#this is the story I posted an excerpt from a week or two ago ^^

[merlinfromberlin]

Nooks & Crevices - Chapter 1

- 5+1 fic of Autobots playing Hide and Seek with a young Bumblebee - a little bit silly and light-hearted; at least for now :) 

In the first chapter: Optimus teaches Bumblebee how to play Hide and Seek. 

Chapters: 1/6 Fandom: Transformers - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Summary:

Hiding was a skill essential to those growing up on Cybertron during the Civil War. However, for a certain vibrantly yellow sparkling raised by the Autobot High Command, and highly sought after by the Decepticons, being able to stay undetected is even more vital than most. It’s a good thing then that Bumblebee is a natural.

Or: 5 times Bumblebee ‘played’ Hide & Seek with his family and 1 time a Decepticon played with him.

Short excerpt: 

When Bumblebee raised his servos towards his caregiver, silently asking to be picked up, the Prime obeyed without hesitation. Carefully he lifted the sparkling up, pulling the tiny minibot close to his chassis and allowing him to rest close to his spark.

For a moment, the yellow sparkling seemed content with the idea of allowing himself to be lulled back into recharge, leaning heavily into Optimus’ chassis as his doorwings drooped sleepily. Then, however, he started to squirm and dug his tiny digits into the crevices’ of his caregiver’s armour in an attempt to scale the Prime’s height. An attempt that ended futilely as Optimus carefully pried Bumblebee off of himself and set him down safely in his lap.

“Op’imus,” complained the sparkling, a pout edged into his faceplates. “Promised play.”

“Bumblebee,” answered the Prime without missing a beat before carefully petting the minibot in between his audial horns. He smiled softly as his charge leaned into the touch. “I promised to teach you a new game after your nap. Remember?”

“Climb?” asked Bumblebee, his whole frame perking up hopefully.

“No, it is not climbing,” replied Optimus with a gentle chuckle. The minibot’s doorwings drooped, his faceplate full of disappointment. One of these cycles, the sparkbyte was going to be the death of him. “Although we might play that later if you still want to.”

At that, Bumblebee brightened visibly, fluttering his doorwings lightly.

“The game I want to play with you first, though, is called Hide and Seek.”

“Hide and See?” The minibot had cocked his helm to the side, studying his caregiver with big curious optics. Optimus’ smile widened slightly.

“Hide and Seek, yes,” nodded the Prime softly. “It is quite simple, really. When I offline my optics, I will count to 30 and while I count, you hide. Once I am done with counting, I am going to look for you. The game ends either when I find you or when I tell you to come out of hiding. Understood?”

“Bee hide,” repeated the sparkling after a moment of silent contemplation, servos resting on his own chassis. Then he pointed up at Optimus’ faceplate. “Oppie seek. And count.”

“Good,” praised Optimus as he scooped the sparkling up in his servos and got to his pedes. His frame creaked slightly, stiff from sitting still for an extended period of time. “Do you want to try playing?”

“Yes!” Bumblebee nodded enthusiastically, his pedes dangling freely as the Prime carried him into the middle of the room. There he gently sat the young minibot down as he lowered himself into a crouch.

“Alright. Then let me count so you can hide.” As soon as Optimus offlined his optics, he could hear tiny pedes shuffling around. “One. Two. Three…”

Even as the lack of visual input unsettled him, the Prime made sure to count steadily, reading the numbers from a countdown he had placed at the corner of his HUD. Once he had reached ten, the sounds of steps seized. There was a quiet shuffling of metal on metal, but at thirteen even that noise subsided and silence settled around sparkling and caregiver.

“… Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.”

When Optimus onlined his optics once again, he could not quite stifle the short burst of surprised laughter escaping his intake. The Matrix of Leadership not only allowed it, but even hummed in approval. Apparently the Spirits of the Primes Past, too, were amused by his sparkling’s antics.

[gyzym]

Hello again!! I am THRILLED to say that Fall Into You is now available for preorder (US/UK)!!

Like... very, very freshly available for preorder. Like, soooo freshly available for preorder that not all of it is actually ready yet. The STORY is ready, naturally, but (and this may shock you) the cover is NOT going to be simple text on a white background! A very talented artist is in fact working hard on it as I type this, and I can't wait to show it to you when it's done 💜

Some things you can expect to see from me in the next few weeks in addition to that COVER REVEAL: a post about PROCESS and HOW THIS HAPPENED (spoilers: the answer is 'with a lot of help from very talented people,' including an incredibly kind developmental editor who gave me some WILDLY valuable insight I'd love to share with all of you; also, I HIGHLY recommend being married to a gifted editor if you can manage it tbqh); a few EXCERPTS from Fall Into You, so you can get a sense of Will and Casey, my best/worst boys; proooobably some other stuff too. But for now, here's a little summary of the book to get things rolling:

Nearly twenty years ago, Will Robertson ran out on his destiny, leaving his family farm and everything he was supposed to become behind. So when he's forced back to small-town Glenriver, Ohio and finds the farm's irritatingly handsome manager Casey Reeves living more happily in his childhood home than he ever did, it's only natural that they hate each other immediately.

Will's plan is simple: sell his late father's apple farm and get back to his carefully constructed life in Chicago. But when a collapsed bridge strands him in Glenriver with Casey, "simple" goes right out the window – along with Will's determination to keep his distance from both his past and the man right in front of him.

Between corporate vultures circling, long-buried family secrets coming to light, and the undeniable spark growing between them, Will and Casey will have to decide if some things really are worth fighting for… and if two people who seem totally wrong for each other might actually be exactly right.

You can PREORDER Fall Into You here in the US (or here in the UK)! I promise that if you do, you won't have to wait too long to read -- the book is slated be out June 18th 😄 It turns out preorders are WILDLY important in terms of how well a book does and how many people end up reading it, so any at all are so appreciated 💜

[contemplatingoutlander]

FiveThirtyEight is gone. Its legacy will endure.

Nate Silver’s website suffered because of Trump and changes in political news coverage.

Opinion | Perry Bacon, Jr. | March 7, 2025

FiveThirtyEight became famous for its “forecasts” from founder Nate Silver. But the website (where I worked from 2017 to 2021) was trying to do much more than predict presidential election results. FiveThirtyEight was an attempt to improve and reimagine journalism. I think it succeeded — even though the website is now defunct. ABC News, which owned FiveThirtyEight, this week laid off the site’s 15 remaining staffers. The network had already made drastic cutbacks two years ago, with Silver himself departing back then. We are in the midst of staff reductions throughout the journalism industry. That said, ABC News is not a newspaper in a declining city in the Midwest. If the network wanted to keep the site going, it could have. This decision probably wasn’t just about money. [...] Political journalism has changed in ways that have made FiveThirtyEight less essential. Silver started the website during the 2008 presidential campaign. (There are 538 votes in the electoral college.) He correctly saw a flaw in American political coverage. Journalism professors and many within the news industry had for years argued that political news was too focused on the “horse race” (who was going to win the next election) instead of policy issues. What Silver argued was that horse-race coverage, while extensive, was often quite bad. It was overly fixated on a single poll or arguing that a candidate appeared to be surging after delivering a strong speech, without any other evidence. Averaging polls, scrutinizing demographics and voting histories of states — that all seems obvious now. It wasn’t 17 years ago. [emphasis added]

I will miss FiveThirtyEight. It was always a reliable source of aggregate polling data. It also provided a lot of background information about the potential bias and reliability of individual polls.

