#the story takes place only in the 7th loop we only hear about her other loops when its important to the story

[killjoy-prince]

If i had a nickel every time i watched an anime where Shun'ichi Toki voiced a character and sung either the opening or ending song for it, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but interesting that it happened twice

[tenebraevesper]

Isekai'd As My Past Self (Sonic the Hedgehog AU Story)

Being a fan of Isekai Anime (currently watching Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I'm Not the Demon Lord), I think it was inevitable for me to come up with a story like this.

However, before I start with the actual premise of the story, I first want to explain the setting though. This story is based on the trope of the main character dying or getting executed in some way, only to reincarnate as their past self (think along the lines of 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys A Carefree Life Married To Her Worst Enemy!), but with the caveat of having all of their future self's memories.

In this case, the story's starting point would be Archie Sonic's Mobius: 25 Year Later and Mobius: 30 Years Later storyline, with the main characters featured being King Sonic and King Shadow - or rather, their past selves before the events that led into 25YL/30YL took place. Silver would also be a major character in this due to his time-travelling shenanigans.

Before I dive into the plot properly, I will leave a warning here. If you read my previous analysis in regards to this storyline, King Shadow (The Altered Future & The Altered Character) & King Shadow (The Alternate Story), you would know that I don't like 25YL/30YL at all and therefore, I'm planning on not only deconstruct it, but completely destroy it in this AU story.

So, if you are a fan of the 25YL/30YL, the King Sonic storyline or the Sonally pairing, I'm recommending you to NOT read this AU story. If you do read it regardless of my warnings, don't come crying into the comments about how much you hate it. There is a reason I have warned you at the start and I'm not pulling any punches with this one.

With that said, let's dive into this story, and if you are curious about the additional text, it is the translated lyrics of the opening song of Villaines Level 99, titled LOVE or HATE?, which I was listening to while writing the story (the links lead to the TV Version and Full Version respectively). Honestly, if this were an anime, I'd probably use that song as it's theme song.

The Future

For example, if I let my hair sway a little

Will the voice I hear be LOVE or HATE?

Do whatever you like, no matter what they say

I won't stop walking

The story starts out sometime after the Sonic Universe Issue #5-#8. Take note, Mobius: X Years Later is, going by Pre-SGW canon, a possible ''What if'' future, not the canon future of Pre-SGW canon, which means that the events leading up to it were probably different than what we saw in later parts of Pre-SGW, but the timeline itself would probably similar enough.

The main focus would be on King Sonic, who is actually quite unhappy and bored with his life as the King of Light Mobius, thinking back to his past adventures and longing for the freedom he had, which is basically the core aspect of his character.

Before anyone starts arguing about why Sonic would be unhappy with his current life, take note that he actually expressed unhappiness in canon, specifically saying how he is not fit to be King, with Sally outright dismissing his feelings on the matter. Admittedly, this was also written by Ken Penders, who has no clue how Sonic works as a character and despite raising an interesting character point, quickly drops it like a hot potato.

Still, it is the one line I 100% agree with - Sonic is not fit to be a King.

This is why this AU story exists, as I want to dive in further into Sonic's thoughts on being a King. There would even be one event where another villain appears and King Sonic springs into action, only for Sally to literally stop him in his tracks, pointing out how he has other people that can handle this (this being a callback to a similar argument they had in Issue #134, where Sally basically told Sonic that he shouldn't throw himself in danger, especially since he's her consort and that they have other people fighting for them, meaning Sonic should stay by her side and rule with her - with Sonic refusing).

This is a similar case, with the addition of Sally telling him how he's the King and that he needs to think of his family and his people, how he can't go fighting like this since he's not anymore in his prime, and so on. All of which are valid points, but go against Sonic's core character.

King Sonic would obviously want to do the smart thing and keep Sally happy, but at the same time, wonders if it's really selfish that he also wants to be free from all of his duties as the King and go back to his adventuring lifestyle. Whether he wants to admit it or not, he has come to regret becoming King in the first place, but now that he made his choice, he cannot escape it.

As King Sonic thinks about this, he learns that King Shadow is back once again to cause chaos and, with other characters being conveniently absent, he goes to confront him despite Sally's wishes. King Sonic learns that King Shadow is on the search of some Mystical McGuffin Crystal (placeholder name, think of it like the Paradox Prism from Sonic Prime) that would help him once again to assert his rule over Light Mobius (as he tried to do with Tikhaos previously).

The two end up in a battle, with the Fake King Shadow sneering at King Sonic for not standing up to him and wondering where Sonic's fighting spirit had gone. This is the last straw for King Sonic and he tackles Fake King Shadow into the Paradox Crystal (not very imaginative, but hey, better than the actual placeholder name), causing it to shatter and the two getting engulfed in a bright light before everything around them turns dark.

The Past

Unstoppable news

They'll forget it tomorrow

Today is better than yesterday

Believing leads to a big victory

Sonic awakens suddenly, standing on a stage surrounded by the royal family and the people of the Acorn Kingdom. He is in a daze, wondering what had happened, with the first thing he notices is that he is much younger, being a teenager once again, and wonders if his battle with King Shadow and the whole Light Mobius future was just a dream.

He is then suddenly addressed by Sally, who asks him to finally make their engagement official to the public, but Sonic, still confused and baffled, and unable to comprehend what had just happened, just utters the following:

''No... I need... Shadow.''

He then leaps off the stage and quickly runs off to find the Faker and get the answer in regards to what had happened.

He eventually finds Shadow, who is equally baffled by what had just happened, although he managed to get an understanding of the situation faster than Sonic, and the two get into another fight, just to take out their frustrations on each other.

During the battle, they come to the conclusion that they somehow time-traveled back into the past, awakening as their younger selves right before the events that would set up the Light Mobius story had happened. In this past, they had just a major victory against Dr. Eggman and, as part of the celebration, Sonic and Sally, who had just made up and started dating again, wanted to make their engagement once again official - at least until Sonic ran off to find Shadow.

In other words, while one could argue that they pulled a Silver, this isn't a situation where they can just change the past and travel back to their own future. Instead, they got the opportunity to relive their past while also having the memories of their future selves. In other words, they are free to do whatever they want with the knowledge they have.

As they process this realization, Sonic accuses Shadow of becoming a tyrant again, and Shadow responds how the only reason he had done that was because even after Dr. Eggman was gone, other villains attempted to take over his place as the Big Bad and Shadow was the one who dealt with them to ensure peace. Had he gone too far in his mission? He did, but he felt that there was no other option for him left. There was power vacuum and he filled it by becoming a tyrant.

Sonic also realizes that, with him being back in the past as his younger self, he also got his own wish granted. He is not King Sonic anymore and he could easily go back to the adventuring he always wanted, enjoying the second chance, the freedom he had been granted. At the same time, he feels guilty because this would mean that the future he knows might not exist anymore, and it is through his own fault, even if he doesn't know the details.

Therefore, Sonic's main inner conflict here would be that he is torn between his desire for freedom and the duty he had towards the Acorn Kingdom as the future King, while Shadow's inner conflict would be his desire to protect the world through any means necessary and whether he should temper his more violent and cruel tendencies.

To make things more complicated, they are suddenly joined by Silver, who came from his own future to inform them about a looming danger that is threatening to tear up reality, with Sonic and Shadow realizing that they're responsible for this and have to work together now to fix their mistake.

This would be the main premise of the story.

The Present

Sync with the rhythm

I want to be swaying

But the outsiders are noisy

Noise canceling

As the story resumes, further details are revealed about Sonic and Shadow's current situation and the true nature of the shattered Paradox Crystal.

Through Silver's investigation, they learn that he Paradox Crystal was a powerful artifact that had the power of bending time and space by granting the user their innermost desires. This explains why Sonic and Shadow have returned back to the past as their younger selves, as Sonic's desire was to have his freedom back, while Shadow's desire was to have the power to protect the world in his own way. Not only that, but the shattering of the Crystal had also tampered with Sonic's own Chaos Energy, putting him in a similar state of agelessness as Shadow, which would allow Sonic to always remain in his prime so he could protect people and keep the world safe.

The three hedgehogs also learn that, before Sonic and Shadow, there was a different Entity that sought out the Paradox Crystal, but got trapped inside it and the Crystal getting shattered released it, which resulted in the Entity gaining the power to slowly fracture reality. To fix this mess, Sonic and Shadow would need to find the pieces of the Crystal that have scattered across the world like the Dragon Balls and bring them together. The reason why it is them who have to do this is, aside from personal responsibility, they're the ones among very few people who can actually detect and handle the Crystal's power and presence.

Sonic is excited to go on this adventure, only to get startled by a furious Sally calling for him and promptly hiding behind Shadow, as he doesn't want to confront Sally's wrath, yet. Shadow, in response, just rolls his eyes, while Silver is confused about what is going on. Basically, by Sonic saying ''No'' and running off earlier, Sally believed that she got shot down again and wants to give him a ''What the hell, dude?!'' speech about Sonic not caring about her feelings or even thinking about the situation for that matter.

Sonic attempts to explain himself, but is interrupted by Shadow, who tells Sally that reality is in danger and that's why Sonic ran off. This way, he also stops Sonic from accidentally revealing that he has memories of his future self, later explaining to Sonic that he doesn't really trust Sally with using any of that information. He points out that, while she can be proactive, when he started his tyrannical rule, she literally did nothing to undermine him, meaning that she still lacks some of decisiveness on her part.

Sally figures that, if things are that bad, then they should call the Freedom Fighters for help, although she would also have to discuss the matter with the Council of Acorn, as per the current rules, they cannot really act without getting the Council's approval.

Sonic, having enough of the Acorn Kingdom's politics and bureaucracy, decides to set out on his own, with only Shadow as his companion. He refuses to be anymore under the control of the government, be it the King or the Council, making the decision to work on his own.

He is here to protect them, not to be controlled by them, and if they don't like it, he can leave. He can do more good for the world if he doesn't have to wait to be told what he is supposed to do.

While there would be people protesting against this decision, Sonic and Shadow are already off on their adventure, traveling all over the world for the Crystal Shards Sonic Unleashed-style.

They would also face several opponents who would want the Crystal Shards for themselves, like Dr. Eggman, Ixis Naugus and Geoffrey St. John, and Scourge and the Destructix (perhaps even meeting Anti-Shadow and Anti-Silver if they have to travel to Moebius).

Oh, and one more thing - the engagement with Sally is off.

The Freedom Of Choice

For example, if I trace my finger a little

Will your choice be LOVE or HATE?

Do whatever you like, make your cheeks turn red

And spitting, boy

As I had mentioned before, the main inner conflict for Sonic would be the choice he would make in shaping his own future.

The expectations from people in-universe, as well as the reader, would obviously be that Sonic follows all the steps that leads up to the Light Mobius future (e.g. marrying Sally and becoming King), as that is the selfless thing to do, something that is expected from the main hero. Set right what was done wrong and follow the path to the anticipated happy ending.

But, is that really the ending that would make Sonic happy? This is a question Shadow would ask Sonic, wondering if he would really be happy to stay at one place, figuratively shackled to the duties of a King and abandoning who he is at his core.

In this story, Sonic would ultimately refuse to give up his freedom.

He will admit that, in the previous timeline, he did it to make Sally happy, but not himself. As a matter of fact, that was something everyone expected him to do, as they were the power couple and all that stuff, and he tried not to look back on the ''What If''. For him, there was no ''What if''.

However, now that he got a second chance, he decides to be selfish and do something for himself, especially when he experiences this sense of freedom once again by travelling all over the world, meeting new people and go on adventures.

The future itself is regarded as a huge ''What If''. Sonic has already experienced a future where he is the King and he wasn't happy about it. The question is, should he continue sacrificing his own happiness for the sake of others or actually be a bit selfish for his own sake? He doesn't even know how he ended up back as his younger self, so is he even allowed to change the present and the future? Would he be the villain because of that?

After all, it is not as if he would immediately return to the supposedly set Light Mobius future even if he fixed the Paradox Crystal. He was brought back to relive his past as he sees fit and he will be stuck in his teenage body with no way to jump into the future. So, either he can live through the whole experience again or just choose a different path.

Sonic would instead use the memories of his future self to help people, preventing any bad event flags from being triggered and protecting the world his own way. These changes in the present would obviously lead to the Light Mobius future not even being a possibility by default, allowing Sonic to live without regret.

Nevertheless, it won't be an easy choice to make and Sonic would keep doubting himself, which is why he would benefit from Shadow's presence.

Speaking of which...

The reason Shadow became a tyrant in the former timeline was to protect the world, ultimately losing himself in the process and feeding into his own delusions. When he returns to the past, he would still be in the mindset that he needs to protect the world by conquering it and eliminating any opposition. Sonic insists that he would be there to stop him, as he knows what Shadow is capable of.

Suddenly, Shadow gets furious, snapping at Sonic because the latter never saw just how bad it got before Shadow took over as a tyrant. As stated before, there was a power vacuum when Dr. Eggman died, leading to many other villains trying to take over, which basically made this whole situation a world-wide Game of Thrones. Shadow had to take over, because if he didn't, things could've ended up much worse.

