#tiny punk shows in people's living rooms

[waitineedaname]

I'm at a local music show for the first time in ages, I've missed this so bad

[astrangetorpedo]

It's Saturday night at Otherlands Coffee Shop. The space looks about the same as it has for the past decade of weekend concerts. A small group of people drinking lattes or craft brews sits around the eclectically shellacked tables while Julien Baker takes the makeshift stage with her baby blue electric Fender. Behind Baker, plate-glass windows are beading with rain. Brake lights from passing vehicles roll over the room, the glare catching the metal plating of her guitar…

It has been a standard evening so far, as coffee-house singer-songwriter sessions go. A folk duo has played a few by-the-book ballads. People are talking quietly. But when Baker takes the mic - her guitar affixed to her tiny frame with a rainbow strap - the atmosphere of the place changes. It's hard to say what exactly does it. Baker is five feet tall and looks, by her own admission, to be about 12 years old, though she turned 20 in September. She wears an unremarkable blue jacket and gray t-shirt, a look she has described in interviews as "level-one RuneScape clothes." She's up there alone.

Baker begins her set with a single guitar note, held for a long moment before she begins, in a quiet and urgent alto "Do you think that there's a way this could ever get too far?" - covering the question with reverb before abandoning it. "I know I saw your hand," she continues, "when I went out and wrapped my car around the streetlamp." She pronounces streetlamp sweetly, drawing it out, the way you'd fixate on something you loved.

The lyric is a reference to the time, when Baker was 17, that she drove her car off the road, shattering the windshield enough so that she was unable to see as a 25-foot-tall light pole crashed towards her. The concrete post split Baker's car cleanly in two but somehow left her entirely untouched.

"Blacktop" - which will be the first track on her debut solo album, due out October 23rd - is a lonely song, maybe her loneliest, though it has some strong competition. When she asks, in the next verse, that some intervening divine, the same that saved her life, come visit me in the back of an ambulance," it is with the longing of something barely missed, rather than any certainty in her good fortune.

The feel at Otherlands, as Baker earnestly continues her set, gives definition to the phrase, "you could hear a pin drop." If people were not paying attention before, they are now. Previously unremarkable environmental details - the rain outside and the hush of the room - seem pulled into Baker, collapsed into her intimate, pining music.

If VH1 ever makes a Behind the Music: Julien Baker, it will play out something like this: A small girl with a big voice grows up in the far suburbs of Memphis. She works a night shift through high school, spends her free time hanging out at the skatepark; she smokes cigarettes, plays hymns at her small church, and figures out an electric guitar in her dad's living room. She forms a punk band with her friends. They call themselves "The Star Killers" and play all-ages shows in community centers and neighborhood pool houses. She gets a girlfriend, gets into drinking, gets some dumb tattoos. Starts touring when she isn't in school. Applies herself. Makes it to state college, where she records a lonely record. The record is really good. People hear the record, share the record, and she gets signed. What's next is history.

At least, it seems like that will be the case, if recent articles comparing Baker and her forthcoming solo album to Rilo Kiley or Natalie Prass and calling her music "equal parts agony and burgeoning wisdom" (NPR), "crushing" (Stereogum), "wise" (Vulture)," a study in contradiction, both fragile and steely at the same time"

Morgan Jon Fox, the Memphis filmmaker, describes hearing Baker's music for the first time this way: "This very gentle young woman stepped up and started playing these songs, and it was one of these moments in life that genuinely felt golden, when you see something that is so special, and so fragile, that is just on the precipice of taking off."

Fox went on to use selections from Baker's forthcoming album throughout his most recent project, a miniseries called Feral, and cites it as perhaps his foremost influence for the project. "I got obsessed with it," he says. "I listened to it while I was writing and in the car while I was finding locations. It's lyrically just very wise beyond her years."

It is easy to talk about the precocity of Baker's music, since she is young, but just talking about the precocity makes it seem as if Baker is a 5-year-old playing sonatas to an auditorium. The image doesn't convey how moving songs like "Blacktop" or "Go Home" ("The side of the road in a ditch when you find me," sings Baker, "... more whiskey than blood in my veins") are, and how Baker's particular talents are as much emotional as they are technical.

"I've never really encountered somebody who has the ability to resonate so broadly with their songs," says Sean Rhorer, whose label, 6131 Records, will release Baker's debut. "I posted about it on Facebook, and my mom responded to it," he laughs. "But then, dudes in punk bands who are associated with us are all about it as well. For me personally, it's like I've listened to a song of hers 200 times and on the 200th time I am just in my car weeping. She has that ability."

Pending release of "Sprained Ankle" in the next week, Baker is doing what she usually does: going to class at Middle Tennessee State University, where she is studying to be an English teacher. She started school as a recording engineering major, but quit the program after a professor told her that if he was going to teach the class one thing, it would be to "take their passion and monetize it.”

"I guess I just believe in the lyceum model of education," she told me when we met in Murfreesboro on a weekend in early September. "I think you should educate to build your intellect, not to make money?"

In the past few months, Baker has flown to Los Angeles to shoot a music video and to Richmond, Virginia, to record at Matthew E. White's Spacebomb Studios, the same studio that produced Natalie Prass' debut album. She's been on the radio, toured to New York, and played around 20 shows, both as Forrister and as Julien Baker. She's currently keeping it together by drinking copious amounts of what she calls "AA-meeting coffee", meaning the strong stuff (Baker is now sober by choice). When we met, I noticed that her hands were marked up with scribbled English assignments and Sharpied X's for being underage from the two gigs she'd played in Memphis that week, driving the four hours back to MTSU in the early hours of the morning.

A year and a half ago, if you'd asked Baker whether she'd be trying to balance a burgeoning career and travel schedule with her schoolwork, she would have looked at you like you were crazy. The songs that make up her album were recorded as a one-off, a side project while she was away from her band. She illustrated the album cover and released it for free on Bandcamp. She didn't think much of it. "Whatever happened with it, I was like, oh, cool," Baker says.

People quickly started to share the album, including a video version of her song, "Something" - shot in a Memphis parking garage by local filmmaker Breezy Lucia - but it wasn't until Rhorer and 6131 contacted her about a three-record deal that she realized what was happening. On her new label's advice, she took the record down from Bandcamp until it could be mastered and formally released.

A favorite mantra of Baker's comes from the high school days she spent around D.I.Y. house venue and record label, Smith7. "Let's all fail together," she repeated, as we drove around Murfreesboro. "At least we'll have each other."

The Smith7 shows were put on exclusively as benefits for charity; records produced without hope of material recompense. "We called it investing in people," says Brian Vernon, the founder and backbone of the lab which has produced locally-familiar bands like Wicker, The Holiday, and Nights Like These.

It was a scene that taught Baker to be wary of the music industry that can, as she phrases it, "put best things to meanest use." (A quote from Paradise Lost: "O little knows / Any, but God alone, to value right / The good before him, but perverts best things / to worst abuse, or to their meanest use.")

But Baker is quick to acknowledge how fortunate she is at the moment; how, not that long ago, even this starter level of success seemed a distant hope. "Being able to support yourself with your art - that's the dream, you know?" Baker mused. She sounds both hesitant and excited. "It sunk in for me when I was able to hand my roommate utility and rent [money]. I was like, 'Wow, that's real."

At Otherlands, Baker introduces herself this way: "I'm Julien, and I don't mean to bum you out. That's just the kind of songs I write." She smiles and pushes back her messy blonde hair from her face, a tic. "You know, you sing about it, and you exorcise it."

A guess at why the 20-year-old's songs are so broadly resonant: They all take place at a familiar, perhaps universal moment of surrender. People connect with it. Her surrender is manifold - laid at the feet of the audience, an ex-girlfriend who left her in a parking lot ("I should have said something," sings Baker, "but I couldn't find something to say"), the friend who once picked her up as a teenager, drunk and lost, from the side of a highway, or an invisible God. She always starts slow, voice drawn out over echoey guitar. As the song builds, she allows for considerable tension, enough space left between verses that you think she might turn away or give up at any time.

But then there always is a moment, about halfway through, where it's as if she makes an unannounced decision that this one is all or nothing, and suddenly she is pure energy. When you see her perform, I swear there is a point when she opens her mouth - I mean really opens it - and she appears to grow three sizes. "Like one of those little styrofoam things you put in water and then they get huge," Morgan Jon Fox laughingly agrees. This shift is her simultaneous will-to-power and an invocation for the listeners to join her. She is no longer suffering alone.

The lyrical loneliness is variously romantic and existential, sometimes within the same breath. Baker, who says she "played the worship circuit" in high school, makes music about God, but is not a Christian musician, to the extent that Christian music is a well-defined and (in my heretical opinion) musically underwhelming genre. There are Christian music labels and Christian music festivals, and Baker is not a part of that scene, though she likes Underoath and Pedro the Lion and Manchester Orchestra - bands that have, more or less explicitly, copped to their love of Jesus. She was devastated when Mike Reynolds, the guitarist for Christian metalcore unit For Today, took to Twitter and declared, "There's no such thing as a gay Christian."

"Sometimes, I haven't played that song," she told me, referring to "Rejoice", a tour-de-force and one of the best tracks on the forthcoming album, "because I felt I needed to hide a part of myself in order to not be made fun of." "Rejoice" begins with Baker wandering around her neighborhood: "Jumping the fence, veins all black. Sleep on a bench in the parking lot." Her voice is low, almost gravelly. "Birthday," she intones. "Call the blue lights. Curse your name when I find I'm still awake." She continues, emphatic, underwhelmed: “choking on smoke, singing your praise" and, without much conviction, "but I think there's a God, and he hears either way. I rejoice. And complain. I never know what to say."

And then she backs up and basically shouts, as desperate as anything else: "I rejoice ... But then why did you let them leave and then make me stay?" Her voice would break if it weren't so strong.

The thing about it, the thing that gets me - despite the fact that I haven't lifted up anybody's holy name since I was in middle school and assigning sexier worship lyrics onto particularly handsome church camp counselors - is that, per Julien Baker, this shit is real as it gets. There is no pretense, no particular evangelism, just the barefaced results of a young woman who is searching. I don't think you have to believe in anything, or come from any specific background, to respect the search, even to feel it deeply.

If there's a mythos to suburban teens - especially punk kids from the suburbs, who, like Baker, grew up hanging out at indoor skateparks and smoking in big box parking lots - it is that they are bored. See: the Arcade Fire anthem "The Suburbs," the chorus to which rejoinders, "We were already bored. We were already, already bored." There's an attendant feel - a beautiful and washed-out-in-a-basement-romance-while-smoking-weed-in-the-summertime sort of thing.

Baker does not seem bored or washed-out. Like her music, she comes off notably uncynical and deeply interested in other people's music, in workers' justice (she uses her fluent Spanish to volunteer for an organization that assists immigrant laborers), in literature, in elementary education, in big questions.

"Why," she asked me offhandedly in the middle of a conversation about Faust, a leaf-eared copy of which she keeps in her room next to a hot-pink record player, "were German writers so interested in water suicide?"

For Baker, making her music and trying to fix bad things in the world are inseparable ideas, though there is no particular proselytizing in her lyrics or sound. It is more about the hows and wheres and whos of the process. She's a proud product of the Memphis grassroots, of the idea that you make things with your friends and do it for someone besides yourself.

And if she has a central fear about the recent attention her music has been getting, it is that she'll have to change the way she makes music, that she won't get to spend as much time writing with her band or crafting her own songs in basic anonymity.

"When you are in The Star Killers," she says, "you have the liberty to do whatever you want, musically. The biggest fear is getting what you want and having it not be what you really want."

But at Otherlands, surrounded by a crowd that the young musician has effortlessly transfixed, it's clear that any apprehension on Baker's part won't stop people from listening. Whatever she is putting out there, people who hear it are picking up on it.

As she finishes her set, Baker seems confident, ready, and, yes, somehow wise beyond her years. Most of all, it seems clear that she's doing precisely what she was born to do.

"When I have these great opportunities," she says, "I have to remember they are transient. But when it comes down to it, this is the only thing that makes sense to me."

(x)

[1hot-mess-express1]

The Girl at the Rock show

Choso X Punk!Reader

Summary: Choso is dragged to a house show by Yuji, but he can't seem to be upset about it for long

WC: 680

CW: none? Mention of alcohol like once? Choso being cute and flustered and big bro and and and

A/N: I wrote this V quickly, not proofread. I'm just obsessed with tiny awkward Choso and his big goth mommy, sue me

Choso doesn't know why he let Yuji convince him to come to a house party. He's not antisocial, per se, but he's an observer, content to be in the presence of others while remaining on the outskirts of whatever antics his brother and his friends have gotten into. However, it is incredibly hard to peacefully observe the actions of others when you're stuck in a sea of sweaty bodies all shouting over one another.