R.I.P. FiveThirtyEight March 7, 2008 - March 5, 2025

_________________ Collage sources (before edits, starting in center, then moving top left to right clockwise, ending bottom left): 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07

[See more excerpts from the column under the cut]

In 2010, the New York Times hired Silver and starting hosting FiveThirtyEight on its website. A few years later, ESPN hired him to create a FiveThirtyEight that would cover not only politics but also sports, science and other topics with statisticians and more traditional journalists working in a combined newsroom. The site grew in size and influence. And other news organizations started borrowing its methods, averaging polls and producing statistical models to analyze elections. [...] The site often had political scientists and scholars write pieces. Fact-checking was extensive, adding to the site’s reliability and reputation. But I knew FiveThirtyEight was in trouble when I saw not only stories similar to ours published in the Times and The Washington Post but also those larger organizations poaching our staffers. Another factor that made the website less relevant was Trump. He made politics more about tweets, firings and other drama that the data can’t really capture. [...] But for me, FiveThirtyEight staffers and its devoted fans, the site was about much more than election predictions and even Silver. It was an alternative, higher form of journalism. It was also a lovable community of nerds, wonks and junkies. Our readers were Democratic-leaning, but they weren’t people watching MSNBC just to hear how terrible Republicans are. They wanted us to tell them if a Democratic politician was going to lose. They loved that every article seemed to involve the writer examining election results down to the county level and producing three charts to support their thesis. Silver now has one of the most popular political Substack newsletters; former managing editor Micah Cohen is now politics editor for Apple News; reporter Anna Maria Barry-Jester has moved on to cover public health for ProPublica. But from my vantage point, FiveThirtyEight is everywhere in more subtle ways. The amount of charts and data in stories about politics in particular is much larger than it was two decades ago. The chief political analyst at the New York Times is a data whiz named Nate (Cohn) who joined the paper essentially as Silver’s replacement. If you tell someone about a poll, they will often ask whether other surveys show the same result. There is still too much horse-race coverage. I hate when I see polls of the 2028 Democratic primary. Can we wait a minute? But FiveThirtyEight made that coverage smarter and more rigorous — creating a legacy that will endure.

[spectrallydistracted]

Chapter Two of Wanting You... Is New

If you read my acespec fic 90 Days to Save Your Life, this is that story but from Aziraphale's POV.

Rating: Mature

Five Chapters/Complete, a new chapter posted every Thursday!

Summary: Dancing at The Gilded Cage was Aziraphale’s dream job. When the lights dimmed and the music started, it was as if a switch flipped. His body reacted to the beat, and instantly he was someone else. Not a stuffy bookseller, not a stodgy tea drinker. Suddenly, he was a sexy cage dancer, and he felt that power.

Aziraphale met Crowley two weeks after he began dancing at the club. At first Crowley was just another admirer. Then it seemed possible he might become something more. But Crowley was a player who went home with a different woman every night, and Aziraphale was an asexual gay man. No matter how strong their attraction, there was no way this could work.

Unless, just maybe, it could.

Chapter Excerpt

What was it Robbie had said last night before they left the club?   I hope you find the man you’re looking for. That was the thing, though, wasn’t it—what kind of man was he looking for?  In truth, he’d found the perfect man years ago, back in uni. He’d loved Oscar wholly, in mind and body. If only Oscar had felt the same about Aziraphale.  Since then he’d had other relationships, but he’d not been in love. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried. He’d spent his twenties trying to recapture what he had with Oscar, to no avail. As his thirties began, Aziraphale decided he was asexual, that he didn’t want or need sex. He’d made that clear to his boyfriends, and at first, they all said they understood. Until they didn’t. Until they pushed. Until they started negotiating for sex. Until they were manipulative. Until they… forced themselves on him. 

Continue reading on AO3

Or start at the beginning

Thanks to @brenna for the very thorough and gentle beta (sorry about those commas and the overuse of the word "just"). Thanks to my cheer readers, @on1occasionfork and @majnoonathelibrarian for holding my hand when I needed it the most.

@goodomensafterdark

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Writeblr Re(rere)intro that's a year late!

Hi! I'm Pax, and I write Big Books that keep getting darker and darker in subject matter 🎉🎉

Basics about me:

he/him or they/them, Mid 20s

Favorite genres: Fantasy, SciFi, Horror, Mystery

Favorite authors: N. K. Jemisin, Tamsyn Muir, Brandon Sanderson, Pierce Brown, Samantha Shannon

Other things I do: Digital art (including commissions!), Twitch streams (usually art or writing sprints, occasionally video games), digital art assets and fonts (PWYW on Ko-Fi!)

Basics about my WIPs:

THE MILLENNIUM SAGA

High fantasy/Steampunk epic, 8 books planned. Book one: Firebreathers (160k words; ~700 pages) Book two: Echoseers (148k words; ~600 pages) Book three: Goddess-Touched (15k as of posting; 3rd attempt at drafting) First person, Multi POV What starts as a simple rebellion against their local Citylord becomes a flight - and fight - for their lives, as Ember Timber, their family, and their newfound friends are forced to flee overseas from the vengeful general who will stop at nothing to earn her Eternal King's favor, and will in fact relish hunting her own son and grandchildren for sport. But along the way, the crew learns that the Eternal King's immortality was not granted in return for his success as the Chosen One long ago, as they have always been told - and the sacrifice for such a thing is not only paid dearly in blood, but on its way to being repeated.

WHISPERS

Dark fantasy Noir. Currently with beta readers. 172k words; ~750 pages. First person, Dual POV. Set in the same world as Millennium Saga, ~5 years after the series concludes. Marika Swiftfoot owes her life to the Shadow of Fowden, the sorceress leader of a terroristic crime syndicate based in the north pole. When the man she once loved finally comes to collect on that life debt ten years later, she plans to kill him the moment it's safe. Too soon, after all, and everyone else she's ever loved will join him beyond the Veil. But hate isn't the only feeling that lingers between them, and when they're offered another way out of their debts, the lives of a few innocents looks like a bargain compared to the life of cruelty ahead of them. Lorelei has been hunting the Shadow for twenty years, and looking for the sister who disappeared for thirty. And here, names are legacies: she wants to earn Hopebringer before her legs give out for good, to erase the stain her father's name has left with Vowbreaker. And for that, she sees one way forward: she must never break her vows, no matter how small. The Shadow must die, and the Whispers with her. Her sister must be found, even if all that's left to find is a story. She must find answers for every case she takes on, even if she doesn't know so much as the name of the man who's gone missing.

