#the best part to me is that weird phase where amy is like. what is this thing doinggg�� (secretly affectionate) while metal stares at her👁👁

[willyhoos]

metamy is insane. like.

what if i was the hero you loved gone wrong. defeated and destroyed. rebuilt as my own greatest enemy. what if i lost everything. what if i had been reprogrammed to despise all i had once fought for. what if i couldn't even remember why i had fought at all.

and what if you were made of roses. what if you represented every beautiful thing i once died trying to protect. what if you wore flowers in your hair and cared for small creatures and had eyes the color of the forests i used to call my home. what if you were everything i once loved.

those memories are just out of my reach. infuriatingly. maddeningly. but if anyone knows who i am (who i used to be) it's you. if anyone can make me feel like who i used to be (who i really am) it's you. i can't speak, i can't breathe, i can't remember anything (but you).

you are the world i have been ordered to burn. i am the weapon you have chosen to resist. i was (am) the hero that you loved.

you are my only memory. i will do anything to make you believe me.

[foreigndistance]

6 Years of Mirishita Anniversary Rankings. (event log/memorials & retrospective)

Ah yes, the yearly Million Live! Theater Days anniversary event. You pick a girl to grind event points for, try to reach the top 1000, and the rest is history. Or maybe you just want to gather all 52 event cards with that new sparkling outfit so you don’t have to dump a ton of rocks just to collect all of them.

Since 2019, I’ve chosen to partake in the yearly battleground of trying to gain as much points as possible. The more popular the idol (or if they are in the key visual), the more painful your ranking experience would be. Or you could just go for Ami, Mami, and/or Ayumu with mostly dumping auto live tickets.

I was only getting into IM@S when the game’s 1st Anniversary dropped, but only started Million Live! Theater Days (Mirishita) after the event happened, so there was no 1st Anniversary event memorial. Hearing stuff about several people that actually got admitted into the hospital and one EmilyP running on bonito stock was wild.

For the game’s 7th anniversary, I’ve decided to compile and release the memorial messages posted onto the Million Live! Discord server, written after getting the event results from the 2nd up to 7th Anniversaries.

2nd Anniversary: UNI-ON@IR!!!! (2019)

Rank: #4352 (Kotoha) & #1717 (Iku)

I knew the anniversary event was going to be crazy... and I was right. While my ranking wasn't as high as the others (due to real life circumstances, school, and Internet issues on the last few days), I did all I could... until I ran out of tokens on the last hour and had to get more of these. Oh, what a mistake I've made. I've done all I can for Kotoha and Iku (mostly the former)… I'll redeem myself next year~

Looking back at the 2nd Anniversary event feels weird. I was a noob at event ranking back there, my highest ranking was reaching around the Top 30,000 players during the “Datte Anata wa Princess” event. It was back during a time where I didn’t take intense event ranking very seriously back there (and also when I had a social life outside of mobile games).

I will say though, the free pulls gave me Kotoha and Iku’s most recent SSRs (at the time) at least. They’ve become my tantou idols within ML! by then… whatever the definition of a “tantou” was to me before I rediscovered and became S.E.M’s producer at the end of 2019.

3rd Anniversary: CHALLENGE FOR GLOW-RY D@YS!!! (2020)

Rank: #1189 (Kotoha) & #907 (Iku)

as a kotohaP and an ikuP and a s.e.mP who had to rank somewhere else right before anniv started, that was the worst 21 days of nonstop tiering i've ever done. it was the hardest [mirishita] event i've ever done after nearly 2 years of playing. this year, i dared to tier for two despite one of them having the highest t1 borders of the event until 18 hours of refresh kicked me in the butt and borders proved to be too high. i did manage to redeem myself from last year's failure though. i don't know if i'll ever tier again for kotoha next year… or if parade d'amour will be a mess like how this event was, but i've done my best for my tantous and i think that's enough. otsu, everyone.

Part of the original “14 days of non-stop event grinding” phase I had back in 2020. I was just trying to get top 1000 for Jiro’s wedding event SR in LIVE ON ST@GE! (RIP), and right as the event ended, there I went for trying to dual rank for both of my tantous—only for me to get top 1000 for Iku but failing to do the same with Kotoha. I wanted to do both but uh… I messed up with the refresh timing back there on the last day. (Let’s not get started with the bugs that occurred during that event.)

It was my first time trying to properly do duo idols for this event, so it was quite challenging. It was also through this event where I first started properly called myself an IkuP.

4th Anniversary: Reach 4 the Dre@m! (2021)

Rank: #95 (Iku)

[3rd anniversary] was the hardest [mirishita] event i've ever done after nearly 2 years of playing. - me, nearly a year ago why the hell does this game keep pushing me to my limits? this was the hardest event i've ever tiered in over 2 years of me sticking around the theater. here it is, the event that forced me to drain all my stamina drinks and memorial items, awaken all of my remaining cards, and use up more than half of my memory piece stash. 4th anniv can finally join in the ranks of my other mobage in the "events that drained (nearly) all of my resources" gang. lately i've been having mixed feelings over the game itself and its recent updates, but Harmony 4 You! ended up being my 2nd favorite anniv song (i'm still sentimental towards UNION!! tho) and i consider it to be the best part of this anniversary. that, along with the limited auto live passes and increased cap for normal ones, those were a life-saver. events like this are crazy every time but tiering this year was a blast, tbh. not gonna lie, being an ikuP is an interesting experience. i became quite emotional two hours after the event ended, seeing what is possibly the highest feat i can go for my tantou. i try to go hard with my main tantous as much as i can but running with iku was genuinely fun and enjoyable. i don't i wanna try this stunt ever again but that was fun. at this point i can say that i genuinely consider her as my top idol in the theater. so... now what? i'm not sure if i'll be sticking around the theater as much as i used to, given the current circumstances (and an upcoming game to look forward to). hopefully the anime and mts will bring in new amazing songs that keeps me staying for a little longer. maybe one day i'll reach t1 in more events with my tantous in them once more. congrats to those who tiered, regardless if they made it or not. see you soon, twinkle rhythm. お疲れ様でした、プロデューサー！！

I pressed too many buttons and there came my first top 100 in an event. I made a whole Twitter thread documenting my journey through this. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work—even when my tantou’s event ranking borders are in the lowest quarter of the cast’s.

I may have overslept a bit on the last day, with my rank almost dropping below T100. Glad I still managed to pull that one off despite several things.

5th Anniversary: Watashi-tachi no R@inbow! (2022)

Rank: #136 (Iku)

"What happened to you retiring?" Nothing shows how stubborn I am with this damn franchise and especially towards the branch that fully brought me into hell more than tiering in the yearly anniversary event. The past year has been somewhat of a mixed bag, with several highs and multiple lows throughout. If anything, I would’ve actually retired as I hinted/said in the past, but in truth I ended up coming back to this stupid game for one reason or another. Or maybe because I care for my daughter(s) too much to fully leave. I did get some of my highest accomplishments (most recently, t1 for Kotoha just a month before this). So, yeah. I realized how much I give too many shits between my 765 tantous, especially Iku. I hope your knives are ready, I guess. To Iku, to Kotoha, to TIntMe!, to Haruka and Chihaya, thanks for the bullshit you’ve brought me into for the past few years. Otsukare y’all. (P.S. I want to try doing a t100 Iku + t1000 Kotoha stunt next year, but who knows really.)

Months before that event, I said that I was about to retire from Mirishita for a while after Iku’s last ranking PST. I had started drifting away from Mirishita because I wasn’t satisfied with what happened in its 4th year. I’m personally glad things are (mostly) okay within the ML! sphere nowadays.

Clearly, I did not fully retire due to various events I’m still waiting for. The memorial for that year says it all.

Event ranking thread for this one goes here.

6th Anniversary: R@ise a Good Sign! (2023)

Rank: #621 (Chizuru & Iku)

"I want to try doing a t100 Iku + t1000 Kotoha stunt next year, but who knows really." (me, last year) big fucking sike. a more melancholic reflection this year, but honestly i don't know how to process things properly since that day... my anger towards a certain company (after shooting down my main branch) has made me throw out all my mirishita event plans for the rest of the year, made me fall off both mirishita (and shinymas) for a while, and went out a revenge arc somewhere in another production for the sake of my tantou units. semi-related, but i became a chizuruP back in january (months before everything fell apart). i didn't tier for any of her events before that so uh... yeah. between this and a night pool party coming up, dunno what is it with me and wanting to "prove" myself as a producer. me tiering this anniv was essentially me fucking around and finding out what to do with all these event auto-passes, event stamina drinks, and a slacc event happening in the other side. i currently deal with three grown ex-teachers and two drunk ladies with top tier seiyuu outside of the franchise. it only took me a couple weeks to accept that chizuru could actually end up as tantou since seeing her seiyuu's collier de perles performance during ml 9th... and i sincerely regret that i didn't become her producer sooner. before everything else started falling apart. i don't know how many more events i have left until i can call myself "retired" from the game instead of the "semi-retired" status i've had for a while now. there's at least two more events i want to rank in, and i don't think i can fully retire until i got closure on that part.

even if i were to visit the theater less than ever before, i'll still consider myself as iku, kotoha, and chizuru's producer. as always, congrats on the 6th anniversary.

on a less melancholic note, i find it funny how i got 315k and 283k pts (certain numbers for certain branches) and somehow got the same exact rank LOL my last-minute tiering got me trying to aim for 315k pts for chizuru, but not 283k for iku. enjoy the clown compilation (from yours truly) from before the event:

Last year’s resolution clearly didn’t go well. Easily the most melancholic among my memorial messages because a Certain Small Indie Company (TM) decided to shut down three IM@S games within the same year, leaving a branch where one of 765Pro’s rivals would start a new life elsewhere without a game.

Reopening old wounds aside, I didn’t initially plan on tiering the anniversary event again until I started casually dumping tickets and tokens onto Chizuru—a tantou I had spent less time with compared to my two legacy ML! girls. I didn’t realize that there were custom unit titles for Mirishita anniversary events now too, so I wasn’t even able to grab the second title due to insufficient event points. I still think it was funny how I snagged the title for both idols and got the exact same points rank for them.

With this event though, it gave me a bit of confidence that I can potentially do a successful dual T1000 run for two idols. Which leads me into...

7th Anniversary: 7D@ys Smile!! (2024)

Rank: #254 (Kotoha) & #478 (Iku)

If anyone ever asked who my top 5 overall IM@S idols were four years ago, you’d get a slightly different answer. Looking at my idol sorter results between the FIVE STAR branches at the start of this year though, guess who was 6th and 7th? Yeah.

Last year’s run (along with watching the ML! server Ps do their own multiple T1000 runs over the years) gave me the confidence to potentially pull off a dual T1000 myself. With a better mindset compared to last year, I tried to pull off my 5th Anniversary resolution again with Kotoha and Iku—while there was no T100 (due to lack of resources and college), I managed to pull it off my biggest revenge from previous Anniversary events.

Started grinding for Kotoha in the first half, then added Iku during the second. Grinded for tokens so hard to try getting Kotoha to 1,000,000 points and Iku to 315,000 points that I have accidentally overkilled my token count to ~284,000 tokens by Day 9. Ended up spending the last 4 days of the event burning my tokens until I reached the points park because clearly I didn’t want to grind anymore in the last several hours. The last 6 hours had me chilling (while procrastinating on my assignments again).

I couldn’t decide what funny numbers as a target at first, all I knew was who to rank for. Then I remembered that this event would end right before SideM’s 9th STAGE this weekend, leading into the branch’s 10th Anniversary a few days later. Going from Million Live’s 10th anniversary → SideM’s 10th anniversary will be fun to see.

So I put into work added an additional 31,500 points beyond Kotoha’s original target, ended things off with ~81k unburned tokens on hand and:

Kotoha: 1,031,500 pts (10th anniversary & obligatory 315)

Iku: 315,765 pts (315Pro & 765Pro)

Not much melancholy from me this time, and a lot of things happened over the years. Kotoha and Iku are still in my overall IM@S top 10, and I really just can’t trade my time with them for anything else.

I give these two thanks for everything, as my first “true” tantou idols. (Now where’s my HELLO, YOUR ANGEL♪ and Give Me Metaphor events?)

———

And that’s all the Mirishita anniversary event memorials! Each had its own silly little memory surrounding it, but at the end: I tried my best for my silly little idols.

(Also please make sure to take care of yourself while ranking I’m begging you—)

[rubywolf0201]

Weird fandom takes I really don’t get

*WARNING*: May contain sensitive topics and to let you know that these are my personal opinions on the topics.

“If Sonic we’re to die, Amy would commit su*c*de just to be with him”

First off, I’m pretty sure that would’ve been a pretty selfish move on Amy's part since she’s one of the most selfless character in the franchise. IF Sonic were to die, Amy would’ve live her life to the fullest because she knew that’s what Sonic would’ve wanted her and their friends to do. Plus she’s 12 pls stop vilifying it.

P.S. I’m never a fan of the take where if Character A were to die, Character B would kill/sacrifice themselves just to be with them since I find it to be selfish in a narrative sense but also throwing away any potential either character would have.

“Rhea is a tyrannical and controlling bitch”

Huh what? Like since when? I mean ok maybe she could’ve worded some things better but she is not controlling in any sense. She took in Shamir, an atheist and never once does she forced her ideology onto the aloof archer at all. She took in Cyril, an orphan and gave him a purpose there. Cyril's support with Seteth has the latter implying that if the former were to have his own motivations, she would happily supported him in his decisions.

And this may go a little off topic, but she genuinely worried about Flayn's disapperance in the academic phase, expressed grievance when Jeralt died, gave Byleth a task of helping the students feel at ease, organising events, so on and so forth. All in all, Rhea is just one of the most misrepresented character in the FE fandom.

“Leonie is plain unsympathetic because her Support with Byleth and Marianne said so”

Well this take appeared on TVTropes but… how is she unsympathetic when her A and B Support for Byleth and Marianne respectively has her apologizing to the latter two for her actions. Really, I think that certain factions of the fandom judge Leonie too harshly and while I understand that she might be everyone's favourite character, but twisting her whole entire character and taking everything out of context all because of one notorious Support is just plain wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. The way her B support with Byleth happened right after Jeralt died did make her a little unsympathetic but I’m gonna say it’s the timing of when the Support happen. Speaking of Supports, I’m pretty sure she has plenty of good ones there such as with Lorenz and Felix for example.

“Claude hates Rhea”

Well yes initially. He was distrustful of Rhea at first in VW along with calling her out once you defeat Edelgard but his Support with Cyril has him changing his viewpoint of Rhea and as such it happens within VW as well. Also, it fits in with Claude's nature as being a distrusting individual (what with his upbringing and whatnot) but overtime with character development has him trusting people but not without caution of course.

“Professor Turo is into N*T and is therefore a cryptobro”

Don’t know where people get the idea that he is into crypto stuff but there’s hardly any info on his and Professor Sada's personality just yet. Again, while I accept any fan interpretation since everyone is allowed to take creative liberties, I think it’s best to not judge a book by its cover, especially since the info on Scarlet and Violet is just recent and we may or may not have to wait for a few weeks/month to see what kind of purpose Professor Sada/Turo may serve.

The same goes for either version-exclusive Professor being a villainous team while the other is good since I don’t want to see another Disney Villian Twist Syndrome™️ again. (Also them being villains with no foreshadowing would make it like an asspull or in my own words, last minute change)

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

EVANESCENCE's AMY LEE On 'The Bitter Truth' 'I Want People To Come Away From This Album Feeling Hope And Empowerment And Strength'

EVANESCENCE will release a new album, "The Bitter Truth", on March 26 via BMG. The band's first collection of original music in ten years can be pre-ordered as a digital version, CD, vinyl and a limited-edition deluxe fan box set featuring a bonus CD, journal, poster and special cassette of exclusive audio from the making of "The Bitter Truth". Every pre-order will automatically come with downloads of already-released songs "Wasted On You", "The Game Is Over", "Use My Voice" and "Yeah Right".

In the official biography accompanying press copies of the new album, EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee stated: "When we first set out to make our new album, 'The Bitter Truth', we had no idea of the pain and hardship that the world would soon face. While the planet suffered through the tragedies of COVID, racial injustice and economic upheaval, my band and I were dealing with the aftermath of our own losses, the unexpected passing of my brother, the sudden loss of a child by Tim's [McCord, bass] family, and the virtual loss of our guitarist, Jen [Majura], who has been literally stuck in Germany, unable to travel to record with us in person in the studio.

"Somehow through all these challenges, a theme began to emerge for us as a band. Pushing through is better than giving up.