Shadow also admits that he understands that everyone hated him, but he had to choose the ''ends justify the means'' option because he felt that there was nothing else left. Sonic, having gained a better understanding of Shadow's motives, would stop their fight and make an offer instead. He would tell Shadow that they could protect the world together as a team, especially since they have knowledge of the future and can use that to their advantage. Shadow would accept his offer.

The part that follows would focus on Sonic and Shadow's adventures across the world, where they would from time to time be aided by their friends, but ultimately, the story would be about them working together and developing a strong bond.

Now, that bond can be purely platonic... but if you are in any way familiar with my blog, you should already know that this would spiral into a Sonadow story.

If you don't like the ship or aren't a shipper yourself, you are free to skip the next part and resume at LOVE or HATE Story.

Sonic & Shadow - The Ultimate Duo

Differences in hobbies, differences in peace of mind

Even if I confuse you

My path is shaped by

Just LOVE or HATE

I'm certain that some don't like where this is going. Why should I write down such a story if one of its conclusions is a non-canonical ship? Well, if you still think the same, then you seriously should have skipped this part.

I had stated before that the story focuses on the concept of freedom and what it means to Sonic, and in this case, this choice would split off into three different paths. The first path would be following the set story, leading into the Light Mobius Future, aka the one this story will avoid. The second path follows a simple adventure plot, albeit going against the beliefs and expectations of the reader, with everyone gaining a happy, but platonic ending, which is where non-shippers should've stopped their read.

The natural conclusion would be that the third path follows the Sonadow Ending.

As stated above, in this path, Sonic would ultimately choose freedom over duty, which would make him ending up with Sally impossible. If he marries her, he becomes King and the Light Mobius future happens, which he wants to avoid in this life. So, distancing himself from any romantic relationships that would result in him being tied down, without him having any say in it, would be the next logical step.

If Sally questions Sonic about their engagement, he would tell her something along the lines of having thought about their future together, and he cannot see it happening anymore. He knows that a future with Sally means a future without freedom, and he knows that, the way he is now, they're incompatible.

Yeah, Sally (and the Sonally shippers) wouldn't be happy about that. After all, their relationship works on the idea of ''Opposites Attract'', which is probably one of reasons why people find it appealing. No offense to those who like the ship, but the issue that I personally see here is that ''Opposites Attract'' cannot work if the two sides are too opposing to attract each other.

In other words, Pre-SGW!Sally is too devoted to her kingdom and people and has stated time and time again that she prefers to settle down once this whole deal with Eggman is over.

Sonic does not work like that.

Sure, maybe Pre-SGW!Archie!Sonic would work, but I'm certain that by now, you have noticed that I'm writing Sonic's character with his Game!Self's characteristics in mind (and some helpful suggestions from Ian Flynn in regards to how he would approach Sonic being in a relationship).

First and foremost, Sonic is free as the wind. He would not settle in one place, even if he would visit it just to see his friends. He would keep travelling. He is not fit to be King (or even a father for that matter, even if he would try his best). His strengths lie in being an adventurer and he wants to fully embrace this side of him over the course of the story.

It has been a repeated statement in the shipping community that if you want to pair Sonic up with someone, this person should be a character who wouldn't warp who Sonic is at his core, but be able to keep up with him and accept his lifestyle. I have seen a debate about Sonamy, and while I find the ship cute and agree that Amy is someone who works hard to be recognized by Sonic, she too would be someone who'd prefer to settle down rather than always be on the move.

This brings me to the only person who not only recognizes Sonic's adventurous spirit and desire for freedom, but has immense respect for him, is capable of not only keeping up with Sonic, but even get ahead of him, and even if they argue, it is clear that both have the same goal in mind, even if their methods differ.

Look, I was never interested in shipping, so if you want me to like a certain pairing, you need to really convince me that it works and that the characters have chemistry and a charm to them.

Sonadow does have that chemistry and charm that makes me go ''Yeah, these two actually work together well.''

As for Sonic and Shadow, this adventure would definitely explore just how well they click together. To note, both Sonally and Sonadow are a case of ''opposites attract'', but with Sonally, they're just too different to work properly, especially when one is chained to duty and the other desires freedom.

Meanwhile, Sonic and Shadow are literally two different sides of the same coin, both never really settling anywhere and driven by their desire to protect their world, even if their methods differ. Both easily balance each other out and even them arguing, or just talking for that matter, sounds like them flirting more often than not. The only thing that needs to be added to their existing relationship is them becoming more vulnerable and open around each other, as it doesn't change what they already have or who they already are.

By spending so much time with each other, they would eventually realize that they have something going on and decide whether they'll fully embrace it or not, especially given their initial reservations about being in a relationship.

Sonic doesn't want to be tied down by anyone or anything and fears that he might lose his freedom again, while Shadow would be anxious about getting this close to someone again due to his own fear of losing someone important to him.

However, considering who the person is they're attracted to, they would realize that there really isn't anything to fear. Shadow would not take Sonic's freedom away from him, and Sonic basically has Main Character Syndrome, so there is no chance that he would die easily, at least not without a fight, something Shadow is well aware of by now.

Not too sure about how their friends would react to them being together, although I'm certain that they would be supportive.

Well, most of them.

LOVE or HATE Story

I did not intend to go this much into detail with this AU Story (which I came up with in a day, mind you), but once I started writing down the idea, I couldn't stop. Sure, there is probably more to write, but I would then have to start the story properly to add even more details of events and interactions.

While I'm somewhat interested in writing this out, I know well that this would end up in a very long story, and I already have other projects I'm working on, so this will remain as just as an idea.

I am open to discussing this story and what else can be explored and I'm eager to hear your opinion on it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I simply wanted to put this out in the public to hear other people's thoughts on it. If you love the story, than I'm glad to hear it. If you hate the story, well... *shrugs* I had warned you that I'm not pulling any punches.

I'm curious about your response!

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

[thequibblah]

⭐

anon: omg hi I think I sent in a ~free choice~ directors cut a while back but if you can't think of anything you wanna talk about I would LOVE to hear more about the way you write the Snape/Lily relationship and and the way it breaks apart, and even specific scenes related to it because in this house we are Anti S/nily

i hope this person was you but if not HAHA i will take this opportunity to answer their prompt as a "free choice" if you don't mind!

so. good old.... severus. ahhh.

writing interactions between snape and lily is like, one of the most rewarding challenges of this fic. now.... pitchforks away, my lovelies.... it's such an interesting emotional space to explore on her end, to me. personally i've never had a friendship end over something big and irrevocable, so it's really brand-new water to tread.

what makes it even more fascinating is that because of the setup of CT — starting after the lake incident — snape is less a presence in her life and more an absence she's working around. if i can get boring and pretentious for a sec, this was something i worked on a lot in college creative writing classes — writing about a thing in the past by avoiding it, or touching upon it and flinching away, or approaching it sideways.

now. we none of us have the patience of serious literary fiction readers in our fic HAHAHHA so this is a lot more dialled-back (dialled-forward??). but that was basically the approach to begin with, with these two. and then it was a matter of exploring the trajectory of it — how when the wound is rawest, lily is actually most forgiving and generous towards him, as she's had less time and space away from him/their friendship, and is busy making excuses for him.

(aside: i didn't realise until actually confronted by it that so much of her attitude towards him comes from her attitude towards petunia, a relationship in which she got used to receiving barbs before she gave them back, but the blood tie keeps her from a clean break. with snape there's no blood relation, obviously, but there's a shared sense of history, of childhood, that kind of lives in the same part of lily's brain/heart. so... really, two people who loathe each other overlap quite significantly in lily's emotional landscape.)

re: lily's excuse-making — it doesn't help that the only person who pushes her on snape is james. (her friends all have learned to avoid the subject, as you do when your friend is friends with someone you don't like but you can't say anything until after they're finished, and then you're like omg thank GOD i hated them from the start!!! but of course in this case they couldn't go overboard with that sentiment, lest it come off as "you should've known better/we knew better and you didn't") thanks to the circumstances of the lake incident, some of those messy feelings towards snape are entangled in messy feelings towards james (early on in the story especially), so the resulting conflict is.... bad....

She half-stumbled backwards, as if she’d been slapped. “I don’t need you to remind me,” she hissed. To her embarrassment, tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. But if she’d thought that would make him back off, she was wrong. “Yeah, except you do need the reminder,” said James. “Because you don’t get it yet. He chose them. Not you.” Lily was shaking. “I believe in second chances,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “But you really, really test my faith, James.” And without waiting for him to answer, she stormed up the girls’ staircase, wiping at her cheeks.

bad.

lily's true blind spot is, of course, that she's more willing to forgive snape's missteps with her. and of course james has to go and point that out :/

“Let me put it this way. If Sni — if Snape were Mary’s friend and he’d said that to her, wouldn’t you tell Mary she ought to never speak to him again?” Lily shifted uneasily. “Well, sure, but I’ve known him since—” “—you were children, whatever. Say Mary did too. Would that change anything for her?”

so the first time lily is like wait actually fuck this!!! it's because he reminds her, in an argument, about how callous he can be — a callousness which i think she's never liked, but it's easier to forgive sharpness when it's your friend poking fun at people you don't like, and less easy when...

“Yes, do let’s talk about Potter,” she said, dangerously calm now. “Let’s talk about how your mate Mulciber used an Unforgivable Curse on him—” To her absolute shock, Severus scoffed. “It was three bloody seconds—” “Shut up,” Lily said, too stunned to think of something better to say. “Shut up, you don’t seriously think that — that because the two of you have a childish rivalry, he deserves torture?” “That’s not what I said,” he replied, looking mutinous. “I just meant, everyone’s acting like he’s some big survivor — always playing for attention—”

...well, when that.

best/worst impulses aside, lily knows that the true measure of someone is how they treat the people they dislike, not their friends, and in a sense his attitude towards james (and generally other people) in this scene makes her realise what she'd read as inconsideration or insensitivity is in fact...

"...You’re weak-willed and pathetic and you’re — you’re not a good person.”

...so there's that.

as anyone who's read lily's current petunia drama will know, she's got a bit of a problem with letting go. but after her mother's death (and the attached stick to your sister she's all you've got), she manages a weirdly good break from cokeworth — because a lot of her childhood was wrapped up in hogwarts, and in snape (whom she hasn't spent vacation time with in over a year at that point). with neither at hand, she hardly has time to process it/feel homesickness.

but note this, at the start of 7th year:

“Was last year nothing to you?” Her voice had sharpened. “I wasn’t freezing you out to punish you, Severus. I was treating you how I plan on treating you from now on.”

of course lily's just making a point here, but when i wrote that i was like wow she (and i lol) are kind of onto something — snape totally does think this is like, a temporary purgatory period after which she really will come around. and through months of her getting visibly closer to his nemesis, he holds onto that belief — despite what she says. (funnily enough, childhood rose-tinted glasses make them both see what they want to see in each other, in very different ways)

that's why when he hears her say what she says to una in that hogsmeade trip, he immediately comes to his own conclusions. that was another important, interesting thing for me — for other slytherins, "loose ends" are opportunities for cruelty, for punishment, to finish what they've started. (not so for regulus, who's grown up with sadism and is frankly repulsed by the idea of pain for a flimsy cause — best believe there was absolutely a point to him orchestrating an attack on the teacher getting close to his brother. but that's another story.)

not for severus either — his loose end, in his own mind, will always be lily. he senses that something's broken, but he has absolutely no self-awareness about what it is, and his extending an olive branch was more about her coming to his level than him going to hers (aka the way apologies ought to work). he realises, over a year out, that it's up to him to fix it, but it's too late — lily's quite moved on at that point, and her residual emotions towards him are indifference and pity.

if only snape had known to leave it there!

looping full circle back to the lake incident, then, the argument in 41 is once again very personal — but rather than him pushing her away, it's him trying to get her close again. and now, stressed about all the bs in the world but also with all the petunia-related learn-to-let-go stuff fresh in her mind, lily is absolutely in the right state of mind to recognise when she's wrongly judged someone. this calls for scorched earth, she realises, or she'll never be able to shake him and move on for good.

and so what started with severus telling her that she's special, that there's a place in a new world for her, ends sort of the same way.... and the break that began with his casual, almost unintentional cruelty, ends with her very deliberate cruelty. as a bonus, she's ready now to use the one thing he's always wielded like a shield in their arguments — james, how the marauders are, etc. etc. — against him, and genuinely mean it.

(she might regret that soon. but not the way you'd think!)

[theawesomeloner]

Chapter 5: Fight and Flight

Samantha could feel her eye lids growing heavy again and her head fell forward for a moment before shooting back up. She gave herself a little shake to try and wake herself up. She was determined not to fall asleep on surveillance, the last thing she needed was them seeing her wake up screaming.

She looked to the clock on the wall and saw she had been sat by herself for nearly two hours now. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could last before she would fall asleep, she just hoped they had been able to track Gareth down. But with how the Agent looked at her after she called them out for trying to hack into her laptop, she imagined even if Gareth vouched for her, they would still send her straight back home out of spite.

Who the hell does this guy think he is?

I can’t believe they’re pulling rank here

Samantha sat straighter in her chair at the return of the voices which had previously been missing the last 2 hours. The door handle rattled as it finally opened but instead of there being Agent Brown, she was instead met with someone new.