Choso grimaces as he gets pushed around in the sea of people, the occasional drink spilling onto him as he tries his best not to lose his brother in the swarm of people surrounding him. Yuji must have noticed his uncertain pace because he quickly whips his head around, offering Chosos a comforting smile before grabbing his hand and helping to lead him through the crowd.

They stop just before the basement door, and Choso can hear the powerful thrumming of music through the door. Yuji grins at him before opening the door, "This is why I really brought you here, big bro."

When they start making their way down the basement steps, Choso immediately covers his ears at the loud music playing before he looks up to realize that it's a band playing, not just something out of a speaker.

They push their way through the crowd to be in front of the makeshift stage as Yuji waves up at you, offering one of his signature smiles. You wave back at him before crouching down on the stage to talk to him, "Yuji! I'm so glad you could make it," you take a moment to glance over at Choso, and he feels himself heat up under your inquisitive stare, "Who's the cutie you brought with you?", you say to Yuji through a cheeky grin.

"That's my brother, Choso, the one I told you about? He's never been to a concert, and I'm broke, so I brought him here." Yuji laughs at your expression of mock hurt.

"Are you saying you would have taken him to someone else if you had money?" you offer him a dramatic pout, to which he's quick to deny your accusation.

"Wha-No, that's not what I said at all, y/n..." He grumbles slightly at your teasing before shooing you away. You go back to tuning up before playing the next set. "What do you think, Cho?"

Choso doesn't respond too busy staring at you to pay attention to his surroundings. You might be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Everything about you screams powerful, from the way you hold yourself to the clothes you wear to that unshakable gaze of yours. Yujis laughs to himself, realizing what's going on in his brother's head.

Just when Choso thinks his little crush couldn't get any worse, you take your place on center stage and come alive, playing for him. He knows this room is packed with people chanting along to your singing, but the way you pin him down with your gaze makes him know you are singing for him, and he can't help the little blush that creeps across his face.

Choso was an observer, but it seems tonight he'll have to live with being the observed.

Bonus "Cho, what is this?" Yuji asks, shuffling through Choso's newly acquired stack of CDs. Choso quickly moves to snatch them away from Yuji, a heavy blush painted on his face. "Ohhh... I get it...Someone has a Cruuuuussshhh." "Shut up, I do not! I-I just thought...maybe I should know the songs they play, that's all." Choso is now beaten red as he tries desperately to deny his little brother's allegations. "Oh really? So if I asked y/n to go on a date with me, you wouldn't mind?" Yuji asks, pulling out his phone and dialing your number to make his threat seem as real as possible. As soon as you answer, Choso tackles Yuji to the floor, trying desperately to hang up the phone as you sit on the other end, incredibly confused as to what it is you're hearing.

[total-drama-brainrot]

Total Drama Psycho Noah AU, after the 'London Adventure' and the truth being revealed, Chris then decides to make this a reward challenge... The reward is that EVERYONE gets to be in First Class, with NOAH... Chris and Noah are curious to see, who will be brave enough to actually enter First Class, after learning about Noah's insanity... How would Courtney + Gwen + Duncan reacts to seeing the video of Noah's insane side showing? 😈 Would Alejandro and Noah still be friends? 😈

Listen, as much as this idea is so fucking funny to me, I really don't think it'd work from a storytelling perspective.

Though (not to push any agendas here, but-) if Chris were to hypothetically have the remaining contestants go against Noah in an enclosed space, in a sort of predator-vs-prey scenario, it'd probably play out something like The Beast chapter in Slay The Princess... without the "eating them alive" aspect, of course.

(Heavy Content Warning for that link, by the way. There's a lot of violence/gore/body horror, among other stuff, by virtue of it being a horror game.)

Maybe he'd lock everyone in the First Class cabin and turn off all of the room's electronics, so the only source of light in the cabin would be the wavering moonlight from whatever tiny windows are dotted around. Noah would use the cover of darkness to his advantage and toy with his competitors in a similar vein to how the Ripper had in their challenge that day, darting silently through the shadows to 'capture' his castmates, picking them off one by one.

It'd be a fun game of cat-and-mouse for Noah. For the others? It'd be a living nightmare. They wouldn't have the luxury of knowing that Noah wouldn't really hurt them, and the bloodlust they'd seen on that screen would be terrifying to watch but downright petrifying to experience first hand. They would be genuinely fearing for their lives, in a way that Chris hadn't been able to prompt since the early days of Island, and the host would love it.

Not that he would do that. And not that Noah would actually attack anyone either. (Without reason to, of course.)

But you are right about one thing; if this AU were to become a fully-fledged story, the London challenge would have to be a reward, just to keep Noah in the competition. Because he literally snapped Zeke's arms like chopsticks- his team would vote him out in a heartbeat just by virtue of him being so dangerous.

Which means the whole of Team Chris (plus Duncan) would be sharing a poorly-lit, structurally unsound cabin with someone they're terrified of.

...Owen notwithstanding, since Owen's a sweetheart and he knows Noah.

But the others would be immediately on guard around him. Noah, knowing there's no reason to keep up his ruse of sarcastic apathy, would probably relish in their fear- he enjoys tormenting people, after all, especially when that torment is purely psychological. So he'd carry on playing the 'unhinged, bloodthirsty sociopath' just to watch the others squirm.

He'd probably make a huge show of still having the Ripper's knife, tucked safely in the sleeve of his white undershirt, and comment that he and Duncan could be 'knife buddies' or something. If only to see how the punk's pierced face would drain of all colour at the prospect of Noah having a sharp object. (Duncan would absently rub at the puncture scars on his hand, to Noah's delight.)

But it'd eventually get boring, I imagine, so Noah would do something to reassure his teammates that he's not some ethics-devoid monster hellbent on destruction. Because having your teammates be in a state of constant paranoia around you would get annoying after a while, and it'd impact their performance in the competition (which Noah isn't really all that concerned with, but Owen is, so Noah doesn't want to do anything to jeopardise their chances of winning challenges).

So he'd drop the exaggeration of his more violent traits, and intentionally show off the unharmful aspects of himself- namely by koala-clinging to Owen and acting 'normally' like they'd done before the London challenge, and/or by approaching Tyler to ask how he was feeling after being stretched on the rack and sheepishly apologise for leaving him behind (showing empathy and remorse, to humanise himself n front of his teammates).

He's insane, not heartless.

As for Alejandro...? I have no idea. Would he even want to risk approaching Noah to find out if their shared comradery was all a ruse? Would whatever tentative trust he had in Noah be completely shattered by the reveal? Or would he be so engulfed by his need to win the competition that he only views this new development as a boon, since now Noah can be more of a physical asset for their team?

It'd probably be a mix of all of these. Alejandro would be left off-footed by the reveal of p!Noah's 'true self' (however much of his 'true self' he's willing to show to others) but I imagine he'd be quick to ally himself with the guy who can break bones like they're chalk and deceive a whole cast of people for two and a half seasons, regardless of any personal misgivings.

[vhstown]

CAN SPIDERS SCREAM?

POV: 1610!MILES 🗡️ [halloween one shot]

summary: What's your favourite scary movie?

word count: 2.4k

content/warnings: depictions of murder, blood and stabbing

a/n: unedited :/ tew busy and i have never written fic that isn't x reader so! that's all erm have fun?

“Oi, Miles — wake up, mate.”

With slight surprise, Miles opened his eyes to see the dimly lit living room. Freeing himself from the confines of his friend’s shoulders, he blinked a few times to make out a rather bemused-looking Hobie. The punk’s eyes left his a moment later, and Miles was soon bombarded with the troubles of a movie night with people who had never had Netflix before.

“Give me the remote back, I just wanna—”

“We are not watching Ghostbusters again, Pav!” Hobie let out a slight laugh as a stream of web, and then a remote control, flew past him — right into Gwen’s hand.

“Ghostbusters is a perfectly fitting title for the occasion!” Pavitr protested, Hobie narrowly dodging the hand that flew up in frustration.

“He’s got a point — that Murray lad is scary lookin’,” Hobie chimed in. Gwen narrowed her eyes at him, as if to say “thanks a lot, Hobie”, before turning to Miles.

“You know what? Maybe Miles should pick. He’s been asleep all night anyway.”

“Hey! Not my fault my ma’ made me clean the whole house ‘fore you guys got here!”

Miles’ eyes felt like closing again at the memory; who knew using your webs to help with chores would need so much clean up afterwards? Not one of his brightest ideas, since he was all out of webs now. Though he would’ve been out of a home if his mom saw the kitchen covered in them.

“Where are your parents anyway? Perhaps on a romantic outing?” Miles rolled his eyes, like it’d do anything to subdue Pavitr’s less-than subtle expression.

“On Halloween night? Your lot must love a thrill, mate.” Also a lot less-than subtle — thanks a lot, Hobie.

Cheeks prickling with warmth, he snatched the remote from Gwen’s hand, frowning at the TV screen. Halloween movie…

“Well, if he’s anything like Rio and Jeff, he should be able to pick a movie.” Gwen crossed her legs, and everyone else shuffled back on the tiny couch.

“Thanks,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. Gwen’s knee, Hobie’s elbow, and Pavitr’s stare prodding him at either side, Miles sifted through the different shows and movies.

“How about Annabe—”

“Nope nope nope…!” As the preview came up, Pavitr shielded his eyes. “Anything besides dolls.”

“At least it’s better than Ghostbusters,” Gwen muttered under her breath as Pavitr peeked through his fingers.

“Oi, Gwendy, cheer up, yeah?” Miles ducked his head as Hobie reached over to slap Gwen on the shoulder. “She looks just like you!”

“Hobie!” was shouted from both ends of the couch.

Miles smiled, and grimaced. At least the two of them could agree that Hobie wasn’t any good when it came to movie nights.

Looking through the movies, none of them really interested Miles, or his friends. Each one would be met with an excited “wait!”, and then a disappointed groan, or another heckle from Hobie (it was one way to decide not to watch the movie.)

“Dude, Halloween’s almost over. Let’s just watch Ghost—”

“Just gimme a sec…” At this point, Miles had given up on listening to anyone, clicking through titles after a glance. It wasn’t like it was helping, though.

“Pick your favourite, or something,” Gwen suggested with just as little enthusiasm.

“Well it’s not Ghostbusters…” he mumbled to nobody in particular.

“Hey, not you too, Miles!”

Scream 2 appeared for probably the 5th time on screen. It’d have to do, he supposed.

“You guys seen Scream?” His tone didn't have enough energy to sound like a question.

“Well Hobie hasn’t, because he lives in the stone age,” Gwen started. “And he looks like Ghostface.”

“Don’t need ol’ Ghosty when we’ve got murderers in government.”

“Dude.” All Miles got was a shrug from Hobie, and then a sigh from Gwen. Crossing her arms, she fell back on the sofa with a creak.

“What? Fed up already?” Hobie questioned, brow raising by a twitch.

“It’s been like, 4 hours and all we’ve been watching is Ghostbusters. We ran out of popcorn ages ago.”

“You guys finished the—” Miles stood up, looking into the bowl. All that was in it was his reflection, staring back at him with disappointment. “Damn…”

“That was all Gwendy — swear on my life.” Hobie declared half a moment of silence later.

“Was not!”

“Okay, okay! Fine! Let’s just watch Scream.”

Miles turned on the movie, chucking the remote on the spot he was sat in. The introductory sequence started, and the room went dark with the screen.

“I’m gettin’ more popcorn — caramel popcorn." That got a groan out of everyone.

“If y’all use your webs…!”

He didn’t finish his threat as he walked into the kitchen — his mom could probably do that for him anyway.

The kitchen door swung open, shutting on its own weight. Miles held his wrist out to the cabinet, but all that came out was a click — out of webs. Right, of course.

A crackling bag of “Crunch ‘n Munch” caramel popcorn on the stove, Miles leaned his arms on the counter, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. He’d been feeling groggy since he’d woken up, but the dreary tiredness was still lingering. Maybe sitting out here with microwaveable kernels popping on the stove would help. Stretching and letting out a groan, the cheap decorations on the windows caught his attention. He could guess that people were starting to head back from trick-or-treating. It was late, after all. Miles had grown out of it, at least for this year. Going out with his friends who technically weren’t meant to be here wasn’t exactly a good idea, though. Besides, being Spider-Man for Halloween again wasn’t really doing it for him.