THE LOST

Space opera webcomic. First scene fully illustrated; will release once the first chapter is complete, a week after Patrons receive the final scene. In the far reaches of space, the term "Media Empire" is quite literal; the Watchers have extended their influence throughout their galaxy filament with the help of their beloved Coliseum, and the Champion therein. After all, having a shapeshifter capable of replicating anything leads to some gruesome, spectacular fights, made all the more heartrending when they are the last of their kind, trapped in the ship molded from their kin's corpse. But while the Watchers have total control over what happens in the pit, they cannot predict the audience. And they certainly cannot predict the malfunctioning psychic implant of an assassin in the front row, and the loss of both opponents and a long-time prisoner of war to the escape.

I also post art of all of these semi-regularly, including in-progress stuff, as well as excerpts and rambling braindumps!! I'm also a huge worldbuilding nerd, so if you ever want to learn more about the worlds I'm writing, don't be afraid to ask!! I love talking about them :D

Boosts are appreciated <3 tell me about your own WIPs in the tags/replies/wherever!! I love learning about what people are working on!

[depraveddame]

Chapters 8 and 9 of Bring Your Seed to Blossom have been posted!

I forgot to post about chapter 8 last week, so sorry!

Chapter 8 features the first of several flashbacks that will be featured in this fic, and chapter 9 is the heaviest of the story thus far. Please, please read the notes for chapter 9 before reading.

Chapter 8 Excerpts:

“So…Morning Star Counselling?” Crowley asked, shifting his weight on the stormy grey, tufted leather sofa as he sat across from Dr Morningstar, absentmindedly drumming his painted fingernails on his stocking clad knee (he had another session straight after this one that was of a another therapeutic nature entirely; no time to change beforehand, and the fishnets he wore under his inky black jeans were peeking out through the torn knees of the denim, more so than he’d realized until he sat down approximately two minutes ago to begin his first official appointment) “bit serendipitous, having a last name made for a therapy practice, innit?”

His busy fingers moved onto the black elastic hair band on his wrist, plucking and twisting it as he changed positions again; Crowley was a fidgety person by nature, but for some reason, that trait was amplified tenfold within this office to a highly questionable degree.

*

He glanced up from his book, leveled the most devastating smile at Aziraphale and murmured, the whisper of a smirk playing around his upturned lips, “‘bout time you came over and introduced yourself, love; you had me thinking you might’ve been a ghost.”

Aziraphale chuckled in spite of himself as he stared down into those sea glass eyes, and as he sat down at the behest of the other’s invitation, the blonde introduced himself.

“Sebastian Barclay, but I go by Seb,” he declared with that dazzling smile as he ran his fingers through his hair, and Aziraphale replied, his voice irritatingly higher than normal and possibly obscured by his heart thudding around in his throat, “I’m Aziraphale Fell, and I’m afraid I don’t have the luxury of a decent shortened moniker.”

Chapter 9 Excerpt:

“Have you ever…spoken with someone, about your experience with your ex? With a therapist, or a counsellor of some sort?” He kept his tone gentle and curious, concerned how Crowley may interpret such a question as possibly being judgemental or negative in any way, but before he even finished his query, Crowley tensed against him; his shoulders and torso turned rigid against Aziraphale’s chest and stomach, and his long legs drew up from their elongated position on the sofa, shrinking into himself as he took a shallow, shuddering breath, and Aziraphale’s heart dropped into that icy depth it always found whenever Crowley was anxious or afraid.

“Crowley?” he whispered, stricken with guilt over putting stress back into Crowley’s limbs so soon, for failing to lessen his pain and discomfort and instead renewing it, “I’m— forgive me, my dear, I don’t mean to overstep—”

“You didn’t,” Crowley’s reply was adjacent to monotone as he disentangled himself from Aziraphale, sitting up and slowly angling forward as he folded his legs at the knee, “I— I s’pose it’s time you know.”

[rjzimmerman]

The U.S. Under Trump: Alone in Its Climate Denial. (Washington Post)

This article reminds me (as if I needed any reminding) that trump is a fucking idiot, but the mafia surrounding him are equal if not superior in idiocy. Will we (i.e., US citizens) "survive" this? Yes, but not without some serious damage to everything that ought to be important to us ("us" as defined as anybody other than the members of the trump cult).

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

When the Trump administration declared two weeks ago that it would largely disregard the economic cost of climate change as it sets policies and regulations, it was just the latest step in a multipronged effort to erase global warming from the American agenda.

But President Trump is doing more than just turning a blind eye to the fact that the planet is growing hotter. He is weakening the country’s capacity to understand global warming and to prepare for its consequences.

The administration has dismantled climate research, firing some of the nation’s top scientists, and gutted efforts to chart how fast greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere and what that means for the economy, employment, agriculture, health and other aspects of American society. The government will no longer track major sources of greenhouse gases, data that has been used to measure the scale and identify sources of the problem for the past 15 years.

“We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox Business on May 8.

By getting rid of data, the administration is trying to halt the national discussion about how to deal with global warming, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The notion of there being any shared factual reality just seems to be completely out the window,” he said.

At the same time, through cuts to the National Weather Service and by denying disaster relief through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the administration has weakened the country’s ability to prepare for and recover from hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather that is being made worse by climate change.

The president is also moving to loosen restrictions on air pollution, which experts say will lead to more planet warming emissions, and to overturn the government’s legal authority to regulate those gases.

Taken together, these moves are poised to leave the world’s biggest economy less informed, less prepared and, over time, more polluted.

Mr. Trump dismisses the threats posed by climate change, suggesting that rising seas would create more “oceanfront property.” He blames “climate lunatics” for environmental regulations that he says have been a drag on the U.S. economy.

The American retreat from climate action has made the United States a global outlier. Nearly every other government has recognized that a hotter planet poses a profound threat to humans and ecosystems. Not the Trump administration, which made the United States the only nation to formally withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit planetary warming.

Around the world, countries are racing to adapt to a rapidly warming planet, reduce pollution and build clean energy. China, the only other superpower, has made a strategic decision to adopt clean energy and then sell it abroad, dominating the global markets for electric vehicles, solar panels and other technologies. Even Saudi Arabia, the second-largest producer of oil after the United States, is spending heavily on wind and solar power.

