#throwback to last year when i got laid off and was having the worst time ever meanwhile she kept complaining about her

[chaelinsbitch]

My friends disregard for my work situations and then her complaining about her own when it's literally not even that serious for her is really starting to piss me off

[majesticbrownjawn]

Halloween

This is a throwback and may be the first Erik-ish fic I wrote more than two years ago. 

Reader (like me), isn’t a fan of Halloween, her boyfriend tries to change her outlook. 

NSFW, boo.

I hate Halloween; you thought to yourself angrily as you woke up on the morning of October 31. 

You had a bad experience when you were younger and had been scarred ever since. Your boyfriend Jason loved it, though, especially after Black folks decided we'd make Halloween all about the culture. He was excited about his costume but refused to share what it was. He said it was a surprise and would make you have a heart change about Halloween. You doubt that highly. One of his best friends threw a big party every year, so you were headed there tonight. 

Thankfully it was Saturday, and you didn't have to rush to get yourself together after work. You wanted to have lunch with Jason because you knew even though you'd be at the party together tonight, he'd be too excited to pay you much attention.

————

"Hey babe, you wanna grab some lunch with me?"

"Aww, I'd love to, but I have to put some final touches on my costume."

"Really?! I haven't seen you all week Jason," you whined. 

"I know, baby, but I gotta finish this. I promise I'll make it up to you tonight."

"Ok, fine," you said, disappointed, and hung up. 

You waited until the last minute to decide what to be for Halloween because you and your boyfriend usually coordinated what you'd wear, but because he was being so extra this year and didn't want you to know who he was going as, you had to figure things out on your own. By the time you made it to the Halloween store, the only thing left in your size was the cliche slutty French maid costume. You bought it without trying it on and went on with your day. You were out later than anticipated, so you had to get home and get ready quickly. As you were putting on makeup, you heard your phone buzz. It was a text from Jason. 

Hey baby, I'm running behind, so I won't be able to pick you up. I'm sorry. Text me when you're ready to leave, and I'll have an Uber pick you up and bring you. 

He was really annoying you today. 

You arrived to the party about an hour later and was surprised to see the mansion was already packed with people. You picked up your phone to call Jason but saw that you didn't have service. You walked around for a while, observing the detail in the partygoers’ costumes. A blue Avatar and headless horseman caught your eye and impressed you. After looking for Jason for much longer than anticipated, you decided to stop at one of the bars to get a drink. As you stood in the line, a rough tug at your hips and warm breath on the back of your neck startled you. 

"What the fuck are you wearing?!" A deep voice said. 

The slutty French maid costume lived up to its name. Your full breasts were spilling out of the top and the dress barely covered your ass. You added fishnet stockings to cover your deliciously thick thighs and to add to the overall hoe factor. You rarely wore heels, but tonight you decided on a  pair of clear, stacked, 5” sandals. You knew Jason wouldn't like your body on display at the party, but he would just have to get over it tonight. He was lucky you’d even showed up. 

The voice in your ear sounded familiar. You jerked away and looked at the man from the ground up. He wore combat boots, a pair of camo pants that hugged him in all the right places, a vest with metal breastplates, and a thin shirt that hugged his muscular arms perfectly. His hair was cut low all over, except for in the middle, where he had short dreads that sprung up and away from his head wildly. Two of his lower teeth were dipped in gold. The look in his eyes was one of pent up anger and rage. 

Jason had transformed himself into your own personal Erik “Killmonger” Stevens. 

"Jason?" You were surprised at how much he actually looked like Killmonger. He knew you had a not-so-secret thing for him, which is probably why he was so confident you'd love his costume this year. People frequently stopped Jason to tell him he resembled the fine ass actor who played your fictitious, homicidal movie boyfriend, but you never saw it--until tonight. He'd been growing his hair out since the summer, and you hated it so much that you barely let him touch you. You told him he could get some cut when he cut his hair, but he refused to, so you’d been finding other ways to get what you needed the last few months. 

"Answer my question. Who gave you permission to come out dressed like a slut tonight?" 

"OK, Jason, this is cute, but you not gon' talk to me like that."

You turned to walk away, but he grabbed your wrist so tight that your body involuntarily stepped back towards him to ease the pressure on your arm. 

"Where do you think you're going?"

You realized at that moment he wanted you to play along, so for the sake of your wrist and his fun, you went along with it. 

"Nowhere Killmonger. I'm all yours," you smirked at him. 

He grinned devilishly and replied, "You better be. And you can call me Erik."

He grabbed a bottle from behind the bar and instructed you to follow him until you reached a pair of plush couches in the atrium of the mansion. People were all around, dressed in costumes, seemingly entranced by the music and the free-flowing alcohol. 

"Drink," he demanded. 

He started to pour liquor in your mouth before you could respond. 

"Wait!" Alcohol was all over your lips and chin and quickly trailing down your to your breasts. 

He quickly sucked it off your neck and licked the top of your tits in plain sight. 

"What are you doing, Jason?" You were angry and turned on at the same time. 

"You got one more time to call me by another nigga's name. You understand me?"

You nodded your head and squirmed a little, realizing how wet you were. 

"Now drink up. I want you loose tonight."

Erik wanted to dance, so you joined the crowd on the floor. His camo pants were thick, but you could feel how excited he was to be grinding behind you. In character or not, he hadn't touched you like this in months. As your bodies moved together to the music, one of his hands crept up your waist and palmed your breast. You loved the way his hands felt on you. He turned you around to face him and gave you the nastiest, sexiest kiss you’d ever experienced. He was really in character and you loved it. 

After grinding on each other a while longer, he whispered in your ear, "I'm ready to fuck you."

Your eyes bulged out from your head and the tingling in your pussy that had been happening since you laid eyes on him tonight intensified. You were ready to fuck too. 

"Go upstairs into the second door and take off everything. NOW." He dismissed you, confident you’d obey his order. 

You trailed up the stairs and waited for him. 

"The fuck you still got clothes on for?!" Your boyfriend was always firm, knowing how to lovingly put you in your place when I needed to be checked. But the tone he used tonight was different. It almost made you afraid of him.

"I'm going to teach you how to listen today. Bend over." You looked at him with questioning eyes to see if he was serious. 

"Bend the fuck over," he repeated. You leaned onto the bed in front of you, ass straight up, listening like a good girl. He ran his hand down your ass before giving it a firm smack. 

"When I tell you to do something, I mean that shit." You could hear the lust-filled anger in his voice. 

You flinched in pain, but your mouth let out a needy moan, encouraging him to continue. He hit your jiggling backside again just before you heard the sound of your fishnet stockings ripping, leaving your ass fully exposed, save the thong you wore. You felt the string being pulled away from your center and onto your ass cheek. 

His fingers circled your clit from behind, making you arch your back, pushing your pussy deep onto his fingers. You wanted them inside. You were so wet, and they’d slipped in a few times already. 

"Not yet, baby," he growled. He replaced his fingers with his mouth. 

He gave you a good tongue lashing from behind and licked up your slit towards your ass. He slowed down as he made his way upwards, and you tensed up, knowing where he was headed. Your boyfriend loved your body and gave all of himself to you when you had sex. He was attentive and genuinely desired to pleasure every part of your body, but you were never comfortable with him pleasing that part of you. It was still so taboo. Would it even feel good? With him thinking he was Killmonger tonight if he tried, would you be able to stop him? Would you want to stop him? 

As his tongue reached that small region of flesh between your pussy and your other hole, your reflexes caused you to reach one of your hands back, trying to swat him away. 

"Wait, Jas-Erik, whoever the fuck you are." 

That was the worst thing you could have done. He grabbed the arm that tried to push him away and held it on top of your back with his hand, leaving you to balance all of your weight onto the single arm below you. His other hand firmly gripped your upper thigh and pulled you closer to his face. 

"Ahhhhh, Erik." You were gone at the first stoke of his tongue in your no longer forbidden area.

He ate you mercilessly, giving you a pleasure you'd never experienced before. Your arm gave out on you, and you finally just planted your face into the bed. Your ass never moved, though; you were enjoying his tongue too much. He released your arm. The noises you were making was assurance you wouldn't try and stop him again. Your eyes rolled back in slow motion when he opened your pussy with his fingers pushing them deep into you and twisting them as he moved in and out of you, mouth still teasing your ass. 

"Oh my gosh, Jason. Fuck!"

"What you just call me?" His words vibrated against your hole, sending a shiver up your spine. He smacked your ass hard. "What's my name?" 

Smack. 

Your body shuddered, but you didn't answer. 

"Hmm?" He struck you again and laughed. 

"Erik," I whispered. His fingers moved to your clit, sending shockwaves through your body, making your pussy jump from the inside. 

"Louder," he demanded. 

"MmmmErik!" Unintelligible sounds left your mouth as he stroked your clit and ate you from behind. Your climax overtook you, pushing the balls of your feet deep into the soft carpet and making your toes point back up towards the bed. Your body went stiff before going completely limp. You flopped stomach-first onto the bed below you. 

He leaned over you on the bed and whispered, "We ain't done yet, turn over." 

You lazily rolled over on your back as he carefully took off his costume. You watched his beautiful body in awe when he removed his shirt and revealed dozens of scars across his chest and abdomen. He was committed to this costume. 

You were on autopilot and didn't realize you were pleasuring yourself until he growled, "That's a good girl, keep that kitty wet for me." 

Your fingers continued massaging your pussy as he stood over you, stroking his dick and chewing his bottom lip. "You look so good, baby, rubbing your clit like that, but I thought I told you to take your clothes off." He reached down and snatched the top of your dress open, making your breasts spill out and sending buttons flying across the room. 

"Yeah, that's better. Now play with them juicy ass titties." You stuck your fingers in your mouth, trying to get them as wet as possible before moving them in circles around your deep brown nipples. His dick slid up and down your slit as you continued giving special attention to your sensitive breasts. 

