#this brain is a temperamental piece of equipment

[seijorhi]

Hey Rhi 👋

It’s been established that I’m completely obsessed with your fic “Means to an End” and I was wondering if you could PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE just spare me a couple more crumbs!!!!! Whether it’s just a couple of backstory ideas that didn’t make it into the fic, outtakes, lil fun facts, more info on the twins and readers highschool drama, or more info on Atsumu and Ames relationship, LITERALLY ANYTHING.

At this point I’m starving 😔, you could throw me a bone and I would die happy.

OBVIOUSLY I don’t want to force you or anything, if you’re not comfortable with doing any of those things, or if I overstepped a boundary, than I’m sorry and I understand. I wouldn’t be at all booty hurt.

This is just me being desperate, delusional, and annoying 😭. ( I was going to ask some questions but my mind is blanking for some reason 😃)

With that being said, hope you keep your mental and physical health 🆙. And in case nobody’s told you this today, we love and support you babe ☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

-🌫️🌬️

nonnie do not let it be said that i leave y'all to starve

atsumu's not usually the grateful type.

some might argue that he should be. the talent he's been blessed with, the opportunities that came with it – but what none of those whiny little piss-ants seem to understand is that those things weren't given to him. he worked for them. hours on the court, practicing with samu, competing against him. drills, endless fucking drills, running til he puked, set after set after set, serve after serve after serve until he was practically fuckin' flawless.

he won't be grateful for his teammates, or his coaches, not even for samu. they worked their asses off to get where they are, too, and samu– samu's his other half. a part of him. it'd be like being grateful for his right foot or grateful for his lungs.

you certainly didn't trip and just fall into their laps – onto your knees, pretty mouth begrudgingly parted – back then, either. never let it be said that he and osamu half ass these things.

but as the girl behind the counter lays out her tray, glittering, shiny – expensive – pieces splayed out to show him, atsumu decides that maybe he has to rethink that.

because he is grateful, really.

ame might as well be a gift, wrapped in ribbon and fucking lace, delivered right into his hands. his sweet, eager to please, idiot girlfriend. atsumu grins, hardly listening to the sales assistant prattle on about the collection – but to his credit, he pretends, throwing in a nod and thoughtful hum every now and then.

'just get her a decent looking fake, s'not like she's gonna know,' samu had said. 'why waste the money?' the why bother goes unsaid.

osamu's not wrong, exactly. he isn't in love with ame, some days he can't stand her. she's fucking annoying at the best of times. ame's not the end goal here – more of a means to that end – but he's not gonna sit and pretend he's not kinda looking forward to breaking her heart and kicking her to the kerb.

but if ame's been good for one thing – if he's grateful to her for anything – it's that she making all this so damn easy.

always chattering, giggling, smiling, bulldozing over your worries and fears. not that you told her the full truth. he doubts that even she'd be able to overlook that, but you told her enough that would've raised some serious red flags with anyone else.

not ame. not his girlfriend. your best friend, supposedly.

what's there to worry about? he and samu, they've grown up since high school, matured, lost that mean streak of theirs. she's so in love with the idea of him that she can't even imagine the atsumu you're intimately familiar with.

he almost died laughing when, at dinner the other night, she'd bashfully admitted to wanting to play a little matchmaker with you and osamu over the weekend. like he and samu haven't already seen you naked, fucked you – claimed you as theirs in every way that counts.

and sure, you've always been easy enough to manipulate to where they want you. even without ame this reprieve of yours was only ever gonna be a temporary thing – til they got their shit together, at least – but fuck it all if she wasn't going out of her way to make it a nice, smooth transition.

he glances up at the sales girl, a grin already taking shape. 'the earrings.' he says, jabbing a finger at the diamonds, 'i'll take 'em.'

she deserves something nice, considering he's just so damn grateful for her help in all of this.

[sapphichotmess]

Absolutely Smitten

Modern!Ellie Williams x Plus Size!f!Reader (not really specified but that’s what I write)

Name inspired by Dodie’s song Absolutely Smitten

Even though this is not 18+, I am an 18+ blog, mdni

read the second part here!!

Warnings/Tags: horrendous writing (not edited) with very little dialogue (idk how to human), fluff, meet cute, rushed ending, reader is able-bodied

~2.7k words

I am up to doing more parts of this! Maybe? 

The melted-butter-colored morning sun filters through the windows of a quaint bakery, casting a warm glow across the wooden-floored interior. Birds chirp their songs, squirrels scutter up trees, causing the rustling of leaves, and an owl up too late calls out one last time. Such a beautiful sight is cause for a relaxing morning.

“Fuck!”

You curse as the all-too-familiar clatter of metal hitting the floor pierces the peaceful atmosphere of the bakery, abruptly drawing your attention away from the serene scene outside. Your brain still wanders as your non-stick shoes squeak on the tile flooring of the bakery, and it doesn’t catch up until you’re nearly toe-to-toe with disaster. Flour dusts otherwise pristine countertops like a fresh layer of snow and cascades like a white waterfall onto the floor. Bread dough clings stubbornly to multiple places in the kitchen: the countertop, the edges of the mixing bowl, and even the crevices between the tiles on the floor. Amidst the mess stood the culprit—a temperamental mixer that seemed to have a mind of its own recently.

