#the navajo kid

[smaeemo]

Mixed kid life is just realizing you lowkey hate white people

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow: The Diary of Sarah Nita, a Navajo Girl  Dear America book by Ann Turner

September 1999

Found on dearamerica.fandom.com

[francisforever2014]

three separate white people pissed me off bad in class today can y’all be quiet tomorrow to make up for it

[morgana-pendragon]

i simply have to classify the parent trap (1998) as a fantasy film bc treating it like an alternate universe with its own built in lore and customs is the only way i can excuse the sheer amount of plot holes/questions i have as a result of being raised in the 21st century

[gyaruwithcherries]

haii!!

hi!! i'm deelite or aphrodite! i'm a 16 twospirit bigender bisexual! (polyam.) i am afro-indg. + latine asian! i love gyaru fashion esp. kogal + combining it w/ scene fashion! i heart the color pink & my partners! ntmy!

[twothirdsgenius]

kids can be so fucking funny, one of the kids today said “AH, JESUS” after a bunch of papers in his binder fell out and i hit him with The Look™️ and he was like “sorry, i mean AHH, GREAT SPIRIT”

[bitchy-peachy]

Does she know she's descended from invaders not indigenous to the region?

Her and her kind are the ones that should get deported.

Remember that time Trumpers asked a Navajo House of Representatives member if he was here legally?

Oh, and yelled at brown 10 year olds that they were illegal and needed to leave America?

Yeahno, I 100% believe Trump would revoke all our citizenships in a heartbeat. Vote BLUE.

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #7

Feb 23-March 1 2024

The White House announced $1.7 Billion in new commitments from local governments, health care systems, charities, business and non-profits as part of the White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities. The Challenge was launched with 8 billion dollars in 2022 with the goal of ending hunger in America by 2030. The Challenge also seeks to drastically reduce diet-related diseases (like type 2 diabetes). As part of the new commitments 16 city pledged to make plans to end hunger by 2030, the largest insurance company in North Carolina made nutrition coaching and a healthy food delivery program a standard benefit for members, and since the challenge launched the USDA's Summer EBT program has allowed 37 states to feed children over the summer, its expected 21 million low income kids will use the program this summer.

The US House passed a bill on Nuclear energy representing the first update in US nuclear energy policy in decades, it expands the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and reduces reducing licensing fees. Nuclear power represents America's single largest source of clean energy, with almost half of carbon-free electricity coming from it. This bill will boost the industry and make it easier to build new plants

Vice President Harris announced key changes to the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program. The CCDBG supports the families of a million American children every month to help afford child care. The new changes include capping the co-pay families pay to no more than 7% of their income. Studies show that high income families pay 6-8% of their income in childcare while low income families pay 31%. The cap will reduce or eliminate fees for 100,000 families saving them an average of over $200 a month. The changes also strength payments to childcare providers insuring prompt payment.

The House passed a bill making changes to the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program. The 8(a) is an intensive 9 year program that offers wide ranging training and support to small business owners who are socially and economically disadvantaged, predominantly native owned businesses. Under the current structure once a business reaches over 6.8 million in assets they're kicked off the program, even though the SBA counts anything under $10 million as a small business, many companies try to limit growth to stay on the program. The House also passed a bill to create an Office of Native American Affairs at the SBA, in order to support Native-owned small businesses.

The White House and HUD announced steps to boost the housing supply and lower costs plans include making permanent the Federal Financing Bank Risk Sharing program, the program has created 12,000 affordable housing units since 2021 with $2 billion and plans 38,000 additional units over ten years. As well as support for HUD's HOME program which has spent $4.35 billion since 2021 to build affordable rental homes and make home ownership a reality for Americans. For the first time an administration is making funds available specifically for investments in manufactured housing, $225 million. 20 million Americans live in manufactured housing, the largest form of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country, particularly the rural poor and people in tribal communities.

The Department of Energy announced $336 million in investments in rural and remote communities to lower energy costs and improve reliability. The projects represent communities in 20 states and across 30 Native tribes. 21% of Navajo Nation homes and 35% of Hopi Indian Tribe homes remain unelectrified, one of the projects hopes to bring that number to 0. Another project supports replacing a hydroelectric dam in Alaska replacing all the Chignik Bay Tribal Council's diesel power with clear hydro power. The DoE also announced $18 million for Transformative Energy projects lead by tribal or local governments and $25 million for Tribal clean energy projects, this comes on top of $75 million in Tribal clean energy projects in 2023

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg put forward new rules to ensure airline passengers who use wheelchairs can travel safely and with dignity. Under the planned rules mishandling a wheelchair would be a violation of the ACAA, airlines would be required to immediately notify the passenger of their rights. Airlines would be required to repair or replace the wheelchair at the preferred vendor of the passenger's choice as well as provide a loaner wheelchair that fits the passenger's needs/requirements

The EPA launched a $3 Billion dollar program to help ports become zero-emission. This investment in green tech and zero-emission will help important transportation hubs fight climate change and replace some of the largest concentrations of diesel powered heavy equipment in America.

the EPA announced $1 Billion dollars to help clean up toxic Superfund sites. This is the last of $3.5 billion the Biden administration has invested in cleaning up toxic waste sites known as Superfund sites. This investment will help finish clean up at 85 sites across the country as well as start clean up at 25 new sites. Many Superfund sites are contained and then left not cleaned for years even decades. Thanks to the Biden-Harris team's investment the EPA has been able to do more clean up of Superfund sites in the last 2 years than the 5 years before it. More than 25% of America's black and hispanic population live with-in 5 miles of a Superfund site.

Bonus: Sweden cleared the final major barrier to become NATO's 32nd member. The Swedish Foreign Minster is expected to fly to Washington to deposit the articles of accession at the US State Department. NATO membership for Sweden and its neighbor Finland (joined last year) has been a major foreign policy goal of President Biden in the face of Russian aggressive against Ukraine. Former President Trump has repeatedly attacked NATO and declared he wants to leave the 75 year old Alliance, even going so far as to tell Russia to "do whatever the hell they want" with European NATO allies

[royboyfanpage]

Lian Harper has a better understanding of Snowbirds than much of the modern fanbase

I've been reading the Green Arrow 80th anniversary special and one part in particular stood out to me. One of the stories in the comic is Roy telling Lian (and Ollie) a story over the phone, specifically *Roy's* story, in the style of a Navajo story, and Ollie and Roy are called Green-Man and Autumn-Son.