Finally, he entered you with a loud grunt, spreading your walls with his healthy girth. You inched up the bed a little trying to adjust to him; it had been a little while. 

"Uhun, where you going? Ain't no escaping this dick tonight." He cupped his hands under your thighs and lifted your ass off the bed, pushing himself further inside, using your legs to pull you up and down his juicy dick. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, Erik." 

"Feels better now?" 

"Yes, baby, yes," you whimpered. He twisted in and out of you, pausing every few strokes to stop and lick your clit before entering you again. His pace sped up as he looked down on you with dark eyes. 

"Ahhhh got damn, girl. This pussy so fucking wet." He inhaled deeply like it was going to keep his nut from coming too soon. 

"Of course it is, daddy. You keep tapping my spot," you moaned. He shifted his hips a little, hitting it straight on. 

"Where is it?"

"It's right there. Don't stop, right there, please!" Your fingers gripped the sheets below you as you came hard around him. He rubbed your clit midway through your orgasm, intensifying and extending your high. He came inside you heavy before falling to your side, breathing deeply as you traced your fingers along the raised scars on his chest. 

"So, you like my costume?" Your boyfriend was back. 

"It was aight." He raised an eyebrow at you. 

"I can give you another spanking if my performance wasn't convincing enough." 

"No baby, my ass hurts. But I have a question. You think Killmonger cuddles after sex?"

"Fuck no!" He yelled. "I do, though."

He wrapped his arms around you, placing kisses in the crook of your neck. 

You couldn’t stop grinning as you laid there in his arms. The experience with him tonight was overwhelming. It felt like you fucked someone else. 

You fucked Killmonger. 

-----

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@harleycativy @queenflaws @theogbadbitch @goddessofthundathighs @syndrlla97 @soufcakmistress @mbakusprincess @supersizemeplz @therealmrsrhodes @toniilaney @raysunshine78 @19jammmy @killmonger-fics @just-peachee @trinityaneise @wawakanda-btch  @killmonger-fics @just-peachee @ladymac82​ @suburbanblackhoe

[atc74]

The Storm

Square(s) Filled: The best is yet to come for @as-the-saying-goes-bingo​

Warnings: Angst, Chuck being a dick, break-ups, mentions of kidnapping and torture (s12 throwback), SLIGHT S15 SPOILERS

Summary: At one time, Chuck was the love of her life, now Y/N is fed up with his crap and decides to go toe to toe with him. 

Pairing: Chuck x Reader (past), Reader x ?

Word Count: 1728

Written for: This started off as a request from @idabbleincrazy​ for my 1k notes celebration:  Could u do #13 with Chuck? (Perhaps set after s14?) Congrats on 1k notes!!! “Fuck, I wish I could give you one more kiss, to feel your warmth, to see you smile… I miss you so much,” So post s14 got me thinking and this is what happened. 

Beta’d by: @amanda-teaches​ thank you for everything you do for me and for being a pretty awesome friend. 

A/N: S15 SPOILERS I have a theory and am testing it here. Not really, but you know what I mean. Chuck is all powerful, but there is only one being powerful enough to match him. While I don’t care all that much for Amara, I see her playing a bigger role this season and I pray to sweet baby Jesus that her character gets a little more depth than s11. 

Sections in italics are the readers dream

Looking to enhance your fanfiction experience? You can get Chuck’s scent here from @scentsfromthebunker!

Y/N wandered around Harlan high school. She should be helping contain the ghosts or helping Sam and Dean find a solution, but she couldn't find it in her to give a damn right now. She finally found a quiet room, the nurse's office. She took a seat on one of the cots and laid down. She couldn’t even believe the shitstorm they were in, all because of Chuck. Her boyfriend Chuck, but she was pretty sure that ended when he took off for worlds unknown with his sister to repair their relationship. If it hadn’t ended then, it surely would have when Sam shot him. 

The worst part about it was he never even said goodbye. Never told her he loved her one last time. She didn’t even get one last kiss from him. You know the one. The last kiss that says I’ll miss you and I’ll always love you but I just can’t be with you. 

The sun had started to sink below the horizon, setting the room alight with a warm pinkish glow. Y/N closed her eyes, praying she could get some rest. Rest from the end of the world and rest from her heartache. 

“Hey, there you are. I was looking for you,” Chuck pushed his way past the stacks of boxes in the store room she had decided to organize. 

“You’re God, babe. You knew exactly where I was,” she chuckled. 

“Yeah, but I also sensed you needed some alone time. I didn’t want to intrude. I promised I’d stay out of your head and I’m keeping that promise,” Chuck acknowledged, taking a seat next to her on the floor. “What are you doing in here?” 

“Trying to keep my mind off the end of the world, again,” she scoffed, pulling another box in front of her. 

“We’ll find a way to stop her,” he promised, pressing a kiss to her cheek. 

Y/N laid her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her. His strength was zapped after the fight with Amara. “What if we can’t? We’re all going to die.” She sniffed, wiping her nose with her sleeve. 

“At least we’ll be together,” he reasoned, resting his head on top of hers. “What do you say we get you out of this mess and to bed? It’s almost two in the morning.” 

“Shit, I didn’t think I’d been in here that long. I need a shower first. I’m covered in dust and cobwebs,” she informed him. She took his offered hand, and they left the storage room. 

“Can I join you?” he asked, almost hesitantly. 

“I’d like that,” she whispered her reply, kissing him sweetly as they reached her room. “No singing though.” 

“You love it when I sing,” Chuck protested.

“Yes, I do. But it’s two in the morning, babe,” Y/N pointed out. 

“Right,” he nodded. “No singing.” 

After grabbing a change of clothes, Y/N led Chuck to the shower room, softly shutting and locking the door behind them. She doubted either of the brothers would be looking to shower this late, but stranger things have happened when they’re stressed and can’t sleep. Y/N removed her dust covered flannel and shrugged off her boots. Fatigue had seeped into her bones, and she felt it acutely as she stripped off the remaining articles as Chuck did the same. 

Y/N flipped on the shower and stepped under the already warm spray. Chuck followed, watching silently as she wet her hair. “You’re beautiful.” 

She blushed slightly under his gaze. “Thank you.” Y/N turned her back to him, grabbing her shampoo off the shelf, only for him to take it from her. 

“Let me.” 

She stepped back as his hands spread the lightly scented shampoo through her locks. She generally appreciated his hands at any given moment, but at that moment, she hummed contentedly as he massaged her scalp. “That feels nice.” 

“I’ve just started,” he chuckled. “Turn and rinse.” 

He ran his long fingers through the strands, rinsing the suds down the drain. He reached for her body wash and poured a generous amount in his palm. His hands drifted over her skin as he washed her. While there was nothing sexual about his ministrations, she still found it sensual, the way he touched her. He was always there to take care of her, even in the simplest of ways. Since their early days when he was simply Chuck, the drunk prophet. 

Y/N returned the favor for him and soon they were toweled off, dressed in night clothes and in bed. “It’s odd, this feeling.” 

“What’s that, babe?” she asked sleepily, draping her arm across his waist, his around her shoulders, cradling her head on his shoulder. 

“Not being able to just snap my fingers and do something,” he admitted. “I feel so weak, so useless.”  

“You’re not weak, Chuck. You’ve taken a hit, yeah, but we’re going to fix this,” Y/N reassured him. She shifted her body until she was straddling her lover. “Let me take care of you.” 

Whispers of pleasure and declarations of love bounced off the cold tile walls as she took her time, pushing them both over the edge. Wrapped safely in the cocoon of his love, she drifted off to a restful sleep for the first time in weeks. 

~*~

She woke in a cold sweat, tears streaming down her face and into her hairline, Dean gently shaking her shoulders. “Y/N, wake up. It’s just a bad dream.” 

“Yeah. Bad dream,” she agreed, wiping her face dry. “Let’s get back to it.” The problem was she never had a chance to grieve the loss of their love. Sam had been kidnapped and tortured by the British bitch and Mary Winchester had returned from the dead. They never had a moment of rest. She never had a moment of rest. Never took care of herself. She was always hunting or taking care of Sam and Dean. Now they needed to save the world. Again. 

~*~

Y/N turned up her face at the storm that raged overhead, like the fire inside her. It had been one mini-apocalypse after another, and she was done. She was done with Chuck fucking with their lives. She was done with him putting the nightmaric visions in Sam’s head. How many times had he seen Dean die by his own hand in the last few months? How many times had Sam died at the hand of his brother? How many times had they killed her? She was done. 

“What the fuck do you want with us?” she roared into the storm. “Quit being a fucking coward and show yourself! Come and face me you piece of shit!” 

“Is that any way to talk to God?” his voice carried over the wind whipping around her. 

“When he’s acting like a toddler, yeah. A diva? Yep. My dickbag ex that left me hanging for years while he was galavanting around the fucking universe bonding with his sister? Abso-fucking-lutely!” Y/N bellowed as she faced him. 

“You always were sexy when you got mad,” he chuckled, a look of nostalgia clouding his features. 

“You haven’t experienced my wrath,” she challenged. 

“Fuck, I wish I could give you one more kiss, to feel your warmth, to see you smile… I miss you so much,” Chuck professed, taking a few steps closer to her, the storm calming around them. 

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations hasn’t expired on your bullshit. You should have thought about that before you left me high and dry without even so much as a note,” Y/N cursed. “I’m so fucking done with this act. End this now and let us go. We’re not going to play your fucking games anymore!” 

“The final chapters are just starting, Y/N. And yes, my love, you will play along. I haven’t finished your ending yet. You play nice and I’ll save you,” Chuck revealed. 

“You think I’ll just give up on Sam and Dean? For you? Why, because you’re God?” Y/N thundered.  

“Because we have a history,” he remarked. 

“It’s that history that will eventually be your undoing, God,” she spat. “I’d lay down my life for them before I ever go with you. They were there for me when you walked out. They’ve been there for me every step of the way. They were there before you, and they’ll be there long after we’re done with you.” 