"Of all the mornings for this to happen," you mutter, placing one hand on your head and one on your hip in frustration. This wasn't how you envisioned starting your day, but in the unforgiving world of small business ownership, setbacks like this were all too common.

With a resigned sigh, you set to work cleaning up the sticky, floury mess. You grab a towel and begin trying to wipe down the countertops first. The flour wipes off easily, some getting caught in the towel and some falling to the floor to be swept up. However, the dough sticks to the granite countertops no matter what you do. Your brows pinch in and your lips pull down at the edges as you realize that the dough is proving to be far more stubborn than anticipated. You try scraping it off with the edge of the towel, but it only smears and clings to the counter. Each attempt to remove it seems futile, making your blood boil.

Glancing over at the mixer, you can't help but feel a twinge of resentment towards the outdated piece of shit equipment. It had been a constant source of trouble lately, breaking down at the most inconvenient times and causing endless headaches.

Shaking your head at yourself for being mad at a machine, you step back, put your hands on your wide hips, and let out a controlled breath. You have to figure out how to fix this. And fast. Your bakery opens in—you look up to a clock and read the hands—shit! It opens in three hours!

Looking over the kitchen, you contemplate what you should do, trying to find an approach to cleaning up and getting a new batch of dough ready in three hours. As you focus on the mixer-made mess, inspiration strikes, and you bustle around to find a small bowl and a sponge, filling the bowl up with warm water. Your chest never rises, and you take slow, deliberate steps toward the mess with the full bowl, hoping it doesn’t tip and make an even bigger mess. When you make it to your destination, you dampen the sponge and gently dab at the dough, hoping that the moisture will help loosen its grip on the countertop.

To your relief, the tactic seems to work, albeit slowly. The dough begins to soften under the gentle pressure of the sponge, gradually loosening its hold on the granite surface. With careful persistence, you continue to work, methodically removing the stubborn remnants of dough until the countertops are once again clean and smooth. Once the dough is removed from the countertop, you get on your hands and knees to begin scrubbing it from the floor. This takes only a few minutes with the sponge and hot water. Finally, once all the pesky dough is removed from each and every nook and cranny, you grab the broom and start sweeping the flour from the floor.

As you sweep, your mind drifts to the tasks still left to do before opening time. Glancing at the clock, you realize you have less than three hours left. You nearly drop the broom from shock, not realizing that 30 minutes had gone by—you still need to get the new dough ready and finish the rest of the opening tasks.

Owning and managing this bakery by yourself is fucking difficult but you love it.

The aroma of fresh coffee fills the air as you start brewing a batch, ensuring that your customers will have their caffeine fix ready when the doors open. Meanwhile, you preheat the oven and begin preparing the day's first batch of pastries, expertly shaping dough into delicate croissants and twisting it into intricate shapes and florets for cinnamon rolls.

Trays of pastries fill the shelves, their golden crusts glistening invitingly in the soft morning light, now higher in the sky. The sound of the oven timer beeping signals that the first batch of cinnamon rolls is ready, and you quickly remove them from the heat, the tantalizing scent of warm cinnamon, brown butter, caramelized brown sugar, and yeasty bread filling the air.

With the rolls cooling on the counter, you turn your attention to the display case, arranging everything with steady hands and care to showcase their deliciousness to potential customers. The final touches are added—a dusting of powdered sugar here, a drizzle of simple syrup there—before you step back to admire your handiwork with a satisfied smile.

With only minutes to spare before opening time, you quickly tidy up the kitchen, wiping down countertops and washing dishes with practiced efficiency. The last of the flour is swept away, leaving the floor sparkling clean and ready to welcome customers.

Finally, shoes squeaking, you make it to the front entrance to unlock the door and flip the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open.’

But as you turn to walk back behind the counter, you hear a familiar bell ring.

The bell hanging above the door you just unlocked. The one you still stand in front of, back turned.

Suddenly, the floor is flying towards you, just a blur of dark hardwood before your eyes flutter closed, and all you can see is darkness.

When your eyes flutter open, pain explodes through your body, your eyebrows scrunching and eyes clenched back shut. Your chest heaves with labored breaths and your heart races like it’s trying to break from your ribcage. Stars dance behind your eyelids as you struggle to regain your bearings, disoriented and dazed from the sudden fall.

What the fuck just happened?

Slowly, agonizingly, you manage to push yourself into a sitting position, blinking away the haze of confusion to assess the damage. Your head throbs with each accelerated heartbeat, a dull ache spreading through your limbs as you tentatively move to check for visible injuries. But before you can fully process what has just happened, a shadow falls over you, and a voice cuts through the fog of pain and confusion.