The man was in a back suit, short brown hair, another agent of some kind she guessed. His hair was parted to his left and the hair line receding slightly. He gave her a small smile as he entered, and only once sat down opposite her did he speak.

“Hello, my name is Agent Coulson,” He said. His voice was mild and calm but surprisingly it only made Samantha more suspicious. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t really think I have a choice,” she said back, too tired to pretend to be nice.

“No, I guess you don’t,” he shrugged, giving another small smile. “I’m sure you know why you were pulled for further questioning today.”

“I imagine it has something to do with my last minute trip and the fact I only brought my ticket and applied for my ESTA this morning.” Samantha said, eyes flicking to the mirror again where she was sure the two agents from before were stood watching.

“You would be correct,” Coulson said, bring his hands up to rest on the table, clasped. “But I’m not here to talk about that.”

“Then what are you here to talk about?"

“I was wondering if you could tell me about the shooting which took place outside your home yesterday.”

The drastic change in conversation topic threw Samantha. She somehow managed to stop her eyes going wide in surprise but there was added tension to her shoulders which she knew the Agent had picked up on.

“Shooting?” She did her best to sound confused.

“Yes, there was a shooting reported outside your apartment complex as well as reports of a young woman being chased in the surrounding area,” Coulson said, his voice and face remaining impassive the entire time.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that had happened,” Samantha lied hoping he didn’t have cctv footage which undoubtedly showed it was her being pursued. “It must have happened after I had left for the airport.”

“It must have,” he gave her a tight smile and she knew that he didn’t believe her for one-second. Surprisingly though he didn’t persist, instead his line of questioning changed again, sending her for a loop. “Do you know a Keith Jennings? Born 5th of August 1958.”

“Yes, he’s my dad,” Samantha’s nails dug into her palms as an outlet for her frustration all the while keeping her face as impassive as the man opposite her.

“He’s also in the US, isn’t that correct?” Samantha nodded, not feeling the need to answer out loud. “He missed his flight back to the UK last week. Mind telling me why?”

Samantha felt her tongue turn to lead as no answers came forward. Her mind too sluggish from the lack of sleep and she was struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of the conversation.

“Is it safe to assume your last minute trip has something to do with him?” Coulson asked when she gave no response.

“In a way,” Samantha said, trying her best to be noncommittal. Her father’s words reminding her not to trust anyone came to her, so despite how much she wanted to tell the Agent about her concerns for her father, she instead decided to continue lying. “The reason for his visit unexpectedly got prolonged. I thought I may come out to see him but he’s not my main reason for travelling.”

“That’s slightly odd, if you don’t mind me saying.”

The pair looked at each other and then her stomach suddenly twisted as she realised something.

“What agency are you from Agent Coulson? You never did give that information.” Samantha said, looking him directly in the eye, no small smiles to give.

“Did I not? How careless of me,” He gave the tiniest head tilt, and both knew it had been no mistake. “I work for SHIELD.”

“And why is SHIELD asking me questions? Do I need a lawyer?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

The two stared at each other, waiting for the other to make their move.

Suddenly a beeping sound filled the room and Coulson pulled out a phone from his pocket. With a quick look, he was already standing and placing the device back in his trouser pocket.

“You’re free to go Miss Jennings,” he said with a polite small.

Samantha almost did a double take, it was the last thing she expected to hear him.

“I am?” She couldn’t help but ask as she hesitantly stood up.

“You are, we were able to contact Mr Williams who verified your story” he said as he swung the door open for her to walk through. On the other side stood Agent Brown from before, with an angry look on his face. “The border agents will give you back your personal belongings on your way out.”

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Samatha decided not to push it further and quickly made her way to exit. As she crossed the doorway, Coulson’s words paused her progress.

“Enjoy your time in the United States Miss Jennings, I hope you enjoy the sights.”

Again he gave her a small smile and Samantha knew he had not believed a single word she had said to him in that interview room.

Samantha Jennings, your average 25 year old trying to manage her way through life. Keeping her head down and ignoring the voices she can hear in her head. That is until her dad goes missing and the same dream of her dying wakes her up every night. Original character for Marvel’s MCU with Loki/OC/Steve Rogers elements (but not often at the same time).

Fanficiton.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13926724/5/The-7th-Avenger

[dailyaudiobible]

02/12/2021 DAB Transcript

Exodus 34:1-35:9, Matthew 27:15-31, Psalms 33:12-22, Proverbs 9:1-6

Today is the 12th day of February welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue the journey…well…we’re…we’re journeying toward the center of the second month of the year. We’ll be there in a few days. And, so, we are moving right along but we have…we have moved through some significant territory in the Bibl. And as we begin our reading today from the book of Exodus, we still find ourselves around the mountain of God, otherwise known as Mount Sinai. Just some really, really important things have happened and transpired. We read of this golden calf that the people decided to worship as their redeemer as their savior as the one who brought them out of Egypt. And we saw Moses come down from the mountain away from God's presence to discover all this, all that transpired there. Moses is back on top of the mountain again. Now he's been pleading for the people. God basically told Moses, “yeah, I can't deal with these people. I'm sending you to the land. You lead them in, but I'm not going.” And Moses is like, “if you don't go, if you don't go then I don't even want to be a part of this story. If you don't go, we have no hope.” And there’s this moment of real deep realization that there is no hope…hope outside of God, that we whether we acknowledge it or not we are utterly dependent upon Him. And, so, let's continue the story. Exodus chapter 34 verse 1 through 35 verse 9. And we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

Commentary:

Alright. Let’s look at some words from the Psalms that we read today or the Psalm that we read today in light of what we’re seeing kind of both in the Old and the New Testament stories. The story in the Old Testament, of course, is God beginning to give the law, but the people's rebelliousness their stiff-necked, their neck…necked-ness…their…their stubbornness and their rebellion and their adultery spiritually by worshiping false gods and just all of this stuff that we…we’ve been able to witness.

In the New Testament we just completed the trial of Jesus, like, He’s sentenced to death, which is how…that's what we'll experience tomorrow. So, let’s just consider for second in these stories the posture of heart of humanity toward God.

So, in the Old Testament we have God invading Egypt to set His people free and all of the drama about that and they’re in the wilderness seeing and hearing from God and God is laying out a tapestry for a culture and yet they are stubborn, they are rebellious, they grumble, they complain, they are not grateful, and they are easily distracted into putting their hope and their allegiance and their heart into the worship of something false. And God is exasperated about it. Who wouldn't be? But He is patient, He is continuing forward with the journey despite their rebelliousness.

We go into the book of Matthew and then we look at the posture of humanity toward God and we see that these same people, like the descendants of this stiff-necked people, they want to do away with God while trying to defend God. But now they have this law, they’re trying to obey this, and it's turned into a power struggle of control over the people. They have to obey the rules. And then God comes in the flesh and they don't even recognize Him. In fact, they are so put out, they are so put off by Him and His ways that they don't…like it…that's how backwards it's gotten. I mean you would…we would say that God would display God's ways, right? He's God. So, that's what we’re seeing in Jesus. If they can't recognize the ways of God and they call him blasphemous and they call him of the devil, then they have so perverted the actual ways of God that it can’t even be seen anymore. And what do we see? God in the person of Jesus patiently taking out there giving. He is going to allow Himself to be killed by His people. That’s a pretty stark thing to think about. But could we maybe at this point in the year acknowledge what we’re seeing here and stop blaming God for things He doesn't do us and stop telling Him He doesn't understand what we’re going through? He does. And He patiently and carefully continues to love humanity until this very day, including us and our complaining and our lack of gratitude and our grumbling and our turning to something else for hope and our giving our allegiance and fealty to something that is false and our acting like a two-year-old and throwing ourselves on the ground and kicking and screaming when we don't get our way. God is patient and kind because He loves us. If we would ever actually get that through our heads it would change our very lives, it would change the way we behave toward everybody.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit come. Let us see this. Let us see Your kindness, let us see Your patience, Your compassion as we continue to navigate all of the different times and stories and people's lives that we find in the Scriptures because we find ourselves in…in…in these stories. We find ourselves in the lives of these people. And, so, open our hearts. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear what You are speaking to us and where You are leading. We acknowledge that You have been patient, beyond what we could ever deserve. You have been kind in the face of our unkindness. You have loved us even while we were Your enemies. Help that to sink in we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello DAB family this is your friend your brother in Christ in Michigan. I want to say thank you to, so many. Your prayers have touched myself and my family in ways you can ever imagine, and we are praying for you all. I'd also like a prayer over my wife. She struggled with many many ailments now but fibromyalgia now followed by lupus and she has some problems with her liver. Through it all she's been upbeat and God fearing and showing me what it is to be a true believer. So, I ask that you raise her in your prayers as I raise all of you all in my prayers. I want to thank the DAB family. What a blessing to hear this every day. I am new. I've only been here since December 21st of last year but to say…I can't even describe the impact on my life, and I want to thank you. With love from Michigan. Bye now.

My name is Latasha and I'm calling from California. I need prayer in the way of my housing situation. I was placed on a housing program for homeless and disheveled men and children. It could be for anybody for that matter, but it's been going up and down. Sometimes I feel like I'm out of the loop. And I found out that my rent wasn't being paid. And now that I'm able to get a lower income of housing I'm being told by management here at the property that I need to hurry up and sign my lease when there are damages, i.e., a big old hole in the ceiling of the bathroom and the thermostat not working. It seems like these companies work together and they try to make the person like myself feel as though I'm crazy almost by saying that you have to hold off but then the other parties saying you have to hurry up and expedite. And I just don't know what to do. I'm at a complete and utter loss and I just need prayer. I need prayer so bad because I'm afraid of being homeless again. I'm afraid of my children finally being stable and it could be taken away from us. And I'm afraid bad because of my situation and circumstance maybe they believe that I'm not apt enough to understand clearly. I just need guidance and direction because I'm so tired. I'm so tired of being tired. And it hurts so bad to feel as though on this earth I am alone and by myself and mostly I'm just…

Hello Daily Audio Bible this is Janelle living in China and I wanted to call and say I am caught up. Yay. At one point last year I was over two months behind and now it is February 7th 11:37 AM in __ China and I am caught up. I just listened to today. That was all I had to listen to today. Yay. I also wanted to do a little bit of gratitude because I have not been doing much of that. So, Lord I thank you that I am living in China and I am able with the low cost of living that China has I am so grateful for my job even though it is stressful and I am trying to learn how to teach without any formal education. It's still an amazing journey and I'm so grateful for it. I am also, as strange as this may seem, grateful for Covid still happening in the US because my church, Church of the Highlands in Alabama, is now doing online small group classes and I can be in a small group. It's at 5:00 AM on Sunday but I can be in a small group. I will wake up for that. I just…I miss that so much and I am so grateful that I’m now able to get back into being in small groups with my church even though I'm living in China. It's amazing and I can't believe it. I’m…I'm in shock. I'm just odd that says even possible a possibility...

This is Whitney in South Florida and I'm here with my kids Finley, Levin, and Lenna and we just wanted to call. And mommy had heard a message from Jody from Arizona and she wanted prayers for her granddaughter Leslie. And we just wanted to let Jody know that we heard her prayer request and we are praying for Leslie and we are praying for that whole family and your daughters one year old as well. Just that their home would be safe and Leslie would feel…that Leslie would just feel Jesus comforting loving arms all around her and know that Jesus is King. And it happens that Ezekiel in his reading had the perfect words that maybe another kid to another kid could hear and he had a great prayer on February 7th, and it was just about the devil and that he has no place in our homes. And, so, we just pray that over Leslie just as Ezekiel did. And the kids wanted to tell Ezekiel one of their favorite parts about his reading and what is that you guys? Bye. Bye guys!

Hi neighbors it's Lisa the Encourager. I'm calling tonight because I really had God press upon my heart to share with you a bit of encouragement regarding the reading that Brian did a couple of…probably a week or so ago and it was about when the disciple asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment. And, of course, Jesus replied back to love the Lord your guard with all your heart and your soul and all your mind. And then the second one was to love your neighbor as yourself. And I really embraced that I think it was a couple of years ago and that's when I started calling in and I'd refer to all of you as my neighbors, to remind me to love you as I love myself. And this year God pressed on my heart to share with you the first commandment and that is to love the Lord our God with all our heart our soul and our mind. And I really started thinking hard about that, like how…what would that look like in action. You know, of course we can say it with our words and our lips but in action. And the only thing that really only came to my mind and the Holy Spirit bless me with was your prayers. Your prayers to God shows the tremendous amount of love. Just think about when somebody calls into the Daily Audio Bible and they call out your name and you hear it and how much it just…it just warms your heart. Well, that's probably the feeling that God, when you call upon His name and you seek Him, and you pray daily. So, I just encourage you to show love God and put that to action, that first commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.

[sammysreelreviews]

Counting Down The 10 Most Shocking Moments From My Favorite TV Shows

So I just finished Jane the Virgin and it inspired me to make a list of moments in television that had me fucking SHOOK. Maybe some other things happened in the show that were just as crazy but these are the moments that affected me personally. This list was so spontaneous but it might be my favorite one cause it was a nice trip down memory lane. Any who, here are the moments that have fucked me up along the years! 