"After touring extensively on our orchestral album 'Synthesis', we knew we wanted to make new music. In between shows throughout 2019, we set aside time to create together. A few days at my house, a week in the woods, just making use of our time together and getting excited about the seeds that were starting to grow. By the end of that year, we had the foundations of several new songs and the beginnings of many more. After recording four songs with our old friend and producer Nick Raskulinecz in his Nashville studio early last year, we knew we wanted to make the entire thing together. The energy and creativity was electric. Then, all of a sudden, COVID stopped everything. The pandemic turned the world upside down, forcing the album to be done sporadically, and at times separately, throughout 2020. We had to think creatively about how to do pretty much everything from that point on. Almost like it was the first time. There was never question, though, of not continuing.

"We had something special in that room when we recorded those first four songs and they carried us through last year. It was a big leap of faith to just go for it with the album and not wait or hold back or have any certainty about when we'd be together again, but we just knew we wanted to release our music and connect with our fans. We needed that connection, perhaps even more than our fans needed us. We wanted to be something in the world that wasn't a disappointment amid so much other bad news. We wanted to be part of the proof that life would go on.

"I never want us to repeat ourselves and I like to allow total freedom in the creative process, so we started experimenting with whatever felt good, taking it at times to a new level entirely, just everything coming from a real, honest place out of the love of music — nothing off limits. But all those rock shows we had been playing over the past few years really strengthened the roots of the band, and that sound and energy was cathartic. I'm who I've always been. Once again faced with darkness, I'm writing to heal. So here we are, naturally, making a brand new fiery chapter of the story we all love. This beautiful truth has been reconfirmed for me — it wasn't just a phase the first time around, and I wasn't wasting my time. These sounds come out of my heart when I'm being honest and I'm making music that feels like a reflection of myself. I'm proud and grateful to still have my band after all we've been through and all I've been through. As much as this album is an evolution, it also feels very full circle.

"The title, 'The Bitter Truth', speaks on one level to the world we live in today, in the belief that we must face reality, no matter how ugly or difficult that is, in order to move forward. But there is also an internal parallel: there can be no healing without first facing the pain. The bitter truth, for me, is that life is short and the choice is that I'm not going to waste it. Our mortality is fresh in our minds. This became fuel for our fire after the pandemic, the lockdown, through 2020 and making this album. We decided we weren't going to let anything stop us. We weren't going to wait around for the world to fix itself. We were going to put all our focus into finishing the album we started. Find new ways to keep on, make our own videos, whatever it took. This time has been hard, but having the music has been an incredible life-giving outlet for me and for all of us in the band. It was a place to pour our frustrations, our rage, our grief and our love to create a world we had some control over.

"Now for some typical bio stuff: They tell me that our first album, 'Fallen', is one of the Top 5 best-selling albums of the 21st century, and the biggest seller by both a band overall, and a rock act overall, if you're keeping score. We've won two Grammys and earned one of the largest social media followings of any music act (thanks, guys!) Someone wrote that our single 'Bring Me to Life' has been a 'pop culture touchstone' for the past two decades. It's still totally weird to me when it comes on over the speakers at the grocery store. These achievements and words of praise are nice but what's more important to me is that our music continues to inspire people to create things. Writers have written books inspired by our songs, fans have created their own anime. Films, music, visual art, even vehicle design. I know what this means because of the artists that have inspired me too. What I'm most touched by is what has grown into an immensely powerful, passionate worldwide fanbase who have a genuine connection with the music — a sacred place where we come together. 'The Bitter Truth' is meant as a gift to you, reflecting hope out of the struggles we all face.

"I want people to come away from this album feeling hope and empowerment and strength. Something that inspires me a lot in life is people who have overcome great obstacles — survivors. I hope we can pass on the idea that even when things are impossibly painful life is worth living. Leaning into those darkest, most challenging moments, facing them and finding we're not alone in them, makes us real. Makes us strong enough to take them on. And it brings us together, if we let it, in a deeper appreciation of the light... and the truth. Thanks for the memories. Now let's go make some new ones."

[malewifegrantaire]

The Birthday Thing

READ PART ONE HERE

PART TWO: Guess who’s coming to dinner hang out for no apparent reason (as far as Grantaire can tell)?

Combeferre had inadvertently ruined the rest of Grantaire’s week. It wasn’t his fault, of course. He couldn’t be blamed for Grantaire’s Incredibly Bad Brain. But still, “I just know Enjolras and I know he likes you” is a very reckless phrase to pepper into a conversation with someone of Grantaire’s constitution. He could hardly fall asleep that night because the words I know he likes you were clanging too loudly against the bars of the jail cell he called a mind. He didn’t mind too much though. The clanging was because Enjolras liked him, which made all of the noise sound a bit like music.

Grantaire picked out an outfit for the party and laid it out like he was a little kid excited for a school trip. Embarrassed with himself, he threw the entire outfit into his clothing hamper so he wouldn’t have to look at it lying out on his dresser anymore. Which was obviously a mistake, because now the clothes were are wrinkled and they were touching his actually dirty clothes. Which meant now he had to do a half load of laundry on a weekday, which he really didn’t like doing.

As he folded his laundry, Grantaire felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Huh. It was from Combeferre. Odd.

hey, are u free? sorry lol i am bored and wanted to know if u wanna hang out ??

Very odd. Maybe the wrong number? Just to be safe, Grantaire texted back:

grantaire is folding laundry right now, like a responsible adult.

Two texts back:

very interesting use of third person..

i can help if u want! i love 2 fold things

So this was Grantaire’s life. He used to be young and wild, and now he’s the sort of person that makes plans with people who text him sentences like “i love 2 fold things.” He typed his response.

uh, sure? might get boring, but i’ll never say no to an extra set of hands.

About fifteen minutes later, Combeferre was inside of Grantaire’s apartment. “You got here fast.” Grantaire said.

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Aren’t you always?”

Combeferre took in Grantaire’s apartment, which gave Grantaire such a wave of self-consciousness that he thought he might be sick. It was a fine apartment, kept clean mostly because Grantaire hardly spent any time in it. The ceilings were far too low for Combeferre.

“This is a really nice place.” Combeferre said. “Have you lived here long?”

“Five years, I think.” Grantaire said. “I think the landlord thought I’d have left by now, but, well. I’m still here.”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s nice. Good windows. Not easy to come by.”

Grantaire laughed at that. “Hey, was there something you wanted to talk about? Or are you just here to admire my big beautiful windows?”

Combeferre looked slightly embarrassed. “Uh, the latter, I guess.” he said. “I mean, just what I texted, I was bored, and I guess . . . I don’t know. I guess I thought we could just hang out?”

Now it was Grantaire’s turn to be embarrassed. Of course. Combeferre is the sort of person who’s actually, you know, decent. He was just trying to be nice and Grantaire was accusing him of having an ulterior motive. Way to go. Grantaire cleared his throat. “Well, thanks for coming. Feel free to park wherever. I only did a half load of laundry so I’m finished folding, sorry. I know how much you love to fold.”

“I went through a very intense Marie Kondo phase.” Combeferre grinned. “Let me know if you ever need your closet to be reorganized.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Grantaire said. It was dawning on him that, being more of the roaming type than the nesting type, Grantaire almost never had people over his apartment, and therefore had very little hosting experience. So he did what he always did in situations like this - said what people say in movies and books and all that.

“Can I offer you a beverage of some kind? I’ve got . . . tap water. And orange juice. And maybe beer?”

“I’m alright, thanks.” Combeferre said kindly. Combeferre’s fridge was probably fully stocked with sparkling water in every flavor for guests to sip on, the bastard. He sat down in a little chair by the kitchenette. “What, what is it?” he asked, looking at Grantaire’s expression. “Why are you - what’s funny?”

“Everything is too small for you in here. It’s like shoving a Barbie doll into a Polly Pocket house.” Grantaire said with a laugh. Combeferre tucked his long legs a bit closer to himself.

“Well, Barbie is a good role model, so I’ll take that.”

“I think an averaged sized woman or two might disagree. Anyways, you’ve got impeccable timing.”

“What do you mean?” Combeferre inquired.

“I mean that someone must have wanted us to hang out today. God, the Fates, some non-denominational arbiter of Destiny.” Grantaire was doing that thing he always did where he ended sentences in a way that begged the listener to ask him to explain himself. Why he chose to speak in these irritating circles? We will likely never know. Grantaire sure as hell didn’t.

Combeferre rolled his eyes, but he seemed more amused than annoyed. “You’re impossible.”

“It’s been said before.” was Grantaire’s reply. “What I mean to say is I’m literally never home. Not literally-literally, but, you know. This apartment is basically a glorified storage unit that I visit when there is absolutely nothing else to do. So the fact that you happened to be passing by on a laundry day...”

“... a work of divine intervention?” Combeferre finished.

“I’d go so far as to call it a miracle if I believed in that sort of thing.” Grantaire said.

Combeferre’s next question caught Grantaire off-guard somewhat. “So you’re an atheist, then?”

Grantaire had never actually seen a shrink, but he had the passing sensation of being sprawled out on some brown leather fainting sofa. Maybe that’s what this was, a psych eval. He’d get a message from the official Les Amis de l’ABC e-mail account later in the week saying “sorry, R, you’ve been deemed mentally unfit to be a part of this organization. We know the Musain is public property, but if you could avoid the premises during our scheduled meeting times we all think that’d be for the best.”

“Well, yeah, aren’t all of the lefties heathens nowadays? At least that’s what Twitter tells me.” he said. His paranoia would not rob him of his (debatable) sense of humor.

Combeferre just shrugged. “I guess if I had to call myself something I’d say I’m agnostic.”

“Huh!” Grantaire said, genuinely surprised. “A member of the ‘namby-pamby, mushy pap, weak-tea, weedy, pallid fence-sitter’ brigade, are we?”

Two things occurred to Combeferre at once: One, that Grantaire was quoting Richard Dawkins, and two, that Grantaire could not have been certain that Combeferre would recognize the quote when he said it. Grantaire was both the sort of person that committed Dawkins to memory and the sort that didn’t really care if someone mistook his references for a string of improvised insults. The more Grantaire spoke, the more Combeferre became aware of how little speaking they’d ever done.

“I guess I just think one can never be sure.” Combeferre said.

Grantaire thought now would be a good time for a subject change. “So, how is party planning going?” he asked.

Combeferre sighed. “It’s . . . it’s going.” he said. “Well, okay, I’m being dramatic. Courfeyrac is actually the one doing most of the planning. I just get weird about stuff like this. I want Enjolras to like everything, you know?”

“I don’t think Enjolras is capable of disliking anything you do.” Grantaire said in a way that to the untrained ear might sound like a veiled insult, but that Combeferre suspected was an attempt at genuine sincerity.

“Well, thanks.” Combeferre smiled gratefully. “I just want him to have a good time.”

“He will. It’s the rest of us you’ll have to work to entertain.”

“Well, Courfeyrac has a slew of party games he’s preparing. Oh, and, uh, Enjolras mentioned he’s glad you’ll be able to make it. By the way.” Combeferre said, which made Grantaire blush, which made Combeferre smile.

Grantaire hated that. Not just when Combeferre did it, when any of them did. Making faces or little comments, as if they were in on some big secret. It’s like they were proud of themselves for noticing Grantaire’s little crush, like they knew something funny or scandalous or cute. But they didn’t know anything, not really. Grantaire didn’t have a crush on Enjolras at all. It was more like a religion. Maybe he’d been too quick to brand himself an atheist earlier.

His annoyance with Combeferre soured the rest of their conversation. He became mean, curt, and downright humorless. This wasn’t at all fair, he knew. Grantaire probably annoyed Combeferre every third sentence (maybe every third word) and that had never stopped Combeferre from being his usual amiable self. There was another difference between the two: Grantaire lacked both grace and graciousness, and Combeferre, it seemed, never ran out of either.

“Well, I guess I should be leaving.” Combeferre said after a while, rising from the squat chair he was sitting in.

“I guess.”

“Uh, thank you for having me over. We should do this again some time. I had fun.” Combeferre lied.

Grantaire smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “Yeah, why don’t we all do brunch some time? You can bring your friends, it’ll be a real party. Everyone can sit around admiring my huge windows. What a blast!”

Combeferre knew he was joking, but he couldn’t decipher the punchline. What would be so bad about having all of their friends over for brunch? Why did he say the word “friends” like that, all sardonic and italicized? Combeferre almost asked him, but instead he just shook his head and smiled.

“Okay. Well. Bye!”

Grantaire waved lazily. “See you around.”

Under normal circumstances, the phrase “Enjolras mentioned he’s glad you’ll be able to make it” would have found itself fluttering in the pit of Grantaire’s stomach. Instead, there was something else sitting in there. Something that felt a bit like failure, a bit like guilt, and - most surprising of all - a bit like affection.

This is precisely why he didn’t like having people over.

[maggyoutthere]

It's funny how I'm actually putting effort on this. I'm putting actual effort on a shitpost.

Anyways I said I'd write a bad sonic creepypasta so here it is. Here's the catch: I like how its turning out so imma make it a 2-pary story. This is the first part. It doesn't have any scary shit but it has the basics for a shitty creepypasta: someone gets a old pirated/unreleased/defective game and tries them out despite getting warned that bad shit might happen.

Again I'm not a fluent English speaker so expect some grammar error and stuff like that ._.,

So ladies, gentlemen and non-bis, I present to you-

Sonic: Battle of Metal and Blood (Part 1)

Synopsis: Teen gets nostalgic mid-quarentine and starts playing old Sonic games. She asks for some cheat codes and shit happens.

So for context; I'm a 17 year old girl stuck home because of quarantine.

It had been 4 or 5 months since the virus sent everyone home. Students were playing Animal Crossing and DOOM all day to fill in the summer hours since no one could go outside. I never liked going to the beach so I was never really bothered by it.

Like many people, I found myself going back in time to easier phases of my life. I was rewatching old cartoon shows from my childhood, getting into MCR and P!ATD and just living in pure nostalgia. I also started getting into gaming again, even going to the point of setting up my Wii again just to play Epic Mickey, but I didn't exactly grow up with the Wii. I was more of a Playstation kid, so much that me and my bro got a Playstation 2 from our cousin when he eventually bought the 3rd one for himself.

My cousin was older than us; I remember him being 16 or 17 when I was like 12, so he was kind of our gaming hero. If there was a level in Crash Bandicoot we couldn't beat, we'd call my cousin and he'd do it in 15 minutes. He knew all the cheat codes, all the secret levels and extra content for the games he had; he was like a genius to me and my lil bro, so when he gave us his old Playstation 2 and games me and my sibling knew we were in for a treat.

We got this Sonic Gems Collection for the Playstation 2 from him. It's like a port of various older Sonic games like Sonic CD, Sonic The Fighters, Sonic R and so on. I grew up playing that game, especially Sonic The Fighters since I wasn't very good at the racing games.

I still had a working controller and a lot of free time so I asked my bro for help setting up the console. The thing was so dusty I was actually scared it wasn't going to work. We clicked the power button and the light on the console turned on. Me and my brother held our breaths as we put the DVD in the console and crossed our fingers. As the screen lit up with the SEGA logo and music started playing, I just hugged him and cheered. He set up the console in my room so I could play without having to go to his room (he was the one keeping all the electronic stuff) and told me to have fun.

I didn't even know where to start. There was so much I wanted to play now that I actually knew what I was doing. I thought about starting with my favourite one out of the bunch: Sonic CD. I'm a sucker for the retro 2D pixel games so that was a must. It was better than what I remembered; the music was so catchy and the art style was vibrant and it stood out from a lot of games nowadays that go for a washed out "hyper realistic" look.

As I kept playing, I eventually reached the level where Amy tags along with Sonic for a while before Metal Sonic bursts through a wall and kidnaps her. Oh yeah, Metal Sonic was a thing. I remembered him from Sonic R and Sonic The Fighters - and the fact he was in the fucking cover art of the DVD case. I absolutely loved the fucker in the games though. He had a cool design, and the idea of the villain being a copy of the hero gone wrong was so interesting to me at the time.

I ended up passing the level and even making it to Stardust Speedway. I was sweating since I'd never come this far at any game. My bro was there cheering me as I tried not falling on spikes or getting hit by Metal Sonic's attacks. I ended up making it till the end on top, but it was kinda sad seeing Metal crash face-first against the door like that.

I was done with that for a while, so I went ahead and played Sonic R and Sonic The Fighters for nostalgia. Again, the fucker was there, either as a boss or as an unlockable character. I ended up noticing how there were a bunch of games missing. There were empty grayed slots with question marks instead of the game titles. I couldn't understand if the game was broken or if there was something I was supposed to do, so I called my cousin in hope he would somewhat tell me what to do. He ended up explaining how the game made you complete all the other games to unlock new ones. I thought that was kinda stupid so I asked him if he had any cheat codes or something to make the whole thing available. He told me he was going to dig up his old stuff and ring me again if he found anything.