"Shit, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"

The raspy voice is laced with concern, tinged with a hint of panic, and it takes a moment for the words to register. When they do, you turn to see a figure kneeling beside you, their features blurred by the remnants of your fall.

Struggling to focus and blinking hard to try and clear your vision, you manage to make out a pair of piercing green eyes staring back at you, filled with genuine worry, auburn eyebrows drawn in, causing worry lines to appear between them. As your vision fully clears, the face comes into sharper focus, and you realize that you've never seen this person before.

She sports a somewhat slender jawline, high cheekbones, proportional top and bottom lips—both somewhat plush—and fair skin smattered with freckles the looked like an artist took their brush and flung paint at them.

Despite the pain pulsing through your head and the disorientation of the fall, you find yourself momentarily captivated by the stranger's striking features. There's an undeniable warmth in her pale green gaze, a kindness that puts you at ease in spite of the awkwardness of the situation. Her eyebrows are still pulled together, the sight of the lines in between them making you want to reach out and smooth them away.

She cocks her head slightly, her short auburn hair swishing with the movement and catching a ray of sun, turning slightly red—the color reminds you of a brown border collie’s fur. As you follow the movement with your eyes, you register her earlier question. With pain still throbbing in your head you manage a weak nod, unable to find your voice amidst the chaos of the moment. The stranger's expression softens with relief at your response, the worry lines between her brows fading, and she reaches out a hand to help you to your feet.

"Here, let me help you up," she offers, her voice gentle as she assists you in standing. "I really didn't mean to slam the door like that. Are you sure you're okay?"

You manage another slight nod, though the throbbing in your head protests with each movement. Your eyes swim and something roils in your stomach, nausea curling up your esophagus. Taking a deep breath, you steady yourself with the captivating stranger's support, her hands gently holding you around waist height so as to not make you uncomfortable.

Well, fall would be an understatement—it was more like a push to the floor.

Assaulted by your own door.

God, could this morning get any worse?

As you gain footing, knees no longer shaking—though if you keep looking into those eyes, they might start all over again—the stranger lets go of you, her right hand swiping over the top of her nose before both hands are tucked in her pockets. A soft blush spreads on her cheeks, moving up from her neck all the way into her hairline.

She still seems concerned, though, softly asking, "Are you sure you're okay?"

A small smile tugs at the corners of your lips at her sheepish expression. "I think so," you manage to reply, your voice faint but steady. "Just a bit shaken up, I guess."

The stranger nods in understanding, her expression softening with relief, though the blush stays. "I'm glad to hear that," she says, her tone genuine. "I really didn't mean to barrel into you with the door like that. I was just in a hurry, and… well, I guess I wasn't paying attention."

Despite the circumstances, you can't help but chuckle breathlessly at her admission. "No harm done," you assure her, your grin widening, cheeks pushing up and making your eyes squint. "Just a little stumble, that's all."

With a shared laugh, the tension and awkwardness between you begin to bleed from the atmosphere. The stranger offers you a warm smile, straight white teeth glittering in the mid-morning sunlight, and a glimmer of amusement dancing in her eyes.

"By the way," she says, extending a slightly shaking hand towards you, "I'm Ellie. Ellie Williams."

You grasp her hand in a firm shake, a sense of gratitude washing over you at the charming introduction. You were nervous standing here in front of this… piece of art sculpted by the likes of Michelangelo, and you knew you would have stumbled and made a fool while introducing yourself. Besides, her slight awkwardness is cute.

You give her your name back, saying, "Nice to meet you, Ellie," with a small grin, the remnants of a chuckle still lingering in the back of your throat, threatening to creep up as she shuffles on her feet awkwardly. “Though I don’t know if it is very nice since you kind of slammed into me with a door…”

She jerks as though hit with something, eyebrows shooting up and eyes widening in shock. Her face darkens more, further showcasing freckles artistically splattered across her face. She stammers out another apology, her words tumbling over each other in her rush to express her regret.

"I-I'm so sorry," she says, her voice wavering with embarrassment. "I didn't mean to... I mean, I've been wanting to come into the bakery for a while now, and I guess I got a little too excited, and..."

Her words trail off into awkward silence as mortification registers on her face, her shoulders folding up towards her ears. She shifts on her feet uncomfortably, unable to meet your gaze. It's clear that Ellie is flustered, her cheeks flushed the deepest red you’ve ever seen as she struggles to articulate her thoughts.

Despite your lips turning up into a slight smile and choking on the giggles that tried to escape at the poor girl, you can't help but feel a surge of sympathy for her. "No harm done," you assure her, your grin softening. "Just a little unexpected introduction, that's all."

Ellie's shoulders relax slightly at your words, a shy smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Thank you," she murmurs, her voice barely above a whisper.

As Ellie continues to fidget nervously, hand dragging over her nose again, you sense that there's more to her awkwardness than meets the eye. So, you offer her a kind word of reassurance. "You know," you begin, "you're always welcome here at the bakery. No need to rush next time."

