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sudoki-sara · 4 years ago

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Decided on yes I will make more rwby Hamilton au. These Hamilton songs are Aaron burr sir and my shot

Citizens: 1776. Feldspar City.

Jaune: Pardon me. Are you Ruby Rose ma’am?

Ruby: That depends. Who’s asking?

Jaune: Oh, well, sure, ma’am. I’m Jaune Arc I’m at you service, ma’am. I have been looking for you.

Ruby: I’m getting nervous.

Jaune: Ma’am... I heard your name at Coquina. I was seeking an accelerated course of study when I got sort of out of sorts with a buddy of yours. I may have punch him. It’s a blur, ma’am. He handle the financials?

Ruby: You punched the bursar.

Jaune: Yes! I wanted to do what you did. Graduate in two, then join the revaluation. He looked at me like I was stupid. I’m not stupid so how’d you do it? How’d you graduate so fast?

Ruby: It was my mother’s dying wish before she passed.

Jaune: You’re an orphan. Of course I’m an orphan god, I wish there was a war! Then we could prove that we’re worth more than anyone bargained for...

Ruby: Can I buy you a drink?

Jaune: That would be nice.

Ruby: While we’re talking. Let me offer you some free advice talk less.

Jaune: What?

Ruby: Smile more.

Jaune: Ha.

Ruby: Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.

Jaune: You can’t be serious.

Ruby: You wanna get ahead?

Jaune: Yes.

Ruby: Fools who run their mouths off wind up dead.

Weiss: Yo yo yo yo yo! What time is it?

Weiss/Ren/Nora: Show time!

Ruby: Like I said.

Weiss: Show time show time! I’m Weiss Schnee in the place to be! Two pints of O’ Sam Adams but I’m working on three, uh! Those Redcoats don’t want it with me! Cuz I will pop chick-a pop these cops till I’m free!

Ren: Oui oui, mon ami, je mappelle Lie Ren! The Lancelot of the revolutionary set! I came from afar just to say bonsoir! Tell the king “Casse toi! Who’s the best cest moi!”

Nora: Brrrah brraaah! I am Nora Valkyrie up in it, lovin it, yes I heard your mother say “come again.”

Ren/Weiss: Ayyyy

Nora: Lock up ya daughters and horses. Of course it’s hard to have intercourses over four sets of corsets...

Ren: wow

Weiss: No more sex, pour me another brew, son! Let’s raise a couple more...

Weiss/Nora/Ren: To the revolution!

Weiss: Well if it ain’t the prodigy of Beacon Academy.

Nora: Ruby Rose!

Weiss: Give us a verse. Drop some knowledge!

Ruby: Good luck with that. You’re takin’ a stand you spit Imma sit we’ll see where we land.

Nora/Ren: Booo

Weiss: Ruby, the revolution is imminent. What do you stall for?

Jaune: If you stand for nothing, Ruby, what’ll you fall for?

Ren/Nora/Weiss: Ooh, who you? Who you? Who are you? Ooh, who is this kid? What’s he gonna do?

I was gonna end it here but then I remembered how “My Shot” continues this song so...

Jaune: I am not throwing away my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! Hey yo, I’m just like my crountry young, scrappy, and hungry and I’m not throwing away my shot!

Jaune: Imma get a scholarship to Shade Academy I prob’ly shouldn’t brag, but dag, I amaze and astonish. The problem is I got a lot of brains but no polish. I gotta holler just to be heard. With every word, I drop knowledge.

Jaune: I’m a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal. Tryin’ to reach my goal. My power of speech: unimpeachable. Only nineteen but my mind is older. These Feldspar city streets get colder, I shoulder.

Jaune: Ev’ry burden, ev’ry disadvantage. I have learned to manage, I don’t have a gun to brandish. I walk these streets famished.

Jaune: The plan is to fan this spark into a flame. But damn, it’s getting dark, so let me spell out the name I am the—

Jaune/Ren/Nora/Weiss/ J-A-U-N-E-A-R-C— We are—meant to be...

Jaune: A colony that runs independently. Meanwhile, Atlas Keeps shittin on us endlessly. Essentially, they tax us relentlessly. Then General James turns around, runs a spending spree. He ain’t ever gonna set his descendants free. So there will be a revolution in this century. Enter me!

Ren/Nora/Weiss: He says in parenthesis.

Jaune: Don’t be shocked when your Hist’ry book mentions me. I will lay down my life if it sets us free. Eventually you’ll see my ascendancy.

Jaune: And I am not throwing away my shot!

Weiss: My shot!

Jaune: I am not throwing away my shot!

Weiss: My shot!

Jaune: Hey yo, I’m just like my country. I’m young, scrappy, and hungry. And I’m not throwing away my shot!

Ren/Nora/Weiss: I am not throwing away my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! Hey yo, I’m just like my country I’m young, scrappy, and hungry and I’m not throwing away my shot! It’s time to take a shot!

Ren: I dream of life without a monarchy. The unrest in Vale will lead to ‘onarchy? ‘Onarchy? How you say, how you say, ‘anarchy? When I fight I make the other side panicky. With my—

All four: SHOT!

Nora: Yo, I’m a tailors apprentice. And I got y’all knuckleheads in loco parentis. I’m joining the rebellion cuz I know it’s my chance. To socially advance, instead of sewin’ some pants! I’m gonna take a—

All four: SHOT!

Weiss: But we’ll never be truly free. Until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me. You and I. Do or die. Wait till I sally in on a stallion with the first black battalion. Have another—

All four: SHOT!

Ruby: Geniuses, lower your voices. You keep out of trouble and you double your choices. I’m with you, but the situation is fraught. You’ve got to be carefully taught: if you talk your gonna get shot!

Jaune: Ruby, check what we got. Mister Lie Ren, hard rock like Lancelot I think your pants look hot. Weiss I like you a lot let’s hatch a plot blacker than the kettle callin’ the pot.

Jaune: What are the odds the gods would put us all in one spot. Poppin’ a squat on conventional wisdom, like it or not. A bunch of revolutionary manumission abolitionists? Give me a position, show me where the ammunition is!

Jaune: Oh, am I talking’ too loud? Sometimes I get overexcited, shout off at the mouth. I never had a group of friends before. I Promise that I’ll make y’all proud.

Weiss: Let’s get this guy in front of a crowd!

All four: I am not throwing away my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! Hey yo, I’m just like my country I’m young, scrappy, and hungry and I’m not throwing away my shot!

Weiss: Everybody sing:Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hey! Whoa! Wooh! Whoa! Aye let em hear ya! Let’s go!

Jaune/Ren/Nora: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Yea!

Citizens: Woah! Woah! Woah! Woah! Woah! Yea!

Weiss: I said shout it to the rooftops! Said, to the rooftops! Come on! Come on let’s go!

Weiss: Rise up! When you’re living on your knees, you rise up! Tell your brother that he’s gotta rise up! Tell your sister that she’s gotta rise up!

Weiss/Citizens: When are these colonies gonna rise up?

Citizens: Whoa! Whoa!

Weiss/citizens: When are the colonies gonna rise up?

Citizens: Whoa!

Weiss/citizens: When are these colonies gonna rise up?

Citizens: Whoa!

Weiss/Citizens: When are these colonies gonna rise up? Rise up!

Jaune: I imagine death so much that it feels more like a memory. When’s it gonna get me? In my sleep? Seven feet ahead of me? If I see it comin’, do I run or do I let it be? Is it like a beat without a melody?

Jaune: See I never thought I’d live past twenty. Where I come from some get half as many. Ask anybody why we livin’ fast and we laugh, reach for a flask. We have to make this moment last, that’s plenty.

Jaune: Scratch that, this is not a moment, it’s the movement where all the hungriest brothers with something to prove went? Foes oppose us, we take an honest stand we roll like Moses, claimin’ our promised land.

Jaune: And? If we win our independence? Is that a guarantee of freedom for our descendants? Or will the blood we shed begin an endless cycle of vengeance and death with no defendant?

Jaune: I know the action in the street is excitin’ but Jesus, between all the bleedin’ and fightin’ I’ve been readin’ ‘n writin’ we need to handle our financial situation. Are we a nation of states? What’s the state of our nation?

Jaune: I’m past patiently waitin’. I’m passionately smashin’ every expectation every action’s an act of creation. I’m laughin’ in the face of casualties and sorrow. For the first time, I’m thinkin’ past tomorrow!

Jaune/Citizens: And I am not throwing away my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! Hey yo I’m just like my country I’m young, scrappy, and hungry and I’m not throwing away my shot!

Jaune/Ren/Nora/Weiss: We’re gonna rise up! Time to take a shot! We’re gonna rise up! Time to take a shot!

Citizens: Not throwing away my shot! Not throwing away my shot!

Jaune/Ren/Nora/Weiss: We’re gonna

Citizens: We’re gonna rise up rise up

Jaune: Time to take a shot.

Citizens: Rise up Rise up!

Jaune/Ren/Nora/Weiss: Time to take a shot!

Citizens: Rise up!

JRNW: Time to take a shot!

Citizens: Rise up!

JNRW: Take a shot shot shot!

Citizens: Ri—ri—ri

JNRW: A-yo it’s time to take a shot! Time to take a shot! And I am— Not throwin’ away my—

Citizens: Time to take a shot! Time to take a shot! And I am— Not throwin’ away my shot!

#rwby #jaune arc #ruby rose #hamilton #rwby hamilton au #lie ren #nora valkyrie #weiss schnee

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shotdownbutstillalive · 4 years ago

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RK600 Verse Open Starter:

Gavin Reed’s mental health was never the best but recently, it was on a sharp decline. It had been a few months since the revolution… a few months since his life had come crashing in all around him when he discovered that he was actually one of the things he had hated for so long… A fucking android…

Since that dreaded day, everything seemed like it was mocking him on how… inhuman he truly was. He now had to worry about getting hurt in the field for an entirely different reason than before. Before he was worried about actually getting hurt but now… it was about being exposed, to show how much of a hypocrite he was.

However recently, Gavin thought he was getting used to this revelation. Sure, he hadn’t completely embraced his true self yet and honestly still tried to ignore it, but at least he wasn’t actively going out of his way to harm himself or obsess over it now. He had been good at hiding it from everyone around him. He was finally feeling like things were going back to normal. Until life just had to ruin everything.

It was a usual day, Gavin was at his desk filling out paperwork as he usually did if there were no big leads in cases when a woman walked into the precinct asking to speak with Captain Fowler. She immediately caught most of the bullpen’s attention due to her obvious Cyberlife aesthetic she had going on. She didn’t even wait for Fowler to leave his office to greet her before she started to speak.

“I’m a representative from Cyberlife. It has come to the company’s attention that the DPD is in posession of Cyberlife property and we ask for it to be returned.” Her voice was calm and sickly sweet to the point it made Gavin want to gag. She then turned to look Gavin dead in the eyes, gesturing to him before continuing.

“Given that the RK600 model is obviously a failure and not technically an android released to the public, it is still Cyberlife property and not concidered alive. We will be taking it back now.”

Gavin went pale.

@unstable-androids

In the months post revolution, Sixty had gone through a more accelerated version of the police academy and was now working as a beat cop for the DPD, working in his own way to help promote android-human harmony and to help make sure their people were fairly treated by the now greatly overworked police department. He still avoided Lieutenant Anderson, but oddly found it much easier to interact with Detective Reed.

Finding himself working on older cases on slow days, Sixty often ended up analyzing old evidence unless something very pressing came up that needed his specific programming. He was just returning from a break when the Cyberlife representative came in, and the sight of them made him freeze up. Her words initially had him confused, but she then made it abundantly clear whom she was talking about.

Snarl covering his face, Sixty was moving before he even calculated the risks and possibilities. Striding up to her, standing tall at his full six foot height, he shed the more meek demeanor he typically wore at work. Very much stepping back to the role of a hunter, he loomed putting himself right up in her space and also shielding Detective Reed from her sight “I’m sorry. If you have any kind of complaint or accusation of theft you will need to fill out the correct paperwork. I’m sure you will find androids cannot be considered property, no matter what model they happen to be” voice cold, LED spinning violently red, he continued “Even if you have a valid claim, there is still quite a bit of paperwork to be done and I’m sure the leaders of Jericho will want to be involved in the negotiations” he wasn’t above calling in the big guns, while he had only met Markus once, a quick message passed on via Connor would have a representative at the station withing twenty minutes. Sixty was confident he could stall her for at least that long.

Sending out a short message ‘There is a Cyberlife representative trying to kidnap an android in the bullpen. We need someone from Jericho here now’ Even if what she claimed was true, and if Reed was still controlled by whatever programming they stuck in him, non-deviant androids were not less than ones that were deviant. They still needed to be protected from the claws of Cyberlife, Sixty was very familiar with how they treated failures. Reed would never see anything outside of a lab ever again if she got her way.

#unstable androids #RK600

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guide-to-the-groove · 3 years ago

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A Sublime Portent of the Future

Everyone has heard Sublime before: What I Got, Doin’ Time, and Garden Grove from their eponymous 1996 album are all timeless classics with a funky beat and some unsavoury lyrics. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy the occasional swear word in their music? A well placed “fuck“ can speak volumes, and the voice of the late Bradley Nowell is especially adept at delivering these expletives, and with great effect. Perhaps to the greatest effect in the song “April 29, 1992 (Miami)”, also from the album Sublime, which remains not only relevant today, but serves as a chilling prediction for the future, intentional or not.

If you haven’t heard the song, take a listen here.

It is no secret the members of Sublime are white, and that is important to note when examining this song and its subject matter, as some may feel the members of Sublime would be unfit to cover such a racially-charged topic. The title itself, while incorrect (Nowell opens with “April 26, 1992″, cited as being kept in because it sounded better) refers to the 1992 Los Angeles riots that occurred after four police officers viciously beat Rodney King, a 25 year old black man (albeit not to death, as one may unfortunately come to expect today). The community was outraged, but like any sensible folk, did not resort to abject destruction. Instead, faith was placed in the justice system to carry out its duty. As we now know, justice was not delivered, the police were acquitted, by a jury, of using excessive violence, despite video evidence. Following this outright slap in the face, riots explode across the United States. Does this sound familiar?

It is at this moment in time the riots begin, and while we hear reference to them in many a song, but we would not hear Sublime’s recount of the events until 1996, four years later. The song begins with some various police radio chatter, from Southern California, before Nowell cuts in, “April 26, 1992 / There were riots on the streets, tell me where were you? / You were sittin’ home on your TV / While I was participating in some anarchy” While not core to the song’s message, it is worth pointing out that while this line seems to be a diss towards folks merely observing the rioting from their home, but appears more apt as an observation toward the increasing presence of the media covering major social issues, almost 24/7, for the entire country and even the world to see.

Nowell continues to describe he and his crew’s escapades, taking advantage of the riots to partake in some good old fashioned looting, the tried and true counterpart to any major civil unrest. Looting only makes everyone involved look bad, especially doing so maliciously, but this is merely a pretext, and it goes without saying that the members of Sublime were not the only participants. Of course, this turns from looting to a more serious issue, with Nowell relenting, “’Cause everybody in the hood has had it up to here / It’s getting harder, and harder, and harder each and every year” An obvious fact, and the riots themselves a reference to this: the culmination of pent up aggression towards a heartless society. Even preceding this, we hear “Homicide, never doin’ no time”, a phrase that, when applied to police, rings true to this day. Nowell briefly describes a side of looting not often acknowledged, singing, “Some kids went in the store with their mother / I saw her when she came out she was gettin’ some Pampers” While protesting often becomes rioting and looting, usually at the hands of more unruly types seeking to exploit unrest, some people, driven to extremes, might take advantage of things for the sake of their family. Again, while not a core part of the song, it paints a broader picture of what was going on.

As much as I’ve mentioned the “core” of the song, we have yet to begin exploring it. So enough stalling: depressingly relevant lyrics, ho! Ahem. Anyway, Nowell continues with the final verses , “They said it was for the black man / They said it was for the Mexican, and not for the white man / But if you look at the streets, it wasn’t about Rodney King / It’s this fucked-up situation and these fucked-up police / It’s about comin’ up, and stayin’ on top / and screamin’ 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin’ cop” The song goes on for a few more verses before Nowell begins listing off cities where rioting took place--another hauntingly accurate prediction of the future--and the majority of the aforementioned swearing occurs in this part of the song. Saving them for these poignant lines sweetens the delivery, and leaves a powerful message when paired with the preceding scene laid out for us: The issue transcends Rodney King, as we have seen with Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd. It transcends even them, as the inherent problem lies with the police and not only their abject aggression and tendency to violence, but a clear and disturbing racial bias against minorities. While the song appears as a brag by uninvolved white men to some, I believe the song is more pertinent not only as a vision of a future world Bradley Nowell would never come to know, but as a strong anthem against police brutality (despite the pro-looting intro). I truthfully think that the members of Sublime would still wholly support screaming 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin’ cop.

Oh, and by the way, 187 is California Penal Code for murder.

Thanks for reading.

