much is wrong about this, from putting Bakugou on display to forcing the medal on him.

Blessed words all of them - it’s why I’m such a fan of the idea of Bakugou without even noticing switching his role model to Aizawa, actually? Aizawa’s the only adult figure in the whole manga who’s constantly been there for Bakugou, he has his future and mental health and reputation constantly in mind and works his ass off to try and help him along as much as possible, he takes note of everything Bakugou goes through, every switch in mood and worsening in personality and interpersonal relationships, and he’s always incredibly fast in nudging him towards the right path again - and Bakugou noticed. He trusts Aizawa to know him, follows his directions and accepts his advices, believes he’ll have his back without an ounce of doubt, that’s the tutor/student relationship Bakugou deserves 

I understand that All Might has a lot of problems of his own and he’s just learning to be a teacher anyway, but he found it in himself to be there for Deku, while Bakugou has been obviously staring at his back for the whole length of the manga and it took All Might 120 chapters to notice, that’s just plain sad

Anon said:What’s your favorite Bakugou headcannon?

BOI I have a lot! One is mentioned in the ask up there, actually haha but generally you can see most of them in my art? I like the idea of him being an artist a lot, given how both his parents are into it, I like to think he’s a rock-music type of kid, I have weird headcanons about his dorm room all including too fancy-looking designer furniture and one too many hero figures stuffed under his bed - he might have a fire extinguisher or two in there as well. Also, he’s a restless sleeper (more like a fighter sleeper) and never wears socks ever

I like to think most of his clothes are black because it’s the color on which the soot from his explosions is the least noticeable, and that he unironically honest to god thinks skulls are the coolest thing ever and can’t stop himself from buying every piece of clothing with them on it (first time he entered Tokoyami’s room he died what a cool place he never wanted to leave ever again); that he really doesn’t like the sea - or taking long baths/showers - because water washes his sweat away and he feels defenceless and it’s horrible, and that rain makes him useless like it does to Mustang from FMA (haha)

He names everything after fire arms (has an extensive, nearly to the point of being uselessly detailed knowledge of those) be it his special moves or his pets or his toys when he was a kid or every and each of the pokemon he’s ever had in any game he’s ever played - he’s a gamer! Mostly into fighting games, though they frustrate him because now and again he blows the controller up without realizing and he’s forced to stop playing, but he also likes strategy-based rpgs a lot (all his characters are called King Of Explodo-kills. All of them)

He talks in hyperboles most of the times, means a thing but uses a word fifty times stronger than necessary to express it instead, and he’s so not used to positive emotions that the first time he feels them it takes him a while to figure out exactly what it is that he’s feeling - he’s an affectionate friend, though he has weird ass ways of showing it, and this part of him is new to him as well since it’s just coming out now that he’s got the squad (he was nearly sure the kids in middle school were his friends, but what kind of friend leaves you to be saved by Deku when a villain attacks?) (meeting the squad made him realize he’d never actually had friends before, it was a bittersweet feeling)

………..okay enough, you asked for my fave and I just blabbered half an hour. I don’t even know which one’s my fave tbh hahaha

Anon said:as much as I like the anime, seeing the sports festivals always makes me sad because bakugou is still an angry kid, but at that time thats pretty much the only thing people see, while after in the manga, yes hes still angry but hes softer? in a way? idk he grew up so seeing him back at the first point makes me sad (sorry for the rant I have a lot of feelings abt this lmao)

He HAS grown, hasn’t he! I hadn’t realized just how much until I saw him back at the beginning of this season yelling at Todoroki the he should stop thinking about Deku and start worrying about him - it’s? Painful? He’s in a constant fight against the whole world, while now you see him way more with his guard down and just… existing. I’m so proud of him and all the good great amazing relationships he’s built ;u;

Anon said:What episode 12 needs is the bakusquad getting angry at how Bakugou was treated because you can’t convince me they were okay with that.

Hmmmmmmmmmm boy I would love that, but all things considered at that point, given how Kaminari and Mina and Sero reacted to Bakugou’s fight with Uraraka, I can kind of safely assume they didn’t think much of it cause they honestly thought Bakugou would flip and destroy the world if not restrained - Kirishima might have found it eccessive, possibly, but in that case too his relationship with Bakugou was just being formed, he didn’t know Bakugou enough to be sure he wouldn’t just lounch himself at Todoroki as soon as he was free

What I can imagine is all four of them some months in the future thinking back on it and going, man, fuck, that really was messed up, what the hell, and for a whole week Bakugou’s highly confused and kinda creeped out by how nice they’re being to him (at some point he starts thinking it’s a quirk) (they stop and go back to normal once they realize he’s honestly trying to figure out a way to unmake it)

Anon said:have you ever thought about…. ojinari (denki and ojirou) beings best buds or just hanging out? and i always liked the idea that baku and kiri get a little jealous whenever denki fawns over ojirou’s soft tail

I have!! It’s also pretty much canon, they’re seen interacting a lot - I don’t know about jealousy tho, mostly because I like to think Baku and Kiri enjoy Ojiro’s friendship a whole damn lot too haha Ojiro’s probably the only one who trains just as much as they do, really, he must be a great gym partner

Anon said:Holy mother of–the medal around Bakugou’s neck is just–I have no words but it’s such a really thoughtful and beautiful way to represent just *waves hands* I can’t explain it but it was really perfect and you’re such a great artist aND BAKU DESERVES BETTER

Holy smokes thank you!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my god!!!!!!!!!!! ;;;A;;; I’m so glad you liked it, oh b o i and yessssss at least he deserves a lot more respect than he ever gets from anyone that isn’t his friends ;~;

Anon said:I know the chains and muzzle were probably(?) for comedic effect like “hahaha he’s so angry we had to restrain him” but dang I’m with you that was just wayyy too far. Crossing into inhumane territory there

;-; I’m so glad I’m not the only one that feels like this about that

Anon said:Okay…. but have you considered in the recent chapters….. platonic kirideku….. (please, I need more of their pure friendship)

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I have, they’re pretty cute and pure and Kirishima’s a ball of excitement and fighting spirit as usual and Deku is kinda there trying to keep up all wobbly smiles and good intentions (he’s not used to the hype people poor child *pats his head*) which is amusing, I don’t mind their relationship at all! But as of now I still haven’t found anything about it unique and interesting enough to make me want to draw it? They’re cute! But they feel… sorta superficial? Like, Kirishima’s friends with everyone, and Deku’s friends with everyone, so of course they’re gonna be friends with each other too! But that’s about it right now. I dunno, maybe it’ll develop more in the future and I’ll decide I want to draw it, who knows!

Anon said:Have you seen that vine with the drunk guys recording singing backstreet’s back? The guy recording is kiri the guy angrily carrying the other drunk guy is baku and the guy being carried is kami

Oh my god this is the best thing I’ve thought about all day, bless you anon hahaha I can’t stop laughing send h e l p the angry look is just so Baku how did they even get him to carry Kami rip

Anon said:I’m sorry if this is annoying of something (mostly bc it’s not a question really) but I REALLY needed to tell you your art is awesome and you made me giggle like a little girl (especially at your kiribaku stuff), and I spent hours at it. You’re amazing!!

It’s not annoying at all!!!! Oh my god, thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Sero giving Bakugo some kind of tape corset is just… omg Fran.

It’s not easy keeping the explosive friend at bay, but someone gotta do it (usually it’s Kirishima) (Sero works well enough when the target of Baku’s yelling is Kiri himself, tho)

Anon said:I just wanted to let you know that bnha has been all over my dash forever but the only reason i’m watching it is you. I found you through your haikyuu art (the bokuku.roteru comic to be specific) and I was sad that you don’t post much hq anymore, so I figured I would watch bnha so that I could enjoy your art to the fullest 😅 I’m only 8 episodes in but i like it so far!

I’m!!!!!! So happy you’re liking it, holy smokes!!!!!!!!! *O* thank you so much for deciding to try it out only for my art, oh myyyyyy ;u;

Anon said:Okay so… This is going to sound honestly terrible but… If Suneater needs to eat something to get his abilities, what would happen if he ate a human with a quirk? Would he be able to use it too?? Gosh. This is so morbid. Sorry for the ask.