Both of his parents were at work, but it didn't bother him too much. They were always busy, and so was he. All of them were keeping Brooklyn safe in their own ways, he supposed. And having the house to himself wasn't so bad.

Faint murmuring — excited, or panicked — could be heard from the living room. Miles laughed through his nose, the crackling of the popcorn getting louder as he haphazardly reached out to flip the bag. That was, until, a searing, high-pitched noise rang out.

Miles almost jumped, before realising that it was coming from the phone: the old-fashioned cordless phone his mom kept for emergencies, or, for making sure he was “actually at home like you said you’d be, because if you and your friends are out somewhere I don’t know about then—”

Better safe than sorry, he thought, picking it up without any thought but an exhale.

Click!

“Hello?”

The faint whirr of static could be heard on the other side; it was dull among the pop of the kernels and giddy buzz from the living room.

“Hello, Morales.” Okay, definitely not his mom.

“Uh, who is this?”

“Take a guess.” Miles took the phone away from his ear, frowning at the screen. These types of phones didn’t seem to give any useful information.

“Ganke? That you?” he humoured.

“Try again. Two more guesses.” His half-smile immediately dropped.

“Okay, nope. This is weird.”

Declining the call, Miles put it back on its stand, rolling his shoulders in discomfort. It was probably just a prank — kind of creepy nonetheless.

Krrrrr….! Miles’ attention quickly turned back to his popcorn, registering the smell of burning. Damn it…

Wooden spoon in hand, he turned off the stove, biting his lip as he assessed the damage. A second barrier of defence against his friends, at least. Come on man, you gotta wake up—

RIIING RIIING! Miles cursed under his breath, and then winced in guilt.

RIIING RIIING! Again? Well, it could be his mom.

RIIING RIII—

“Hello?”

“Why’d you hang up? Don’t you want to play a game?”

“Okay dude seriously? Couldn't you be at least a little original? I don’t have time for this, I literally just burnt my popcorn!”

Miles didn’t know why he was suddenly ranting to a stranger on the phone, but maybe it’d get them to break character, or something. It must be some kids behind the stupid crackly voice — or maybe it was his dad. He tried to stifle a laugh at the thought of his dad trying not to laugh and his tightened expression, even though nobody would hear. Well, whoever this was might.

“You’re making popcorn?”

“Uh-huh. Was gonna watch a movie, actually. And relax — you know, without weird phone calls at midnight.”

“How about this? I ask you a different question this time.”

“Yeah? What is it?” Miles let out a sigh, hands on his hips as the burning died out in the pan.

“What’s your favourite scary movie?”

“Not even a little improv..." he mumbled under his breath. Might as well stick to the script. “Uh, I dunno. Scream?”

“Scream? That one where the murderer wears a mask and goes around killing people?”

“Yeah, and where the murderer makes dumbass phone calls to their victims beforehand.”

“But that’s your favourite?”

“No..."

There was a pause on the end of the phone, before the modulated voice replied.

“You know... me neither.”

Bzzzt!

“Hey, what the…?!” Miles looked around him, but couldn’t make out anything. The power was out. “You can’t be serious…”

“Scream’s too old-school, don’t you think?”

There were equally confused reactions from the living room, and the voices of his friends got louder as he stepped into the hallway, phone in hand.

“Guys?” he called out, cordless phone by his hip and his own phone flash pointing into the hallway.

“They won’t hear you,” the voice from the phone said. Miles stopped, turning his phone and seeing something catch the light. "When you scream."

Moving, it shot towards him, his web-shooter sputtering empty air at the knife that surged past mere inches away from his face. No webs.

“Guys?!”

Miles pointed the flash up, only to see what looked like a Halloween mask that was melting: Ghostface. He would’ve laughed; it was crude at best. But right now, it was terrifying.

He booked it for the living room, pushing against the door only for it to push back against him. Locked — the panic surged in his chest, but his Spider-sense hadn’t gone off.

Thunk! Knife in wood — right where his face was a millisecond ago. His cheek stung only for a moment before he grabbed the knife out of the door, holding it to the darkness.

His mouth opened, and then closed. Should he call for his friends? Would it put him in more danger? Why couldn't he... Where did the masked person go—

A short breath came out of his throat, strangled. And then hot searing metal, right through his stomach. Why couldn't...

No, the metal wasn’t cold — it was the blood. The pain only seared for a moment, when the knife was pulled out. Miles’ hands went to the growing patch of darkness near his abdomen, bile in his throat and eyes wide, stinging from the dry air.

It was suddenly cold, and his mind was blank. Something that sounded like wind — a laugh, emerged from behind him.

He didn’t feel the second stab.

“Oi, Miles — wake up, mate.”

With slight surprise, Miles opened his eyes to see the dimly lit living room. Freeing himself from the confines of his friend’s shoulders, he blinked a few times to make out a rather bemused-looking Hobie. The punk’s eyes left his a moment later, and Miles was soon bombarded with the troubles of a movie night with people who had never had Netflix before.

“Give me the remote back, I just wanna—”

“We are not watching Ghostbusters again, Pav!” Hobie let out a slight laugh as a stream of web, and then a remote control, flew past him — right into Gwen’s hand.

“Ghostbusters is a perfectly fitting title for the occasion!” Pavitr protested, Hobie narrowly dodging the hand that flew up in frustration.

“He’s got a point — that Murray lad is scary lookin’,” Hobie chimed in. Gwen narrowed her eyes at him, as if to say “thanks a lot, Hobie”, before turning to Miles.

“You know what? Maybe Miles should pick. He’s been asleep all night anyway.”

“Huh?”

“We were doing fine!”

“No we weren’t, Pav — I was about to fall asleep.”

“Like Hobie said, Murray is a good representation of the horror genre!”

“And not the literal ghosts?”

“The ghosts too!”

“Hey.” Miles flinched a little at how close the voice was. “You alright? You look a bit pale, mate.”

The three of them went silent, attention turning to him. Hobie’s expression was laced with concern. Miles just nodded, though he wasn’t looking at anyone. He was fine, right? That was…

“Yeah, yeah — I’m cool. I just…” That wasn't real. He was fine. “Tired. Ma’ made me clean… and stuff.”

“Where are your parents anyway? Perhaps on a romantic outing?” He glanced at Pavitr, but it didn’t do anything to subdue Pavitr’s less-than subtle expression.

“On Halloween night? Your lot must love a thrill, mate.” Also less-than subtle. If it weren’t for the fog clouding his head, he would’ve been annoyed.

“Just watch… Anabelle, or something.” The sofa creaked as he pushed off of it. He winced at the feeling of his abdomen reeling in on itself. “I’m gonna get some—”

Two eyes met his: the reflection in the popcorn bowl. It was empty. Figures...

“That was all Gwendy, swear on my life.”

“Was not!”

“Oh, Miles is mad guys.”

“Hey, don’t look at me.”

It wasn't real.

“It was literally Hobie!”

Just a dream — of course.

“Miles…? Where are you goi—” Pavitr’s voice faded as the kitchen door swung shut behind him.

“Just need to call my mom,” he muttered to himself, grabbing the phone off the stand.

“Mira — I’m going to call this phone, okay? You need to call back from the call log. I'm showing you once.”

“Like—” This…

The call log appeared on screen.

Incoming:

31 OCT. 11:42PM Accepted

31 OCT. 11:40PM Accepted

31 OCT. 4:21PM Missed

Only the last one was his mom. Miles clicked out of the call log, met with the tiny blue home screen. It read: TUE 31 OCT.

The time right now was 11:39PM.

RIIING RIIING!

RIIING RIIING!

RIIING RIIING!…

His friends were in the other room, still arguing about what to watch.

“…Anything besides dolls...”

“…It’s better than Ghostbusters…”

“…She looks just like you!…”

"...Hobie!..."

…RIIING RIIING!…

With half an inhale, Miles picked up the old-fashioned cordless phone, thumb over the green button. It was the phone he’d answered before, and for some reason, minutes into the future.

The phone he’d answer many, many more times to come.

thanx 4 reading! thats it okay cya i havent slept more than 6 hours in a hot minute goodnight x_x oh n tagging @phoenixinthefiles :P

find my masterlist here !

[obsidianimagines]

See You Around

You meet Jack for the first time after one of his shows

Jack Mercer x f!reader

Warnings: cursing, drinking, smoking

Notes: I assumed the Spares tattoo on his arm was for his band because idk what else it could mean so let's just pretend that's it ❤️

New York City, October 31st, 2001

"Court, you told me you were taking care of the tickets."

Your friend and roommate huffed as she walked next to you, the heels of her boots clicking on the sidewalk. "Yeah, I meant I was going to buy them at the door. I didn't think they'd be sold out already."

"The Strokes are pretty big now. Their album came out a few months ago, and they've been touring all over the place." You shrugged, shifting gears to help cheer her up. She'd been so excited to go to the show. "But hey, it's Halloween in New York City. I'm sure we can find something else to do tonight."

After a block or so of walking, you noticed some people entering a bar, and the chalkboard sign out front: TONIGHT: SPARES. "Hey, look!" You pointed at the sign. "Let's check it out."

"I guess we could. I didn't dress to be outside for too long." Courtney gestured to the short, tight dress she wore, with only a thin sweater covering her arms. She looked very cute, but definitely not too suited for the late October weather. As you stopped at the door, she looked in through the window and noticed the type of crowd inside. "Is this going to be one of those shows you like with the mush pits or whatever?"

"Mosh pits. And I don't know, I've never heard of this band before. But there has to be at least one hot guy, right?" You knew exactly what to say to convince your friend, and it worked.

"Alright, let's go in. Just don't leave me, okay?"

Courtney held onto your arm as the two of you walked inside, the bouncer waving you both past after checking your IDs and taking the few dollars for your cover. It was yet another bar with a tiny stage, nothing you hadn't seen before. Maybe 100 people could fit if they really squeezed in, but there was only about half of that at the moment.

After grabbing some drinks, you and your friend settled a little closer to the back because you knew Courtney would run for the hills if people started throwing elbows anywhere near her. And you wanted to see some kind of live music that night after hyping yourself up so much.

When the band came out dressed like punk rockers, Courtney's eyes went wide, and you gave her a reassuring smile.

You stepped out of the front door of the bar after the show, your ears still ringing from the guitars and drums. Your friend had loosened up and actually started having fun, so she was at the bar chatting up one of the band members. But you just needed a little air after being in that hot, stuffy room.

Once you took a breath, you noticed the lead singer of the band—he'd introduced himself on stage as Jack—leaning against the bricks with the last remains of a cigarette between his lips. Since you were at the back of the bar, you hadn't been able to see him well, only hear his nice voice and the way he played his guitar. Now that you could make out his features, he was actually pretty cute.

"That was a great show," you said, breaking the silence.

Jack's blue eyes flicked up towards you, and he took the cigarette from his mouth to put it out on the wall and toss the butt in the trash can a few feet away. "Thanks."

You expected that he'd go back inside with the rest of his band, but he simply took out another cigarette and lit it with a zippo. Something came over you, and you also rested your back against the wall, leaving about four feet between you. "I'm surprised you're not getting a drink with your band."

"The bar had to kick me out when the show ended."

It took a moment for you to realize what he meant, and you laughed. "You're in a band and you don't have a fake ID?"

"That asshole at the door took it." He could get another one, but that would require money, which he wasn't exactly swimming in.

"Damn, that's rough. He let me and my friend in with ours."

"Well, you've got an advantage. Most bars don't care about your ID when you're a pretty college girl."

"What makes you think I'm in college?" you asked, shoving your hands into the pockets of your jacket and definitely not thinking about the fact that he called you pretty.

He shrugged. "Just a guess."

"It was a good one. I'm an art student. You?"

It was Jack's turn to laugh. "Hell no. School's not my thing." College usually required a lot of money or very good grades, and he'd never had either of those things. Even if he had, the idea of sitting in classrooms all day again was fucking torture to him.

The front door to the bar opened as someone exited, and you heard Courtney's distinct laugh among the music and chatter. You looked in the window and noticed that she hadn't moved from her barstool. "My friend's still flirting with your drummer."

"Shit, I bet he's loving that." Jack chuckled as he joined you in peering through the glass, finding his bandmate, Ben, and a cute blonde at the bar. Despite a local following, the band wasn't anywhere near the level of fame that had girls throwing themselves at them, so Ben would probably be bragging about this for at least a week.