A few hours later, he sent me a message telling me he'd found something that should work. He told me he did have a cheat code but he thought it was best if I didn't do it. Here's the transcript from his message.

"There's something that might work but it's kinda weird. I got this memory card from a friend of mine and he said this should unlock all the hidden contents within the disc, but when I tried it some weird shit started happening. Most of the sonic games were unplayable no matter how many times I restarted the console or cleaned the disc. There should be an extra game slot but that's just a glitch. Something about the system trying to make up storage for the extra code. Just don't click on anything that looks like a glitch and you should be golden"

Well that was a bit discouraging, but we agreed to meet that afternoon so he could give me the memory card.

When I got home and plugged the cartridge into the slot on the console, I was kinda scared. What if the thing exploded or something? I gave it a try and the thing actually worked! As I clicked on the games section, everything was there! There were some vectorman games but I didn't know who that was at the time so I didn't really care about them. What I was more interested in was the museum. There were a bunch of unlockable promotional art and illustrations there that I never got to see as a kid, so you could imagine how joyful I was when I saw the museum section filled with pages upon pages of illustrations and renderings of the games. Some of them weren't even on the Gems Collection like some screenshots of Sonic Heroes.

I went back on the game menu and was surprised to see another game entry below all the vectorman ones. It was called "Sonic: Battle of Metal and Blood". What the hell was this? It surely wasn't in the cover art and a quick google search turned up nothing. Was it a glitch? It couldn't be; it looked too clean and intentionally made to be a glitch, not to mention that whole game titles don't just appear out of thin air. Game or not, something was programmed in there. I concluded it was probably someone's fan project that was in the memory card my cousin gave me. Why hadn't he mentioned it though?

I was too curious to turn down a mystery like this one, so I got up first to make a cup of coffee since it was already getting late. As I returned from the kitchen, I remembered to look at the synopsis of the game. I can't remember exactly what it said but it was something along the lines of:

"In this sequel to the famous Sonic CD, step in the shoes of Sonic's friends as they face their biggest challenge yet. Control Amy Rose and Miles "Tails" Prower and fight against the metallic faker himself, Metal Sonic, and stop him before he puts his plan to become the only Sonic in action"

Woah, that sounded exciting; I wasted no time. I got all cozy, kept my cup of coffee next to me

And pressed START.

To be continued in part 2

[redantsunderneath]

VAL and BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY

I shouldn’t be allowed to watch documentaries. All that any documentary seems to be about (at this point, to me) is the relationship between itself and the truth. I don’t know if it’s 2000's reality TV or that one time I watched Capturing the Friedman’s and Waco: The Rules of Engagement back to back that broke me, but what interests me isn’t the subject matter but standpoint epistemology of the thing. These two docs are very different, diametrically opposed in almost every way, but both are defined by the ways in which the text struggles against reality. Val is about an old man who used cameras (himself) to capture his entire life as he pretended to be someone else on film. He is infirm, occluding his laryngotomy tube to talk, and his handlers try to manage his naps around meet and greets where he sells the shell of the person he once was for the fans who still care. It’s forbears are archeological dead celebrity docs that try to find the elusive star at the center (Robin Williams, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) and those about reclaiming memory (Alzheimer Project, Waltz with Bashir) but it’s just… he’s the cameraman and he’s still shuffling around. Closest comparison (minus the age part) is probably Kid 90, which was being cut at the same time. This doesn’t get at how weird this is, though. He used to make movies with his brother, who drowned during a seizure and haunts the movie (he would put up his brother’s drawings in shots on film sets, the talks about or around the event constantly). He often hands off the camera to people so he can be seen in his world with complex instructions (when I walk off, focus in on that speaker so when I go onstage you will hear my first line) and when the camera hits a mirror he lingers (as in the video of his newborn baby). He seems to always be performing, an aspect of life we are all familiar with by now but less common when this footage was taken. His wife is uncomfortable on camera, usually mugging or hiding, and you get the feeling the distancing from his life is intentional as he focuses on internal transformation away from ego resolution, but he still needs to be seen, his sense of self tied up in an object permanence issue. The movie is structured as someone trying to sort through memories of their life and come to terms with them, although the memories in this case is a small warehouse full of video tapes and film canisters. In his current life he can only communicate with difficulty and tries to convey reaction with meaningful-but-of-what glances and gestures. Effacement by time and looming death drench the whole enterprise - when his brother dies he says his father “lost his charisma” (just contemplate that). His current simulacra of celebrity makes him feel like a ghost, signing “you can be my wingman anytime” multiple times for people who this means something to. So he brings up the footage and tries to reconstruct his life (his credit as cinematographer is both funny, touching, and chilling). This thing is full of interesting moments. He is doing a line reading of Hamlet at Juilliard and Peter Kass stops him to ask where the performance is coming from. He responds that he has never considered killing himself which causes Kass to explode, insisting that no-one in the history of the world has not had that thought. This seems to rob us and him of a potentially revelatory moment as Kilmer seems different, spiritual in an unusual way… maybe the reason why he never thought of that was more interesting than that point. His entreaty to Marlon Brando to tell him what his earliest childhood memory is is responded to by Brando asking for him to rock his hammock with repetition of the question only yielding feedback on the rocking until neonatal-fat Brando’s satisfaction at being rocked seems like an answer. The argument with John Frankenheimer who does not want to be filmed is something else. The major things going on are here are being haunted vs feeling like a ghost and an arrested Lacanian mirror phase that complicates his intersubjective context, with the karmic

self-assessment of who he is trying to chill in the middle. The filmmaking knows this and orients itself as a process of evaluating memory where what is true seems elusive, heavily edited, and hall-of-mirrors-like. The question of what is performance is a subconscious struggle. Conspicuous in their absence are his own feelings on his decline beyond the fact that he “doesn’t believe in death,” real insight into his marriage (and breakup, other than an allusion to his method acting Jim Morrison being a problem) and relationship with his kids (who are around all the time, but seem like Sixth Sense characters), and the fact that he’s a legendary asshole on set. This last is, like, the one thing everyone knows about him. But you can sort of sense this stuff secondarily, right off the edge of the screen and in him relentlessly projecting onto his parents. The real crux is the study of a man who never feels seen, but tries to become so by disappearing into someone else, who needs recording devices so that he can capture himself properly, all controlled performance; someone unaware of his own loneliness brought about by not being very good at making himself available because his “self” is externally resolved and constant inner transformation masks the unformed nature of his ego at rest. The film accomplishes this by allowing him to reveal what is absent by his preoccupations and bearing witness to his deflection mechanisms, so that he is no closer to knowing himself but, by being manipulated in a way we can see the frame of, we kind of get a glimpse. Good experience, wish there was more Christian Scientist material (that seems like an angle of understanding the film wasn’t interested in). Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is about a young girl who is followed by cameras capturing her entire life as she pretends to be herself on stage. She has a Simone Biles flavored psycho-physical compromise that everyone tries to “handle” while she sells herself as the person she isn’t to fans who care, at least right now. This is in the tradition of Truth or Dare mimics that seem de rigueur for female pop stars. Closest comparison is Miss Americana. This movie feels made by spreadsheet to contain scenes to develop the official narrative of an in-her-brother’s-room, in her suburban parent’s house, sui generis composite genius who is on the edge of mental unfitness trying to be as normal as she can in this crazy merry go round called fame. The obviousness of the put on is diffused by the relative lameness of the pieces. In some respects this is the typical documentary “look for the cracks for insight” play, but it is consciously using that as a tool too and doing it badly - the manufactured insight escape moments largely ring false. This comes off as a Zoom background era counterfeit, a series of YouTube clips where Markeplier or whoever lets the mask slip a little in the most forced bit of unbiddenness possible. There is a boyfriend who feels like a story mandated version of “from Canada.” But the interesting thing is the way it recapitulates the way modern pop is put together, not by writing, not by spontaneous “feel your way,” but by putting bits of ideas together and trying to emulate form. There are a lot of moments in the film that feel like they could have been real, but the non-actors were asked to do another take and can’t quite nail it. It actually has such a boner for produced casual that it is pretty much allergic to authenticity, which is quite a thing for a documentary. The major things going on are here are grappling with whether she brings anything musically to the table (the brother seems like the musical force, she’s afraid her voice is bad, they make a point to show her idea notebooks as work product), her wish to only perform if she can give the fans her best show (possibly her version of just wanting to call in sick, understandable) is at odds with her being the center of a machine that has to move, her as a product of a not entirely with it older parents who gave their kids an open creative runway

and now are instrumental in managing her as a resource that is tricky to work with, the work being her and her brother dicking around and making magic happen, and an attempt to paint her as a Beleiber who now is on the the other side of the fan dichotomy. Development of her style, arguably her #1 thing, is sort of left as her telling a video director “I drew this bleeding eye woman, can we do something like this?” and sort of suggesting through letting her point around that she is a de facto co director. At times, it feels like a try at icon forging that someone wanted to fail, but it is probably just the high school conception-to-production level tat ultimately comes off as a larger indictment of making a movie like you make modern pop music - overdetermined manipulation of flimsy elements without a satisfying ethos, that looks too be an insubstantial assemblage of spliced pieces that live of die by their stickiness. But it begins to feel, more and more, that it’s about how non-exciting pop stars can be as people and that a narrative that people respond to can kind of die if you show that’s it’s just work and somewhat normal people trying to be a piece of an illusion. It’s this partitioning away of the hyperreality and an attempt to show the official story acted by the sausage makers trying to pretend the banality is just crazy man. Where Val is a simulation of an habitual performer considering who they actually are selectively sorting their life and failing to confront the loneliness of age and death (more elusive to them than us), this is obvious hoax unintentionally (?) revealing the fabricated nature of the image-music industry by way of demonstrating the strangely normie creatives, green-yellow ombre or no, can’t be arsed to summon a proper freakout (the whining seems authentic, though). Music videos may lie to you, but the official story is strangely correct - kids living in mom’s house cobble together catchy stuff and pull off pop stardom due to social media age production savvy and a little zeitgeisty imagery, it’s just everyone is well adjusted if stressed and someone’s only donning the costume of the online archetype of a specific kind of girl. Val uses the constructed nature of these narratives as a tool wielded in the open to suggest the inner working of a mind failing to be honest with itself while the other is interesting in its transparency and failure to convince us of the loosely conceived fiction, leaving reality apparent as bong resin. Baudrillard would have liked this one more, probably.

[the-whole-long-stupid-story]

Okay, hear me out

So I really wanted to do a Michael x Maria with Kids AU / Future pic, and this glowy/sunny picspam is what I came up with.

Let’s revise.

Majandra has said previously she thinks that M&M would have 3 or 4 alien babies, so that basically makes it canon, okay? She also said Maria would be keepin’ it high n tight (I mean obviously, because she’s the queen of f*cking everything).

Click below to read my in depth rant about their life, their kids, their kids’ names and what m&m are like as parents. I was 3 coffees deep at the time okay, arrest me 💁🏽

So these pics show what loving 3 little Guerin-Delucas is like - exhausting (see top middle), but happiness personified. They live in a modest country-style home on the outskirts of a nondescript city, just the way Michael likes it in order to keep a cover of anonymity. Maria’s okay with their set up because the kids have heaps of space outdoors to play, and she’s close enough to town to get her “city fix” (Michael’s words, not hers) when she needs to.

Michael is absolutely besotted with his kids and would walk through fire for them. He is the best dad, all of his fears of being a terrible parent because of Hank melted away when he realised he felt nothing but pure love for his kids. He also has a deepened love for Maria that he never knew was possible, and he’s literally in awe of her most days (but would never admit to it - apart from special occasions or when he wants her to cook Italian without using half’n’half).

Maria is one of those relaxed, serene motherly types, where nothing seems to overly phase her and she spends most of her time just having fun with her kids as opposed to enforcing heavy routines upon them. She had 3 home-births (because you can’t exactly rock up to a hospital when you’re giving birth to an alien’s offspring), and she was calm and determined throughout. In comparison, Michael lost the plot with stress - pacing about their house, making the lights flicker and the cupboards in the kitchen rattle, until Maria growled at him for “throwing off her flow” and demanding he go top up the aromatherapy burner with more lavender oil. Max and Liz were there to help, and Isabel and Kyle arrived later to welcome the baby too.

When their first baby was born, Michael was absolutely gobsmacked and a little bit terrified of the baby. He’d never seen something so small, fragile and new. From that moment when he first held his first daughter, with tears brimming in his eyes, he vowed that he would protect every single cell of her being. He couldn’t even fathom what he would do if anyone ever tried to hurt his family. No, that was a lie - he could fathom it. He would blow the world to kingdom come if anyone so much as touched a hair on their heads. 

They take photos of their kids every so often and send them anonymously back to Amy. To begin with, Michael refused - explaining it was too risky to have photos of their kids out there in the world for anyone to find - but they came to an agreement when Maria, with tears in her eyes, mumbled that she couldn’t bare the idea that her mom would never get to know that she had grandchildren. So they compromised - they don’t take any close up pics of their children’s faces to keep them safe and relatively anonymous.

Michael was scared sh*tless the first time Maria was pregnant (obviously it’d be a bit nerve wracking being pregnant with a hybrid baby, right?) but it was also the best thing that he could have ever dreamed of happening in his life. Like remember in S1 when he and Isabel had that dream about having a baby? Remember he was so into it in a weirded out kinda way - like determined to be there for Isabel and be part of that dream baby’s life regardless. She had even said to him, “I’ve never seen you that happy”, to which he replied, “Yeah well, I’ve never been that happy.”

Guess what - now he is.

They had 2 girls followed by a boy. The girls are close in age, about 4.5 and 6 yrs old - their son has just turned 1. One of their girls has fair hair and the other is darker, but they both have Michael’s deep brown eyes. Their son was born with blonde spiky hair, but it’s starting to darken up. It’s still too early to tell what colour his eyes will be, but Michael’s hedged his bets on them being a greenish colour like Maria’s.

Michael would be quite happy to continue having an entire tribe of kids, creating his own little hybrid alien baby army, but Maria is pretty certain she’s done. Especially when he uses the term, “hybrid alien baby army” when trying to convince her they should have one more. Okay, maybe two more. She told him she’s really happy that he’s finally found some minions that find his armpit farts actually funny, but that he’ll just have to get his kicks from seeing all his new nephews and nieces that are due soon.

Okay, and lastly - baby names. So I have a suspicion one of the girls would be Amelia. And then that made me think that their other kids would need to have some significance with their names too, but Michael didn’t really have a female figure in his life that meant much to him. And then I thought, what about Hal? He saved Michael et al’s lives when they were in the pods, but I can’t see Maria agreeing to name their son Hal. So THEN I realised that the girl-version of the name Hal would be Hallie. 

So yeah, we have Amelia and Hallie for their daughters, and their son would have obviously been Alex James. Alex because Alex, James for 2 reasons - if you know you know, and if you don’t know I can tell you in the comments 😘✌🏼

And yes, just to kill my fragile heart a little further, that is supposed to be one of their kids with Alex’s guitar (Jim got it sent to a safety deposit box held under the name of a Brandy Wallbanger, and Michael surprised Maria with it one Christmas - The Christmas Nazi strikes again). 😭

[purplesurveys]

1046

Does it annoy you when people make their default of them kissing someone? I don’t mind kissing photos or icons. But hmm, I can imagine being a little grossed out if it’s an image of them kissing with tongue or if it’s generally a little on the sloppy side.

Are there any names you can think of that just go well together? Well there’s...a lot of names in existence lmao, so there’s a lot of combinations out there that I like for sure. I just don’t rank them and I don’t have a name combination of choice just yet.

Do you enjoy museums? I’m obsessed with museums. In every single one of our family trips, my dad has always made sure to book at least one museum visit for me so I can return back home happy, hahaha. I also visit and revisit museums in my own time, and I’m open to going to any kind of museum whether it’s natural history, art, science, ancestral homes, etc.

Have you ever met anyone famous? One of my coworkers plays the drums for a local band that’s got a bit of a following, so it was definitely a shock when I first saw his name in our work group chat. Someone I used to be close friends with in the local wrestling community is now an actor/influencer and doing a billion gigs and photoshoots all day. We’re still mutuals so every now and then I’d comment on one of his posts and congratulate him on how far he’s come.

Describe the scariest dream you can remember? I never like it when someone I love is shot in my dreams. The scariest dream I had recently is probably the one where I watched three planes drop to the ground all at the same time and explode.