DON’T!!!!!!!!!! worry anon this is a home open to every and each speculation as far as quirks go I live for this shit - also I might or might not have thought about this too (I have) and I guess as long as quirks are classified as physical attributes then he would gain the quirk? Mutations, for sure, but stuff like Bakugou’s sweat works too (he can use the venom in the animals he eats so nitroglycerin sweat is fair game) and probably body-shifting like Kirishima would work as well… I’m not sure about stuff like Shinsou’s quirk, but if there’s a gene or an actual mutated part of his body that can make him control people, then probably it’s be okay too

Please Jiki don’t ever eat anyone, tho lol

Anon said:I also am weak for the need vs want. I’ve actually said that to people. Don’t need you, I want you hahaha love you, Fran!!

Anon said:OMG Fran the comic !!! the soft kiribaku !!! and i love that Bakugou can still live without Kirishima but his live will be colourless, just LOVE IT !!!!!!

THANK YOU BOTH SO MUCH OH MY GOD!!!! I’m super glad you liked it!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tyrantisterror]

How I’d Ruin It: Batman

(thanks to The Lego Batman Movie for making my brain keep coming back to this, and also for making such awesome goddamn toys for my retail therapy needs)

While I write my own stories nowadays, the old fanfic writer in me resurfaces every now and then in the form of idle thoughts about how I’d handle certain stories I love.  Sometimes these musings lead me to one horrible conclusion: that no matter how much I may love the story in question, I’d be absolutely fuck awful at writing it.  This is because the scope of things I’m interested in writing is significantly smaller than the scope of things I’m interested in reading/watching - my muse is a pickier eater than I am.

Still, no matter how awful and off message my bastardized mental versions of these stories may be, they keep popping up now and then, demanding to manifest as stories are wont to do.  So today I’m going to exorcise one of them by summarizing it to you.

Today, my wonderful readers, I’m going to tell you how I’d utterly fuck up at writing Batman.

I’m a conditional Batman fan, because there’s a lot of Batman media out there and a lot of it is shit - and also there’s so much of it by volume that even reading/watching only the good Batman stuff would take more time than I can spare.  So when I say I love Batman, know that I mean, like, mostly the 90′s animated series and scattered arcs like The Long Halloween that can stand alone, and The Dark Knight, and the Adam West show, and Holy Musical B@man, and some other random Batman stuff.  I only know/like some Batman, but the amount of Batman I like is still, like, a lot of Batman.  Jesus Christ there’s so much fucking Batman dudes.

But I have some problems with Batman, two of which are relevant to this post because they’re also kind of necessary to its appeal.  The first is one that is almost justifiable, although it will undoubtedly sound preposterous to most people: why does Batman have to be so dark?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a horror fan, so obviously I’m not completely averse to darkness in my fiction.  A big part of Batman’s appeal to me comes from how it’s rooted in Gothic Horror tropes.  It’s a comic about a dude who dresses up as a Dracula to fight monster men in a city that’s literally called Gotham, so darkness has to be part of the story.

But jeeeeeesus christ Batman is needlessly dark sometimes.  Does a bat themed super hero really need to be fighting a guy who carves tally marks into his skin for every person he’s murdered?  Is the Joker really more interesting when he’s killing everyone he sees than when he committed clown themed heists?  Isn’t being a crocodile man enough intrigue for Killer Croc, or does he need to be a creepy cannibal too?  Does every villain need to be a murderer?

While the Adam West Batman show is so campy that I can only tolerate it in small doses, it nonetheless makes me pine for a brighter take on the character/series.  It’s kind of nice to have bright colors and jokes and a Batman who doesn’t whine about how sad he is, and villains who are more into making elaborate puzzles and traps instead of finding new ways to mutilate their victims.  I’d love to see it blended with the complex psychology of the darker Batmans - but more on that after we get to problem number 2.

Which is, of course, Batman himself.

Batman can be an interesting character.  In the best Batman stories, I certainly do love him.  But, to be totally honest with you, even at his best, Batman is never the main draw to me in a Batman story.  He’s like the bun of a hot dog - it’d be weird to have one without him, and a lot of the more interesting ingredients would sort of fall apart without him holding everything together, and you’d have a great big sticky mess on your hands, but... I mean, if I’m honest, he’s not the part of this I’m looking forward to experiencing.  Batman isn’t the meat of the meal to me - no, that role goes instead to his villains.

Goddammit those villains are great! Joker, Two Face, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, the Riddler, even the obscure ones like Killer Croc and Clayface, and even the shitty ones like Calendar Man - I just fuckin’ love almost every single one of ‘em, and they’re the reason I keep thinking about how I’d love to just... just utterly ruin Batman.

But when I start thinking of the story I want to tell with those villains, inevitably I remember that, oh hey, I need to have something for Batman to do because, y’know, it’s called Batman for a reason, and my muse just wants nothing to do with that.  And that’s why the wheels always fall off.

Well, that and I have a billion other stories to write, but still.

So here’s how I’d ruin Batman in a brief pitch: My Batman story would star the villains, almost none of whom are murderers, in a version of Gotham where Bruce Wayne died with his parents, and thus has no Batman.

You’d have a Gotham City much like the one in Year One (I hate to reference a Frank Miller comic but it’s easily the most well known framework for where I’m starting here), ruled by a mix of slightly exaggerated gangsters and corrupt businessmen - more outlandish in their evil than the real thing but not quite on supervillain level.  The villains would all retain their origins for the most part, but without a Batman to draw their focus they sort of turn on each other.  It sort of splits into two factions: the Freaks, who are victims/products of the corruption inherent to the city, and the Crimelords, who are the few members of the old/mundane criminal element that adapt to the superpower boom and transition from normal gangsters to supervillains.

The resulting conflict would be the story of a bunch of broken people trying to destroy the system that made them, and the horrible remnants of the old crime world desperately trying to return things to how they are - anarchists vs. tyrants.

Now that we’ve got the basic plot/conflict down, let’s go to what I always focus on first when writing a story: the characters.  We’ll begin with our protagonists...

The Freaks

The Joker - obviously the leader of the bunch, the Joker is probably one of the characters I would bastardize/alter the most.  Nowadays it’s set pretty firmly in stone that the Joker has to be, like, the most evil man in existence.  He’s gotta kill people on a whim, physically abuse his girlfriend, cut off his own face and wear it like a mask, and just generally be a real fuckin’ creep.  But does he have to be that evil?

Well yes, yes he does, it’s what makes him iconic and is basically his defining trait, and without it most of the stories told with the character wouldn’t be possible.  The idea that he’s the villain who gives other villains nightmares is what makes him stand out.  If you lessen the depths of his depravity, you’d ruin Batman.

but does he haaaaaaaaaave to?

Imagine if you will a young, down on his luck commedian named Jack Napier who, in an attempt to provide for his wife, accidentally gets involved with the mob.  They make him dress up as a (fictional) crime boss called the Red Hood for a caper - he has to act the part to get the police off the scent of the real bosses.  Little does he know that he’s a patsy, set up to not only mislead the police but to buy time for the crooks’ escape by getting into a firefight.  He’s shot and falls into some chemicals, gets bleached, and wakes up with a new, much more unhinged state of mind.  Like the normal Joker, he finds the magnitude of his tragedy to hilariously absurd.  Also like the normal Joker, he decides to become an agent of entropy in hopes of dismantling the city that made him a monster.

Unlike the normal Joker, however, the focus of his wrath isn’t a paragon of morality and justice, but rather the corrupt and powerful rulers of Gotham.  He becomes the arch enemy of mobsters, crooked cops, and politicians - people the normal version of the Joker also antagonizes, of course, but not to this level.  Since his nemeses are different, this Joker never defines himself as a force of evil and corruption.  Instead he humiliates - this Joker punches up and brings those in power down a peg.

The “joke” theme because important here, as the Joker ends up creating a lot of schemes designed to ridicule and embarrass his victims as much as destroy them.  It’s not enough to just shoot the corrupt politician - he needs to kill their ego and their sense of power.  This Joker would much rather scare the shit out of his victim with a convoluted and frankly stupid “death” trap than just shoot them - and he’d be perfectly content just splatting them in the face with a vaudevillian pie instead of actually killing them at the end.

He wouldn’t be an out and out hero - he doesn’t go out of his way to save people or anything - but he’d also be a far cry from the “killing dozens of people a day for the sake of proving he’s evil” Joker we get nowadays.