At your invitation, Ellie's eyes light up with gratitude, looking more like an excited dog by the minute. "Thank you," she says, her voice light and filled with genuine appreciation as she bounces on her heels, her auburn hair dancing with her movement. 

Feeling your cheeks heat at the depth of her stare, you find yourself fidgeting this time. There's something about Ellie's enthusiasm that's infectious, drawing you in despite the lingering discomfort from your fall.

Before you can gather your thoughts, Ellie reaches for a nearby pcake display, her eyes alight with anticipation. "I think I'll take one of these," she says, pointing to a freshly baked red velvet cupcake nestled among its companions.

You watch as she pays for her purchase, a sense of admiration growing within you for her unbridled enthusiasm. Despite the chaos of the morning, Ellie's presence has brought a ray of sunshine into your day, and you find yourself feeling grateful for the chance encounter.

Taking a moment to appreciate the way she lights up the room with her infectious energy, you can't help but wonder about the person behind the cheerful facade. There's a warmth in her eyes and a genuineness in her smile that speaks volumes, leaving you intrigued and wanting to learn more about her. And there's an undeniable chemistry between you, a connection that feels both unexpected and strangely familiar.

So, you summon up your courage to do something probably wholly unprofessional as a business owner. You take a deep breath and meet Ellie's green gaze head-on. "Hey, um, would it be okay if I got your number?" you ask, your voice tentative but earnest.

Ellie's eyes widen in surprise at your request, but her smile only grows wider. "Of course!" she exclaims with a small scoff-like laugh, her enthusiasm bubbling over. "I'd love that."

With a sense of relief flooding through you, you fumble for your phone, fingers trembling slightly as you input Ellie's number. As you exchange contact information, a sense of excitement blooms within you, fueled by the prospect of getting to know Ellie better.

With a final exchange of smiles and promises to stay in touch, you bid Ellie farewell, watching as she heads off down the street with a spring in her step. As you turn back to the bakery, a sense of anticipation fills your chest, mingled with the lingering ache of your fall. 

With a final nod of assurance to yourself, you straighten up and take a step forward. Despite the unexpected start to your encounter, there's something strangely comforting about Ellie's presence—as if fate had intervened to bring you together in that moment of chaos.

taglist

@les4elliewilliams @abbyshands

[allgoodnamesrgoneee]

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Head over now to check it out and show some love! 🙌

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Sweetened Memories

Masterlist

𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚 — The one where he falls for you again.

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 — Trent Alexander-Arnold x You

𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 — 5.8k

Warnings! FLUFF!! so much fluff, childhoodfriends!au, they're in loveee

Preview

**********

The coffee machine sputtered and groaned under your firm but futile grip, emitting a steaming hiss that served as the final exclamation point on yet another failed attempt. It's beyond saving, and deep down, you knew it.

Still, you gave it one last tap out of sheer stubbornness before stepping back with a sigh.

Your mum’s old bakery had seen better days, its equipment far from the shiny, state-of-the-art setups you’d seen on glossy magazine pages or Instagram feeds.

Yet, despite the peeling paint, creaking floorboards, and temperamental appliances, this place was home—a stubborn little corner of the world that had witnessed your happiest and hardest days. And for that you could never give it up.

You'll fight till the end.

The comforting hum of the bakery was broken by the cheerful jingle of the bell above the door, signaling a customer. Wiping your hands on your flour-dusted apron, you hurriedly finished up what you were doing before looking towards the sound.

“Be right there!” you called out automatically, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face as you turned toward the counter.

When your eyes landed on the figure standing just inside the doorway, your heart faltered, stumbling in a way that caught you off guard.

There, silhouetted against the warm glow of the morning sun streaming through the glass, stood Trent Alexander-Arnold.

His baseball cap was tugged low, shadowing his familiar features, and a hoodie hung loosely over his broad shoulders, doing little to disguise his unmistakable frame. But it wasn’t just him. A small girl clung to his hand, half-hiding behind his leg as her curious eyes darted around the bakery.

For a moment, your brain scrambled to connect the dots. Trent. Here. In your mum’s bakery. The realization hit like a splash of cold water, jolting you upright.

His gaze flicked toward you briefly, and at first, there was no sign of recognition. But as your startled expression softened into a knowing smile, something shifted in his posture. His brows furrowed slightly, and a flicker of uncertainty crossed his face.

“Hey,” he said cautiously, his voice quiet but instantly recognizable. “I just need a quick—”

“Trent,” you interrupted, your voice warm with amusement. His name felt foreign on your tongue after so many years, like an old song you hadn’t sung in ages. Yet, it came naturally, almost effortlessly.

He froze mid-sentence, his sharp gaze narrowing as he studied you more closely. And then, as though a veil lifted, recognition dawned. His eyes widened slightly, his expression softening as his features shifted from confusion to something bordering on disbelief.

“Wait… you're—” he began, his voice trailing off as the pieces clicked into place.