WARNING: LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS!!!

10. Gossip Girl: The Dark Prince

Let’s be clear Gossip Girl stopped being the show it was by season 4 by adding insane story lines but one that was realistic was Queen B marrying a real life prince! Although there are some minor hiccups Blair finally has the dream wedding she always wanted. Unfortunately everything comes crashing down when Louis basically tells her that she means nothing to him and the marriage is now just for show. This SHOOK me cause Louis was such a good guy until that exact moment. Ugh the moment he whispered those vile words to Blair her heart dropped and so did mine.

9. Elite: So who’s actually dead?

From the beginning it was clear that one of the promiscuous teens of Elite was going to die it’s just not who you’d expect! In the first episode you find out that it’s none other than Marina! She was such a big part in the first episode I didn’t think her character would be the one to kick the bucket. Yes I am aware that the real mystery of the show is who’s the murderer but Marina being dead threw me for a loop.

8. On My Block: The Quinceañera from Hell.

On My Block is supposed to be funny and it was until the last fucking episode of season one. Ruby decides to throw his crush Olivia a Quinceañera and everything goes smoothly, she even gets to face time her parents that got deported, until Cesar’s past comes to crash the party. Let me explain. Cesar finally joined his brother’s gang and had the job of executing Latrelle who’s from an opposing gang. Cesar is too sweet for his own good and lets him live. Unfortunately Latrelle shows up to Olivia’s Quinceañera, uninvited, and fires at Cesar but hits Ruby and Olivia in the process. In the end of the episode two ambulances are on their way to the hospital and ones lights go off indicating one of them has died. At the beginning of season two we finally find out that Olivia has passed which is sad and like talk about the worst birthday party ever!

7. Pretty Little Liars: Boo!

There were literally 100 different A’s on this god forsaken show but the final A reveal was definitely the best. Spencer and Ezra have been kidnapped by A in a weird underground whatever thing and Spencer wakes up to her reflection only it’s not her reflection ITS HER TWIN. The elite PLL fans like myself always had theories of Spencer having a twin but when it actually happened I couldn’t believe my eyes. When Alex puts her hand down and says “boo!”... chills literal fucking chills.

6. Vampire Diaries: Dead girls walking.

I could honestly make a list of the top ten shocking moments from the Vampire Diaries alone but this one had 15 year old me shaking in my Ugg boots. Jeremy’s first love Vicki died in season one, which was like WILD for 2009 let me tell you, and his other lover Anna also died. In the season two finale we see two shadows walking around following Jeremy in his house and they’re none other than Vicki and Anna looking straight at Jeremy and even speaking to him. At this point in the show people coming back from the dead was unheard of and this is why it beat everything else.

5. Dark: What REALLY happened that night?

Ok so Dark has a lot of WTF moments like the entire show is a total mindfuck but in season 2 they answered a question and I was not prepared for the answer. Let’s back track realllll quick. Mikkel goes missing in the woods one night and no one finds him BUT Mikkel is alive and well he’s just in the year 1986! In the cave he went through there was a wormhole that took him to the past but the question was, how the fuck did he even end up there!? In the last episode of season two Jonas, Mikkel’s son (I know it’s confusing) goes back in time to stop Mikkel from disappearing to make everything right. Jonas talks to his dad, adult Mikkel, and Mikkel drops the bomb that Jonas was the one to lead him to the fucking wormhole in the first place!!! Everything about this show is absolutely insane but I mean this shit was INSANE. I literally could not believe what I was hearing and honestly neither could Jonas.

4. Jane the Virgin: Have a nice day bae!

Michael begins his day going to take a test and he doesn’t come back. I am so team Michael just so y’all know so I loved the flashbacks of the fair with Jane this episode. What I DIDN’T like was the end of this episode. When Michael “died” I dead ass did not watch the rest of season 3 until it was streaming on Netflix. I sobbed so bad and then at the end of the episode when Jane gets the phone call that Michaels “dead” WOW that shit HURT. Thankfully I decided to keep watching the show cause at the season 4 finale Michael is alive and well but has a little amnesia. I literally will never forgive the writers for ripping my heart out and stomping on it.

3. American Horror Story: Running in circles.

Violet tried to kill herself and Tate saves her by making her throw up except, she didn’t actually survive. Violet is depressed and stays home and it’s not until she tries to leave the house do you realize she’s actually been dead for a couple episodes. Its heartbreaking cause she’ll be stuck in that house forever but the moment you see her dead corpse was absolutely disgusting and heartbreaking at the same time.

2. Skins: Where’s Cook’s main hoe?

When Skins came back for a 7th season wrapping up the lives of Effy, Cassie, and Cook I thought we were gonna get some closure but what I got from Cook’s episodes was very unexpected. There’s honestly a lot going on in Skins Rise but Cook’s second episode has him facing off his psychotic boss Louie. Let me give a little backstory. Cook deals drugs for Louie but Louie made Cook drive his girlfriend Charlie around. Cook being Cook fucks Charlie while simultaneously cheating on his own girlfriend Emma which makes it super awkward when the three of them runaway together to get away from a psychotic Louie. Before Cook absolutely beats the shit out of Louie he’s in the woods looking for Emma and he fucking finds her in a clearing HANGING on a tree!!! Like WHAT THE FUCK!!! Skins has never been THAT brutal and I honestly think it was the most jaw dropping moment that ever happened on the show. God I love Skins but I did NOT love that death like can my baby Cook just be happy!?!

1. Degrassi: The Next Generation: A night to forget.

I was 13 the first time I got my heart broken, the perpetrator, Degrassi: The Next Generation. I was OBSESSED with this show I watched it from the very beginning. JT was my literal MAN like I loved him so much and when they CRUELLY killed him off I legit didn’t want to go to school the following Monday. JT dying is number one because it was my first big TV death and I’ll never forget it along with Liberty’s blood curdling screams.

[shownuslaugh]

The First

Series: Sechskies 7th Member AU

Pairing: Rose/Jiwon

2020

             “Hey.” Jiwon’s voice is uncharacteristically soft. The kind of soft he only reserves for those with a special place in his heart. Rose almost can’t bare it. Jiwon recognizing her weakness is the last thing she needs. “If you want to sit this one out-“

             “Don’t insult me, Jiwon. I keep telling you it’s fine. I’ve moved on.”

             “Of course you have. We both have.”

             “We have.”

             Jiwon nods. “That’s why you’re going home with Kangta. Because you’ve moved on. Because seeing Jongkook again hasn’t triggered you and made you rush into something you shouldn’t have. Because you’re definitely not still running from the past.”

             Rose shoots him a glare that would bring a less stubborn man to his knees and make him beg for mercy. Luckily, Jiwon’s got too much pride to swallow for that.

             “When the fuck did you turn into Suwon? Pissing people off is his thing.”

             The almost-maknae’s head perks up at the sound of his name. “I resent any comparison you just made.”

             “You should,” Rose snaps back.

             Jaeduck giggles quietly. “Someone didn’t get much sleep last night.” The insinuation isn’t lost on anyone in the room.

             “All of you stay out of my love life!” Rose storms out of the waiting room into the hallway where she runs straight into her worst nightmare. Eyes welling up with tears she screams, “why can’t you just leave me alone, you bastard?!”

             Jongkook blinks in shock, reaching out a hand to steady Rose, only retracting his hand when she flinches. “RaeAh, that’s what I’ve been doing. You asked me to leave you and Kangta alone, and I have.”

             “Yeah, well, just- just keep doing that.” She takes off down the hall, cheeks stained bright red in embarrassment. Maybe she’s known to be the most emotional one in the group, but that doesn’t mean public outbursts don’t fill her with at least a tiny bit of shame.

             “Rose!”

             She speeds up when she hears Jiwon calling her name.

             “Rose! Damn it, Kang RaeAh, slow down!”

             She doesn’t stop until she’s on the front steps of KBS, chilly air stinging her skin and fresh air filling her lungs. Her chest burns and aches and her knees feel wobbly, like they’re made of nothing but gelatin. With the comeback right after her Christmas album, she thought it would be easy to just throw herself into her work, into Sechskies, into her boys, and everything would be fine.

             “You told me- no, you promised me- everything would be better with time, Jiwon.” Rose hates how accusatory she sounds. She hates how she knows it’ll only start a fight with her leader. Maybe that’s what she needs though. A good screaming match where she can just let it all out once and for all and finally, finally move on from the past twenty years.

             Twenty years.

             She’s been holding on to the hurt, the anger, the depression for twenty years.

             “Is it not?” Jiwon asks.

             Rose shakes her head. “It’s worse. I went to America and started a whole new life away from all of you and it never got better. For twenty years I’ve been trying to let the past die and it won’t! I’m out of ideas!”

             He sighs, trying to hide the fact he’s ever so slightly out of breath from chasing her down. “Look, we don’t start filming for thirty minutes. Let’s go to that café down the street and we’ll talk. What?” Jiwon does a double take when he notices the way Rose is looking at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

             “Nothing,” she says as she shakes her head. “I just… have I ever told you how much you mean to me?”

             Jiwon hides the little swell of pride behind a grimace. “Don’t do that.”

1996

             Rose isn’t like most other girls Jiwon knows. Not to say that one type is better than the other. Rose is just… different. She’s soft and so, so naïve that it honestly makes Jiwon sick with fear sometimes. Who’s going to hurt her? Who’s going to take advantage of her? Where does his responsibility for her as a leader end and begin?

             The last question is one that applies to all the members that are going to end up in his group, but it’s also a little different for Rose. She’s going to be the only girl in the group. He’s supposed to protect her more than the others. God knows she can’t do it herself.

             “Don’t you ever touch me again!”

             Jiwon is snapped out of his thoughts by Rose’s high pitched scream of rage. He looks over to see her laying into one of their fellow trainees… whose name Jiwon can’t remember for the life of him. But he sure as fuck is determined to learn it when he watches the dick smile like Rose is playing some game. Jiwon gets up and walks over, enjoying the way the smirk slips off the other guy’s face.

             “Rose, what’s going on?”

             Her eyes are fierce, fiery, dangerous as she glares. “He grabbed my butt when I walked by.”

             “What?” Jiwon’s attention snaps to the younger boy as he says, “RaeAh… go find Jiyong and stay with him until I tell you otherwise.”

             “Jiwon…” For a second her fire falters. “Don’t do anything that could get you in trouble. Please?”

             “Go.”

             Her bravery dips and suddenly she’s scared. Not for Jiwon. For the poor soul she brought his attention to. “It’s not worth it.”

             “Go!”

             With a tiny sound of shock, Rose jumps back and scurries off to look for Jiyong. She finds him in one of the many practice rooms, sneaking a nap with JaiJin. In a panic she spills out the whole story of what just happened. Guilt gnaws at her insides with each second that ticks by.

             “Do you think he killed him?” Rose bites at her nails.

             JaiJin laughs. “Sounds like he might, but the guy deserved it. He shouldn’t have touched you. Jiwon has too much pride and ego to let something like that go.”

             Rose pouts. “Yeah, but over me?”

             All JaiJin does is shrug. “You’re his.”

             Jiyong clears his throat. “What JaiJin means is: you’re in his group. He’s your leader, so he’s going to protect you. If one of us got in trouble-“

             “He’d tell us to deal with it. Rose is the baby so everyone wants to protect her.”

             There’s a moment of silence before Rose says, “Jiyong… we can’t tell him about Jongkook.”

             JaiJin’s eyes go wide. “From Turbo? How do you know him?”

             “They’re dating,” Jiyong says in a rush. JaiJin notices how the younger boy’s face grows slightly more solemn and files that information away for later. It’s interesting enough to catch JaiJin’s attention, so that means it can only be trouble.

             “Jiwon definitely won’t like that.”

             “Won’t like what?” Jiwon plops down on the floor beside Rose, ignoring her incessant poking and prodding for any bruises, cuts, or signs of a fight. “Would you stop? I’m fine!”

             Rose grumbles something about “stupid, stubborn boys” but does as he asks.              

2020

             “Do you remember that trainee you beat up the year before we debuted?” Rose blows the top of her coffee before taking a sip, enjoying the immediate warmth that spreads through her body.

             Jiwon shrugs. “Maybe.”

             “Don’t lie, Jiwon. I’ll know.”

             “So what if I do? That was in ’96. How’s that still relevant?”

             Rose smiles, looping her arm through Jiwon’s and resting her head on his shoulder. “Do you want to know a secret about that day?”

             He makes a vague sound that she takes as a yes.

             “That was the day I figured out you would do anything for me. Not because you had to but because you wanted to. You and Jiyong were the first men who ever loved me and expected nothing in return… I can’t explain how much that means to me.”

             “Your mood swings are killing me. This is why I didn’t want a girl in the group.” He pushes her off and starts walking faster.

             Rose whines playfully. “Oppa! Oppa, come back! I love you! Don’t you love me?!”

             “I don’t know you!”

             “Oppa, people are staring! Are you really going to do this to me on the street?”

             “Rose, if you don’t fuck off right now, I swear!”