He also wouldn’t be aware of the fact that other people don’t necessarily get the joke - not in the malicious “BWAHAHA I’M EVIL AND I’M KILLING YOU WITH LAUGHING GAS IT’S FUNNY TO ME BECAUSE I’M EVIL” way, but in the “Look, I know you’re technically in peril here but you have to admit it’s objectively ridiculous that you’re being dangled above a tank full of piranhas, right?  I mean, is it even true that they eat people, or is that a myth?  This whole thing’s pretty surreal right?” sort of way.

Harley Quinn - Harley is my favorite Batman character when she’s written well, but sadly she’s normally written absolutely horribly so I’m kind of happy to just fuckin’ ruin this story for her sake.  Part of her problem is that the core concept for her character is “psychiatrist is seduced by patient, subjected to psychological and physical abuse by him, and because of said abuse becomes a supervillain.”  I mean, a lot of Batman villains also have the “horrible psychological problems make people evil” thing going on which is, y’know, horribly unfortunate, but I feel like Harley’s hit harder than most.

But since the Joker isn’t nearly as much of a bastard in this story, maybe Harley can get out with a nicer origin as well?

This version of Harley isn’t the Joker’s victim so much as a collaborator - maybe the Robin to his Batman?  They’re kindred spirits in their love of whimsy and their distaste for how the city is run - Harley in particular has a focus on the corrupt nature of the mental health facility she works at (I mean, Arkham’s not particularly good at its purpose even in the normal Batman universe).  Like Robin, Harley softens the Joker’s war on Gotham’s criminal underworld a bit - she drags him into a more compassionate viewpoint.  Unlike Robin, she’s not a subordinate/ward - while Harley plays on the Joker’s clown motiff, she doesn’t follow his schemes without question, and always argues for a different way of doing things when the Joker’s plans get too mean-spirited.  They’re actual partners in crime, as opposed to the victim/abuser dynamic they had in past fiction.

I realize this is the kind of alteration to canon - y’know, making the main villain sympathetic and a canonically abusive relationship into a healthy romanticized one - that makes people use the word “fanfic” as a pejorative, but, well, I did say this is how I’d ruin Batman.

Catwoman - while the Joker is obviously going to be the leader of the bunch, Catwoman would be the deuteragonist, both because she’s just as iconic and also because she’s probably the closest thing to Batman in this world, and it is still ultimately a world designed to work around a Batman-ish character.  Born poor, Catwoman pickpockets her way into wealth, specifically targeting the most corrupt of the wealthy.  Unlike most of the other Freaks, she has the option of living a normal life, but is ultimately compelled to keep robbing from the rich and giving to the poor (and also herself - look, she has a lot of cats to feed).  Catwoman grounds the Freaks in reality and helps them understand the rules of the system they’re trying to break - and, with her status as an up and coming socialite, is able to give them valuable intel on some of their targets.

Mr. Freeze - honestly you could just transplant the Batman: The Animated Series take on him right into here, because it’s kind of baffling he was considered a villain in the first place.  It takes literally no effort to make him a heroic figure - you just have to remove the more-traditionally-heroic Batman to make him shine.  Mr. Freeze isn’t as daffy and volatile as the Joker, but is every bit as determined to bring Gotham crashing down and to make the corrupt pay for their cruelty toward people like him.  He’s also hilariously serious, providing a stoic counterpoint to the more flamboyant personalities of the other villains.

Poison Ivy - Poison Ivy’s motivation has been “protect the environment, plants specifically”, which is pretty noble to be honest - it’s just that her methods are unnecessarily homicidal.  So, y’know, maybe tone that down a bit?  Less “mind controlling innocent people and murdering them for money to build a plant park” and more “using convenient giant animate plants to halt construction that threatens local parks” sort of schemes.  She’d basically be an environmental sciences themed vigilante - Captain Planet with an aggressive streak.

I know it’s more traditional to pair her with Harley Quinn, but I’d kinda like to try setting her up with Catwoman instead - both of them has this history of being femme fatales/evil seducers of men, so it’d be kind of fun to have a story where they just have none of that at all.  Though pairing her with Harley and making the Harley/Joker relationship purely platonic is an interesting dynamic too...

Killer Croc - he’s a great big crocodile man who lives in the sewers because no one above ground accepts him, on account of him being a big crocodile man and all.  Despite his fearsome appearance and prodigious strength, he’s a pretty swell guy - the gentle bruiser of the group.

Two-Face - like Mr. Freeze, you really don’t have to alter much to make him a good guy.  Just keep Two-Face pointed at mobsters and he works as a hero pretty well.

The Riddler - In this world, the Riddler begins as a cop who, while clever, isn’t corrupt enough to excel in the police department.  His superiors assign him to the Freak case in hopes of getting rid of him (preferably in a fatal sort of way), but that plan succeeds in the worst way, as he ends up defecting to their side.  The Riddler helps the Freaks make their schemes truly bizarre and unpredictable, and helps them get to the bottom of who is truly running Gotham City.  He’s also a smug prick about it, because smugness is key to his character.

Clayface - a star of Gotham’s theater scene, Basil Karlo is convinced to try an experiment age-defying makeup which turns him into a giant shape changing mud man.  He becomes the group’s master of disguise and also ups their general theatricality, and can back up Croc as the muscle in a pinch.

The Crimelords

Penguin - a petty thug with delusions of grandeur, Penguin wants to rise to the ranks of the social elite and goes to great lengths to seem more educated and “classy” than he is.  While he is never accepted by the rich people he idolizes, he continues to do their dirty work in hopes of getting their approval.  He is cunning in a way, though, and rises to prominence throughout the story as one of the few criminals who can keep up with the increasingly eccentric Freaks - probably because he’s basically one of them despite his protests.

Scarecrow - a corrupt psychologist at Arkham Asylum who helps the mafia by providing insanity defenses for mobsters and driving key witnesses insane, Scarecrow’s obsession with fear would spiral out of control throughout the story.  Eventually he’d switch sides to the Freaks when he gets too weird for the oldschool criminals to tolerate, although he’d never be well liked by either side.

Firefly - a particularly skilled arsonist for the Maroni crime family.  Not much more than that.

Deathstroke - the greatest assassin employed by the Falcone crime family, Deathstroke takes himself very seriously, which is to his detriment considering the pack of ridiculous monster men he’s facing in this story.  He has a bitter rivalry with...

Deadshot - the greatest assassin employed by the Maroni crime family.  Deadshot doesn’t take his work very seriously at all and is prone to sarcasm and flippancy.  He kind of loves the fact that the freaks are causing so much ridiculous trouble for his employers, but that doesn’t mean he won’t kill them for a paycheck.

Bane - a mercenary hired by the crime families to take down the Freaks.  Bane eventually switches sides; he may be a bad guy, but he also cares about the downtrodden having grown up in a city not unlike Gotham itself.

Calendar Man - the youngest son of the mafia boss Carmine Falcone, Alberto Falcone is inspired by the theatricality of the Freaks and becomes a holiday themed serial killer, targeting enemies of his father’s business in a misguided attempt to earn his approval.

Black Mask - As the different crime families slowly dwindle in number over the course of the story, Roland Sionis, an underboss for the Maroni family, eventually rises in the ranks (due to his superiors dying) and unites what remains of the mafia under his iron fist.  Deciding to fight fire with fire, he crafts a grim alter ego for himself in hopes of striking fear into the Freaks.  It doesn’t work because he’s just not theatrical enough to pull it off, but he does manage to be a thorn in their side for a while.

Hugo Strange - the chief psychologist of Arkham Asylum, Hugo Strange is an awful, awful man.  He’s also an incredibly intelligent one, master minding many of the problems the Freaks encounter.  He’s not the root of Gotham’s problems, though, as he ultimately serves...

Ra’s Al Ghul - an ancient sorceror who has made and destroyed countless societies in his many centuries of scheming, Ra’s Al Ghul made Gotham City into a nexus of misery and cruelty in hopes of awakening a world ruining entity - i.e. basically he’s trying to bring about Gozer the Destroyer.  ‘Cause why not bring in a bit of Lovecraftian terror to a setting that has a madhouse that makes monster people that’s literally called Arkham Asylum?

And that’s it.  That’s how I’d ruin Batman.

I’ll probably repurpose some of these ideas into other stories like I do with most of my fanfic ideas, but man, this sure is shitty as a Batman story, huh?