During this, obviously, one of the major plotpoints is Roy's addiction and a retelling of Snowbirds Don't Fly from Roy's perspective, in which Roy accounts how Ollie was angry at him. Lian actually *corrects* Roy, saying that Ollie was scared

And honestly? I think this is *how* this was meant to be interpreted when it was written. Snowbirds was never meant to show Ollie as in the right, but it was also never meant to make him the villain. Ollie is, in this story, essentially a caricature of a 70s parent's reaction to finding out their child is using drugs. Keep in mind this was written *during* the war on drugs, a time where misinformation was rampant and every parent's worst fear was finding out their child was an addict. I personally firmly believe that Ollie views Roy as his son, and vis versa, but even if you don't Ollie finding out that the kid/young adult he'd been mentoring is addicted to drugs? Terrifying. Especially since Ollie's aim had always been to teach Roy strength, and addiction was seen as the worst possible weakness, meaning Ollie had not only failed as a father but as a mentor in his eyes. Snowbirds is repeatedly used by Oliver Queen haters to demonize him, to show him as a bad father, but Snowbirds is and always has been a product of its time, not in terms of writing but culturally. Yes, Oliver *would* react like that in 1971. And so would most DC heroes. But you know what? He grew. He developed, he changed his mindset and he *listened* to Roy, and snowbirds ends with him being *proud* of Roy.

So yeah. While there were definitely aspects of his reaction that were undoubtedly angry, that was all vastly overshadowed by *fear*. Lian Harper was, as always, right.

Edit: I did a big post on Snowbirds here

[sugarbombs-n-stuff]

Companion's Comfort Foods

(I didn't include Ada and Codsworth cause they don't eat)

Cait: Cait's comfort food is cottage pie (which is shepards pie with beef instead of lamb). It was on the food rotation at the combat zone before the raiders took over and it brings back good memories of her first few years of freedom. Cottage pie and a beer is a good supper for her.

Curie: A bowl of sugarbombs. It was the first meal she had after she got turned into a synth so she's grown really fond of it. She likes cereal in general so if you sit her down with some and a puzzle, she'll be so happy, though she does like eating while talking to a friend.

Danse: When he was in the BOS it probably would have been coffee seeing as the food really wasn't great. It was pretty much flavorless chicken and mashed tatoes and the thought of it made his stomach churn. A cup of coffee however was guaranteed, and it was good every time. After BB no questions asked his comfort food is beef(brahmin) stew. Sturges makes some flavorful, mouthwatering, downright sinful tasting food and you'll always see Danse first in line whenever it's the stew in particular that's being made. He also likes to dip some cornbread in it, and it isn't uncommon that you'll see him patting his stomach after eating like some midwestern dad.

Deacon: Roasted mutton on fry bread with hot peppers. Deacon was raised on Lake Mead by his mom and grandparents. His grandma was Navajo, so they always had something with fry bread and meat, normally bighorner meat. The mutton became his favorite though. It's a wave of nostalgia every time he takes a bite. He doesn't really have it anymore, partly because of he can't really get it in the commonwealth and partly because even if he makes it, it's never as good as his family makes. A big stupid smile is on his face whenever he visits his mom, and she makes it for him. Though he hasn't been out there in a while, too busy helping the Railroad.

Dogmeat: Dogmeat will eat anything, and he doesn't really have a comfort food. His favorite food though his dried brahmin ears,

Strong: Pre War Strong and Super mutant Strong actually agree in this area, his comfort food is still ribs. Pre-war, he liked dry rub ribs that make your mouth water and stomach grumble when you look at them, he was damn good at making them to cause he learned from his grandad so anytime he made them he thought about him. Now he likes raw brahmin ribs. He isn't picky anymore and doesn't care as long as he eats but if he really concentrates, he can still hear a deep laugh like rolling thunder and smell a hint of spice when he takes a bite.

Preston: Rabbit Stew. Growing up with his auntie on far harbor he ate pretty much everything, mans was a human garbage disposal. However, he had broken his leg when he was 10 and his auntie made him rabbit stew. They sat in the bed and laughed and joked for hours as she told him stories. His big brother even joined them and joked around too. Now every time he makes it, that memory is at the front of his mind, it causes a smile to sit on his face for the rest of the day afterwords.

Piper: Her dad used to make cabbage rolls with corn and rad stag. She still makes it for Nat but when she starts cooking it, she swears she can hear her dad talking her through how to make it for the first time. She doesn't let herself get sad at the memory when she's cooking, she embraces it. She keeps promising to teach nat how to make it but she's kind of swamped with work at the moment, but they have it every week they can afford it.

MacCready: Like danse he also likes stew however his comfort food his mushroom stew. He remembers eating it in Little Lamplight and when he takes a bite suddenly, he's Mayor MacCready sitting with his pals and getting irritated at Princess again. He also thinks of him chatting with lucy, both as kids and adults and gets a comforting sadness for a little afterword but comforting none the less.

Hancock: Him and his brother used to make fruit jam growing up and would sell it in Diamond City market. He still makes the jams now with the help of Daisy and sells them in her store. His mind wanders and he wonders that if things were different between McDonough and him, if they would still make them together. His brother's favorite was the dandy boy apple one so that's his comfort food. Dandy Boy Apple Jam.

Nick Valentine: Coffee. Nick doesn't eat much and human nick really only ate out of necessity. Ellie makes him a cup every morning and they talk before they get to work. Good memories are enjoyed over coffee and that's good enough for Nick.

X6-88: When he was in the institute he liked the coconut nutrition pouches but he wouldn't classify it as a comfort food because he was a machine that didn't need comfort in his or the institutes eyes. Now that he runs around with sole survivor though, his comfort food is braised deathclaw with rice. It's extremely filling, and he thinks of that first night he was assigned to Sole and they made them this. It was one of the first times he seriously considered being something close to human.

Longfellow: Roasted Fog Crawler with black beans and a side of scotch. He cooks well and he actually really enjoys it. Whenever he cooks, he gets peace and peace is comfort. Not to mention the whiskey settles his soul for a bit.

Gage: Spicy Curry. He learned to make this dish originally from his mom and for a while after becoming a raider he didn't touch it again cause of the memories. Eventually though, one night when he wasn't thinking about it, he started taking out the ingredients to make it. Muscle memory is a bitch but he's not going to waste food and when he took that first bite, he heard his mom singing in his brain and telling him to wash up after. It's rare when he does eat it but when he does you might be able to hear him humming as he makes it.