[mizukiri]

Penny Dreadful Prologue

Before language and time existed before Heaven and Earth, darkness was all that It knew. Just a formless void of nothingness with no curves, edges or lines, it felt nothing about the void, nothing ill or joyful, but It felt a longing. It felt a desire—a Loneliness. And so It split in two, a divine blinding light became, and equal half of all there was, is, and ever could be, and neither knew who came first, the rooster or the egg. They did not care because they had each other. Before they created together, they were together, equals to one another. Eventually, they made language, their children used it, and words like He and She came to be. They had their favourites, their relational ups and downs, but Neither were alone; they could satiate each other. 

  Until they couldn't. 

Until He grew distant and wanted to create alone. 

But that- that is another story. And yet, that story is like a stone skipping across the surface of the water, mirroring the story you are about to hear—and mirroring one of the oldest stories, the tale of love. 

Time heals all wounds, in the end. But this is not the end for us. His end was our beginning.

Some stories are so compelling that they ripple through time, touching people throughout eons, changing slightly. But never enough.

This is their story. 

     .

JANUARY 7TH

.

Shave and a haircut, two bits, reverberates throughout a Greenwich Village loft. Exhaling her cigarette (an action closely resembling a sigh), a tall olive-skinned woman whom most would assume is in her early twenties stands and stretches. She saunters over to the door. She looks through the peephole to see a curly-haired brunette standing on the other side.

"Penny S.?" The short woman in large-framed cat-eyeglasses asks, holding up her phone. "I'm here about the roommate ad?" 

The door opens an inch, dark eyes peering at her from behind it before they seem to speak. "Let me guess, spring semester N.Y.U.?" 

The stranger in front of Penny blinks twice and flushes. "The New School." 

Penny groans before closing the door and taking the chain off the latch before opening it fully. "Strike one."

Cat-eyed Frames ducks her head in greeting and half-waves before walking into the loft apartment before she slips her shoes and her backpack off by the door. Penny watches her quietly; her arms crossed over her tank top. 

"Holy shit." Escapes Frames mouth as she stands up, taking in her surroundings. The loft is easily over 2200 square feet. There is a bathroom to her left as Frames enters, a modest kitchen to her right, and an island to separate it from the rest of the open space. They move around a dark wooden dining room table stacked full of tomes and books that look like they belong in a university library. 

"Sorry— just it's even more amazing than what I was expecting."

Penny rolls her eyes, but Frames is blissfully unaware as she walks around the loft, her hand tracing a pattern on the kitchen island. Penny wanders over and perches herself back in the armchair she had been sitting on before the interruption. The lithe woman reaches for her cigarette and inhales before placing it back in the ashtray beside a small expresso cup. She exhales and picks up an exotic curved blade and her apple before she begins to slice wedges. Behind the chair is three floor-to-ceiling windows narrowly separated by red brick. Beyond the kitchen is a shared wall completely obscured by bookcases overflowing. 

Frames regards Penny calmly, taking in the two messy buns that look like they belong on a child, not a twenty-something-year-old woman. Booty shorts and a tank top seem to be all that she's wearing outside a black stoned ring on her left hand.

"How can you afford this?" 

"I can't." Penny points out with her knife towards Frame's phone, still in her hand, "Hence the ad." 

Frames intrigues Penny. She's used to girls wearing Uggs and yoga pants answering her roommate ad, only to last a few months at best. This one is different.

"I didn't catch your name." Penny offers, lifting an apple slice to her mouth before resting her head on her knees.

"Nevaeh." 

A giggle washes over Penny long and full of mirth, but again Frames blushes.

"Oh, you're not kidding. Well that's… unfortunate." 

Nevaeh shifts uncomfortably on the couch. "I could change it—  if it's another one of your strikes." 

Penny shrugs lazily at her. "Hey man it's not for me to judge you based on your name. TRUST me. If you want to change it, change it for yourself. But just to be clear, your parents sound like the worst."

Nevaeh laughs. "That's a little too easy to deduce isn't it? After all, don't most of us flock here to New York to get away from them?"

Penny's heart skips a beat. If you only knew.

"What about you? Do you go to school?" Nevaeh asks, her eyes roving the apartment's layout. To her left, a staircase leads up to a second-story loft where she assumes the rooms are. Her eyes meet Penny, whose back is to the floor to ceiling windows, most of the space filled with bookshelves full of books and interesting looking weapons that couldn't possibly be real decorate the walls.

"I am a private investigator." Penny murmurs, picking up an expresso cup beside her ashtray and takes a sip. 

"How many tenants?"

"Just me."

Nevaeh laughs, beginning to unzip her jacket and remove it. 

"What?" Penny inquires.

"A woman in her twenties lives alone in a Greenwich Village loft inside a building that values rent at over five thousand a month. And you are asking for less than a tenth of that for my portion?"

Rolling her shoulders, Trixie reaches over for her drink to take another sip of it.

"That is correct if we both choose to move forward with this arrangement."

"Do you always keep it this warm?"

"Is that a problem?"

"Not if I don't have to pay for it."

"No the price listed is all inclusive."

"That sounds, like a dream. This whole thing sounds like a dream." Nevaeh stares around the apartment wistfully. 

Penny snorts a small laugh and shakes her head. "Look I think I may like you, against my better judgement, so I'm going to be honest with you. For the last few girls it has been more of a nightmare than a dream. I'm pithy, and sometimes vile. I swear like a sailor and I smoke in the loft. I come and go at all hours, I forget personal boundaries, if you leave chocolate, cake, or chocolate cake in the fridge I will eat it." 

Nevaeh nods and narrows her eyes at the woman in front of her. "You say against your better judgement. We've spent maybe two minutes together. What have you gotten from me so far?"

"Well you yelled my name outside our apartment, which tells me you're naïve and not from the area, since you're obviously not a cop. You took you're shoes off at the door which rules out more of the states, giving me the impression you're possibly Canadian. You're clothing is simple but timeless, made with quality fabrics which tells me while you don't have much to your name, you're aware of the difference between quality and not quantity. Your name screams that your parents were millennials, but ones who must have valued the arts given your choice of school."

Nevaeh reaches over to the coffee table and takes an apple from the bowl before leaning back and crossing her legs underneath her on the couch.

"Want to know what I've gleaned in the last two minutes?" She asks before biting into the fruit.

"What's that?"

Nevaeh just smiles, "you said 'our' apartment."

.

FEBRUARY

.

"Damn it, Penny close the door!" Nevaeh's heart skips a beat as she walks in on Penny going to the washroom. She turns around and raises her eyes to the sky, towels and bathrobe in hand.

"I'm just peeing Vaeh, you're fine." 

"I don't think you're grasping my point!" Vae squeaks. When she hears the toilet flush, she turns around to see Penny doing up her jeans. 

"You said boundaries." Vaeh pleads; Penny shrugs and simpers as she glides past her before Vae adds, "believe me, if you keep pressing, I will release the floodgates and you won't know what hit you."

Vaeh goes to close the door behind her now that she's alone to enjoy her bath. She hears Penny start the espresso machine for the fifth time that day; the percolation's sound causes a small epiphany.

"And wash your hands!"

"I just PEED!"

"Don't be gross or I'll start calling you PigPen!" Vae finishes barking down to Penny on the floor below. Before she closes the door, she listens and is rewarded by hearing the kitchen tap spring to life.

"That's what I thought," she mutters more to herself than anyone as she closes the door to draw herself a bath.

The next morning as she starts the coffee maker for their first pot of coffee, Vae sees Penny's ring sitting on the sink beside the tap. She picks it up and examines it, realizing it's neither new looking nor old, modern nor antique. The smooth black appears to be onyx, the band most likely platinum. Biting her lip, Vae looks around for a safe place to put it instead of right beside a very industrial drain. Walking upstairs, she finds one of Penny's hair elastics, loops the ring through and then walks into the hallway where there are hooks for hats and scarves. She places on a hook closest to Penny's door before heading off to school.

   ~***~

You have 31 unread text messages .

Vae's heart sinks and begins to scroll through a lengthy one-sided conversation Penny seemed to have been having with herself while Vae was in class.

She reads the last one first, as one tends to do upon opening the chat.

  PigPen | 3:32p.m.

I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, but please, PLEASE, just call me when you get this message. 

  PigPen | 3:30p.m.

/your room.

  PigPen | 3:28p.m.

I mean, I understand if that's what happened, but I just thought I should check in before I destroy this garburator by ripping it/the rest of the house apart trying to find it.

Vae autodials Penny before scrolling through the rest of the messages, and Penny answers in one ring.

"Pleasetellmeyouhaveseenmyring."

"It's on the hat hook closest to your room, on a hair elastic. You left it by the sink."

Vae listens to Penny scramble with the phone, up the stairs and an audible exhalation of relief before she returns to the call.

"I blame you for this." And Vae can sense there is some truth to her mocking yet biting tone.

"You're welcome." She returns in a sing-song voice, only to annoy Penny further. "Next-time, where would you like me to put it?"

"There shouldn't be a next time."

"Uh-huh."

.

MARCH

.

"Happy birthday!" Vae squeals, handing Penny a luxurious looking piece of chocolate cake with a single candle in it.

"You made this for me?" Penny inquires suspiciously.

"Of course!"

"How did you find out?"

"Through FaceFilm, that app keeps all your personal data. For someone so private I'm surprised you're even on it."

"It's for work... it helps with the investigating." 

"Right." Vae murmurs, watching as Penny continues to eye the cake. "One more year then your legal! Not that that's ever stopped you, did you know I thought you were like... twenty-two or something when I first met you? Aren't you going to make a wish?"

Penny closes her eyes and her lips tremble as though she's silently speaking the words so fiercely, they may erupt from her throat.

Then she opens them and quickly blows out the candle.

"What did you wish for?" Vae asks her, placing her own piece of cake down in front of her.

"More time." Penny murmurs before digging into the cake.

 ~***~

"Is that a sex swing?" Vaeh asks as she assesses Penny's room. 

"Can't it just be a swing Vae?" Penny doesn't seem to be too flustered by the question as she leans against the doorframe, her signature double buns replaced with a long raven ponytail, resting high on her head.

"Por qué no los dos?" Vae shrugs, jumping onto the bed as she flops into a sitting position. Their rooms are opposite one another, the bathroom they share between them, but after Vae passed the two-month mark, permission had been granted. It hasn't been easy, Penny was willing to compromise, and Vae laid tape down in areas of the living room where knives might fly past towards its target dummy at any given moment. Vaeh also has learned that Penny won't feed herself, but she gets hangry, making it easier to cook for her. Still, Penny is not without her virtues. 

"It's a gift from my stepmother. Besides, I'd have to be having sex for it to be both." She laments before flopping down beside her companion on the bed. 

Vaeh looks Penny up and down with an incredulous look, choosing whether to comment on the fact her stepmother gifted her a sex swing or, "You… have a hard time finding-" Vae wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, "Someone?" 

Penny smiles wistfully, "It's not like we're playing hide and seek Vae, but I don't make friends easily. It would require me to socialize with... people. And my upbringing while badass, was… complicated."

Vae has assumed that Penny came from money. The books, the clothes, the apartment. They eat and drink like broke students, but Nevaeh is acutely aware her roommate is taken care of in ways that she is not.

"So, what your saying is that ordinary people bore you?" Vae enquires.

"Yes? That sounds so petty." Penny whinges.

"Yeah, well, at least you're honest. Vae tells her, staring up at the ceiling. "Always."

"My sweet little bigot." It occurs to Vae that even though it is a 20-foot ceiling above them (the highest in the whole building, as they reside on the top floor), tiny greenish-yellow stickers are scattered in what she  thinks  might be constellation patterns. A sex swing was adequately bolted to the roof. Even with access to the right ladder, the project would have taken hours upon hours without some sort of divine intervention.

"My upbringing wasn't that badass," Vae murmurs.

"No, from the sound of things it wasn't."

"I'm no basic bitch though."

"Oh, I believe it." Penny laughs, "Otherwise, why would you live here with me?"

  .

MAY

 .

"Penny pleeeeease?" Vae begs; she is getting tired of dehydrated noodle cups and macaroni and cheese for supper.

"I said no Nevaeh." Penny sternly tells her, and Vaeh begins to pout. She crosses her arms over her chest and finds herself folding her legs underneath herself as she watches Penny continue to pick an outfit in the mirror.

"Come on, I seriously need your help. The Dior," and Penny holds up a black silk collared blouse, "Or this one, I think I got at H&M," and she shows her a heather grey cable knit that is similar in colour to the wool skirt she's got on. 

"Why should I help you get dressed for a fancy dinner that you get to go to, for free, when you won't even take me?"

"I take you for dinner on work ONE TIME."

"It was not one time." 

"I can't take you on every case."

"You're going to a fancier place?"

"No."

"Possibility you're coming home will blood all over you again?"

"... Hopefully not?"

"The black silk. It's from B.C.H."

And that's how Penny and Vaeh begin to categorize much of their life. There is now, and B.C.H. (Before CoHabitation), and as two people who don't have much or many, B.C.H. stuff doesn't work its way into everyday conversation frequently. Vaeh doesn't know what Penny used to do before they met, but now she spends her free nights walking Vaeh back from the corner market down the street from their loft. 