Have you ever been to a mint where they make money? Nopes. I think the BSP had been part of one of Nina’s field trips before, but my batch didn’t get to have the itinerary.

Do you ever get really, really hyper? Occasionally.

Are you left or right handed, or ambidextrous? Right-handed.

If ambidextrous, do you prefer writing with your right or left hand?

What is your favourite subject at school? Any history elective, biology, political science.

Do you ever use Yahoo! Answers? For seriousness or for trolling? I used to read both serious (when I have a legit question) and funny (when I was bored and just wanted to lurk on the site) items on it. These days, when I have a genuine question, Google usually pulls up a Quora link which I find has been more helpful than Yahoo! Answers ever was.

Have you ever stepped on a thumb tack? No, but my brother did when he was a baby and was first learning how to walk.

Do you have a username you use for everything? Or does it change each site? I use my first name + surname for more serious, professional websites. Then I have a go-to for everything else.

Are you in Miami bitch? :D No. Not really interested in going to Florida at all, to be honest.

How did you break the last bone you broke? I’ve never broken a bone.

Have you ever used Nexopia? Never used, never heard of it before.

What has been the best year of school for you so far? Junior year of both high school (2014-15) and college (2018-19) were really great for me. There was a string of good events that happened in both, and I was able to have a lot of fun, gain friends, and have a number of positive learning and growing-up experiences.

Do you have any disorders or disabilities? I’ve always worried that I have BPD, but from the time I started considering it until today I’ve only done self-diagnosis, so idk. There’s definitely a lot more to unpack when it comes to me, mentally and psychologically. 

Do you ever watch How To videos? Not really. How It’s Made videos are fun to watch though.

Do you enjoy trolling? It doesn’t even sound fun.

Have you ever been to an emergency room? If so, what for? Never been.

Which emoticon face do you use most often? Things like: :) :( :D :P :L D: Most of the time I’ll use the open- and closed-mouth smileys. I use the sad face as well, and occasionally I’ll pull out the :3 and :/ emoticons.

Are you a musical sort of person? I mean, are you musically talented? Yeah, not at all. I can’t sing, read music, nor play any instrument.

How did you break the first phone you broke? So my mom hooked my first phone to a lanyard that I was made to wear as it was the surest way I wouldn’t be able to lose it (I was 7, which really should not be an age for kids to receive their first phones lol). One day I was being a little more rambunctious than usual, and while moving around the hook to the lanyard suddenly came off, and the phone crashed to the ground. It messed up the screen a bit and the hook also got a little fucked from there; eventually the phone came off during my 1st grade field trip and I never realized, and I lost the phone.

Did you have a tree house when you were a kid? If so, did you ever fall from it? We did not have a treehouse. My grandpa surely would’ve been the type to make one for his grandkids as he’s great at building stuff and working with wood, but it just wasn’t plausible considering most trees here are crawling with fire ants and other weird and potentially dangerous insects.

Have you ever been on vacation to a snow field? I don’t know what that is but I’ll go ahead and say no as I’ve never seen snow anyway.

When you go on vacation, what mode of transport do you usually use? We take road trips most of the time because my dad likes to drive. But if it’s gonna be on another island in the country, like Palawan or Batanes, then we obviously have to take a plane.

What is the worst show, in your opinion on MTV? The best? I don’t care for any shows on MTV and I typically think most of them look like they suck. The few ones I’ve seen, like Teen Wolf and Scream, certainly didn’t help.

Do you like Jason Derϋlo? Eh, some of his hit songs are catchy but I’m not a fan fan.

Are there any movies that just creep you out so much? Aside from everything about it being creepy, Eraserhead is just so depressing to watch. Midsommar is also a freaky film.

Have you ever had a close encounter with a shark? I don’t think so.

Do you have any hotties on your walls? I have a poster of Nam Joo Hyuk that Angela got me when she went to South Korea, but he’s more cute than hot to me tbh.

Do you ever wish dinosaurs came back to life and there were cute and snuggly? Not really. But it would’ve been interesting to see how they would look like in real life, and know their temperament and things like that.

How many countries have you been to? Aside from having been around my own, 6.

How many states have you been to? In all the countries you’ve been to? We stayed in one city/state for each country I’ve gone to - Bali, Singapore, Johor, Shanghai, Jeju, and Fukuoka.

What is a song you heard long before it became popular and everyone liked it? Idk about songs, but this was me with The Crown lol.

Do you enjoy designing things? Anything? Not my thing at all. This is more of Nina’s specialty. Girl can make anything look pretty.

Do you know anyone who has gotten themselves into a serious accident? Yeah. Off the top of my head, I remember my aunt getting involved in a hit-and-run with a motorcycle and needing to get a number of stitches on her head. My cousin Joelle also got into a bad car accident a few Christmases ago that totally wrecked her vehicle.

Can you play anything on the violin? Nope, I never learned how to play. It’s one of my favorite instruments though.

Do you know what a raincheck at stores is? Never heard of that. I’ve heard some people say “I’m gonna have to take a rain check” whenever they abruptly have to bail on a plan at the last minute, but I think you’re talking of a different raincheck here.

Whose funeral was the last you went to? Nacho’s wake. Never been to a funeral.

Who got married at the last funeral you went to? That’s pretty fucked up.

What do you think of excessively long names? What about their shortenings? I don’t have an opinion on either.

Do you ever get hay fever? No.

Do you know anyone with the last name Pilbeam? Never heard of that surname before.

When you were little, did you have those magnet letters on your fridge? We may have had those? I’m not sure. I haven’t seen the fridge I grew up with for a while now. I do know Athenna had those magnet poetry phases on her family’s fridge and we used to try to make poems with them.

Have you seen the Techno Jeep video on YouTube? I have not, and it doesn’t sound familiar.

Does your house have a wood fire? No.

Do you know what a Pibgorn is? I don’t think so. I can’t recognize the term.

Can you learn the lyrics of a song by ear, or do you have to search them up? It’s 50/50 for me. Sometimes it’ll be easy for me to recognize the lyrics, and other times it’s incredibly difficult.

Do you like the name Amy? It’s a pretty name. I’d consider it as a second or third name.

Have you ever got an x-ray? How about a brain scan? Just an x-ray.

[thepausedsforzando]

III. The Paused Sforzando

Part I. The End To The Remaining Effort

*******Introduction*******

   It’s been 5 years. 5 years and a month just about. This post looks weird in public because it’s first one. It’s also marked as III. On October 8th, 2019 I nuked my entire Tumblr. Actually, I nuked all 3: hunkee, digitalclothingofhunkee and thepsychologyofdarthvader. That was a heavy day. This series has been shotty and inconsistent, in that gaps have become bigger and the details have lessened. This could likely be due to the feedback and problems I’ve had with people in my posts when I would talk about personal things that were not only private for me but for them. Primarily, these inconsistencies and gaps are because I’ve slowly descended into more of a void of a human being than I ever thought I could be when my life was right. January 6th, 2016. That’s where we last left off. “We” now means, and has always meant, current Matthew, as well as the one who will be reading this. If any Where are we now? Corny, I know, but you wanted to type it.

   I have always dreamed of having a Tumblr where I had literally 0 holdbacks. If it was disturbing or could easily be misunderstood, I’d post it anyway. But coming from a Christian background where the Christian homeschool choirs I was in had its dark pockets of judgement, it, or more than just it, made me severely self-conscious. But that is tied deeper to why I care about what others think, and how their attention makes or breaks me as a human being. But I’m getting head of myself. On purpose.

   hunkee, and it’s other 2 sisters were that of restriction. No more. So many have lost touched, forgotten and abandoned me, so who fucking cares now. I may still care. I’m showing it right now, but I’ll contradict that.

   One thing I will hold back on is the private information of loved ones who never got a voice to choose whether or not to have their private lives posted here. I am transparent and honest to an extreme, and it’s gotten me in trouble more than I ever thought or wanted to. Therefore, what you will be seeing is the second draft, edited to filter out private events out of love and/or respect to those who didn’t get a voice. They will be edited with summaries and I may even redact names or change said names. Those people deserve it. And I should have known back then. But you can’t know everything. I could have learned faster, but respect is being shown nonetheless.

   Alot has happened from January 6th, 2016 to February 5th, 2021. What I choose to be here will be here, and other installments will follow. Where we last left off was- well before I say it, let me show you the progression:

- 2009: The end of my childhood and innocence - 2010: a solid year of happiness in the first chapter of adulthood - 2011: not bad - 2012: The beginning of the dark renaissance; the start of it all - 2013: The Darkness: The darkest point, the breakdown, the intervention and the beginning of me stopping any care and any effort. Laziness became my life. - 2014: The Void: Through trying with little effort, the numbness grew - 2015: I literally forgot most of 2015. The Void at its highest - 2016: The End: The year that I gave up, after 5 years of trying through abandonment. - 2017: Committing to my abandonment. - 2018: Rebirth: The slow growth of the tiniest voice within me. - 2019: Pause #1: Amber - 2020: ugh: - 2021: ugh:

Let’s just begin.

             **************

   As per usual, let’s recap from the 16th. My name is Matthew. I’m 24 and a half years old. I work at Patsco Windshield Repair and had for about a month. I have been living back at my parents now for 2 years and about 4 months. I’d been single for 1 year and 2 months. I still had my Roth IRA and likely got rid of my savings account due to poor management of my money. I had suppressed my love for Amber again, and it wouldn’t be the last time. I was emotionally void after raging and depressing for years. My life had no meaning, nor did I really have many friends or any social interactions. I had a car. I can’t remember what bills I dealt with, but it was likely phone, insurance, health insurance and idk.

   Life at Patsco was pretty lame. I would drive to the corner of a parking lot on a busy road, hold up a sign for a while and repair people’s windshields. Calling insurance companies and cleaning headlights. Great for a high schooler; pathetic that I was there in life at 24. The pay was $12/hr. I forgot if the hours were good. But the best thing that happened then was I read Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. I fell in love with that book. Standing on the grass next to cars at the red light of whatever intersection I was assigned that day. Immersed in the world and loving the darkness. I found beauty in dark things and gravitated towards hateful content. Who would have figured.

   Patsco didn’t last very long. Maybe I got fired, I think I did. My memory has deteriorated so much over the past x amount of years. As has my attention span. And effort. Anyway, it usually takes me 1-3 months to find work, and on April whenever, I became a delivery driver for Jimmy John’s. Yet again, a low end, dead end job. I lasted just about 2 years. I asked Asia to let me stay long enough to make it an even two years, but she couldn’t stand me and it didn’t go that long.

   Amber had either come back or was always there. For private reasons, someone in her life had jealously forbade me to come over and witness the birth of her first child. That didn't fucking happen with her second. I was there. More on that later.

   Remembering 2015, 2016 and 2017 is hard. I'm having to pull up my resume, previous entries of this series and go back to where I was then. By the time Jimmy John’s rolled around, I’d been back home for over 2 and a half years. Being numb and unmotivated, I was also an asshole to live with. I treated my mother horribly. There is much to get into about what I have learned about her over the years and why we clash, but I always handled it wrong and I still do. Too lazy to confront her. She saw me at my worst. Whatever I could do out loud, she mostly saw and had to be the victim of it. She didn’t deserve it.

   What I write about tends to focus on home, mom and dad, work, cars and not much else. I’ve neglected to mention Eva but once. I feel bad that in a forgetful and numb phase, I forgot when I met Eva. I met her on MeetMe, a social app for meeting people that too many guys used as a dating site. It was really, really pathetic. But I was open to meeting a significant other too I bet. There goes the hypocrisy. Take note. I just didn’t advertise it and let whatever unfolded, unfold.  Before I mention Eva, what happened on MeetMe is notable. I just didn’t advertise it and I'd let whatever unfolded unfold. This is where I was at: I met someone who lived across the road from me named Evie. I put what I wanted onto her and god fucking dammit I was creepy. We were barely just talking and I was gushing over her. She was pretty and I wanted to be with someone.

   My obsession with women had always been a tame problem that sprouted when it got to be intense. In 2011, when the neglect started, my creepiness, lack of social interactions and desire to have a girlfriend got weirder. Every girl that was remotely attractive, or not even that attractive was ‘so right for me’ and I’d pursue. Ashley, Andrea, Christa, Amy. I can’t even remember them all. It was every. fucking. woman. that came to Josh's and I's house. Someone I hadn’t been vibing with or talking to in the first place. That’s the key, you get to know someone and if they move that way WITH you, then it’s something. I always bash guys for pursuing if THEY want it, whether they’ve talked to them much or not. In my own way, I did that. I just didn’t assert myself as hard because in this context, it would have been awkward.

   Evie casually told me where she worked. We were barely acquaintances and had never met or even had each others’ numbers. And when I saw she was getting off work one night, I bought her the candy she said she loved and walked over to her in front of the store at night, basically a total stranger, and gave her the Reese’s after clarifying who I was. She was extremely quiet. I bet she didn’t eat those candies because she thought the psycho who I guess you could say stalked her poisoned them and is going to kidnap her. Fuck me that was stupid. But that’s where I was at. My desire got stronger and more obsessive over these 4 years. This might have happened in 2015. Either way, I was doing things that were not Matthew. Using a woman for sex, stalking one, and Naomi....Poor Naomi.

   We were talking as friends. She was beautiful. I wanted someone. She did NOT want to find a significant other. When she was reaching out for someone to talk to, it was a friend to confide in. And she made that clear. I lowkey pursued her romantically. We’d meet down the street of her house and park in a parking lot close by. We’d talk deeply, about her hard life. And I would be there for her. Once I told her my intentions, we stopped talking. She was upset, and had every right to be. When I was pursuing Amber 3 years prior, I was putting her newborn to sleep and said ‘can you say “daddy?”’...............................it’s hard for me to bring that up because as wrong as it was and I probably knew at the time, now I can’t....I can’t even explain the awkwardness and shame I feel for saying that. Like I devolved from already clingy/kinda obsessive/maybe on occasion creepy to.....that. To a newborn whose mother....I can’t remember if she liked me at that time. I think she did. ReGARDLESS.

   The last time I wasn’t like this was Ana. in late 2011/early2012. I was never perfect as I’ve said like 3 times with regards to my intense emotions towards girlfriends. Hell, I wasn’t bad at all to Nicole. But this loneliness, that was a combination of my fault and other things that made me do things I regret. I had my first one night stand years ago. Attaining friends was through the screen of my phone. I couldn’t make friends. I lost my ability to be social. I became more socially awkward. Pursuing women wasn’t successful, and my desire had gone out of control.

   Here I am, miles away from the original point: Eva. She was a female and I was looking for a relationship. Desiring love, affection and to get fucking laid. It came in the form of many creepy endeavors. I wasn’t as terrible with Eva. I liked her because I liked every female that came in contact with me. So it wasn’t even genuine when I told her. But we got past that. Wasn’t trying to get in her pants or anything heinous. But as that small phase passed, for the first time in years, I gained a friend. I made a new friend........it’s not that it’s hard, but was for me. I can’t think of the last time I made a new friend. But I hit the jackpot. No one is more loyal than Eva.

   She was an actual friend. She listened to me. I listened to her. We cared for each other. She invited me to her house and to outings with her friends. She cared about me. Someone finally did. It was nothing to her. Like it should be nothing to anyone else: you have friends and you spend time with them. But it was the universe and all its stars to me. I made a big deal out of it for reasons you already know. She was the true friend I needed, but got so late. I felt included, I felt cared about and I felt wanted. I think she’d even text me first! That doesn’t exist anymore! She became a bright spot, but it didn’t change what was coming.

   I got mad at Jimmy John’s. Aggressive driving, maybe dealing with the occasional dick ‘cause I was in an upper middle class (some would say rich) area of town. Having been void for so long, I felt I was at a dead end. I think I was friends with Eva by then. I had only been at Jimmy John’s for a month, not even. 2 days before Mother’s Day was when it finally happened.

   Despite the angel that had come into my life, I was still lazy and numb, but I feel I was more angry at this point. Regardless, on May 6th, 2016, I officially gave up. From neglect to anger to depression to laziness, it had all culminated to this. It came in waves: neglect, anger, depression, suicidal ideation, hopelessness, self-attack, breakdown, intervention, self-abandonment, extreme sloth, numbness beyond the realm of textual representation, sick of my state, denying help, anger and then release. Release of it all. When I say ‘I gave up’, that seems so small in text, but defined ‘the rest of my life’. This had been culminating for 4 years and I finally just gave up. Career? never. Healthy diet? never. Friends? They already all left me so nothing’s gonna change ‘cause it hasn’t. Love? either I said I can’t ‘cause of my mental state or idk. Being happy? it hasn’t been possible.