[pinkflipphonez]

our favorite golden retriever boy's bday is soon AND powwow season is just around the corner so here's some indigenous headcanons I've got for alfred f. jones!

he is actively attempting to learn every single native language within his region, but fluently speaks osage, dine bizaad, hopi, mvskoke, and algonquian massachusett and ojibwa

he is the embodiment of sunshine. he can make everyone laugh, and that includes babies. that being said, he has been the reason for at least 100+ babies' first laughs and has proudly thrown parties for each of their families as per the navajo tradition

him (and matt) fully volunteer to drum and sing at powwows, especially at small town ones. they will roadtrip across canada and the us during the summer and absolutely bring the party to the 49. they also do it to overindulge in piccadilly and indian tacos

he is not a religious person but he does acquiesce in spiritual traditions he has picked up from native elders. the major one he uses is smudging. alike the kid from 'sixth sense', he sees dead people-- or ghosts to be exact lol. and he hates them! which is why he will often smudge and pray early in the morning, once a week, to cleanse any spirits from his house

smokes are always in his possession. while he does smoke on occasion, he mostly carries them with him for exchanges. for example, if he encounters a cool mineral on the roadside, instead of just taking it, he will leave tobacco behind as a show of appreciation

he feeds the rez dogs exponentially (even when everyone at every rez keeps telling him not to fuckin do that, you shitass)

put him on your rob list because he owns so many beaded jewelry and turquoise, it may just pay off your student loans and then some

his mutton sandwiches and navajo burgers will make you fall in love with him, no joke

[birdfriend-theband]

SOMEWHERE YOU DID, SOMEWHERE YOU WILL: Bird Friend's Our Gods at 10; or, Last Thoughts on the Albuquerque House Show Scene

Author’s note:

Okay - bear with me on this one. Ten years have passed since the events in this piece occurred. In those ten years I’d like to think I’ve picked up a few scraps of wisdom here and there, and while our culture has built an industry around depictions of untamed youth, I’m inclined to believe that those years aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. I was far from perfect as a young man, and this memoir is not designed to suggest any differently. It is, however, partly an attempt to express gratitude towards those folks who gave me the opportunity to live something like the rich life of an artist. If this work has found its way to you, I will say this: my inbox is always open.

G. Himsel

Funeral Hill, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Autumn 2024

I. 

Halfway through the last-ever show at the old Vassar house, someone called the cops.

Cheap Time was playing in the living room when the police banged on the door, and when the hostess took over the mic to warn the crowd, the whole place fell apart. The music shambled to a halt, and the living room - which was painted floor-to-ceiling in graffiti - became the scene of a mad scramble for the exits. Young punks spilled into the backyard, clambering over the cinderblock walls and into the alleyways, or sprinting drunkenly past the squad cars blocking the driveways. Underage kids tossed bottles and dime bags onto the neighbors’ side of the fence before disappearing into the darkness themselves. The band stood around, dumbfounded, as the room cleared, their audience disappeared, and a pair of tired-looking cops wandered into the house with their hands on their hips. The night was over, prematurely - and while the old house’s closing ceremonies were supposed to have some sort of significance, the chaos of the evening was befitting of the chaos of its era. The street was full of wasted kids, running from the cop lights. With three beers in my body, I ran, too - into the cool bronze night of the neighborhood, past the bungalows and pueblo revivals, holding my half-empty pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of my flannel shirt. It was the fall of 2013 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was nineteen years old, and it was the first house show I’d ever attended. 

II.

Albuquerque is about a day’s drive from anything; eight hours east of Las Vegas, seven hours out from Phoenix. Denver lies six miles to the north, and Mexico five hours south. The city rests on a massive alluvial plain and straddles the Rio Grande at its midpoint, where droughts and water-rights battles often reduce the river to a trickle. It’s bright: the sun shines four out of every five days, and at a mile above sea level, the sun can feel intimately close. Isolated by miles of Southwestern desert, it’s nonetheless a city of intersections - intersections of North American cultures, of rivers and railroads, and of highways. I-40 and I-25 collide here at the “Big I,” an engineering feat that doubles as a towering monument to the car culture of the American West. Nearly thirty percent of residents speak Spanish, and another significant portion speaks Navajo or Vietnamese. In the last hundred and fifty years, it’s grown from a railroad depot to nearly two-hundred miles of low-density urban sprawl - and many parts retain an odd 1960s or ‘70s feel. Outside of the city, they make movies and television, and test weapons for the military. Passenger trains still clatter through downtown, and bands play under gazebos in the historic district. In Barelas, Chicano pride shines. In Rio Rancho, suburban tract homes bump up against the stark, high desert. But while the city glows with a sort of mid-century American-ness, it more often feels far, far away from the mainstream culture and customs of the rest of the U.S. It’s a weird place, especially if you - like me - grew up amidst the urban renewal and suburban gloom of post-industrial New England. Out in New Mexico, you sort of get the feeling that you’ve traveled off the map.

I lived in Albuquerque from 2012 to 2016. I wanted to make art and play my guitar, and I got my wish; I spent most of those years submerged in the city’s weird subculture of underground house shows. Our neighborhood of University Heights - more generally known as the Student Ghetto, due to its huge population of off-campus UNM students - was the kind of starving-artist paradise peculiar to college towns. The neighborhood was made up of cheap, low-density rental housing. Landlords and neighbors were generally tolerant of the 18-25 crowd and whatever noise and chaos it generated. Homes were usually single-unit, with spacious yards and a sense of relative privacy. Rents were in the high hundreds, and we often had more space than we needed. The infrastructure supported public transit and cyclists and the whole area was anchored by a commercial strip with cheap food and plenty of intellectual resources.

But while while the Student Ghetto was typical of any neighborhood near a big college campus, the fact that the college campus happened to be located right in the middle of a major city - a city that, in turn, was an isolated stop on the way to the rest of the world - meant that a disproportionate amount of creative energy was funneled directly into the laps of the people living there. In 2014-15 a five-block stretch of Gold Avenue alone boasted five house venues, each with distinct programming, that sometimes threw shows on the same nights. The most important of them, Gold House, changed hands countless times but survived for over a decade as a magnet for nationally-recognized punk and indie acts. I saw Kid Congo play at Gold House, in the living room; I saw Kimya Dawson play on the porch. The loudest show I’ve ever seen in my life was at Gold House: the Cosmonauts blew my eardrums there, on a Sunday night in the summer of 2014.

A culture existed around these places. Different houses were home to different sub-families of the city’s greater punk community, and often had one or two of their own house bands in addition to a few touring favorites. My immediate neighbors hosted murky, reverb-washed psych rock bands like L.A. Witch, while the legendary Bungalow was something like a fraternal organization for strange, outer-limits outsider punk. 

Beyond that, different houses had different philosophies about live music, different levels of permissiveness surrounding drugs and drinking, and varying levels of preparedness for interactions with the police. At some venues, “rules” were looked upon suspiciously. At one Fourth of July show in 2015, the entertainment options were split between outdoor American flag-burning and a basement set by a band that played completely naked. But there were more often attempts to establish some order. At the Bungalow, there was generally a volunteer at the door who checked IDs and marked hands accordingly; this protected the house and its inhabitants when the cops were called, as they were during the second Mountain Blood Fest when one hardcore punk vocalist ended up on the roof. 

My Albuquerque experience eventually reached its zenith at the Bungalow, where Bird Friend recorded Cibola and I probably attended more shows than anywhere else, but it was Wagon Wheel - a miniscule pueblo house on Stanford Drive - where I first found my footing as a writer and musician. 

III. 