“The girl who pushed you into a puddle in Year Five because you made fun of my braces?” you offered, a soft laugh escaping you as the memory bubbled to the surface.

For a beat, he stared at you, then broke into a lopsided grin that sent an unwelcome flutter through your chest. “I was gonna say the girl who could never beat me in races on the playground, but sure, let’s go with that.”

You rolled your eyes, the teasing lilt in his tone instantly familiar. “Selective memory, as always. Some things never change.”

**********

-Bianca🌻

[cerastes]

Imagine how Doctor felt when they finally got to Rhodes Island after Evil Time, and Amiya and Kal’tsit immediately warn them about the ‘special’ cases.

Don’t overestimulate Ifrit this, watch out for suddenly bursting on flames around Skyfire that, Skadi can accidentally turn you into a bloodstain on the carpet with a flick of her finger so keep your distance this, Lappland will possibly eat your carotid artery like she eats Kit Kats wrong if you delve too deep into her world that, yeah, yeah, a lot of stuff that is either obvious or makes sense after spending an aggregate seven seconds in the same room with the person in question, nothing terribly hard to understand or believe.

And then, you have Specter.

“We have to keep her in the medical ward in a reinforced room whenever she’s not in an operation,” explains Kal’tsit. “She is highly unstable and dangerous if left unsupervised. Only make contact with her if it is completely necessary.”

So you have all of these dangerous people running amok freely in the base, but this one, this one Specter person in particular needs to be locked behind reinforced walls? Sounds dangerous.

Doctor then takes one look at this supposed rabid animal and sees this:

Bam, Doctor is immediately emotionally supported. Doctor cannot comprehend how this pleasant, sweet, soft-spoken lady could possibly be as dangerously violent as advertised. Ifrit has a mean streak, Skadi IS legitimately that strong and lacks any sort of social skills so she always ends up resorting on it, Lappland has all the makings of a sociopath, and Skyfire is unfortunately Skyfire, so Doc can understand these perfectly, but Specter? This somewhat short nun that, to be fair, occasionally blurts out how some people were always meant to be pieces, but otherwise just hangs out at the dorm and breaks out a cute little prayer for others now and then? How could she possibly need nigh permanent containment?

Then Doctor sees her in action for the first time in an Operation and everything makes sense.

Just as a reminder:

Strength? Top class. Endurance? Top class. Tactical planning? None whatsoever. Combat skill despite no tactical planning abilities at all? Rated excellent. Specter dissociates harder than a child with ADHD taking three ritalins instead of the prescribed one and has a body ravaged by a lethal, incurable illness, and despite all of this, there she is, catching machetes, arrows and Arts blasts to the chin and shrugging them off while swinging a buzzsaw duct taped to the end of a pipe she found laying around on a Costco parking lot to immensely devastating effect. Nothing can take her down, no one can take her strong swings, all the while she’s completely out of her mind, relying entirely on muscle memory from back when she was actually sane, only muttering some nonsense to herself in a low voice now and then. Sometimes, one of her eyes just starts intensely glowing for some reason. Kal’tsit has no freaking clue how she does that. Hordes of Reunion nobodies wondering if they should even bother swinging at this blank-faced small nun because even if they get lucky and don’t lose an arm in the process, it’s not even going to hurt her. It’s quite literally and realistically meaningless to attack her. She’s a walking horror movie. 

And it’s not even due to powerful Arts or a powerful mutation given to her by Oripathy, no one knows how or why Specter can do any of this, less of all herself. It’s go time? She just says “ok, tell me how it went when I wake up, see you later, have a pleasant noon”, turns off her brain and activates her Ultra Deepsea Instinct to Gokupunch Elite Casters and Defense Crushers through buildings. 

It’d only take one particularly bad manic day to really ruin some lives at Rhodes Island if she ever lost control. They’d no doubt be able to contain her one way or another -- she’s not the only freak of nature in Rhodes Island, after all -- but it’d be a Herculean task to stop her nonetheless, and practically impossible to stop her with no loses. Specter is the unstoppable force and the immovable object simultaneously thanks to her deadly mix of physical strength and endurance. It makes all the sense in the world that Kal’tsit would prefer her in a nice, tidy, reinforced hospital room where all she’ll damage if she ever flies off the handle is some medical equipment instead of very realistically ripping someone in half with her bare hands or punting Skyfire out of the stratosphere or something. Sure, she’s a nice, soft-spoken lady, but you also never know when sudden (or even full) onset insanity will kick in, especially since Specter’s nervous system is already a wreck. As dangerous as Ifrit or Lappland can be, there’s a sort of ‘guarantee’ that they won’t harm others if they can help it; Ifrit is temperamental and rebellious, but not at all malicious, and Lappland is kind of a sociopath, but aside from making people uncomfortable, she doesn’t hurt others. Specter, on the other hand, can simply go fully insane one day and there’s no way to tell when it’ll happen, and given her clinical condition, it’s indeed less an “if” and more a “when”.