-G

Sources:

https://www.culledculture.com/sublime-april-29-1992/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/los-angeles-riots-quotes_n_1456782

https://thepolypost.com/arts-and-entertainment/2017/04/25/article_6b5b5bdc-29ee-11e7-ba86-2b08554a8e4a/

https://banana1015.com/april-29-1992-miami-why-the-sublime-songs-name-doesnt-match-the-lyrics/

https://www.sfweekly.com/music/twenty-years-later-sublimes-april-29-1992-miami-is-still-the-best-song-about-white-boys-piggy-backing-on-a-riot/

#sublime #music review #song review

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chiseler · 4 years ago

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Maxwell Bodenheim

In Letters from Bohemia, Ben Hecht declares his friend Maxwell Bodenheim “more disliked, derided, denounced, beaten up, and kicked down more flights of stairs than any poet of whom I have heard or read.” In his lifetime Bodenheim was at least as well known for his drunk and dissolute behavior as for his writing. Today he’s mostly remembered for the tawdry way he died.

He grew up poor and Jewish in smalltown Mississippi. He was bright but viciously boorish, physically handsome yet repulsively slovenly, and argumentative to a fault, with a genius for the insult that could end any discussion, usually with his being punched in the mouth. As young men Bodenheim and Hecht were the pranksters of the Chicago Renaissance. According to Allen Churchill’s The Improper Bohemians, they once filled a hall for a literary debate on the topic “Resolved: That People Who Attend Literary Debates Are Imbeciles.”

Hecht strode center-stage to announce that he would take the affirmative. Then he stated, “The affirmative rests.” Bodenheim shambled forward, scrutinized his confident opponent, and said, “You win.”

Bodenheim – Bogie to his long-suffering friends – was twenty-two when he blew into Greenwich Village with other Chicago émigrés in 1915, and instantly made a name for himself in the neighborhood as a poet of promise. Reading his facile, gaudy verses now, it’s easy to think that it was the brute force of his sociopathic presence, rather than his poetry, that convinced the best poets in the Village at the time that he was one of them, potentially even the greatest of them:

You have a morning-glory face

Whose edges are sensitive to light

And curl in beneath the burden of a smile.

Remembered silence returns to the morning-glory

And lattices its curves

With shades of golden reverberations.

Then the morning-glory’s heart careens to loves

Whose scent beats on the sky-walls of your soul.

Tellingly, those not directly in his orbit seem not to have been fooled by the clever romance-novel sham of such verses – and neither, apparently, was Bodenheim himself, though he would go on roaring about his genius for decades. Hecht records that after entering 223 poetry contests and failing to win a single one, he took to signing his letters to editors “Maxwell Bodenheim, 224th ranking U.S.A. poet.”

He did have a real talent for scandal, easy enough to generate during Greenwich Village’s prolonged drunken orgy in the Prohibition years. His haughty, insulting demeanor, and his habit of trying to steal other men’s women right under their noses, got him regularly socked on the jaw and thrown out of bars, soirees and the fauxhemian revels at Webster Hall.

Turning from poetry to prose, through the 1920s he wrote a string of best-selling, sensational potboilers like Replenishing Jessica, about a free-loving bohemian, Georgie May, about a fallen prostitute, and Naked on Roller Skates, about a middle-aged “onetime hobo, circus-pegger, doughboy, sailor, anarchist, con man, all-time sensationalist and wanderer of the world” who leaves a small town with a much younger woman who “wanted to try everything at least once.” They sound better than they read. Hecht called them “hack work with flashes of tenderness, wit, and truth in them.” When the Society for the Suppression of Vice brought Bodenheim to trial in 1925 on an obscenity charge for Replenishing Jessica, his defense lawyer used a familiar tactic of demanding that the prosecutor read the entire text aloud to prove his case. Judge, jury and the reporters covering the trial dozed as the prosecutor droned on and on, and the unaroused jury voted Bodenheim not guilty. Mayor Jimmy Walker agreed with the verdict. “No girl was ever seduced by a book,” he quipped.

For a bohemian poet, commercial success and celebrity could bring on a full-blown personality crisis (as it would do Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac and Kurt Cobain). Bodenheim squandered the money he made from his novels on drink and gambling, as though he couldn’t throw it away fast enough. He preferred to demand loans and cadge drinks from everyone around him, like a true bohemian poet should. Meanwhile, his reputation in these years as a daring, risqué writer attracted a cloud of what we’d call groupies today, many of them the sort of teenagers from the outer boroughs and the hinterlands who flocked to the Village in the 1920s to throw off the shackles of mainstream morality and abandon themselves to the neighborhood’s non-stop pagan revels.

He took his pick. One was Gladys Loeb, 18, from the Bronx. In 1928, he ended a brief fling with her, adding that her poetry was doggerel. Her landlady soon found her with her head in the gas oven, barely clinging to life, and to Bodenheim’s portrait. A few weeks later he did the same thing to twenty-two-year-old Virginia Drew, who threw herself into the Hudson and succeeded where Gladys had failed. When police went to question Bodenheim about Drew’s suicide, he’d slipped off to stay with fellow Villager Harry Kemp in Provincetown. Gladys, having recovered from her own suicide attempt, followed him there – trailing her irate father, cops and reporters. Bodenheim talked his way out of their clutches, but not out of the newspapers all over the country, which had a field day with lurid tales about the Greenwich Village Lothario.

Then came Aimee Cortez, widely feted as “the Mayoress of Greenwich Village.” She earned the title by stripping naked at private parties and Webster Hall shindigs and gyrating a wildly erotic dance. According to Churchill, this display sometimes ended with her going off with some lucky male, but other times she’d stop abruptly, with a look of terror and confusion, and run off. In a later era she’d be prescribed a drug for this clearly disturbed behavior, but in the Village of the late 1920s, where “a hideous lust… pervaded the air” as Bodenheim’s My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village put it, she was merely celebrated as the queen of the modern-day bacchantes. Not long after Gladys and Virginia made the papers, Aimee was found with her head in her own oven, also clutching Bodenheim’s portrait. She was dead at nineteen.

Bodenheim was indirectly implicated in the sad end of another lover, a teenager from the outer boroughs with the improbable name Dorothy Dear. When she wasn’t with him in his MacDougal Street apartment, he wrote her love letters that she carried in her purse. One afternoon she was aboard a rush hour subway train heading from Times Square to the Village when it derailed at a faulty switch, killing sixteen passengers, including Dorothy. Bodenheim’s love letters were found scattered around the wreckage.

By the end of the 1920s Bodenheim was a wreck himself. From the 1930s until his death he was a fixture on the streets and in the bars of the Village, by turns annoying and sad-making, decaying before his old friends’ eyes into a stinking, toothless ghost, “tottering drunkenly to sleep on flophouse floors, shabby and gaunt as any Bowery bum,” as Hecht put it. Still, Hecht gallantly added, “Bogie hugged his undiminished riches – his poet’s vocabulary and his genius for winning arguments. He won nothing else.” He cranked out more cheap novels, drank the money, and stooped to hawking his poems to tourists in Washington Square for a quarter each. Wiseacres in the bars fed him gin and laughed at his drunken mumblings and rants, which sometimes yielded a famous line like “Greenwich Village is the Coney Island of the soul.”

Poets were the main entertainment at Max Gordon’s Village Vanguard in the mid-1930s. Gordon couldn’t afford to pay them; they performed for whatever change the patrons tossed at their feet. Poet Eli Siegel, later founder of the Aesthetic Realism movement, was the emcee in the early years, but the crowd really came to see three ghosts of the Village Past – Joe Gould, Harry Kemp and Maxwell Bodenheim. They hung out there because Gordon tolerated them and his patrons were easy marks for a few free drinks. In his memoir Live at the Village Gate, Gordon describes how Siegel would call Gould out of the crowd with the cry, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Harvard terrier and boulevardier, Joseph Ferdinand Gould!” Gould would shuffle up to the spotlight and do his schtick, while Bodenheim, tall and imperious, would stalk the shadows at the back, “point his finger, and shout, ‘Eli Siegel! I hate you, Eli Siegel. You rat!’” Gordon continues:

Eli would wait for Bodenheim to shape up so he could call on him to recite. But it was no use. Bodenheim, swirling crazily, eyes glazed, arms outstretched, would suddenly stop and point his finger at a frightened girl who had refused him a dance during intermission. “Rat!” he’d shout at her.

Despite the frightening deterioration of his physical and mental hygiene, Bodenheim still attracted a certain type of desperate woman, usually in decline herself. He met the last of them in 1951 when Ruth Fagan bought a poem from him with her last quarter. She was thirty-two, he was a fifty-nine-year-old derelict, and within a couple of weeks they were going around as Mr. and Mrs. Bodenheim, though it’s not clear they ever bothered to make it official. They decayed together for the next couple of years, chronically broke and drunk, descending from cheap rooming houses to flophouses to sleeping in hallways and doorways. She turned tricks when she could, and he beat her when he found out. In 1952 they made a horrific spectacle of themselves at a fancy reunion for surviving members of the original Chicago Renaissance group, where he panhandled the guests while she propositioned them.

If the Bodenheim of the early 1950s was a disgusting or amusing clown to the tourists, and an embarrassment and bother to his old friends, he was something of a martyred saint to the generation of bohemians who came to the Village after World War Two. In his headlong descent into the abyss, his lust for the extremes of degradation, his lust for lust itself, he was like a dark archangel of negative capability for them, representing the ultimate rejection of bourgeois virtue and mainstream values, even to the point of total self-destruction. He comes up several times in the published diaries of Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theatre, from this period. One night in 1951 she and her husband Julian Beck were in the San Remo, the dark and smoky bar at Bleecker and MacDougal Streets that Bodenheim often haunted:

A ragged drunk approaches our table. In terrible shape. Ash blond hair askew. He lurches forward, his hands resting on the table. Directly to Julian: “What’s your name?”

“My name is Julian Beck.”

“My name is Maxwell Bodenheim. I’m an idiotic poet.”

And he turns and moves off before we can speak.

The late Roy Metcalf, who was a young newspaper reporter in the early 1950s, also encountered Bodenheim in the San Remo. “Bodenheim had a great face, an alcohol-ravaged face,” he recalled. “Once a guy from uptown wanted to see Greenwich Village, so we went down to the San Remo. There was Bodenheim. He said, 'Bring him over, let’s buy him a drink.’ He expected Bodenheim to say something. Bodenheim by that time was so paralyzed by alcohol that all he could do was bray, 'Aaaaargh.’”

In 1953 Malina went into the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue, where artists hung out. The food was lousy, the lighting made people look so bad they nicknamed it the Waxworks, and the other patrons tended to be bums, drug addicts, tough guys and cops. The staff was not particularly welcoming to arty boho types. So naturally that’s where Bodenheim and Ruth went to celebrate his birthday. Malina writes that a friend stole a pumpkin pie from the counter as a present for Bodenheim. “A cop sees him, but is somehow content with my explanation that Maxwell Bodenheim is a great poet and that his birthday should be celebrated. The counterman is not so generous: 'I ain’t doin’ this for love.’ We all eat. Ruth Bodenheim curses the cafeteria. Some junkies come and tell horrible tales of hospitals and arrests. One taps his eye with a knife to show us that it’s glass. Ruth Bodenheim smiles in an aristocratic manner: 'I’d never have believed it wasn’t real,’ as if she were consoling the owner of false jewels.”

“Do we not idolize Maxwell Bodenheim although we are sometimes loath to talk to him and always ashamed of our condescension to him?” Malina wonders in another entry. “What we admire is Bodenheim’s refusal to resist. We fight all the time, resisting temptation. We admire those who don’t. Even if it’s suicidal.” And later: “Even self-contempt when fierce enough is magnificent. The virtue of the extreme is its extremity. Nature loves extremes as much as she loathes a vacuum.”

In 1953, Ruth took up with a violent, mentally unstable dishwasher named Harold Weinberg. One night in the winter of 1954 the three of them wound up in Weinberg’s room off the Bowery. Bodenheim roused himself from a drunken stupor to see Ruth and Weinberg having sex. He attacked Weinberg, who pulled out a .22 and shot him through the heart. Then Weinberg stabbed Ruth in the chest. The last photos of Bodenheim show him and Ruth lying dead in the squalid room.

“The hideous death of Bodenheim blankets the Village in a funereal spirit,” Malina wrote. “Who dares confess to the wrenching excitement of seeing a companion’s mauled corpse on the front page of every newspaper, and all of us knowing that the worst has again triumphed?”

Cops picked up Weinberg a few days later. At his trial he called his victims Commie rats and shouted that he “did the world a favor” by getting rid of them. He sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” as he was led out of the courtroom and off to Bellevue.

Today, Bodenheim is remembered more for this tabloid end than for any other achievement. Even his memoir was a dispiriting sham. My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village, published posthumously in 1954, was ghostwritten by a hack who, like everyone else in the Village, had bought him drinks to listen to his drunken ramblings. It’s a loose collection of vignettes, anecdotes, and racy gossip that was already antique when the book appeared. His old friend Hecht, who sent a check for $50 to help pay for Bodenheim’s cheapjack funeral, based his 1958 Off-Broadway play Winkelberg on him. (“There was never a man as irritating as Winkelberg.”) It ran for a month at the Renata Theatre on Bleecker Street, then sank into oblivion along with much of Bodenheim’s own writing.

by John Strausbaugh

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foolsongsa · 5 years ago

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𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐆, 𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐄.

quiet, idyllic, scenic ...

or at least, that’s what you’d read in any real estate advertisement asking you to move there or any travel advertisement encouraging you to visit. in reality there’s a persistent chill in the air even in the dead of summer and nobody talks about the place just beyond the largest great white pine in the forest where countless have disappeared. statistically, there are more strange occurrences in this small town than anywhere else on the whole eastern coast .. but that fact evades public knowledge to this day. it’s as if as soon as you leave, you take the fog with you. it infiltrates the deepest parts of your mind and twists your perception. you remember having a wonderful time, you remember sailing on nimble boats and eating the finest seafood caught fresh off the coast. you don’t remember feeling the dull ache, or seeing the shadows down by the dock .. human-like but too tall to be so. you don’t remember the pervasive fear that seeped into your bones as you suspected you were being watched from everywhere at once, eyes you couldn’t see but were sure existed. they had to, you could FEEL them.

there’s something to be said about being BORN in cape fog, or living there a substantial amount of time. those born in the town have a deeper connection to it, can see more than the average eye .. visions that were allusions to the truth and clues if they so chose to follow them. that man with the sickle ? he’s really there, it’s not your imagination despite how much you wish it was. those newer to cape fog enjoy a more .. altered view of reality. a facade. recent residents are woefully unaware as to what is actually going on around them, are only presented with the utopia they sought in moving here. the get away they so feverishly desired. they only see what they’re allowed to.

eerie, dangerous, unknown ...

this will be a small group verse taking place on both discord and/or tumblr, starting with 10 available spots. i am so so so excited to share these wild thoughts from my brain with you all and tysm again for expressing interest. please be advised that this is a suspense / horror themed rp, therefore the group WILL contain mature themes and potentially triggering content. you must be 18+ to join !! application is as follows, please send it off anonymous to my ask. once you are accepted i will message you to exchange discord names and send you an invite to the server :-)

— firstname lastname is age in letters years old and played by faceclaim. he/she/they has/have lived in cape fog for number of years and currently works as a(n) occupation at place of work. ( name or alias, preferred pronouns, @tumblr username )

𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐓. ( 𝟐 / 𝟏𝟎 𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐕𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 )

— althea kohn is twenty-one years old and played by madison beer. she has lived in cape fog for seven years and currently works as a bartender at murphy's. ( leesh, she / her, @wearyhands )

— grant palmer is twenty-three years old and played by jacob elordi. he has lived in cape fog for thirteen years and currently works as a bartender & handyman at murphy’s. ( kels, she / her, @foolsongs )

— lucia alvarez is twenty four years old and played by sofia carson. she has lived in cape fog for twenty years and currently works as a crime analyst at the cape fog police department. ( lizzy, she / her, @jviced )

— madeleine ellerbrock is twenty years old and played by sophie simnett. she has lived in cape fog all her life and currently works as a server at murphy’s. ( kels, she / her, @foolsongs )

— sage frater is twenty three years old and played by booboo stewart. he has lived in cape fog for twenty years and currently works as a dockhand for fog's fish. ( amanda, she / her, @hotboxed )

— theodore “theo” flynn is twenty three years old and played by alex fitzalan. he has lived in cape fog for eighteen years and currently works as a server at murphy's. ( sunny, she / they, @videogcmes )

— tj adams is twenty four years old and played by tom holland. he has lived in cape fog for twenty four years and currently works as an emt for the cape fog volunteer fired department. ( kevin, he / him, @wrciths )

— wynonna “wynn” branson is twenty-two years old and played by margaret qualley. she has lived in cape fog all her life and currently works as a busser at murphy's. ( sky, she / her, @wuunderstruck )

𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐋 𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐒.

- member of local police department ( beat cop, detective, morgue assistant, etc ) - receptionist, maid, escort, or security personnel at the cape motel - server or assistant manager at the firefly diner - student at cooper point community college ( in the next town over, an hour’s drive away - go crows! ) - dock worker, boat worker, or sailor / fisherman employed by key local company “fog’s fish” - medical personnel at local general physician’s office ( medical assistant, receptionist, records keeper, etc )

#ok big moood here we go folks #worked hard n fast on this shit #i'm so stoked #𝘟𝘐𝘐𝘐 ╱ 𝔬𝔲𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔯 –––––– personal.

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therainroguefanfiction · 4 years ago

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🔥 ℝise Ⱥbove I̾t ◈ Chapter 020 [Living Valley Online]

📑 Table of Contents | ◂Backward

Author’s Note: So, this was obviously inspired by the third ending, “Datte Atashi no Hiro” by LiSA. I love that ending and I thought it would be cool to explore that RPG side for a couple chapters! You can watch the clean version at the bottom of this page~

Word Count: 2,344

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

〈“If you don’t like the way I talk, then why am I on your mind? If you don’t like the way I rock, then finish your glass of wine. We fight and we argue, you’ll still love me blind.” Dua Lipa, “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)”〉

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

“She was… a villain?”

Toshi nodded, hanging his head. “Alissa grew up as an orphan on the streets. She became a mercenary at a young age in order to survive. As she grew up, she came to care less and less for the rules society tried to force upon her and so… she became a contract killer.”

“A mother fucking assassin…”

“Yes. Her quirk, ‘rogue’, made it an easy profession for her. She could use stealth at will, and she was well versed in all manner of poison and venom.”

“Holy fucknuggets,”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to hate her. Alissa’s rough childhood shaped her into who she became because she had no one to guide her, to show her love. She was utterly alone in life, and she did the very best she could with the cards she had been given.”

“Her past was pretty bad, that’s true,” Aizawa interjected. “But everything she did was her own choice. She understood that better than anyone and she didn’t go around making excuses for her actions. She took responsibility for her poor life choices.”

“Alissa had already begun to turn her life around when I met her. Rather than continuing on as an assassin, she chose to become a bounty hunter instead.”

“Ain’t they the same thing?” I raised a brow.

“No, they’re not. Bounty hunters don’t kill their targets, they incapacitate them and hand them over to the police.” Toshi held up a finger as he explained. “She stopped killing people and started to attack only criminals that had done terrible acts of violence. Actually, that’s how we met. She saved my life from a group of villains when I was in my last year of middle school. Of course, I had heard all of the rumors surrounding Alissasears, but she was surprisingly kind to me. She made sure I was unharmed and safe before taking off. After that day, it was like fate had decided that we would continue to cross paths. And then…”

“She turned herself into the police,” Aizawa muttered. “It was all over the news for months how the police had finally apprehended the famed assassin.”

“But she became a hero, right?” My brow furrowed. “How’d that work?”

“She made a deal with the police commissioner. In exchange for her cooperation and testimony against several top villains that she had done jobs for, they would let her go free. She agreed to this, giving up multiple associates and old clients. Because of her actions, twenty-five top villains of the time were taken into custody, but… she was never free again after that. She was under constant surveillance by both cops and villains. No one trusted her. Just like that, she was completely isolated again.”

“So you weren’t kidding when you said she had a lot of enemies, huh?” I swallowed, leaning back a bit.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Toshi heaved a heavy sigh. “As far as most people are concerned, Alissasears ‘retired’ from being a hero because of the target on her back, but there are a few people that know the real reason behind it.”

“Which is?”

He lifted his hand, pointing a bony finger at my heart. “You, young Jen. When she became pregnant with you, her whole world took on a new meaning. She did her best to avoid the public eye, but with so many people watching her so intently, she knew that that could never happen. Not here, anyway.”

Aizawa humphed. “She kept what she was planning a secret from all of us. She didn’t trust anyone… except for this idiot.”

“Even then, she didn’t tell me everything. The day she tried to leave, for example. Alissa kept telling me that she was planning to make a break for a different world, but she never told me when she was going to leave. And then she tried to run.”

I scratched my cheek, my brain trying to process all of this new information. My head is really starting to hurt… “You told me before that she… uh, died in your arms… How’d you find her?”

“When she was heading for the meeting spot, she realized that the hero killer, Stain, was following her. She panicked… I’ll never forget getting that message from her. I was on the other side of town at the time, attempting to help save a group of women being held hostage. Maybe if I had left immediately instead of waiting, she…”

“Tch,” I leaned forward, flicking him hard between the eyes. He winced, blue eyes snapping to meet mine. “All these years and you’re blamin’ yourself, aye? Not cool, Toshi.”

He gave me a sad smile, nodding his head. “I have many regrets when it comes to her, but… the past is the past. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“Hmm, and you’re trying to make amends by taking care of me, huh?” I cocked a brow, folding my arms over my chest.

He jumped out of his seat in surprise, blood spurting from his mouth and onto the white blanket draped over Aizawa, who glared at him. “Of course not! I mean, in a way, I hope it makes up for my failures, but I genuinely do care about you, young Jen!”

“Calm your man tits, I was kidding.” I grinned.

Aizawa continued to glare at him, not that he noticed.

Toshi took me by the shoulders, his expression dead serious. “No matter what happens from here on out, I promise you, Jen, I won’t let the league of villains take you. I don’t know what they want from you, if it’s some sort of revenge or if they have other plans, but I won’t give them the chance.”

His sincerity caught me off guard. My grin softened to a smile as I pulled his hands from my shoulders. “I don’t need you to defend me ’cause I’m gonna get stronger. I’ll defend myself and everyone I care about. Let that blue-haired freak come for me. I’ll make him regret the day he was fucking born!”

Toshi smiled proudly, giving me a nod.

“You can both leave now,” Aizawa grunted. “And get me a clean blanket.”

“Oh yeah, that reminds me.” I rubbed the back of my head, giving them a blank look. “Apparently I can teleport,”

“…what?!”

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

“Are you fucking serious?!”

I winced, pulling the phone back away from my ear. “Do you have to be so goddamn loud?”

Bakugo scoffed from the other end of the line. “Bitch, you just told me your mom is Alissa-fucking-sears!”

I scratched my cheek. “She’s that popular, huh?”

He was silent for a moment. “Oi, have you told anyone else?”

“No, you’re the only person I really talk to, bro.”

“Good. Don’t fucking mention that to anyone else, got it?”

“D’aww, are you worried about me, Bakuhoe~?” I grinned.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME THAT!! And no I ain’t worried about your dumbass! Are you gonna fuckin’ log in or not?!”

“Yeah, yeah, geez.” I put the phone on speaker, setting it on the coffee table beside me before picking up the controller and booting up my game system. “What’s this game about anyway?”

“It’s an RPG,”

I hummed. “Doesn’t seem like your kinda game,”

He scoffed. “It’s currently one of the hardest games to fucking beat. I’m gonna destroy this fucking game and leave all those losers in the dust!”

“‘Kay… but why do I have to play?”

Silence.

“Bakuh -”

“Shut up,” he grunted. “This stupid game doesn’t let you play alone.”

“And you have no friends, huh?”

“S-Shut up, bitch! You don’t, either!!”

Yeah, but I’m not the one trying to play a multi-player game. I rolled my eyes as the game loaded.

“Hurry up and make your damn character!”

“Don’t fucking rush me,” I scowled, selecting the swordmaster class. “Fuck, there’s so many options. Why are there so many options? This is hella detailed for a free game.”

“Che, I’m gonna go get food. You better be done by the time I get back!”

Hm, should I make her look like myself or a completely different person? Making a cute ass guy is also an option. Meh, I’ll just make her look like me with a few subtle changes. Let’s try… green hair? Ooh, girl, green is not your color, fam. Blonde maybe? Oh, that actually looks pretty dope, but it’s too normal. Red? Not nearly as cool as Erza Scarlet. Damn, that blue looks amazing, though. Maybe I’ll dye my real hair that color for a while.

Now for the clothes. I’ll just choose some pants and a basic, plain shirt with boots. I confirmed her looks and the game started to load. I heard a door opening and slamming over the phone, followed by the obnoxious sound of someone munching loudly on chips.

“Are you done yet?”

“Just loaded in.”

“Ignore the fuckin’ NPC and come outside.”

“No can no, chief. Gotta do the tutorial before I can leave.”

“For fuck’s sake!”

I chuckled at his impatience. “Tuts usually aren’t too long, keep your thong on.”

And I was right. Five minutes passed and the tutorial ended. I left the building, a blinding white light filling the screen.

それ以上に上昇 ☆ Living Valley Online

Bakugo was waiting outside the building, leaning against the wooden support beam. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he was wearing an open vest, the top rimmed with thick white fur. Red fangs hung from his ears, and various necklaces and beads hung around his neck. His pants were blue, white fur between the hem and the top of his black boots. Red cloth was pulled over his elbows and a cutlass was strapped to his waist.

“Fucking finally!” he scowled, holding his palm up. A blue screen projected in front of him and he glanced at me. “Swordmaster, right?”

“Yeah,”

He pressed on the screen a couple times before a sword materialized in his hand. “It’s only a rank twenty, but it’s better than that shitty rank one on your back. Trade me.”

A blue screen popped up in front of me: ‘LordXplosionMurder has requested to trade with you.’ I accepted and selected my sword, while he added the higher level sword and some potions. We both confirmed the trade and I took the sword out to examine it. The metal was dark grey with a faint sapphire-blue glow around the blade. The handle was wrapped in leather with wolves stitched into it with black thread. The game said it was a blue item – rare.

“Let’s go! We need to power level your ass!”

I hummed as I followed behind him, strapping the sword to my back. The fantasy city we were in was called Rune Province. According to the information popping up beside me, this is the main city in the game, but it was only medium-large in size. The buildings were made from white brick and dark oak wood. Lanterns hung beside the doors, a cream-colored candle unlit inside.

Hmm, so it’s a fantasy middle-age type game without electricity.

“Hey, what’s the max level in this game?” I asked, glancing at his back.

“One hundred eighteen.”

“And what level are you?”

“One hundred.” He growled, clenching his fists. “You have to pass through the fuckin’ Jade Forest to get to the level one hundred one area, but you have to have at least one level eighty in your party to enter the fucking place.”

“Sheesh. How long you been playin’ this shit?”

He mumbled under his breath.

“You’re walking in front of me, Bakuhoe, I can’t hear you.”

“Since it came out!” he yelled, earning weird looks from the citizens and other players. “And stop fucking calling me that, bitch!”

If I remember correctly, the download page said this game came out a little under a year ago. Has he been playing alone this whole time? I sped up so I could walk beside him. “So, how are we gonna power level?”

“We’re going to Moonbrick Manor,”

I hummed, folding my hands behind my head. “Sounds interesting. And I just gotta let you fight, right?” He grunted and a screen popped up in front of my face: ‘LordXplosionMurder has invited you to a party!’ I accepted and he stopped in front of a wooden post, atop which was a whitish blue stone with a teal swirl in the center. He put his hand on the stone, grabbing my wrist with the other. A bright blue light surrounded us, blinding me.

When the light faded, we were standing in front of a large wooden door, standing at least twenty feet tall. We were on a stone bridge surrounded by spruce forests as far as the eye could see. I glanced over the side of the bridge and whistled. This shit is hella high off the ground, so much so that I can barely see the river flowing underneath it. The fog hanging in the air didn’t help my visibility, either.

“Stop gawking and let’s go, bitch!” Bakugo barked.

I approached the gate, lifting my hand to the wood. A red screen popped in front of my face: ‘Warning! You are about to enter a level one hundred dungeon. Your current level is one. You will definitely die. Proceed?’

I sweatdropped. No pulling punches, huh? “Uhh, Bakuhoe. Don’t think this area is just a bit too high?”

“Hah? Are you scared, tiger?” He smirked, folding his arms over his bare chest.

The fuck is with that nickname, brah? I scowled, “No, I’m not scared, but it’ll take ten times as long to level up if I keep getting one shot when an enemy so much as looks at me.”

He rolled his eyes, approaching the door. “Just stay the fuck behind me and you’ll be fine, dumbass. I’m not weak like you are!” His body walked through the door as if it were made of water.

I have a bad feeling about this, man.

With a sigh, I accepted the warning and stepped through the door.

⊱ ────── {⋅. 🔥 .⋅} ────── ⊰

▸ Forward

📜 Read more by checking out my masterlist 📜

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grimmcop · 6 years ago

Note

✘

@gentlegrace || Send ✘ for a ‘the morning after’ starter with our muses!

Nick hummed lazily as he stretched his limbs in the bed, a hazy ‘just awake’ look in his eyes and a content smile on his face. He turned to his left side, gaze shifting to Snow looking like a painting next to him, complete perfection. He leaned forward and placed some gentle kisses across her shoulder and neck. He drew back, one arm resting underneath his pillow. “Good morning.” his voice was husky and quiet though there was a playful gleam in his eyes “Do you want coffee or something else to wake you up.”

#gentlegrace #asks #verse || ( beat cop // twenties )#can you say queue? || queue

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365daysofsasuhina · 5 years ago

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[ @sasuhinamonth || SasuHina Month 2019 || Day Twenty-Four: Modern AU ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

I’m gonna be late, I’m gonna be late…!

Pedaling as fast as she can, Hinata huffs for breath as she makes her way the few blocks from her little apartment to her place of employment. Thankfully the bike lane is relatively clear today, and she only has a few near-misses on her flying trip to the bakery.

Rolling up to the proper block, she squeezes through the narrow alley to the back door, finding it already unlocked. Ooh...she’s been beat. Taking her bike in to keep it away from prying hands, she leans it against the backroom wall before hurrying through to the shop proper.

There she finds her boss already working on getting the morning stock set up. Cringing a bit in guilt, she sheepishly makes her way up and starts working. Thankfully all she gets is a teasing hello. Thank goodness the lady’s as laid back as she is. That’s probably the only reason she has this job in the first place. When panic attacks meant failing out of her college entrance exams, Hinata bailed and looked for work instead. Lo and behold, she basically got scooped up by the rather maternal lady despite only being a handful of years younger.

So now, here she is, helping run the little corner bakery that’s served as her only source of employment after high school. Sure, it’s not glamorous, or getting her a six figure salary, but...she really does love it. It’s a homey place, and she almost immediately fell in love with the atmosphere. Add in that her boss pretty much treats her like a little sister, and she can hardly even call it a job.

“All right, that’s all the display cases! Want me to turn on the sign?” Given a nod of approval, Hinata ties on her apron and starts officially opening for the morning.

And it’s not long before they get their first customers. Within just a few minutes of opening, they’re hit with the steady flow of morning traffic as people come in seeking coffee and baked treats before work of their own.

Hinata relishes in it, taking and completing orders with practiced ease. All smiles and soft thank-yous, they get through the morning rush with limited catastrophes.

Taking a break in the traffic to wipe down counters and tidy up a bit, Hinata glances up at the bell over the door. A young man about her age walks in, hands in his pockets. He looks...vaguely familiar…?

Behind her, her boss greets him by name, asking if he’s here for the station order…? Sasuke. Sasuke...why does that ring a bell?

“Yup. Hope I’m not too early,” he replies, stepping up to the counter.

“Not at all! Give me a few minutes to box everything up.”

At the mention of a task, Hinata asks, “Do you need some help?”

“No dear, I’m fine! You just mind the front for a bit, all right?”

“...okay.” Turning back around, she isn’t sure what to say. He’s currently the only one in here, and...apparently he already knows what he’s getting. “Is this, um...for a catering…?”

That earns a small snort. “You could say that.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m interning at the police station during my off-class days from school. Dad’s the chief, so…”

“...oh!” It all clicks into place. He went to her high school! Sasuke Uchiha. She remembers now - his dad is indeed chief of police, and he got so much teasing for it about being ‘straight laced’ in case his father was watching.

“Yeah. So I’m currently on donut duty.”

Her head tilts. “...I thought that was just a trope…”

“Cops love their baked goods,” Sasuke confirms with a hint of a grin. “Boss lady’s dating a cousin cop of mine, so we try to get stuff here when we can. Y’know, scratch each other’s backs. Support the little local guys.”

That earns a giggle Hinata hides behind a hand. “Oh, I see! So...are you going to be a cop, then…?”

“It’s what I’d like, yeah. Pretty much my entire family’s on the force. Bit of a tradition, so...don’t see why I shouldn’t follow suit. For now though, taking some college classes first. Seeing if anything else catches my eye, but I’ve pretty much made up my mind.”

“Well, hopefully soon you’ll have more exciting duties than d-donut runs,” Hinata replies, still amused.

“Yeah...not exactly why I signed on, but the new guy always has to take the grunt tasks. Hence trying intern work while I’m at school. Trudge through it now so I hopefully don’t have to later.”

“Smart!”

“Well, we’ll see if it pans out.” Looking past her, he digs out his wallet as the order’s brought up front. “Here, this is the card to run.”

Hinata does as much as they finalize the order, charging it to the proper account. “Well...I guess if this is a regular thing, we’ll see you around!”

“Yeah. Nice seeing you, Hinata.”

There’s a small jump. He...does he recognize her? A bit too surprised, she barely manages to wave as he takes his leave. Behind her, she hears light snickering, turning to see the knowing look in her boss’s eye. “W...what?”

“Nothing, nothing...but yes, I daresay you’ll see him again, hm?”

“H-hey!”

.oOo.

Thiiis is later than I want, and I still gotta do my daily Dx Had a busy day irl and didn't have a chance to write until now, darn it! Anyway, open-ended AUs always leave me a little lurching, so I borrowed a favorite trope of mine for this one to help narrow it down: bakery AU! Which still counts as modern, right? I just love the thought of Hinata working in one. And soon enough Sauce will be a cop to enjoy donuts and coffee, too x3 But yeah, that's all for SHM today! I'ma take a break then try to do my daily before it gets TOO late, lol - thanks for reading!