Wagon Wheel’s house band was Arroyo Deathmatch, an insane hardcore/folk-punk band that played a weird assemblage of uncommon and handmade instruments and acted as the essential masthead for the local Goathead Record Collective. Besides being the band that I most closely identify with this space, they were the first group I encountered in the Southwest who really completely embodied a DIY ethic. A lot of people coming into music feel as if they need to gather a certain amount of abstract necessities in order to reach a performance level - things like promotional materials, or a clear idea of genre, style, influence, etc. These guys didn’t even need proper instruments. They played a kind of shambling punk on a frankenstein lineup of homemade drums, bass guitars, flutes and ukuleles that was nonetheless really literary and challenging and rousingly political. They hand-printed their own CD jackets, did all their own distribution, and created their own music network before Spotify was a thing and when social media as we now know it was in its infancy. 

The first time I caught them was at Wagon Wheel, on their own turf - in the sweaty, postage-stamp sized living room that felt like it was ready to burst with bodies dancing, jumping, singing along. I have no idea how long they had been a band before I encountered them, but the scene that I wandered into felt completely fully-formed by the time I arrived. Folks knew the words to their songs, knew the breaks, wore the fashion and participated fully in the music. The audience was committed to this local band in a way that I had never considered, let alone encountered, in the fragile, decentralized, conservative and suburban music community back home in New England.

Seeing Arroyo Deathmatch for the first time completely reordered my idea of what was possible as a performer - instead of meeting the expectations of an entrenched music scene, as most fledgling musicians attempt to do, they created their own scene, with its own internal logic and set of rules. Obviously this wasn’t the first time this had ever happened in punk history, but to see it happening on such a grassroots level - and with an audience that was so ready to be a part of their thing - was incalculably influential on my soft, teenage brain. I sent them an email, asking how to be a part of that thing, and they set me up with my first show in town. It was the first Bird Friend show - a last-minute addition to the opening ceremonies of the first-ever Mountain Blood Fest. I banged my way through six or seven solo songs, completely unamplified, met our lifelong friend and collaborator Nikki Barva, and was at a Goathead Collective meeting two weeks later.

IV.

Goathead Record Collective was an non-hierarchical affiliation of artists and musicians that organized gear shares, music promotion, and operated a sort of mobile recording studio whose equipment was free to use amongst collective members. They organized a weekly meeting - on Wednesday nights - where participants drew up show schedules and local promo stuff and organized workshops on everything from tour booking and zine-making to discussions about scene politics and self-policing. The location rotated, sometimes taking place at the Bungalow, sometimes at my own place, Coffee House, and most often at Wagon Wheel. A ton of stuff came out of the GRC: an organized network of merch sales, three iterations of Mountain Blood Fest, countless shows at venues ranging from living rooms to warehouses, clubs, and karate studios. That’s not to mention the recorded output: GRC was involved in early releases by bands like Days ‘N’ Daze, and a distinguished list of Albuquerque artists like the Leaky Faces, Manuka Piglet, the Vassar Bastards, and Arroyo Deathmatch themselves. Using the DIY studio setup and a refurbished 10-CD duplicator from the flea market, the collective did hand-made CD releases and promoted them in local newspapers. 

If it sounds utopic, it was - and the collective disbanded after a few years. But when I stumbled into it, it was in its halcyon days. At Wagon Wheel and the other houses it felt as though there was an endless parade of bands who, although now fading into history, left a permanent impression on us. Far from the cultural centers of the country, and far even from the curated, “professional” music community of Albuquerque, the weirdest bands in the world summoned magic, effortlessly, night after night. These houses glowed with creative energy, and the more music they contained, the more their myths assumed legendary proportions.

V. 

I hoped that some of that magic would rub off when Alexster, of Arroyo Deathmatch, invited Bird Friend to record an album at Wagon Wheel. Our band was - as it’s always been - a pretty loose unit. I had one record out already, a self-titled release that I’d cobbled together with my high school band. It was a gloomy, navel-gazing collection of bummers and breakup songs that nevertheless featured “Parting Gifts,” a song that’d soon become a singalong staple of our years in Albuquerque. I’d been playing solo shows in the city for about six months, and had recruited Cody and Peach of the Leaky Faces to play with me when they were available. My then-roomate (now wife) Carson would sit in on harmony vocals every now and then. 

I booked a weekend at Wagon Wheel to bang out some songs I’d been working on; I’d recently read Hesiod’s Theogony & Works and Days and some of Edith Hamilton’s classic Mythology and become really interested in the weird, flawed gods and heroes of ancient Greece. I was a young dude, very far from home and trying to figure things out pretty much completely on my own; I was very aware that I was going through a transitional period, twenty years old and particularly susceptible to self-mythologizing. I began to think of myself as entering a new epoch of my life, and through my involvement in the Collective and the music community I felt as if I were making a full break from the expectations and orthodoxies of my “old life” in New England. It became very important to me to write down what I was seeing unfold all around me.

Reading the ancient stories - which really feel so contemporary at times - pushed me to mythologize what I was living through. The writers, artists, strangers and cities of the Southwest lived on one hand, with the folks I left back in New England on the other. I started to try and fit them into the contours of very, very old stories. I may have been trying to make some sense of the weird new world I found myself in. But I was more certainly writing to my older self; caught in that present utopia, I had the bright idea to create a sort of Myth of Ages that would elevate that fleeting moment to the status of folklore. After all, the excitement of the music community back then felt so much bigger than the sum of its parts. If this radical moment of mass self-actualization was, in its essence, just a bunch of people hanging out in living rooms, it felt huge, important, essential. That meant the only way to write about it was mythologically. 

Once again, it’s not like this idea was itself a radical development. Storytelling and tall tales are as old as anything in the folk tradition. But if Bird Friend’s love for the folk tradition has often pitted us against the prevailing currents of popular music, it was - in this instant - the most appropriate vessel.

We only had two days to record the material that would become Our Gods. Some elements of my music life never change, and the matter of scheduling is one of them. Alexster had a day job, a venue to run, and other groups to record; Cody had his other band, Carson was still in school, and I worked nights at the 66 Diner. Peach, who at that point had already played shows with us, may have been out of town or otherwise occupied, and didn’t get to join us at all. As it were, we had two days back-to-back in mid-October to crank out whatever songs we could. We planned a double release with the Leaky Faces in December, so the feeling was that whatever we committed to tape that weekend would pretty much be the album. The “the studio” was set up in the empty living room, and was limited to two microphones and a dining room chair. Alexster’s bedroom served as the control booth.

VI.

A few days before the release, the Collective got together in the basement of the Bungalow, and we had a CD-making party for Our Gods and the Leaky Faces’ Freak Tree. We burned blank discs ten at a time on the duplicator, and cut album covers that we’d printed for free with someone’s UNM library card. We did some beers and carefully glued the covers onto plain black CD jackets, each one stamped with the Goathead Records logo. It was December, and it was cold; in photos from that night, everyone’s wearing jackets and sweaters indoors. I wonder now if the heat was on, or if it was ever on in that house. 