"I'm just glad she's having a good time after what happened earlier." You glanced over at him and realized he didn't know what had brought you there in the first place. "We were supposed to see The Strokes tonight, but it didn't work out. Your show was the first one we found."

Jack ashed his cigarette and took another drag. "Probably a bit of a shock, huh?" He'd seen The Strokes before, and the crowds weren't quite as rowdy as the small ones at his shows.

"For her, yeah. But I've been listening to punk and metal my whole life. If I were here on my own, I would've been right there in the pit."

"Really?" He'd only met you a few minutes ago, but you didn't seem like the type.

"Really."

His eyes lingered on you a moment before they turned back to the window. "We're playing another show here Friday night. You should come."

"I'll think about it."

You didn't even notice that Courtney had left the bar until she walked out of the front door.

"We've got class in the morning, we gotta go!" She grabbed your arm, tipsy and giggling. "I gave the drummer my number. You were so right about finding hot guys here!"

Your cheeks burned at her words as Jack smirked.

Courtney started pulling you down the sidewalk, searching for an empty cab to hail, and you turned back towards him to give a little wave with your free hand. "See you around, Jack."

Only once you were gone did Jack realize that he hadn't even gotten your name...

[searchingwardrobes]

I'm back!!! After months and months of creative exhaustion and writer's block, this story came to me one night when I couldn't sleep. It's just a little one shot of pillow talk in Camelot that's a little fluffy, a tiny bit angsty, and a whole lot of tenderness. I hope you all enjoy it!

Rated T

               Killian wished for the first time for those garish artificial lights of Storybrooke. As Emma said, he was becoming a 21st century man, and he had come to enjoy the ability to see his beloved in all her glory, even after the sun went down. Here in Camelot, however, he had to rely on his sense of touch alone to map the marks on Emma he had come to know so well.

            “You and I, we understand each other,” Emma had said once, and the longer they were together, the more they saw it to be true. Though many a woman had warmed his bed, he still felt self-conscious the first time Emma saw the scars that riddled his body, yet she had smiled in that knowing way she had, and had cheekily said, “let me show you mine.”

            His thumb now grazed the puckered one on her shoulder, a form of punishment by a foster father using the tip of his cigar. He nudged her hair aside with his nose, then lightly brushed his lips across the faint white line behind her right ear, caused by a broken beer bottle.

            “I thought I ducked in time,” Emma had chuckled when she told him the story, “until I felt the trickle of blood dripping down my neck.”

            He knew what it was to make light of a person’s past, as if childhood slavery was just one of those things that happens sometimes. There was nothing normal about it, however, just as there was nothing normal about Emma living in an alleyway at the age of ten ducking from beer brawls.

            Emma shifted in his arms with a contented sigh. He wished she could sleep, but since the darkness wouldn’t allow herself that reprieve, at least she could find solace in his embrace. “You silence the voices in my head,” she had told him, pressing her nose to his collarbone. If that was the case, he would not leave her side, though the sleeping arrangements hadn’t made her father very happy at first.

            Killian’s fingers danced along the jagged scars along her upper back, the newest ones, from when a skip she was chasing pushed her into a plate glass window. That story elicited a shrug and bragging rights that she only missed a few days of work. Bravado – he understood that defense mechanism as well.

            They really did understand one another.

            Emma reached around for his arm and pulled his hand down to lace his fingers with hers. She pressed their joined hands to her chest, and he noticed the slightest change in her bearing. An almost imperceptible stiffening, and did her pulse just kick up a notch? She shifted again, this time as if she were uncomfortable.

            “Are you alright, love?”

            Emma released his hand, and using her magic, she lit the candles in the room. Then she rolled over to face him, her hands fluttering, as if she didn’t know whether to touch him or not. She finally balled them up in the sheet that covered her, pulling it up to her chin.

            “Do you know the song ‘Brandy’?”

            Killian chuckled. “You know my only knowledge of this realm’s music is you and Henry. Right now your lad is educating me on something called punk? Apparently, it was a favorite of his father’s.”

            Emma rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, Neal loved that stuff. I prefer the classics.”

            “Like those beetle people?”

            “The Beatles, Killian, and yes. Also Motown, Elvis, Creedence Clearwater Revival. I don’t know why, I just always liked the old stuff.”

            “And this song? ‘Brandy’? Is by one of these singing groups?”

            “Uh, no, but it's kind of the same genre, I guess. I don’t know even know who sings it, actually. I thought maybe you’d heard it at Granny’s or something. It’s about this girl and a sailor, so . . . “

            “Ah.” He nodded, encouraging her to go on. He was glad she’d lit the candles, though he still couldn’t see her well. Well enough, however, to see the furrow of her brow and the way her lips turned down. This was obviously about more than a song. “Most sailors I know prefer rum, though. Brandy is a little high brow for our modest tastes.”

            Emma rolled her eyes, which was precisely what he’d been going for. “Brandy is a woman. She lives by the sea and serves drinks to sailors. In a tavern, I guess.”

            “Aptly named.”

            Emma adjusted her pillow beneath her head and rolled over. She continued the story gazing up at the ceiling instead of looking at him.

            “The song tells the story about her and the man she falls in love with. He’s a sailor, and he loves her, but always leaves her.”

            Killian is beginning to see where this is going. He shifts closer to her, propping his head up on his blunted arm so he can look down at her as she speaks. With his hand, he strokes her arm gently.

            “The chorus,” Emma continues, “is what the man always says to her: Brandy, you’re a fine girl. What a good wife you would be, but my life, my love, my lady is the sea.”

            There are many things Killian could say. The first thought that comes to his mind is that the man in the song is either an idiot or a complete cad who most likely has a girl in every port. He’s known the type. People probably assume he’s the type, but he was always careful that his one-night stands had the same expectations he did. He actively avoided women who would be a “good wife.” Not every sailor had good form, however. He could explain all of that to Emma; tell her that the song is unfortunately a common tale, but it’s never been his.

            He knows, however, that none of those things are what Emma needs right now. So he waits, without moving, his hand still caressing her arm. Emma releases a puff of angry breath before speaking again.

            “I’ve always hated that song.”

            “Emma, love,” Killian says gently, shifting onto his back and reaching for her, “come here.”

            She comes to him a bit shyly, and he smiles at her gently as he cups her face with his hand. In her gaze, he can see hesitation. Fear. He doesn’t know if it’s the darkness whispering doubts, or if it’s her same old insecurities, but this is one battle he knows how to help her fight.

            “My life,” he says, kissing her cheek, “my love,” he kisses her nose, “my lady,” he kisses her forehead, then pulls back so he can gaze into her eyes, “is you, Emma.”

            Her eyes well up with tears, and a hesitant smile teases the corners of her mouth. “The Jolly Roger was your home for so long. You had nothing holding you back. Nothing tying you down.”

            Killian shakes his head. “Emma, you said once that you and I understand one another. You, like me, were an orphan. What is the one thing all orphans want more than anything else?”

            “A home,” Emma breathes without hesitation.

            Killian nods, then kisses her fiercely, pulling her to himself, his hand tangling in her hair, pouring into his kiss all his hopes and dreams for their future. When they part, breathless, Emma presses her forehead to his, her smile finally full and joyous.

            “So I didn’t freak you out when I mentioned that white picket fence?”

            Killian tucks her against him, wrapping his arms fully around her. As he kisses the top of her head, he thinks of the real estate ads he and Henry have been looking at, one house in particular that looks fit for a princess, with a view of the sea.

            “Not at all, love. I want that too.”

            Emma snuggles further into his embrace, her hand splayed on his chest, right over his heart.

            “Good,” she says, with that edge of smugness he’s always found so endearing.

            He tries to stay awake, for her sake, but the warm, flickering light of the candles, combined with the softness of her in his arms, lulls him more than the ocean waves. Just as sleep pulls him under, he murmurs against her hair.

            “You’re my home now, Emma. My life, my love, my lady.”

Tagging: @snowbellewells @jrob64 @teamhook @kmomof4 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @spartanguard @xhookswenchx-reads-blog @thislassishooked @thisonesatellite @xarandomdreamx @zaharadessert @huntressandlioness1 @jamif @undercaffinatednightmare @onceratheart18 @sparlecorn93 @sals86 @pirateherokillian @jonesfandomfanatic @linda8084

I don't even know who is around anymore, so let me know if you want to be added or removed from my tag list!!

[the-kr8tor]

More Spider-Punk and Loki Variant! R, anyone???

– You like to shapeshift quite a lot, your favorite forms being animals. Hobìe doesn't think it's entirely good for his heart, especially when you like to turn into such adorable animals. (The time you'd turned into a bunny, he'd practically had a heart attack. He had held you close to his chest and played with your floppy ears as he cooed. You didn't hate the smothering as much as you claimed you did.)

– There are times when you transform into not so cute animals, though. It would give him a good scare at first until you nuzzled against him, then he'd know it was you. (There was that time you turned into a snake. Then, the time you turned into a baby alligator. Hobie had jumped onto the ceiling while screaming for help both times and refused to get down until you'd turn back to calm him down. "It's just me, Hobes! I'm sorry!", you said while failing to hide the chortles of laughter. "I love you, but you're an ass sometimes, lovie.")

– Sometimes, you bring him with you when you need to check in on Asgard. His chest swells with pride to see how fair and kind of a leader you are for your people, his love for you growing tenfold when he sees that you've let orphaned children live in your palace until they found homes. Since you rule the realm now that your corrupt father is no longer in control, your people like to refer to Hobie as "hilmir" (Which means prince/protector) Hobie would look at them crazy and peer at you for explanation. You'd just shrug and say they've gone mad since the rebellion, a smirk on your lips. ("....I'm gonna have Miles look it up." "My love, I assure you, it is nothing you need to worry your pretty head about. It's trivial!" ".... Better yet, I'll just go ask Lyla-" "Hobie!")

– There are times when running a kingdom is too much, especially a kingdom that's still recovering from war. Some days, when Hobie is there in the palace with you, you both go into a room hidden among the walls. A place you've always used as a hideaway for as long as you can remember. You lay your head on his chest and breathe in his scent, the tension in your body practically leaving as he tenderly trails his knuckles along your spine. He'll hum a tune he wrote just for you as you melt into his embrace, his beauty that fell from the stars. ("I never wanted to rule...", you mumble against his chest as tears sting your eyes. "It was always supposed to be Thor, that big oaf... I miss him..." "I know, sweetheart", he coos as his thumb brushes the tears that drip down your cheek.)

– One time, Hobie tries to get you to teach him magic. Excited that he's interested in learning from you, you agree and start training him in the ways of the mystic arts just as your mother had trained you. You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing when he accidentally makes an explosion of colors splash onto his face, which is now a purple hue. ("You got a little... thing right here." You say quietly while pointing to his face, lips trembling as you hold back your chuckles. "No shit, love. Can you fix it?" "I told you to visualize your favorite color in a ball and make it glow a tiny bit brighter. What happened?" "I like 'em all, what can I say?")

– When Miles, Gwen, Pav, and Margo come over, Hobie is too excited to show off what you taught him. He tries to shapeshift into a cat, only for just a pair of fluffy ears to poof onto his head in a cloud of shimmering red smoke. The sight makes them all laugh, Hobie scoffing and waving them away. ("Oi. At least I can do that much. I don't see none of you lot makin' cat ears, huh?" He says with a triumphant smirk, only to click his tongue when you smirk at him and turn into a giant hyena. Your barking laughter almost sounding like a real laugh. "Show off," Hobie grumbles before he and the kids clamor on top of your belly, nuzzling into your warm fur.)

AHHHH MORE LOKI VARIANT! R

The second I read that r likes to shapeshift into animals this part in thor ragnarok popped up in my head 🤣🤣

I giggled when I read the second part 🤭

Hilmir 🥹🥹😭😭 that's so freaking sweet 😭

Aww them hiding away from everyone while Hobie comforts r 🥹

BAHAHAHHAHAHHA i love that he's trying to learn magic!! The way that i imagined the magic orb splashing on his face like nickelodeon slime 🤣

Bro lost some aura points there (or so the kids say these days 😂)

[shyphonics]

Salad Days Chapter 3: When I was born, my mama cried, and picked me up with gloves.

(babypunk!Rodrick Heffley x reader)

part one | part two | part four

I wanna be stereotyped

I wanna be classified

I wanna be a clone

I want a suburban home

Suburban home

Rodrick wakes unusually early, 8 AM, still feeling weird. The rest of the band are still asleep. He grabs a beer from the fridge because, fuck it, nobody can tell him not to.