#sasuhina #sasuhinamonth #sasuhinamonth2019 #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #best years of your life [ au ]

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parabellumrpg · 5 years ago

Photo

LEON COSTELLO

THIRTY-SEVEN – BOSS – COSTELLO

Since learning about the family business when he was only eight years old, Leon knew that the burden of being the patriarch would land on his shoulders. His whole life, according to his father, was leading up to the moment when he inevitably inherited the throne. Leon began training at an early age. He went to meetings with his father, spent whatever free time he had observing and trying to understand the decisions that were being made— even the difficult ones. By seventeen, Leon was well versed in the art of self defense. He knew how to disarm someone at a moment’s notice, knew exactly how to clear a room if needed. And, over the years, Leon grew to liking all of the violence that came with the family business.

Despite his taste for danger, Leon understood how to keep a level head in the moments where it mattered the most. Whenever his father was enraged and saw death as the only solution, Leon tried finding other alternatives for retaliation. Ones that lined their pockets with more money and kept the feds off the radar. (This wasn’t to say his means of handling things weren’t violent, though. They were just more discreet than his father’s.)

Smarter solutions, less risky.

At twenty-six, Leon was well known throughout the city. He had the classic bad boy persona, and he was wanted by many. He did whatever he wanted, took what he pleased.

Violet Moore was a bartender at a location that Leon frequented. Violet was closing out for the night, gathering her belongings, when a patron got a little handsy. Leon didn’t deal with any disrespect, especially not towards women. Leon beat the stranger to a pulp. The cops were called. Leon spent the night in jail, but he got the girl in the end.

Leon and Violet dove headfirst in to their relationship. They both complimented each other so well, and after the night they met, they were rarely seen apart. Violet showed an interest in the organization, and Leon wanted to show her everything that he knew. He wasn’t officially on the payroll as an assassin, but he’d been trained at a young age to be lethal. He would show Violet the same.

Violet shone as an assassin, and not long after she finished her apprenticeship, they married. Violet understood that, one day, Leon would be the Costello boss, and she would be right there with him as queen.

How then, did their relationship falter after only a few years of marriage?

Leon became the head of the family, and with that came an inexplicable amount of responsibility. Whenever Luca announced the news of his engagement to the family, Leon remained completely silent. It took him a few minutes to even process the information, to understand how this had happened. It wasn’t good for business. It wasn’t good for Luca. But there was no stopping that kid -- either they let it happen, or Luca would go behind their backs and do something even dumber. Leon had to let it happen, but this took a toll on his relationship with Violet. He was consumed with worry for his family, fearing that no good would come out of this marriage. He and Jackson Sinclair met to discuss how things would move forward, but it did little to silence any worries that Leon had.

As a result, Leon and Violet bickered. Leon would pick a fight for no reason. And whenever Paityn was kidnapped, Leon simply couldn’t handle things anymore. He walked out on her with little to no explanation. It tore him up inside, but now, his focus was figuring out what the hell happened next. The Sinclairs, of course, pushed the blame onto his family. The Costellos defended themselves, doubled up on their security wherever they could -- but the war was bloodier and more dangerous than ever before. Leon had nothing to do with Paityn’s disappearance, but the Sinclairs would never believe him until they found her (if they found her alive).

For the sake of his little brother, the Costellos joined in on the search for Paityn. (Independently, of course -- the Sinclairs wanted nothing to do with the Costellos.) But they couldn’t find anything. This meant that there was someone else -- a third party. Either that, or someone had betrayed the family.

-- Relationship Status: Married to Violet Costello (Separated) -- Siblings: Ezra, Mia, Sofia, and Luca Costello -- Other: Abel Costello (Cousin)

FC: Sebastian Stan

The role of LEON COSTELLO is currently OPEN.

#rpg #rp #roleplay #crime rp #mob rp #leonbio

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disregardcanon · 5 years ago

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end of year writing meme

Total Stories Written: 27

Total Words Written: 147413 Average Words Per Story: if you do the mean, then it’s 5,459 Shortest Story: the aftermath of rebirth at 338 words Longest: Paint a New Horizon at 23,673 words

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?

I wrote fewer stories than I expected, but they were far longer than I expected. I wrote a lot of 11k fics.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write most?

pairing: Sansa/Margaery (throwback to 2015 omg)

genre: I don’t feel like I had a certain genre I wrote a lot of tbh.

fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

THE POKEMON GAMES! Like, oh my god. I wrote fanfiction about soul silver. I wrote fanfiction about POKEMON WHITE. what. the fuck. Like, technically the first fic i ever wrote was about pokemon but i never expected to do it again.

Did you take any writing risks this year?

I wrote 2 very long asoiaf fics about difficult subject matter. Combined, they add up to more than 40 thousand words of fic.

Do you have any fanfic or general writing goals for the new year?

Fanfiction wise, I would like to finish up some of my wips and try to improve.

In general, I would like to figure out more what I want my writing to look like moving forward and how to go about that. I’m experiencing some growing pains, so I need to reassess my style and strategy and see what I need to readjust moving forward.

From the past year of writing, what was your…

Best story of this year: Paint a New Horizon

This feels like a bit of a cop out since it’s the longest, but I am very firmly the most proud of this fic out of anything I wrote this year. I feel like the emotional bits were satisfying, the romance worked nicely, and the action kept me interested in a way that almost never does. I was able to commit to TWENTY THREE THOUSAND WORDS and put my ALL INTO IT! that is. monumental for me. I’ve written long fics in the past, but those were chaptered and frankly, not as good as this one was or as much work.

I love this verse so well that I might actually go back and write more in it later when I have time. I have the beginnings of a sequel ruminating around in my drats.

Most popular story of this year: normally I split this up into multiple categories, but by hits, kudos, OR comment threads The Times They Are a Changin’ comes out on top. The mcu fandom really went nuts over Carol and Maria, didn’t they?

Personal favorite:

Washing Machine Heart is a fic that I hold close to my heart. 1. I wrote this one when I was on a study abroad in Latin America, which is the coolest thing that I have ever done 2. it’s just. really well done. I’ve never written something quite so messy and unpleasant in a realistic way before. It’s ugly in the way that Steven Universe: Future is ugly right now. In exactly the way that “Washing Machine Heart” should imply 3. oh god was it cathartic

Most under-appreciated:

Maternal, Paternal at 71 kudos, I know I shouldn’t call this one “under-appreciated”, but it’s in a few VERY happening tags, in a very happening fandom with a VERY popular set of characters. I’d think that people would be more interested in reading “Endeavor is an asshole and eventually Dabi kills him” but like. it’s whateves I guess XD

Most fun to write:

We Could Be Heroes both semesters that I had during 2019 were. super fucking stressful. the only times that I’ve had that were productive for fic was January break, summer vacation, and December break.

Last April on my birthday, though, I rewarded myself and after I got home from hanging with some friends I just sat down at my laptop and didn’t think about literally anything. I just wrote. I took a format that I knew I liked and didn’t have to think about (talk show format with an OC I already made for a different story) and then 3 characters I was very interested in then (Melissa Shield, Monica Rambeau, and Tahani Al-Jamil) and then I just. ran with it. I wrote and wrote and wrote and it was amazing. I didn’t think about it being good or about my homework or literally anything other than this talk show lady talking to these three cool characters.

It was wonderful. 10/10 would do it again.

Story with the single sexiest moment:

Familiarity. It is literally the only thing I wrote this year with ANY sex in it, so it’s automatically the sexiest. Way to go Margaery you did it.

Most “holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story:

Um. Just Souring Grapes in general.

Most challenging to write:

Biggest disappointment:

Shouto Todoroki Joins the Supervillain Dads Club I hoped to finish this fic last year in January. It’s currently December and I haven’t been able to look at the thing since.

I think it’s mainly because I just lost the drive, but it’s also kind of because wips stress me the fuck out. And also I had 2 stressful semesters so that doesn’t help. Favorite character to write: my favorite characters to write this year were both Todorokis! Dabi and Fuyumi are both a joy to write, I swear

Favorite opening lines:

Serena falls down at the kitchen table feeling as cold and distant as the room does. The harsh lines and open floor plan were supposed to show a minimalism only possible with wealth, but to Serena it's always felt empty.

A Woman’s Place

Surprisingly, Theon’s life does not change much either way after Maron is taken to the Greenlands. Balon does not magically start paying attention to him, even though he’d prayed every night to the Drowned God that he would.

Pretty Little Thrall

The Twins are a grand fortress spanning the width of the Green Fork. A great stone tower stands on each side of the river, with a greater bridge running in between. The Frey stable boys have taken their horses, and Jeyne walks as close to the river as she dares as they make their way to the tower. She watches the river rush beside her in awe. She’s never seen a river run so wild before. It seems like the very waters rushing beside her want to rise up and drown her themselves.

Good Family

Favorite closing lines:

That's what she gave up fighting the Kree for, and Carol will do everything that she can to bring them back. She's stopped fighting for some things, but she'll never stop fighting for this. If the times don't change on this one, she'll make them. She'll rip that gaudy fucking glove off of that bastard's grape crush colored hand and shove it up his ass if that's what it takes to get her family back.

The Times They Are a Changin’

"Alright, then. Let’s do this together,” you say, “as a team.” You think that you really like this "being friends" thing. Maybe after you beat Red, you and Silver can go to Hoenn- or Sinnoh. Unova even. Somewhere new and exciting with new people to beat. It’s nice to have a partner who’s not a Pokemon, for once. You think that, together, you could be the best trainers that ever lived.

Maybe the best friends too.

no silver medals (when you get the gold together)

The stars spread out above you- the universe expanding outwards onwards and upwards, excelsior.

Excelsior

Other favorite lines:

What does a grape do under pressure? Grapes tend to shrivel in the sunlight. Turn to raisins, actually. She doesn’t remember what poem that was from, but she remembers reading something like that in English class once. Some poem that she didn’t understand really, and might not have gotten even if it were in Japanese. She doesn’t think that’s what she’s doing.

Does it ferment, like wine? Her father always joked about her mother aging like a fine wine, growing more beautiful every year, growing stronger. But Miné isn't gaining strength, not really. Not right now. Maybe she’s just souring, getting more and more bitter about things that she can't have. Maybe she's just souring grapes.

Souring Grapes

“The authorities confirmed that Endeavor was not even in the state during the accident, and Shouto’s doctors confirmed that the burns were consistent with boiling liquid, not an open flame.” Superman looks visibly relieved to hear that.

“But that does not mean that I trust him,” Batman says, “I would prefer to keep an eye on him.”

“Why would you want to keep an eye on him, he’s a superhero ,” Captain Marvel says, with none of The Wisdom of Solomon but all of The Innocence of a Ten Year Old, “that means that he’s a good guy, right?”

Shouto Todoroki Joins the Supervillain Dads Club

The thought stabs into his brain like a needle, like the scent of pine, like the memories he’s never wanted back. Robb was the one person who ever cared about him, and Theon betrayed him to parade around as a prince and become Ramsay Bolton’s broken little toy. He swore himself to the little boy who took him by the hand when he came to Winterfell as a scared little boy and never let go. And then Theon betrayed him.

“Theon,” the trees whisper,” Theon.” The crows in the branches take flight, cawing his name, and he feels something else take flight too. His heart, beating somewhere deep inside his chest.

“Theon,” it throbs, “Theon, Theon.”

He wants to do something, something reckless, something brave. Something that makes him redeemable.

He can’t save Robb, but he can save someone . He can save Robb’s fake sister. Theon can save Jeyne from some of her pain.

If You Believe in Me (I’ll Still Believe)

She dared a glance forward and met Margaery’s eyes- a deep, chocolate brown. They were warm and inviting and Margaery’s little curly bangs framed her face like a heart. Margaery’s head went over the back of the booth and it seemed to almost be floating against the flowery wallpaper. It looked like Margaery was lying out in a field of flowers- the Maiden gazing up at the clouds and trying to make shapes of them.

She could imagine Margaery telling her that this one is a flower, like Tyrell, and this one’s a deer, like Baratheon, and this one’s a dick, like Joffrey. She giggled nervously again and felt her cheeks flush. She’d never felt this giddy and unsteady in her whole life.

“Are you alright, Sansa?” Margaery asked cautiously. She reached across the table and laid a hand over Sansa’s own. The touch was warm and tender, and Sansa felt the blush from her toes to the tip of her head.

“I’m perfect!” Sansa nearly screeched. Margaery laughed at that, but her look was kind.

“Yes, darling,” she said with a smile that was wide and fond, “I think that you are.”

Lesbian. The word wasn’t supposed to fill her with such a warm, hopeful feeling, was it? She wiggled awkwardly in her chair, trying to get situated and stop feeling so silly and excited and vulnerable, but it didn’t fix anything. She felt Margaery’s leg brush against hers under the table. It sent a jolt through her.

Lesbian.

Sansa took a shaky breath. She thought to herself that there might be something to that.

Paint a New Horizon

#end of year writing meme #writing meme #sunkelles writes #2019 writing meme

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parabellum-rpg-archive · 5 years ago

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N A M E: Leon Costello A G E: Thirty-Five O C C U P A T I O N: Second in Command to the Costellos L O Y A L T Y: Costello Crime Family

SOME RISE BY SIN, AND SOME BY VIRTUE FALL.

Despite his taste for violence, Leon became known as the family diplomat. Whenever his father was enraged and saw death as the only solution, Leon tried finding other alternatives for retaliation. Ones that lined their pockets with more money and kept the feds off the radar. (This wasn’t to say his means of handling things weren’t violent, though. They were just more discreet than his father’s.)

Smarter solutions, less risky.

At twenty-six, Leon was well known throughout the city. He had the quick temper, the classic bad boy persona, and he was wanted by many. He did whatever he wanted, took what he pleased. His temper landed him in a few jail cells over the years, but his family was always there to bail him out.

How then, did their relationship falter after only a few years of marriage?

Well, nobody really knows.

As time went on, they were bickering for no apparent reason. They went from loving each other, to loathing the sight of the other person. They were arguing about everything to the point that their own families were urging to separate in private.

One day, Leon walked out the front door and never looked back.

His focus immediately became the organization. There’s no time for love in war— at least, that’s what Leon told himself. Since his separation from Violet, he hasn’t seen her much, and he isn’t sure he wants to. The well being of his family and their empire is the single most important thing to him. What kind of future did they want for the family? Was a union the only way for both the Sinclairs and the Costellos to survive?

In the end, it didn’t matter what Leon thought. The marriage was agreed upon, and his youngest brother was chosen to marry Paisley Sinclair.

To this day, Leon doesn’t know how this marriage will solve anything. With casualties on both sides, no one is sure how they’re expecting to stop the bloodshed just because Luca and Paisley marry. While the Sinclairs aren’t the only enemy, they’re by far the most prominent one— the biggest annoyance. None of this is sitting right with Leon, and he hasn’t had a good feeling about the wedding since it was announced. That temper of Leon’s resurfaces when he thinks of his little brother marrying Paisley. He knows what is expected of him— to see through the union of both families. But how can he, when the Sinclairs have terrorized their city for so long?

The only thing that Leon knows for certain is this: if the Sinclairs harm Luca, or any of his other siblings in any way, the treaty is off, and he’ll help his father stake his claim as king.

CONNECTIONS:

— Relationship Status: Married to Violet Costello (Separated) — Siblings: Ezra Costello, Mia Costello, Sofia Costello, and Luca Costello — Other: Abel Costello (Cousin)

FC: Paul Wesley

The role of LEON COSTELLO is currently OPEN.

#rpg #roleplay #rp #mature rpg #bio rpg

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mittensmorgul · 6 years ago

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The End

Yes, we have 5.04, the episode titled The End, with the whole end!verse, but every time this phrase pops up in the show since then, I think this is the first thought a lot of people have. And I think it’s... wildly misleading. I mean, since we haven’t actually had a return to this specific “end.” And I don’t think we ever will. As everyone will recall, the show did not actually end after 5.04.

So to that end (pffft), I wanted to cobble together a history of the phrase as it’s been used throughout canon. Just for my own reference purposes. Here’s the big ones, though:

5.22 Swan Song:

CHUCK types "THE END" and takes a drink. CHUCK: No doubt – endings are hard. But then again... nothing ever really ends, does it?

(spoiler alert: fuck you, Chuck)

11.22: We Happy Few:

AMARA: My brother will dim and fade away into nothing. (Outside, ROWENA staggers to her feet. The sunlight is no longer just rosy, tinting the sky purple.) AMARA: But not until he sees what comes next. Not until he watches this world, everything he created, everything he loves turn to ash. (Outside, ROWENA turns, lifting a hand to shield her eyes.) AMARA: Welcome to the end. (She disappears.)

(lol, bzzzt, wrong, try again)

13.23 Let The Good Times Roll:

CASTIEL (to Michael): How do we stop him? MICHAEL: You don't. After consuming the Nephilim's grace, Lucifer's juiced up. He's super-charged. He'll kill the boy, your brother. Hell, he could end the whole universe if he put his mind to it. And you thought I was bad. DEAN: No. No, you beat him. I saw you. MICHAEL: When he was weaker, and I was stronger. Believe me, I'd love to rip my brother apart. But now in this banged up meatsuit... not happening. This is the end, of everything.

(way to horrifically manipulate the situation!)

14.20 Moriah:

CHUCK: (angrily): Fine! That's the way you want it? Story's over. Welcome to The End.