    I adopted a new phrase: Until death. It kept repeating in my head. I had a new set of goals and motivation in my life. My goal was to avoid being happy. It was to never seek love or really get anything serious, idk. My goal was never to get a better paying job, but get enough just to live on my own. Push everyone away, not get lied to by people’s flakiness. Be in a shitty apartment and watch my 30′s, 40′s, 50′s and maybe even 60′s alone. Eat junk food and clog my arteries as no one cares and everyone has forgotten me. What’s the use. I tried. I FUCKING TRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I couldn’t do it. After 4 years, I was alone, I had no social life, I couldn’t score a woman and I was too creepy to even get close to the first step, I had eaten junk food most of my life and it was affecting my mental and physical health, I couldn’t hold a job, I couldn’t advance because I couldn’t stay long enough, my mental health was blocking my success rate before I started telling people it was blocking my success rate, I was at odds with my parents, Missy was in Chicago, no matter what I did I just couldn’t progress. It wasn’t worth it. I just let it go. My life and my desire to be happy. And that was a commitment. Hard as it would be for my family to have to endure that, I didn’t do it for them. And they didn’t have to suffer. But they did.

   Missy graduated the year we're talking about now. To preface that, the whole family had vacationed to New Orleans sometime.....2014? idk, but my mental state and circumstances had made me a recluse. My family was outgoing, talking with Uber drivers and the person kind enough to let us use their house instead of a hotel. They experienced New Orleans and were having fun. But not me. I was not fully there. I was withholding myself from participating. I was quiet. if you knew me when I was myself, I was the opposite of quiet and shy. But the darkness had just become me. I was barely participating, sitting away from people and not saying a word, focusing on rooting my phone and occasionally talking about it, not talking to humans outside of my family and not speaking with a sad, distant, vacant expression.

    I learned something through my silence. Usually, if there were family problems, I’d be overly involved and not able to think straight ‘cause I’m thinking of all the perspectives and dividing my attention up multifold. I wasn’t like this in New Orleans. When I said nothing, I got to listen more; I got to see what I hadn’t seen all this time. Or at least what I didn’t bring into focus all my life. And that was more true sides of my family through their interactions. The fighting over nothing and people from different perspectives. The escalations and how my family just doesn’t understand each other. If anyone else is reading this but me, you can learn more than you can possibly imagine when you say little to nothing, sit back and let the conversation you normally are involved in happen in front of you. Don’t interact, just let it happen. Watch what you don’t pick up. Our compassion is valid; we can also get carried away and not notice what’s fully going on right in front of our faces.

    Much changed from that much as I used to. Optimism is ideal in moderation, as is everything else. My father was so aperspective shift. I learned more about where we are as a family and I didn’t brush it under the rug as ngry that my standout silence and being a weird, burdensome stick in the mud of a family vacation was affecting everyone and our time together. Not to mention my sister moved out...........2013? I forget. She had been in Chicago so we don’t see her everyday. Things had changed. I had moved back, but for a small amount of time, mom and dad had the place to themselves. That part of your kids growing up and leaving. He confronted me angrily and I learned something else by what he said. You would think he would say something based on how I’ve prefaced this, but instead what uttered from is angry face was:

“Do you have any idea how much money I’ve spent?!”

    Sometimes, maybe many times, the way you say something or the first thing you say reflects where your focus is at. I disagree this is always the case. But in that moment, I believe as a man whose life revolved around providing for his family for 20 years, became focused on that primarily. The man can love. The man loves him family incomprehensibly. Never doubt that. But I learned not only of his perspective but how men (traditionally and mostly) make their life’s purpose of providing....larger than love, communication and interaction. All of that is still there in my father at this point, but when it wasn’t, I learned why.

    Back to the point, Missy was graduating. I had been at Jimmy John’s a bit and even though New Orleans was a while ago, I only got worse for vacations. And going to Chicago was..........terrible. My sister had always been a social butterfly and extravertive. Our personalities were now white and black. I didn’t know how to talk to people. I didn’t know how to socialize. I didn’t want to. I’d been burned so much that I forgot how to be a human being, and also tried not to be. The silence and seclusion as people were in my sister’s living room, talking, was bizarre. People would kindly ask me about me and raise small talk and I don’t remember how much I’d say if I said anything. I think I’d straight up ignore people. It was extremely awkward. I was introvertive, shy, quiet, ignoring and reserved like I was an extreme trauma victim or a mute (no offence meant to either an victim of a crippling trauma or mutes). My sister was in love and trying with this man that turned out to be an asshole. But at the time, my sister was showing me her life and a very important man in her life and I was just letting it pass me by. Was it as simple as just getting over it? Faking it and putting on a face? That, is the opposite of who I am, and I couldn’t just shake this off. I was alone for 4 years and upset about it. It changed me so much that you don’t just pull out of that. Who Matthew IS. PERIOD. at this point. IS. too far gone from who he really is and so deeply warped and shaped by his depression that who he IS is hopeless and functionless.

    Her boyfriend got me a present. I practically said nothing. I watched my sister graduate. I don’t remember it. This is trauma. This has affected my caring, my memory and my attention span. I’m not myself or a functioning human. PSA: it is possible to get out of the habit of many things you don’t think you could get out of the habit of. Like social interaction, how to talk to people, react to things. It wasn’t the darkest point, but such a troublesome time. I was 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% darkness and 00.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% myself. There has always been a voice inside that never wanted this. That disagreed with the (verbal) self harm I’d convince myself. After a while, if you tell yourself the same thing, whether it’s good or destructive, you’ll believe it. You’ll trick you mind. Same thing with your environment. You become affected and accustomed to your environment to some extent. When you don��t realize it.

But this was never me. Me just got smaller. The darkness took over. The darkness was my Caretaker, which leads me to...

[cptnsantiago]

take me home

10/?

~ i would give it all, i would sacrifice

read on ao3

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SPOILERS FOR 7x04

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It was the final ride.

Maybe it was dramatic to be narrating in his head like it was some huge life altering finale to something, but surely he was allowed to be dramatic about getting a new car. It wasn’t just a new car either — they were getting a family car. A car, purposefully bought for their growing family.

It was in part three of Amy’s family planning binders (of which there were three thick binders). Part one and two of the first binder were pretty simple, finding a good OB, researching preschools and getting onto said preschool waiting lists. This part was probably the most expensive part of their list, apart from actually having a baby and paying for everything that baby needs for the first eighteen years of their life. 

Trading in his old, crappy car to get a new, shiny, and hopefully, cool family safe car was a big deal. This was all a big deal — they were making a baby. Jake wishes he could take the DeLorean for a spin just to let young Jake know to get ready for the wild ride he would be in for once he joined the ninety-ninth precinct. 

Are DeLorean’s kid friendly? Probably not.

A quick google search proves his hunch to be correct, but god, that would have been awesome. He wishes he could say he’ll miss this car, but trading it in for a car with actual windows that weren’t shower curtains (because he was still too lazy to get it fixed) will be nice. They had done far too much research into a good car for Jake to be upset about something new and fresh.

Jake briefly wonders what it’ll be like when their kid is born — Boyle hadn’t failed to tell him something great about having kids everyday since he found out they were trying — so now Jake knew all about how good newborn babies smelt. It was weird, but he definitely wanted to compare the new car smell with the newborn baby smell when he could.

He was really turning into Boyle with how excited he was about it all. Amy hadn’t pointed it out since that day in the elevator, but now he could really hear how cringy saying mischief managed was after sex.

Jake wasn’t going to miss the window that wouldn’t roll up properly, or the weird smell coming from his trunk no matter how many times he cleaned it. There were many memories connected to this beaten down car, mostly tied to Amy — but just like proposing to Amy, and deciding to start their family together — there was no doubt in his mind that it was time to give up this car. 

If he still had his mustang, it would be a whole different story. Not that Jake wouldn’t give anything up for Amy and their family in a heartbeat; if he still had the mustang today, the goodbye would be way more bittersweet. Jake already had his cry about it when he sold it so he could payback Terry years earlier, but just remembering the car that changed his life brought a tear to his eye. 

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that his second day on the job, the day he pushed that perp against his car, had changed his life. Eleven blocks he ran after the guy, and he remembers the feeling of pride encasing him all while the guy called him a pig and told him to rot in hell. Jake doesn’t think he could pull off an eleven block chase today, as much as he hated to admit it, he was entering the older side of adulthood. It makes him shudder to think that he would soon be entering the middle aged man phase. 

It was definitely one of the best days of his life, despite it triggering his crushing debt for years to come which he had barely just recovered from. So yeah, that car changed his entire life — it was essentially where he fell in love with Amy. 

He was hardly speaking metaphorically. Their first date, even if it was only for a bet, was in that car. Jake had his first real conversations with Amy that night, and he had the time of his life. Nothing happened between them for a long time after that, and by the time he told Amy that he loved her for the first time, his mustang was long gone. But it still held that special place in his heart for the beginnings of his relationship with the woman who was now his wife and now the future mother of their children. 

This was a story he couldn’t wait to tell their kids about. Jake was really going to be that dad who told their children stories about their parents relationship just because he was so in love with Amy. He thought books were overrated compared to the stories he could tell about him and Amy — his stories would well and truly trump any story about a dumb turtle and bunny race. Alas, Amy was his amazing Amy, and had already started adding children’s books to their Amazon wish list because they would 100% be giant book nerds. 

The anticipatory anxiety intensifies as they pull up to the car dealership. Amy seems just as nervously excited as he is, but Jake suspects that she’s mostly thrilled to get rid of the piece of junk he calls a car. They aren’t getting much for the car, only a small fraction of the price would be cut off whatever new car they choose. Savings were savings, so they wouldn’t say no. 

He’s not particularly emotional when he does say goodbye to the car — most of his feelings in the moment were related to picking a new car for their family. Not to mention the swell of emotions that came every time he thought of them having a real baby.

Even if Jake could really go to the past to tell past-Jake all about his future, he knows his past self wouldn’t believe him. Being at a place in his life where he was confident to become a father, and with Amy of all people, is something he never thought he would achieve. Not long ago he had felt the same, that he was too damaged from his own experience with his unreliable father to be a good dad himself. Everyday since they had decided to start trying, Jake was doing everything in his ability to prove that he wasn’t going to be like his father, Jake would be better than that. He was still afraid now, at the idea of becoming a father. But with Amy by his side and his epic skills handling Pam and the bomb — it was now a fear he can tackle head on and know he’d be okay in the end. 

Amy made sure to not let go of his hand the entire time at the car dealership, pointing out every back seat to remind him that’s where their baby would sit. As if Jake could forget, he could imagine it clear as day. 

The medium sized champagne coloured sedan isn’t what he expected. They’d done their research on safety features and what-not, but he really hadn’t imagined what the car would look like. The test drive goes perfectly — even there, Amy’s hand is still present on his knee and squeezing whenever she felt overwhelmed by it all. Jake could definitely relate, but he had to stick to squeezing the car wheel. 

The colour and make of the car did make him feel a bit older than he really wanted to feel, but Amy was so set on it by the time they got back to the dealership so he knew it was a done deal. It had all their preferences when it came to safety features while still including heated car seats which, Amy had insisted to the saleswoman, was a necessity. The lady had been confused when Jake agreed with a hearty nod; there was probably no woman in the world more passionate about keeping her bottom warm during the winter than Amy Santiago. 

Jake would get used to the lameness the car radiated, because soon enough, the baby inside it would make it much cooler. Besides, the more he thought about it, it was really rebellious car being the colour of an alcohol. This car was cool. 

At least Amy definitely made it feel good when they left the dealership hand in hand, the keys to their new family car in her hand as she suggested the stop for some champagne of their own before continuing the sensuous journey to parenthood. 

[cutegirlmayra]

Prompt Idea - What would happen if Amy is a boy instead of a girl in the series?

I’m trying to find all the times I’ve done this -so I don’t repeat myself!- (x) and I know I made a Sonic Boom prompt about Amy turning into a boy and being comforted by Sonic, but I can’t seem to find it? (If you wonderful Cuties do find it, please let me know and send me the link!)

PROMPTS ARE ON SHUTDOWN! Do not send me any prompts, but do look forward to the grand re-opening!

Also, thanks for minding the rules!

Gonna combine this with Valentine’s day, is that okay, Precious Anon?

Prompt:

After successfully fighting off evil and robotnik’s annoying schemes, Amil and Sonic waved goodbye to Tails and Knuckles, deciding to take the scenic route to Amil’s home.

Amil placed his hands behind his head, looking up at the clouds. “Man… It’s gonna be Valentine’s day soon…” He longingly lingered his eyes on a couple as they entered the city, cuddling on a bench.

“You’re still on about that?” Sonic joked, laughing at his sentimentality.

Amil puckered his lips in a pout, glaring a bit at Sonic, “Is it so wrong to want to be loved and love in return?”

“Pfft! It’s just funny you think about it.” Sonic scratched his nose, smirking. “What kind of girl would you be into, anyway?” he nudged him, winking. “I could see you with a strong-willed girl as a contender!”

Amil looked away a bit, turning slightly shy. “Actually… I wouldn’t mind if I found a girl a lot like you, Sonic.”

Sonic flinched a moment, but gave Amil a weird look, “I’m not following that…”

Amil took some courage and huffed out his nose, placing his hands on his hips. “Look, I’ve got a mean swing and a knack for destruction. But deep down, I’d liked to chase after something a little more lasting… Your way of life,” He turned to him, turning sincere. “The confident way you hold yourself,… Do you happen to have a sister by chance?”

Sonic punched him in the face.

“Offph!”

“Quit that. You’re sounding weird.”

Amil rubbed his face and raced back to Sonic’s side, “Hey! Come on! If I was a girl, you’d be head-over-heels for me!” he pointed accusingly. “I would be the cutest, strongest, most confident person there ever was!”

“You already are.” Sonic rolled his eyes, “I think I get what you mean, though. You want someone who would follow your way of life, a companion and partner who wouldn’t mind who you are and what you do.”

“A best friend! Kinda like you, I guess.” Amil blushed slightly and looked away, “Is it wrong to say that?”

Sonic remained silent but stopped a moment to look towards the sun lighting up City Square. “You really consider me someone who would be a good companion?”

Amil stopped too, staring at Sonic, intrigued. “I mean… You wouldn’t really marry though, right? I can’t see you as that type.” Amil joked, rubbing his head. “Shame, I think you could be someone’s shining knight, so to speak.” He then sighed, relaxing a bit. “Sorry for the weird convo. I just was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to have someone like your best friend? But reversed? Just a thought, I suppose.” He scratched his own nose.

Suddenly, an explosion went off and the two turned to the building.

“Eggman?”

“Can’t be… Come on, let’s check it out!”

The team didn’t really know how to address or talk to girls,… so when the girl in the building reached for Sonic, Amil accidentally took hold of her too.

The building burnt a bit but the fires were quickly put out and no one was injured, Sonic and Amil fist-pumped as the girl came up to them.

“Thank you both so much! You’re my heroes!”

Amil blushed a little, “Ah, it was nothing.” But before he could continue, Sonic shoved him behind him.

“Yeah, it was my treat!” Sonic smirked behind himself, seeming to challenge Amil for the girl.

Sonic was only playing but Amil fought back, and the girl retreated a little creeped out by their antics.

Going back home, Amil admitted it. “Is it weird that I’d rather be with someone I could call my hero than just being said hero?”

“You’re a hopeless romantic, Amil.” Was all Sonic commented with.

“But you stopped me from getting her number! What’s with that? Bro-code, dude! I grabbed her hand first!” Amil raced up in front of him but Sonic grabbed his head into a noggie.

“Who do you think I am? Letting my best friend get tangled up with a girl? No way!” he let Amil go and dashed off, seeing his house wasn’t too far now.

“I can cook!” Amil cried out, “I’m the perfect picture of a future husband!”

“Snoooorree!!!”

“You’re just jealous of my good looks!”

“You look like the underside of Eggman’s toosh!”

“TAKE IT BACK!”

The two bantered until Amil finally got inside his home, where he fell on his couch and seemed regretful of even talking about romance with Sonic.

“He’ll never get it.” He admitted, and pulled out his hammer, looking it over a moment and stroking its sides. “He never gets lonely… never needs anyone by his side… How would he get it? Even Tails and Knuckles… no one thinks about love.”

He then grinned and blushed, pulling his hammer into his chest. “But that would be kinda interesting… finding a girl like Sonic? Or him finding a girl like me? I bet he would bite his tongue then, hahaha!”

Several days later, Metal Sonic attacked and the gang appeared to fight.