[greasegotahold]

This post started out with a point then turned into rambling abt the stage show lol

So like. at least in my irl circle and from what I heard yesterday, a lot of ppl prefer the musical to the movie. Acknowledging the bias of theatre ppl toward theatre, that's not the reason I heard most; what I heard most is that the musical stays closer to the book than the movie. Granted idk how many if any of these ppl have seen the complete novel extended cut of the movie, but even so this argument sits wonky with me

Bc the musical takes quite a few departures from the book, some p dramatic. Darry is not the gang's leader, Dally is. Randy is an ensemble part with one line; Cherry gets his ending "even if you win, nothing will change" moment. Sandy is already gone. Evie and Sylvia are gone. Steve is not a big part of Soda's life. Two Bit isn't acknowledged as an alcoholic. Johnny was only jumped a week ago, and it's not a secret who did it. Bob is the one who jumps Pony at the start and even comes up with an excuse for it. Dally doesn't give Johnny his heater, Dally commits a far more direct suicide, no sickness or court proceedings, so on and so forth.

Now I understand why we made just about all of these changes: the show is just about 2 hours as is, not counting intermission; streamlining needed to happen, for time and for clarity of storyline. I even prefer a lot of the changes (Cherry is just. Such a livelier character lmao. She's given stuff to DO. I love her in the book and movie but the stuff they added in the musical I simply love.) I bring this up just bc it. Is honestly just as different as the movie if not more so in how it departs from the source material.

Which means when ppl are saying it's closer to the book, they mean in feel.

And in many avenues; talking about the the extreme accessibility of the book as an adult with other adults, attempting to articulate my issues with the film adaptation, and then later attempting to defend the movie on those same shortcomings, I think I know why.

It's the ever-present narration. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Ponyboy tells his story, he doesn't show. And that makes the book an extremely straightforward read, and absolutely how he can tell us so much shit that happened in so little time, but it also makes it hard to capture in a standard movie adaptation, especially when the movie also needs to trim down and streamline characters and plot points.

But what does Pony do throughout the musical? He narrates. Yes the story plays out real time, but it's still interspersed with these slowdowns where he talks to the audience, where he's narrating.

And I think that's what's really clicking so well with the musical, despite all the changes to characters and their dynamics and plot beats.

And for certain things, the impact is still there, they just changed it around. Johnny was jumped last week instead of months ago and we don't get the excerpt abt how he wound up buying his first blade, and how he would kill the next soc who tried to jump him, and Dally no longer gives him his gun, but he does give him the 6 inch switchblade when Johnny is genuinely worried his dad will kill his mom, and then shows him how to stab to kill. The circumstances are different, but we still get Dally giving Johnny a lethal weapon. The motivation changes for why Johnny carries his blade, from self defense to an explicit want to protect others, but this makes it a more direct setup for when he kills Bob to save Pony.

And a lot of the straight up original additions to the plot feel seamless. The added backstory for Cherry's parents, her dad's alcoholism and her mom's kind of just. Surrender to hopelessness and despair. Not only explains why she's so touchy about Bob drinking, but it makes the change from going along with him to stop a fight into her refusing to back down after breaking up feel justified. To be clear, I don't fault book and movie cherry for doing what she does in that scene, she's trying to keep everyone else safe, I just think that the change was set up and well executed in the musical.

Also sidenote but in Justice For Tulsa...I have so many feelings after getting to see it. The cop shining his flashlight down on Two Bit as he gets jumped, but then he just keeps on walking bc why would he care abt a greaser...Bev buying right into the boys' escalation against the greasers vs Cherry's outright rebuke and then Marcia is over here looking genuinely Physically nauseous over having to choose a side. And of course the moment where the cop beats Dally after handcuffing him, that speaks for itself.

(Sidenote, unrelated to anything, I just wanna say when I listened to the soundtrack for the first time, years since I had read the book or watched the movie, somehow I just knew when the soc boys started singing their threatening section, that they were jumping two bit. I guess I just had a faint buried memory that Two Bit was the revenge-jumping victim lol)

[triptychgrip]

In Totality: Yuuri’s family secretly learns Russian in order to surprise Viktor at their wedding

Though I teased this story last week, real life sadly got in the way of my being able to post in time for Day 6 of Viktuuri Week (‘Happiness’). But, better late than never!

You can now read In Totality, my one-shot about how Yuuri gets his family/friends to secretly learn Russian in order to surprise Viktor during the Katsuki-Nikiforov wedding reception. In addition to chosen family feels, this story features Yurio stepping up to the plate to ensure that no one butchers his native language, the Nishigori triplets acting with astonishing levels of independence, Viktor doing some scheming of his own, and Yurio/Otabek/Mila tallying an Official Cry Count at the wedding. Below is an excerpt that I hope piques your interest in this story, or my other Yuri!!! on Ice fics!

—

“If anyone saw the most recent videos I have on my phone, they’d be thoroughly creeped out,” Yuuko dead-panned, switching to Japanese temporarily.

Mari smiled, and even Yurio cracked a grin from his side of the laptop screen. 

This was her and Yuuko’s third speaking practice session with him, and just a few days ago, the Ice Tiger had sent the two of them a number of videos in which he’d taken close-up footage of his lips while he’d pronounced different vocab words and sentences. 

So far, one of the hardest parts of learning elementary Russian had been training her brain to give the correct signals to her mouth to form the right shapes. 

They were so different from the ones used in Japanese!

 “I don’t know if you can tell, but I took that last one in the locker room, and Viktor walked in just as I was about to start speaking. I told him I was making a video for my dentist. What kind of creep dentist would ask for hand-made videos, anyway?”

Yuuko laughed so hard that she spewed water over her diligently-recorded notes, and Mari moved out of the line of fire just in time.

Once they’d all settled down, Yurio eyed her, appraisingly.

��Ok, your turn. Ready?”

Mari cringed but nodded, having to remind herself that she’d seen this particular teenager in a number of unflattering situations. Namely, those post-temple onsen soaks, two summers ago. 

So they were on even ground.

…somewhat.

One of the realities of learning a language was resigning yourself to the fact that you were bound to look and sound dumb, especially in the beginning. With her brother’s encouragement, she’d told herself to lean into that as much as she could.

“Hello. My name is Yuri, and I live in St. Petersburg, Russia. How about yourself?”Yurio began.

She took a second to think, trying to recall the content from the last few Meiji Academy lessons that she’d completed. 

Sohma-san, Kitagawa-san, and the other virtual instructors were excellent and always made time to answer questions well after the lesson had ended. But even so, there was something far more freeing in being able to practice this stuff with Yurio. 

[thishappensonceeveryfewlifetimes]

Show-off Friday that I'm posting on Sunday because I didn't get to it Friday

I was tagged by @escapismlover one week ago (hi bookie)

And I don't have anyone to tag because I'm pretty new here and don't have a lot of writer mutuals so if you see this and it somehow inspires you to brag about your writing, 1,000% go for it I'm rooting for you

rules: show off a story you're proud of, talk about it, and tag anyone that you'd want to also see show off a little

This is an excerpt from my veeerrryyy self-indulgent dragon age fanfic wherein Hawke joins forces with the Hero of Ferelden and the former leader of the Inquisition to stop Solas.