Getting shows is harder than he’d expected. He’s nervous, but he has to keep up a front, for the sake of the band. If he tells them he’s worried that they’ll never get a show, they might just give up. He can’t let on that there’s any negativity in his mind. He has to be a fearless leader. This has to work. This is their life now. It’s gonna be fucking amazing.

There are seven missed calls from home on his cell phone, and he decides to ignore them a little while longer. He doesn’t feel like talking to his parents, he knows they’d just be disappointed in him. He'd just have to hear about so-and-so from down the street who just got into law school. Or medical school. Or whatever the fuck kind of school.

No matter what he does, he knows he's a failure in their eyes.

Rodrick hadn't had any interest in higher education. He'd figured he didn't need it for the kind of life he was after. No matter how much his parents had guilted him.

He'd felt maybe a teeny, tiny bit guilty when everyone around him got their college acceptance letters. People started cliquing up based on which schools they'd gotten into and everything.

I hope we're dorm mates!

Are you taking psych 101?

Wow, you got a full scholarship?

Fuck off.

At one point, his dad had even caved and said, you can major in music theory!

And what, Frank? Show up to venues all like, here’s my degree! My masters in drums! Give me a show, please?

Yeah, right.

At least he'd had the rest of the band. Through everything, they'd always been on the same page. Always plotting a way out.

He takes a deep chug of his beer and pops his laptop open. He checks The Strike's website, and notices a radio feed in the top corner.

A nasally man's voice comes through his headphones. He's mid-rant, "-because they didn't understand us. And they never have, and they never will. My parents thought I was the devil. My dad loved The Eagles. I hated The Eagles with every fiber of my being. If I could say one thing to my father- and Glenn Frey- right now, it'd be: suck it. Punk never dies."

Rodrick suppresses a laugh as a song starts. He's pretty sure he recognizes it, and the words are really resonating with how he's felt since he left home.

Clicking through The Strike’s event calendar, he almost does a spit take. Friday night. They’ve got a show.

Suck it, Frank and Susan!

“Wake up, fuckers!” he yells, causing bodies to stir around the living room.

“Dude, shut up.” Ben groans from the couch.

“You shut up! We have a show! In 2 days!”

That does the trick, and everyone is up and shouting in celebration, drowning out their downstairs neighbor hitting the ceiling with a broomstick.

His email blinks with a new message:

Let’s see what you got, diaper boy.

~

Gettin’ high with your friends

On the basketball court

Sunglasses on when you sleep

Yeah, that's a sport

They're absolutely decked out. Denim, leather, patches, and studs as far as the eye can see.

You recognize Rodrick from your post at the bar, dressed like an aging member of a hair metal band, desperately clinging to his youth. He’s fumbling with his ID and a pair of dark sunglasses while Jimbo, the bouncer, impatiently crosses his arms. The rest of his band, you assume, make it through easier.

“The show’s in two days! What are you doing here?” you shout, drying a glass with a rag.

They look like a child biker gang, hopped up on sugar.

“Making ourselves known!” one of the others replies. He’s got a high pompadour, and a leather jacket that is entirely too small for him. You chuckle as they all take a seat.

“What’re you havin’?” You toss the rag over your shoulder and meet Rodrick’s eyes.

“Beer?” He says, unsure.

“Type?”

“Uh. Cheap? Cheapest, please.”

“Natty Light. Two bucks. Plus tip.” You wink, rooting around in the fridge under the bar.

“Tip? You got it out of the fridge.” Rodrick raises an eyebrow.

“And I opened it,” you pop the beer open, setting it down hard to make your point.

“Okay, okay. Uh, what’s a tip on that?” He looks panicked, digging in his wallet.

“I’m fucking with you. It’s a two dollar beer.”

He sheepishly hands you three singles, and you tuck the third into your bra. You hate to say it, you really do, but he’s kinda cute. All dressed up to drink shitty beer with his friends. He’s got a nice nose, despite the visible break, and enough eyeliner on to join a family of raccoons. It suits him.

He takes a sip and flinches, “This is awful.”

“If you hadn’t said cheap-est, you woulda had more options!” You laugh.

The rest of the guys order a round of PBRs, a four dollar option, and well whiskey shots.

“Ooh! Classy,” you mockingly fan yourself, “What fine young gentlemen.”

“Hey, how come it’s empty in here?” One of them asks.

“It is…” you check the clock behind the bar, “four pm.”

They stare at you.

“Broad daylight.” You deadpan, setting four shot glasses down on the bar.

The Strike is an old building, all chipped red paint and rickety metal. Rodrick’s eyes linger on a giant sculpture of a flaming match above the bar. Posters from their heyday line the walls: Agent Orange, Circle Jerks, Violent Femmes, Adolescents. There’s a weird song playing; the chord progression seems all out of whack, and from what Rodrick can tell, the singer is chanting suicide, suicide.

“What song is this?”

“You don’t know? it’s your favorite,” you tease, smirking at him.

He’s got nothing. You figured.

“Dead Kennedys, ‘Straight A’s.’ Come on, man. It’s a good one, too. Sixteen on the honor roll, I wish that I was dead. That was me!”

“Whoa. What? What happened?” One of the others asks. He’s got flat ironed blonde hair and big hipster glasses, and his mouth is hanging open.

“Well,” you tilt your head, “Let’s just say my hair and eyebrows have fully grown back, and my parents don’t know my whereabouts. The punks took me in, and I never looked back.”

“What do you mean they took you in?” The one with the shaved head looks at you with genuine concern.

“Okay, so like, this is a bar. People play here. People also play empty buildings, and shitty old houses.”

They’re hanging on your every word.

“I used to run the doors for house shows, collect the five bucks or whatever, stop fights, and then I could sleep in the houses. Then they started paying me, I met my band, I met Mike… and now I’m here!”

You pose, attempting to look successful.

“That’s really cool, but also, like, sad. You don’t talk to your parents?” One of them asks, eyes glittering.

“Don’t need ‘em.” You try to smile reassuringly. You hadn’t meant to bring the vibe down, but hey, they’d asked.

Rodrick’s eyes are fixed on you. His expression is strange. You decide to break the tension.

“You gonna drink that, baby boy?” You tap your fingernail next to his shot.

He looks up at you, lips trembling like they’re trying to form words. His friends are cackling.

“Uh, y-yeah, totally.”

Oh. He’s never taken a shot. None of them have, you realize, as you look down the line and see full glasses.

“C’mon, losers! Take ‘em down! What are you here for?” You holler, channeling your best drill sargent, “I’ll do it with you, fuck it!”

You pour yourself a shot of shit whiskey, raising it in the air, “Let’s go!”

They mirror you and raise their glasses.

“Here’s to Big Rod and The Diapers!”

Gulp. You look around. They’re all puckering their lips and tearing up. You have a brief moment of recovery as well.

You exhale heavily, “Yeah, that’s what happens when you get well liquor. Does a body wrong.”

They laugh, still groaning.

You turn the music up from the big stereo behind the bar, and the guys are all chatting amongst themselves. They seem to be having a great time, and you’re prepping the back of the bar for the small crowd about to pour in at five.

The whiskey hits Rodrick’s head, and he feels pretty goddamn proud of himself. This place is awesome. They have a show here. He fishes his phone out of his pocket and decides he's finally going to call home. Hearing your story had made him actually miss his mom. Maybe she’d even be proud of him.

“I'll be right back,”

His friends wave him off, and he heads into a doorway where the bathrooms are. He dials the number and sighs heavily, shaking off his nerves.

“Hello?”

“Hey, uh, hey mom,”

“Rodrick! Oh, thank goodness, did you change your mind? Are you coming home? We can start applying to colleges again, and…”

“What? No, I… I got a show! At a real venue.”

“Oh.” She sounds disappointed, “Are you getting paid?”

“Wh- I don't know! It's in two days. I'll let you know. Nice to know you're still so supportive, though.”

“I'm just worried about you.”

Rodrick frowns, refusing to speak.

“Do you want me to put dad on?”

“No,” Rodrick scoffs, “tell Greg I say hi.”

He hangs up, standing there, sulking for a moment. Why the hell was he expecting anything different? Don’t need ‘em.

He hears a commotion towards the front of the bar. He peeks around the corner, and sees the bouncer restraining a short, stout guy with a shitty little mustache.

“Lemme go, Jimbo!” he struggles.

“Tony! We told you not to come back here!” You march around to the front of the bar and put your hands on your hips.

“What did I even do?”

“You got broken glass and blood all over the dance floor! You know who had to clean it up?” You're right up in his face, taunting him.

Tony is part of a small group who only come to shows to beat the daylights out of each other. They're sweet when you get to know them, but reckless, and horrible for the bar ecosystem. Last Saturday had been hardcore night, and Tony and his buddies had managed to turn a very respectful pit into an absolute bloodbath.

He's still squirming. The bouncer has him in a full Nelson at this point, he's not doing himself any favors.

“I had to clean up your fucking blood, asshole! That's a health hazard!” You land a light flick on his nose and he grumbles. It's probably broken, and you feel just a little bad. “Not cool!”

Jimbo carries him outside like a child and dumps him on the curb. Rodrick is slowly creeping to the front of the bar, eyes wide. He's cautious, but part of him can't help but think how cool you are.

“Dont come back! Remember what I said, I can put the Hell's Angels on your ass in a second!" The bouncer’s voice booms.

The rest of the band notice Rodrick’s presence and they share a frightened look. This is getting serious.

Jimbo shuts the door and laughs. He's a huge man, mountain-like even. He's got long hair with a beard to match, adorned with rings, like a viking. His laugh does not match how scary he is. He sounds like Santa Claus.

You're laughing too. Jimbo is the perfect bouncer; strong and intimidating, but a total softie underneath. He's the honorary uncle of everyone at The Strike.

“You're a Hell's Angel?!” Ben pipes up, shocked.

“Nah,” Jimbo chuckles, “I just have a beard and a bike. Little fuckers like Tony scare easy, though."

Rodrick feels his heart hurt a little less as everyone around him laughs. He could get used to this. It feels like being in a weird little family.

“Oh boy,” you say quietly, hearing the familiar sound of fuck, fuck, fuck! coming down the stairs. It's Mike.

“What’s goin’ on, Mike?” you ask, grabbing a glass and filling it with seltzer water, topping it with a lime.

“Fuckin, booze delivery Saturday, show Friday! Spring break! Fuckin… frat boys!" His voice is high and nasally. Rodrick immediately recognizes his voice from the radio show earlier.

He chugs the water in one go, and slams it on the counter.

“Mike, we got plenty. All the bottles are at least half full, and the walk-in has, like, fifteen cases of beer.” You say, refilling his glass.

“Frat. Boys.” He repeats, running a hand through his tall, silver hair.

Rodrick grimaces. He really, really hopes none of those frat boys will be from back home.

“Isn't this a punk bar, though?” Ward asks.

Mike moves his head like a meerkat to look at Ward, squinting through his Buddy Holly glasses.

“Who are you? And they don't care! They'll go anywhere there's noise and booze!”

“Alright. Focus. Ideas, solutions,” you try to recenter your neurotic boss.

“They said we could come get it, but that delivery’s not gonna fit in a goddamn ‘94 Corolla.”

Ben leans back from the bar and looks at Rodrick, raising his eyebrows. Rodrick gets it, and smiles back, pointing at Ben.

“We have a van!”

Mike whips around to look at Rodrick.

“Who are you?”

“We’re Löded Diper, uh, sir?” he cringes at his own words.

“Ew. Don’t do that.”

“I don’t know why I did,” Rodrick’s eye twitches, “but we’ll totally get your booze.”

Mike gives him a suspicious glare, then ducks behind the bar to grab a notepad. He scribbles furiously and waves Rodrick over to show him the paper.

“That’s where you go. That’s who you talk to. That’s our order. Be there at 11 AM tomorrow, get it here by 1.”

“We’ve totally got it!” Chris shouts from the bar, making Mike jump.

“Don’t fuck me over!” Mike turns to point at Chris, then makes his way back up the stairs.

You look at Rodrick, mouthing nice! and giving him a thumbs up. He nods, giving you a big grin. It’s the first real smile you’ve seen from him, and it gives you a little flutter in your chest.

Pretty cute.