[becasueimtheworstkindofperson]

Episode 1: Many Mouths Which Speak and Very Few Heads Which Think Transcript

Good morning girls, goths, and gays, and welcome to the very first episode of Because I’m the Worst Kind of Person! My name is Kate and I’m here to guide you through the minefield that is classic literature! For the very first season, I’m going to be tackling one of the longest books I own. Clocking in at two thousand four hundred and fifty three pages in it’s online pdf form, you know it as the brick, that’s right, it’s Les Miserable by Victor Hugo!

You might be thinking to yourself, “Is Les Mis really the best book to be starting on?” and honestly, It’s probably not. I’ve never taken a single french lesson in my life so I’m going to butcher this baby! But the fact of the matter is, it’s been on my reading list since I read Hunchback, and my sister’s getting really annoyed that I refuse to watch the musical before I read the book. It’s not a great standard to have, I wouldn’t recommend it. This is going to be my third time attempting to get through it.

Now. Which version will I be using? I can’t read french either, so I would obviously need a translation. At first I thought I would be fine to use the copy I had, a nice thrifted signet classic copy I picked up for a dollar. Then I ran into an issue. Copyright Law. The copy I owned was translated by Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee, and while it was based on the original C. E. Wilbour translation, it wasn’t something I could just read out loud to you guys. So I had the brilliant idea to pick up a copy of the Wilbour translation! How hard could it be! Very hard apparently. By the time my copy arrived in the mail, I realized that it was the abridged version. Now I have nothing but respect for people who want the abridged version of a Hugo novel. Victor is equally, if not more concerned with us knowing every building the protagonist passes, every festival that might be taking place, the backstory of every minor character, as he is with the main plot. It can get exhausting. That said, Momma didn’t raise no bitch, and I’m very used to biting off more than I can chew. By this point I realized that since I’m going to be putting up transcripts, and I didn’t want to type up Les Mis word-for-word, it would probably be in my best interest to just use an online pdf, which lead me to the version I will be using, translated by  Isabel F. Hapgood who died in 1928, which puts me safely in the public domain. I’ll put a link in the shownotes to the pdf I’m using so y’all can read along with me.

Before we get started each week, I’d like to share a fact about the author with you. They’ll start out pretty mundane, but since this book is long as hell I’m sure I’ll get into the weirder aspects of Hugo’s life before long, and there were some pretty weird aspects. To start us out, Victor Hugo was born in 1802 at the age of zero and died in 1885 at the age of eighty three.

Without further ado, let’s get started on the book!

[From this point on, text from the novel will be formatted normally and commentary will be bolded]

 PREFACE 

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century— the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light— are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. 

VOLUME I. 

FANTINE

BOOK FIRST—A JUST MAN

CHAPTER I 

M. MYRIEL 

In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D——. I’m not abbreviating that for dick or anything, it literally just says ‘D’ with two dashes after it. And I’m just going to apologize for all the names I’m going to completely decimate here. He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D—— since 1806. 

Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. That is the most Victor Hugo sentence I have ever read. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry. 

The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary- Christ. “Events succeeded each other with precipitation.” Okay… Sorry guys, that’s- that seems really redundant there. Let’s try that one more time. The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ‘93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,—did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest. 

In 1804, M. Myriel was the Cure of B——. And here we’ve got in brackets Brignolles, which I’m assuming is Italian. He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner. Oh same.

About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy—just what, is not precisely known—took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Cure, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly:— 

‘Who is this good man who is staring at me?’ 

‘Sire,’ said M. Myriel, ‘you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.’ 

And then everyone clapped.

That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Cure, and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D——. 

What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as to the early portion of M. Myriel’s life? No one knew. Very few families had been acquainted with the Myriel family before the Revolution. 

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was connected were rumors only,—noise, sayings, words; less than words— palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it. 

However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D——, all the stories and subjects of conversation which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one would have dared to recall them. 

M. Myriel had arrived at D—— accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior. Why is she elderly then? I know, I know, it’s like 1800’s France, but still.

Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire Magloire? Madame Magloire [this worked better in audio], who, after having been the servant of M. le Cure, now assumed the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur. I’m, again, so sorry about all this French.

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal expressed by the word ‘respectable”; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. So like, she’s not hot, but she’s got a great personality. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping;— a mere pretext for a soul’s remaining on the earth. 

Oh my god I hate how men write women so much. So this is not a modern problem, folks!

Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out of breath,—in the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma. 

On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general and the prefect. 

The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.

End of Chapter 1.

CHAPTER II 

M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME 

The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital. 

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Puget? [Again, it works better in the audio] Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in 1712. Oh my god. There are so many run on sentences which, like, I get and I am also guilty of them, but come on, Victor. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d’Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. I don’t think I have it in me to do another take of that, so again, like, that is completely butchered, and if I was just reading this to myself I would have completely just skipped over that list. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.

The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden. 

Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his house. 

‘Monsieur the director of the hospital,’ said he to him, ‘how many sick people have you at the present moment?’ 

‘Twenty-six, Monseigneur.’ 

‘That was the number which I counted,’ said the Bishop. 

‘The beds,’ pursued the director, ‘are very much crowded against each other.’

‘That is what I observed.’ 

‘The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air can be changed in them.’ 

‘So it seems to me.’ 

‘And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents.’ 

‘That was what I said to myself.’ 

‘In case of epidemics,—we have had the typhus fever this year; we had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at times,—we know not what to do.’ 

‘That is the thought which occurred to me.’ 

‘What would you have, Monseigneur?’ said the director. 

‘One must resign one’s self.’ 

This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground-floor. 

Oh my god. He’s as bad as Hemmingway, there were like no dialogue tags. Anything that was like, ‘oh yeah, it looked like that to me’ that was the bishop just so you guys all know.

This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground-floor.

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital. 

‘Monsieur,’ said he, ‘how many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?’ 

‘Monseigneur’s dining-room?’ exclaimed the stupefied director. 

The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking measures and calculations with his eyes. 

‘It would hold full twenty beds,’ said he, as though speaking to himself. Then, raising his voice:— 

‘Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.’

On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the Bishop’s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital. 

M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage. M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, There is just one sentence every now and then that I just cannot get. Let’s try this one more time.  On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital,  M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own hand:—

And here’s the note.

 NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES. 

For the little seminary … … … …. . 1,500 livres 

Society of the mission … … … …. . 100 ‘ 

For the Lazarists of Montdidier … … …. 100 ‘ 

Seminary for foreign missions in Paris … … 200 ‘ 

Congregation of the Holy Spirit … … …. 150 ‘ 

Religious establishments of the Holy Land …. . 100 ‘ 

Charitable maternity societies … … …. 300 ‘ 

Extra, for that of Arles … … … …. 50 ‘ 

Work for the amelioration of prisons … …. 400 ‘ 

Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners … 500 ‘ 

To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt 1,000 ‘ 

We can get behind that.

Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the diocese … … … … … …. 2000 ‘ 

Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes … …. . 100 ‘ 

Congregation of the ladies of D——, of Manosque, and of Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor girls … … … … … …. . 1,500 ‘ 

For the poor … … … … … …. 6,000 ‘ 

My personal expenses … … … … … 1,000 ‘ 

——— 

Total … … … … … …. . 15,000 ‘

M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period that he occupied the see of D—— As has been seen, he called it regulating his household expenses. 

This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D—— as at one and the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted. 

And when a village curate came to D——, the Bishop still found means to entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine. 

Okay. I mean, at least they’re semi-equals. It’s not the best.

One day, after he had been in D—— about three months, the Bishop said:—

‘And still I am quite cramped with it all!’ 

‘I should think so!’ exclaimed Madame Magloire. ‘Monseigneur has not even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days.’ 

‘Hold!’ cried the Bishop, ‘you are quite right, Madame Magloire.’ 

And he made his demand. 

Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits. 

This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator of the Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D——, wrote to M. Bigot de Preameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic lines:—

 ‘Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and Chateau-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams. These priests are all thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my  part, I am for Caesar alone.’ Etc., etc. 

On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame Magloire. ‘Good,’ said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; ‘Monseigneur began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand francs for us! At last!’ 

That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a memorandum conceived in the following terms:— 

EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT. 

For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres 

For the maternity charitable society of Aix … …. 250 ‘ 

For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan … 250 ‘ 

For foundlings … … … … … … … 500 ‘ 

For orphans … … … … … … …. 500 ‘

 ——-

 Total … … … … … … …. . 3,000 ‘ 

Such was M. Myriel’s budget. 