“Because I wrote it that way! Don’t you see?” He snickered. “I made you indispensable to them and them to you. I’ve made you so co-dependent on one another that you will gladly sacrifice yourself for them, but would they do the same for you?” 

“Without question,” she answered. 

“We’ll see about that,” Chuck grinned wickedly, the storm gaining strength once more. 

“No, brother. It’s over,” Amara called out over the booming thunder, illuminated by the storm and her power. 

Chuck backed away, only to be restrained by that power. Amara stretched out her arms, gaining further intensity, levitating over her brother. She placed her hand over his heart, her palm glowing red as she transferred the Mark to him.

He cowered from her touch, and his screams rent the air before he fell to his knees on the soaked earth. “What have you done?” 

“Turnabout is fair play, Chuck. Let’s see how you like being locked inside a cage for a couple of millenia,” Amara mused, returning to the ground beside him. The storm dissipated and the sun broke through the clouds. 

“You should know better than to mess with a Winchester, Chuck,” Sam clucked, wrapping his arm around Y/N’s waist. “You okay, honey?” 

“Never better, babe. The best is yet to come,” Y/N placed her left hand on his cheek, pulling him in for a kiss, her silver ring glinting in the sunshine. She turned back to Chuck on his knees at her feet. “Think about that when you’re rotting in your cage.” 

In the blink of an eye, Amara and Chuck were gone, leaving Sam and Y/N alone. 

“Feel better?” Sam asked her.

“It’s over. With Amara’s help, we saved the world again, and I got my closure,” Y/N smiled up her husband as they walked toward their new life together. “So yeah, I’m good.”

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[grimelords]

My November playlist is finished and I've done something slightly different by actually ordering the songs into a cohesive playlist rather than leaving them in the order I added them. Listen in for everyone's favourite genre, acoustic guitar instrumentals, followed by old fashioned cowboy country, comedy and ridiculous songs, 80s and modern dance, out-there piano instrumentals, rocks and rolls, oddball rap, christian rock buried where nobody will find it, noise rock of all flavours and Mirror Reaper in full. I guarantee there'll be at least something in four hours of music that you'll like. listen here!

Deixa - Toquinho: I love how much happens in this song even before it even kicks off at about a minute in. It cycles through so many different feelings before it really powers up and the drums come on. The rhythm from then on is just mesmerizing, it's just so busy and never dwells on any section for too long, the interplay between the melody, bassline and chord rhythm is amazing. And then at about 2:20 it powers up again! Bossa Nova Strong. Also I'm feeling very disrespected because I just did some research on this song only to find out it was sampled by Nujabes on one of his bad anime youtube hip hop songs.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee - Marisa Anderson: Traditional And Public Domain Songs is Marisa Anderson's weakest album, which is a shame because I love Traditional and Public Domain songs. Her playing is on point as always, but the tremolo and distortion she's using overwhelms the recording more often than not. This song is the best on the album purely because she's playing so quietly that it only shows up when she gets loud so it works perfectly near the end as it crescendos.

The Three Deaths Of Red Spectre - Gwenifer Raymond: Gwenifer Raymond has a new 'non-holiday specific single for a cold climate' in her words and I absolutely love it. The sheer velocity of the middle section is flooring, before it breaks apart totally and reforms into a sort of shanty before metamorphosing again into a heightening mania. I love the constantly shifting structure of this, it barely stops to give you room to breathe all the way through before the very end where it almost feels like it's going to collapse entirely.

Mister Sandman - Chet Atkins: Happy to report that I've had Mr Sandman stuck in my head for three weeks now and still don't really know the words because of tumblr posts. It alternates between 'mr email / e me a mail / make the attachment a pic of a snail' and 'mr sandman / sand me a man / make him the cutest man car door hook hand'.

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind - Chet Atkins & Dolly Parton: I've never gone much on Chet Atkins but my girlfriend showed my this song and it has completely reversed my opinion and it's mostly due to Dolly Parton. She is just so lovely on this it makes me tear up - the song itself is so nice and the playing is perfect but her personality just shines through so brightly it's an absolute delight.

There's A Man Going Around Taking Names - Lead Belly: I've been doing research to try to find out what this song is referring to, or its origin but I cannot find anything concrete. A few people are saying it inspired Johnny Cash for The Man Comes Around, which is plausible and adds a mystic bent to it. It seems incomplete, like it's missing the turn at the end that reveals who exactly he is or what's happening so the whole song just ends up feeling very mysterious and ominous.

When Mussolini Laid His Pistol Down - Merle Travis: This song is from 1943, which is sort of amazing because that means it's not a song about history particularly but rather current events. A great paragraph from wikipedia: "On 24 June Mussolini gave his last important speech as prime minister. It went down in history as the "boot topping" speech, with the Duce promising that the only part of Italy that the Anglo-Americans would be able to occupy (but forever and horizontally, i.e. as corpses) was the shore-line (for which he used a wrong word to define it). For many Italians, that confused and incoherent speech was the final proof that something was wrong with Mussolini." Mussolini, truly history's greatest moron.

The Master's Call - Marty Robbins: As a result of Red Dead 2 and my own natural instincts, I've been having a bigger than usual moment with cowboy music this month which of course includes Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs. In my mind this song is both the true ending and end credits music of Red Dead 2. Arthur sees the face of Christ in a lightning bolt and abandons his life of crime and sin, pleading with the lord to forgive him and then God kills a hundred cows with another lightning bolt just to make damn sure Arthur knows He's serious.

Saga Of The Ponderosa - Lorne Green: I was hanging out with my old housemate a few weeks ago and it turns out we were both having concurrent Marty Robbins cowboy music phases which was great news because then he turned me onto this album by Lorne Green who was on Bonanza and apparently took it upon himself to expand the Bonanaza Cinematic Universe in the 60s with a few albums. This song is apparently an origin story of Bonanza which I have never seen. It's extremely good, very powerful music. Great story of this godlike man striding across the country and overriding his wife's decision by naming his son HOSS.

Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder: I think it's interesting in A Star Is Born that Jackson Maine doesn't seem to be a real life equivalent of any actual musician. He's not obviously an archetype of any real person and so it's hard to place how exactly famous he is in the world of the movie. He's washed up enough to be playing pharmaceutical conferences but still has enough industry respect to be playing a tribute at the Grammys. The closest I could think of was Eddie Vedder oddly enough, and this song from the Into The Wild soundtrack really does sound like a Jackson Maine original.

For Chan - Tim Heideker: I'm having a real thing with comedy music recently and I can't tell if it means I've got a brain parasite or comedy music is good to me now. I think what I like about this song is the bluntness. There's no two ways about these people, and after years of hearing about the alt right as mysterious political genius computer brains it's a nice break to just hear them called greasy fat basement guys like we used to.

That's Right I'm Five - Don't Stop Or We'll Die: More good comedy music! They played this song on Comedy Bang Bang without announcing what it was called first, so the chorus really surprised me and made me laugh a lot. "They're selling the stocks so buy them, launch the torpedoes, tell my wife I love her, and send my son to college, bury me in the desert in my osh kosh b'gosh - that's right I'm five!" might be my favourite lyric of the year.

Future Brain - Den Harrow: Den Harrow is very good. He's like a beautiful moron American man that some italian scientists built in a lab in order to conquer America from the inside. Here are some good highlights from his wiki article: "The name Den Harrow was conceived by producers Roberto Turatti and Miki Chieregato, who based it on the Italian word denaro(money)." "After years of fame and popularity, it was revealed by frontman Stefano Zandri and his producers that Zandri did not actually sing the Den Harrow songs; he was essentially a character who lip-synched to vocals recorded by a number of other singers. Furthermore, since they did not consider Zandri's name and origin to be "trendy" enough, the producers R. Turatti and M. Chieregato concealed Zandri's Italian origin, marketing him as having been born Manuel Stefano Carry in Boston. This was done so Polydor Records could market him more easily in the English-speaking world, where Italian-produced music was, at the time, viewed with skepticism"

Love A Girl Right - Little Mix: Check out this rewrite of the Thong Song they did for the new Little Mix album. It's beyond belief. My girlfriend loves Little Mix and she's right to because they're the only girl/boy band that actually takes advantage of the form and does harmonies instead of just having them all sing in turn or all at once. They've got good vocal arrangements but they have the worst fucking songwriters working for them. Songwriters that pitch 'what if the Thong Song had a crunchy nu-metal guitar in it'.

This City Made Us - The Protomen: It's interesting to hear a band change styles - most other Protomen songs are a sort of Springsteen pastiche but this one from their newer single is more like Iron Maiden or Thin Lizzy. Approaching the 80s from a different angle. It's impressive to switch so radically and still have enough of a unifying sound that it feels like the same band. 80s throwback rock is a generally pallid genre populated by freaks who can't move on but Protomen put so much heart into it it's hard to write them off.

Teardrops - Womack & Womack: I love this song because it has two choruses. The drums stay the same throughout, the chords stay the same through the verse and chorus and only change for the second chorus/bridge part ("the music don't feel like it did when I felt it with you"), which just gives the whole song this feeling of beautiful endlessness. It goes and goes and goes and you're always already living in the best part of the song.

Boys Will Be Boys - The Duncan Sisters: Very very good piece of disco with a very nice piece of country picking guitar near the start for some reason. I quit like that the chorus of 'boys, oh boys, will be boys - they can really hurt you!' goes from a lighthearted thing about relationships until the bridge near the end where it sounds more like a dire warning. She's staring straight into your eyes and saying 'they can hurt you. boys can hurt you. they can really hurt you.' while motioning toward the exit with her eyes. 

Ayaya - Bicep: I've been trying to train my ear a bit better so I got a piano app on my phone and I just try to pick out the melodies of songs now when I'm bored. It turns out this is a very satisfying song to play. The melody is very simple, but the constant build and the couple of other melodies that come in around it make you feel like a super genius for just playing the same thing over and over.