Warning: long post

For all the places Alice liked to see and be seen, taverns were generally at the top of the list. She didn't consider herself someone who drank too much, but she didn't turn down a drink, either. And besides, a soul could learn a lot just by listening to the right conversations in a crowded place like this.

For instance, Alice learned pretty quickly from the inebriated gentleman beside her at the bar that some chink-in-her-armor bitch was making trouble out back. He was complaining loudly about it and nursing a welt above his eye, so he was hard to miss.

"Sound like something we should look into?" Alice muttered to Varric.

"Even if it's not…" Varric nodded to the group of guys around the drunk man's other side who all nodded to one another and moved as one toward the door. "I don't know whose luck they're pushing."

"C'mon." Alice jerked her chin at Harding across the tavern, and she received a nod. The three of them exited the tavern after the group in time for Alice to catch the heel of one, passing around the corner of the low-roofed building. Above the sounds of debauchery from within the tavern was the general night-noise of the village, animals calling and servants shouting and revelry being had. But above even that din was the ferocious snarling of someone very angry.

Alice, Varric, and Harding rounded the corner into the alley to see the group—six, seven men?—closing on a single woman. She was tall, leanly-muscled and armored in leathers, at a glance not a match for the small mob before her, but she was the source of the rage.

"I said if you and your crusted-ass friends don't fuck off, I'll hand each and every one of you your peckers!" she snapped. "I won't say it again!"

Varric had Bianca in his hands with her crossbars extended before the woman had even finished shouting. "Now, seven on one doesn't seem like all that fair of a fight. What do you think, Hawke?"

With her staff drawn and ready, Alice looked at him a little sheepishly. "I was just going to hit them with a seismic pulse, honestly."

"Oh, be my guest."

Alice looked back at the mob, which had turned their half-drunken ire to the two newcomers at the mouth of the alley. Harding had slipped around their flank, unseen, but Alice glimpsed the light off the curve of her bow from the shadows. If it came to an open fight, she had no doubt about their chances.

"That is," Alice said sweetly. "Unless you all want to rethink your choices."

The first man that lunged toward Alice, knife in his fist, only took a step before he sank to the muddy ground, screaming, an arrow protruding from the soft part of his knee. That was all it took for the rest of them to surge.

Alice made good on her word. Summoning her mana, she channeled a burst of the energy through her staff and out into the ground at the mob's feet, sending a tremor through them that knocked them off balance.

Varric let fire with Bianca, taking two out with well-placed bolts in non-vital areas. The goal wasn't to kill them, though there was no telling that to the woman they'd been cornering. With a crossbow of her own, she downed three men, one of whom was only just struggling to his feet again.

Alice knocked the final man standing back with another sharp pulse of her magic, and he lay there in a puddle, staring up at the sky, too dazed or drunk to collect himself.

"Did you have to kill them?" Alice asked the woman as she plucked bolts from the men she'd felled.

That earned her a sharp glance from narrow eyes and Alice got the sense maybe stupid questions weren't the brightest idea.

"I've been doing my best to avoid these shitheels," the woman said, tucking the bolts back into a quiver over her shoulder. She sounded Fereldan, but fancier. Good breeding? Nobility? "Tracking me, cornering me in a dark alley like honorless bastards."

"Who are these guys?" Harding asked, picking her way over the dead and injured men to rejoin Alice and Varric.

The stranger glanced at the three of them, tensing like she expected the fight to keep going. "Who are you?" she asked with an edge to her voice.

"Alice Hawke," Alice said, too brightly, trying to soothe the situation over before the woman let rip with her crossbow again. It was nowhere near as fancy or advanced as Bianca, but the woman handled it in such a way that she might well have been born with the thing in her hands. "You're welcome for the assist, by the way."

"Thanks." The woman slung her crossbow across her back. "Hawke, you said?" She glared at Alice. "I've heard of you."

"Aww, thanks," Alice said with a smile. "Always nice to meet a fan."

The woman snorted, but didn't return the smile.

"Varric Tethras," Varric said, extending a hand while keeping Bianca tucked under his arm with the other. Not as a threat, Alice guessed, but probably just to show her off.

"Scout Lace Harding," said Harding. "You said these guys were tracking you? You expected them to jump you like this?"

"I…yes." The woman blew some errant dark curls out of her face from under her hood and assessed the bodies in the alley. "Bounty hunters. Dedicated ones."

"Maybe if you told us who you were, we might understand," Alice said.

"You could be bounty hunters, too."

"You said you'd heard of me?"

"I've heard you're the reason for the mage-templar war," the woman said, a little too casually. "I've been blamed for a shitty thing or two, myself, so I take that information with a grain of salt. But I still don't know you, or what you've been up to since you vanished from Weisshaupt."

"You know about Weisshaupt and still believe I'm a bounty hunter?" Alice asked, unable to fight the grin on her face.

She shrugged. "We all get desperate."

[8aeddel-vriska]

If my last post wasn't indic8ive enough, I've started da88ling in demonaltry again. Last time was a dud, 8ut I have reason to 8elieve this time isn't as I've already had a su8stantial spiritual experience without even reaching out yet.

Long ass post under the cut.

A few weeks ago, I had mentioned my nigh-decade long fondness and infatu8ion with the fictionalized version of Azazel from The 8inding of Isaac (the game, not the 8i8lical story), as well as lamenting that I had attempted demonaltry a year or two ago, 8ut found no results (most likely 8ecause I lacked direction and research), and eventually gave up, and a thought had occurred to me. "I wonder what the real Azazel is like." Two of my dear friends, one who is a Luciferian and is quite close with him, and another who had worked with Azazel in the past, suggested that I should look into him, and shared the excerpt from the 8ook of Enoch a8out more or less his whole deal (taught humanity how to make weapons, armor, and do makeup, and that this was 8ad, Apparently (according to god)). After a few days of low energy, I finally 8it, and I was hooked. I 8 up all the info I could like a ravenous 8east, 8oth the info from the 8ook of Enoch, as well as personal experiences (Unverified Personal Gnosis, or UPG), though o8viously with that part in mind. I think I honestly may have hit the 8ottom of the well on inform8ion.

Regardless, at this point, all I had done was tantamount to reading and taking some notes. I was still feeling some dou8t, 8ut pushed through it. After asking my aforementioned Luciferian friend on how interacting with him was like, so I could have a frame of reference. During all of this, when I had started thinking a8out the concept of "what if Azazel was nudging me along slowly to this point?", I 8egan to have this feeling of 8eing watched. Not in a 8ad way, 8ut in the way that one can "feel" eyes on the 8ack of their head. I had felt this lightly in the previous days, 8ut didn't think too much of it. After mentioning this to her and descri8ing the feeling, I turned my phone off and tried to sleep.