~

Hold my head, make me warm

Tell me I am loved

Give me hope, let me cry

Make me feel

Give me touch

The guys are all passed out for the night. Rodrick finds the radio feed from earlier and puts his headphones in, laying back on the couch. This time, the host is different.

"This is 98.7, your last independent radio option in a hundred mile radius." A calm, warm voice greets his ears, and he has a pang of recognition.

Is that...?

"I've been thinking about this song a lot today," the host says, "this one's for whoever needs to hear it."

Brain death. Mind death. School damage! Straight A's!

Rodrick sits up. Holy shit. It is you!

He closes his eyes and lets the song take him over. For how dark the lyrics are, it's oddly comforting. Today had really made him feel less alone.

Life isn't just bullshit for him- he'd known that, of course- but now he knows it. He's seen it. He's not a disgrace for going after his dreams.

He's finally in a place where that's not such a crazy idea.

If you're okay, if four other bands are okay... he's gonna be okay. He doesn't need anyone's approval. Fuck 'em.

He lays back as the song ends and another begins, a sense of relief washing over him. Eventually, he falls asleep to the sound of your smooth radio voice mixed with crunchy, old punk demos.

Everything is gonna be okay.

He knows it.

[hermithomebase]

gig culture in the uk for an indie band is so different to the pop girlies. they love to push exclusivity and enable everyone’s pretentiousness because they got tickets to see said band in a tiny venue. i used to go to shows constantly and everyone would moan the second their favourite bands started playing places over 500 capacity

they do this in the US too like i remember seeing videos of FOB playing in tiny bars and basements and like, peoples living room house parties bc that’s just what you Do in scenes like that and that’s the culture it’s part of the grungy aspect—but dream is a fucking punk band he’s a Youtuber turned Popstar HE HAS A FUCKING RECORD DEAL

[mariacallous]

For 20 years, the only way to really communicate privately was to use a widely hated piece of software called Pretty Good Privacy. The software, known as PGP, aimed to make secure communication accessible to the lay user, but it was so poorly designed that even Edward Snowden messed up his first attempt to use PGP to email a friend of Laura Poitras. It also required its users to think like engineers, which included participating in exceptionally nerdy activities like attending real-life “key-signing parties” to verify your identity to other users. Though anyone could technically use PGP, the barrier to entry was so high that only about 50,000 people used it at its peak, meaning that privacy itself was out of reach for most.

These days, to talk to a friend securely, all you have to do is download a free app. For a certain set, that app will be Signal. Snowden and Elon Musk have recommended it; it’s been name-dropped on big-budget shows like House of Cards, Mr. Robot, and Euphoria, and its users include journalists, members of the White House, NBA players, Black Lives Matters activists, and celebrities trying to get their hands on Ozempic. Its founder has been profiled by The New Yorker and appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. A tiny organization with virtually no marketing budget has become synonymous with digital privacy in the public imagination.

Technology can be deeply shaped by the personal inclinations of a founder. Facebook’s light-fingeredness with user data is inseparable from its roots in Zuckerberg’s dorm room as an app for ranking women by their looks; Apple’s minimalist design was influenced by Jobs’ time spent practicing Zen Buddhism. Signal is no different. During its formative years, the charismatic face of Signal was Moxie Marlinspike, a dreadlocked anarchist who spent his time sailing around the world, living in punk houses, and serving free food to the unhoused. He led every aspect of Signal’s development for almost a decade, at one point complaining,  “I was writing all the Android code, was writing all of the server code, was the only person on call for the service, was facilitating all product development, and was managing everyone. I couldn’t ever leave cell service.”

In the field of cryptography, Marlinspike is considered the driving force behind bringing end-to-end encryption—the technology underlying Signal—to the real world. In 2017, Marlinspike and his collaborator, Trevor Perrin, received the Levchin Prize, a prominent prize for cryptographers, for their work on the Signal Protocol. Afterward, Dan Boneh, the Stanford professor who chaired the award committee, commented that he wasn’t sure that end-to-end encryption would have become widespread without Marlinspike’s work. At the very least, “it would have taken many more decades,” he said.

The motivations that led to end-to-end encryption going mainstream lie far out on the political fringe. The original impetus for Marlinspike’s entry into cryptography, around 2007, was to challenge existing power structures, particularly the injustice of how (as he put it) “Internet insecurity is used by people I don’t like against people I do: the government against the people.” But sticking to anarchism would imply an almost certain defeat. As Marlinspike once noted, the “trail of ideas that disappears into the horizon behind me is completely and utterly mined over with failures … Anarchists are best known for their failures.”

For an idealistic engineer to succeed, he will have to build something that is useful to many. So there has also been an unusually pragmatic bent to Signal’s approach. Indeed, in many interviews, Marlinspike has taken a mainstream stance, insisting that “Signal is just trying to bring normality to the internet.” Signal’s success depends on maintaining its principled anarchist commitments while finding a wide-ranging appeal to the masses, two goals that might seem at odds. Examining how the app navigates this tension can help us understand what might come next in Signal’s new quest to reach “everyone on the planet.”

Released after WhatsApp  set the standards for messaging, Signal’s problem has always been how to keep up with its competition—a fine dance between mimicry (so as to seem familiar to new users) and innovation (to poach users from its competitors). Signal started off by copying WhatsApp's user experience, while at the same time pioneering end-to-end encryption, a feature that WhatsApp turned around and copied from Signal. Throughout this evolutionary dance, Signal has managed to maintain an unusual focus on the autonomy of the individual, a wariness of state authority, and an aversion to making money, characteristics that are recognizably anarchist.

Because a small fringe of cypherpunks, Marlinspike included, came to see cryptography as a way to remedy the imbalance of power between the individual and the state, Signal focused on getting end-to-end encryption on messages and calls absolutely right. With Signal, no one can read your messages. Amazon can’t, the US government can’t, Signal can’t. The same is true for voice calls and metadata: A user’s address book and group chat titles are just as safe. Signal knows basically nothing about you, other than your phone number (which is not mapped to your username), the time you created your account, and the time you last used the app. Your data can’t be sold to others or cause ads to follow you around on the internet. Using Signal is just like talking with your friend in the kitchen.

Because Signal is committed to retaining as little metadata as possible, that makes it hard for it to implement new features that are standard to other apps. Signal is essentially footing the cost of this commitment in engineer-hours, since implementing popular features like group chats, address books, and stickers all required doing novel research in cryptography. That Signal built them anyway is a testament to its desire for mass appeal.

Signal also pioneered features that gave individuals more autonomy over their information, such as disappearing messages (which WhatsApp later adopted) and a feature that let users blur faces in a photo (which it rapidly rolled out to support the Black Lives Matter protests). At the same time, Signal has garnered users' trust because its code is open source, so that security researchers can verify that its end-to-end encryption is as strong as the organization claims.

For the ordinary user, though, individual autonomy and privacy may not be as important. On WhatsApp, users accept that it will be very hard to figure out what exactly the app knows about you and who it might be shared with. Users’ information is governed by an ever-shifting labyrinth of grudging caveats and clauses like “we will share your transaction data and IP address with Facebook” and “we can’t see your precise location, but we’ll still try to estimate it as best as we can” and “we will find out if you click on a WhatsApp share button on the web.” WhatsApp is also closed-source, so its code can’t be audited. If using Signal is like talking in a friend’s kitchen, using WhatsApp is like meeting at a very loud bar—your conversation is safe, but you’re exposed, and you’ll have to pay for your place.

If you’re not an anarchist, you may be less worried about a shadowy state and more worried about actual people you know. People in your community might be harassing you in a group chat, an abusive ex might be searching your chats for old photos to leak, or your child might have gotten access to your unlocked phone. WhatsApp’s features better support a threat model that is sensitive to interpersonal social dynamics: You can leave groups silently, block screenshots for view-once messages, and lock specific chats. WhatsApp can even view the text of end-to-end encrypted messages that have been reported by a user for moderation, whereas Signal has no moderation at all.

Idealists have called centralization one of the main ills of the internet because it locks users into walled gardens controlled by authoritarian companies. In a great stroke of pragmatism, Signal chose to be centralized anyway. Other encrypted-messaging apps like Matrix offer a federated model akin to email, in which users across different servers can still communicate through a shared protocol. (Someone on Gmail can still email someone on Yahoo, whereas someone on Facebook Messenger can’t contact someone on Signal.) This federated approach more closely mirrors anarchy; it could theoretically be better, because there would be no single point of failure and no single service provider for a government to pressure. But federated software creates a proliferation of different clients and servers for the same protocol, making it hard to upgrade. Users are already used to centralized apps that behave like Facebook or Twitter, and email has already become centralized into a few main service providers. It turns out that being authoritarian is important for maintaining a consistent user experience and a trusted brand, and for rolling out software updates quickly. Even anarchism has its limits.

What Signal has accomplished so far is impressive. But users famously judge software not on how much it can do, but on how much it can’t. In that spirit, it’s time to complain.

Because of Signal’s small team, limited funding, and the challenges of implementing features under end-to-end encryption, the app bafflingly lacks a number of important features. It doesn’t have encrypted backups for iOS; messages can only be transferred between phones. If you lose your iPhone, you lose all your Signal chat history.

Signal also doesn’t do a good job serving some of its core users. Activists and organizers deal with huge amounts of messages that involve many people and threads, but Signal’s interface lacks ways to organize all this information. These power users’ group chats become so unwieldy that they migrate to Slack, losing the end-to-end encryption that brought them to Signal in the first place. It’s common to try and make multiple group chats between the same people to manage all their threads. When users are hacking “desire paths” into your interface to create a new feature, or leaving because of the lack of the feature, that’s a strong hint that something is missing.

WhatsApp and Telegram, on the other hand, are leading the way on defining how group chats can scale up. WhatsApp “communities” gather different private group chats in one place, better mimicking the organization of a neighborhood or school that may be discussing several things at once. Telegram’s social media “channel” features are better for broadcasting info en masse, though Telegram’s lack of moderation has been blamed for attracting the kind of fringe crowd that has been banned from all other platforms.

It's no exaggeration to say that small features in a chat app encode different visions of how society should be organized. If the first reacji in the palette was a thumbs down rather than a heart, maybe we would all be more negative, cautious people. What kind of social vision did Signal arise from?

“Looking back, I and everyone I knew was looking for that secret world hidden in this one,” Marlinspike admitted in a 2016 interview. A key text in anarchist theory describes the idea of a “temporary autonomous zone,” a place of short-term freedom where people can experiment with new ways to live together outside the confines of current social norms. Originally coined to describe “pirate utopias” that may be apocryphal, the term has since been used to understand the life and afterlife of real-world DIY spaces like communes, raves, seasteads, and protests. And Signal is, unmistakably, a temporary autonomous zone that Marlinspike has spent almost a decade building.

Because temporary autonomous zones create spaces for the radical urges that society represses, they keep life in the daytime more stable. They can sometimes make money in the way that nightclubs and festivals do. But temporary autonomous zones are temporary for a reason. Over and over, zone denizens make the same mistake: They can’t figure out how to interact productively with the wider society. The zone often runs out of money because it exists in a world where people need to pay rent. Success is elusive; when a temporary autonomous zone becomes compelling enough to threaten daytime stability, it may be violently repressed. Or the attractive freedoms offered by the zone may be taken up in a milder form by the wider society, and eventually the zone ceases to exist because its existence has pressured wider society to be a little more like it. What kind of end might Signal come to?

There are reasons to think that Signal may not be around for very long. The nonprofit’s blog, meant to convince us of the elite nature of its engineers, has the unintentional effect of conveying the incredible difficulty of building any new software feature under end-to-end encryption. Its team numbers roughly 40; Marlinspike has just left the organization. Achieving impossible feats may be fun for a stunt hacker with something to prove, but competing with major tech companies’ engineering teams may not be sustainable for a small nonprofit with Marlinspike no longer at the helm.

Fittingly for an organization formerly led by an anarchist, Signal lacks a sustainable business model, to the point where you might almost call it anti-capitalist. It has survived so far in ways that don’t seem replicable, and that may alienate some users. Signal is largely funded by a big loan from a WhatsApp founder, and that loan has already grown to $100 million. It has also accepted funding from the US government through the Open Technology Fund. Because Signal can’t sell its users’ data, it has recently begun developing a business model based on directly providing services to users and encouraging them to donate to Signal in-app. But to get enough donations, the nonprofit must grow from 40 million users to 100 million. The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize.