The Call - David Mayer: I completely forget how I came across this song but I'm in love with the vocals on it. The effect reminds me of the one on Problem With The Sun by Nicolas Jaar, sort of pitched down and layered over itself. Outside of the vocals it's a pretty straightforward euro house chunk but damn sometimes a song just has a really good sound in it that you can't deny.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: My girlfriend's brother was telling me he was riding his bike the other day and had some kind of mental break where he was riding north in the afternoon but the sun was on his right, in the east - and for some reason his first instinct wasn't that he was wrong or disoriented, it was that there was a problem with the sun and it was in the wrong place. That boy ain't right but this song is good. I love that Nicolas Jaar uses this weird down pitched voice on a few songs and I really wish he'd bring it back, it sounds great and also funny to me.

Ensaslayi - Cecil Taylor: I don't have the brain power to comprehend any of Cecil Taylor's ensemble work that I've heard, free jazz in a band setting is simply too much for me it turns out -but I've really been getting a lot out of this solo album of his called Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!. This song in particular is one of the longer ones on the album, where another is only 53 seconds long and a few last around ten minutes. This is a nice midpoint, where he gives himself so much room to get lost in different directions without losing the thread entirely. I said it last time I was talking about him but I've really never heard anyone play piano like this and I absolutely love it. A lot of reviewers describe it as him playing the piano like it's a drumkit, which I think is accurate to a degree - but I think looking back from here this music makes a lot more sense within the context of black midi and things like that. The extreme edges of what a piano can theoretically do, but with a decisive and beautiful human edge and human brain that's responsible for and making sense of the chaos.

The Homeless Wanderer - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: I found out about this album cause Benjamin Booker was posting about her on his instagram story and it's just incredible. The TL;DR of her story is she's an Ethiopian nun that studied music in Switzerland and Cairo and wrote this beautiful piano music based on traditional Ethiopian pentatonic music. I love the rhythm of it, every note in the right hand get swirled around and around before it's settled on while the left hand moves so smoothly and delicately. Unfortunately-ish she's obviously in that genre of Searching For Sugarman secret blog music evidenced by her spotify similar artists being Karen Dalton, Alice Coltrane and Connie Converse. That's not a bad thing exactly, at least people are hearing about her, but her music is unique and amazing enough on its own without needing much mythologizing.

Carnival Of The Animals: No 12 - Fossils - Camille Saint-Saëns: My girlfriend was showing me Saint-Saëns' The Swan and then we were going through the whole rest of the Carnival Of The Animals and I'm happy to report that he not only did he do one for fossils but also centered it around the idea of a bone xylophone. I'm going to write an article for Vulture tracing the origin of the cartoon bone xylophone and my thesis is it starts here.

Perth - Bon Iver: Just thinking about how good Bon Iver is. I love how massive this song can feel, the drums combined with the big brass. It's small and soft on the grand scale, but on an album that gets as quiet and soft as songs like Holocene this song blows up like an atom bomb.

Yet Again - Grizzly Bear: This really is one of the best songs of all time I've decided. It feels like I get into a thing of listening to it on repeat almost every month now. I don't know what it is exactly - I guess it's every part of it. The lyrics are impenetrable (check) the riff is simple and powerful (check) the drums are doing a lot and keeping it simple at the same time. The the way the harmony vocals all intertwine in the prechorus part is amazing. The way the whole song blows up into a big radio static solo at the end. Every part of this song is great, I just love it.

Fuckin N' Rollin - Phantastic Ferniture: I found out that Julia Jacklin has a side project with a very shit name and they make very good music. I love when people have a whole other band for another side of their self. This is just Julia Jacklin if the lyrics were just first draft whatevers instead of incredibly poignant and beautiful and the music was just rockin and rollin with your friends. It's great!

Soft - Kings Of Leon: Number one best song ever about havin a bad dick!! I'd love to hang out lady but my dick! I'm passed out in your garden, I'm in I can't get off I'm so soft! I'd pop myself in you body, I'd come into your party but I'm soft!

Soft Serve - Soul Coughing: I played this while I was driving with my girlfriend and she said 'what the fuck is this' and she's right, as usual. It's Soul Coughing baby! The 90s 'slacker jazz' band! They sound dated as fuck, a real product of their time but I think they've still got a lot to offer. I had the chorus of this stuck in my head for a couple days which made me listen to this album more than usual when I mostly prefer their first one Ruby Vroom. Irresistible Bliss might have the worst album cover of all time though, so it's got that going for it. Google it.

Ya Mama - Wuf Ticket: There wiki article for this band says they had two songs in 1982 and that was it. Then it has a section titled Greaseman and then the article ends. Here's the Greaseman section in its entirety: "Wuf Ticket's “Ya Mama” achieved its greatest notoriety, and airplay, as a music bed for bits by shock jock The Greaseman on WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C. and later his nationally syndicated radio show where Greaseman would argue with a surly service industry worker." Anyway this is more of that very good early hip hop shit where everyone assumed songs should go for 8 minutes. It's just extremely weak sauce Ya Mama jokes for a very long time before they change tack completely and start talking about how Every Woman Is An Angel And Without Mothers We Would Never Have Been Born So Think About That Next Time.

Gon Be Okay - Lil B: I had the part of this song where he sings 'things are never gonna be the same again' along with the piano in my head the other day and spent fully an hour googling to try to find what song it was from before giving up. I woke up the next morning and suddenly remembered it was this song but was very shocked to find out that he actually never sings that line along with the piano melody, he says it once at the start and that's it. What's going on with my brain. Anyway in my searching I found out that the piano is sampled from the Spirited Away soundtrack so once more in my life I've been led to ruin by anime.

2 Minute Drills - Allblack & Kenny Beats: This whole EP is great. More sports themed rap please. Allblack is ferocious and Kenny's production throughout is great, the perfect mix of simple straighforward beats that still have a lot of space and energy in them, plus 'Woah Kenny!' has my award for Best New Producer Watermark.

Don't Gas Me - Dizzee Rascal: I don't know how he keeps doing it but somehow Dizzee Rascal continues to make extremely fun bangers without ever slowing down. The best line in this is when he says "no I don't drink Appletiser" (the sparkling apple juice) which is an extremely weird flex if there ever was one.

Acid King - Malibu Ken: It feels insane that a Tobacco and Aesop Rock collab sounds as good as this. I love that there's no drums the entire time he's rapping and I completely love the Mort Garson vibes in the instrumental which turns out to be a perfect soundtrack to the Ricky Kasso satan worship LSD murder story that Aesop's telling. Also in reading about Kasso I just discovered the very good stoner doom band also named Acid King, so expect to see them in next month's list.

Pirate Blues - As Cities Burn: As Cities Burn have reformed and put out a new single so I've been thinking about them a bit. On paper they don't sound good, over three albums they morphed from a christian metalcore band to a christian alt-rock band, and while they never reinvented the wheel I think they're a remarkable band who took a lot of risks in their own way and made a lot of rock solid music. They've got a lot of great songs but I think this is my favourite from their third album when it finally felt like they'd settled into a steady alt rock sound informed by their much heavier past.

This Is It, This Is It - As Cities Burn: The thing I like about As Cities Burn is that as much as they're a christian band (yuck) they're more of a band of guys who are christians (slightly less yuck) and the difference is huge. Rather than evangelising or preaching, their songs are about their own personal struggles with their faith (still slightly yuck). I like this song especially because the lyric feels close to gospel, 'we're all singing for our sins, unless grace be the wind' but with the added twist of being furious that you're trapped by the sin of your physical body.

Timothy - As Cities Burn: I think this song is just incredible. The lyrics are so strong and direct and heartbreaking, the vocal performance especially is amazing and it may be the only time in history that a 6 minute guitar solo has seemed good and necessary.

Face Tat - Zach Hill: There's an incredible video of the recording of this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGi9SOFX5rc that really looks exactly how it sounds and has a very similar energy to that video of 80 guys singing the halo theme in the boys bathroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRG9KwvbVhk . This is what it sounds like when the boys are left alone. The biggest draw to Zach Hill's drumming is the intense primordial immediacy of it. He is just pounding away like a possessed animal and it's really on show here, especially combined with the occasional punctuating shout. Carson McWhirter's guitar is incredible too, the tone he's got where it sounds like three at once playing these incredible twisting riffs that turn on a dime. I think what I like most about this song is just how in sync they are - for such a chaotic, noisy song it sounds so rehearsed, somehow every single note is perfectly in time in the storm.

Betty's Worry Or The Slab - Hunters And Collectors: This is maybe the sweatiest song I've ever heard. It's a disgusting song about being incredibly sweaty and horny and I love the weird squeaky noise he makes after he says 'say it! say it!'. The bass sound in this is so fantastically meaty too, and combined with the brass at the end it's just great.

Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull (live) - Refused: I cannot believe just how absolutely ferocious live Refused is. Insanely powerful without ever missing a beat in a song like this that requires incredible timing throughout. For some reason I've always thought Refused were an only ok live band after watching Refused Are Fucking Dead because all I remember of it is a clip where the guitarist accidentally hits the singer in the face with his headstock and they have to stop the show.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: I got to see Bell Witch live a couple of weeks ago and it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. I can't really describe it other than it feels like the closest thing to a legitimate summoning ritual that I've ever seen. An invocation and an expelling of raw power and emotion between two people, it was really something. Also the best part was about two minutes in when they were really setting the scene with the sort of ambient beginning of Mirror Reaper and the whole crowd was dead silent and entranced as they built this mystic atmosphere and set the vibe a guy behind me said loudly to his friend 'hm pretty good so far!'

What's You Gonna Do When The World's On Fire - Lead Belly & Anne Graham: This is in my opinion the best genre of gospel song where they they just roast you for not being saved yet.​ 

listen here

[junker-town]

The best and worst of the 2021 MLS kits

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We have some good, some bad, and a lot of ugly.