We did the show at Wagon Wheel a few nights later - something like eight bands played, and our resident videographer Isaac “Boose” Vallejos got the whole evening on film. That night was Wagon Wheel as I remember it: packed, sweaty, and electric with creative energy. In those days, getting a show at all felt like a blessing - every single performance felt vital, essential, and to attach a whole album to it felt triumphant. I have the videos of the Bird Friend set, and we’re loose, sloppy, full of humor, and backed against the wall by a big crowd of happy people.

The Goathead thing began to splinter apart a few months after Our Gods. Social friction amidst the growing proportions of the scene, not to mention the exhausting undertaking of Mountain Blood Fest II, contributed to a slow drift towards other projects. The atmosphere of idealism was hard to sustain as more people joined the fold, and the collective itself felt more beholden to a sense of expectation and accountability that quickly overwhelmed it.

It was tough to let it all go. It’s not like the shows and the bands simply vanished, but a growing sense of dislocation and disunity began to take over. The essential loss of a mutual support network returned the music scene back to a landscape of unfocused cliques. At this point, I was 21 years old, totally untethered and spinning my wheels. I started drinking a lot, and entered a dark stretch, turning out songs that were long, desperate, and heavy with a sense of doom. I fell down for a while. Eventually I left Albuquerque, in order to hit the reset button before I went too far down an ugly path.

A friend of mine once said that writing is a selfish act. Before he passed away, I often thought about asking him what he meant - and now that I don’t have the chance, I meditate on it often. And writing down these memories so long after the fact, I find myself meditating on it all over again. Maybe it’s selfish to attach too much significance to this brief period of my life. Or maybe it’s selfish to view something that touched so many people through the narrow window of my own, meager experience. After all, the world of New Mexican music was so much bigger than the record collective. Or perhaps it’s selfish to talk about those days like they belonged to some perfect, unspoiled era; for they most certainly did not. All of this history took place against the confused, chaotic backdrop of about a thousand peoples’ early twenties - not generally known as a peaceful or self-assured time in life. Not everyone got out in one piece, or even alive.

Yet I’ve been playing my guitar in front of people for a long time now, and Bird Friend has been around in some form for over a decade. And though I’ve started to suspect that we’re not going to be famous (not that that’s the point), in navigating a whole range of music scenes I’ve started to double back to the questions leftover from the days of Goathead. How do we celebrate each other, and our art? How do we inhabit the role of audience, critic, and creator all with the same grace? And now, in a world whose modernity is more disenfranchising than ever, how do we do it all with dignity?

As musicians, we’re constantly being assaulted by statistics: our plays, our listeners, and their level of engagement is constantly being tracked in extreme, granular detail. Promoters use these numbers to gauge your marketability, an important task in a world where the profitability of a music venue is considered life-or-death. Less people are going to shows, less people are consuming physical media, and the network of music discovery is essentially in the hands of algorithms and AI. The context of a piece of music is often lost when a “user” only spends a few seconds with it on a reel or social media post. The act of creation is its own reward, yet I sometimes find myself asking the most frightening question: what’s the fucking point?

What are we supposed to do as artists? Why do we make music? Who’s it for? In a perfect world, it’s one pathway to building a shared philosophy. That’s what the Goathead era was for me: a forum in which a little music scene was foundational to ideas about culture, community, and mutual support. But what’s the benefit of creating a shared philosophy, if it only exists in a digital space? The town I live in now is supposedly full of artists - and I don’t see a united front against the behemoth of corporate development that’s shuttered a frightening number of venues these last few years. Art as content, art as corporate culture, art supposedly made “accessible” by an internet machine designed primarily to make money are all more dominant than ever - and I sometimes wonder if the concept of an art community actually stands a chance. When I worry, I think of the extremely unlikely success we had in Albuquerque. If it warms me just a little, I also remember that it was all a very long time ago.

Our Gods is not the greatest album ever made. It���s not even the best album Bird Friend ever made. But for myself, and my own personal history (here comes the selfish act again), it represents a little glory that we got to participate in, if only for a while. I wonder if I’ll ever experience that intensity again, but if your time is still yet to come, hear this: somewhere you did, somewhere you will - somewhere you are all together still.

VII. Belated Liner Notes

Listen to “OUR GODS” on Spotify or Bandcamp.

Overture (Muses)

The idea with “Overture” was to start the record with a reference to Greek poetry and to Hesiod’s work by including a rip-off of the kind of invocation that would commonly begin a piece of ancient literature. This little prayer was meant, in the old days, to set the tone and context of a piece and to assure the audience that a storyteller knew what they were talking about.  Performed a cappella in one take, I don’t think this song was ever performed again. I still like the concept, and still think it’s clever to flip this old convention on its head by admitting in the first line of the album that the writer of these songs is an unreliable narrator.

Where Are You?

I spent a lot of my younger years wandering around the woods of New England. This is the oldest part of the country, and if a historical site isn’t preserved, it’s quickly swallowed up by nature. The area I grew up in was clear-cut in the 19th century for sheep grazing, and by the early 1900s was completely forested again. There are really no such thing as historical ruins out here, and if you do find something abandoned out in the forest, it’s probably only a few decades old.  I saw some coincidence in the idea that, in both the Mediterranean and the Southwest, researchers are constantly finding throwaway evidence of really old civilizations - potsherds, petroglyphs, architectural stuff that’s all just been sitting out in the desert for hundreds or thousands of years that gives you an idea of the everyday lives of people who lived and died generations ago. You can actually just wander out into the desert and see this stuff. It doesn’t get washed away by the rain or the ocean or torn up by a tree root after fifty years. That’s the idea behind “Where Are You?,” a song that supposes what will be left of our lives a thousand years from now. When you’re young, you feel things so, so intensely - how much of that intensity lives in the objects we leave behind? What kind of half-life does it have?

Oh, Pilgrim!

This is a pretty straightforward song, message-wise. It was most likely written before I began to fixate on the “concept” of this album, and it’s more of a clear-cut celebration of my independence and my Big Desert Adventure than anything else. It’s very important in our catalog, however, as the first-ever recorded Carson performance. Her natural gift for harmony is obvious here, and I remember Alexster being somewhat stunned that she pulled her part off in one take.  Recording vocals can be the most nerve-wracking element of the studio experience, and her fearlessness in performance and ability to write complex vocal harmonies is as stunning now as it was then. 

The Wheel

I haven’t talked much about the dominance of folk punk in the Albuquerque scene of those days. It had already been around for years by that time, and the blank-canvas nature of the genre was well-suited to the limited resources of our little scene. For a while, it felt like folk punk was all there was in the neighborhood, since it could be played convincingly on cheap instruments, by folks with limited chops, and didn’t require anything as burdensome as an amplifier. The minor-key inertia of “The Wheel” owes something to the prevailing folk punk conventions of the day, and seems to be particularly indebted to The Leaky Faces’ “Steam,” even if it doesn’t match the energy of that band. 