Vae's shift is over, she and Penny both with their free coffee in hand. They tend to talk about Vae's day more than Penny's, as Vae learned early into their friendship that Penny does not usually discuss much about her work as a private investigator. 

 .

JULY

 .

Tears are running down their faces as credits roll. They are lying in Penny's bed, where one of the two household televisions is located.

"Okay, breathe."

"Prometheus School of Running, oh my God," Vae chokes out, and Penny immediately shudders and rolls her eyes, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. 

"You okay?" Vae giggles, rubbing her eyes.

"Yeah, it's just, I have a weird reaction to hearing people take the lord's name in vain."

"Are you serious right now? You swear like a drunken sailor, on shore leave..."

"I don't think it's that bad." Penny counters.

"... In a brothel."

"Now you're just exaggerating."

"We are banned from that Macdonald's on 11th."

"Okay, but that eleven-year-old was a bully."

"You once used the word 'fuck' for every word in a sentence."

"Well that's my point exactly. Monty Python was not that far off in their assessment in the versatility of the word fuck."

"So is it that you believe in God?"

And Penny begins to laugh hysterically, bitterly almost. "You could, you could say that."

"Alright." Vaeh sighs her head, resting in her hand, taking in her weird, eccentric friend who has now established another parameter to their relationship.

"Alright?" Penny questions.

"Alright."

 .

AUGUST

.

Vaeh climbs the stairs to their fourth-floor loft, meeting with a delivery person leaving a note.

Penny's shouting can be heard on the other side of the door. 

"She not answering?" She asks.

"I knocked miss, and it's only her voice in there. I think she's on the phone."

Vae offers an apologetic smile. As she turns the keys and enters, she catches Penny's eyes, her shoulder pressed into her phone, giving her the ability to play with a knife, bright and silver (a personal favourite) in erratic short bursts.

"I don't give a flying fuck Linda, which, is rather apropos in this case, don't you think? He knows where I live; it's not like his name isn't on the deed."

Vae creates a peace sign towards Penny before turning the aforementioned fingers towards her eyes, then motioning across the room at Penny to force her attention.

"What?" And there is petulance in Penny's tone as she uses her free hand to hold her phone and give Vae her attention.

"You have registered mail." Vae whispers as if to try and give the caller and Penny privacy that has already been broken. 

"Just sign for me." Penny huffs, and then she's back on the phone. "What are you even talking about? "

Vae wants to tell her that this isn't how these things work. That the delivery person isn't going to allow Vae to sign for mail just that easily, but Penny is deeply invested in an argument once more, and the stranger at the door interrupts with a "Miss, can you can just sign x and type her name in."

"What?! " Penny clips out so pithy it sounds odd and catches Vae off guard. 

"How? WHY?" And Vaeh is now REALLY intrigued as she signs the package. Not many things can get Penny to use that many investigative words that closely in order, that she's now playing 'wh' word bingo in her mind.

"How long?" 

DOUBLE HOW! 

"I've been gone two years— "

Booo, you broke the chain after a double how? Boooooo...  Vae giggles internally as she closes the loft door, dumps the package on Penny's desk and slips her headphones on at her workstation.

Sometime later, after Vae has slipped her focus into the design she's creating, her head and shoulders bouncing as she plays with colour palettes, Penny crosses her field of vision. 

Vae slips the headphones off, "Hey roomie," she greets in a sing-song voice, "Who was that?"

She watches as Penny absent-mindedly fiddles with her ring. "My thera—  Linda."

"You have a thera-Linda too? Where do you keep yours?" Vae pantomimes looking around the apartment leerily before leaning in and whispering, "I keep mine in a drawer by my bed." 

"What?" Penny asks, caught off-guard.

"Exactly." Vae says and goes back to her monitor. Her shoulder-dance slowly begins once more even though she respects Penny enough to keep her headset off until she's done. 

"Linda was a family therapist and friend. She's like an aunt to me." 

"Ah, family problems." She murmurs as she watches Penny slip into the chair at her desk. 

"It's my stepdad. He's gone missing." 

Vae's attention is peaked now as she looks over at Penny, who is staring off into the middle distance. "Wow, are you okay?" 

"Yes," Penny's eyes go wide in realization. "Sorry, I should have explained. He does this from time to time. When my mom and he—   this one time." She looks at Vae with jaded eyes, seemingly confused as to what is holding her back.

"When I was little, he was known to bail when things got rough. When he and mom finally figured their literal prophetic shit out, he got better. He had his moments, but he genuinely tried. Now that my mom is gone. Well," Penny says, her eyes drifting down to the package that Vae had signed for. 

"I didn't know your mom was gone." Vae murmurs reaching over the desks and placing her hand on Penny's. 

"She is and she isn't. That's the worst part. She is and she isn't." Vae looks down at their hands and sees her thumb rubbing Penny's wrist. 

"So Lu—  Dad, Linda says he's not handling it well. Which, newsflash, no one is taking it well. But that's no reason to treat my stepmom and dad the way he has been, regardless of their previous problems. SPEAKING OF WHICH," Penny pivots, pulling her hand out and opening the package. 

"Let's see what the big-bad-momma-bear sent me this time." She takes one of the knives she uses as a letter opener, the sparkly handle painted bright.

No joy or recognition lights up Penny's face as she places the package down on her desk.

"What?" Vaeh asks, more interested than she ever has been with Penny's details about her life before their cohabitation.

Vae stands to look in the box and sees white, radiant feathers reflecting the light from the room back at them. There aren't many, only three, and they are covered in bright red dots of blood. 

"Say what you want about my parents," Vaeh finally speaks, her voice concerned, "but yours sound like the worst. "

  .

NOVEMBER

 .

Vae hears a clinking sound in the sink before she sees it, and her heart stops briefly as it casually rolls towards the garburator drain. Quickly, she snatches it out of the slow-motion moment she foresees it falling down towards a black abyss. 

Frustrated, she takes the ring and seeks vengeance on the woman who almost gave her a heart attack. 

She finds Penny in her room, a file named DROMOS, in her hand, GAUDIUM, MISC. LILLIM, CONSTANTINE on the bed. She's smoking and drinking, listening to piano-heavy dance music so loud that she couldn't hear Vae knocking on the door. 

"Penelope, I swear if I find this thing one more time—"

" I knew where it was." She tells her as she turns down the volume.

"It's no use to you down the drain!"

"It's no use to me period." Penny murmurs, and Vae feels a shriek almost bubbling within her, "just, take it, will you?!"

"I promise, no more hand washing."

 ~***~

"Are you not visiting anyone for Thanksgiving?" Vae enquires from the kitchen, the date looming closer and closer.

"No. Are you?" Penny asks, looking up from a case file she has sprawled out on her desk. Vaeh had answered the door at 7:30 a.m. this morning to receive it for her, forcing her signature since Penny was still fast asleep. As she has noticed before, it comes from Los Angeles. She had tossed it on her best friend's desk before hitting the button to the coffee machine and passing out on the couch while it brews, only to be woke by Penny a few hours after that.

"Canadian Thanksgiving is in October," Vaeh reminds her.

"Right. So you didn't, sorry." Penny murmurs, Vae dressed in pajama pants and a hoodie, shuffles over to her drafting table/computer desk hybrid that they set up on the opposite side of Penny's dark mahogany antique. She hands Penny a cup of coffee before flopping down into her chair.

"Kind of hard when they all live back west," Vae adds, reaching for her drawing tablet.

"Mmmm... mine too, at least those left." Penny adds as she opens her laptop.

Vae nods softly, files this extra information in the THINGS THAT EXPLAIN PENNY compartment of her mind.

.

DECEMBER 

.

The snow falls around them in puffy white clouds, a wind sending them sideways, enough of a nip to the air to have them be hustling back to their loft after dinner with some of Vae's classmates. Penny is still going on about the impending holidays.

"If neither of us see no point— "

"Can't afford." Vae interjects. 

"Oh so you're saying that if I paid for you, you would head back for the holidays then?"

"With your family, sure." Vae replies illusively. 

"No... that wasn't part of the question."

"Then what is our actual plan," Penny begins again, "because I cannot have dinner with your friends Rose and David twice in one month." 

"They have been the worst since they started listening to that new podcast. Sometimes they play it so loud when we are in the studios at school, I can't hear the instructor. I'm not," and Vae makes an awkward motion with her arms, "built to receive that much stimuli." 

"Do you even hear yourself sometimes?" Penny turns to Vae, her breath coming out in steam as they try to fight the cold. 

"Please, coming from the one with a sex swing in her room." 

"It's not used for sex!" Penny huffs, shoving her hands deeper into her pockets.

"Are you telling me you actually swing in it... just because?"

"Are you telling me you wouldn't?" 

"Pffft... I dunno." Vae begins, looking over at a heavily bundled up Penny, dark eyes peering out, "Christmas movie Marathon? But I mean, entertaining Christmas movies. Die Hard, Krampus, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Nightmare Before Christmas— "

"Gremlins?" Penny asks, hopefully.

 "Do you even have to ask?" Vae retorts. "Do you want to watch Zuzu's Petals?" 

"Is that the remake of It's a Wonderful Life?" Penny hesitantly asks.

"I don't know, I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life." They continue their trek towards their loft, the snow gently falling above them before Penny clears her throat.

"Look, I've been meaning to talk to you about something important— "

"Oh Pen, I thought I told you friends don't ask friends to come to their improve shows. "

"No! That's not what this is about, although it really hurts you won't even try. "

"What is this about then?"

"A couple of months ago when we had our Alien marathon— "

"— and I said oh my God and you got hella weird?"

"I did not get hella weird."

"You got sooooo weird. It was visceral! I watched you shudder."

"Do you believe in God?" Penny plows ahead; they're almost to their building. 

"What?" Vae is surprised by the line of questioning, "Why?" 

"I don't know, it just struck me. I never thought about your feelings or thought to ask. I just did kind of what I watched mostly everyone around me my entire life do and focus on my own feelings before realizing I should consider yours." She holds open the door for Vae, and they begin the climb up the stairs.

"No. Sort of? As an artist I've dabbled with the lore of Judeo-Christian theology but like, it's all stories to me. I think I'm agnostic."

"I think it's reasonable to want proof." Penny mutters. 

"Well if I was one for needing proof, I would have given up believing you were a P.I. months ago."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing! Nothing..." and Vae rolls her eyes towards the heavens before smirking a carefree grin at her. "I mean all those files you could just be a very thorough stalker."

"Stalking is essential to the job yes." Penny agrees before unlocking their front door and letting Vae through before walking through herself.

"And I imagine so are the arts, but that doesn't seem to inspire you to invite me along."

"The Arts?"

"Yeah like, sketching a suspect, or taking photographs. You know I covet your camera, and when I asked you about ISO and aperture, I could have sworn I saw you drool."

"Maybe I could use help with the camera."

"Maybe I could help you with the camera." 

    Hours later, when they are both in sleep clothes and are sitting on the couch, finishing their tasks for the night before heading to bed, Penny signals to Vae she wants to talk to her. Vae puts her pencil down and pulls her headphones off.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come with me on a job."

"Saywhat?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to come with me on a j—"

"Okay, so you said what I thought I heard you say. When? Why?"

"Or forget it, you can stay here."

Vaeh throws a pillow at Penny's head, which Penny spears with her knife reflexively. She pulls the knife out and puts the pillow behind her back as though it were entirely natural behaviour.

"Just a few questions, how good are you at drawing someone from memory?"

 ~***~

The P.I. and the Artist are at a frat party, scoping the crowd. Vae has her arm looped through Penny's, sipping from a solo cup that Penny had procured for her when they entered. They tend to stay tethered together in situations like this, but Vae is barely focusing on Penny's conversation, and some frat dudes are having. If she must draw any of these faces later, she knows she needs to study their features, read their eyes, soak up the details. 

"I'm a private investigator," Penny yells above the music's obnoxious noise to the guy in front of her, her leather jacket groaning with her movements.

Vae's is in the backpack that she brought, containing her pencils and sketchbook; their winter-wear is also stored there. Vae imagines she must look like a hunchback currently, and two men have offered to take it for her, but she'd like to be able to leave at a moments notice and get home without freezing to death, so instead, she continues to look like a clinging humped sidekick to her attractive best friend.

"Oh yeah, so like… do you catch people cheating and shit?" the guys all laugh nervously. Two dude’s high-five as Vae rolls her eyes and continues to nurse her drink. One of the frat bro's winks at her. The party has a strict rule on no phones and even had checked the two of them at the door. Vae's been to parties with no phones before done to encourage people to mingle, but this must be one of her the most boring places she's ever endured it. 

"Cheating and shit is below my paygrade." Penny informs him. Vaeh hyper focuses on this part of the conversation while pretending to be caught in the song. She doesn't know much about many of Penny's cases, but she can agree that seems to be out of Penny's wheelhouse. 

"So, what then?"

"Bounty reconnaissance, sometimes enforcement." Penny adds an eerie smile on her face, her eyes flash darkly, and she looks the most intimidating she has since Vae first met her.