With the dawn of a new MLS season comes the promise of new beginnings and new opportunities. New fans can discover the game for the first time, new memories and magical moments will be made, all of them with the crest of your team donning the athletes.

Since 2005, Adidas, one of the biggest names in global soccer apparel, has been outfitting each MLS team with their jerseys. The investment Adidas has made in the North American game has had a significant impact on the growth of the sport in the U.S. After signing on, Adidas’s reputation in America grew and their array of products have dazzled fans from the beginning.

Which is why we have been confused and disappointed by Adidas over the past few years.

What we have seen is that for some reason, Adidas has decided to recycle old templates from their European clients and dump them to MLS. Beyond that, there have been a slew of white away jerseys that seem to never end.

Last season, teams like Houston, Minnesota, Nashville, NYCFC, and New York Red Bulls launched away kits that didn’t use a white base. However, with the addition of the white home kit for LA Galaxy, the teams in Atlanta, Portland, San Jose and Orlando got the white washed treatment (with Montreal and Toronto getting a white adjacent treatment in gray).

This trend was immediately noticed. Fans were not happy with the results. With Adidas feeling the pressure, the company announced their intentions to launch less white jerseys this year, and explore alternative away jersey colors.

Well if Adidas’s goal was to cut down on white-looking shirts, they failed.

Despite their promise, Adidas released seven new jerseys using either grey or white, bringing the number of jerseys using those colors up to 14.

Some of the white jerseys are not bad. Some teams, like in the case of NYRB or LA Galaxy, use white in their traditional home kit. But this is a continuing problem that we - and many other MLS fans - have noticed. There seems to be a consistent lack of desire for creativity among MLS kits. If it was there, then we wouldn’t be seeing re-used templates, the same colors, or jerseys that look like they slapped logos on t-shirts.

We want to see Adidas do better. We hope Adidas does better. Otherwise, we hope MLS goes to a new model of letting each club sign their own contracts with kit suppliers. We might finally get some diverse and exciting results that way.

With that being said, we’ve compiled a tier list of the best and worst kits in MLS. Here’s what each tier represents:

The BEST: pretty self explanatory, the best kit made this year

A: among the best kits in the league, deserving of full acclaim

B: a unique, creative effort was put forth and seemed to have payed off

C: Kits that are creative and bold, but seem to be missing something

D: Either the details added don’t work, there’s something missing, it’s bland or all of the above

Delete This: The most bland and uninspired kits of the bunch

And while they are clustered in tiers, these are ranked from our favorites to least favorites in order.

Let’s plunge right into this starting at the top.

The Best: LA Galaxy away

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This shirt managed to make Adidas’s horrible, stupid, no good, very bad shoulder stripe template look like a part of the shirt that’s meant to be there. That in itself is commendable, but mix in the color combination and the gold tracing the stripes and you have a classic, which is very rare to do in MLS.

A Tier

FC Cincinnati home

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The alternating blue and orange pinstripes atop a base of deep blue is a really solid look. It doesn’t have the gorgeous color combo of the Galaxy kit, but it does manage to also incorporate the template elements well, and in a way that actually complements the overall design.

Vancouver Whitecaps FC away

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Yes, we did go on a rant about how we dislike the white away kits. However, in this case, Vancouver’s white away kit is a classic and a throwback to an original Whitecaps jersey. The logo that fits perfectly in that blue band in the middle, the sleeves with great cuffs, and the clean collar wrap up this kit which should just be Vancouver’s permanent jersey.

B Tier

New York City FC home

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This one has grown on us from the beginning. The mini NYC’s in the stripes seemed tacky at first, but after sitting on it for a while, we’ve grown to love them. Add to it the solid white accents and this is a kit fans of The Pigeons should be proud of.

Seattle Sounders FC away

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We allowed ourselves one rant each in an effort to cut down on how long this article was and while we both thought this was a good kit, one of us had an especially strong opinion: “I was fine with this kit being wacky and fun before I saw the release video linking it to Jimi Hendrix. If you’re gonna do a legend, do a legend right. And to me, linking this to Jimi Hendrix, whose style and flair is so much more extravagant than this kit, ruined it for me. If it was called the ‘Purple Haze’ kit, I’d feel better, but they didn’t, and so I must protect Jimi because such a legend deserves better.”

Toronto FC home

In this list, we decided to reward teams that had creative elements that worked well together. Considering Toronto’s away kit has stripes that are similar to this one, we put this in the B tier. Fitting the theme works well for TFC and overall, this kit is one that stands out.

C Tier

Orlando City SC Home

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All in all, this is not a bad shirt. We’re not massive fans of gradients unless there’s a design element used to assist the transition and this kit accomplishes that. It’s not fancy or a classic, but it’s still good. The main question we have is why the MLS logo is on both sleeves. While this is a great kit, it’s nothing compared to the effort released by their NWSL sister club, Orlando Pride SC (also, yes, NWSL jerseys being better will be a common and accurate theme on this list):

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CF Montreal home

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We can debate the rebrand and take points off for it (we will later), but not on this kit. It’s clean, the accents are nice, and the sublimated club logo is bold enough that viewers at home will most likely be able to see it. However, they lose points here for the lack of blue which we’ve come to expect from previous Montreal Impact kits.

Chicago Fire away

It’s a good kit. As ugly as the Fire crest is, the monocolor badge doesn’t look nearly as bad here. The sublimated Chicago stars are a fantastic idea and addition, but they lack red. In fact, this whole kit is sorely missing the color red. Therefore, it’s only the second best soccer kit in Chicago. If you want to see a Chicago flag kit done right, look at the NWSL’s Red Stars:

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Portland Timbers FC home

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We both really liked the promise this jersey brought, but thought they messed up the execution. The stitch motif down the middle is unique, but the too-chunky collar disrupts it. We also found it weird to include dark green on half the front of the kit, but not on the sleeves. If this went back to the drawing board, we think it’d be a B at minimum.

Atlanta United FC home

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This one reminds us of the time Inter Milan decided to ditch their iconic blue and black stripes for a black kit and light blue pinstripes around it. The Five Stripes stuck to their nickname as close as you could, and while this is a great shirt, it seems like it would be much better served as a third kit.

Philadelphia Union away

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It’s...unique. The design is wild and gives us 90’s flashbacks. The color of blue and lightning bolt design is wacky in a fun way. However, a darker shade of yellow would have improved this jersey a lot because we can barely see the stripes, league logo, club badge and sponsor in these pictures. We can’t imagine how invisible they will look during a day game.

Chicago Fire home

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This shirt makes us sad because they were so close! Imagine just one other complementary design element laid on this shirt. Even a thin red cheesy oversized outline of a flame would have made this shirt so much better given that the base design is so solid.

D Tier

FC Dallas away

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This seems eerily reminiscent of Chelsea’s away kit from this season in terms of the pattern. It’s missing solid red elements we’ve come to expect from FC Dallas. But the one major detractor has to be the size of the MTX logo on the front. It just seems way too big and makes this feel tacky.

Real Salt Lake away

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This kit gets a few things right: the red monocolor crest, the red Adidas logo, the red MLS logo, and even the red on the sleeves. The blue sponsor and shoulder stripes look good as well. However, we think it’d be hard for a viewing audience to see the designs and adding a red outline to the sublimated graphics would have helped. Did we mention we liked the red in this kit?

Sporting Kansas City away

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This kit gives us the same vibes as this year’s West Ham United away kit. If we’re being honest, it just seems like something is missing. If some small piping stripes in either white or silver were at the top and bottom of the navy bands here, we think SKC has a much better kit.

Nashville SC away

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We liked these initially when it appeared to be black and yellow, but once we noticed it was navy our shoulders slumped. Navy and yellow is a wonderful color combination, but navy so navy it looks black doesn’t lend itself to that classic palette. If the navy was more vivid, this shirt would have been very high up the list, but instead it’s this, which is bad – therefore it’s bad.

New York Red Bulls home

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The problem with every Red Bull team’s shirt is that the logos are so massive, so intense and such a striking contrast of colors that it’s becoming difficult for any of their teams to have a decent shirt. This jersey is no exception. The base is much too simple and doesn’t include design elements that complement the kit. Also, the small Red Bull logo in the crest just above the big Red Bulls logo is goofy and unnecessary. If you’re going to be your own team and sponsor, please find a way to be more creative.

Austin FC home

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A club in its inaugural year should come in much stronger than this. It’s your first season, capitalizing on that energy and giving your supporters a dope shirt is important. It’s unlikely you’re going to have much more success beyond that, so it’s really disappointing to start the season with a non-memorable shirt. (Side note: Again, another team outdone by the NWSL. Racing Louisville is a new NWSL expansion team and dropped this beauty.)

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Minnesota United FC home

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This is how our conversation went for this jersey:

“I feel nothing toward this kit. It’s not ugly, it just seems like a light blue adidas shirt. D tier.”

“Yep, I’m good with that.”

~End of conversation~

Colorado Rapids away

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This kit has a lot of unique design elements. Unfortunately, no one will see them in action on the field and they are hard to notice if you don’t buy the jersey. The kit is a light green color (but it looks white) and you can barely notice the silver star above the crest. The biggest disappointment is the really cool embedded topographical line design paying homage to some of the high peaks of Colorado. Sadly, it’s the same color as the kit so you won’t be able to see it on your screen. For a look at a better crack at this idea, look at Kelme’s effort on the away kit for Spanish side SD Huesca.

D.C. United away

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Obnoxiously patriotic symbolism. DC is more vivid and interesting than cheap American iconography. The marble pattern is much too light and the red, white and blue is annoying. It looks too similar to the current US National Team jersey. DC, real DC, is a magnificent place, and we swear to God if DC doesn’t give us a Cherry Blossom shirt we’re gonna go mad.