Amil was strong, but was quickly thrown off balance, his arms waving around before Metal Sonic kicked him off the cliffside.

“AHHH!!!” Amil cried out, but Sonic dashed down after him.

Grabbing him, the two started falling.

“Dude, what are you doing!?” Amil cried out, trying to push him towards the cliff wall to safety.

Sonic just gritted his teeth, pulling Amil to his side and taking the blunt of the hit as they crashed into the water below.

Sonic was knocked out, but Amil was able to blink his eyes open and gasp at seeing Sonic sink and get moved downstream.

‘No! Why would he do that!? He can’t swim!’ Amil quickly summoned the rest of his strength to swim with the tide, getting to Sonic quickly and fought it the rest of the way to get to the shoreline.

Gasping for air, he dragged Sonic up to the rocky base of the cliff and pumped on his chest. “Come on, dude, come on! Sonic!”

Sonic spat out water and slowly got up, hacking before lightly whacking a worried Amil away. “I’m fine, I’m fine…”

“That was crazy!” Amil, pumped with adrenaline, bundled his fist. “You could have killed yourself trying to save me…”

“I… couldn’t let a friend down… now, could I?” Sonic smiled, that usual comforting grin to let his friend know it was all going to be okay.

Amil narrowed his glare, “That’s not good enough. If you had died because of me… I-… Sonic, you can’t just jump off cliffs for people!” he closed his eyes, pushing away his admiration for Sonic.

“You can if you care about them.” Sonic got up, a little wobbly as Amil’s eyes shook at his words.

He hadn’t heard something so kind all his life.

He gazed up at Sonic, almost fixed on in the moment he had created.

“What… did you say?”

Sonic just shook the water off of him, and as droplets coursed down still, he gave Amil a thumbs up, outlined by the sun on the tip of the cliff above him. “Let’s get back up there, into the thick of it.”

He offered him his hand.

Amil felt helpless again. It was something he had always struggled with.

No matter how powerful he was, his heart was always weak to things like this.

He shook his head, “No. I’ll only weigh you down.”

“But you won’t slow me down, and that’s all I care about.” Sonic took his unwilling hand and pulled his friend up, surprising Amil. “You’re not as delicate as you make yourself out to be. The thoughts and feelings you have? That’s you, Amil. So stop wasting time thinking you need someone when you can be that for yourself. I’ll be here until that day comes.”

‘Then I never want it to come.’ Amil silently resounded that thought throughout his being. “I… I want to always be with you… Sonic.” he looked down, “I don’t… want to be someone who doesn’t need you anymore.”

Sonic paused a moment, watching him closely.

“If I can just…” Amil began, his hand that Sonic was holding by the wrist twitched a moment… as though wanting to reach but bundled itself into a fist first. “If I can be strong enough to stand by your side… then nothing could phase me ever again!”

“…Amil…” Sonic watched his friend’s inner torment but said nothing.

He just waited and listened, like a true friend.

“Let me… be your hero then, Amil.”

Amil now had slight tears forming on the sides of his eyes, looking hopelessly to Sonic.

Sonic smiled kindly, more tender than Amil had ever seen from him.

“If you need me to be, I’ll be it.” He then winked and brought Amil up to piggie-back ride as he raced up the cliffside to return to the fight.

“…Sonic…” Amil closed his eyes and held on.

‘If I can’t be a hero in this life… then at least let me be selfish and aspire to be your ultimate friend.’

Amil has never left Sonic’s side sense, always believing in him, and never thought about love much sense.

(…Did I… just write a buddy fic?)

PART 2: (x)

[askjaybird-hyssop]

Updates

So, I guess this is just going to be a general update about what happened last night. It’s going to be pretty long, just a warning. There’s also vague talk about some injuries, but everything’s okay now. Oh, yeah, there’s also small talk about Tim almost overdosing by accident. I think that’s all the warnings I need to give, but let me know if I should start warning you guys about other things too.

I’ll start with yesterday morning. I was already having some trouble sleeping and the anxiety from knowing what I was going to have to do ended up making it harder to stay asleep. I got up around 6 when I decided to give up trying to sleep and I went out into the park again.

I didn’t do much more than just stretch my wings (which I learned it something I really need to start doing. It hurt like hell because of the binding I’ve had to do. Probably because they were in one position for too long, so hopefully I’ll be able to stretch my wings more around the others now). I walked around some of the trails and just hung out around there until around 9 or 10.

It was surprisingly relaxing, but also extremely nerve wracking. The only thing that really has made me not panic when I’m in those woods is the reminder that it’s not Rosswood. (I’m hoping The Operator is only able to be in Rosswood and the other general locations we’ve seen him in the past. I don’t want to have to stop coming to these woods just because of them.)

Anyways, I ended up having to sneak out of the park because there were a surprising amount of people there, and I drove back to my apartment. I didn’t really do much else besides panic, attempting to figure out what I was going to say to them, and trying to make sure no one was going to back out of the meeting.

I never was able to ge Jessica’s number or information, so I couldn’t ask Alex to bring her. Amy and Sarah couldn’t come because they already had things scheduled that they couldn’t miss, so they weren’t there either. When Sarah backed out was when I really got nervous about people not coming to the meeting, but Alex, Tim, Brian, and Seth were all still able to go.

We all ended up meeting at Brian’s house, which was what ended up being one of the things that caused me to have a panic attack. I ended up going with my wings unwrapped and hidden underneath my shirt and an old hoodie. I still kept the bullet hole wrapped, of course, but it didn’t really hide it as much as I hoped in the end.

I got there, we went in and talked for a while, and I kept getting more and more nervous. I ended up putting off telling everyone by asking to go to the bathroom, where I started having a panic attack. I ended up knowing some stuff over by accident because my wings were freaking out, which I’m assuming alerted Alex that something was wrong. At least, I think it was that, but it could’ve been anything considering I don’t really remember too much from it.

Him and Brian kept giving each other looks before I went to the bathroom, so I’m wondering if they already knew I was panicking. Alex was always pretty good at telling when someone was struggling, and considering Brian is friends with Tim I assume he’s had experience with that too.

Alex was the one to come over and help calm me down, but he ended up being the first one to see the other changes. He ended up seeing my markings and eyes, and I don’t think he realized I had claws until I accidentally scratched him. I was pretty out of it during the main part of the attack, so I can’t really remember what all happened, but I know afterwards he was extremely concerned.

I was able to calm myself down enough to realize I was hurting him by accident (I somehow ended up holding his arms) and I let go. I think he was trying to avoid letting me know I hurt him so I didn’t panic even more, but I still saw. We stayed in there for a while, thank God he had shut the door, and when all the changes finally went away I tried helping him deal with the scratches I left.

Most were pretty shallow, but a couple were pretty deep. I think I’m going to need to start practicing control with my claws, because the fact that they went through his jacket and still managed to cut him that much is not good. I’m not sure how I’ll do that, but maybe I can ask the others.

Anyways, we ended up wrapping his arms after disinfecting them with me avoiding talking about what just happened. When we finally left the bathroom I was in that weird phase after a panic attack where everything is numb but also extremely clear. It’s hard to describe, but that’s really the best I can come up with. I was extremely exhausted and just wanted to get everything over with.

I know Alex saw my wings underneath my hoodie because when I was readjusting everything he kept eyeing them. I don’t think he expected me to tell everyone about them, especially so soon after my panic attack.

We ended up going outside and we sat back down with the others. I took a minute to just say ‘fuck it’ internally before I got everyone’s attention.

Well, it was more of me saying “hey, Alex?” and that resulted in everyone looking at me anyways. If I could change one thing about how I revealed my wings to everyone, it would be not saying anything to prep them for it. I just ended up taking my hoodie and shirt off, and I stretched one of my wings out towards him. I’m glad I had the brainpower to remember to cover up the bandages around my torso with my hoodie and shirt.

The others just stared at me for a while, before Tim ended up grabbing his medicine. I think it’s the same medicine that was supposed to help him not hallucinate because he went over and tried to take an entire handful of his pills. Luckily, Brian stopped him before he could take any, but that was what finally got everyone moving again.

I should’ve known better than to think Tim would try punching me, he obviously has a bad history with the hallucinations and the mental hospital. It’s not hard to figure out, knowing this, that he thought he was hallucinating and that was just an ingrained panic response.

After Brian was able to get Tim to calm down everyone just took a moment to breathe. (I wish I was able to have done more than just sit there and bring my wings back together so he couldn’t see them anymore, that was a dumb move on my part.) Eventually, Alex asked if they were real, and I said yes. I ended up showing them my wings again, and once they confirmed that they could all see and feel them, they started asking questions.

I ended up answering a couple of their questions and then continued to explain vaguely what had happened in the previous timeline. I don’t really remember much of what I said, but I know that everyone agreed to meet up again to talk soon and that they’d be careful. After that everything becomes more and more fo a blur because I was so exhausted. I’m glad I didn’t accidentally crash my car, I swear I accidentally fell asleep at one point.

I think when everyone left it was a little after 9 pm, but I went back home and ended up sleeping until around 8 am. I was really sore because of my wings freaking out during my panic attack but being bound by the hoodie and shirt. Sadly, I just checked and my shirt has multiple tears in it on the back.

 Luckily I should be able to just cut and modify the back to let my wings through it. My hoodie was able to get away with no tears but it is stretched out a little more than before. (It takes a surprising amount of force to actually tear certain fabrics, so that’s something I learned.)

I still haven’t heard the majority of the people from the group chat. Alex just added me to it a minute ago (as I’m writing this) so I’ll figure out how everyone’s doing through that.

I think that’s all for now.

[madcapmoon]

MacKayes are woven together, through punk rock and beyond

Alec, Amanda and Ian MacKaye, exclusive 2019 photo by Allen Beland.

By Andy  

 Sunday, March 10, 2019 With dad taking his spot, front and center at the stove, the MacKaye family dinner is a vital Sunday fixture in their schedules in the Washington, DC, area. Whipping up vegan delights, the elder MacKaye is a culinary threat as he grips onto cooking utensils instead of a microphone or guitar that his children -- Ian, Alec and Amanda -- have wielded during their time on stage with their various bands over the years. This is where the MacKayes thrive, as a family, more than they do anywhere else in their lives. "For us, the MacKayes, we all still hang out with each other," said Amanda, 49. "It wasn't temporary. A lot of people when they get to this stage of life, their siblings are far-flung or they don't really get along with their siblings or whatever. A lot of this is just part of who our family is, we have Sunday dinners, we're together. We have one sister who lives on the other side of the country, but we're all still connected. And we're all still into whatever the other one is doing. We're all still pretty interested in each other." Currently, Ian, Alec, older sister Katie and their dad Bill all live in DC; Amanda (the youngest) resides in nearby Arlington, Va.; and another older sister Susannah calls Oakland, Ca., her home. Ian said it was a treat to have Susannah back on her home turf of DC this weekend to celebrate her birthday. Ian, 56, noted that his parents were only children, so the MacKaye siblings grew up without any uncles, aunts or cousins. They learned from and inspired each other along their life paths, which eventually led them toward punk rock and embracing the idea of residing outside of the mainstream. He laughs about the MacKayes being a weird family that way. They're close-knit to the core. "We are the MacKayes. Especially our mom, she really emphasized, we are a family," said Ian of mother Ginger, who passed away in 2004. "We're fifth-generation Washingtonians. My mom was born here and it was just important to her this idea of being Washingtonian. I think we're just committed to each other. We're a family and there's times where people get steamed with each other about something, but we never have like the awkward Thanksgiving nonsense. But partially because we see each other almost every Sunday for dinner anyway." If the conversation roams toward music at the family meal, Katie can certainly chime in about taking Ian to his first concert, featuring Queen and Thin Lizzy in 1977. Ian noted that Katie always possessed cool records and was ahead of her peers in the music game. She wasn't a punk, but was a proponent of going to see live music of all sorts, including arena-rock bands and tunes with a faster bent like witnessing the Ramones with Ian in 1979. Katie still attends gigs, and aside from venturing into the music scene, she's voyaged across the country twice on her bike. She's a badass, Ian said. Alec, 52, remembers Katie toting a clutch of records back from England around Christmastime in the late '70s. Generation X, Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Damned and a 10-inch sampler featuring X-Ray Spex were soon blasting throughout the household. "The moment I heard it, I was just clocked in. It was the best thing I had ever heard," Alec said. Ian was a self-proclaimed Ted Nugent "Double Live Gonzo" devotee before latching onto punk music a few months before Alec in '79 or so, thanks to his high school friend Bert Queiroz lending him some Sex Pistols, Damned, Clash and Tuff Darts records. "I had to really get in on it and think about it 'cause I was so puzzled by the whole thing. But I gotta say, it clicked and I was like, 'Oh, I'm in, I love this stuff,'" said Ian, who remembers debating with kids in high school about whether punk sucked or not. When Ian cut his hair, he recalls rocker Alec and his friends teasing him about the new look. Soon, Ian and Alec would be a punk duo, delving into the music together, attending gigs in DC and performing in bands like the Slinkees, Teen Idles, Untouchables, Faith, Minor Threat and more. Further down the road, Embrace, Ignition and Fugazi would continue to put the MacKayes and DC on the map.

Little sister Amanda got in on the punk action as well. It wasn't just the music that spoke to the MacKayes, it was the surroundings that punk offered and a way for them to click with family and the other like-minded people they encountered. Amanda's entrance onto the scene occurred at age 9 and was captured in a classic photo of her and Katie watching the Slinkees play a garage gig in August of '79. Amanda laughs when the photo, featured in the book "Dance of Days," is mentioned. "It was like a lightning-bolt moment for me. The funniest part of the memory for me is that Kim Kane of Slickee Boys, he was just so kind, he is so bright in my memory of that show. It's just interesting to think about the fact that of all the things to remember about that moment, it is someone I wasn't even related to," she said.

A young Amanda, center, with Katie behind. From "Dance of Days."

While she doesn't remember any of the music, "I remember, and this is probably sort of like the core of my feeling about punk, is I just  remember the freedom and the intimacy. I think I was wearing a Johnny Rotten button, but it was a homemade one that Ian or Alec had made. You're in a garage, there's not like a real stage, just running around with people I didn't know who were happy to see me. We're all just there and there's like this joy, which is what I think of, that sensation is what sort of propels me in every aspect of my personal definition of punk. It's wrapped with this joy." For Alec, dipping his boots into shows in the punk realm marked both an advancement into his formative teen years and a punch of chaos into his musical tastes. "I think I liked the intimacy of it all. Before that, I had just been to see arena rock, some of the huge bands like Queen and Santana and large-scale things. Then going to smaller shows was really the ticket for me -- it still is," said Alec, who mentioned attending small shows by Bad Brains, Slickee Boys, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs at first, and bigger ones with the Cramps, Damned, Clash and B-52s. The energy of those shows was infectious. "I really was digging on that abandon, you could really lose yourself in the music. Everybody else was on the same page and it didn't seem like it was very well-controlled and that part was super exciting for me. That was what I was responding to right away," Alec said. Alec began his punk transformation on the clothes and hair front in middle school and said that people thought he was a nerd or a freak. At age 14 and now in high school, he joined his first band, the Untouchables. He's still singing today with Hammered Hulls and Ian plans on taking them into the studio soon. On initially getting up on stage, shouting out lyrics and bouncing his body all over the place, Alec said, "I was pretty introverted before that, and I still am in a certain sense, but I also became an extrovert by being in a band and not being afraid to be standing on stage and doing things that a lot of people would not be up for. I was up for it, 'cause it gave me license to act out in ways that were just fun. So that was a big change for me. With punk rock, it felt like I had a new persona and had a little bit more vigor." Ian's mind was blown when he saw the Cramps play in DC in '79. It was his first punk show and was a seminal event for the area's punks. "I thought it was incredible. The first show was the Cramps and that was complete chaos and really, really exciting and so dangerous feeling and terrifying," he said. "At that point, I had seen Queen twice and Nugent three times, and they were all arena shows, so my relationship with music was really, when you saw bands, you saw them in that kind of setting, and bands were, as you know, unapproachable in that setting." The Cramps show in a hall at Georgetown University was wall-to-wall packed with punks. And it was nuts. "(The Cramps) were so in your face and everybody was really losing their shit. People were jumping up and down," said Ian, noting that as the sold-out show progressed, the long tables that people were standing on soon began to break and he could see "human formations descending into the crowd." People also were seen squeezing through transom-style windows to get into the fray. "Punk was wide open, and I just wanted to get in," Ian said. "It was instantly just on, so I felt it was great. Super engaging. It was like you're walking down the street and you find a box, and you go, 'That's an interesting box,' and you bring it home and when you open it, it's a box of infinite learning -- and I'm still learning." "Some people in the world think of life in terms of phases and then there's other people who think of it in terms of flights of stairs, and that's I think where we're at," he added about the MacKayes. Ian's still got the Evens, a two-piece with him on guitar/vocals and his spouse Amy Farina on drums, in the back pocket but they haven't been active lately. Another band with Joe Lally on bass, Farina on drums and Ian on guitar/vocals is nameless at this point and they have a record in the bag and awaiting a future release. They played two gigs last November, but the band is on hold until Lally returns from tour with the Messthetics, which also features former Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty.