(cue things happening for another 20 episodes... he’s 20 episodes too soon)

and since there were *a LOT* of results:

yes each one of those open tabs is a reference page I’m pulling quotes from, and yes there are so many open tabs they’ve blurred together. one big drawback about watching a show that has apocalypses every now and again. i’m omitting references that aren’t directly about narrative ends, too (like casual “at the end of the day” references and the like). this is gonna be long so it’s going under a cut:

2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two:

YED Oh, Jake. It's got to be you. I've been waiting for you for a very long time. You're my leader. You open that crypt, and you will have your army. JAKE You're talking about the end of the world. YED No, not the end— the beginning... a better world, where your family will be protected. More than that. They'll be royalty. Buddy boy, you have the chance to get in on the ground floor of a thrilling opportunity. Whaddya say? It's your call.

(spoiler alert: pffft... the whole “Demon Army” thing was always a sham, I think pulled ON Azazel by Lilith, even if that was only retconned in later in canon. but also, endings are beginnings, the spiral loops ever onward, and it’s laughable now eleventynine loops of the spiral down the way from this moment, isn’t it? Jake who? Azazel the fanatic who wasn’t even trustworthy enough to be let in on Lilith’s real plans? Incredible)

4.05 Monster Movie:

DEAN: You think "elegance" is really the word for what you did to Marissa, or Rick Deacon, or any of the others?! DRACULA: But of course. It is a monster movie, after all. DEAN: You do realize what happens at the end of every monster movie? DRACULA: Ah, but this movie is mine. And in it, the monster wins. The monster gets the girl. And the hero, he’s... electrocuted. And tonight, Jonathan Harker, you will be my hero.

(spoiler alert: the monster does not win)

4.06 Yellow Fever:

Sam: So uh...so, what did you see? Near the end, I mean. Dean: Oh, besides a cop beating my ass? Sam: Seriously. Dean: Howler monkeys. Whole roomful of them. Those things creep the hell out of me. Sam: Right. Dean: No, just the usual stuff, Sammy. Nothing I can’t handle.

(spoiler alert: it was definitely not anything Dean could handle)

4.09 I Know What You Did Last Summer:

ANNA: Look... I get it. You think I'm nuts. If I were you, I'd think I was nuts. But it's all true. PSYCHOLOGIST: It's okay. You can tell me. I'm here to listen. ANNA: The end... is coming. The apocalypse. PSYCHOLOGIST: The apocalypse. Like in the Bible? ANNA: Kind of. I mean, same bottom line. This demon, Lilith, is trying to break the 66 seals to free Lucifer from Hell. Lucifer... Will bring the apocalypse. So... Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

(spoiler alert:... we know how this turned out)

4.15 Death Takes a Holiday:

DEAN: You know what I mean. We're talking the end of the world here, okay? No more tasseled leather pants, no more Ramones CDs, no more nothing.

(spoiler alert: Pamela’s cool with that since she’ll get an endless show at the Meadowlands in her personal heaven)

4.22 Lucifer Rising:

DEAN: But me and Sam, we can stop... (he cuts off, having an epiphany) You don't want to stop it, do you? ZACHARIAH: Nope. Never did. The end is nigh. The apocalypse is coming, kiddo, to a theater near you.

(spoiler alert... it bombed at the box office)

5.02: Good God, Y’all:

Dean: Listen, Chuckles, even if there is a God, he is either dead—and that's the generous theory— Castiel: He is out there, Dean. Dean: Or he's up and kicking and doesn't give a rat's ass about any of us. I mean, look around you, man. The world is in the toilet. We are literally at the end of days here, and he's off somewhere drinking booze out of a coconut. All right?

(spoiler alert: i mean he really wasn’t far off the mark was he...)

5.03 Free To Be You And Me:

REPORTER: —the town of Tully? tonight, John. Locals say that what started as a torrential hailstorm late this afternoon suddenly turned to massive lightning strikes that triggered the fires now consuming more than twenty acres here along the Route 17 corridor. County officials are advising all Tully residents to prepare for what could become mandatory evacuations. The BARTENDER shuts the TV off. BARTENDER: Damn. Is it me or does it seem like it's the end of the world? SAM looks away.

(spoiler alert: that was an observant bartender)

5.07 The Curious Case of Dean Winchester:

A WOMAN, MRS. XAVIER, is reading the Weekly World News, headline: "LEADING PSYCHICS AGREE: THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE! Experts confirm the end is upon us!" She chuckles. The door opens.

(spoiler alert: that time the Weekly World News was actually right)

5.08 Changing Channels:

Dean: Hey there, Sam. What's happening? Sam: Oh, nothing. Um. Just the end of the world.

(spoiler alert: lol)

5.09 The Real Ghostbusters:

CHUCK: Ok, Ok, just..okay, it's okay. so, next question. (hands shoot up) Yeah, you. FAN: Yeah, at the end of the last book, Dean goes to hell. So, what happens next?

(spoiler alert: how do you feel about angels? Yeah, because let me tell you, they're not nearly as lame as you think.)

5.11 Sam Interrupted:

Dean: It's the end of the world, okay? I mean, it's a damn Biblical Apocalypse, and if I don't stop it and save everyone, then no one will, and we all die. Dr. Cartwright: That's horrible. Dean: Yeah, tell me about it. Dr. Cartwright: I mean, Apocalypse or no Apocalypse... monsters or no monsters, that's a crushing weight to have on your shoulders. To feel like six billion lives depend on you...God...how do you get up in the morning? Dean: That's a good question.

(spoiler alert: this is actually Dean talking to himself)

5.17 99 Problems:

SAM : Busy night? PAUL: I’m telling you, since The End started, it’s been like one long last call. That round’s on me.

(spoiler alert: welcome to the apocalypse, pull up a bar stool)

DEAN: We’re all gonna die, Sam. In like a month—maybe two. I mean it. This is the end of the world, but these people aren’t freaking out. In fact they’re running to the exit in an orderly fashion. I don’t know that that’s such a bad thing. SAM: Who says they’re all gonna die? What ever happened to us saving them?

(spoiler alert: hey remember that other time Dean went all nihilistic about the end of the world? yeah good times)

DEAN: So the demons smoking out—that’s just a con? Why? What’s the endgame? CASTIEL: What you just saw—innocent blood spilled in God’s name. SAM: You heard all that heaven talk. She manipulates people. DEAN: To slaughter and kill and sing preppy little hymns. Awesome. CASTIEL: Her goal is to condemn as many souls to hell as possible. And it’s…just beginning. She’s well on her way to dragging this whole town into the pit.

(remember the whore of babylon’s MO? manipulating people into doing stuff they never would’ve out of fear? yeah)

LEAH: This is why my team’s gonna win. You’re the great vessel? You’re pathetic, self-hating, and faithless. It’s the end of the world. And you’re just gonna sit back and watch it happen. DEAN grabs the stake, punches LEAH, and stakes her. DEAN : Don’t be so sure, whore.

(remember that time the whore of babylon taunted Dean about rejecting his destiny as the vessel of Michael, basically trying to manipulate him into doing the thing? And then he tried to go out and do the thing in the next episode but Cas stopped him? yeah good times)

5.18 Point Of No Return:

PREACHER : The end is nigh! The apocalypse is upon us! The angels talk to me, and they asked me to talk to you! The apocalypse— DEAN: Hey! I’m Dean Winchester. Do you know who I am? PREACHER: Dear God. DEAN: I’ll take that as a yes. Listen, I need you to pray to your angel buddies and let them know that I’m here.

(spoiler alert: good thing that guy prayed too loud)

5.20 The Devil You Know:

CROWLEY Now...For the record, I'm against this. Negotiating a high-level defection -- It's very delicate business. SAM What are you talking about? CROWLEY I begged Dean not to come back. We should be miles away...from you. He replied with a colorful rejoinder about my "corn chute." SAM (scoffs) CROWLEY So, go ahead. Go --ruin our last best hope. It's only the end of the world.

(spoiler alert: considering this entire thing was a demonstration of Crowley’s ability to manipulate things to his favor... nice tug on the ol’ apocalypse card to get your way)

5.21 Two Minutes To Midnight:

Pestilence: Hmm. You boys don't look well. It might be the, uh, Scarlet fever. Or, uh, the meningitis. Oh! Or the syphilis. That's no fun. However you feel right now? It's gonna get so very, very much worse. Questions? Disease gets a bad rap, don't you think? For being filthy. Chaotic. Uh, but, really, t-that just describes people who get sick. Disease itself... very... pure... single-minded. Bacteria have one purpose -- divide and conquer. That's why, in the end... it always wins. So, you've got to wonder why God pours all his love into something so messy! And weak! It's ridiculous. All I can do is show him he's wrong, one epidemic at a time. Now... On a scale of 1 to 10, how's your pain?

(spoiler alert: blowing up the bacteria actually kills them)

Bonus:

Death: As old as God. Maybe older. Neither of us can remember anymore. Life, death, chicken, egg. Regardless -- at the end, I'll reap him, too. Dean: God? You'll reap God? Death: Oh, yes. God will die, too, Dean. Dean: Well, this is way above my pay grade. Death: Just a bit.

(spoiler alert: *taps watch and raises eyebrow at Billie*)

5.22 Swan Song:

CHUCK (VOICEOVER): Any chapped-ass monkey with a keyboard can poop out a beginning, but endings are impossible. You try to tie up every loose end, but you never can. The fans are always gonna bitch. There's always gonna be holes. And since it's the ending, it's all supposed to add up to something. I'm telling you, they're a raging pain in the ass.

(spoiler alert: with the context that this is God speaking, RUDE)

6.15 The French Mistake:

BALTHAZAR Hello, boys. You've seen "the Godfather," right? DEAN Balthazar... BALTHAZAR You know, the end, where Michael Corleone sends his men to kill his enemies in one big, bloody swoop? (Balthazar finds a container of salt and pours it into a bowl on Bobby's desk) DEAN Hey! BALTHAZAR "Dead Sea brine." Good, good, good. You know, Moe Greene gets it in the eye, and Don Cuneo gets it in the revolving door? DEAN I said "hey." BALTHAZAR You did. Twice. Good for you. Blood of lamb. Blood of lamb. (looking through Bobby's fridge contents) Beer, cold pizza. Blood of lamb. Yes! Blood of lamb! SAM Why are you talking about "the Godfather"? BALTHAZAR Because we're in it – right now, tonight. And in the role of Michael Corleone – The archangel Raphael.

(spoiler alert: Raphael was playing at being a Michael wasn’t he...)

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King:

CASTIEL You want to make a deal? With me? I'm an Angel, you ass. I don't have a soul to sell. CROWLEY But that's it, isn't it? It's all of it. It's the souls. It all comes down to the souls in the end, doesn't it? CASTIEL What in the hell are you talking about? CROWLEY I'm talking about Raphael's head on a pike. I'm talking about happy endings for all of us, with all possible entendres intended. Come on. Just a chat.

(spoiler alert... it all comes down to the souls in the end, happy endings for all of us, or we can hope)

Bonus, for the sake of hilarity, because of the implication that Hell is a spiral narrative that begins at the ending, All Along The Watchtower style:

CROWLEY Yeah. See, problem with the old place was most of the inmates were masochists already. A lot of "thank you, sir. Can I have another hot spike up the jacksie?" But just look at them. No one likes waiting in line. CASTIEL And what happens when they reach the front? CROWLEY Nothing. They go right back to the end again. That's efficiency.

(spoiler alert: THAT’S EFFICIENCY!)

Double bonus, because I said so:

CASTIEL If you touch the Winchesters... CROWLEY Please. I heard you the first time. I promise -- nary a hair on their artfully tousled heads. Besides, I think they've proven my point for me. It's always your friends, isn't it, in the end? We try to change. We try to improve ourselves. It's always our friends who got to claw into our sides and hold us back. But you know what I see here? The new God (pointing at Castiel) and the new Devil, working together.

(no spoilers, this is just Cas giving everything, selling himself out, for his loved ones again)

6.21 Let It Bleed:

March 15, 1937 Providence, Rhode Island

(A man, H.P. Lovecraft, is typing on a typewriter. He drinks and continues typing. He types "THE END" then places the final paper on top of the others. His door creaks open, seemingly by itself. At the same time, there is a crack of thunder and the lights flicker. He looks up, afraid

(spoiler alert: guess what happened next? *screams and blood splatter* *title card*)

bonus:

CASTIEL: It's a means to an end. Balthazar, you understand that. BALTHAZAR: Oh, absolutely. But what's the end here exactly? You know, raid Purgatory, snatch up all the souls? CASTIEL: Win the war.

(spoiler alert: or option B, exploding and taking half the planet with him... always an option, apparently, and the one that kinda happened...)

7.20 The Girl With The Dungeons And Dragons Tattoo:

CHARLIE: So what's the end game – steal our resources, make us some slaves? DEAN: Planet-wide value meal. We're the meat.

(spoiler alert: sorry they weren’t kidding, Charlie. the Leviathan’s end game was pretty miserable)

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental:

DEAN picks up a “Sorry!” card. CASTIEL: You know, we weren't sure at first which monkeys were gonna make it. No offense, but I [DEAN moves a marker on the board] was backing the Neanderthals because their poetry was... just amazing. It's in perfect tune [CASTIEL picks up a card] with the spheres. But in the end, it was you – the [CASTIEL moves a marker] homo sapiens sapiens. You guys ate the apple, invented pants. DEAN: Cas, where can we find this, uh, Metatron? Is he still alive? CASTIEL: I'm sorry. I – I think you have to go back to start. DEAN moves a marker. DEAN: This is important. CASTIEL motions for DEAN to pick up another card. DEAN does and moves another marker. DEAN: I think Metatron could stop a lot of bad. You understand that? CASTIEL picks up another card. CASTIEL: We live in a "sorry" universe. It's engineered to create conflict. I mean, why should I prosper from... your misfortune? [CASTIEL puts down a marker and moves DEAN’s marker back to the start.] But these are the rules. I didn't make them. DEAN: You made some of them. When you tried to become God, when you cut that hole into that wall. CASTIEL: Dean... it's your move. DEAN pounds a fist on the table and swipes the board to the floor. DEAN: Forget the damn game! Forget the game, Cas.

(spoiler alert: In the end, it was you... I mean humanity won the evolutionary lottery and ended up being able to make the rules for ourselves. All through this, Dean’s looking for other potential avenues toward saving the world from being devoured by Leviathan. Remember when Metatron might be able to do a lot of good? while Cas dodges the actual subject and plays a game that literally continually sends Dean “back to the start” to make the same moves again, maybe slightly differently this time, different strategy, as he repeatedly tries to get Cas to answer HIS question about the actual world-ending game they’re playing against the Leviathan? THIS IS THE SPIRAL NARRATIVE IN ACTION IN ONE SCENE. “WE LIVE IN A SORRY UNIVERSE ENGINEERED TO CREATE CONFLICT” “BUT THESE ARE THE RULES” And when Dean is tired of trying to work within the rules? *game goes flying* *smashes God’s guitar* heck this is a perfect scene... have I mentioned that I love Ben Edlund lately?)

8.01 We Need To Talk About Kevin:

DEAN: Yeah, Cas didn't make it. SAM: What exactly does that mean? DEAN: Something happened to him down there. Things got pretty hairy towards the end, and he... just let go.

(spoiler alert: Dean’s already rewriting this ending in his head because he can’t accept the truth of it. Endings suck, and this one would not stand.)

8.12 As Time Goes By:

HENRY : John was a legacy. I was supposed to teach him the ways of the Letters. DEAN : Well, he learned things a little differently. HENRY : How? DEAN : The hard way. Surviving a lonely childhood, a stinking war... only to get married and have his wife taken by a demon... and later killed by one himself. That man got a bum rap around every turn. But you know what? He kept going. And in the end, he did a hell of a lot more good than he did bad.

(spoiler alert: see, Dean’s already made a hell of a lot of peace with John even way back then)

8.14 Trial and Error:

DEAN: I'm a grunt, Sam. You're not. You've always been the brains of this operation. SAM: Dean— DEAN: And you told me yourself that you see a way out. You see a light at the end of this ugly-ass tunnel. I don't. But I tell you what I do know – it's that I'm gonna die with a gun in my hand. 'Cause that's what I have waiting for me – that's all I have waiting for me. I want you to get out. I want you to have a life – become a man of Letters, whatever. You, with a wife and kids and – and – and grandkids, living till you're fat and bald and chugging Viagra – that is my perfect ending, and it's the only one that I'm gonna get. So I'm gonna do these trials. I'm gonna do them alone – end of story. You're staying here. I'm going out there. If landshark comes knocking, you call me. If you try to follow me, I'm gonna put a bullet in your damn leg.

(spoiler alert: just look at the title of this episode to see how this all turned out. It ain’t called “Trial and Major Win”)

Bonus:

SAM: I want to slam hell shut, too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live, and so should you. You have friends up here, family. I mean, hell, you even got your own room now. You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't – I am. But it's there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it. DEAN: Sam, be smart. SAM: I AM smart, and so are you. You're not a grunt, Dean. You're a genius – when it comes to lore, to – you're the best damn hunter I have ever seen – better than me, better than dad. I believe in you, Dean. So, please – please believe in me, too.

(spoiler alert: hell if this doesn’t sound like the speech Sam gave Dean in 14.12, but like way less frustrated, angry, and afraid)

8.17 Goodbye Stranger:

Meg: You ever miss the Apocalypse? Castiel: No. Why would I miss the end of times? Meg: I miss the simplicity. I was bad. You were good. Life was easier. Now it's all so messy. I'm kind of good, which sucks. And you're kind of bad -- which is actually all manner of hot. We survive this... I'm gonna order some pizza and we're gonna move some furniture around. You understand?