The feeling wouldn't go away, however. Instead, it continued to grow. Instead of just that vague sense of 8eing watched, it grew into feeling eyes staring at me, out of sight. I laid in 8ed with this feeling, unsure what to make of it.

Things changed when I flipped to my other side, so my 8ack was facing the rest of my room. The feeling grew and grew.

You know how even when you're not looking at/can't see the room around you, especially if it's familiar to you, you can still have a sense of it? Knowing the general size, where everything is, etc.?

I felt something vividly in the room take shape. The eyes had gained a humanoid figure that was now sitting in my desk chair. From what I could "feel" (and analyzing the feelings l8r), it was quite tall, pro8a8ly around 7 feet, wearing (what I would only realize l8r after 8eing told) was a priest's stole and had large, crooked horns, plus the little side horns you see on goats sometimes.

Its eyes, however, were what stuck out to me. 8right red, just... staring at me. It felt like it was 8urning a hole in me (not in the literal way, just like, the figure of speech for 8eing stared at intensely). What was interesting was that the eyes were... soft? Kind. While I was still o8viously a little freaked out and nervous, they were almost disarming and comforting in a way, and I got the sense that the figure intended no ill will. I also think they had those little rectangular goat pupils.

Also worth noting, while I'm unsure if that's just what it looked like, or my lack of 8eing a8le to really "see" it fully, was that the figure was more or less a fully dark/vanta8lack silhouette, with only the eyes and the scarf-y type part of the stole 8eing discerna8le, 8oth 8eing red.

If you can put two and two together, you can pro8a8ly figure out that this was likely Azazel. I got that sense pretty quickly, considering I had never felt something like this 8efore, and that he was all that was on my mind for the last few days. I was also 8ack on my phone now, kind of openly texting my friends a8out this experience. I was fully lucid.

One of them suggested that I should wave and say "hello". Still pretty nerve-wracked, I sat up and looked at the space where I "felt" him. I couldn't see anything directly, 8ut I got the sense I was looking at something. The shadows there felt... different. I chose not to shine a light.

I hesit8d a 8it to wave, still staring 8ack, when I felt (not heard) the words "Don't 8e shy". I'm unsure how to descri8e it other than just... feeling the words. Somehow, I could also tell they were somehow grey in color? Which I don't even know how I could 8egin to explain.

He waved in turn, and went right 8ack to staring. After upd8ing my friends and talking a8out him more, I laid down to sleep, Azazel still present, and still staring. He dissap8d after an hour or so.

I found myself staring at the chair he was "sitting" in when I woke up in the morning, with this really deep sense of longing, missing his presence. I hadn't really felt anything like it.

Here's a drawing I did 8ased off of what I "saw" that I did the day after. The more "chi8i" style kinda hides the fact of how tall he was, and some of the finer details (hair, necklace) were just things I filled in to get a 8etter idea as I was drawing.

That 8rings us to now, 8ut I don't think I really have anything further to add that'd 8e su8stantial. I suppose I just wanted to share my experience and write a8out it, and especially see if anyone who's had experience with him had anything interesting to say, as I'm (more or less) relatively new to... all of this.

I plan on holding a ritual within the next week or so to get into contact with him, though I've 8een so in the pit of find any info on him specifically that I've neglected to really sit down and look at the nitty gritty of how rituals work.

[ryancash]

Alto Turns 10

It still feels hard to believe that ten years has gone by since Alto's Adventure landed on the App Store and changed my life forever. I shared some reflections on Twitter and wrote a little excerpt for a Snowman blog post:

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that Alto’s Adventure has been out for ten years. In some ways, it feels like we launched it just yesterday – I still remember waking up at 4am and seeing the tweets pouring – and we hadn’t even officially announced the game. In other ways, it feels like a lifetime ago. The game has taken us on so many unexpected journeys, introduced us to incredible people and opened doors we never could have imagined. When you make something digital you don’t necessarily get to interact with people who use the thing you made but with Alto (because it’s been quite far reaching) it actually happens from time to time. It’s these personal stories that people have shared that really stick. Every once in a while I’ll encounter someone who tells me they grew up playing Alto or it got them through a tough moment in their life. It’s always a bit hard to believe.  Most recently it was a barista at my local coffee shop. Her and I have had pretty in-depth conversations about life every week or two for the last few years but what I do for work never came up. Recently it did and she pulled out her phone and showed me both games. She said she’s been obsessed with the games ever since they came out and has beat every goal in both of them. Then there was the time I was in a car with an 18-year-old family friend who, after an hour of small talk, asked what I did for work. When I told him I worked on Alto, he practically lost his mind – he and his friends had spent hours playing it at school.  These kinds of moments – though few and far between – are always surreal. We made Alto because it was something we wanted to play ourselves – but knowing it’s become a part of so many people’s lives is something I’ll always be grateful for.

I haven't really been writing on this site anymore – but maybe that'll change in the coming years. Who knows. Either way I wanted to log this here for posterity. Here's to the next ten years.

[bbrooklynbabe]

tag by: @littlemarianah

the rules: if you're tagged, make a new post and share one or two sentences (or lines for artists) from your unposted WIP with zero context.

Katniss and I linger in the classroom, the only ones left as we're finally released for our two weeks of recess. I deliberately gather my belongings at a sluggish pace, hoping she'll catch on to the unspoken message.

(you got me there bc my real wip is being posted, but i'm in my first week of my new job so i haven't written anything new. i wrote this excerpt a few months ago for another story)

tagging: @katnissmellarkkk

[thana-topsy]

Liminal Bridges [Excerpt]

I've made some changes to Liminal Bridges while writing new content/gearing up to start posting again! I've always been the type of fic writer that flat-out refuses to go back and change/edit/re-write things I've already published. HOWEVER. The way the plot is progressing, there were a few things I wanted to tweak in earlier chapters. Namely.... I wanted to add J'zargo into the story. Here's what a couple of scenes from Chapter 7 now look like, featuring my favorite pyromaniac:

--

The classroom was surprisingly full when Neloth pushed through the door and walked to the head of the room. The soft murmur of conversation died immediately as all eyes tracked him with a mixture of nervousness and anticipation. 

“Whatever you think you know about the school of Mysticism, I want you to forget it.” He let the book in his arm fall heavily against the desk. “With the blessed collapse of the Mages Guild, the study of Mysticism has become more and more scant, very rarely leaving the halls of the Psijics on the isle of Artaeum. However, the Telvanni have known and utilized the practices of Mysticism for millennia.” 

He opened the book. There was a soft, collective noise of scrolls being unfurled and ink pot lids being flipped open. 

“First, the thing you must understand above all else is that to study Mysticism is to open your mind to the inherent paradox of reality. It is not for the faint of heart, nor for the weak willed. My intent is not to lead any of you into madness, though it is always a possibility. Now…” Neloth heard someone in the front row of the class audibly swallow. “What types of spells and rituals fall under the category of Mysticism?” He looked out at the class expectantly. 