The Road (Forever Returns to the Heart)

“The Road” flirts with bluegrass, a style whose strict conventions and average level of musicianship are completely foreign to a band as ramshackle and inconsistent as Bird Friend. This was one of the songs that was supposed to include percussion, which is blasphemous in the bluegrass world, and there are live recordings out there that include Peach on the drums. Nevertheless, any listener of “The Road” can probably tell that I’d discovered Ralph Stanley by this point.  This is one of the songs from Our Gods that I vividly remember working on; I recall flipping through Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume as quietly as I possibly could while Cody recorded the freewheeling banjo parts. “The Road” is probably only second to “Parting Gifts” when it comes to its popularity, as well as the number of times it was caught on video during this era. It’s featured in the Before You Burn documentary and on the Mountain Blood Fest II compilation. 

Granite & Gold

This is an interesting track. I don’t remember much of what motivated me to write this one, although it strikes me now as some hand-wringing over the future legacy of the Goathead scene. Ten years later, Goathead is long gone, and the artists that are still active have completely evolved. Looking back at that time in such depth feels like going back to a place you used to live in; everything’s different, and a lot of people are gone, but the light still falls in the same way. An uncanny feeling, I guess. Like visiting your old elementary school. 

The Fear, The Fear

“The Fear” is a weird composite of a lot of my influences at the time of recording. The title is, of course, ripped from the Defiance, Ohio album of the same name. The guitar part is totally indebted to Bob Dylan’s version of “House Carpenter,” which I played often back when I spent my Sundays busking in Santa Fe. I’m not entirely sure where we got the idea to attempt the weird, sitar-like banjo part, but I suspect it was from Mark Fry’s “The Witch,” which was on heavy rotation at Coffee House. I do also remember Cody joking that the banjo part came out “sounding like Donovan.” Our Gods is a pretty spare record, and I think this is the most ambitious we got during those recording sessions. It’s another comment on the fleeting nature of the community and the anxieties and social pressures that motivate people to choose a life of convention over a life of art. 

Our Gods

The title track features Kylee Jo on fiddle. Kylee was staying overnight at Wagon Wheel during the Our Gods sessions; it wasn’t uncommon for house venues to host traveling musicians (or just travelers) even if they weren’t performing there, and Kylee was just on the way to somewhere else when we met. Having never met us before, and certainly never hearing of our band, she agreed to play fiddle on “Our Gods.” I played the song once through to teach the changes, we recorded one fiddle track, I wrote her name down on a piece of receipt paper for the album credits, and we never saw each other again.  Some of the most intimate exchanges of ideas happen in your own home, far from performance spaces, and Carson and I have always tried to keep our home open to other artists. It’s a tough world out there, and a little sanctuary can go a long way. Sometimes you even make new friends, or collaborators. 

Sucker & St. Joan

Sometimes you look back at a song you wrote and surprise yourself, and in revisiting Our Gods after so many years, this song seems to stand taller among the others. The intent behind this album is clearer here than anywhere else, and the composition, harmony, and structure are all about as highly-developed as I was capable of at age 20. The playing’s good, too; but what really strikes me on “Sucker” is its clarity. Hearing the chorus again, recognizing that even a decade ago we were aware of our community as a temporary junction of lives, is awfully moving - and revisiting this song is what encouraged me to write this piece in the first place. When listening to this song, I can feel my present self looking back, my past self looking forward - and we meet each other somewhere in the middle.  I do my best to catch up with people from the old scene, engage with their art, listen to their bands and see what’s going on in their lives. Some folks are still permanent fixtures in the Bird Friend family, while some are like distant relatives. Still others I check in with once a year or so, or catch their shows when they’re in town. Others just cross my mind from time to time, or pass by in the social media parade. 

IIX. 

Spotify, music streaming, and social media all belonged to a very different landscape a decade ago. Many bands of the Albuquerque community never made it to Spotify for logistical or philosophical reasons; others never recorded much at all, or produced anything that sounded like their live performances. Practically none of the bands of those days are still active - although most of the artists involved are still working, the vast majority of them have moved onto other projects. Much of the Goathead Record Collective’s web presence has been lost over time.

Below, I’ve listed a few songs that are representative of Bird Friend’s world during the 2013-2016 era. Some of it comes from bands we played with, and most of it comes from Albuquerque. All of the bands featured were, in some significant way, affiliated with the house show scene. Bandcamp is still the best way to listen to these artists. If you have the paper edition of this piece, the QR code on the bottom will take you to the web version where you can listen to the music.

If you want the authentic experience, you can download these songs as mp3s, drag them into an iTunes playlist, load them onto an iPod Mini with a cracked screen and listen to them on a skateboard.

The Leaky Faces - Steam 

Arroyo Deathmatch - Swimming the Witch

Bella Trout - Coffee Stains

Human Behavior - Crag

Smoke & Mirrors - The Godslayer

Manuka Piglet - Mr. Kelp

Crushed!? - Ethereal Horizon

Soviet Science Fair - Toast (Live 2014)

lemurtween - pee van/no one understands me

Lindy Vision - Bad Things

The Vassar Bastards - Dead Cat

Nobody Particular - Cage Wreck

Colour Me Once - 10,000 Miles to Graceland

Marissa. - Running For The Gates

Klondykes - BTSD

[bignaz8]

ARIZONA INTERESTING FACTS:

1. Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits, more mountains than any one of the other Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).

2. All New England, plus the state of Pennsylvania would fit inside Arizona.

3. Arizona became the 48th state and last of the contiguous states on February 14, 1912, Valentine’s Day.

4. Arizona's disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature across the nation and the lowest temperature across the nation in the same day.

5. There are more wilderness areas in Arizona than in the entire Midwest. Arizona alone has 90 wilderness areas, while the Midwest has 50.

6. Arizona has 26 peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in elevation.

7. Arizona has the largest contiguous stand of Ponderosa pines in the world stretching from near Flagstaff along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains region.

8. Yuma, Arizona is the country's highest producer of winter vegetables, especially lettuce.

9. Arizona is the 6th largest state in the nation, covering 113,909 square miles.

10. Out of all the states in the U.S., Arizona has the largest percentage of its land designated as Indian lands.

11. The Five C's of Arizona's economy are: Cattle, Copper, Citrus, Cotton, and Climate.

12. More copper is mined in Arizona than all the other states combined The Morenci Mine is the largest copper producer in all of North America.

13. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, two of the most prominent movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, were married on March 18, 1939, in Kingman, Arizona.

14. Covering 18,608 sq. miles, Coconino County is the second largest county by land area in the 48 contiguous United States.(San Bernardino County in California is the largest).

15. The world's largest solar telescope is located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Sells, Arizona.

16. Bisbee, Arizona is known as the Queen of the Copper Mines because during its mining heyday it produced nearly 25 percent of the world's copper. It was the largest city in the Southwest between Saint Louis and San Francisco.