But there are also reasons for hope. So far, the most effective change that Signal has created is arguably not the existence of the app itself, but making it easy for WhatsApp to bring Signal-style end-to-end encryption to billions of users. Since WhatsApp’s adoption, Facebook Messenger, Google’s Android Messages, and Microsoft’s Skype have all adopted the open source Signal Protocol, though in milder forms, as the history of temporary autonomous zones would have us guess. Perhaps the existence of the Signal Protocol, coupled with demand from increasingly privacy-conscious users, will encourage better-funded messaging apps to compete against each other to be as encrypted as possible. Then Signal would no longer need to exist. (In fact, this resembles Signal’s original theory of change, before they decided they would rather compete with mainstream tech companies.)

Now, as the era of the global watercooler ends, small private group chats are becoming the future of social life on the internet. Signal started out a renegade, a pirate utopia encircled by cryptography, but the mainstream has become—alarmingly quickly—much closer to the vision Signal sought. In one form or another, its utopia just might last.

[crmsnmth]

September Sky Chapter One, Part 5

I stepped into that tiny room and grabbed a clean pair of black pants out of my dresser, and a Hellraiser t-shirt out of the closet and headed back out and down to the shower.

Our place wasn't all that big but I wouldn't call it small either. From our porch (which for some reason had a very comfortable couch on it), you entered into a very neglected living room. I cannot recall a single time I saw any of us use it. My room was directly off the living room. A small hall led down to the kitchen and bathroom. Dennis and Tom's rooms were off the hallway. At the back of the kitchen was another door that led outside into an alley. And down to the basement, and up to the apartment above. Downstairs in the basement was a washer and dryer that either Tom or Dennis had set up, making laundry exponentially cheaper.

I flicked the bathroom fan before turning on the shower. I take very hot showers, the kind that will turn your skin bright reds and pinks. So I need the fan to suck the steam out of the room. Especially because for once I wanted to use the mirror and take care of the way I looked. Something I rarely cared all that much about.

Usually, I take long showers. I enjoyed the warming comfort that only a hot shower can provide. But today, I didn't have the time. As I washed my hair, the intrusive thoughts began there wonderful attack. What if she doesn't show? I mean, I couldn't really blame her if she bailed. It would certainly suck, but I'd probably respect her for the move. I mean, she now has all day to think if getting coffee with a stranger who dresses like the dead was worth the risk. I mean, this was 2012. There's some sick people out there. Still, a part of me deep down really was hoping she'd take the actual risk. And there really was only one way to find out which way she was going to go.

I was done in about ten minutes, dressed and ready. I stood staring into the mirror, making sure my bi-colored hair was perfectly in place, and not the rat's nest it usually was. There was nothing more I could do, so I checked my phone and headed back to my room to rest again. It was only 2:34 which gave me plenty of time, but it felt like I had no time.

So I did what I normally do. Distraction. At least for an hour. The only problem was that every distraction I had, I didn't have any interest in. My anxiety was winning on this one, letting its black tendrils reach deep into my brain and forcing intrusive thoughts and panic to bite slowly around my nerve endings.

I sat on my mattress and decided to check my messages on Facebook. I only had one, and that was pretty normal. The only person I really talked to was my best friend, Chad. We didn't really see each other that much since I moved to Milwaukee. Before I had moved, him and I were almost always together. I can't think of a day where we didn't end up hanging out, usually in front of a Speedway Gas Station. Like some kind of punk Jay and Silent Bob.

We did try, and thanks to the miracle of the internet, we were able to keep our friendship alive and well. Being able to talk to someone with instant video messaging is an amazing thing that I really think we all take for granted just a little too much. Be it a message on Facebook, a late night gaming session, or a Skype Call. There was always a way.

CHAD: Hey, one of these weekends, Alana wants to meet up and show us some bar in Walker's Point. I think it's Sabbatic or something like that. She said it was, in her words, "totally you guys." Can you geta Saturday off? And if so, can I crash at your place? If Alana is right we both know how that will go.

[thislovintime]

Peter Tork with his brothers, Chris and Nick.

(Photo 1) “It shows Peter, when he was 14, with his arms around his brothers Chris (four years) and Nick (twelve), in the living room of Wynward Hill Farm in Williamantic, Conn. ('The Thread Capitol of America'!). Peter was a freshman at Wyndham High School when this picture was taken.” - Catherine McGuire Straus, 16 Magazine, December 1967

(Photo 2) Taken by their sister, Anne.

(Photo 3) Peter’s yearbook photo, E.O. Smith School, Class of 1959

“When I was in junior high school, I was a punk. I wanted people to love and admire me for my gentle wit, my talented music-making and my beauty of personality. Instead I was loathsome and irritating and quarrelsome and I didn’t know why people didn’t like me. But I began to think and meditate on it. Meditation is the only way the personality can be improved, and gradually I began to work things out and better myself. I like to give someone as many ‘different sheets of music paper’ as I can — behave differently toward him each time I see him. That is the only way someone can know what the real me is like. You can’t know the real me by only talking to me. I believe that you can tell more about people by the way they looking walking away from you than you can by what they say. In the highest sense, I think a human life is art, that art includes all expression. The way I play a guitar expresses something, and the way I scratch my thigh expresses something. I think my guitar music is good; that is where I haven’t made any compromises. I think it really expresses me. And it’s going to be better. Our new Colgems album is a terrific thing. Everything you do is an accumulation of everything you have done in your life. If each action could be fully understood, it would explain everything about you. That is the ideal. In everything is its opposite. If you curse with great violence, there’s a tiny spot in which your gentleness appears, and if you say, ‘I love you,’ with great tenderness and passion, there is also an indication of hostility and anger.” - Peter Tork, Seventeen, August 1967

“Windham resident Terry LaVoie said she and Tork went to Windham High School together and were, eventually, members of the first graduating class at E.O. Smith High School in 1959. She said she has known him since seventh-grade. ‘He was a lot of fun,’ LaVoie said, referring to him as a ‘class clown’ who loved to do small pranks. She recalled attending Tork’s 13th birthday party and she was the only girl there, other than his sister, Anne Thorkelson. LaVoie said his mother gave her a potholder to embroider as a party favor and she had it for many years, though it eventually wore out. She saw him perform at the old Shaboo Inn in Mansfield, which John co-owned with David Foster and others, as well as at The Monkees 30th reunion show at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford. ‘To me, he was still just a person,’ LaVoie said, noting she got a VIP pass and talked to him backstage at the Oakdale show. Tork gave back to various local charities over the years, including performing in a Battle of the Bands benefit show for E.O. Smith, a benefit for Joshua’s Trust in Ashford in October 2010 and a fundraiser at the Willimantic Elks Club in April 2010 for Bailey’s Garden in Lebanon.” - The Chronicle, February 22, 2019

In connection with this topic, Peter's advice to a high school student in 1969.

[thesinglesjukebox]

SCREAMING FEMALES - "BRASS BELL"

With John, we say goodbye to Screaming Females...

[7.19]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: This has been my song of the year since it came out. Maybe it's just the familiarity -- when a single is released in January, it has 12 months to make its way into my heart. Maybe it's that I saw Screaming Females for the first -- and last -- time in March at the EARL (East Atlanta Restaurant and Lounge), surrounded by friends I didn't have a year before. Maybe it's the rawness of Paternoster's guitar and vocals, her insistence on a rhythmic minor key riff that I just don't hear much without the layer of pretense that can surround it. There's no valorization of the '70s here, no bemoaning of what music used to be, but a reaffirmation of what the guitar always could be, of the idea that anyone, no matter how small and quiet they might seem, can close their eyes and yell and become a star, even if just in tiny rooms drenched in domestic beer and cigarette smoke. I did not know, when I submitted this song, my rediscovery of a band that I had first found doing college radio in 2012, that Screaming Females would announce their breakup a week later. I did not know that even as I wondered how I could possibly write a blurb for this, the most important song of my 2023 by any metric, would also be the swan song of an 18-year... it almost feels wrong to call the band a titan. That's never what Screaming Females was in ethos. They simply made the music they wanted to, beholden to no one but themselves. I have no means to eulogize them, but I still had to try. [10]

Nortey Dowuona: "I hope they keep going forever." -- Steve Albini [8]

Tara Hillegeist: Screaming Females may be the only grunge-indebted band to exist whose songs have only gotten better the clearer and prettier their production has become, and I've been on team "Marissa Paternoster is one of America's greatest living rock & roll singer-songwriters" since Castle Talk, without a single reason to betray my ideological loyalty in that regard in all the years up till now, either. And since "Brass Bell"'s got riffs that would make even Ratt bang their heads in appreciation, and lyrics like if Cocteau Twins wrote a Neil Young song -- in other words, it's a Screaming Females song... yeah, of course I think this is amazing. It'd take a harder sell and a colder heart than me to think anything else. [8]

Micha Cavaseno: Truly, I don't think of songs beginning with that kind of analog distortion as leading to the sort of gallop and retreating riff cycle pattern I associate with stoner rock and beard metal. I don't think in any of the times people would've mentioned this band I would've expected that I needed to make comparisons to Torche or Mastodon. And go figure: this first note is the note they're going out on. Hell of a way to go out, and just my luck really. [7]

Taylor Alatorre: Two weeks after Screaming Females released Desire Pathway, the J Mascis side project Heavy Blanket came out with Moon Is, an album of instrumental stoner-psych jams aimed squarely at those for whom "rip" is the default verb for guitar solos. There's no doubt that a similar path is open for Marissa Paternoster if she wants it; as if to confirm this, she played a show with the Dinosaur Jr. frontman just a few days after her band's break-up. "Brass Bell" is a solid showcase of the trio as a tight-knit riffing machine and not just a one-woman fireworks show, though there are a few too many concessions made for the radio airplay that never came. The flange effects feel like tacked-on regressions, and the wings of a high-flying, late-coming Paternoster solo are clipped after four terse measures. The sad reality is that the airwaves only seem to have room for one basement-band-doing-stadium-rock at a time, and if your name isn't White Reaper, you may just be out of luck. [6]

Ian Mathers: I mean, kudos to whoever made the wiki entry for this album list "punk blues" as the genre (follow your bliss!) but in every sense except the subcultural this is absolutely classic rock. The production, Marissa Paternoster's vocals and especially and gleefully so her soloing. It's great, in a way that makes me want to take up the air guitar and reach for words like "stentorian." [7]

Katherine St Asaph: I think I like this because of, not despite, the early-'00s radio rock feel. At times it almost feels like it's going to turn into Trapt (not an insult I swear). [7]

Brad Shoup: "Brass Bell" has something I always admired about Screaming Females, which is their uncanny ability to make nu-rock. They never really coded as "punk" for me: maybe stoner metal, but with a lighter guitar tone and an ability to write a hook. Because I grew up in butt rock's salad days, I guess I tend to hear it everywhere. But these riffs (the start-stop one and Phrygian-sounding one) and the way Marissa Paternoster punches into the chorus are modern-rock radio gold. Hell, the chorus even has the kind of fake-deep imagery that should get over. (Would a different alloy make living in a bell a tolerable situation?) Godspeed, Screaming Females. I'm sure all your subsequent bands will rock. [7]

Dorian Sinclair: Having spent the past three weeks on a placement where I learned, in great detail, about the history and function of carillons (bell towers, specifically those with two octaves of bells or more), I am definitively able to confirm: living in a brass bell would be really fucking loud! Central metaphor holds up! [7]

Rachel Saywitz: Sounds like a disaster on the horizon and a heroine's call to arms. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Everything starts to crumble once the actual verse arrives -- you can't feel the jaggedness of the start-stop guitar riff, and the band sounds all too eager to go straight into the chorus both the first and second time around. Unfortunately, the central metaphor there is too awkward, and is shouted with a conviction that leaves no room for it to be a proper hook. They almost convince me with the detours taken in the final third, but the radio-rock sheen is all too much: it sounds like I'm at a bar and the local band is trying way too hard to convince everyone of their energy. [3]

Alfred Soto: Marissa Paternoster's vocals are the right kind of arch and posh: when she complains, "It's too loud!" she sounds like a country club member sneering at Rodney Dangerfield. The rest of the riffage is not too loud, with interesting changes. [7]

David Moore: Every time I get really into a band a few years late they break up within the year. I take full responsibility and vow to stop listening to music. [8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Long live Screaming Females, they rocked harder and longer than a lot (A LOT!) of posers, and they have songs that showcase their gnarled hookiness better than this (download "Ornament" for clear skin etc. etc.). [8]