Vaeh is confused at her sudden mood shift until—

"So, if you don't remove your hand," Penny's voice drips cold, "you'll see what kind of enforcement I'm capable of."

 ~***~

"How much longer?" 

Penny narrows her eyes as she continues to look for her target. The bros and the dudes are all high fiving each other loudly while a bunch of partnered sorority girls giggle in a corner. 

"Trust me, this is not how I want us to spend our Friday night." Penny smiles at her briefly. 

"As long as we don't get assaulted—"

"— again."

"— assaulted again. Or roofied. Or both in that unfortunate order." Vae murmurs.

"I figured we would do some reconnaissance for an hour top. If the bounty appears you get a good look, treat you to free drinks, then we can do whatever you want. If you want to go home and get drunk off box wine and binge watch horror films, you just say the word and I'll spend a whole twenty on the booze."

"Penny Espinoza we don't need four boxes of cheap wine."

"Two each?"

"You do you, but I'll stick to one. My final assignments are due in a week."

They both fall silent for a few minutes, each getting lost in their thoughts.

"You said you enforce bounties." Vaeh starts, "Is that what all the knives are for?"

"Not always," Penny answers illusively.   

Penny's eyes fall on the stairs as a frat-bro begins a drunken stagger down the stairwell, and she notices his pallor colour and blood flowing from his left ear.   

"Wait here."  

Vaeh scrunches her face at her roommate, and "What, wait? Why would I wait, I have to see his face if I'm going to draw him."  

Penny continues to follow the possible dead frat-dude as he makes his way to the frat house door and slips out into the night. As she slips between the partygoers, Penny's one hand reaches for the door handle as the other slides behind her back for her blade.   

There are still too many people around in the front yard, but the drunken dead dude (triple D?) is down the sidewalk and heading into the park.  

"Go home, Vaeh." Penny calls out, "The scope of this assignment has changed entirely."  

"You can't just ask me to come with you on a job then tell me to go home, essentially leaving me stranded forty blocks away from it in this Den of Rohypnol." Vaeh catches her and grabs her arm.   

"I doubt that you're at risk." Penny scoffs.  

Vaeh winces, her feelings hurt as she takes a step backwards from her friend. "Wow. Nice Penelope. Real nice."  Vaeh had already removed the winter attire from her backpack and throws Penny her gloves watching as Penny catches them gracefully. She drops the bag as she slips on her peacoat.  

"I don't have time for this!" Penny finds herself begging.   

"Then let's go." Vae holds out her hand in a gesture that indicates that Penny should lead the way.    

Penny growls in frustration and stomps off ahead of Nevaeh, shoving her hands deep into her leather jacket. Vaeh exhales shakily and picks up the bag, placing it on her back before doing the same with her own hands.   

The shorter of the two watches her friend speed walk ahead, trying to make up the difference, but the triple D hasn't managed to get very far away from them.   

She shakes her head and looks down at her feet, leaving imprints in the snow.  

Vae hears it before seeing it; it sounds like a strong wind whooshing around her head, her curls getting caught behind her glasses. When she manages to pull them out of her face and looks up, she stops in her tracks.   

[sinceileftyoublog]

Sam Rae Interview: Green Turns to Dust

Photo by Sophia Lou

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“It’s their experimental record,” you say about so many classic artists, the common tale that they tone their traditional chops before venturing out into the realms of improvisation and loops. For Sam Rae, her upcoming record Ten Thousand Years (August 7th) represents the opposite journey. Her first two, 2014′s instrumental, improvised Stories From the Marrow and 2017′s heady Bring Us to New Islands, are drastically different than Years, a bonafide, lyrics-forward folk record born out of Rae’s experience as part of Brandi Carlile’s touring band. Carlile’s tour bus and band members provided Rae with an atmosphere to reflect and write, and as it turns out, she had a lot to say.

Ten Thousand Years is an album about all things Rae, from where she grew up (Iowa City) and where she moved (Santa Cruz, before relocating to Charleston, South Carolina a year ago), to her family and past and present loves, and growing up queer in the Midwest. Throughout, Rae remembers past events and hearing certain stories but is also baffled by the seeming unending nature of time and the world. Her interplay between feelings concrete and abstract is impressively balanced, especially for a first time writer-in-advance. (Ten Thousand Years is the first album on which Rae wrote the lyrics before recording the songs.) The involved personnel and sound, too, has expanded, perhaps to match the scope of Rae’s themes: Not only are we treated to Rae’s voice, guitar, and cello playing, but producer Jacob Hoffman’s french horn, piano, and 12-string Rickenbacker, Kendl Winter’s banjo, Dustin Busch’s hand-crafted lap steel, drummer Sean T. Lane’s homemade rhythm and atmosphere instrument, The Bike. Overall, though, Ten Thousand Years finds a way to hang on to bits and pieces of Rae’s experimentation. It’s two most ambitious tracks bookend it: “Intro”, initially improvised on organ while Rae’s father and fiancee played a game of pool, and “Dying Here”, the longest track on the album with tape and live delay.

I spoke to Rae over the phone last month, the day the album was announced and reverby lead single “Head Rush” premiered on Country Queer, and today, she’ll be doing her first streamed performance of the album’s material, at 6 PM CST on her Instagram. “It’s such a relief to hear it finally entering the world and coming out of my head...so much space is opening up!” she laughed. Of course, Rae is pining to do a real live show but is limited by COVID-19 (“What if I played on a dock and people could ride up on canoes?” she speculated), so for now, that open space will have to be limited to the mental realm. Ultimately, Rae doesn’t seem to be worried about what she can’t control, and to an extent, even the things she can. Life is large, and as she sings on “Colors of the Highway”, “I’m sure I’ll have the choice between remembered or forgotten / Either is fine by me.” 

Read our conversation about the record below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Do you feel like Ten Thousand Years represented a big step for you from Bring Us to New Islands?

Sam Rae: Huge. I almost considered taking off my last two records completely. Just making them disappear. I didn’t want to get rid of them, per se, but just having this be my debut because it’s so different from my last two. I ultimately decided against it, because I basically wanted to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to how I got to where I am, which is not necessarily traditional. My first record was an improvised, looped cello concert. I recorded it live and released it. My second one is this ethereal, cello-looping, kind of synth-based record where I started to explore singing a little bit, but it was mostly focused around synth sounds and reverse cello loops. Lots of experimental stuff. This one is pretty much straight up folk. We recorded it to tape. The songs generally have structure. It’s kind of just landing in this more specific genre that just feels better. I was exploring all of this ethereal improvisational stuff for so long just because it was my comfort zone. Improvisational performance is always where I’ve been most comfortable. Writing these songs that are so lyrically exposed is this whole other can of worms. It’s less comfortable for me. But of course, I’m always drawn to the discomfort, so this is where I am. And it feels very right. I’ve finally found my...what’s the word...crevice, or...

SILY: Your niche?

SR: My niche! Or my identity in music that I’ll stick with from here on out, which feels really nice.

SILY: How long had you been writing lyrics or writing in general?

SR: I was already really into stream of consciousness journaling, but I always felt too vulnerable to have those lyrics be front and center. So in my second album, Bring Us To New Islands, I decided to include my lyrics a little bit, but I still definitely hid them behind these sonic textures and cello loops and what not. When I was writing that record, I was literally writing the lyrics to those songs as I was recording them. I would go in, and my producer would be like, “That sounds good,” or, “That sucks,” and I would go home and rewrite something. I was doing it on the fly. I was exploring that discomfort, I guess. That was another big step in the direction of where I am today. Really, to answer your question, the last three years, and especially the last two, particularly in 2018 when I was out with Brandi, I was using the adrenaline and the momentum I felt after shows with her, and I’d run straight to the bus after the show, lock the door, and get out my guitar. I wrote 60 percent of these songs on the back of that bus. She’s really dialed it in--just the level of writing and the music quality and her presence. I was just absorbing it all like a sponge, and I wanted to utilize that freshness of what I was seeing in front of me every night. It was fun to throw these songs together on the back of the bus. I finally had enough songs--6 or so--and thought to myself, “I should just write a record here!”

Writing to this extent is fairly fresh for me. The last two years, I’d say, writing in the form this record represents. Less ethereal.

SILY: You still find ways where you can use your voice instrumentally, but the lyrics are more front and center.

SR: Absolutely.

SILY: You mentioned Brandi and [Carlile’s twin-brother bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth] in your liner notes as providing an atmosphere where you could write. Was that just on tour?

SR: Definitely touring. Trading songs with Tim on the bus or the green room. He’d teach me a few little chords, and I’d go and do a song. Getting a few tips from Brandi here and there about my voice, and definitely taking that to heart. I was highly influenced by their writing on this record. I guess it just challenged me to rise to this level of writing I knew I could achieve. That’s cool just to have them as an example, as a bar.

SILY: You mentioned that you made “a folk record” with this one, though it still contains some of your more experimental tendencies. But in a sense, there are a couple aspects on here associated with traditional folk but maybe not “folk” as we think of it today: homemade instruments and field recordings. Both appear on "Intro”--even though it’s not a “field” and just a basement.

SR: Yeah, the “Intro” on my phone in my dad’s girlfriend’s basement. [laughs] Then, we threw some cello and vocals on top of it.

SILY: It almost lays the groundwork for the spirit of the record, with The Bike, the homemade instrument. It’s got a sense of time and place...is that your dad saying, “Turn it down, it hurts my ears!”

SR: Yeah. [laughs] He’s got hearing aids, so he’s a little more sensitive to sound now. I thought it was just very well-suiting that his voice pops in at the very beginning, like when you’re a kid: “Turn it down! Stop messing around, we’re playing pool. We’re trying to do this thing!” And I’m over there just cranking the organ. Then I keep playing, and you can kind of hear him pipe in one more time: “Turn it down!” I just keep going because I was recording on my phone. I was like, “Ooh, this is cool! I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I don’t want to stop just because of my dad.” [laughs]

SILY: The record is called Ten Thousand Years, and on the title track, you individually go through each set of thousand years. What stuck out to me is you almost present the idea that time is more than what we perceive, when usually, people say the opposite, like, “It goes by so fast!” What’s the idea behind the record title and that track and how it relates to the whole album?

SR: Yeah, that’s a great question. I remember writing that song when I lived in Santa Cruz. I was just thinking about being in a partnership with somebody and how it just felt like every week or every day we were learning another aspect about one another. There’s a high possibility or likelihood we were never gonna learn fully everything. I was pondering that concept and definitely wrote that song in almost one go. Usually, I let it sit and go back and edit and change some lyrics to make it flow, but this one, it just kind of came out. In that song, I’m trying to address these tangible, nostalgic feelings I have for each portion in my life I can divide up into sections I’ve exposed. It gets to this point where it just becomes less tangible. Ten thousand years, and there’s more. There’s that bridge part where I’m just trying to be that ten thousand and one. It’s just based off of the concept that as humans, we’re a lot more complex that we can understand some days, and we can be hard on ourselves to that extent. Not being able to understand or be in control of certain aspects that are just human. Those are going to be there regardless of whether we have control or not. That’s kind of a long-winded version of it. 

That theme threads itself through almost every song on the album, especially songs like “Waukee” and “Strangest Thing” and kind of delving into concepts of being present and losing family members and that life is just this kind of sometimes misunderstood thing, I guess. At least from my perspective, I catch myself trying to fully understand it and be completely in control. I have these glimpses of moments where I tell myself to let go of that aspect and realize it’s a lot bigger than myself.

SILY: You’re certainly wrestling with the tangible versus the non-tangible. “Strangest Thing” gets its title from the line, “It’s the strangest thing how the wind can blow but can’t be seen.” That line definitely stuck out to me. Another one is on “Colors of the Highway”, when you sing, “Taste the colors of the highway.” It’s like a certain form of synesthesia. You’re messing with the senses.

SR: Definitely. There’s this sort of ghost-like element to a lot of these songs that touch on things I can’t control or fully understand.

SILY: At the same time, are there any stories on the song that are inspired by or reference hyper-specific events? Like, on “Waukee”, did you really light the family car on fire with a cigarette? [“Oh, you lit the family car on fire with your dead end cigarette.”]

SR: [laughs] That’s a good point. It goes from that extreme of being a little ethereal to these super finite specific moments like that one, referring to my mom when she was a teenager lighting her family car on fire with cigarettes. She was in the car with her other siblings and one parent. I’m constantly fascinated by their stories and how they survived. That’s one of their stories, where she lights the car on fire and my grandpa walks out and just tells her to go inside and go to bed. That song, specifically, is very focused around my family and my mom’s side, specifically.

SILY: On the same song, you talk about “Something in our blood that we find so comforting.” Is that family for you in general?

SR: On my mom’s side, we’re really tight-knit, and we get together on a regular basis. At this point, it’s about 50 of us. She has lots of siblings, and they all have kids, and then they all have kids, and I value the fact that we get together on a regular basis. I value that. I was an only child, and my cousins were kind of my siblings.

SILY: Same here, actually!