17. Billy the Kid killed his first man, Windy Cahill, in Bonita, Arizona.

18. Arizona grows enough cotton each year to make more than one pair of jeans for every person in the United States.

19. Famous labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma.

20. In 1912, President William Howard Taft was ready to make Arizona a state on February 12, but it was Lincoln's birthday.

The next day, the 13th, was considered bad luck so they waited until the following day. That's how Arizona became known as the Valentine State.

21. When England's famous London Bridge was replaced in the 1960s, the original was purchased, dismantled, shipped stone by stone and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it still stands today.

22. Mount Lemmon, Tucson, in the Santa Catalina Mountains, is the southernmost ski resort in the United States.

23. Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch in Picacho, Arizona is the largest privately-owned ostrich ranch in the world outside South Africa.

24. If you cut down a protected species of cactus in Arizona, you could spend more than a year in prison.

25. The world's largest to-scale collection of miniature airplane models is housed at the library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

26. The only place in the country where mail is delivered by mule is the village of Supai, located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

27. Located on Arizona's western border, Parker Dam is the deepest dam in the world at 320 feet.

28. South Mountain Park/Preserve in Phoenix is the largest municipal park in the country.

29. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, located about 55 miles west of Phoenix, generates more electricity than any other U.S. power plant.

30. Oraibi, a Hopi village located in Navajo County, Arizona, dates back to before A.D. 1200 and is reputed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in America.

31. Built by Del Webb in 1960, Sun City, Arizona was the first 55-plus active adult retirement community in the country.

32. Petrified wood is the official state fossil. The Petrified Forest in northeastern Arizona contains America's largest deposits of petrified wood.

33. Many of the founders of San Francisco in 1776 were Spanish colonists from Tubac, Arizona.

34. Phoenix originated in 1866 as a hay camp to supply military post Camp McDowell.

35. Rainfall averages for Arizona range from less than three inches in the deserts to more than 30 inches per year in the mountains.

36. Rising to a height of 12,643 feet, Humphreys Peak north of Flagstaff is the state's highest mountain.

37. Roadrunners are not just in cartoons! In Arizona, you'll see them running up to 17-mph away from their enemies.

38. The Saguaro cactus is the largest cactus found in the U.S. It can grow as high as a five-story building and is native to the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across southern Arizona.

39. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, grew up on a large family ranch near Duncan, Arizona.

40. The best-preserved meteor crater in the world is located near Winslow, Arizona.

41. The average state elevation is 4,000 feet.

42. The Navajo Nation spans 27,000 square miles across the states of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, but its capital is seated in Window Rock, Arizona.

43. The amount of copper utilized to make the copper dome atop Arizona's Capitol building is equivalent to the amount used in 4.8 million pennies.

44. Near Yuma, the Colorado River's elevation dips to 70 feet above sea level, making it the lowest point in the state.

45. The geographic center of Arizona is 55 miles southeast of Prescott near the community of Mayer.

46. You could pile four 1,300-foot skyscrapers on top of each other and they still would not reach the rim of the Grand Canyon.

47. The hottest temperature recorded in Arizona was 128 degrees at Lake Havasu City on June 29, 1994.

48. The coldest temperature recorded in Arizona was 40 degrees below zero at Hawley Lake on January 7, 1971.

49. A saguaro cactus can store up to nine tons of water.

50. The state of Massachusetts could fit inside Maricopa County (9,922 sq. miles).

51. The westernmost battle of the Civil War was fought at Picacho Pass on April 15, 1862 near Picacho Peak in Pinal County.

52. There are 11.2 million acres of National Forest in Arizona, and one-fourth of the state forested.

53. Wyatt Earp was neither the town marshal nor the sheriff in Tombstone at the time of the shoot-out at the O..K. Corral. His brother Virgil was the town marshal.

54. On June 6, 1936, the first barrel of tequila produced in the United States rolled off the production line in Nogales, Arizona.

55. The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in North America.

56. Bisbee is the Nation's Southernmost mile-high city.

57. The two largest man-made lakes in the U.S. are Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both located in Arizona.

58. The longest remaining intact section of Route 66 can be found in Arizona and runs from Seligman to Topock, a total of 157 unbroken miles.

59. The 13 stripes on the Arizona flag represent the 13 original colonies of the United States.

60. The negotiations for Geronimo's final surrender took place in Skeleton Canyon, near present day Douglas, Arizona, in 1886.

61. Prescott, Arizona is home to the world's oldest rodeo, and Payson, Arizona is home to the world's oldest continuous rodeo, both of which date back to the 1880's.

62. Kartchner Caverns, near Benson, Arizona, is a massive limestone cave with 13,000 feet of passages, two rooms as long as football fields, and one of the world's longest soda straw stalactites: measuring 21 feet 3 inches.

63. You can carry a loaded firearm on your person, no permit required.

64. Arizona has one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S.A.

[hauntedtrait]

🐴Once Upon A Time In Chestnut Ridge: A Bachelor Challenge

Meet Dakota Blue Heron, Chestnut Ridge's most eligible bachelor!

Dakota is 29, stands 6'3 tall, living on Crow's Head ranch, primarily a horse ranch that is open for guests in the spring and summer months. The ranch is owned and operated by the Heron family, being passed down through generations for over a century. Kindly, Dakota's parents have allowed the ranch to be used this season, in hopes that the show's popularity will help bring in more guests and customers.

Dakota accepted the network's offer to be Bachelor in hopes of finding a life partner, having little time to meet new people in his regular life. Also because, in his words, "this seems fun!"

Here's a few things he wants potential contestants to know about him: he spends his days working in various different parts of the ranch (in the horse stalls and gardens especially), he grows most of his food and whatever he doesn't grow he sources from local and ethical producers, he loves being surrounded by people (especially those he holds dearly), occasionally hunts (deer and invasive species mostly). He speaks navajo, navajo sign language, english and spanish, and is a tribal member of the navajo nation. Dakota wants kids and is looking for a partner with similar desires to start a family.

Keep reading below for more info!

Likes: fellow animal enthusiasts, physical contact (his love language), his grandmother's cooking, gardening, spending his days outside, being with family, cinnamon, old hollywood films, people who are connected to their families or communities, fry bread

Dislikes: being cooped up inside, snow days, musical theater, cilantro (he's got the soap taste gene), sudden loud sounds, stand up comedy, cold showers, people who don't like getting dirty, cops, cigarette smoke

GUIDELINES:

8 contestants will be accepted

contestants should have at least 5 likes and/or dislikes

contestants have 15 skill points to distribute as they wish

contestants can have 3-5 traits, except for unflirty or romantic, do give them at least one negative trait, it's more fun that way

unfortunately, only human contestants for this one. YA and adult only, any amount of story/backstory, any aspiration except for romance related aspirations, any gender (pleaseeee give them pronouns). include all this information in your entry please.

any cc and outfits, though try to keep to 1 outfit per category. maxis match or maxis mix is fine EXCEPT for alpha hairs, no alpha hairs please.