As for the chance episcopal perquisites, that’s perquisites not prerequisites the fees for marriage bans, dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy. 

After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who lacked knocked at M. Myriel’s door,— the latter in search of the alms which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in distress. So basically, he organized socialism in his diocese Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities. 

Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself. Probably not in a sexy way though. He is a man of God after all

The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people of the country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct, among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu. Which means Welcome, and I have that in brackets there. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased him. 

‘I like that name,’ said he. ‘Bienvenu Bienvenu? Bienvenu? Tweet at me if I’m saying that wrong. ‘I like that name,’ said he. ‘Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.’ 

We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.

And that is the end of Chapter 2!

[From this point on I’m done reading the text so everything will be formatted normally]

Okay, so first impressions, or I guess third impressions in this case. Both times I tried to read it I didn’t get through the bishop part which is weird cause I actually really liked it. It reminded me a lot of Death Comes For the Archbishop which I read a couple years ago, and that was really good.

I haven’t had a personal great experience with religion, but it’s nice to see that in theory it can work out. I mean, it’s fictional, but like, there are genuinely good people out there practicing religion and practicing the way it is meant to be practiced, quote unquote.

I guess we almost passed the Bechdel test here. We did have two women talking to each other, and they’re both named, but it was about a man. It wasn’t romantic, which was nice, it was more about “Jesus Christ I wish he’d give us some amount of money so we can be a little comfortable.” Which honestly, Madame Magloire… I appreciate her. I appreciate all of them.

I don’t know how much of this is going to make it in the final cut, I’m just rambling at this point. But like, sorry you had to sit through like, two income statements. That’s probably not an income statement, I’m gonna get a bunch business majors yelling at me. Except I’m not because why would a business major be listening to my literature podcast. Checkmate atheists!

So yeah, let’s see where this goes.

Okay! So, well, to finish us out, I’d like to mention some more contemporary media I’ve been consuming. You know, something a little more recent than the 1800s. Uh, just so you know that this isn’t the only thing I’m doing with my life. I do- I do read modern stuff and I do watch modern stuff too. I’m not a complete nerd, or asshole depending on how you interpret that.

So, I’ve actually  found the third season of Twin Peaks at my library so I’ve been working through that. Putting a plug in for your local library, please go visit it. They- They are just happy to see people there. So, yeah, I’ve been working through the third season of Twin Peaks. It’s definitely interesting to see how it’s changed from the first two seasons. Cause this one was made in like 2016, versus the first two which were in like 1990 and 1991. And it’s a lot more gory and a lot more violent, which I’m not like the biggest fan of, but it does have a lot more of the surrealist and supernatural stuff, which I’m living for. I think it has to do with changing standards of media, honestly, and of what can be seen on television, along with the fact that they’re no longer the trope-setter. You know, they’re building off of twenty years of increasingly weird and violent crime dramas so they have to kick it up a notch somehow. So my favorite episode so far has got to be number eight, which is Gotta Light?And it was just gorgeous and abstract and terrifying all at the same time, and it was amazing and incredible. I don’t even think there’s talking for more than five minutes in it. Like, a giant portion of it is silent, and that is something I love in films and TV, is when they can utilize silence because we’re so used to having, just, constant noise, and I’m guilty of this too. I listen to all my podcasts on like two times speed because I just can’t deal with the silence. But it’s so interesting to see it incorporated in like, art forms other than- or I guess art forms at all. You know, as someone who took music lessons for like twelve years and then promptly forgot everything, or most everything. You know, the pauses and the silence are what makes the music, or it’s what makes the sound.

Anyway, so I just want to thank everyonefor listening! The intro and outro are Sunrise Expedition by Joseph McDade, if you like it, go check him out on Patreon! If you want to reach out to the show or bully me for my terrible pronunciation, you can follow the show on twitter @bcimtheworst and on tumblr and instagram @becauseimtheworstkindofperson. Transcripts will also be posted on tumblr. My personal socials are @imsoglitter on tumblr, instagram, and twitter.

Stay tuned for episode two and hear me butcher the French language even more than I already have! Why? Because I’m the worst kind of person!

[abridgedpause]

After eight years as an idea and four years in active making, Vision Éternel’s long-anticipated boxed set “An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes” is finally out! Released through Abridged Pause Recordings, the collection features five compact discs, one cassette, two stickers, six business card flyers and a two-page postcard insert.

The five compact discs include all five Vision Éternel extended plays released to date, covering 2007-2015: “Seul Dans L’obsession” (2007), “Un Automne En Solitude” (2008), “Abondance De Périls” (2010), “The Last Great Torch Song” (2012) and “Echoes From Forgotten Hearts” (2015). The cassette compilation, “Lost Misfortunes: A Selection Of Demos And Rarities (Part One)” features nineteen rare and unreleased b-sides, demos and alternate versions spanning 2007-2010. All of this audio content has been remastered and most of it appears in a physical format for the very first time!

The collection also includes a handful of bonus material: business card-sized reproductions of the original promotional flyers for each of the five extended plays as well as the 2009 flyer for the Japanese-exclusive compilation; two stickers: one of the 2008 band logo designed by Jeremy Roux and another of the 2017 band logo designed by Christophe Szpajdel; and two postcards with original artwork by Rain Frances and Pierrette Bourdon backed by liner notes. The assortment is packaged in a deep blue keepsake box, limited and hand-numbered.

An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes Boxed Set by Vision Éternel

An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes Boxed Set by Vision Éternel

The idea of the boxed set originated in early 2010, following Abridged Pause Recordings’ release of Vision Éternel’s third extended play “Abondance De Périls“. The year prior, Japanese record label Frozen Veins Records released a compilation of Vision Éternel’s first two extended plays; 2007’s “Seul Dans L’obsession” and 2008’s “Un Automne En Solitude“, both originally released through Mortification Records. The Japan-exclusive compact disc, titled “An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes“, included three unreleased b-sides and was bundled with a poster. When that compilation was released, on February 14th of 2009, the future of Vision Éternel was uncertain and it was promoted as a sort of discography of the band.

Once more material was released in 2010, Vision Éternel founder Alexandre Julien started planning a follow-up compilation compact disc for Frozen Veins Records, which would have combined “Abondance De Périls” and its eventual sequel, 2012’s “The Last Great Torch Song“. Unfortunately, Frozen Veins Records folded in the early months of 2010 and the release was briefly put on hold. Within a month, the compilation was re-conceptualized into a boxed set. This boxed set was to re-use the title “An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes” because Alexandre Julien found that it perfectly represented the mood and theme of the band. The collection was upgraded to include every Vision Éternel song ever released. During the four years that followed, a long list of record labels offered to release the boxed set, including Winterreich Productions, Valse Sinistre Productions, Dedicated Records, Dunkelheit Produktionen and Broken Limbs Recordings, which resulted in drastic changes in the formats and contents of the collection. Ultimately, Abridged Pause Recordings took the reins, following the record label’s release of Soufferance’s boxed set “Travels” in August of 2013. Thus ensued the long and emotional task of putting the boxed set together.

Between March of 2014 and March of 2018, many different parts of the boxed set were designed, crafted, purchased, manufactured and printed (and a great many parts had to be re-designed, re-manufactured and re-printed due to ongoing problems). Alexandre Julien envisioned the “An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes” boxed set as the definitive Vision Éternel collection, not limited to every Vision Éternel song released, but rather to every Vision Éternel song recorded. This would normally only be attainable if the boxed set was completed and released after the band calls it quits. But Alexandre Julien found another way; release the boxed set in an impressive package in the spring of 2018, but leave room in the box for yearly “add-on packages”. With that in mind, the keepsake box used for the collection was intentionally crafted bigger than it needed to be, so that as future albums are released, a limited edition pressing will be manufactured to retroactively fit in the boxed set. The yearly add-on packages will also include bonus material such as stickers, flyers, postcards and other memorabilia made to subsequently fit in the boxed set.

The boxed set can be purchased directly through Vision Éternel’s webstore as of April 14th 2018.