Ignition

For Ian, after the seeing the Cramps, he felt that what they were doing was pretty straight forward and so he got the Slinkees happening. "I wanna be in a band, I just wanted to play music. I wasn't then and I still don't think of it as a career. To me, I just wanna play music. I just do the do, I just work with what's in front of me," he said. That Slinkees garage show, with his family members in the crowd, kicked things off and the MacKayes have never stopped. The punk ethos still rings true. The idle teens are adults with children and they continue to make an impact in the music world and on the people they encounter in their day-to-day lives. Their family is your family. We're all in it together. "I honestly wasn't thinking about sort of the juxtaposition of me as an audience member or me as a performer because that's kind of the point, they're not that different. We're making a show together, that's what we're doing, the audience and the bands," Ian said. Alec knew he would be a punk-rock lifer from the get-go. "I gotta say that there never was even a doubt in my mind. I have known people in my life that, 'that's a closed chapter,' they move on, they grow up, they put away childish things or whatever. I think when I got into punk rock, in my head it was a forever thing that I would be 120, if I ever live that long, and still be doing it, on some level, I just didn't know how," he said. "So that's been a thing that as you go through life, navigating how you can still relate to it and how it can work in your life. It just stayed with me, I never stopped listening to music and I like the energy." "It's a feeling and it's real as they say, as I said in a previous band," laughed Alec, who works full time in an art museum and thrives on learning about history, philosophy and cultural things. He also gets to travel the world, and recently attended a hardcore show in Tokyo while his art colleagues took in different sights. Some things never change, right? Keep your key in the ignition of life and go wherever the fuck you want. "It's astonishing to me that when I was in Tokyo, there was a flier for a Faith/Void re-release. To me, it's been almost 40 years of doing stuff and it just keeps going," Alec continued. On a recent day, I walked into a Barnes & Noble and saw a Minor Threat record with the first two EPs at the front of the M rack. Alec sits on the cover with his head buried in his arms. It's an iconic image that I first witnessed when I purchased the original red 7-inch at Zed Records in Long Beach, Ca., in 1981.

Alec said that someone recently showed him a photo of that image emblazoned on someone's back as a tattoo. "That particular image is not me, it's anybody. That's the one that the  everyman punker can relate to. Yes, it's a trip to see that everywhere still. It's really got legs," he said. Like a lot of us who got into the punk scene back in the early '80s, those early MacKaye bands had a major impact on Amanda. As a youngster, she had those tunes at her fingertips, literally right when the tapes came hot from the studio into their home music deck. Lives were changed when the play button was pressed. "They were my older brothers and I already looked up to them and tried to do whatever they were doing. I found the whole thing instantly exciting. The energy of it was just hypnotic for me and I immediately sort of gravitated to it," Amanda said. "My parents played a lot of records and my mom played piano. There was other music, we didn't really listen to mainstream radio that much. I definitely was aware of 'mainstream rock,' but really at a very early age, like 10-11-12, I was in a conflict with my peer group because I was listening to Minor Threat and they were listening to (mainstream music)." "Some of the general-population music stuck with me, but mostly I was sort of in an instant weirdo zone because when I was trying to get people to listen to my Walkman, it was Minor Threat and they were like, 'Eww. Why?'" she added with a laugh. "Some of the 'why?' for me was that I was totally awestruck by my brothers and I was super proud of them and wanted to tell everyone like, 'No. No. No. I'm related to these people.'" Like family members do, the self-proclaimed tomboy gravitated toward whatever Ian and Alec got their hands on: football and baseball cards and muscle-car Hot Wheels because Alec made models of those vehicles. Amanda, who these days works at a public high school with her husband, said that as a child, "I think that I always sort of felt like outside the circle. I felt like our family just didn't look like everybody else's family, we did things that were a little bit different." She tried to fit in with the other kids by playing soccer in elementary school, but she was admittedly a terrible player and hated the experience. Kids were mean to boot. "I couldn't wrap myself into it and maybe that added into why when I saw this group of people in this garage, who were like, 'Oh, hey, you're outside just like us,' maybe that's why it felt so good," she said of the Slinkees gig. "I'm still attracted to that warm embrace that punk rock gave to me as a young child. I love it when I find bands that are just warm from the get-go. You meet them and you feel like you've known them for a long time, or they play music and you just feel like, 'Oh, yeah, this feels right.'" Following in her brothers' footsteps, she formed her first band, The Headaches, as a pre-teen and they performed in living rooms. A quick insight into the experience was their theme song was ripped off from The Monkees and they had personas (she was the tough, cool person who looked like one of the Blues Brothers). Her punk path became more serious when she formed Sammich Records in high school and released an EP by her friends Lunchmeat and Mission Impossible and then many more records to follow. Ian helped her configure the label since he had experience on his side with Dischord rolling strong (Amanda and Alec also worked at Dischord for a awhile). At age 20, she began singing in Desiderata and later performed with the Routineers.

For the last 14 years, Amanda has booked shows at Fort Reno Park in DC, the spot where the MacKayes saw some of their first concerts. She likens the free outdoor shows to an incubator for bands to give it a shot and play out. She's received feedback that people are thankful their kids can see them play and see music and be able to expose their kids to something that drives them forward, she said. "I jokingly refer to it all the time as a labor of love. But it's actually much more serious for me than that, because at this point in the music industry or however you want to discuss it, the opportunity for people under the age of 21 or even 18 to see live music un-influenced by anything else is very rare in this area. It's like a dinosaur. I feel extremely emotionally  bound to do this because that's what helps me sort of dial in on what was important to me," said Amanda, adding that most venues -- aside from art spaces -- serve alcohol and have video or pinball games that infringe on the true musicality of the shows. "It's really really hard to find a pure experience where you're seeing music and that's all you're seeing. You're with your friends or your family or just with like-minded people. So, I'm pretty impassioned about keeping it going," she said of the Fort Reno gigs,

Heaps of music and crucial life lessons that they gained through the punk scene remains with the MacKayes. As they gather for the Sunday meals and for Susannah's birthday, the conversations are sure to be lively and insightful. The MacKaye children of today will have enough of their parents' stories and anecdotes to last them a lifetime, and they'll feed off those discussions and create vital paths of their own and experiences to pass on as well. "I suppose it's what I didn't learn that's kept me free," Alec said. "I'm pretty resistant to being led away from the things that I cherish. I didn't learn to grow up and be completely conventional, even though there's been plenty of peer pressure from adults. It's a cliche, but it's true, that you really need to stay true to the things that serve you best, and I've continued to do that." "I have two daughters and that's another moment where I just didn't know what that was gonna be like, being a father," Alec added. "I wasn't really afraid of being a father, I was afraid of being a member of the village. You know, they always say it takes a village to raise a child... to me, the village just fucking bothers me and they should just go raise their own children and stay outta my face. That was something I was worried about, but I found out there's other villagers that feel the same way, so that was a relief. I can be a father that isn't like the ones that you think are perfect, and that's OK, and my kids love that about me." For Amanda, she forever enjoys watching Ian and Alec perform and says it's a cool feeling to be still walking her own path. "At this point in my life, it doesn't hurt to be different. When I was 12, it was really complicated and painful for me that all the kids in the neighborhood thought I was weird and I didn't really have any friends, except for Josh who introduced me to Joan Jett, which was incredible 'cause it's still very prominent for me," said Amanda, who's still in touch with Josh. She's thankful for remaining true to herself since the day she stepped into the garage with Katie to watch Ian and the Slinkees. The high school she works at has a staff spirit week on tap and they're asking people to dress like they did in high school. Amanda and I laugh: "Same." (Except that she doesn't wear leather anymore, so that jacket of yore won't make an appearance.) Alec jokes that Ian's the ultimate storyteller of the family. He remembers occurrences with exact dates and years and relays the information in great detail, with verve and a dose of humor. Through the punk scene, the trio of MacKayes -- Ian, Alec and Amanda -- have woven themselves together. "In the '70s and the early '80s, there was a lot of chaos in our family, with our parents, and I think that punk probably was something that was very anchoring for us," Ian said. "And I think the three of us especially, really that was an important connection. It was something that we could feel committed to and it was a safe thing."

There’s Something Hard In There Blog

[starting-fresh-mads]

Hi.

I figured it was time to start fresh and start a new. A place for myself to write down my thoughts without the baggage of the past. My old diary was full of self loathing and loneliness, so after rereading and thinking it just didn’t seem right to write about how great my guy is and how my life is getting so much better, if you could scroll back and find just the opposite in a matter of posts. How could I start to look at the positives when all the negatives were just staring me in the face. So here is goes… life update. I guess we will start with friends. Joanna: I miss her. NYC seems so far away (even though I know its not) and I just miss being able to see her whenever. We still talk daily and shes the sister I never had, but I just miss the days where we did absolutely nothing and had the most fun. Liv, we never see her. Dev and maddie and ally, they are great we are all kinda scattered so we don’t seem them as much as wed all like but thats life I guess. Family is next: family is good. Miss them and things are changing and I can tell they dont love it. Im not home as much as they would like but hey I dont live with them anymore, so its just a new adjustment for them and well for me too. School friends: Weve kinda fallen apart honestly. I could not tell you the last time I talked to Grace, caroline, grace, amy. I live with cait so obviously i’m very close with her still and I still talk to molly and elsa. Kinda wild because before school ended I would have put money on that grace and I would have stayed best friends. I guess thats just how things go. It used to make me really sad, but now I am just like indifferent because why am I fighting so hard for a relationship where I feel like I am the only one giving. There no benefit and just frankly exhausting. Chloe: I love her to death its just hard to find the time to make the time. If that even makes sense. I want to be there for her and support her. I need to call her and stop being a shitty friend when all she has ever done was want to be a part of my life. Do better maddie. and finally Henry: Things are really good. like really really good. He makes me happy. like the kind of stupid happy where if I were to see two other people acting like us Id be disgusted. He just gets me. He can tell when something is bothering me with just a look. He can make me smile when I have tears coming from my eyes and most important he can calm me down when I can feel my switch about to flip. He loves me for me, all my flaws included. He makes me feel whole and thats a feeling i’m not ever willing to give up. Distance is hard though. I have my good days and bad days. Leaving days are the worst. I literally feel as though i’m leaving a piece of myself, the best piece of myself, when I leave him. The next day gets better but then I just find myself missing him again. I go through this battle between wanting to rush into the next phase in our lives and being like woah woah slow down because your gonna miss this when its done. The future scares me and excites me all in the same second. its awfully confusing. Where we end up gives me a stomachache, but also I think its butterflies because I know its gonna be one hell of a ride. Its weird to think about that moving and being in the same city isn’t that far off, but I guess we will get there when we get there. I met his friends finally. They are actually so nice. Once the initial overwhelmingness of it all faded away I actually was able to enjoy myself. I hope they liked me too. I love hanging out with his family. They are so easy to get along with and I fit right in. It makes things easy. So I guess to sum it all up. Henry makes the bad days worth it and the best days filled with smiles. Work: what is there to say about work. I do love being a nurse and most days I truly enjoy my job, but recently idk I cant put a finger on it. I need to figure out what I want to do once my contract is up, but I also need to figure out what is going on in a year from now and what my life looks like then. School? Peds? Chicago? DC? NYC?? its a lot to think

About. Good thing I got a lot of time. I guess thats all for now. Heres to a new beginning and a fresh start. Lets make it a good one mads :)

[aleksandrakv]

Social media in Adam Lambert’s life&career

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything longer than a tweet about Adam, but this stanning lethargy doesn’t reflect the level of my interest in the man. It may appear so, but can the lack of online presence automatically imply the lack of interest? In today’s state of affairs, when artists have carefully constructed and heavily monitored internet presence, when YouTube views are everything and the most powerful politicians seem to pay more attention to Twitter than their jobs, it would be understandable if it could. The www. has finally become literally that – a worldwide group chat, where presidents tweet, where actors, musicians and sportsmen keep vlogs on YouTube, writers publish their essays on Facebook, and everybody comments.

Adam Lambert has chosen not to do so. In an era when YouTube stars become singers who get Saturday Night Live slots where they whisper the lyrics into a microphone, and when the top trending video which garnered more than 30 million views in a day is one of a reality star announcing her pregnancy, Adam has taken a quiet step back in the past few years - and I together with him. I couldn’t help it. Twitter has lost its appeal to me ever since a constant possibility that Adam could see a particularly flaily or witty tweet was no longer an option – the magic of giddy anticipation was gone. For all intents and purposes, Adam has semi-abandoned Twitter and moved to Instagram; a Facebook affiliated app which I never took a liking to.

I was upset and a little resentful. I didn’t understand why. Not only did I have to suffer the cruel Atlantic Ocean between us, but now we were on different online apps, which is a fate way worse than living on different continents, according to cyber sense of geography. In my bitterness, I even had an occasional mean thought on the subject. Oh yeah, that’s because he can ogle hot guys there. What about MEEE? Or, even worse: it’s because of the filters. The man LOVES a good filter, the vain queen. Or, absolutely the worst: he wanted to escape the twitter crazies. It was the worst because I should have known that the crazies are everywhere. I was bitchy, mean, and so, so wrong. This essay is my redemption. The price I want to pay for my stupidity, because Adam does have a social media presence, albeit not as aggressive as I might like. There is a reason for that, which he has already given. I had read it before, but it flew right over me like a sparrow, equally tender and fragile, leaving my head unruffled and thoughtless as if nothing had happened.

Even on his preferred social network, Adam’s behavior is somewhat atypical, in a sense that he doesn’t hesitate to share less than perfect photos. Unfiltered, sweaty, in-your-face, flaking makeup photos of the realistic kind - a rare occurrence among the Hollywood hotties. But he is a geek like the rest of us. The anticipation of waiting for the first photos to appear when he has a concert is one of the best parts of being his fan. Adam is incredibly photogenic, but sometimes, those photos are low quality ones, taken by fans on their phones, from pretty unflattering angles. Adam somehow manages to look great in most of them, despite the low angles and the fact that great physical exertion makes everyone look awful. Being photographed in the middle of an adrenaline rush while singing from the top of your lungs for two hours is challenging. His facial features almost rearrange with strain, but Adam simply knows how to pose and is rarely caught off guard – a life’s tiny miracle.  I love those candid pictures. And Adam posts only the best of them.

It’s the professional photos where he shines the most. Those are usually true works of art, crispy sharp and simply stunning in their quality. I don’t think I’ve ever seen less than perfect professional photo of Adam. They capture the moments that would otherwise be missed and allow you to fully appreciate the visual side the concert. In videos, the focus is primarily on the sound and the movement, but if I had to choose which medium reflects Adam’s emotional state and journey during concerts best, I would choose photography. It’s a strange thing to say about a singer, but Adam has a very expressive face and body. It’s like their muteness and stillness don’t subtract, but add to the experience of Adam’s process of creation.

In addition to music photography, Adam posts everything and anything that’s important to him, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. His Instagram page is a mess, a potpourri of professional photos, fan photos, album covers, photos of his family, friends, his dog, travelling photos, fashion photos, and all that in uneven levels of quality which most posters would never allow themselves. Adam has it all, from professional HD quality to grainy and blurry shots taken by a phone. It’s a far cry from carefully coordinated, handpicked and posted after a thousandth try stylish representation of other serious posters. He doesn’t juice for a week before taking selfies. He doesn’t always filter. He doesn’t always look pretty. He isn’t always all mysterious and artistic. He’s sometimes such a goofball. He is definitely an undisciplined Instagram user. 

It’s a revealing fact. He deletes his posts sometimes, and I’m not sure if it’s the morning after self-filtering, or he gets the call. Social media can make or break a career nowadays. But on the other hand, you can be a successful artist without constant media presence – although it is a pretty rare occurrence. The only example coming to my mind is Frank Ocean. There are artists who have a modest number of followers and YouTube views, and yet they can and do fill up arenas, just as there are artists who have millions of followers and cannot have a decent tour. 