Download can be private or public, up to you, BUT please include ALL cc in the download!

i own most of the packs except for some of the kits, but i do have the ‘kits made bgc’ so i can replace stuff if needed

i will be changing skin details and giving them more outfits, if you submit a sim you are consenting to have them be changed to fit my sim style. honestly i highly encourage everyone to use sliders and custom presets, i think sims look a lot better with those and i dont love how vanilla presets look tbh

if you do not have the horse ranch pack but would like for certain skills, traits or aspirations from the pack to be used on your sim, let me know and i will add it in game!

tag me in your posts and use the hashtag #chestnutbc

UPDATE:

NEW DEADLINE: AUGUST 14

PLEASE READ:

As stated previously, Dakota likesmasculine-leaning sims. No strict gender preference, but I am looking for masculine contestants. Be it women who are more butch, masc leaning non binary, cis or trans men on the masculine side of the spectrum. Dakota's type tends to be people with muscles, masculine-leaning, who look like they could pick him up and throw him around. Dad types are a plus too. He prefers people who aren't very skinny, who have some meat on their bones. Strong types, protective vibes, and obviously people who can and are willing to work on a farm and live and deal with animals every day, it's not easy work!

[super-luna-fic]

Camp Justice Character Profiles

Callan "Cal" Josephine Alvarez W.

Alias: Crow Camp Justice Age: 14 Sex: Female Species: Human Hair: Dark Brown Curly Eye Color: Dark Hazel Brown Camp Justice Height: 5'6 Race/Ethnicity: West Indian (Trinidad and India), Dominican, Caucasian Skills: Martial Arts, Stealth, Weaponry, Acrobatics, Gymnastics, TBA Personality/Traits: Friendly (most of the time), Competitive, Short-tempered, Hardworking, Optimistic, Patient (that's what she thinks), Loyal, Mischievous, Hardheaded, Playful, Caring

Richard "Dick" John Grayson

Alias: Robin Camp Justice Age: 14 Sex: Male Species: Human Hair: Black Short and Wavy Eye Color: Electric Blue Camp Justice Height: 5'5.75 Race/Ethnicity: Caucasian (Romanian, French) Skills: Martial Arts, Stealth, Weaponry, Acrobatics, Decoding (Hacking), Gymnastics Personality/Traits: Optimistic, Compassionate, Caring, Loyal, Cocky, Playful, Hot-tempered, Ambitious

Wallace "Wally" Rudolph West

Alias: Kid Flash Camp Justice Age: 15 Sex: Male Species: Human Hair: Red Straight Eye Color: Gemstone Green Camp Justice Height: 5'8 Race/Ethnicity: Caucasian (Scottish, Norwegian) Skills/Powers: Martial Arts, Stealth, Super Speed, Super Stamina, Accelerated Healing, Phasing, Science Personality/Traits: Energetic, Impatient, Loyal, Caring, Playful, Talkative, Cocky, Kind Hearted

Kaldur'ahm

Alias: Aqualad Camp Justice Age: 16 Sex: Male Species: Atlantean, Human Hair: Light Blonde Curly Eye Color: Pistachio Green Camp Justice Height: 5'9 Race/Ethnicity: African American (Nigerian Ancestry) Skills/Powers: Martial Arts, Superhuman Strength, Hydro kinesis, Enhanced Hearing, Durability, Aquatic Respiration Personality/Traits: Calm, Level-headed, Caring, Loyal, Responsible, Noble

Conner "Con" Kent

Alias: Superboy Camp Justice Age: Biological body of 15-year-old but was created 6 months before being discovered Sex: Male Species: Kryptonian, Human Hair: Black Straight Eye Color: Ocean Blue Camp Justice Height: 5'9 Race/Ethnicity: Caucasian Skills/Powers: Martial Arts, Super Strength, Super Hearing, Durability, Enhanced Vision, Accelerated Healing Personality/Traits: Hard-headed, Defiant, Loyal, Temperamental, Shy

Roy Harper

Alias: Speedy, Red Arrow Camp Justice Age: 17 Sex: Male Species: Human Hair: Red Orange Straight Eye Color: Sky Blue Camp Justice Height: 5'9.5 Race/Ethnicity: Caucasian (Dutch), Native American (Navajo) Skills: Martial Arts, Stealth, Archery, Technology, Weaponry Personality/Traits: Loyal, Short-tempered, Serious (sometimes), Playful

Artemis Crock

Alias: Artemis Camp Justice Age: 15 Sex: Female Species: Human Hair: Blonde Wavy Eye Color: Green-grey Camp Justice Height: 5'7 Race/Ethnicity: White (Scandinavian), Asian (Vietnamese) Skills: Martial Arts, Archery, Weaponry, Stealth Personality/Traits: Passionate, Loyal, Witty, Hardheaded

M'gann M'orzz

Alias: Miss Martian Camp Justice Age: Generally appears as a 15-year-old but is biologically 45 Sex: Female Species: Martian Hair: Red Straight Eye Color: Reddish Brown Camp Justice Height: Generally presents herself as 5'7 Race/Ethnicity: N/A Skills/Powers: Martial Arts, Telepathy, Phasing, Flight, Mind Control, Shapeshifting, Invisibility, Durability Personality/Traits: Optimistic, Cheerful, Playful, Loyal, Polite, Caring

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the DC original characters or plots. The only characters I own are the ones I created. This is merely a fanfiction story.

DO NOT REPOST ANYWHERE!

A/N: Thank you so much for continuing to keep up with my posts. I will be posting the first chapter later this week. If you have any questions or just want to talk please do send me a message!

See ya later!

[zithcavooris]

Growing up on the outskirts of the Navajo Nation, Roy Harper always felt a little bit of an outsider due to his biracial parentage. This persisted even after his white father died a hero’s death, rescuing innocent bystanders from a forest fire. Although a troubled, angry youth, Roy worked hard to fill his father’s heroic shoes. He channeled his anger into fighting against bigger kids to protect the smaller, doing odd jobs to help make ends meet, and studying archery under his mother, a world-class archery master fittingly named Brave Bow.

One day, a man named Oliver Queen came to town looking to hone his already impressive archery skills as Brave Bow’s student. He became a family friend and would return many times over the next few years. On one such visit, one of Oliver’s enemies followed him, revealing his identity as the hero Green Arrow. Roy and Oliver wound up working together to defeat the villain, saving each others’ lives and further cementing their friendship.

Tragically, Brave Bow began to succumb to illness. Having no family, and nothing else in town to keep her son there, she beseeched Oliver to take Roy in and give him a better life elsewhere. Uncertain that life with him would be much more stable, Ollie nonetheless agreed. Roy, who insisted he was “practically an adult anyway”, also began fighting alongside Green Arrow as his sidekick. He was nicknamed Speedy, after his agility on both foot and bow, a nickname that everyone regretted once the two became friends with superspeedsters.