Release Credits:

All music composed and performed by Vision Éternel. Vision Éternel is the creation of Alexandre Julien. Music recorded, produced and mixed by Alexandre Julien at Mortified Studios from January of 2007 to December of 2014. Mastered by Adam Kennedy at Vital Philosophy and Garry Brents at GAB Recordings. Remastered by Alexandre Julien at Mortified Studios in January of 2017. Artwork, illustrations, paintings and photography by Alexandre Julien, Marina Polak, Jeremy Roux, Rain Frances, Pierrette Bourdon and Christophe Szpajdel. Layout by Alexandre Julien. Released on April 14th of 2018 through Abridged Pause Recordings – APR16. All songs released are exclusively registered to Abridged Pause Publishing. An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes is dedicated to Pierrette Bourdon.

Vision Éternel – An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes Boxed Set After eight years as an idea and four years in active making, Vision Éternel's long-anticipated boxed set "

[stormyrecords-blog]

new arrivals 9-22-17

stormy records

13306 michigan ave

dearborn, mi 48126 313-581-9322

so many great new releases this week!!! wow!! call or email us if there is something you would like to place on hold or do mailorder for. we use realy great mailers!! new items for friday SEPTEMBER 22nd 2017 VATrax Test (Excerpts From The Modular Network 1981-1987)2LP  $31.99

Trax Test is the first ever survey of Italy's pioneering, visionary, and influential label and mail art collective Trax, which ran from 1981-1987 as a network for the creation of collaborative projects. The collective included a pre-NWW Colin Potter and some of the earliest work from Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, but also had deep connections with the art world; a few Trax members went on to become famous designers and artists -- Ettore Sottsass of hugely influential Memphis Group even guests on vocals on the last track of the compilation. The whole selection here is rare as heck and sorely in-demand by collectors, much of it now making its vinyl premiere some 30-odd years after the fact. With credit due to compilers Vittore Baroni of Trax and Ecstatic's avowed wave fiend, Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving) -- who was also behind the Mutazione (Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988) compilation (2013) -- Trax Test is a portal to the international scene which laid the grassroots for a proliferation of electronic music over the proceeding decades -- a pioneering part of the infrastructure for independent music distribution which could be said to pre-echo the myriad social networks and platforms today. As Frans De Waard astutely points out in the 16-page booklet, there were no "templates" for this thing back then, meaning artists did everything DIY: from cutting, pasting, and Xeroxing their artwork to experimenting with recording techniques and disseminating their work; all resulting in a wonderfully daring and freeform mosaic of ideas which valued the virtues of ostensibly "unfinished" or open-ended work. Traces of disco, cosmic krautrock, jazz, electro-pop, and industrial noise are all tessellated across the compilation's 25 tracks, with a number of artists and the same equipment -- cheap drum machines, synths, FX and tape -- cropping up in various, mutant formations. This set is right up there with the best compilations from Vinyl On Demand, Light Sounds Dark, or Minimal Wave. Features: Cancer, M.A.Phillips, Nausea, Amok, Mecanique Vegetale, Daniele Ciullini, E-Coli, The Cop Killers, Peter Mayer, Rod Summers, Robin Crozier, Capitalist Pig, Biagio D'egidio, Piermario Ciani, Vittore Baroni, Nocturnal Emissions, De Rezke, Ado Scaini, Enrico Piva, Giancarlo Martina, B Sides, Colin Potter, Naif Orchestra, Merzbow (Vacation Of Merzbow Lowest Music & Arts), Monty Cantsin, Die Form, Utopia Production, Spirocheta Pergoli, Nostalgia, Ptose, Ddaa, Zone Verte, and I Nipoti Del Faraone. Mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy. NINOS DU BRASILVida Eterna  LP  $29.99

Nico Vascellari and Nicolò Fortuni come out to play in the dark on their third and deadliest LP as Ninos Du Brasil, taking their fascinations with ritual musics -- from Brazilian Afro-Latin tribal rhythms to library music and freezing Scandinavian BM -- deep into the festering undergrowth of their shared, exotic aesthetic. Where the cover of their first album for Hospital Productions, Novos Mistérios (HOS 411CD, 2014), depicted a naked man covered by a leopard pelt, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd's oil painting of a screeching Chiroptera in flight on the Vida Eterna jacket makes a strong visual allegory for NDB's finer tuned spatial sensitivities inside, with their churning rhythms now embedded in fathoms of dread space and father shaded in layers of processed vocal chants, both punk, metal, and tribalistic. The big highlight is no doubt the closing cut, "Vagalumes Piralampos", where Arto Lindsay, the legendary founder of DNA, chimes in on a stygian, moonlit jag between the eyes of bossa nova, batacuda, and the sort of esoteric electronics also charted by Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement or Cienfuegos. But it only really makes sense after you've expended your energies along with the band thru monstrous techno shakedowns such as "O Veto Chama Seu Nome", the soca-like rush of "Condenado Por Un Idioma Desconhecido", or found yourself lost, without coordinates, in the pitch black breakdown of "No Meio Da Noite" and have been hypnotized by the stalking rhythms and atmospheres of "Em Que O Rio Do Mar Se Toma". The creation of this album, inspired by vampirism, was born from a collaboration between Vascellari and Fortuni with producer Rocco Rampino, whose love of dense textures and low-end bombast masterfully and cleverly couples with the bands explosive percussive charge, resulting in eight tracks that mimic sharp blades scything through a nocturnal jungle. RIYL: Psychedelic Warriors Of Gaia, Female, Vatican Shadow. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Comes in a gatefold jacket. OZKENT, MUSTAFAGenclik Ile Elele   LP  $25.99

2017 repress, black vinyl. "Originally released in Turkey 1973, Özkent's masterpiece (creation) of an all instrumental Turkish Psychedelic Funk album, filled with classic beats and breaks still inspires long time fans and first time listeners. The funky rhythms, hypnotic percussions, and heavy break beats makes this a holy grail amongst DJ's and music fans alike. Only a handful of copies from the original pressing are known to still exist making this reissue a welcome addition to any record collection. The concept is very complicated, futuristic and free from categorization. Traditional folk songs mixed with rock, jazz, blues, funk and psych. Özkent took traditional turkish folk songs and reconstructed them for the new 'hip' generation. It was recorded live in just one day with some of the best studio musicians in Turkey. The band was made up of 2 drummers, 2 guitarists, 2 percussionists, a bassist and a Hammond B3 organist. Özkent created his own unique guitar sound by adding extra frets and a clutch of effect pedals in order to create quarter notes and emulate turkish traditional scales. Mustafa Özkent has since made arrangements for hundreds of other artists in Turkey. But this unique album documents his most revered work. In the more than 40 years since the Mustafa Özkent Ve Orkestrası recorded Gençlik İle Elele, it seems that the world is still just discovering this gem." SILVER APPLESSilver Apples  LP  $26.99

2017 repress. Formed in 1967 as a psychedelic electronic duo featuring Dan Taylor on drums and Simeon on a homemade synthesizer consisting of 12 oscillators (and an assortment of sound filters, telegraph keys, radio parts, lab gear and a variety of second hand electronic junk), Silver Apples quickly gained a reputation as New York's leading underground musical expression. Their pulsating rhythmic beats with the use of electronics laid the groundwork for what would become 'Krautrock' Silver Apples was released in 1968 and still remains an innovative and revolutionary album. Their highly influential sound has influenced countless bands from Stereolab, Beastie Boys, Blur and more." VINCENTFast Forward  12"  $21.99

Music From Memory return with four tracks drawn from the St. Louis musician Virgil "Vincent" Work Jr.'s cassette debut from 1987, Fast Forward. Following a compilation taken from one of Virgil's collaborative projects, Workdub (MFM 012EP, 2016), this album reflects a more stripped back and raw musical approach. Experimenting with rhythm programming, midi, layering, sequencing, digital effects, and sound synthesis, the Fast Forward sessions grew from a series of late night jams with Vincent's brother Scott. The songs that would form Fast Forward evolved out of improvisation, lending a unique often spatial and searching quality to the tracks. O'DWYER, AINEGallarais   LP  $24.99