Specter having the dubious honor of being the only Operator we know of that has to be kept in a special room for the safety of others suddenly makes a lot of sense when you consider her medical condition and what she’s capable of.

[dippedanddripped]

Visiting Asheville, North Carolina, in December, I walked past a sandwich board that read, “Synth you’re here, come on in.” It was a pop-up store selling T-shirts, mugs, and other memorabilia commemorating one of the town’s most famous citizens, electronic music pioneer Bob Moog.

This month, celebrating what would be the inventor’s 85th birthday, that storefront reopens as the Moogseum. It celebrates not only Moog’s innovations, but also those of his contemporaries who created the synthesizers and other devices that transformed music beginning in the ’60s and ’70s. It’s the latest project of the Bob Moog Foundation–the nonprofit archive and educational institution established in 2006 by his youngest daughter, Michelle Moog-Koussa. (It’s unaffiliated with Moog Music, the company her father founded.)

Moog, who died in 2005, did not invent the synthesizer. Instead, “he’s the one who made it mainstream,” says Mark Ballora, professor of music technology at Penn State University. He became a celebrity, and people used “Moog” (which rhymes with “vogue”) as a synonym for electronic music.

A classically trained pianist, Moog worked closely with a wide range of musicians to understand what they wanted out of a device for generating electronic music. His synthesizers found incredibly diverse applications–from Herb Deutsch’s avant-garde compositions to Bernie Worrell’s funkadelic jams to Wendy Carlos’s classical music blockbuster Switched on Bach. Moog also collaborated with other inventors–including digital music pioneer Max Mathews and even rival synth maker Alan Pearlman (who died in January).

With today’s software-defined digital media, it’s harder to appreciate the naked physics of early electronic music and the radical transformation that manipulating these forces enabled. “Nothing fazes the students now,” says Richard Boulanger, professor of electronic production and design at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and a protégée of both Moog and Pearlman. “We’re transforming their voices and turning trash cans into drum kits, and we’re sounding like aliens just when we cough.”

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inRead invented by Teads

But “when we first heard the sound of a Moog synthesizer in the late ’60s and early ’70s . . . it just blew your mind,” says Boulanger. “It was like the sound of the future.” Indeed it was: Today, Moog synthesizers are standard kit for many leading musicians, from Kanye to Lady Gaga.

MOOG FOR THE MASSES

The Moogseum packs a lot into its 1,400 square feet, including iconic instruments like the Minimoog Model D and Minimoog Voyager synthesizers, an interactive timeline of synth technology from 1898 to today, and a replica of Moog’s workbench.

Beyond celebrating the past, the Moogseum aims to teach future generations, including non-musicians. The central vehicle for this is the exhibit Tracing Electricity as It Becomes Sound–an interactive wraparound video projected inside an 8-foot-tall, 11-foot-wide half dome, created by Milwaukee-based media company Elumenati.

“What we’re trying to impart is that you are in the middle of the circuit board, observing what’s going on,” says Moog-Koussa. “There will be a custom knob controller, so that people can actually interact with representations of transistors, capacitors, and resistors,” she adds. “So that they can actually become part of the circuit.” (The foundation aspires to create online versions of exhibits in the coming year.)

This honors Moog’s visceral, even New-Agey, relationship with physics. “I can feel what’s going inside of a piece of electronic equipment,” the inventor said in the 2004 documentary Moog.

He developed that feel when he started building and selling theremins, beginning at age 14 or 15 (Moog said both in different interviews). Invented by Léon Theremin in the 1920s and a staple of sci-fi classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still, the instrument allows players to create eerie tones by moving their hands through electrical fields. Three Moog theremins are on display in the museum.

Moog-Koussa isn’t just trying to cater to people who are already familiar with her father’s work. “Our work in education and archives preservation, and now with the Moogseum, will extend way beyond people who play synthesizers,” she says. The foundation she leads has an ambitious plan to bring hands-on education to schools across the country. It’s finalizing the design for the ThereScope, a battery-powered device that combines a theremin, amplifier, and oscilloscope to visualize the electrical waveforms behind sounds.

This would extend the foundation’s regional education program, Doctor Bob’s Sound School, which began in 2011. The 10-week curriculum now reaches about 3,000 second-graders a year in western North Carolina. “We have 13,000 young children who can read waveforms and explain to you the variances in pitch and volume,” says Moog-Koussa. “And that’s just one of our lessons, out of 10.”

THE STRADIVARIUS OF ELECTRONICS

Unlike the college-dropout entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, Moog stayed in school–earning a PhD in physics from Cornell in 1965, while continuing his theremin business. In 1964, he built his first “portable electronic music composition system,” later dubbed a synthesizer. The device was capable of producing over 250,000 sounds.

It was not the first synthesizer–a point that Moog-Koussa herself emphasizes. But the high quality captivated musicians. That was despite its temperamental nature. Moog’s early voltage-controlled oscillators, which produce the raw electrical waveforms, were susceptible to current fluctuations from the electric grid and to temperature changes. As they warmed up, the synthesizers drifted out of tune.