Delete This Tier

Houston Dynamo FC home

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This shirt is actually fine. Perfectly fine. It’s OK. It’s not disgustingly memorable, or classically memorable. It’ll be forgotten as soon as the team stops wearing it and moves onto something else. But for now, today, it’s fine. I’m not sure that’s what they were going for but it’s difficult to see any other intent given the extreme lack of, anything. (Once again, a MLS team outdone by an NWSL counterpart. They look similar, but there’s no sublimated graphic for the Dynamo. Meanwhile, the Dash have this cool hexagon pattern)

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San Jose Earthquakes home

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We like the collar and the cuffs of the sleeves. Even the sponsor logo seems like a good size and a good color. But outside of that, we see nothing but a light blue t-shirt. We get that it’s your home kit, but you couldn’t have added anything else to it?

CF Montreal away

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Yes, this is the same kit as last year. Yes, we didn’t like it then. But, this is where we punish CF Montreal for their rebrand. It seems unnecessary to blow up a well established brand for the sake of making things more European. The Impact had a unique name and a fanbase that loved it. It’s sad to see it go. Also, if you’re going full rebrand, then Adidas should’ve given you a new away kit - so this ranking is as much on them as it is on CFM.

Los Angeles FC away

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LAFC’s Roma impression is hilarious. Like that old meme of a woman trying to hair flip rising out of water:

The base color is much less in the vintage category and extremely in the dirty socks category.

Inter Miami CF away

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Fashion icon David Beckham continues to be disappointing in an area in which he should never be disappointing. Not only is the kit bland and basic, and the Miami design is hidden in black, but it’s not Miami at all! The biggest problem here is that anyone who has never been to Miami could produce a more Miami shirt, and that is embarrassing. ADD. MORE. PINK.

Austin FC away

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See Austin’s other kit, but also the worst thing you can do is make no effort and sell a shirt at MLS shirt prices anyway. If you want to buy this shirt with a name and number on the back you’re going to pay $119.99, and that’s just criminal.

Columbus Crew SC away

This shirt is so bad it’s funny. It makes no sense and it’s hideous. The best part of this kit is that it’s just the setup to the punchline: the full kit.

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The Worst: New England Revolution away

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Cue the other rant:

“This has to be one of the most lazy and confused kits I have ever seen - made worse by the descriptions of the design elements. I’m from New England, and a lot of these design elements don’t make any sense at all.

“The one positive comes from dedicating the jersey to “The Fort”, a supporters section of the Revolution at Gillette Stadium. A logo on the lower left side lists the sections the group stands in, and overall, that’s the most unique thing about this jersey.

“The description of the design elements say the stripes on the shoulders represent “the colors of the water and the sky that surround the war-era forts throughout New England” and the lines on the main body of the kit represent “the blockwork of American Revolution Era war forts.”

“So let’s tackle each of these. The colors on this kit are confusing. While they claim the left shoulder stripes are navy, it looks closer to black in multiple pictures. In addition, the club crest and Adidas logo look black, leaving the United Healthcare sponsorship as the only navy thing on the jersey. As for the light blue, the messaging is wrong if they think that’s representative of the sea. The waters of New England are not that light. If it’s representative of the sky, they got that wrong too. The skies of New England are not turquoise.

“But, more importantly, the line design on the shirt itself doesn’t represent what they aimed for. A majority of the major forts in New England left over from the Revolutionary War are either: a) made of wood, not stone blockwork or b) pentagonal in shape, not square.

“All of this is just distraction from the main problem with this kit: it’s a template. The design is taken directly from the kit Spain will wear to the Euros in 2021.

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“Overall, this kit is a representation of everything wrong with Adidas’s MLS kit rollouts. The Revs deserve better.”

Finally, here’s our full tier list visualized:

Let us know what you think! Were we right? Were we wrong? Did we put too many in the C, D, and Delete This column? Leave a comment down below.

[tristenchan42]

Mega Throwback Thursday: Seven Days and No FB Unlock!

Seven days have passed, and my FB is still locked since April Fool's Day. I was too foolish, and that's how I got locked up virtually.

I was mentally deranged, and I underestimated myself.

I promise that I will never make the same mistake again!

Now, where were we?

Oh, it's been about 20 years since 9/11, but we'll get to the dreaded 20th anniversary of the attack later, as it's too shocking to share here.

So instead, let's look back at the good times of the Among Us shenanigans. On the formerly live YouTube streams like this, Virtual YouTubers like Kiara Takanashi squared off to survive the maintenance session or jeopardize the mission of the crew. Among Us is a social deduction game, now with a new airship map. This game is based on the other social deduction games of the past like Town of Salem, which is also based on the traditional board game called "Werewolf". Among Us is different, and the rules are self-explanatory, if the players know the rules already.

Speaking of which, Kiara Takanashi is a phoenix, and KFP is part of the lore about her. She's no chicken. She is known to resurrect herself several times, which is obvious for a phoenix in human form. She is a Hololive-EN member, which is a member of the group of English-speakers, whose voices actresses are known to speak English.

However, it is known, according to the bestiary, that phoenixes can only resurrect themselves annually as long as there are no evils around their ashes. Phoenixes are an endangered species on Mystara. They must live. No disintegrations.

Spoiler Alert: Kiara is always innocent in her Among Us Collab stream; good alignment confirmed.

Not in the mood for Among Us this time?

As the YouTubers and the social media mourn the loss of Mario, and played by the after-anniversary prank that ultimately led to some locked-up FB accounts, it is realized that the video character did not die for real. He is still alive and permanently preserved in your copy of Super Mario 3D All-Stars that you should already have purchased in time before the event ended by the end of last month. You would have an opportunity to relive the memory of the famed Super Mario 64 game with updated graphics, bug fixes, and text.

And, as I know, there is no Wario Apparition.

There is no Fourth Floor.

There is no Luigi (unless you count him and Wario as additional playable characters in the DS version of Super Mario 64).

There should be no intolerable glitches (and no weird out-of-the-norm courses) as some scary glitches are made up by the YouTubers who pretended they did the research on the beta builds (which by evidence, the beta builds are buggy and the game was yet to be finished with the art being updated and finalized in time, and should not be played, as I know honestly).

There is only Mario, and the three-floor castle, with Toads, paintings, and stars, and Mario heads in the castle to save Peach from Bowser on the third floor. There is no Fourth Floor, and Wario's just a rival who treats Bowser with the same disrespect. Wario's not interested in woman-peaches; Wario is only interested in big cold-hard cash, like precious gems and treasures like from some ancient pagan pyramid.

If I were to come up with a Creepypasta involving the DS version of SM64, I would write stories about a mysterious renegade Pokémon that haunts the castle as soon as it enters the castle through the portal and began making scary use of its Shadow Force.

Hell's Kitchen is tonight, and East coast viewers might have missed it dearly. It's the final pre-finale dinner service of the season. Last week, Amber's failure to shine showed in her poor performance on the fish station and she's eliminated. Tonight, the quarterfinalists feed the clubbers in an unexpected morning club service, followed by a restlessly explosive dinner service when the cooks are doing their worst not to lose as they watch their backs trying to prevent each other from sabotaging each other's progress. They need to work as a team, but in the end, someone must be laid off, because the master is looking for someone to lead a brigade at the newest HK attraction at Lake Tahoe. Speaking of which, I advise not to pay it a visit just yet because of the encroaching pandemic that is still infecting people lung-to-lung.

Anyway, good night, and don't let that virus kill you in the lungs. I must live, but I want you to live, regardless of race, religion, etc.

[cadenthouseofcastiel-blog]

(OOC) Why I Didn’t Kill Myself

I have not had a very fantastic 20 years, but no matter how I pull them apart and branch off different possibilities as if my life could be simplified to an inconsequential choose your own adventure story, there’s no way I would change what has happened. After a long chat with my sister (nearly 3 hours, like holy shit, how do I even have enough to talk about), I realized that while there are some ideals I would love to have in life, I would hate the reality that I would receive. Sure, I wish my Mom was alive to see important milestones and to be able to run to when everything just seemed to much, but the reality is that it never would be that simple, cookie cutter deal- that wasn’t who my Mom was. And yeah I’m going through what feels like Hell because it’s a God damn throwback Thursday in the worst way. What’s happened recently has brought up a lot of painful memories that I had hoped were buried and in the past, but nothing ever stays that way I suppose.

I confessed to my sister that I have no idea what the Hell I’m doing and that I don’t know why or appreciate that things have gone the way they do. I know that everything has been my decision- rash or not- and that if I’m not where I wanna be, then it’s on me. But she pointed out that over the 20 years I’ve been alive, I’ve been through more than most people have to deal with in their entire life course, between losing both my parents after having been in a beyond broken home, losing my closest in age sister to suicide, and numerous other things (some of which I still haven’t told and I don’t want to if I don’t have to). I try to take that in consideration, but that doesn’t always mean anything. At my age, some of this shit shouldn’t be such a huge thing, but it is. Everything just seems so overwhelming and I would love to just be able to just duck out of life for awhile and just come back to it whenever I’m ready to deal with whatever bullshit it wants to throw at me next, but that’s not how it works.

I admit I had my time today where I shut my phone off for like three hours after my now ex-boyfriend came and got what I believe is the last of his stuff and I just let it all hit me. He’s gone, what we had is gone, and I’m alone, again. Then came the flood- how the Hell am I supposed to deal with all these bills, with having almost no possessions down here, having a pet to take care of on my own, whether I can stay where I am or do I need to find somewhere else... I damn near bottomed out. I laid in bed, curled up in a ball, feeling so hurt and lost that I couldn’t even muster up the tears to shed over my ridiculous situation. I was messaging people before and after so that no one would hunt me down and give me the are you okay bullshit because no, I’m not okay- I am far from okay. 