(spoiler alert: Cas doesn’t miss the end of times. And the only reason he was “kind of bad” here was because he was being mind-controlled by Naomi so... Meg will be dead by the end of the episode, and Cas will be freed from Heaven’s control. Good times. Better than the apocalypse anyway)

8.19 Taxi Driver:

BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah, well... You know, I always figured that'd be the end of it... You know, just a Hunter's funeral. Zip. Nothing. And I was okay with that. Imagine my surprise. SAM: Well, I guess if there has to be an eternity, I'd pick Heaven over Hell. BOBBY: Yeah. 'Cause there's nothing screwy going on up there. SAM: I wish I made the rules. BOBBY: Well... I'll, uh, do my part, get to the end of this, but... I ain't exactly the retiring type, so, you idjits figure out a way to spring me...

(spoiler alert: apparently what’s burned doesn’t stay dead, s8 version? Also Sam wishes he made the rules... I love all these mentions of “the rules”)

8.21 The Great Escapist:

DEAN: We got the other half of the tablet. KEVIN: What? DEAN: It's the light at the end of your tunnel, kid. Don't say we never got you nothing.

(tfw the light at the end of the tunnel is actually a locomotive)

Dean: Cure a demon. Okay, ignoring the fact that I have no idea what that actually means, if we — if we do this, you get better, right? I mean, you stop trying to cough up a lung, and, and, and bumping into furniture? Sam: I feel better, yeah, um, just having a direction to move in. Dean: Well, good, cause where we're headed doesn't sound like a picnic. Sam: But we're heading somewhere. The end.

(spoiler alert: LOLOLOL thing again bub.)

9.20 Bloodlines:

ENNIS: Look, I don't need no apology from you. DAVID: I lost someone, too, okay?! But I'm trying here. ENNIS: I'm sorry about your brother. He spoke about you at the end. He said, "David, I'm sorry. I didn't have a choice."

(I wasn’t gonna include this, because it’s purely conversational on top of being from this episode which doesn’t really count but... when they’ve both lost people in a sacrifice play, and one is mistaken for the other and his dying words for his brother are “I didn’t have a choice?” um... that just felt relevant)

9.23 Do You Believe in Miracles?

Gadreel: I sat in this hole for thousands of years thinking of nothing but redemption, of reclaiming my good name. I thought of nobody, no cause other than my own. Castiel: You've been redeemed my friend. Gadreel: The only thing that matters in the end is the mission: protecting those who would not and cannot protect themselves. The humans. None of us is bigger than that, we will not let our fears, our self absorption prevent us from seeing it through. Not anymore. Castiel: No, no of course not. Gadreel: Move to the other side of your cell Castiel, and keep your head down. When they say my name, perhaps I won't just be the one who let the Serpent in, perhaps I will be known as one of the many that gave Heaven a second chance. Run sister.

(spoiler alert: redemption, selfless sacrifice, Gadreel meets his end to prove Metatron’s manipulative duplicity and reveal his real motive... that was just another game in a different loop of the spiral. In the end, it’s the only thing that matters)

10.20 Angel Heart:

CASTIEL: So do you think she's better off on her own? SAM: Cas, she just turned 18. CASTIEL: You were alone when you left for college at that age, weren't you? SAM: Yeah, but that's different. CASTIEL: How, Sam? SAM: Here's all I know ... going it alone, that's no way to live. You being there for her, even if she thinks she doesn't want you to be there for her, that's good for both of you. CASTIEL: Maybe, in the end. SAM: In the end.

(spoiler alert: things don’t just get better right away, and they’re hard but family sticks together, loved ones stick together, even when they say they don’t want to... it might not be easy now, but in the end...)

11.02 Form and Void:

SAM: I was infected last night. You? RABID MAN: This morning. SAM: Wait a second. Then why -- RABID MAN: . . . am I further along? Don't know. This thing, it ain't math. I seen some people change fast, some change slow. But in the end . . . We all end up the same. We go psycho. And then we go boom. SAM: Well, that's not -- I'm gonna fix this. RABID MAN: LIAR! You and me, we're dead. We're just taking our sweet time about it. So if you were smart, you'd put a bullet in me . . . and then eat one yourself.

(Sam wasn’t lying, Rabid Man. You just didn’t make it. And Sam was smart not to put a bullet in either of you.)

Bonus, for extra manipulation:

HANNAH: Where is it? CASTIEL: I don't know. HANNAH: Then who would? The Winchesters? Castiel, if this is true, it's the end for all of us. Sam and Dean -- where are they? CASTIEL: I don't know. HANNAH: Then think harder! CASTIEL: How did you find me?

(because that’s the thing, Cas realized Hannah wasn’t there to help, not there to heal him, and that she’d been in charge of all of this all along. She could’ve helped Cas like he’d asked and earned his trust and he probably would’ve shared what he knew of the Darkness with her, but she resorted to the old Heaven Way Of Doing Things instead... and he saw through the manipulation)

11.09 O Brother Where Art Thou?

Man: Repress your sins. Beg for his divine mercy. When the end comes – and come it will – only the forgiven will ascend to holy grace.

and

Amara raises both her arms skyward, compelling lightning bolts. One by one the members of the crowd are struck down; with the final lightning bolt hitting the man who had been preaching. They are all dead, completely scorched. The blood on the fountain turns back to water. The thunderstorm ends. Amara surveys her work, her gaze resting on one body, still holding a sign that says: THE END IS NEAR!

(gotta love those wackadoo religious nuts in this universe, right?)

Dean: What is it exactly that you want? When you make the world of bliss and peace, what’s in it for you? Amara: What I deserve. Dean: Which is? Amara: Everything. Dean: Everything? Amara: I was the beginning and I will be the end. I will be all that there is. Dean: So, you’re it. [Dean turns away from Amara]. That would make you God. Amara: No, God was the Light. I’m the Dark.

(So Amara was the beginning and will be the ending, all that there is... kinda... sounds a bit like... the empty?)

11.10 The Devil In The Details:

Lucifer: Okay, you don't like me. I get it... I get it; sometimes I don't like me either. But Gabriel and Raphael are dead. God went out for a pack of smokes and never came back... and Michael... well, let's just say prison life hasn't really agreed with Michael. These days he's usually sitting in a corner singing show tunes and touching himself. Sam: So you're it. Lucifer [laughing]: I'm it! And hey, I'm not the good guy, we both know I'm not, but the Darkness, she's the end of everything. Lucifer crouches down so he is face to face with Sam, imploring with him. Lucifer: But I can beat her. We can beat her. You and me, together. So come on, Sam. Make the right choice, the big sacrifice one more time, man. Sam, it's time to save the world, man.

(hooooly shit there’s a lot of lying and manipulating happening here... and the Darkness? even she wasn’t the end of everything)

11.16 Safe House:

(mostly included for flashback-to-the-apocalypse lolz)

BOBBY: The apocalypse is on the horizon, and you wanna hunt a damn ghost! RUFUS: Well unless you found a way to stop the end of the world during your little siesta, we got jack all on any of that business. Now I knew you were in the area, heard about this possible little gig, I thought a win would be nice.

(because it’s the end of the world and weird random “wins” help. Plus things that exist outside of time and space in convenient pocket dimensions for easy storage outside of God’s lil creation)

11.17 Red Meat:

Michelle: I... I just wanted to see how you were doing. And to tell you th... [Her voice shakes with emotion and she pauses.] I'm sorry. You saved our lives and... [another pause] well, my mom used to say, um... I didn't believe her then, but I... I think I do now. She used to say... death... it's not the end.

(lololololololllllllllll)

Dean’s spirit: You know, the Darkness is out there... and the world is gonna burn. And once she gets started, that's the end of everything, including you. Now, Sam's the only one who can stop it. Billie: Hmm. How's that? Dean is lost for words. Billie: That's what I thought. It's cute, though. You pretending you're trying to save Sam for the greater good, when we both know you're doing it for you. You can't lose him. But even if Sammy could win the title bout... the answer would still be “no.” The answer will always be “no.” Game's over, Dean. No more second chances. No more extra lives. Time to say bye-bye to Luigi, Mario. Dean’s spirit [sadness and desperation in his eyes]: I'm asking you... I'm begging you, please. Bring him back. Bring him back and take me instead. Billie: I'm not here to bargain with you, kid. I'm here to reap you. And the kicker is... Sam's not dead. [Dean looks stunned] But you are. Or will be, soon enough.

(DOUBLE LOLLLOLOLOLOLLOLLOLLLL)

11.21 All in The Family:

Dean: You're right. I am drawn to you. And it bothers the hell out of me, 'cause I can't control it. Amara: Then why fight it? What you're feeling is that I am the end of your struggle. Something stops you. Keeps you from having it all.

(lol Amara REALLY wants to be the end doesn’t she... poor thing gonna get stuck with Mr. Infinite Loop Chuck... no wonder that’s like her worst nightmare. Heck, being locked up in nothingness sounds better, since that IS her deal... she’s not just the “end” though... she’s also the beginning...Alpha and Omega... Chuck is all the middle bits)

11.22 We Happy Few:

CHUCK: I can’t say I’m sorry if I’m not. (He places plates of pancakes in front of SAM and DEAN.) What he wants an apology for, I did it for humanity. For the world. Look, Lucifer wants what everybody wants: Amara gone. ‘kay? Let’s just give him a little time to cool off. (CHUCK sips from a mug labeled WORLD’S GREATEST DAD.) DEAN: Okay, well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a little time is not something that we have. The end is frickin’ nigh.

(omfg it’s all the Dabb era themes... god Chuck has always been a dick)

Bonus:

CLEA: End times shouldn’t bother you though, Ro, you a rat. Find your way off any sinkin’ ship. ROWENA: Damn right. The spell I’m working on is Book of the Damned magic, and it can get us back. We can buy ourselves a few more centuries of life. Turn back the clock for us before the world inevitably goes (sing-song) ‘bye-bye.’ CLEA: You scared. ROWENA: Aye. I came face-to-face with the Darkness. The Apocalypse bell’s been rung a few times in our day, but when I looked inside her, I saw it. Not just the end of the world, Heaven and Hell. The end of magic.

11.23 Alpha And Omega:

CAS: The angels are—Heaven won't help. DEAN: They know that this is the end, right? Of everything. CAS: Yes. SAM: And they don't care? CAS: No, it's not that. It's... They know—They know God is dying and they don't think we can win this. Souls or no souls. They're sealing Heaven, and they're "dying with dignity".

(spoiler alert: it’s like they keep trying to do this all through Dabb era... even after the Shadow throws open every gate. They’re still dying. Kinda makes me think it’s Chuck’s doing... literally... all of it, since it was Humanity’s Plan in this episode that CHANGED things from Chuck’s plan to just... wait for the inevitable blast wave ending)

[Sam, Cas, Crowley and Rowena, and Chuck pull up in the Impala to ‘The The Lazy Shag’ bar/restaurant which has a ‘Closed’ sign on the door. A man walks by with a sign that says ‘The End Is Near’.]

(and a bit later Cas comments that Chuck looks terrible >.>)

12.12 Stuck In The Middle (With You):

[organ music plays, Castiel is sitting in his truck listening to the radio] RADIO: Each of us has a time the physical body dies. We all face God’s judgment in the end. There’s not one of us alive walking on this earthly plane that will not pay the consequence for their actions. [the Impala pulls into the parking lot, distracting Cas from the radio] RADIO: The Lord will hold us in the palm of his hand, and he’ll weigh our souls. Brothers and sisters, are you worthy? [Cas turns off the radio]

(lol, THE WOUNDED ANGEL)

RAMIEL: Allies. Is that what you call three humans with one good liver between them and a busted up angel? CROWLEY: I admit they don’t sound like much. But every Armageddon, every bloody, “this is the end of all things,” a Winchester stopped it. Like it or not, they’re an asset we can’t afford to lose.

(Crowley being sensible, there’s something much bigger than Ramiel’s surface-level read at stake here)

12.20 Twigs And Twine And Tasha Banes:

KETCH: It's the end for the American Hunters. Their time has passed.

(BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA)

WOMAN: I'm reaching the end of my very long life, and it's a problem. Max and Dean are also in pain. Another image of Tasha in the cellar bleeding profusely from her stomach area flashes. WOMAN: 'cause I sold my soul for power. So when I pass, my soul goes to Hell. Unless I can find someone to take the burden, to take my magic.

(spoiler alert: that’s YOUR problem, lady)

12.22 Who We Are:

SAM: Is this how you pictured it? The end? DEAN: Oh, you know it's not. I always thought we'd go out like... Butch and Sundance style. (Sam chuckles) SAM: Yeah. Blaze of glory. DEAN: Blaze of glory. (Dean smirks) Son of a bitch.

(spoiler alert: the grenadebaiting payoff. Gonna die anyway? May as well get the big boom.)

13.02 The Rising Son:

SAM: These yellow-eyed things just keep on comin’, huh? DEAN: Mm—hmm. And hopefully this fourth Prince of Hell is the last Kardashian in the family. SAM: According to this, if that was Asmodeus, it’s the end of the line.

(hey, for once, reaching the end of the line is a relief)

13.16 Scoobynatural:

SAM: Dude, what's wrong with you? DEAN: They don't know that they're in a...a C-word. And we're not gonna tell 'em about anything. Not where we're from, not about monsters. Nothing. Capiche? (Dean looks over to the Scooby Gang, standing across the room) DEAN: They are pure and innocent and good, and we're gonna keep it that way. SAM: Look, if you've seen this episode, why-why can't we just skip to the end? DEAN: Well, 'cause sometimes it's about the journey and not the destination.

(we can’t “skip to the end” because it’s about the JOURNEY, which is still ONGOING, and therefore NOT THE END)

Bonus:

Sam: Ha! Velma was right. It was a shady real estate developer after all. Jay: It's not fair. I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids. Dean: He said it! He said the line! Scooby Dooby Do! Sam: What are you doing? Dean: Well, I mean at the end of every mystery, Scooby looks at the camera and he says-- Castiel: Dean, you're not a talking dog. Dean: I know that. I... Sam: Yeah. Dean: No, but come on, I-I do look cool with the ascot, right? No? Guys? Come on, guys. Look, red is my color!

(lol!)

13.20 Unfinished Business:

KEVIN: I didn't have a choice! I… Y-you don't understand. I… I… I never used to believe in anything. Well, ex-except science-- quantum mechanical unpredictably. But then the end of the world happened, and everyone around me-- my friends, and my… my mom-- they all started to die. But God chose me? What… What does that even mean?! Michael said he wanted to save the world, not kill it. But he… he hurt so many people. When I couldn't perfect the spell, Michael, he got mad and threw me in the dungeon. And I was so scared, but I fixed it. B-but I… I couldn't do it anymore.

(aah, the poor Worst Version of Kevin, no choice, thought he was doing the right thing, manipulated by circumstance and empty promises...)

GABRIEL: I had it made-- all the booze I could drink, all the, uh, entertainment I could handle. [Sam interrupts and Dean looks disappointed, but the action returns to the motel room] SAM: Okay! Why don't we just skip to the end? [Gabriel sighs and skips to the end of the story, asleep in bed with the two women, when Sleipnir, Narfi, and Fenrir bound him with a sigil and kidnapped him from his bed] GABRIEL: So this is how it ended. By the time I came to, they had sold me to Asmodeus. SAM: Why would they do that? GABRIEL: Hello? Lucifer? In case you don't remember, there was an apocalypse brewing at the time.

(LOL Sam asked Gabriel to skip to the end of the story, and unlike Dean in 13.16, Gabriel did... no wonder Dean was disappointed, he was enjoying the journey even if most of Gabriel’s story was embellished beyond recognition)

LOKI: You think you're some… poor, innocent victim? [he strolls over and punches Gabriel again] Gabriel, with his deadbeat daddy and his mean older brothers. [he stomps on Gabriel] “Who will help me?” “Who will save me?” [he picks Gabriel up and pins him to the wall by his neck] I did! But you… you couldn't keep one promise. And then you had the audacity to ask me to help you again?! [he throws Gabriel down the hall, where Sam and Dean have arrived in a doorway behind him] You think I deserve to die for your spinelessness?! That my sons deserved to die?! [the fight continues, as Dean slides Loki’s sword to Gabriel and Gabriel finally gets Loki pinned to the wall at the tip of the blade] LOKI: Of course, of course you would need someone to swoop in and save your pitiful ass. GABRIEL: Shut up! LOKI: Face it, old friend, you're a joke. You're a failure. You live for pleasure. You stand for nothing. And in the end, that's exactly what you'll die for.

(heck... I mean, Loki dies here, because that “promise?” Gabriel didn’t break it. Loki just wouldn’t listen to facts or accept the reality of what happened. Gabriel had been trying to SAVE his father in 5.19, but THEY also wouldn’t listen... so... poor Gabriel was just stuck in the middle again, and he was imprisoned and tortured for it. Heck he better still be alive and that was another projection that died in 13.22)

14.03 The Scar:

Dean: You were right. I just didn’t want to look at it, what Michael used me for. I just wanted to race ahead. You know, skip to the end of the story the part where I get the weapon and I take out the bad guy. The part where I kill Michael. Sam: Yeah, I know. Dean: You know I said yes to him because I thought: it was stupid. I was stupid. Sam: Dean, you did what you had to do.