To solve the problem, Moog partnered with Pearlman, founder of rival company ARP Instruments. In exchange for Pearlman’s stable oscillator circuit, Moog offered his elegant ladder filter technology, which refines the oscillator output.

“If you start with a raw analog waveform . . . it’s a buzz, like your alarm system,” says Boulanger. “Are you ready to make love songs to the sound of your smoke detector?” He calls Moog’s oscillators and filters “the Stradivarius of electronic instruments.”

Moog’s first synthesizers were huge boxes of electronics stacked and wired together in a spaghetti tangle of patch cables. In 1970, he combined the functions of his modulars into a compact device called the Minimoog Model D, which featured a piano-style keyboard as the main interface. (Pearlman did the same with his iconic ARP 2500.)

The Minimoog eliminated patch cables but included a wide assortment of knobs and switches, plus Moog’s signature mod and pitch-bend wheels. It gave musicians huge latitude in crafting the sounds underlying those piano keys. It also featured a pitch controller, an electronically conductive metal strip that sensed static discharge from the players’ fingers, allowing pitch inflections like those of a stringed instrument. Invented in the 1930s, the technology is proof that touch interfaces long predate the smartphone era.

The Model D controls “liberated” keyboard players, says Boulanger. “It allowed a keyboard player . . . to take a lead role and be so expressive with unique new sounds that reached through and spoke to an audience, like a singer could, like a guitarist could, like a cellist could.”

SUSTAINED SOUND

Moog synths are so central to the music of past-century icons like George Harrison, Herbie Hancock, Kraftwerk, and Parliament-Funkadelic that it’s easy to dismiss them as the sound of the past. Documentaries and articles about the inventor tend to focus on those formative years in the ’60s and ’70s. Moog’s New-Agey sensibilities and lingo further reinforce the old hippy vibe.

But Moog continued innovating into the 21st century. His swan song, the Minimoog Voyager, was released in 2002, just three years before his death from brain cancer at age 71. It was an analog synthesizer, but equipped to interface with digital music equipment.

The synth sounds of Moog and his contemporaries have persisted though a variety of genres and artists. When I asked Moog Music–the company that Bob Moog founded, lost, and then reacquired in his final years–for examples of artists currently using its instruments, I got a list of over 30 acts. The diverse assortment includes Alicia Keys, Deadmau5, Flying Lotus, James Blake, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, LCD Soundsystem, Queens of the Stone Age, Sigur Ros, St. Vincent, and Trent Reznor.

Moog Music’s brand director Logan Kelly also called out up-and-comers, including trippy synth instrumentalist Lisa Bella Donna and the Prince-mentored, all-woman soul trio We Are King. (See the embedded playlist below for samples–or full versions if you’re a Spotify subscriber–from these and other artists.)

And despite the digital tools at their disposal, Boulanger says that his students are also pulling analog devices into their compositions–even modular synthesizers, which are experiencing a revival in a somewhat-miniaturized style called Eurorack.

Moog Music continues to turn out new, hand-built synthesizers. “A lot of the circuitry that Bob designed, we still look to that for inspiration and use it in almost all of our instruments,” says Kelly. Its newest, a semi modular synthesizer called Matriarch, has just gone on sale. The company also puts out limited reissues of classic full-size modulars and synths like the Minimoog Model D.

There are also mobile-app recreations of instruments including the

Minimoog Model D

(which sells for $15) and the

modular Model 15

($30). “It was a UI/UX challenge to capture the feeling and the fun of actually patching [cables for] this instrument on a mobile device,” says Kelly. Companies such as Arturia also make software emulations of Moog’s analog circuits, used as plug-ins for digital music composition. A 2012 Google Doodle even honored the 78th anniversary of Moog’s birth with a

tiny online playable synthesizer

.

And with many of Moog’s, Pearlman’s, and other inventors’ patents having expired, companies such as Behringer and Korg are turning out budget reproductions of classics. They’ve won praise from some musicians, such as Boulanger, for making the devices accessible to starving students, but derision from others who feel the companies are free-riding off the inventors’ legacies.

Behringer’s stripped-down reproduction of the Model D, for instance, sells for around $300 (without a keyboard), vs. $3,749 for Moog Music’s full re-issue (which is no longer in production). Kelly declined to speak on the record about Behringer’s and others’ third-party devices, but emphasized that Moog sells synthesizers in a wide price range, starting at $499.

CONTINUING EDUCATION

We don’t know how Bob Moog would have felt about the knockoffs, but he did work hard to bring music technology to as many people as possible.

“He would champion anyone and everyone,” says Boulanger, who describes himself as being “just some little guy” composing music when he met Moog in 1974. “He ended up writing articles about some of my music in Keyboard magazine [in the mid-1980s] and helped launch my career,” says Boulanger.

“When my father developed a brain tumor and was quite ill, we set up a page on CaringBridge for him,” says Michelle Moog-Koussa. “And from that we got thousands of testimonials from people all over the world about how Bob Moog had impacted and sometimes transformed people’s lives.”