All my life people have asked that question and asked for an honest answer and if I gave that honest answer, they would have me committed. There’s a reason for that. I would have to admit that while I laid in bed for those three hours, dozing on and off because I’m physically, emotionally, and mentally beyond exhausted, I contemplated taking that glass cup out from the book shelf next to my bed, shattering it and then stepping on the jagged pieces until one found just the right vein or artery to splice open. Then I could just lay down and slowly bleed to death, a quiet peaceful passing. I would have to explain that the only reason I didn’t act on that plan is because the survival rate is too high. My roommate or someone would likely find me and take me to the ER and then I’m stuck with a huge bill that I’ll pay off when I’m dead because then I’d have to take time off from work to recover and wouldn’t have the money and then the debt collectors would come and I’d be fucked. I don’t want to go back to the behavioral health ward because it’s not going to help otherwise I would’ve had a bigger turn around than I did- I’ve relapsed several times since that week on the ward when I was a junior in high school. 

With that in mind, I still have that part of my conscience that pipes up and says, ‘Hey, what the fuck are you thinking trying to end your life when your sister did that to you and everyone else? Where do you get off thinking it’s okay to pull the same bullshit and getting different results? News flash, you’ve become close with so many people in so many places that you would pretty literally cause world wide grief. Can you even begin to deal with that?’ The answer is no, I can’t even begin to deal with that. As it stands now, my niece will one day too soon have to go through the uncomfortable and scary talk of why she never met Aunt Sammy because Aunt Sammy put a bullet in her brain and I don’t like the thought of being that second story of her never having time with Aunt Lizzy because she cut open her artery and bled to death and it was a huge debate for a long time whether it was an accident or not because of how she died. Then there’s all of you who barely know me and somehow you’ve come to see me as a very close friend if not family. Given that I view you all as family, I can’t hurt you like that, partly because I would have no way to let you all know what I’d done and why because I would be in the midst of dying. But the bigger reason is that it’s not something you burden your loved ones with because whether or not anyone realizes this, you are burdening your loved ones when you commit suicide because they are forever saddled with survivor’s guilt (which is a legitimate thing, it’s taught in psychology and therapists will even diagnose it). 

So today, I almost took that final leap, but instead, I thought of all of you and realized that I couldn’t hurt you or anyone else by killing myself. I don’t want any of you to suffer because I made a dumb decision while I was going through some shit that would eventually be a drop in the ocean in the long run.

I am sorry to anyone I might have scared, worried or anything along those lines. I didn’t mean to stress you like that and hopefully you’ll forgive me. I’m still not in good shape, but I’m a tiny bit better than before. I have a few people to thank for that: My sister, 

@hellagayangelofthelord  @deanismyvessel @hellasarcasticdemonfromhell @driver-picks-the-music-67 @666crowley-king-of-hell666 and even my ex and his mother, who have both been checking in on me to make sure I’m okay because they know just how hard things have been and how much I gave up to try and start a new chapter here with them.

So thank you to all of you, even those of you who didn’t know that I was going through this. It was a nice distraction to be able to glance through your posts and try to forget that things aren’t even close to decent. Thank you again and here’s some lyrics to a song that helped me get through today:

“ I am sorry this is always how it goes The wind blows loudest when you've got your eyes closed But I never changed a single colour that I breathe So you could have tried to take a closer look at me I am tired of punching in the wind I am tired of letting it all in And I should eat you up and spit you right out I should not care but I don't know how...

I am sorry for the trouble, I suppose My blood runs red but my body feels so cold I guess I could swim for days in the salty sea But in the end the waves will discolour me...

So I take off my face 'Cause it reminds me how it all went wrong And I pull out my tongue 'Cause it reminds me how it all went wrong

And I cough up my lungs

'Cause they remind me how it all went wrong

But I leave in my heart 'Cause I don't want to stay in the dark...”

- Of Monsters and Men, “Organs”

[1-dollar-cd-sale-reviews]

Zebrahead - Waste of Mind (1998)

Zebrahead is a band I’m very vaguely familiar with. I only know them from two things - the song “His World” from Sonic 06, and a full-length music video of theirs that got picked up as a Youtube ad a couple years ago. I’m not a big fan of rap rock, or punk rap in this case, and I kind of expected some decent bro music at best. I picked it up as a joke, and I was ready to cringe - I tend not to take song titles like Bootylicious Vinyl seriously.

But I ended up enjoying this album more than I thought I would. For one, while the band’s style is “punk rap”, this album also has a bit of dub influence - as far as punk goes, I think there’s a healthy dollop of ska and dub influence in there, as is characteristic of third-wave punk music. Because of that, there are some tracks on this album that took me completely by surprise.

My expectations, as I so eloquently wrote in my review notes, were as follows: “I think this is going to be an album of righeous punk-rap jams, and I'm probably going to cringe a whole lot”. The first half of this statement held up - the first track, Check, instantly confirmed my suspicions. This song and Get Back are pretty standard pop-punk numbers, with Check utilizing faster rapping and Get Back balancing the late-90′s bro jams with the lyrics.

The Real Me was the first track to really stand out to me. It has a more chill, bouncy vibe to it - the chorus features the same guitar style as the first two songs, but the vocals are harmonised. It’s a much softer jam, and it reminds me a lot of the sort of music my friend really likes to listen to. The song only does one thing wrong, and that’s the repetition of the words “and I get mine, and I get mine, and I get mine” etc. that leads into the chorus.

The tracks I didn’t like reminded me of knock-off Blink-182 songs - this label applies wholeheartedly to the song “Someday”. It’s about being in school and hating it, and liking an attractive girl that’s way out of your league. There’s a select handful of songs I’m down with that utilises this trope, but I can count them on one hand - I hate when premises like this crop up in music. It’s been done. And the fact that it’s all being rapped just sours the song further for me.

Someday is my least favorite song for that reason. There are a few tracks I didn’t like so much, or just sort of sat through - Walk Away would be completely forgettable if there wasn’t a dub part that comes out of nowhere, and Swing is just completely forgettable. There’s also a song called Feel This Way that has a really annoying call-and-response sort of gimmick to the lyrics, though the chorus was pretty good - the band is really good at harmonising on the handful of occasions they add harmonised vocals. Someday is the only song I can really say I disliked - otherwise, the worst thing I can say is that a lot of the choruses sound like completely standard pop-punk from the late 90′s/early 00′s.

The titular track, Waste of Mind, gave me a bit of a Red Hot Chilli Peppers vibe. Not too much, the weird discordant guitar notes playing on the right audio channel aren’t very good and the chorus is fairly bog-standard punk-pop, but the feeling lingers during the verses. It’s more of the bassline, I think - the song has a total stylistic change to more of a chill, Caribbean beach tune, and that leads into a refrain of the chorus that took me by surprise and made me appreciate it just a little bit more. The hints of RHCP are there for me, but they don’t rule the song.

Big Shot, much like The Real Me, hint at the band’s ska/dub influence, and foreshadow the album’s change of direction in the last quarter. Fairly generic chorus, but it has a really fun, bouncy rhythm to it. I feel similarly about the song Jag Off, which has more of a swingy tempo to it - it has a similar concept to Feel This Way, with a singer and rapper sharing the verses and responding to each other, but both of them get some time to shine and play off each other. The chorus is also one of the better ones of the album.

I don’t have much to say about Time, except the rapping is pretty fucking fast. Blisteringly so, at least in comparison to the rest of the album. Fairly generic pop-punk, with the real highlight being the rapping.

The last three songs of the album - Move On, Fly Daze and Bootylicious Vinyl - take a complete swerve into more laid back, groovy jams. Move On features the singer more than the rapper, and it’s a really pleasant surprise of a song. The singer sounds like a bro, and his notes are a little flat, but it’s really good for what I initially wrote off as late-90′s bro jams. This is one of the longest songs on the album, and I didn’t want it to end.

For the song Fly Daze, they got Ron Jeremy to record a skit for them - he’s a radio DJ who asks all the ladies listening to “give them the clap”. It’s really dumb, but I’m kind of impressed they reached out and got him to do it.

This song is more of a throwback groove number. There’s this really great spacy feel to the chorus, and the song utilises cowbell and sports-whistle sound effects to great effect. The bass rules this song, and there’s this really great guitar solo right near the end too. It’s this song that solidified my opinion of the album - it’s a good record, and I’m glad I listened to it.

Of course, there’s one more song to go - Bootylicious Vinyl. Honestly? Meh. It’s not great. But it isn’t particularly bad, and even if I didn’t like it so much, it doesn’t tarnish the rest of the album.

Waste of Mind was a very pleasant surprise. I was expecting some pretty standard punky trash - my expectations weren’t completely off-base, because a lot of the choruses for these songs were forgettable faff. The best quality to those choruses was the occasional presence of layered vocals. Of course, not every chorus was forgettable, and the album had more range to it than I was expecting. I really liked the album’s late swerve into more laid-back jams, and I had a good time for a great deal of the album. I recommend this album wholeheartedly, even if it’s just to give it a try.

For the more hard, “punk rap” style of songs, I recommend The Real Me and Big Shot, though both are more funky, swingy types of songs that feature rapping and punk-sounding choruses. If you’re interested in the more laid back tunes at the end of the album, I recommend Move On and Fly Daze - in that order, preferably, but they’re both good songs either way.

You can grab the album for anywhere between $6 and $9, and the album has been uploaded to Youtube.

[sophiarose1816]

Happy Release Day for The Flight Path Less Traveled by Leigh Dreyer

I am tickled to be able to share a special post about this exciting second entry in the Pride of Flight series, a Pride & Prejudice modern continuation story. Blurb:

In this modern Pride and Prejudice continuation and sequel to The Best Laid Flight Plans, 2nd Lieutenant Elizabeth Bennet and Captain William Darcy are facing trials after the events of Elizabeth’s last flight. Darcy’s proposal lingers between them as Elizabeth becomes almost single sighted to her rehabilitation and her return to pilot training. A secret is revealed to Elizabeth about Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s past that throws all she has known to be true into a tail spin. The romance between our hero and heroine begins to blossom through military separations, sisterly pranks, and miscommunications. Can Darcy and Elizabeth come together or will flying in the Air Force keep them apart?