SR: Yeah, nice! It’s cool. I always craved that connection to a sibling based off what I saw around me, but I definitely got some of that from my mom’s side of the family. The choruses of that song touch on watching my aunts and uncles pass away one by one. It’s a strange feeling. Every time that happens, there’s a shift in the whole family. It’s kind of rattling, and a large letting go. There’s lots of cancer on that side of the family, so it’s this inevitable shadow, almost. That song’s definitely very family-oriented.

SILY: This might be a stretch, or unintentional, but it reminds me of the saying, “My family is my rock,” and you used literal rocks on the percussion of that track.

SR: I didn’t ever think of that! I found a few unintentional things on this album that I didn’t necessarily mean to do but are cool. That’s one of them. I guess the draw to that rock sound is that textural feeling. Rather than only being a sound, it creates this texture like if you were crumpling sand in your hands. That definitely relates to my feelings around community and family. There’s almost this texture or nostalgia to it that I hold on to.

SILY: Can you tell me about the song “Delaine”?

SR: That tune, I wrote in Astoria, Oregon at the end of a solo run down the coast. I had had the name Delaine floating around my head for a few weeks, and I don’t know why or how it popped into my head. It was just kind of floating around and had no purpose other than to be a name. Then, I decided one day I would write a song about the state of Iowa and name her “Delaine” so I could almost sing to her as if she were a human, which might be kind of weird. [laughs] But it opened up the possibilities of me singing to a place--I could sing to it as if it were alive. 

“Delaine” is a placeholder for Iowa, and it touches on my upbringing in Iowa, and coming out as gay in Iowa, and exploring my gender, doing drag, and it just felt so nice against the backdrop of what I felt at the time to be this mundane feeling that I was just becoming bored with the place to the point where I was like, “Get me out of here!” Of course, after I leave, I find myself laughing now about how much I missed it. But I was young and needing to get out and explore things and be in different communities. So it touched on a lot of that and just exploring my identity and a place that wasn’t necessarily surrounded my like-minded people, although Iowa City is pretty rad. 

The chorus, I was thinking about just the other day, and I was thinking kind of related to this feeling of screaming into an empty field--my mom used to take me out to an empty cornfield to just scream into the top of my lungs. I would do that, and it was this great release and always felt like the cornfields were there to hold it, hold the scream, or just be simple and calm. So I wrote those choruses, and in a sense, to kind of relate to that feeling of this spacious calm and the ability to release in the midst of that.

SILY: “The prairie fields of rural love.”

SR: Uh huh. This super expansive chorus gives me that same sense of relief as when I would go out and scream into a field. Overall, it offers a lot of space, but it’s pretty angsty. There’s a lot of built-up angst around what it was like to grow up in the Midwest.

SILY: This is probably a hard question to answer, but to what extent do certain songs address a little bit more head-on your experiences growing up queer in Iowa?

SR: Ooh...on this album?

SILY: Yes.

SR: Definitely “Delaine”. There’s a line in “Ten Thousand Years”, one of those segments I go through is, “My TV screen blew up, and I learned how to run.” That’s definitely referencing coming out and just ostracizing myself. I thought everyone was gonna disown me, and they didn’t. I was creating this thing in my head that if I came out, everyone would just stop talking to me because I was definitely abnormal and there weren’t a lot of gay people around me. It turns out I was just scooting around the issue with even my friends after almost a year, and finally, one of them brought it up and was like, “It’s okay, you know.” Because I had been coming to hang out with them with a girlfriend of mine but not saying who she was. It was just this suppressed thing I was creating for myself. “My TV screen blew up, and I learned how to run” refers to the fact that I was suppressing it pretty hard, to the point where I just decided to move away. In retrospect, kind of realizing that a lot of that was in my own head and my family has fully accepted me...although there’s still this kind of passive, “Oh, maybe some day she’ll date a man again. Maybe this is a phase.” My family is getting over that aspect, because it’s been a long time now. [laughs] It’s clearly not a phase.

SILY: And you’re married, right?

SR: Yeah. Well, I’m engaged to be married in October. But my parents and relatives still call her my friend. So there’s a passive underlying, they don’t want to acknowledge it. Not to say that they’re not supportive. So that line, “My TV screen blowing up,” I was creating this explosion in my own head, but it was outwardly existing in a passive way.

SILY: What about the song “Love Is Love”? The title of it is the most common expression for support for marriage equality, and there’s the phrase, “time’s a changin’” in that song, which is one of the oldest political statement tropes. Would you say that song is political in a way?

SR: It definitely is. To be honest, it wasn’t inspired by that. My being gay or queer is a different topic. But it of course applies to that and it’s perfect for the listener to find their own meaning in. I wrote that more around feeling privilege around me in the industry--especially white male privilege--and feeling its effects. It’s obviously a different topic, and I didn’t pinpoint that because I did want the song to be applicable to however the listener wants it to be.

SILY: The last song on the record is intriguing, and one of the things that stood out to me was how you ended it and therefore the album. I thought to myself, “How often do you hear the phrase, 'For example,' in a song, let alone to close the record?” It seemed to be a radical acceptance of things not being tied together entirely. What were you going for with that ending?

SR: I guess it felt like it did tie the whole record together. I sing, “For example, take the green / It turns to dust eventually,” which is basically the summary of the entire album. Everything evolves and changes and dissipates and starts over again. Trying to deny that just feels like you’re running against a current. It’s easier said than done--it’s definitely a process, realizing something like that. And then the following line, “The fire’s not in the rich / It’s in the fire that lights the ditch,” so it definitely ends on a pretty political note, and something I feel very strongly about, which is that in order for change to happen, we have to be a little more than forceful and less passive.

SILY: Maybe more from a prose perspective, it’s almost a very cool rejection of what you’re taught: “End something with a concluding thought.” You’re showing, not telling.

SR: For sure. It doesn’t end in a conclusive, “Here is the answer,” manner.

SILY: Many of the people you worked with--Jacob Hoffman, Trina Shoemaker, Joe Gastwirt--they’ve got pretty big resumes. What’s something you think you learned from working with them, and what might they have learned from working with you?

SR: Good question. Starting with Jacob, he just has this way of making me feel supported. He admires my songs. It’s really refreshing, because he sees me as a human. We have a lot of mutual respect for each other. Building this record off that mutual respect that was already established via touring with Brandi for almost a year on the bus was really crucial.  [Hoffman plays piano in Carlile’s band]. He was one of those people I played my songs to after I wrote them on the back of the bus. I would be like, “Hey, come back here, I have a song to play you! What do you think?” I was definitely bouncing these songs off him. It just felt absolutely appropriate to invite him to be the producer. 

He’s also this one-take wonder. He absolutely lights up when he picks up an instrument. Whenever he had a part on the song, he’d just go and get these crucial parts. In “Waukee”, that strumming. In “Love Is Love”, those very strong chords. He just nailed those parts on the first take and then he was just done. He was a very positive element in recording this. Him, and my drummer Sean T. Lane, and Mike Davis, the engineer, the three of them just offered these unique sensibilities and experiences. They always looked me straight in the eye when they had anything to say. From day one, they were like, “I’m following your vision.” I was like, “We’re gonna record this to tape and get live takes.” Whether they were hesitant or not, they didn’t show it. That’s not their way of going about it. They had to believe I could get these songs in full takes. I definitely felt that. I think you can get a sense for how comfortable I felt based on how the songs turned out. Jacob was one of the people to spearhead that feeling. 

I started working with a different mixer at first. I can be pretty stubborn and like to do everything by myself, so I was like, “I’m gonna find my own mixer!” It just wasn’t working out. I was kind of not willing to admit it at first and ended up learning a pretty big lesson on that because I spent quite a bit of money on the first round of mixes and decided to trash them all--or set them aside, really. I was feeling a little vulnerable to call Trina. Initially, I was thinking I would just call her and have her mix one to two or three songs, and my partner Cat, who has been kind of my strong voice that’s whispering in my hear the whole way through this album process, was like, “Don’t cut corners.” I was running errands one day, and she called me, being like, “What are you gonna do? Are you gonna call Trina?” I was like, “Aw, man, I don’t know if she’s gonna have time, she has work for Sheryl Crow and Wood Brothers.” I was just feeling vulnerable about that. And she was like, “No. You’re gonna call Trina, and you’re gonna ask her to mix your whole record.” I was like, “I don’t know if we can afford it,” and she was like, “We’ll figure it out. Just do it!” It was just this reinforcement that I needed. I immediately called [Trina], and she immediately agreed to do it. It was so easy. I had built up this preconceived notion in my head that just wasn’t true. I called her, and she was super awesome. She actually thought I was a telemarketer, because my number’s from Iowa. She answered, “Who is this?!?” I was like, “Oh, dear!” [laughs] “I’m Sam, I play cello for Brandi.” “Oh, I’m sorry!” Working with her just blew my mind. She told me from the beginning that I’d have to wait for her to finish some projects and be patient, and I was like, “Absolutely, I’m willing to do that. It’s worth it to me.” And so we figured out how to make it work. She nailed a lot of them on the first mix. She really nailed that feeling of aliveness and spaciousness, and she brought out these little treasures I didn’t even know were there, which I thought was really crucial. 

I don’t know. She’s an absolute genius and an artist, and working with her was definitely an honor. At some point we were talking on the phone--we ended up kind of becoming friends through this process--and she was telling me how she still studies string recordings and how they’re mixed. Even in her professional years, after so long, she still wants to grow and study these things. It definitely translates into her mixes because she’s not trying to put a thumbprint on them, just trying to make them what they should be. That’s the key, really.

Joe was also super awesome to work with, although mastering is a different experience and a little less involved. He was recommended to me by Trina, so I absolutely trusted that right off the bat. Trina thought he would be a great person to finish this project out, knowing that he, too, is not one to put a huge thumbprint on something. He doesn’t want to leave a mark. He just wants to maintain its integrity and slightly lift it up. That’s what Trina told me, and that’s exactly what he did. So it was a pleasure working with him, too.

Photo by Pete Souza

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

SR: Pete Souza took that photo in Mexico at the second Girls Just Wanna Weekend with Brandi Carlile. I met him years ago through Brandi, because he’d come to shows now and then and take pictures during the show. We started to become friends during that. I asked him one day whether he’d be able to take my album cover. It kind of didn’t work out a few times. He was gonna come to New York for the Madison Square Garden show and ended up not being able to because he was traveling a lot previously. There were a few times we were trying to get together and it didn’t work out. It came down to perfect timing because I still hadn’t found my mixes with Trina, and we hadn’t settled on an album cover yet, and we were in Mexico, and I was like, “Hey, wanna just go have a fun photo shoot?” It was so much fun. I was really nervous because I get super dorky in front of cameras. [laughs] My face just doesn’t look natural. He had this way of making me feel super comfortable. We were just having fun playing with sunlight and different colors of walls. It was just fun! It felt like two artists just working together and collaborating without any intent on what we were gonna achieve. He captured that shot, and then, yeah, the rest is history!

SILY: How have you been holding up during quarantine?

SR: At first it was kind of fun, and I had a lot of time to myself and to work on this release. But honestly, it’s just been hard. The range of emotions is something I’ve never felt quite before. The diversity of them. I’ve never experienced that many in such a small period of time. Usually, they’re stretched out into multiple experiences over a longer period of time. But I’ve gotten to this point where I’m super stir crazy. Cat and I have been really strict, and we have literally just been sheltering in place. We’ve left the house to go see the sun set, but we don’t get out of the car. We go to the grocery store like once a month and wear masks and gloves and are really conscious, so we’re just staying home most of the time. 

It’s definitely getting to a place where, for me, I’ve just been completely diving into promotional stuff and album stuff and have been constantly been working on the computer. So it’s been a way for me to cope with my anxiety, but also, maybe not so healthy, because I don’t really have a firm boundary between when I’m doing it and when I’m not. But I’m learning a lot about myself. I think my biggest takeaway is I’m really glad to see how much support has been offered by friends and community members. It’s easy to get down on the world and the state of our government, but it’s been a little uplifting to see people rising up through that and offering their support. Even the smallest little posts, like, “Hey, let me know if I need to buy you a bag of groceries and put it on your doorstep.” Humanity is still good. That reminder is definitely driving me through this. My hope is very high, and my anxiety levels are very high.

SILY: I think a lot of people would agree with that statement...I know you’ve been busy with this record, but have you been consuming any other media, like music, books, movies, or shows?

SR: I’ve definitely been listening to some new records that just came out, including Laura Marling and Fiona Apple. I’ve really, really been diving into the Laura Marling album.

SILY: It’s incredible.

SR: It’s so good. I miss that feeling of putting on an album and immediately feeling relieved about how good it is. It’s more rare these days, me listening to something and want to obsessively listen to it after that. So I’ve been listening to that and definitely watching some shows and sitting on my back porch throwing a ball for my dog. [laughs] My three main activities.

SILY: Is there anything I didn’t ask about, the record or otherwise, that you want to say?

SR: Hmm...I guess the only thing that comes to mind is that, overarchingly, with this record, I really wanted to have a live feeling as if you were in the room. My intention around trying to catch these live takes, with guitar, main vocals, and drums, is that the drums and I could kind of create that vibe and then we’d build off of that. Sean and I were just working off of each other with those initial takes. At first it was an experiment, those initial takes, but we ended up being really proud of it.