Silence followed. 

“Sometimes, I ask questions that aren’t meant to be answered, but this one is. So speak up and don’t waste my time.”

“Absorption spells.” The answer came from a Khajiit who sat in the center of the room. He was familiar—the one who had gone toe-to-toe with Neloth in his first lecture on Destruction magic over a year ago.

“Correct. What else?” 

“Teleportation,” the Khajiit answered again. 

“Correct, again. Are you the speaker for the class?” He shrugged and leaned back in his chair with a smirk. “J’zargo seems to be the only one to have answers.”

“Very observant. What else?” Neloth asked him directly this time.

“Soul trapping.”

“What else?” 

J’zargo opened his mouth, then paused, faltering. He looked to one of his classmates beside him, then back to Neloth. “Divination?” 

“Correct.” A slow smile spread across Neloth’s face. “But why?”

“Eh…” The Khajiit’s cool demeanor was gone, replaced with nervous doubt. “This one… does not know.” 

“Then this is where we shall start for today. I do hope the rest of you were writing all this down while your classmate carried your dead weight.” There was a flurry of movement as quills frantically scratched across parchment. 

“We’ll begin with the principles of Mysticism.” 

—

“Master Neloth, I had a question regarding the assignment.” 

The first week of classes had come and gone with relative ease. Neloth had only held two lecture-heavy classes and sent all of his students off to do a significant amount of reading before the next session. It was really quite simple. There was nothing to question. 

“What might that be?” he asked, only half paying attention as he copied his most recent research into his journal.

 “Will we need to know all of Sotha Sil’s lessons on Artaeum for the exam, or are there like… certain terms to memorize?”

Neloth paused in his writing, slowly looking up from his journal. The student, a shaggy-looking Breton boy, took a nervous step backwards. 

”I’m sorry. Were you expecting me to compose a vocabulary list?” 

The student shook his head, dark brown hair falling into his eyes. “No, sir, I just meant—” 

“You just meant ‘are there any shortcuts I can take’? Is that right?” 

“No, I—”

“For the exam, you and you alone, will be required to transcribe from memory the entirety of 3rd of Sun's Dawn, 2920. Any future inane questions will result in more assignments.” Neloth pointed at the door with the tip of his quill. “Out.”  

The boy opened his mouth, sucked in a breath, held it, then quickly ducked his head and strode towards the exit. Neloth went back to copying. It took him a long moment to realize there was someone else still standing in the room. He set his quill down with a loud sigh. “Yes? What else?” 

“This one also has a question, but not about the assignment.” It was the know-it-all Khajiit from class. He had a muscular build beneath his mage’s robes, the fur around his muzzle carefully coiffed into a ridiculous little mustache that framed his mouth. “J’zargo can wait until class, if you’d prefer.” 

“You’re already here and you’re already bothering me. So you might as well waste my time now as opposed to later.” 

The Khajiit smirked, shuffling through his scrolls. “J’zargo simply wanted clarification. You said that Mysticism and The Old Way were used interchangeably by the Psijics. But while ‘The Old Way’ can refer to Mysticism, Mysticism does not necessarily refer to The Old Way, yes?”

“Correct. Because one is a religious philosophy, while the other is a theoretical school of magic.” 

“This one is simply confused by what separates the two.” 

“Did you read Tetronius Lor’s treatise on Mysticism?” 

“Yes, which is why J’zargo is confused.” 

Neloth rubbed at his temples with a sigh, but the question was intelligent enough. Worthy of answering, at least. “The Old Way refers specifically to the practices of the Psijics on Artaeum. They use meditation, thought exercises, and riddles to better connect with what they believe to be the purest form of magicka. The study of Mysticism is far less spiritual, at least as far as House Telvanni is concerned. It’s more of a science than a religion— identifying patterns and working with cause and effect, direct action and reaction. It is something that can be mapped and traced. Experiments can be performed and repeated with reliable results.” 

The Khajiit nodded, looking thoughtful. “Forgive, but are these not the same thing?” 

“Hardly,” Neloth scoffed then paused. “But explain your reasoning.”

“Well, meditation and riddles… This is just another way of identifying patterns, yes? Thought exercises are psychological. Scientific, as you said. So it feels, to this one at least, like it is just splitting whiskers based on pomp and circumstance— one group refusing to be associated with the other.” He tilted his head curiously. “J’zargo thinks it counterproductive to say they are two different things instead of considering them as a whole.”  

Neloth pursed his lips. “J’zargo, was it?”     

“That is this one’s name, yes.”

“Well, J’zargo.” Neloth smiled thinly. “In addition to your reading assignment, I’d like you to write a short essay on the similarities and differences concerning the religious and secular practices of Mysticism.”

J’zargo’s eyes glittered mischievously. “Are you punishing this one for asking questions?” 

“Do you feel punished?” Neloth asked as he leaned back in his chair. J’zargo shook his head. Neloth nodded. “Good. The Arcanaeum should have a copy of Concerning the Psijic Order as well as Origin of the Mages Guild. Those are the main resources you need.” 

“Thank you, Master Neloth.” 

Neloth pointed to the door with the feather end of his quill. “Out.” 

[justanotherblonde]

it's sasodei week 2024!

i have precisely one thing to contribute, but ffs it's not done yet grr!! maybe we can blame my dog... she demanded i come play with her no less than nine times (i kept track) as i wrote this post (she does this by shouting at me then humping my leg to show me who's boss, sometimes pulling on my sweater sleeve with her sharp li'l teefs, beagles, man, i tell ya...) 🐶

anyway!! here's a TEASER of my Day 3 Band/Rockstar/Idol AU story ahhhhh!!! it's not even titled yet!!!!! i don't even really know what the tags will be! and i haven't had time to make a header image!! 😫

but this i know, oh this i know:

Sasori is first chair cello of the Sunagakure Philharmonic

He has a dirty little secret hobby: listening to metal (among other genres that are definitely not classical)

One of the bands he listens to is called C4

Guess who's the lead singer???

Yes, you guessed it, it's Deidara, singer/song-writer, perhaps much more...

In this AU, everybody lives!! Well... okay fine, Sasori's parents still didn't make it, i'm sorry

But that means two important things: Third Kazekage is alive! And there are a LOT of Uchiha running around.

There's more, a lot more, but you'll have to wait until i steal more minutes and hours from my dog and my work! but i'll give it to ya, come hell or high water! or wildfires, earthquakes, debilitating PM 2.5 ratings, or uh... dare i say... another pandemic??? FEAR NOT!

if you want to wait for the full thing to drop to read, i've left the teaser excerpt below the cut.

a million thanks to @sasodeiweek for hosting this event and encouraging us SasoDei creators to flex our creative muscles! loving all the contributions so far!

and without further ado...