(ugh there’s that awful “you did what you had to do.” there was NO CHOICE. NONE. and Dean just wanted revenge at any cost for having been used like that... not even just by Michael, but in the Grander Scheme he has context for after 14.20)

14.07 Unhuman Nature:

Rowena: It's as I suspected. A Nephilim, for all its power, is an unnatural presence. Part human, part angel… It -- It doesn't quite fit. It's delicate. Its grace is what holds it in balance, and when Jack's grace was taken from him, his being fell into chaos. The -- The cells are gobbling each other up. Castiel: Well, if it's grace he needs, he can have mine. Rowena: No, dear, it won't do. Jack is part archangel. He needs a much stronger force and probably some kind of magic, and he needs it quick. Dean: How quick? Rowena: I don't...I don't exactly know, but he's enterin' a critical phase. Sometimes he'll look just fine, but then his body will give way and...it'll be the end of him.

(interesting phrasing...)

14.10 Nihilism:

Mainly, I wanted to make note of the song choice that plays in Rocky’s Bar, “Searchin’ for a Rainbow” by the Marshall Tucker Band. Because the lyrics repeat on a loop about looking for the end of the rainbow

14.11 Damaged Goods:

SAM: Mom, we don’t hug. I mean, w-we do, but only if it’s literally the end of the world, you know?

(yet... Dean awkwardly hugged him... sign of the apocalypse)

14.12 Prophet and Loss:

DEAN: Hey. Man, I-I just want to make sure that you’re still with me on this thing. You’re gonna see it through to the end. SAM: Well, I gave you my word, didn’t I? DEAN: Okay, alright. Just, you know, after what you said last night, I-I-I don’t need you and Mom coming up with some way to stop me. SAM: You know, Mom hates this. I hate this. DEAN: I know. SAM: And Cas and Jack, you haven’t even told them. DEAN: Okay, well, yeah, that’s because I’m not good with the whole big goodbyes, alright? I-I-I don’t need to get shaky on this thing. SAM: Wouldn’t be the worst thing. DEAN: You know what Michael wants to do, you know that this will stop it, and you know that there’s no other way. So, just put the end of this trip outta your head, okay?

(spoiler alert: oh look it’s nihilistic Dean from back in 5.18 come for a brief visit. good thing he got clocked on the noggin instead of doing this dumb thing)

Bonus that’s not really a bonus, because boy’s obsessed and it’s just not healthy:

DEAN: I believe in all of us. And I’ll keep believing until I can’t. Until there’s absolutely no other way. But when that day comes – if that day comes… Sam, you have to take it for what it is – the end. And you have to promise me that you’ll do then what you can’t do now, and that’s let me go. And put me in that box.

#it's spirals all the way down #spn 5.04 #is notably absent from this list...#spn masterlist masterlist pffft #this is just for my own personal musing purposes #the end

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franciscretarola · 5 years ago

Text

South Philly: A Love Story

(Photos by Francis Cretarola) The names of some (but not all) of the people in this otherwise truthful account have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent, as well as my own ass.

As Cathy and I rounded the corner on Morris and turned onto our block of 13th (the “Miracle” stretch that, from the day after Thanksgiving through New Year’s, becomes a tourist destination that can be seen from space), I noticed the ambulance parked midway up the street. And my heart sank. They’d already loaded in whomever it was they came for, but I saw that it was stopped pretty much in front of Joey’s house. Joey is what I call an “original,” one of the people who were here when we first arrived more than twenty-three years ago, the mostly Italian-American neighbors who’d created this neighborhood and for generations defined it. Most of my block is still comprised of originals and their spawn, but it would be accurate to say that their impact on the character of the neighborhood is growing ever more muted.

I’d not seen Joey much recently. Just the odd sighting of him doing his constitutional walk around the block, moving a lot slower than he once did, and seeming a bit preoccupied. When we first arrived in the neighborhood Joey was already in his sixties, but a force of nature. Just over five feet tall, thin but solidly built, looking exactly like men of that age I’ve seen all over southern Italy, Joey’s physical stature belied the massive impact of his personality. He was generous, quick to offer a hand, free with his opinions. We never dove into politics, but we might not have been on the same page. At block parties he danced (to doo-wop, the “Grease” soundtrack, dance hits from the ‘70’s), in Cathy’s words, “as if no one was watching,” his arms punching the air in front of him, his legs pistons that fired in place. In these moments his face always revealed angelic contentment. Joey was a hell of a lot more comfortable in his own skin than I’ll ever be. His voice, again out of proportion to his diminutive size, boomed. From the inside of our house, I always knew when he was on the street.

His voice boomed in disconcerting ways when he harangued my brother and me for our ineptitude at bocce. Though completely inexperienced, we’d joined the street’s team playing in a league at the Guerin Rec Center (sponsored by a chiropractor, our team was called The Backbreakers). One of the teams we played was made up some of the guys from Danny and the Juniors. When they’d win, they’d sometimes break into a verse of “At the Hop.” It chapped our asses. It was meant to chap our asses. Breaking balls in South Philly is an honored and cherished tradition.

It was before one of these games that I learned something else about Joey. We were huddled outside, waiting for the doors to open and whining about the winter cold when he, out of nowhere and offhandedly, told us a story that stopped our bitching in its tracks:

“When I was in the army in Korea, it was so fucking cold our rifles froze. Couldn’t load ‘em. Couldn’t shoot ‘em. We had to piss on the works to get them working again.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that an old guy from South Philly had dealt with stuff that would’ve put me in a fetal position. These are tough people. And this was a good reminder.

Cathy and I arrived in this neighborhood in 1996. Coming here changed everything for us. Without exaggeration, I can say that had we never settled here I’d never have become proficient in Italian, we’d never have lived in Abruzzo, and certainly never opened Le Virtú (our neighborhood trattoria dedicated to the cuisine of Abruzzo). We owe South Philly everything. And we’ve seen and been a major part of the changes to the neighborhood and East Passyunk Avenue, changes that have been breathlessly celebrated and discussed in local media. The demise of old South Philly has been frequently, enthusiastically, and prematurely reported in stories that have ranged from sensitive, thoughtful treatments to obnoxious, oblivious hit pieces. It’d be disingenuous for us to say we’re not happy about some of the changes. But it’s equally true that we miss a lot of what’s been lost, have mixed feelings about what’s filled the void (including our own roles in that), and would miss what’s left were it to vanish. When old South Philly goes, the country will have lost one its last original and truly great places. Were it to go during our lifetimes, we’d probably pull up stakes. There’d be no “here” here. We came to South Philly because of what it was, not what we thought it could become.

Rowhome life is familiar to me. I was born and raised up the Schuylkill in Reading, PA, in a blue-collar, predominantly Polish and Slavic neighborhood on the city’s southeast side. My mom’s parents, who also lived in our neighborhood, were “shitkickers” from rural North Carolina who’d moved to Reading for jobs in the textile mills. My dad was Italian-American. When I was a boy his father, from Abruzzo, lived in the house with us. Six of us - including my brother and one of my sisters - lived in a rowhome that would fit inside the one Cathy and I now occupy alone on 13th Street. Reading’s Italian section was gone by the time I was born, but my dad’s friends from that old neighborhood, a tightly knit group of half a dozen guys - partners since grade school in activities both benevolent and (mildly) nefarious - were more a part of our lives than blood relatives. We referred to them as “uncles.” From my grandfather, I got stories about the old country and about being an Italian immigrant when nobody here wanted Italians (he arrived in 1909, one of over 183,000 paesani to make the voyage that year). He explained why he changed his name (from Alfonso Cretarola to Francis Cratil) to avoid prejudice, warned about the KKK who hated Catholics and immigrants like him, spoke reverently of FDR, and taught me and my father before me to root for the underdog. From my dad’s friends I learned a lot, too: how to argue passionately without forgetting you loved the person you were arguing with; how to instantly forgive and when to hold a grudge; how to relentlessly and inventively break balls (the pedestrian insult can boomerang, resulting in a loss of status); numerous mannerisms and off-color Italian expressions and hand gestures; that morality ran deeper than legality; and - above all else - how to show up when a friend was in need.

They had a pinochle game that rotated from house to house. Games would often go on into the early morning. These were raucous, intensely competitive affairs, and master classes in Italian-American culture: music (Sinatra, Prima, and Martin); language (I heard “minchia” so often that I took to using it in conversations with school friends, not knowing it meant “cock,” often playing the role “fuck” does in English); casual volatility, sudden explosions of anger and joy; and food (platters of sausages, meatballs, provolone, capocollo, sopressata). Once, during a game at our house, the doorbell rang, and I went to answer. (I was in about 6th grade). I opened the door to a cop. He asked if the local district justice, one of my dad’s friends, was in the house. I led him to the game in the dining room. He approached the table, hand on his holster, and yelled that the game was busted. For a beat or two, the men at the table looked up at him in silence. Then the judge exploded with a “Vaffa…” and the room erupted in laughter. The cop sat down, had a bite to eat, and left after a few minutes. He’d just wanted to break balls.

So I felt prepared for South Philly. But it still surprised and (usually) delighted me.

We moved into our house in November of 1996. Coming from the paesano-deprived wastelands of Washington, DC, where we’d been living and working, the neighborhood was a paradise. Everywhere I turned were ingredients and foods that could then only be found in specialty stores in the District. There were six bread bakeries within a five-minute walk of my house - good bread, too - and three pasticcerias. There were three butchers inside that radius, including Sam Meloni’s a half a block away on Tasker. We had the Avenue Cheese Shop, Cellini’s, and Phil Mancuso’s as provisioners and, for rarer stuff, DiBruno’s and Claudio’s not too far away on 9th. The hoagie options were overwhelming. Fresh fish was a block away at Ippolito’s. And I’m just talking about the east side of Broad. Ritner Street west of Broad was, and remains, an oasis for anyone seeking Italian flavors. Dad’s Stuffings, Potito’s, and Cacia’s bakery (the tomato pie, but not just) are regional treasures. Cannuli’s Sausages is a full-service butcher shop, where they make a liver sausage taught to them years ago by women from Abruzzo. North of Ritner, on the 1500 block of South 15th, there’s Calabria Imports: sopressata sott’olio, provolone and pecorino cheeses, condiments from Calabria. I gained ten pounds the first few months in the house. And I didn’t care.

But South Philly’s more than a colorful, urban food court. There were/are rhythms, ways of being, and a specific sense of community. Oft-disparaged, stereotyped, and dismissed, the originals in the neighborhood made - and still make - it singular. They’ve provided some of my favorite memories.

My first night out drinking in the neighborhood, I went to La Caffe (now defunct, even the building’s gone) at 12th and Tasker. It was a typical, no-frills corner joint. There were three guys at the bar, all of whom gave me the side-eye as I bellied up. This was long before dedicated hipster ironists started mining the neighborhood for material. My hair was halfway to my ass then, and Italian American wouldn’t be the first, second, or third ethnicity you’d guess when taking in my mug. I wore a vintage Phillies jacket to at least establish some bona fides. I ordered a double Stoli. The guy closest to me gave in and asked what my story was, and a pleasant conversation ensued. We’d reached the point - which used to be a thing - of doing shots of anisette (a practice that, while amicable, often turned a pleasant night’s buzz into a pitiless banshee of a hangover), when the door opened, and a hulking guy, already in his cups, came in clutching a big paper bag under his arm like a football. He was warmly greeted, so, I construed, a regular. He set the grease-soaked bag on the bar, pulled it open and announced: “I got pork sandwiches for everybody!”.A round of roast pork with sharp provolone and broccoli rabe, Philly’s true classic sandwich (the cheesesteak is a pretender to the throne). Welcome to the neighborhood.

The days leading up to Thanksgiving, decorations start to go up: lights; inflatable Santas, snowmen, and Grinches; lights; wreaths; candy canes; nativities; Christmas balls; more lights; plastic holly; tinsel; real and fake evergreen trim; ribbon; additional lights; a giant Snoopy; some elves; and then, finally, the serious lights. This was all pretty much spontaneous, nothing like the organized/enforced effort that now creates the so-called “Miracle on 13th Street.” On Christmas Eve, we were more or less forced at the ends of loaded cannoli into the homes of neighbors to drink wine, anisette, sambuca, rum, and whiskey, and to make our own “plates” from vast spreads of Italian comfort foods. The warmth and good feeling were contagious. And the desire – a need, actually - to share, the humbling generosity, was something I’d only experience again when we began traveling in Abruzzo. My neighborhood in Reading had been close, but nothing like this. The New Year rang in with neighbors returning from dinners and parties in time to bang pots and pans in the middle of the block. The next day, houses up and down 13th and on the cross streets were open, offering neighbors and sometimes complete strangers hot drinks, food, and a bathroom as the Mummers strutted up Broad. It’s never been the same since they changed the parade route.

Our first spring in the house, I was in the kitchen making dinner - roast pork, spaghetti and meatballs - and looking longingly out the window. It was the first real beautiful day of the season. Clear blue skies, about 70 degrees, no humidity. I stepped out into our yard to soak it in. We’ve got the typical tiny South Philly concrete pad; nice for a garden if you’re game, maybe a fig tree (a few of our neighbors still have them). We’d yet to buy yard furniture, and I was regretting it. Cathy stepped out, and I mentioned that, but for the lack of a table and chairs, we could eat outside. “Next time,” she said, and we went back in. Minutes later we heard banging at the metal backyard gate. We opened it to find the old woman who lived in the house behind ours standing in the narrow alleyway. Born in the “Abruzzi” and always dressed in black, she stood less than five feet tall. In heavily accented English, she said “I give you table and two chairs.” She’d been pruning her rose bushes and heard us talking. She led Cathy through her yard and into her kitchen where she had a plain, white plastic table with matching chairs. We were speechless. “I no use anymore. Take,” she said.

The neighborhood landscape was a lot different then. Its mien, too. Before there was the East Passyunk “Singing Fountain” at the 11th Street triangle, the spot was occupied by an old gas station turned hoagie shop, Cipolloni’s Home Plate. Joe Cipolloni was a neighborhood kid who’d been a catcher in the Phillies’ farm system. We hit Joe’s for a medley of hoagies one of the first nights we crashed in the house. Franca Di Renzo’s venerable Tre Scalini was then across from the triangle on 11th. The Di Renzo family’s been serving food on the Avenue almost three decades now. Their departure (announced as I was writing this), is a dagger to the heart. Frankie’s Seafood Italiano (which memorably used the “Mambo Italiano” melody in its radio advertisements) was catty-corner from Franca on Tasker. On East Passyunk there was also Ozzie’s Trattoria and Rosalena’s; Mr. Martino’s Trattoria, Mamma Maria’s, and Marra’s were where they still are today. Walking into a joint meant being warmly greeted with a “Hon,” “Cuz,” or some other friendly moniker. Service was always personable, attentive, and familiar, like you were an old friend. For the life of me, I don’t know what the objection - frequently voiced in amateur and professional reviews - is to this style. Why come to one of the country’s most unique places and ask them to conform to your expectations, change character? Or mock them for who they are? You’re a guest in their neighborhood. Let them be who they are. Roll with it. How self-important, fragile, or far up your own lower digestive tract must you be to be traumatized or offended by “Hon” or the like? What kind of bloodless, sterile, frigid, suppressed, affection-deprived “family” environments produce such specimens? ‘Merigan!

Transactions at restaurants and stores in South Philly weren’t solely financial in nature. They involved human exchanges, real conversation beyond any purchase, interactions that formed some of the neighborhood’s connective tissue. I know that some of the new arrivals in the neighborhood regarded this as a time suck: “Why am I waiting behind this ambulatory fossil while she recounts, for the fifth time, her late husband’s illness, her son’s family’s impending and unapproved move to Jersey, and her plans for the Padre Pio festival? I just want to buy my damned provolone and go!” While an understandable complaint, it was also oblivious. These conversations created and maintained community. Walking into Sam Meloni’s butcher shop was, for me, as much for social reasons as it was to buy meat. The family shop had been at the corner of Iseminger and Tasker since 1938. Sam - in his late sixties and more alive than I’d ever been in my twenties - held court behind the counter, Jeff cap rakishly turned backwards, his expressive faccia usually wearing a wry smile. Entering the store meant immersion in the perpetual, playful, multi-subject argument between Sam and his nephew Bobby - a big, imposing, but sweet dude - and their straight-man assistant, both damn good butchers themselves. You were brought into the fray, asked to weigh in and choose sides, and then identified as an ally or unreasonable bastard. I would go in for some chicken cutlets and walk out nearly an hour later with the chicken, veal scallopini, chicken meatballs, and, most importantly, renewed faith in humanity. Sam’s family was from the town of Campli in Abruzzo’s Teramo province. My family’s also from Teramo. So, we talked a lot about the old country. Once, during my first bought with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I walked over to Sam’s for some cutlets and Italian water, the Lurisia stuff Cathy loved. He was alone in the shop that day. He knew what was going on – I’d had my involuntary “chemo haircut” (much of it had fallen out) and my skin had turned an alluring shade of gray. He rang me up then asked how I was getting home. I lived less than a block away.

“I’m walking, Sam.”

“No. No you ain’t,” he snapped.

He washed his hands, brushed himself off, grabbed my stuff, and locked up the shop. And he drove me home.