In Adam’s case, I feel like he is past making or breaking his career online. At this point, he doesn’t need a heavily moderated Instagram page or a vlogging channel to achieve anything - other than making me happier, that is. The fact that I would love if Adam was more present, by engaging with his fans more, or, in best case scenario, vlogging about his life and career (I would sell my firstborn for that), doesn’t mean much in grander scheme of things. Adam has allowed himself the luxury of doing what he wants, and his Instagram page reflects that in the clearest of ways. I am not saying he wouldn’t benefit from having 50 million followers on Twitter or Instagram, but, he just doesn’t have that. If he can’t get it from doing his job and being who he is, he will never get it anyway. He refuses to participate in the social media race. So, unlike many a budding YouTube star trying to make it in other fields by creating an ideal, unrealistic impression of themselves, with their uniform, heavily filtered, grayscale artsy photos, Adam’s multifarious posts do reveal a lot simply by not being what one would expect. He’s a rebel just for kicks there. 

Oh, there is some vanity there; he isn’t above it nor does he pretend to be. He smizes and pouts in many filtered photos and videos, enjoying his flawless skin provided by Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom’s filtering system, turning his head like this and like that like a Valley girl – but that’s just Adam playing with his toy. He has this proclivity for ridiculous behavior; that and the fact that he loves the ageless chibi art of Creative Sharka makes me sometimes think that he has entered a serious fear-of-getting-old phase. It would have been true if he posted such photos only, which he most definitely doesn’t.

Adam is a naturally beautiful man, why does he have to goof around like that? Well, because he is so much more than that. Because more than stunning good looks, he has a killer sense of humor. Because more than looking pretty and feeding his vanity, he loves having fun. He mocks himself, too. “I swear I didn't realize I was making full duck face” is his own comment on a truly astounding full duck face he made while trying to credit Valentino for a clothing item. He loves stand-up comedy. He’s watched the Amy Schumer Leather special, and the Ricky Gervais Humanity special, and posted about both shows. That’s how I know.

There’s a selfie which he took while Antinous was being tattooed on his torso – a particularly painful experience, according to him; hence the awkward facial expression. The photo is so ridiculous and unflattering that it immediately reminded me of the comical selfies which Ricky Gervais takes all the time, trying to look as ugly as possible in them, thus expressing his mockery on the worldwide mania of posting unrealistically perfect photos. Adam has a comedic streak a mile wide, and not only does it come out in concerts and movie roles such as his part of Eddie in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but also in his Instagram page as well. Unlike Ricky, Adam just wants to laugh at himself. Yes, he sometimes looks ridiculous and weird - don’t we all? He’s no bullshitter, and never will be. 

Now would be a great moment to mention his Grandma June alter ego. So, Adam has decided it would be great to make himself look forty years older, name the character Grandma June and rant throughout several videos on many a current topic. Who? What? Adam, the most eligible gay bachelor of several times? Adam, the Zeus in a thong sex symbol for many? Unbelievable. Waves of discomfort could be felt throughout the shallower waters of the fandom. Was he just having fun with it? Was he mocking himself for overusing de-aging filters? Was he helping himself get over his own fear of aging by laughing at his own expense? Was it some kind of reverse psychology/psychotherapy via Snapchat filters? Was it to shock his fans who come to his page for hotness and beauty galore, only to find Grandma June blinking owlishly at them? The list is endless. It’s like he was saying, ‘yeah, I’m hot, but I’m also ridiculous, funny and a little bit on the crazy side.’ Who knows. It’s certainly less ridiculous than me putting words in his mouth. It is also very non-Hollywood of Adam, where ageism is rampant and the anti-aging industry flourishes, where kids start injecting botox as soon as they’re twenty and where a lot of people take faces they’re born with as a slight suggestion. Interesting topic.

We’re now traipsing deeper and deeper into Adam’s more hidden depths. This makes it sound like scrolling through his Instagram page is a voyage into the heart of darkness, the Apocalypse Now style; but it does feel adventurous after you parse through the regular job-related stuff. Such aside interests tell us a lot about him and his fascinations, like his love and respect for other artists. He is a true fan at heart, expressing himself unabashedly and passionately – so many pictures of Freddie, Bowie and George Michael, but also Goldfrapp, Demi, Lady Gaga, and all his musician friends. Sometimes, he puts the flailers in his own fandom to shame. I like that about him. I feel like it’s a level we can relate on. And I love that he doesn’t have cheap, tit-for-tat, I’ll-do-you-and-you-do-me mentality. When he says that he likes something, you better fucking believe that he does.

He also loves nature. He posts sceneries – the beloved Runyon Canyon, the Ibiza cruise, Mexico, Bali, Mykonos in Greece, Argentina, you name it - but, he will also post a photo of a single olive tree. The fandom speculated for three days about what it could possibly mean. He posted a video of a single butterfly flapping its wings, and a colony of bats, and a lonely gecko crawling up the wall and a mother duck and her ducklings swimming in the lake. Endless photos of Pharaoh don’t even count. Details from around him capture his attention in a way that he expresses his emotive, intuitive side by showing us the impact they have on him. In his private moments, he is a far cry from a wild rocker living his wild rock’n’roll life. He’s so much more than that. He’s a tree watcher. A butterfly watcher. A bird watcher. Life and observing life clearly excites him.

He also loves architecture. He will post pictures of streets and buildings, sculptures and monuments, from everywhere he goes, and he travels a lot. Someone else would probably spend all pre- and post-concert time in hibernation accumulating energy, but not Adam. He loves the bas-reliefs, ancient facades, the Greco-Roman culture, supporting columns and carvings of Venetian houses; but every now and then he will also post some strange things, like tombstones. He’s a traveler with a twist. When he goes somewhere new, he sometimes visits cemeteries.  He’s been to Boston Cemetery and Buenos Aires Cemetery. He posted a photo of the entrance to Jesus’ tomb from his visit to Jerusalem. No matter what B Hollywood horror movies are trying to tell us, cemeteries are never about being creepy or frightful -- they are like a library for the imagination. Wandering cemeteries around the globe, reading headstones, thinking about the lives of the people there, the mind wanders into a thousand stories. It can be therapeutic. But, who knows what Adam’s motives were. All I know is that he is more than just a traveler – he is also a spiritual explorer.

In everything he does, he rarely stays within the lines. This diversity tells us that Adam is a complex man before he is an artist, and even less than he is an artist, that he is a promoting artist. His self-promoting campaigns are there, but ever so subtle and discrete - nothing like the aggressive campaigning that has become obligatory nowadays. I’m not talking about the management or the label part in it, or whoever is in charge of his promotion; just Adam’s own role in it. A few tweets, a few Instagram posts, mostly just informative in nature, before a new release. Regarding concerts, a tweet before and after is a rarity. An occasional review. He will sometimes post great photos after concerts, though. I have no idea how to explain such behavior other than to say that he doesn’t want to do it, nor does he feel like he has to. Maybe he is of the ‘an artist should never reveal too much and keep a level of mystery’ persuasion. Maybe he believes the music will find its way to those who want to hear it. Or maybe he just finds it tacky, as I do, the ad nauseam self-promoting of certain artists. Who knows. I certainly wouldn’t find it tacky if Adam did it. We’ll see how Era 4 will roll out and if Adam will be more talkative then. The one explanation I personally find the most believable is that he is a well-mannered man who believes that you should let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips; but that’s because I tend to attribute Adam superhuman qualities. He can’t be that much of a gentleman, can he?

He is not very verbose in his Instagram captions either; most of them, that is. His posts are usually with very little or no comment from him. He tags the people in the photo, or he gives credit to the photographer – he is pretty diligent about it. On few unfortunate occasions when that didn’t happen, we had a mutiny among the photographers which ended with bruised egos on both sides.

So sparse are his comments, that when you do bump onto a few loquacious ones, you just know that it must be something of utter importance or that he feels strongly about. You don’t have to guess anything then, or draw unfortunate conclusions, which is a game his fans like to play and that Adam likes to engage us in by dropping random hints. No game here – his words are loud and crystal clear, concise and to the point, and apart from bringing my attention to the relevance of such particular posts, they serve to remind me what a great thinker and an amazing human being Adam is. Those words are always about love and equality.   

One of such glimpses into his more private, passionate side is certainly his love and appreciation for  Creative Sharka, a fan who makes digital paintings and chibi art of Adam and the moments in his career. He has posted her art several times and even met with her during his tour - such gratitude and appreciation of a fan really warms my heart. It tells me what I already knew: that he is such a fan himself, a great lover of everything that inspires him and open in his heart for the reciprocal love exchange between artists as the highest form of flattery. He’s had such situation in his career several times, on various levels, but this one with a fan feels truly rewarding.

Creative Sharka gives him her art, but it doesn’t have to be a tangible thing. One of the most revealing and emotional comments he wrote under a photo from one of his performances reveals so much. It is a photo whose focal point are the backs of two people, two guys, who are leaning against one another in a hug, their heads connected, and they are facing Adam singing on the stage in the background. They are in the forefront, their body language speaking of love; Adam is in the background, perhaps inspiring such connection. His comment says, “Really in luv w this photo. So sweet.”  I’ve never read Adam saying that about any picture, and it’s one of the amateur, fan ones, too – and all the more precious for that.  

But, does he always feel the love? Do we? Most of the times, I am sure that he does. But I have always imagined Adam as a highly emotional guy, which also means a great capacity for sadness, too, especially with so many reasons for it surrounding us. There is one, literally one sad comment that I have encountered during all these years. It’s under a photo of Frank the Robot’s head, taken before the show, with the top half of it waiting patiently to be connected with its bottom half by diligent Queen crew, so that Adam can ride it and spew obscenities into the audience from its shiny, metallic head. “Sad Clown,” is Adam’s caption. I don’t know if he felt bad for Frank at that moment, or the words are about Killer Queen, but there is a possibility  that the words are about Frank’s rider later on. Sometimes, he does have to hide his sadness and paint his smile on. Who doesn’t.

He truly belongs to one of the rarest of species – a beautiful man who becomes even more beautiful when he opens his mouth and speaks. Or sings. In the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit, pre-Vučić era, I used to take his words for granted. I believed everybody thought so, or almost everybody. I was spectacularly wrong. The bout of sadness that gripped me then is still not easing up. How can it? This Weltschmerz has affected everyone with a soul - Adam, too. Will our physical reality ever satisfy the demands of our minds and souls ever again? I believe so, as long as there are people like Adam, like Emma Gonzalez, like many others who are fighting for it. That is what hope sounds like. With rising urgency, Adam speaks up.

“Black lives matter. For all of u who totally miss the point of this movement, the GOAL is for all lives to matter equally. But as it stands, racism is preventing us from that ideal. We must fix the reality so we can grow toward hope.”

We must fix the reality… We really do, Adam. Faced with such thoughts, don’t all previous words about promotion and lack of internet presence sound frivolous? I am glad that this is how Adam feels. I am so proud of him for sharing his thoughts. 

When he posted a photo of Freddie, pointing out the hypocrisy of the ruling US political party using Freddie Mercury’s music, some people seemed to have an issue with that. This was Adam’s reply:

“I realize that there are many different schools of thought frequented by people following me on social media. EVERYONE is entitled to their opinions and beliefs. Including me. This is MY Instagram page where I share my experiences and feelings. If you don't agree with something, that's perfectly ok with me - but I'm not going to refrain from being me, and no one is forcing you to either.”

And refrained he has not. 

He’s spoken against the gun violence. 

He’s spoken about Orlando. About Paris. About all mass shootings. 

He’s also spoken at the Los Angeles Pride Resist March last year. Here are some of his words:

“I typically avoid publicly speaking about politics because of its divisiveness. People get real sensitive, and I ain’t trying to piss anybody off. But, this year things have gone way too far.

So I’m not speaking today about being a democrat vs. a republican. Today is about right vs. wrong. The current presidential administration has manipulated the country using fear and hate to gain power to divide us. Our differences are being used against us. And the shockwaves of this dangerous rhetoric have rippled throughout our community and beyond. And it fucking hurts. We’ve come way too far to stand by and watch our social progress be yanked backwards. It’s almost as if they’re going, ‘Eh, you’re different. You can’t sit with us.’ What the fuck is that? It’s childish and it needs to end now.

Our pride parade is usually an all out shit show of a party where we all dress up like crazy unicorns and prance around through the streets. Yeah! It’s a celebration of the progress we have made – our liberation, our freedom, our glitter. But this year, we are facing such dark forces that pride has taken on a deeper purpose. Protest. So today, we stand together in order to support anyone whose human rights are at risk. We resist homophobia. We resist transphobia. We resist misogyny. Bi-invisibility. We resist racism. Xenophobia. And we resist extremism, and anything else that helps promote hate. We stand defiant and will not be brainwashed. We refuse to be sucked into that kind of negativity.

But, I ask you not to fight hate with hate. We don’t want to be hypocrites. So how can we resist? I’ll tell you what I think:  with unity, with visibility, truth, inclusion, acceptance, and most importantly – love.”

Don’t his words boom loud? Read them and abide by them. Don’t scroll through or ignore them. 

Shame on those who think that Adam should only do his job and stop voicing his opinions and views. 

Shame on those who, blinded by his beauty, refer to him as a Ken doll. 

Shame on those who say that he is back in the closet. 

In his Love Letter to the LGBTQ community, which was published in Billboard magazine last year, he talks more about what his community means to him:

“Y'all are my true inspiration. You're life lines that have kept me grounded and thankful. All the LGBTQ musicians, dancers, drag queens, bar stars, club kids, DJ's, designers, actors, stylists, glam squads..... YOU are my circus family. It is because of all those years traipsing round our nocturnal playgrounds that I had any sense of how and why I wanted to stay the course; to rep for my queer family!

And now 8 years later, the LGBTQ community has come SO far. I see fellow artists AND civilians coming out with no apologies and no fucks given. Despite the current obstacles we face, I am blown away by our progress. We have come so far. My true fans share the same principles so we continue to welcome other alien weirdos into our family. Thank you ALL for inspiring and supporting my journey. I promise to keep doing the same for all of you.”

Should he speak more frequently? Adam has voiced his opinions time and again, but he won’t misuse the opportunity given to him. He has a sophisticated sense for not crossing the line between his art and his humanitarian fight. He  never pushes anything under anyone’s nose; not his art; not his fight. He never uses just causes as a self-promoting opportunity. 

This is all part of the reply to the question from the beginning about what the lack of social presence can mean. His social presence isn’t lacking, it is just of the unobtrusive kind. It’s all out there, only a few clicks away. Are we so used to the constant media shoveling content down our metaphorical throats that we can’t even register when something’s said only once?

Apparently, I am. Because I have already read Adam Lambert’s own explanation about deciding to moderate his social media presence and it hasn’t even made a blip on my radar at the time. I won’t tell you where his words are from, you can try to guess. It’s a direct quote. It says everything.  

How pathetic now seems the discussion about  flattering vs. less flattering photos? Don’t ask this man about the size of his gauges for a hundredth time and expect him to engage with his fans more. But Adam does, he does engage, for he isn’t a mean man and he answers the same trivial questions again and again. It’s perhaps a much better option than talking, I don’t know, about Weltschmerz. Sometimes, such discussions are better avoided, and not only that - he has already said what he wanted to say. It’s much more bearable to repeat the silly topics than the raw, emotional ones. The repetition hurts, and devalues the latter.  

It really is a journey, from Grandma June, to cultivating self-love and True Individuality; only not to the heart of darkness, but to the one of lightness. It’s all him, the philosopher and the comedian, the Frank’s head rider and the march speaker. Read his words. Don’t forget them, like I did. Laugh with him, but also think with him and be sad with him.

“True Individuality seems daunting in our age of social media popularity contests. Sometimes it’s terrifying to face your true, whole self, stripped of any pretense. The good, the bad, the cracks, and the scars. I am no stranger to the feeling of not liking myself. Once I get past my own body image issues, I realize that I sometimes also neglect my own spirit. Living in a world filled with so much hatred sometimes makes cultivating self-love a very difficult task. I have always struggled with this as I’m sure many of you have. My path is a kind of paradox in that I get to share my craft with the world, but also be willing to throw myself to the wolves. To dare to be different, but still wanting to be accepted. There is vast beauty to be found in life’s contradictions. This non-binary reality allows us to lead happy, expressive lives, and yet this very freedom comes with great risks. I’m not alone in this limbo. Through my art, I pledge to bring empathy and courage to anyone who has been made to feel unworthy or ashamed while daring to be themselves.”

***

~The sources for everything mentioned in the essay are Adam Lambert’s social media pages. I’ve decided against posting any links because I feel like this one reference is enough.

~No photos either,  since I mention too many of them  and this bloody thing is too long already. Just this one.