David Toop, on hearing Áine O'Dwyer's Gallarais and the subsequent conversations between November 2016 and January 2017. "Sleep music, the underworld. Twenty-six letters were sent, not far to travel, from Proust, hypersensitive writer to his upstairs neighbour, Marie Williams -- 'I was rather troubled by noise . . . I was trying to sleep off an attack. But at 8am the tapping on the parquet was so distinct that the Veronal didn't work and I woke with the attack still raging.' Marie Williams played harp, though it was not the harp that dragged Proust from the fumes of a bedroom armed against asthma attacks, cork-lined to smother noise.. . . Proust spoke of an imperceptible breath, 'like the wind breathing into the stem of a reed', mingling with the subdued song of his dying grandmother's breathing, 'swift and light . . . gliding like a skater towards the delicious fluid', the human sighs released at the approach of death . . . 'Who's there?' cries out the old man, stark terror pulled awake at the faintest of noises from pitch black vicinity of an unseen doorway. . . . There is one voice or two, whispers of shaping breath thrown into far obscure and occult recesses of the space as if spirits on the wing whose feathers shriek and keen. They are swans with near-human heads, carrying the lightness of souls, moving between dry land of the living, subterranean rivers of the dead. Sleep music they make, its murmurs written by the method of 'passive writing', a transcribing of tongues unknown to all but the most open of listeners. . . . The space was a cave, a tunnel, a room without windows. A skull without eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, though as Beckett had noticed, the soul turns in this cage as in a lantern, silence 'beating against the walls and being beaten back by them'; the space was a chapel, upturned boat, perhaps the curragh that carried Maildun and his crew to the Isle of Weeping, the Isle of Speaking Birds, the Palace of Solitude. . . . 'Within a house described by Mary Butts, in Ashe of Rings (1998), the bronze note of a clock rings, 'like a body falling bound into deep water'. . . . The body descended into the tunnel, never to return as itself." Sky Music: A Tribute To Terje RypdalCD  $16.99

Guitarist and composer Terje Rypdal (1947) is probably as close as one gets to a living legend in Norwegian music. He has received a number of awards, including three Norwegian Grammies (Spellemannpris), the last being the honorary award in 2005. Sky Music is a heartfelt celebration of an inspirational artist and truly unique guitarist who hasn't fully received the due credit and recognition he deserves for over 50 years of music making. Initiated by the experimental US guitarist and lifelong Rypdal fan Henry Kaiser, Rune Grammofon put together an all-star band including keyboardist and long-time Rypdal side-kick Ståle Storløkken (Elephant9, Supersilent), bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (Scorch Trio, The Thing), drummer Gard Nilssen (Bushman's Revenge), guitarists Even H. Hermansen (Bushman´s Revenge) and Hedvig Mollestad, Finnish guitarist Raoul Björkenheim (Scorch Trio), and Swedish guitarist Reine Fiske (Dungen). Kaiser also played and produced while Hans Magnus Ryan (Motorpsycho) added bits and pieces and Jim O'Rourke beamed in his exquisite contributions to "Sunrise" from Tokyo. Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, and David Torn delivered their solo interpretations, Cline with the aid of cellist Erik Friedlander. AUBURN LULL Hypha   CD  $16.99

vinyl coming soon

The reclusive midwesterners return from dormancy with nine stunning, elegantly sparse tracks that showcase the band at its most focused, melodic, and mysterious. While distinctly sounding like Auburn Lull, Hypha veers into uncharted territory, delivering surprises at every turn. The hallmark cavernous guitars and vast, slow-motion expanses, though still present, are reigned in, restrained, and paired with a newfound sense of minimalism and a broader palette of sounds, textures, and shapes. While the band have existed for more than 20 years, they've always remained a well-kept secret to the wider indie community. Hypha is a brilliant example of why the band's rich textures and precise compositions are adored by so many. "... discerning ears will find that Auburn Lull's rich tapestry is as dangerously hypnotic and transporting as it is soothing." --Tiny Mix Tapes WIRE, THE#404 October 2017   $10.50

"Jlin, Frances Morgan profiles the Chicago footwork outlier. Meanwhile, inside the issue... Tomokazu Hayashi essays a user's guide to the pioneering electronica of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono. Geeta Dayal meets veteran Swiss visual artist and kosmische music producer Walter Wegmüller. Invisible Jukebox: Penny Rimbaud; Epiphanies: Noel Meek; Inner Sleeve: Paul Steinbeck; Global Ear: Portland; Unofficial Channels: Pop Not Slop. And in the Bites section, we feature: Hanba!, PSF reissues on Black Editions, Marianna Simnett and Dominique Lawarlee." GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR Luciferian Towers lp $22.99

cd $14.99

The sound of Godspeed’s radical fury takes a sideline on their impeccably composed sixth album. It contains their most melodic and powerfully positive-sounding music to date. RITUAL HOWLS 12" Their Body $14.99

Ritual Howls are a unique brand of industrial rock with death jangle-like guitars. Collaboratively, Ritual Howls create a surreal, introspective gloom that could fuel a disco in hell, a soundtrack to your favorite nightmares and most grisly fantasies MOGWAI Every Country's Sun clear vinyl lp $26.99

Every Country's Sun takes two decades of Mogwai's signature, contrasting sounds - towering intensity, pastoral introspection, synth-rock minimalism, DNA-detonating volume - and distills it, beautifully, into 56 concise minutes of gracious elegance, hymnal trance-rock, and transcendental euphoria. Produced by psych-rock luminary Dave Fridmann, it's a structural soundscape built from stark foundations up; from a gentle, twinkling, synth-rock spectre to a solid, blown-out, skyward-thrusting obelisk. There's percussive, dream-state electronics ("Coolverine"), church organs as chariots of existential fire ("Brain Sweeties"), tremulous, foreboding bleeping -Â possibly from a dying android ("aka 47"). Their most transportive album yet, it also hosts their most fully realized art-pop sing-along of their storied history, "Party In The Dark," a head-spinning disco-dream double-helix echoing New Order and The Flaming Lips, featuring Braithwaite's seldom-heard melodic vocals declaring he's "directionless and innocent, searching for another piece of mind". This is music as a keep-out chrysalis, protective audio armor through exalting organs and portentous, dissonant guitar fuzz warping at the edges, bending the world inside-out into a reality in which you'd much rather live. The last three songs ascend into explosive exorcism, closing with the colossal "Every Country's Sun," its searching intensity whooshing towards infinity in a dazzling cosmic crescendo. LINA TULLGREN lp Won $19.99

Lina Tullgren is from Southern Maine just over the border of the northernmost seacoast of New Hampshire. It's an unexpected location for artistic incubation, but osmosis is bound to occur when you grow up surrounded by family, friends, and weirdos interacting at all times with their own interpretations of creative output. Shifting in trainings and traditions, the 23 year old eventually found herself a voice with the electric guitar, uniquely flavored and shaped from the many years of fiddle lessons and classical technique. The shifts in genre and instrumentation are stark, but important for her growth as a songwriter. Lina's morphing interaction with music has mirrored a growing determination to harness her ability to melodically and lyrically express complex emotions - a rare gift at such a young age.With 2016's Wishlist EP - recorded to tape at the home of band mate Ty Ueda - Lina proved an ability to craft simple, introspective and succinct songs, each one a pulsing glow leaving you both hollow and whole, alone but never lonely. It is on Lina's debut album Won that we reap the full rewards of this newfound confidence in expression and rejection of internal hesitation. "The writing doesn't necessarily get easier, but I feel more comfortable tapping into emotions and going to those places that need to be written about. Won, as it turned out, is the product that I have been hearing and picturing in my head as I write and listen to music." It is the product of what happens when you push past the fear of what it means to think out loud - to become accountable for your internal struggles by way of manifesting your ideas into songs that are then free to grow apart from you, to exist on their own while always remaining specifically implicative of you. Now backed by a full band, each track manages to remain piercingly intimate, sometimes brief, and always honest, while gaining a wholly new sense of gestation both sonically and lyrically. BEHIND THE SHADOW DROPS lp Harmonic $20.99

cd also $13.99

Behind the Shadow Drops is the new solo endeavor from Takaakira 'Taka' Goto, founding guitarist and composer of iconic Japanese experimental rock group, MONO. Established in 2016, Behind the Shadow Drops combines Goto's disparate but commensurate interests in many different forms of music, most notably ambient, trip-hop, industrial minimalism, and modern classical. Recorded at Goto's home studio and mixed with esteemed producer and percussionist, John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, Yo La Tengo), H a r m o n i c merges Goto's dynamic, moody compositions with McEntire's renowned drum programming and percussive sensibilities. What begins as a passing resemblance to the more melancholy work of Goto's ensemble, MONO, slowly mutates into something otherworldly, submerging in a symphony of synths, drum machines, noise loops, and mournful strings (courtesy of Los Angeles experimental cellist, Helen Money). Resembling something like waves rippling in the ocean under a cloudy moonlit sky, H a r m o n i c is as eerie as it is beautiful - a vast abyss punctuated by seemingly endless glimmers of light. OMNI lp Multi-Task $15.99