Rehearsal ran circles round Sasori’s ears. The music followed him always, all hours.

Chapter 1

Rehearsal ran circles round Sasori’s ears. The music followed him always, all hours.

The fine, agile fingers of his left hand twitched; his right hand swayed side to side, marking the strokes of his bow. Eyes half-closed, his feet kept time on the pavement as he walked. It was Haydn this week, Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major. A weighty yet familiar responsibility for Sasori, first chair cello of the Sunagakure Philharmonic.

He sighed. Rehearsal had wrapped half an hour ago. He was on his way home, and tomorrow was a rest day. He didn’t need to torture himself like this. 

The headphones around his neck were a comforting weight, as friendly and intimate as the straps of his cello case on his shoulders. He flipped them over his ears and dug in his coat pocket for his phone. Scrolling through the saved playlists on his music app, he skipped all of the classical “homework” and went straight for his guilty pleasures: dance-pop, glam-rock, musicals… and heavy metal. 

No one at work knew about his low, low tastes.

Well, the Third had known. 

Sasori gritted his teeth, biting back unbidden memories. Now he definitely needed to blast his brain clean with some noise. 

Something heavy.

Something loud.

Something to transport him far away from the sand-scraped streets of Sunagakure.

His thumb landed on the album he was looking for.

Art is an EXPLOSION by C4. Track 1: “Light It Up.”

From that first haunting guitar chord, the tension Sasori held in his chest and face dispersed. He rode that twisting whine down, down… someplace dark and cool, far beneath the earth. As the barreling drums built to a crescendo, he held his breath—wait for it!—

A million years, through timeless stone I’m damned to walk this path alone This darkness, all I’ve ever known…

The lead singer had a deep, melodic voice. He molded each word of the verse carefully, tenderly, as if he were embarking on a ballad… then WHAM!

Cymbals crashed; the roaring chorus caught the last two notes of an electrifying riff like a surfer hopping a wave:

Light it up! Hey, light it up! Strike a match and light it up! My fuse is short, ’m ready to blow, Crush the ceiling down to the floor!

Not in a million years would Sasori admit out loud to anyone that he listened to C4, especially not now that the public were actually aware of their existence. The metal band had catapulted to fame last year with their single “Burn Down All the Discos,” but Sasori had been listening to them well before that. Three years ago, his music app had recommended him a track from Art is an EXPLOSION—C4’s debut album—based on his eclectic streaming history. 

If the first song Sasori had heard by C4 had been anything but “Artist,” he’d probably never have given them a chance: their usual sound was, on the surface, sloppy, and most of the lyrics were childish boasts. “Look at me!” their vocalist seemed to say in every song. 

But “Artist” was different. It was, inexplicably, an up-tempo perversion of Vivaldi’s Winter Largo in F Minor, lamenting how hard it was to live for art’s sake when the world ran on money and heroic virtue. Listeners without classical training would be unable to appreciate or likely even identify the subtleties of what had been done with the classical score, but the first time he heard it, Sasori had been riveted. Vivaldi’s rhythmic harpsichord had been replaced with a softly tapped snare drum; a mournful electric guitar carried the melody when it wasn’t sung. 

Curiosity piqued, Sasori had investigated the rest of the album, and found similar nods to classical music throughout the tracks, much harder to notice than the adapted Vivaldi, drowned as they were in a thunderstorm of electric guitar and percussion. C4 were more than just a metal band: they experimented with typical traits of the genre and also drew from pop rock, classical music, even musical theatre to create a sound unlike anything Sasori had ever heard. They broke all the rules and they did it with glee.

One day—a rest day—home alone and bored, Sasori had looked up the band online. It surprised him to learn that the lead singer had been only sixteen when the band was formed. That powerful voice certainly didn’t sound like it belonged to a teenager. But the band’s website was light on biographical information, and Sasori hadn’t felt like digging deeper. An overwhelming amount of fan sites and social media accounts had sprung up since “Burn Down All the Discos” and C4’s world tour. Bored as he was that day, Sasori wasn’t about to use his precious free time to obsess over some flash-in-the-pan rock band, especially one fronted by a kid.

And yet, he still listened to them.

“Artist” often competed for the position of most frequently-played song on his app, but only when he was feeling particularly moody. 

It crossed his mind that he ought to check if C4 had come out with anything new lately—the app usually sent a message when artists he’d followed released new music. Pausing to wait for a traffic light, he dug for his phone again.

Lo and behold, a new album had dropped not three days ago.

Beauty of a Moment, it was called. The cover art featured the Venus de Milo... mid-explosion.

Sasori chuckled under his breath. “He really does fancy himself an artist, doesn’t he…” 

What a fool. Popular music was not art. Rock music was not art. It came and went, but the classics stayed. For centuries. Forever.

It was the one thing Sasori and the Third had always agreed on, despite all of their differences. 

Speaking of which… 

...

[rjzimmerman]

What America can learn from Miami’s trash nightmare. (Washington Post)

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

Two years ago, Miami-Dade County awoke to a garbage nightmare. Both of the county landfills were nearly full, and the aging incinerator that once burned the lion’s share of the county’s waste had itself been consumed in a runaway trash fire.

After the fire, County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava proposed what she said would be the best solution to a bad problem: replacing the wrecked incinerator with a new $1.5 billion waste-to-energy facility that would generate enough electricity for 70,000 homes, pollute less than the old plant and — the mayor said — wouldn’t stink.

If built, it would be the biggest incinerator in the United States, potentially paving the way for other cities and counties to adopt a waste-management method that some scientists say is the least bad option to deal with trash that can’t be recycled or composted.

The only problem is, nobody wants it. Environmentalists called the proposal a way to greenwash burning garbage. Neighbors who lived with the old incinerator’s stink protested the plan. “I’m not saying I’m glad it burned down,” said Fabiano de Lisio, who has run a business selling motors a block from the incinerator site for 15 years. “But I’m happy I can’t smell that stench anymore.”

The core of the problem is that Americans throw out��more trash than almost any other people on the planet — and lag behind other wealthy countries in recycling and composting. That leaves U.S. cities with two flawed options for getting rid of waste: burn it or bury it.

In recent years, more local governments have been considering incineration. The strategy has become common in Europe, China and Southeast Asia as the technology has advanced from the heavily polluting plants of the early 20th century to a new generation of facilities that contaminate less and offer other opportunities. In one famous Danish example, the incinerator doubles as a ski slope and public park.

Miami-Dade County’s predicament is a test of whether this solution could take root in the United States, as well.

After months of public uproar and private lobbying — including by the Trump family, which owns the nearby Trump National Doral golf course — Levine Cava pulled her support for the incinerator plan. The mayor now says the county should stick with the emergency measure it has been using since the fire: sending trucks and trains 100 miles north to dump waste in central Florida.

The final decision is up to the county commissioners, who will vote in coming weeks.