But Moog’s five children were largely left out of that experience. “My father really held his career at arm’s length from our family,” says Moog-Koussa. She believes this comes from her father’s wariness of parents projecting desires onto their children.

“He had a very domineering mother who wanted him to be a concert pianist, and was quite heartbroken when he decided to pursue electronics,” she says. (Moog studied piano from age 4 to 18 and was on his way to a professional musical career when he pivoted to engineering.)

“We kind of knew the basics [of his work], but, at least half of those basics, we learned from external sources,” says Moog-Koussa. They also knew few of their father’s collaborators, aside from Switched-On Bach creator Wendy Carlos.

Since her father’s death, Moog-Koussa says she’s developed relationships with many of the legends her father worked with, such as composers Herb Deutsch and Gershon Kingsley and musicians Rick Wakeman, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and the late Keith Emerson.

In a way, the foundation and Moog Museum seem as much an effort of Moog’s own family to discover their father as to educate the rest of the world.

“I don’t think we realized the widespread global impact and the depth of that impact,” she tells me. “And we thought, here’s the legacy that has inspired so many people from all over the world. That not only deserves to be carried forward, but it demands to be carried forward.

[reverseblackholeofwords]

Colors of Dissonance (pt. 8)

Part 7

Nate smiles up at Kathryn and folds his hands in his lap. “So, can’t you at least let me know why I’m here exactly?”

Kat walks around the table and sits down again. Nate watches her every movement, the way that her hands seem to panic for something to do, so she flips through his file a few times until she comes to a certain page, which she slides towards him. “These are your recorded hours using your Tube as compared to that of a normal consumer.”

Nate looks at the little vein of purple that represents him, soaring much higher than the plain black vein of his fans, those that might spend an hour, maybe two, in their Tube each day, while he spends nearly six times that at least. “Yeah, I log a lot of time. Am I in trouble for that?” He looks back up at Kat with his big brown eyes and smiles again.

“No, but Corporate has started to notice a trend among Tubers who spend extended amounts of time under the influence of the hallucinogenic gas of the Tubes. It starts with headaches.” Kat’s sharp eyes flick up to his. “Which you’ve complained about to your friend Mathew more than once.”

Nate bites his lip. “And after that?”

Kat sighs and leans forward onto her elbows. “They start to hallucinate. Eventually they lose their grip on reality, and many have died.”

“Died? As in, natural causes, or…” Nate dares to say it, “Corporate intervention?”

“Watch what you’re insinuating there, Nathan.” She gets up and walks over to the wall of black glass and makes a motion that Nate can’t entirely make out. When she turns back, Nate feels his heart kick into overdrive. “Those inflicted with the headaches often become violent, lashing out at the people around them for no apparent reason. In the past, they’ve claimed that there are demons in their head, but we imagine that is a result of the hallucinations. Have you ever dealt with such things? Demons in your head?”

Nate smirks up at her and feels his hands twitch for the gun. “Haven’t we all?”

Kathryn finally smiles back, and she almost looks sorry for him. “How true.” The door swings open behind Nathan, and he tries to jump up from his chair only to be forced to sit again. “We haven’t found a cure for the hallucinations yet,” Kathryn assures him as suited men hold him down and press something against the back of his head. “But we have found a way to delay the public’s knowledge of it.”

Nathan throws all of his weight against the men in the suits, hoping to throw them off, but there’s a flash. Nate’s neural cam feels like it’s setting fire to his brain, and he hits the floor, unmoving. Kat sighs and motions at the men to take him away.

  Mark keeps his head down as he follows the faint blue line until he reaches the point that Sean pinned. The Tuber looks up and around, but he doesn’t see the slight Irishman anywhere. Someone taps his shoulder, and Mark turns to look at them only to have something thrust into his hands as a figure in a black hoodie disappears back into a crowd, hovering a few inches off the ground.

Mark blinks and wonders if he’s seeing things again when he looks down to see what Sean handed him. It’s a black rectangle, long with rounded edges, and one side of it is covered in a material that’s meant to grip and hold. Mark recognizes the device as a hoverboard, which explains how Sean was flying.

He sets the hoverboard down on the sidewalk and steps on. The instant he does, a menu appears on his neural cam for controlling the hoverboard. It’s a familiar sight though he hasn’t used one in years, but Sean knows… somehow, he knows that Mark would be able to use the temperamental piece of equipment, which means he might need it to get to wherever they’re going.

Another pin appears in Mark’s head, another meeting point. Mark bites his lip. It’s been forever since he’s ridden one of these things, and he isn’t sure he can still manage it.

He steps off the hoverboard and decides to walk. or He starts up the hover device and kicks off.

[dohenry3000-reblogs]

"The most temperamental piece of laboratory equipment will always be the human brain. George Johnson, “Millikan,” in The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" from "The Science Writers' Essay Handbook: How to Craft Compelling True Stories in Any Medium" by Michelle Nijhuis