Aaron Bergstrom: Thirty-five seconds of "When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?" synth build, but we're talking about one of the most dependable indie bands of the past decade-plus, so you better believe they get there. Whether it's Marissa Paternoster screaming on guitar, or Marissa Paternoster just screaming, they've always lived up to their name. She deserves the plural all to herself. RIP to an institution. [7]

Frank Falisi: Screaming Females was an underrated experiment in texture. They could shift tactility live on the ridge of a dime. The big metal monster would suck in its woofer and start to strut different, guitar puffing over tom hits, which were doing the riffs. The bass was too big to hear and the bass was mercury. Something about playing live means performing life, which means playing the changes. Texture in music is a signal. It prepares your body to sound different. "Brass Bell" begins with washing electronics, a loop. It leers and jeers, like a Mica Levi film score on your fretting fingers. The mouth of sound is broad. "Brass Bell", Desire Pathway -- these are the descendants of All At Once (2018), of Marissa's Peace Meter (2021). Once you master bass and guitar and drum and the human voice, you can unmaster it, unwind it, break a string. "Brass Bell" breaks open after the noise into perfect form, crunched production, crisp like adenoidal panic. There's a perfect breakdown in the middle of the song, a perfect bring-it-all-down with a minute left before drumming back up, before one last chorus. "It's too loud!!" How many times have I said this at the Screaming Females gig? How many times has the sound entered my ears, all my complicated receptors and sets of crevasses ringing, only to feel my own texture quake at the sound? We talk sometimes of the collective frisson of the gig, of being a body among bodies. Divine. I think something like that happens on a studio sound too. Me and all my changes, a flange forever. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[dustedmagazine]

Learning to go out again:  Jennifer Kelly’s 2022 in review

Meg Baird plays Chicago

Meg Baird calls it “people practice,” the ordinary skills that we require to interact successfully with other human beings. Small talk, the appropriate amount of eye contact, a certain minimal degree of comfort in crowds: these are all things that eroded in the pandemic.  And going even further, I’d add we ran short of “leaving your living room practice,” the difficult process of readjusting to unpredictable environments again. I got really bad at that in 2020 and 2021.

So, while 2022 was, in many ways, a joyous return to the norm, it was also deeply uncomfortable. Again and again, I’d show up far too early to shows and avoid talking to strangers.  I’d mistake soundchecks for music. I’d get bands mixed up and think the opener was the headliner or at least the second band. It was like I’d never been to a show in my life.  But gradually, over a year that was really genuinely rich in opportunities to see live music, I started to remember why I loved it — and how to be marginally less annoying to everyone around me. And I got to see some wonderful performances.

There was James Xerxes Fussell’s intricately re-arranged Americana on the eve of a blizzard in January and Jaimie Branch’s mesmerizing Anteloper just a month or so before she died. Our local festival, Thing in the Spring, once again delivered incredible abundance with Lee Ranaldo, Myriam Gendron, Jeff Parker, Tashji Dorji and others all taking turns on the stage. I experienced the twilight magic of Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles on a back porch in Northampton as the bats darted overhead, as well as the viscera-stirring low tones of Sarah Davachi at a three-story-tall pipe organ at Epsilon Spires in Brattleboro. I got to see one of my very favorite bands, Oneida, at a club in Greenfield, MA, late in the year. I saw my friend Eric Gagne’s band Footings expand Bonny Prince Billy’s songs into epic, twanging bravado. Yo La Tengo came to my tiny little town and tore the place down.  In Chicago for my birthday weekend, I got a chance to hear Meg Baird and Chris Forsyth at a whiskey distillery on the Chicago River. It was a great year. I’m so glad I was there for it.  

It was also an exceptional year for recorded music as, honestly, it always is. Here are the records I enjoyed the most in 2022, but don’t pay too much attention to the numbers. The order could change tomorrow, and I may very well discover more favorites in other people’s lists.  (We’ll have a Slept On feature at some point early in 2023.) I’ve written a little bit about the top ten, but you can find longer reviews of most of them in the Dusted archives. I’ve linked these where available.

1. Winged Wheel—No Island (12XU): An underground-all-star remote collaboration melds the hard punk jangle of Rider/Horse’s Cory Plump, the unyielding percussion of Fred Thomas, the radiant guitar textures of Matthew J. Rolin and the ethereal vocal atmospheres of Matchess’ Whitney Johnson in a driving, enveloping otherworld. Just gorgeous.  

2. Oneida—Success (Joyful Noise): The best band of the aughts has dabbled in all manner of droning, experimental forms in recent years, but with Success, they return to basics.  “Beat Me to the Punch” and “I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand” are gleeful bangers.  “Paralyzed” is a keyboard pulsing, beat-rattling psychedelic dreamworld. Success is Oneida’s best album since Secret Wars and maybe ever. (I wrote the one-sheet for Success, but I would feel this way regardless.)

3. Cate Le Bon—Pompeii (Drag City): Eerie, madcap Pompeii refracts pandemic alienation through the lens of ancient disaster, floating narcotic imagery atop herky-jerk rhythms.  Abstract and experimental, but also sublimely pop, Pompeii haunts and charms in equal measure.  

4. Destroyer—Labyrinthitis (Merge):  Dan Bejar is always interesting, but the COVID lockdown seems to have shaken him loose a bit. Labyrinthitis is typically arch, elliptical and elegant, but also a bit unhinged. Hear it in the extended rap that closes “June” or in the manic disco beat of “Suffer” or oblique but perfect wordplay in “Tinoretto, It’s for You.”  

5. Horsegirl—Versions of Modern Performance (Matador): Horsegirl elicits a lysergic roar that’s loud but somehow serene, urgent but chilled. The trio out of Chicago were everywhere suddenly and all at once, as sometimes happens to bands, but on the strength of “World of Pots and Pans” and “Billy” I suspect they’ll stick around.  

6. Jake Xerxes Fussell—Good and Green Again (Paradise of Bachelors): An early favorite that refused to fade, Good and Green Again considers old-time music from a variety of angles, often incorporating more than one version of a traditional tune in a seamless way.  The music is lovely, made more exquisite still by James Elkington’s arrangements, which are subtle, right and unexpected.  

7. Lambchop—The Bible (Merge): Stark and lavish at the same time, The Bible catches Kurt Wagner at his morose and mesmerizing best. Surreal sonic textures—including orchestral flourishes and autotuned funk beats—wreathe his weathered baritone, as he traipses through ordinary landscapes turned strange and warped.  

8. The Weather Station—How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars (Fat Possum): Tamara Lindeman drew on Toronto’s vibrant jazz community to form her band for this sixth album as the Weather Station. The band improvised alongside here as it learned the songs. As a result, these songs have the usual pristine folk purity, but also a haze of late night sophistication in elegant runs of piano and pensive plucks of bass.  

9. The Reds, Pinks and Purples—Summer at Land’s End (Slumberland): Glenn Donaldson is pretty much the best at bittersweet jangle pop right now, and this wistful, graceful collection of songs about life’s dissatisfactions is every bit as good as last year’s Uncommon Weather. Plus it’s got a seven-plus minute improvised guitar piece right in the middle, what’s not to love?

10. Tha Retail Simps—Reverberant Scratch (Total Punk): Montreal’s Retail Simps make ferocious garage rock with a bit of soul in its tail feathers. “Hit and Run” sounds like a lost Sam and the Shams b-side and “End of Times – Hip Shaker” with having doing exactly that. If they ever remake Animal House, here’s the band. 

25 more albums I loved: 

Non Plus Temps—Desire Choir (Post-Present Medium)

Joan Shelley—The Spur (Important)

Mountain Goats—Bleed Out (Merge)

The Sadies—Colder Streams (Yep Roc)

Spiritualized—Everything Was Beautiful (Fat Possum)

Superchunk—Wild Loneliness (Merge)

Hammered Hulls—Careening (Dischord)

Kilynn Lunsford—Custodians of Human Succession (Ever/Never)

Oren Ambarchi/Johan Berthling/Andreas Werliin—Ghosted (Drag City)

Green/Blue—Paper Thin (Feel It)

E—Any Information (Silver Rocket)

Sick Thoughts—Heaven Is No Fun (Total Punk)

Pedro the Lion—Havasu (Polyvinyl)

Pan*American—The Patience Fader (Kranky)

Weak Signal—War & War (Colonel)

Frog Eyes—The Bees (Paper Bag)

Pinch Points—Process (Exploding in Sound)

LIFE—True North (The Liquid Label)

Mary Lattimore & Paul Sukeena—West Kensington (Three Lobed)

Wau Wau Collectif—Mariage (Sahel Sounds)

Vintage Crop—Kibitzer (Upset the Rhythm)

Anna Tivel—Outsiders (Mama Bird)

Chronophage—S-T (Post-Present Medium/Bruit Direct Disques)

Sélébéyone— Xaybu: The Unseen (Pi)

Zachary Cale—Skywriting (Org Music)

Jennifer Kelly

[callmeblake]

A Musical Journey To Discover New Indie Soundscapes

What’s Up Jersey: An Intimate Show w/ Frank Iero and the Cellabration

Posted by mysoundscape on May 6th, 2016

Forget the dazzling lights, the huge, deafening amps, and the ever-expanding arena fields. Today we are at the Crossroads in Garwood, New Jersey. This live venue offers nothing overtly majestic, and yet it does provide the setting for majestic performances: the space is small, yet cozy, dimly-lit, and yet inspiring. Active since 1996, the Crossroads has become a landmark for live music in NJ, and on May 1st it hosted two intimate, stripped-down performances by ex-My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero, now touring under the pseudonym, frnkiero andthe cellabration.

frnkiero andthe cellabration (Frank Iero, Evan Nestor, Matt Olsson) live at the Crossroads, Garwood, NJ on May 1st, 2016 (Giulia Caparrelli ©)

(See my posts on tumblr from this event here or keep reading below.)

Both shows had sold out in a few minutes after their announcement. On May 1st, on a heavily rainy Sunday, devoted fans invaded the parking lot of the Crossroads, lining up since early morning – the bravest ones had been camping outside for two days! Despite the bleakness of the weather, the atmosphere was serene: people introducing each other, exchanging past concert experiences, singing their heroes’ anthems, or drawing illustrations as gifts to later shower Iero with.

Around 1pm the tension rose dramatically as the doors finally opened. It took little time to fill up the venue. Fans gathered around the tiny stage, which actually looked like an intimate living room, furnished with a small table and an abat-jour. It felt like being home, and the performances really benefited from this familiar vibe.

Geoff Rickly, Iero’s old friend and frontman of successful post-hardcore band Thursday, first took the stage for a solo acoustic performance. The overall atmosphere was extremely casual, yet raw and authentic. He alternated music – both from Thursday’s past hits and his more recent solo mixtapes – with impromptu talk, addressing the audience. His vocals, foregrounded by the lack of extensive instrumentation, were impressive, rich in texture and emotion.

Geoff Rickly at the Crossroads, Garwood, NJ on May 1st, 2016 (Giulia Caparrelli ©)

Iero greeted his fans with warm affection, and then introduced his accompanying musicians, Evan Nestor, the lead guitarist, and Matt Olsson, the drummer. It was just a big family reunion. Right from the start Iero pointed out he would rather watch people in the eyes than staring at blank smartphone screens. The audience fully agreed. The show turned into an honest, joyous sharing experience, filled with music – both original songs from Iero’s debut studio album, “Stomachaches”, and covers – and spontaneous Q&As with the fans. The questions ranged from “What do you think of this band?” to “Do you feel the Burn?”. The kind of talk you would have among good, old friends.

Turning to the music, the acoustic sound really gave new life to Iero’s songs: the vocals were more limpid, the harmonies with Nestor highlighted, the overall vibe engaging, and yet it retained the punk, angsty attitude of “Stomachaches”. One of the highlights: Iero’s energetic rendition of “25 Minutes To Go” by Jimmy Cash.

Frank Iero signing autographs after the show (Giulia Caparrelli ©)

Both shows lasted approximately 2 hours, and spanned from 2 till 10 pm. It was an all-day, music-enjoyment party. It is remarkable to note that, after each set, Iero took the time and patience to greet, talk to, and sign autographs for every single fan. He gave away his best smiles and hugs, and people truly appreciated his kindness. (Kudos to the Crossroads staff for the smart handling of the crowd!) Dazzling lights, huge, deafening amps, and ever-extending arena fields weren’t really needed to make and experience true, astounding music. Frank Iero and his friends proved how much simplicity and good heart pay off.

(*STAY TUNED: frnkiero andthe cellabration just announced they’re going to start recording new music within the next few weeks!)