red vinyl

Atlanta, GA trio Omni charges out of the gate in 2016, stunning everyone within earshot with their debut longplayer, "Deluxe"; a dizzyingly refreshing amalgam of wiry post-punk jitters & a dash of zen cool. "Multi-task" is their latest offering & all signs point to the coveted goal of "next level".Guitarist Frankie Broyles (ex-Balkans/Deerhunter) & bassist/vocalist Philip Frobos (Carnivores) crafted "Deluxe"s eleven tracks in their practice space with friend & engineer Nathaniel Higgins. They returned to Higgins for "Multi-task", recording basic drum tracks at Higgins' home studio & overdubbing bass, guitar, vocals & more during two separate trips to a remote cabin in the woods near Vienna, Georgia."Multi-task" is a more musically adventurous step forward for the band, keeping the frantic, fleet-fingered fingerpicking of Broyles' guitar work & Frobos' dead-cool delivery while expanding their musical palette & to include whispers of post-Roxy glam & Postcard Records pop. "Multi-task" balances the band’s trademark off-kilter & unconventional jams with an elegance not found in many of their contemporaries, Omni pulls it off with grace & style, still whirring on their minimalist funk-fused agit-pop while creating an album that is awash in the excitement of new love, or fleeting attraction - a journey from that dizzying buzz of first date pheromones found twirling on the dance floor to the cab ride cool-down to home (or wherever.) WAYFARING STRANGERS Acid Nightmaresdouble lp $26.99

cd $16.99

first few copies will come with a cool numero record tote bag and deluxe label catalogAs the hippie movement hurdled towards its emanate demise, bad vibes infiltrated the rock world. Tainted LSD, loud motorcycles, and a series of brutal deaths spawned inspiration for guitar-wielding teenagers across the globe. Implementing deafening fuzz and satanic screams to create their proto-metal monstrosities, short-lived stoner bands pressed their lysergic experiments in microscopic quantities before blacking out entirely. Lifted from the ashes of the acid rock hell fire are 18 distorted tales of dope fiends, pill poppers, and the baddest of trips. Deluxe 2LP comes housed in a blacklight poster-style jacket, replete with flocking and lysergic neon. 24 pages documenting the creeping existential dread of the hard rock underground are tucked into the gatefold pocket alongside two dead dinosaur-heavy LPs. Compact disc is packaged in standard Numero slipcase, with digipak and 40-page book, limited to 2000 copies. METZ lp Strange Peace $18.99

cd also available $14.99

loser edition vinyl

“We tracked fourteen songs in four days. It was the first time we felt confident enough to just play live and roll tape,” METZ guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins explained of the recording process in a press statement. “Strange Peace is much more diverse and varied than anything we’ve done before, which was exhilarating, but terrifying, too. We took the tapes home to Toronto feeling like we’d made the record we wanted to make.” In terms of theme, the tracks on the LP are said to be about “uncertainty.” “They’re about recognizing that we’re not always in control of our own fate, and about admitting our mistakes and fears,” Edkins continued. “They’re about finding some semblance of peace within the chaos.” Waxahatchee - American Weekend  $20.99

LIMITED EDITION PRESSING ON WHITE VINYL Flat Duo Jets - Pink Gardenia / Man With The Golden Arm  lp $22.99

The two a-sides here - Pink Gardenia and Man With The Golden Arm - were both originally released on the self-titled debut album by the Flat Duo Jets (1990), and have never been released on vinyl. These two b-sides are both outtakes from the original sessions for the album, but have never before been released. All four songs have been remastered, and are being released on special colored vinyl, in a deluxe gatefold package. Disc One - on pink vinyl 1a. Pink Gardenia 1b. Penetration Disc Two - on gold vinyl 2a. Man With The Golden Arm 2b. Bumblebee Boogie Grubbs, David - Creep Mission lp   $24.99

Creep Mission is an album of instrumental compositions with Grubbs's effortlessly recombinant electric guitar at its core, and its m.o. is to go both deep and wide. The album goes deep in the sense that the guitar becomes the relentless, meditative focus of these songs without words, and it goes wide in that these pieces utilize a discontinuous set of arrangements that make the most out of an extraordinary group of musicians convened for the mission at hand. Wand - Plum lp $20.99

Wand are back, with music colored weird orange and rouged to Plum. Teeming, dense, at times wildly multichromatic sounds; an idiom, an inside joke, a talisman, a bookmark, a mood ring, a long evening's shadow of loss and longing. And meanwhile all the shifting weather, the wireless signals, the helicopters overhead.... Tricky - ununiform lp $25.99

Tricky returns with his 13th album, ununiform, out in September on his own label False Idols via !K7 Music. It's a delicate, storming, intricate album that sees Tricky take perhaps his most radical step yet a journey into happiness and contentment.It's a record that shows the legendary British producer confront his legacy, history, family & even death itself. And in all of this, he finds the strangest, least familiar thing & peace. Laraaji - Bring On The Sun + Sun Gong (CD) $16.99

Laraaji's Bring On The Sun is a collection of brand new studio recordings, recorded by Davey Jewell (Peaking Lights/Flaming Lips) and mixed by Carlos Niño (Leaving Records). A magical mixtape of tracks that run the full gamut of ‘Laraaji music’, from blissed-out percussive jams to reflective vocal hymnals to trance-inducing drones. Available as a 10-track double CD with Bring On The Sun on the first disc, and a bonus disc of Sun Gong, the previously limited run vinyl-only pre-cursor to the main album. Laraaji - Bring On The Sun (Vinyl) $25.99

Laraaji's Bring On The Sun is a collection of brand new studio recordings, recorded by Davey Jewell (Peaking Lights/Flaming Lips) and mixed by Carlos Niño (Leaving Records). A magical mixtape of tracks that run the full gamut of ‘Laraaji music’, from blissed-out percussive jams to reflective vocal hymnals to trance-inducing drones. Available as an 8-track double vinyl LP which includes download card. Luna - A Sentimental Education lp $26.99

Thirteen years after they released their last new music, beloved indie rock band LUNA return with two releases: an LP of covers: A Sentimental Education, and a 10” EP containing six new Luna instrumentals: A Place of Greater Safety. Both releases will also be available in one double-CD wallet package. The covers album finds Luna covering the Cure, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, YES, Fleetwood Mac, Mercury Rev and others. Luna are touring North America in November 2017. Upcoming events at Trinosophes 9/22: New Music Detroit's Strange and Beautiful Music opening night with m usic by  Khemia Ensemble,  Juxtatonal: Jocelyn Zelasko and Bryan Hayslett,  YAK,  Joel Peterson (with Lisa Raschiatore clarinet, James Greer viola, Abby Alwin cello),  New Music Detroit (featuring  cellist Una O’Riordan) and  Rebecca Goldberg 10/10: Circuits Des Yeux 10/14: Grails Related 9/23: Trinosophes present Ryan Jewell Duo at night two of Strange and Beautiful Music at The Max M Fisher Music Center . 10/26: Joel Peterson original score to silent classic   Der Golem  at Toledo Museum of Art   EL CLUB UPCOMING SHOWS  (most shows all ages - ticket will say all ages or not)remember - tickets are cash only. this saves us all the service charges!! the spits, screaming females  sat sept 30th $15

cold cave sun oct 1st $18

joyner lucas mon oct 2nd $12

touche amore fri oct 6th $25

tokimonsta sat oct 7th $15

the bronx tues oct 10th $17

algiers fri oct 20th $13

giraffage sun nov 5th $17

kelela tues nov 7th $20

parquet courts thurs nov 16th $17

daniel ceasar sun nov 19th $15 MARBLE BAR (all shows 18 and over) tops fri sept 22nd $10

nude party tues oct 10th $5

pickwick thurs oct 12th $12

grails sat oct 14th $13

cults sat oct 21st $19

hoop sun oct 22nd $5

bully wed nov 8th $15

shy girls thur nov 9th $13

cold specks wed nov 29th $10 ASSEMBLE SOUND (18 and over) the blow, ema fri nov 17th $13