Let me introduce author, Leigh Dreyer, and her books through a Q&A she is sharing with us.

1.                Tell us a little about yourself and your background?

I work as a speech pathologist, currently in the Las Vegas area. I work both in person at a charter middle/high school and a long term acute care facility and doing teletherapy (which I absolutely love) from my home. Yes. I have three jobs plus writing because I apparently enjoy being crazy.  I write while my kids take naps, during teletherapy breaks, and at night. I have an incredible husband who is a pilot in the Air Force and two amazing kids. My son is four and my daughter is two. Both my husband and I are children of Air Force pilots which makes for fun family get togethers. Needless to say, I very rarely have to do a lot of plane-related research.

 2.                Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special?

Elizabeth Bennet has just gone through tremendous trauma at the end of The Best Laid Flight Plans and now she has to get back up, brush herself off, and push forward. In the original Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth faces a lot of invisible enemies (marriage or lack thereof, the entailment, etc.), but I wanted to see where she would take me when her enemies were very much physical. Would she be strong and fight?

3.                Which writers inspire you?

Jane Austen is the obvious answer, but I’m also inspired by so many JAFF authors. People like (in no particular order) Linda Wells, Joy King, Diana J Oaks, Maria Grace, Abigail Reynolds, Jenetta James, Karen Cox, Beau North, Jan Hahn, Elizabeth Ann West, Rose Fairbanks, etc. inspire me to fall more deeply in love with characters I already enjoy. I also love Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaman, Aled Hossein, Tom Wolfe, William Makepeace Thackeray, Agatha Christie, and CS Forester.

 4.                What are you working on at the minute?

Book three, Came a Flight Gently and a short story about how Mr. and Mrs. Bennet meet and get married. I’m also working on outlining a time-travel story.

 5.                What’s it about?

Came a Flight Gently will start where The Flight Path Less Traveled ends and will continue the story in New York and feature the Reno Air Races (National Championship Air Races), the last of the great pylon races.

 6.                Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead character from your most recent book?

When I answered this for The Best Laid Flight Plans, I said maybe David Gandy for Darcy and Katherine McNamara or Lily Collins for Elizabeth. Now, I’m kind of thinking brunette Chris Evans and Gal Gadot or a young Marissa Tomei. I picture a modern Elizabeth as a strong, independent female, but also fun and feisty and never cruel.

 7.                How much research do you do?

It really depends on the scenes I’m writing. My favorite research to do is everything to do with food. I have spent many the hour figuring out what to for a big event catered by Mrs. Bennet. I like to really think through what each character would be eating and making. Obviously, Mr. Collins likes potatoes and, if you read book 1, you know Darcy does not eat bacon, but what about everyone else? For flight scenes, I write a lot of them on my own then send them to my husband, father, and father in law to be checked for accuracy. Normally this results in a long page of notes from my father to make it sound authentic (apparently I am very bad at writing what the characters might say on the radio when speaking to tower).

 8.                What made you decide to sit down and actually start something?

After going through The Best Laid Flight Plans I changed the ending because I just wasn’t ready for it to end. I wanted to see what happened next and leave the door open to really learn more about Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Colonel Fitzwilliam, etc. I needed another book or two or three for the story to end for me.

 9.                This book is part of a series, tell us a little about it?

The Flight Path Less Traveled is book two in a series of three planned books: The Best Laid Flight Plans, The Flight Path Less Traveled, and Came a Flight Gently. The first book is a P&P variation whose story line closely follows the events of P&P. The next two are original continuations although you will definitely see other favorite Austen characters and events as the story continues. Each book is an altered line from a poem that I find meaningful and that I feel speaks to the tone of book I wanted to write.

 10.             For your own reading, do you prefer ebooks or traditional paper/hard back books?

I prefer paper books, but I do the vast majority of my reading on kindle or on my phone because they are so easy to drag around with me. I work a lot and am frequently running around with my kids so carrying a paperback isn’t always practical. I do all my reading on my Kindle Paperwhite and have for about five years.

 11.             What book/s are you reading at present?

Right now I’m reading Rational Creatures edited by Christina Boyd on Kindle and listening to Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, but ask me in a few days and I’ll be on to something else. I’ve averaged at least five books a month for the last six or seven years.

 12.             Do you proofread/edit all your own books or do you get someone to do that for you?

I was blessed to work with Christina Boyd of The Quill Ink. Let me tell you, she is amazing to work with and the book is so much better for having had a professional editor. My sister in law is also great about giving me really fantastic feedback as a beta and ARC reader. She is currently working as an editor for some online sources and is amazing.

 13.             Tell us about the cover/s and how it/they came about.

The photoshoot was done in Utah by Monica Cook, a military spouse, who runs Joyous Reflections Photography and Portraiture, at the Air Force museum at Hill Air Force Base. It was important to me to highlight Elizabeth as a female officer. Females are so rare in the pilot world that I wanted to be able to see Elizabeth as I see her, a strong woman who is willing to work harder than anyone else to achieve what she sees for herself. I made the choice to have the little ringlets and her hair up in a kind of braid Mohawk, because I thought it was a fun throwback to the Regency hairstyles. Of course, after the events at the end of The Best Laid Flight Plans, she is pictured out of a flight suit and in her blues, but I wanted to continue to present that strong image as she fights to recover.

 14.             Who designed your book cover/s?

My amazing friend Alishia Mattee. She is a military spouse and my next door neighbor when we were stationed together at Hickam Air Force Base and she is so talented.

 15.             What is your favorite movie and why?

Gone With The Wind. Partly because I am an eighty-five year old woman trapped in a thirty year old’s body (please see my love for all classic film, 1940s jazz and classical music, and other habits like insisting my family eat at the table) I love the costumes, the romance, the huge sets, the language. I love it all. Scarlett is one of my all-time favorite characters. She doesn’t let other people tell her she can’t achieve. She needs to take care of her family, so she does, in whatever way she can. I find her strong, capable head something I would love to emulate, even if she is a little stupid with her heart.

 16.             What advice would you give to your younger self?

Just do it. Jump in. You can figure it out while you’re doing it, but if you wait until you understand every nuance of a task, years will pass and it still won’t be done.

 17.             What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Write. Also, edit. I recently had a friend who decided her NaNoWriMo draft was ready for publication. She had not even re-read it. Yikes.  I tell every aspiring writer I know to write and then let someone read it and critique it. Critique can be hard to accept, but you’ll only get better.

 18.             Can we recognize your adopted hometown of Del Rio, Texas in The Flight Path Less Traveled?

Absolutely. Longbourn City is based on my hometown of Del Rio and Meryton Air Force Base is based on Laughlin Air Force Base which is about fifteen minutes out of town. My parents and siblings still live and work there. You see less of Longbourn in this novel, but the place that Aunt Gardiner takes Elizabeth to eat taquitos rancheros is Julio’s on Highway 90. Julio’s is famous for their chips and salsa. Love those things—seriously, they are amazing.

 19.             What’s the worst job you’ve had?

I worked at a restaurant (which will remain nameless because I signed an “I won’t whine on the internet” clause when I got hired) during grad school in Lubbock and I often refer to it as “the worst job ever.” It was on fourth street in Lubbock, Texas, although that location is now a Chick Fil-A. My manager was crazy and often switched from sickly sweet to horribly insulting. The food was meh at best. I worked there for three months and outlasted eleven employees. That should tell you something about the work environment.

 20.             Where do you get your ideas?

Well, book two is not just a general pilot training book anymore. You read the basics of Air Force life in The Best Laid Flight Plans, but now Elizabeth isn’t a naïve butter-bar Second Lieutenant anymore. She’s learned and grown. Many of her experiences in the novel are based on my friends and family who have had similar things happen to them and gone through the board process. I’m trying to avoid spoilers in these questions, but let’s just say, the events that occur to her are certainly not out of the ordinary. For Darcy, many of his experiences are based on my growing up with a T-38 instructor. Cross-countries were just part of the gig. My husband is in a staff-type job now, but when he was actively flying, he was gone more than he was home.

I do love interviews for all that I learn about the background for author and books.  Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Leigh!

Where can you find Leigh and her book? Flight Path Less Traveled Links

GoodReads:  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44427328-the-flight-path-less-traveled?ac=1&from_search=true

US link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PNFN962/ref=x_gr_w_glide_ku?caller=Goodreads&callerLink=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44427328-the-flight-path-less-traveled?ac=1&from_search=true&tag=x_gr_w_glide_ku-20

UK link:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-Path-Less-Traveled-Continuation-ebook/dp/B07PNFN962/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+flight+path+less+traveled&qid=1552874830&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spell

The Best Laid Flight Plans Links

US link: https://amzn.to/2IkAWTF

UK link: https://amzn.to/2SfGA9m

Contact Information

Email: leighdreyerauthor@gmail.com

Facebook: Leigh Dreyer

Facebook Page: @leighdreyerauthor

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/leighdreyer

Website: http://www.leighdreyer.com/

 Social Media Information

Hashtags: #TheFlightPathLessTraveled #LeighDreyer #JAFF #AustenInspired

 Before she heads out on tour with The Flight Plath Less Traveled, let me share the blog tour schedule so you can join in with more fabulous posts.

March 19- From Pemberley to Milton

https://frompemberleytomilton.wordpress.com/

March 21/22- My Jane Austen Book Club

March 23- My Love for Jane Austen

March 23- Interests of a Jane Austen Girl

March 25- Austenesque Reviews

March 26- So Little Time

March 27- Diary of an Eccentric

March 28- More Agreeably Engaged

April 3-Half Agony Half Hope

April 4/5- Margie’s Must Reads