We were in Italy when Sam passed. It was an aggressive cancer. Friends of ours, who’d recently moved to the ‘hood and fallen in love with him and his place, went to the memorial. They said that there were photos of Sam from all through his life. A lot of shots from parties. One taken “down the shore” showed him carousing with his friends on the beach, their towels surrounded by “dead soldiers,” empty bottles of booze. Sam had fun. Our friends also mentioned the score of unescorted older women at the memorial. Sam had been a committed bachelor until the end. His nephew Bobby died, also of cancer, only a few months later. The shop closed.

Immersed in this Italian-American bubble, I felt waves of nostalgia, yearnings for the sense of belonging my dad and his friends clearly had in their boyhood enclave (as much as I loved it, I would never be from South Philly, and we’d been transplants to the Polish/Slavic quarter in Reading), and a desire to connect with my roots. Everywhere around me I’d see older, Italian-born guys – hair (or what was left of it) closely cropped; face shaved but casting a shadow by mid-afternoon; height a little over five feet; build thin to stocky, but solid; pants belted and hiked to the midsection; shirt tucked and buttoned to the neck; handkerchief in the back pocket; shoes plain, of leather; sartorial mien somber – who reminded me of my grandfather. These guys and their wives are usually quiet, reserved. They keep to themselves, cook and eat at home. Which is maybe why the newcomers moving in and journalists perfunctorily writing about South Philly often don’t seem to notice them. A lot of them used to congregate at the now-defunct Caffe Italia west of Broad on Snyder. But they’re still around, hiding in plain sight. Many of them, I’d discover, were from villages near where Alfonso had been born. Listening to them speak a language familiar but, really, impenetrable to me became intolerable. I wanted to understand where all this stuff around me had come from, the place that’d shaped Alfonso and, to a lesser extent, my father and myself. So, with Cathy’s permission (she’s a mensch), I quit my job writing and copyediting for a publisher out of Maryland and made the first of my extended trips to Italy to study the language, first in Florence, but later and more intensely in Rome. My studies provided me the key to exploring and understanding Abruzzo - a wild, beautiful, mostly untraveled region, and the point of origin for many of South Philly’s denizens - and penetrating, just a little (the community can be justifiably suspicious and guarded), the native Italian component of my adopted neighborhood.

It wasn’t too long after our return from an extended stay, with our two Jack Russells, in Abruzzo that we met, befriended, and – in a move that determined our future road and made Le Virtú possible but which for a short while caused us crippling anxiety and provided a window to hell – started working with a chef from Napoli operating on the west side of Broad. This guy – let’s call him Gennaro – prepared the real-deal cucina napolitana. No compromises, nothing elaborate, just the genuine article. Working with him was our intro to the biz. Luciana, our opening chef at Le Virtú, was a frequent dining guest and then, after Gennaro ominously disappeared one weekend, his sometime substitute in the kitchen. Gennaro, who we discovered too late had a history with illicit substances and a taste for expensive wine that someone else had paid for (chefs, the little dears! It’s always the Aglianico, Amarone or Barolo, and never the Nero di Troia), gradually went off the rails, slipping into legitimate mental illness. When out of paranoia he asked a busboy to frisk a customer because the guy was speaking in Neapolitan dialect (your guess is as good as ours), we cut bait. My last sight of Gennaro was on my stoop around midnight, asking for the phone number of a former server, a young girl he’d become convinced was the Madonna (not the singer, but Christ’s mom, of immaculate conception fame). When I denied his request, he produced a knife, and I a baseball bat (what else is a vestibule for?). I was chasing him up the street, bat in hand, when I locked eyes with an incredulous cop in his cruiser (not the first time this had happened, by the way). I flagged down the cop and he took Gennaro away. The whole thing was our first restaurant “cash-ectomy,” but my brother and Cathy had developed a taste for the biz. So, we were in, just not with Gennaro.

But before it all turned to merda, Gennaro provided – and subsequently burned – bridges into South Philly’s discrete, native-born community. We frequented expatriate clubs, visited in homes, met, dined with, and came to know many of our Italian neighbors. Language was crucial to that. And it proved crucial to repairing the damage Gennaro’s erratic behavior was continuing to cause in the neighborhood after our breakup. As part of the reconciliation with the neighbors, we were invited for dinner at the home of a family from Basilicata, the soulful, beautiful, but economically and historically screwed region at the instep of The Boot (between Puglia to the east and Calabria and Campania to the west). The head of the household – let’s call him Domenico - had been a semi-regular at Gennaro’s place and had watched his gradual decline. It was Domenico who’d come to us with stories of Gennaro’s increasing madness and how it impacted the street as, in our absence, it all went off the rails. We did all we could to clean up the messes, settling Gennaro’s accounts with purveyors, apologizing to neighbors. In the meanwhile, Gennaro escaped, first to Jersey and the employ of a well-known, native-born restaurateur, and then permanently back to Napoli. Once returned home, his old habits and illnesses caught up with him. He didn’t make it. Domenico’s mother - short, whippet-thin, in her seventies, and a non-English speaker – cooked for us and his family. It ranks among the best and most authentic Italian dining experiences I’ve ever had in the US. The décor of the rowhome was completely old-world, the lighting soft, the house immaculate in the way only immigrant homes are, a purposeful demonstration of work ethic and pride. Nothing she made was remotely elaborate, just all beautifully done. Beyond the perfection of the homemade pasta, the simplicity and delicacy of the grilled and fried antipasti, the generous portions of wine and digestivi, I most remember the image of this woman, visible from our table, relentlessly at work for hours at the kitchen stove, a culinary machine. She produced course after course, never sat down with us, never stopped moving. It had to be nearly midnight when she reluctantly emerged from the kitchen to accept our thanks and unconditional surrender.

By the time we opened Le Virtú in October of 2007, the demographic changes already at work when we arrived had greatly accelerated. Fresh diasporas from Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, and elsewhere filled the gaps (and storefronts) left by Italian Americans. The sons and grandchildren of Italian immigrants often didn’t want to carry on family businesses or wanted to pursue a suburban style of life (that I’ll never understand, and the idea of which gives me the fantods). These new arrivals brought with them the energy and entrepreneurial impulse that generally attends immigrant waves. Family-oriented, hardworking, and driven to succeed, they’ve greatly benefited the neighborhood. From my vantage, they remind me of my grandfather and his peers. Others arriving were generally more affluent, white, and college educated. It was in the late 90’s that we began to see folks, obviously from outside the neighborhood, walking around and looking at houses. Browsers. Handwritten notes asking if we’d consider selling our home were shoved through our mail slot. It was hard to know how to feel about it. Priced out of more expensive areas or newly arrived in the city, these folks were attracted by the neighborhood’s amenities, housing stock, proximity to the subway, and convenience to Center City. Prices on our own block increased eight- to tenfold between 1996 and today, providing a windfall for some neighbors with an itch to leave but also pretty much making it certain that their children couldn’t buy in the vicinity if they wanted to stay.

By the mid- to late-aughts, swarms of hipsters, ironic deep divers, beer geeks, gourmands, and self-appointed food critics were descending on the neighborhood as the infrastructure to satisfy them all had developed. Bars began offering vast selections of national and local craft and Belgian beers. Even corner bars started carrying a few crafts and a couple of Chimays. The harbinger for all of this, however, was Ristorante Paradiso, the dream of Lynn Rinaldi, a proud product of the neighborhood. Paradiso departed from the familiar Italian-American narrative and bravely introduced Italian regional themes to East Passyunk. Heartened by Lynn’s success, we opened Le Virtú, digging deep into la cucina Abruzzese and proffering dishes that would have been familiar to the grandparents and great grandparents of our neighbors. And, of course, a diverse host of restaurants and other eateries – most of them astonishingly good – followed. It’s now possible to figuratively eat your way across much of the globe and never leave East Passyunk.

We’d imagined Le Virtú as a love letter to Abruzzo, where we’d lived after my first occurrence of Hodgkin’s and where we returned to annually and, perhaps naively, a gift of gratitude to the neighborhood. Our first menus, created by Luciana from Abruzzo, were straight out of tradition, without any “cheffy” interpretation. And still we’d have guests, some of them locals and neighbors, who were baffled by our fare. One guy, seated at the bar and looking over our offerings, his face a map of confusion, remarked: “Not for nothing, but is there anything Italian on this menu?” So, a little (hopefully unpedantic) explanation often proved necessary. Using ingredients from specific local farms, importing rare ingredients from Abruzzo (buying our saffron involved going to the village of Civitaretenga in Abruzzo and knocking on a farmer’s door; we filled suitcases with rare cheeses from organic farms in the region), and trying to proffer quality wines and digestives made our prices above what had been the neighborhood norm. Without doubt, we alienated some locals. And the people most familiar with our dishes, the native-born Italians living in the neighborhood, never went out to eat Italian. The idea of going out and paying for what you could make at home was, to them, obscene. Only ‘merigan did that. But we gradually found our clientele, or they found us. And watching, as has happened many times. family shedding nostalgic tears over a simple bowl of scrippelle ‘mbusse - pecorino-filled crepes in chicken broth – and remembering the grandmothers from Abruzzo, now most likely departed, who used to make it for special occasions…you can’t put a price on that.

The Italian South Philly that persists is deceptively large, especially if you’re just judging by a count of storefronts and businesses. Philly’s population of Italian Americans is still the second largest in the US, after New York’s, and a lot of that’s attributable to South Philly. Most blocks in the old enclave are still partly or majority Italian-American, even if some - not most, but a sizable number - of the newcomers tend to pretend the originals don’t exist. Or maybe just wish that they didn’t. This disrespect is often palpable and felt among the long-time residents. They talk about it. Early on during East Passyunk’s so-called “renaissance,” a new store owner catering to more recent neighborhood arrivals and visitors to the Avenue remarked to a journalist that his block had three Italian eateries but that there was no way that could last. He sounded hopeful. I can’t count the episodes in which, drinking or dining at a local joint or just walking along the street, I’ve heard visitors or newcomers condescendingly discussing the long-time residents, the Italian Americans, like Margaret Mead describing the subjects of some anthropological expedition. They say these things blithely, indifferent to or unaware of the fact that the locals hear them. A professor at a city university once asked me where I lived. When I responded, she grimaced then asked: “How do you like living down there with them?” Again, I don’t look Italian American. I informed her of my background and ended the conversation.

I won’t whitewash any of my neighborhood’s shortcomings. Except maybe to say that they seem to be painfully evident everywhere in America. We’ve drawn the ire of some of South Philly’s less-accepting citizens for the causes we’ve supported at Le Virtú, the fundraisers for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. But many, maybe even most of our strongest supporters have also been Italian American and folks from the neighborhood. They’ve shown up when we’ve asked for help. We’re indebted to them. But the easy stereotypes often used to describe Italian South Philly and Italian Americans in general are tired, lazy, and profoundly ironic. They also have a long history. Most Italian Americans can trace their provenance to somewhere in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the southern realm that lasted until most of the peninsula was unified at bayonet point in 1861. In Italy, southerners were often disparaged, labeled terroni for their connection to the earth and the dark color of their skin. Into the 1970’s, some landlords in northern cities openly refused to rent to southerners. Crackpot theories about their inferiority and tendency toward criminality began in northern Italy in the 19th century and followed them to the U.S. Nativist propaganda and even the editorial sections of papers as reputable as The New York Times attacked their character and lamented their arrival in America. During an earlier, xenophobic freakout in the 1920’s, we changed our immigration laws, in part, to stop the waves from southern Italy breaking on our shores. It’s painful to see how durable and apparently socially acceptable these stereotypes are. Just as it’s painful and shameful when some Italian Americans forget this story and mimic their ancestors’ tormentors.

What the future is for the Italian enclave in South Philly, I can’t say. I’m trying to enjoy as much of it that remains as I can, to savor it. The new immigrant communities, vibrant and essential to the neighborhood’s future as they may be, are understandably insular. And it’s unclear how committed the other newcomers are to the neighborhood, the young families, couples, and affluent professionals making their homes here. Will they stay or, as many do, move on when their kids reach school age? Some have had a real positive impact. Participation in school and neighborhood associations is important and has for sure contributed to the area’s betterment. But those types of organizations aren’t deeply organic. They can and do strengthen a community, but I don’t think that they often create the profound sense of belonging that palpably existed here when we arrived, and that persists among long-time residents. Many of the newcomers turn their eyes from and backs to the street. Their lives occur inside their homes, and they don’t actively participate in their block’s daily social exchanges and rhythms. Is this a suburban mode of being? I wouldn’t know. Since we opened our restaurant, we are also guilty of often hiding behind our door, preoccupied and occasionally overwhelmed as we are (we’ve nobody but ourselves to blame for this; no one held a gun to our heads and forced us to open a restaurant). It seems clear to me and to Cathy that the originals provide much of the social glue that makes our part of South Philly an actual neighborhood. Their emotional attachment to the place, their pride, their events still inform the place’s identity. Without them, this is just an amorphous cluster of streets and homes, meaningless real estate designations. They provide much of the framework that whatever’s to come will be built on.

And, again, the community is stronger than some reports might indicate. If you’re ever lucky enough to happen upon a serenade, you’ll see and feel how strong. Before a wedding, the bride’s street is blocked off, and her and the groom’s families, as well as neighbors, gather in front of the rowhome. The groom “serenades” her from the street. There’s music, wine, food, laughter, an epic party. It’s something brought here from the old country. My brother Fred got to participate in one in Abruzzo, in the mountain village of Pacentro. He held the groom’s ladder as he climbed to knock on his bride’s window. Once arrived at the window, the groom, a musician of note but, by his own admission, not much of a singer, had to belt out an appropriate tune while all his friends and half the town looked on. His musician friends then joined in. They’re more to the letter of the law in Abruzzo. In South Philly there’s often a DJ instead. The couple in Pacentro, dear friends of ours who’ve hosted us in their own homes, reluctantly left Abruzzo after their marriage to realize their dreams. They now live happily in our South Philly neighborhood.

Oh, and by the way, Joey made it. He’s okay.

#southphilly italianamerican philly abruzzo abruzzese southernitalian levirtu #nopassportrequired eastpassyunk

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themadamelibrarian · 5 years ago

Text

Infinity

Rating: Teen and up

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Summary: The car ride had been a long one and she had fallen asleep miles before as she watched the trees through the window. There wasn’t the usual music or conversation, just a great wall of foliage blending into one color as she and her husband sped by, so she had let the sound of the engine lull her into a deep sleep.

The car ride had been a long one and she had fallen asleep miles before as she watched the trees through the window. There wasn’t the usual music or conversation, just a great wall of foliage blending into one color as she and her husband sped by, so she had let the sound of the engine lull her into a deep sleep.

When they finally reached the city where they lived it was well past sunset. She never liked the dark and like her neighborhood after dark even less. It wasn’t a ghetto or slum, but the city at night always put her on edge. One too many stories of muggings, rapes or murders. It was those very same stories that made her stop watching the news, but just because you don’t see the danger from day to day doesn’t mean it’s not there. As they were turning onto the block they live on, they heard a siren in the distance behind them. She looked to the back at the same time as her husband and saw several cop cars and a swat bus barreling down the street towards them. Her husband, Alan, moved off to the side of the street with the rest of the traffic and allowed the police vehicles to pass. As each one moved along their side, Alan got a curious look on his face and when the final vehicle was several cars ahead, he turned the car back into the street to follow them.

Melinda grabbed the overhead handle of their ’97 Honda Accord for fear that they were going to hit something or someone at the speed Alan was maneuvering the vehicle around others. He was definitely speeding but the worse part was the swerving in and out of lanes to pass cars just to keep up with the police. Melinda kept asking him what he was doing and if he thought, it was a good idea to chase cops to an obviously violent scene but he never answered. Finally, he started to slow and pulled up on the opposite side of the street from where the cops parked. They watched as the cops piled out of their cars and took up position outside of a ratty old three-story building where the window boarded up or missing entirely. Each officer, including the swat team, had their guns drawn and was taking aim at the building’s second story. Melinda started to count how many officers and got to twenty when she heard the Honda’s door open and close. She turned to see Alan slipping away towards the scene of inevitable violence. Melinda tried to open the window to yell at him but the switch wouldn’t roll the window down even though Alan had left the car running. Before she could reach for the handle, the first shot rang out from the building and the resulting cacophony of response from the police force was deafening. Melinda cowered down in her seat praying to whatever god would listen that she and Alan would survive this.

When the blast of guns stopped, she slowly peeked over the window’s edge to see the result of the gunfight. There were cop cars without windows or with flat tires. There were no longer boards in the windows on the right side of the second story of the building. Injured police were being cared for by their comrades and not 6 feet away from the car was Alan; dead from a bullet wound in the face. Melinda started to scream and beat on the window but no one must have been able to hear her because no one came to help. She removed her seat belt and tried to open her door but the handle wouldn’t move. She had been telling Alan for weeks that the door was broken but when he would open the door, it would never stick. She tried several times, pulling and tugging in various directions and ways, hoping that she would find the special movement to unlatch the door. When she was out of breath from trying, she turned to crawl out the driver’s side. Sitting in the driver’s seat was Alan, covered in blood and gore. A bullet’s entrance wound clearly visible and seeping blood down his face. Melinda backed up against the passenger door in terror as Alan turned and lunged for her.

Melinda woke with a start as Alan put the car in park in front of their apartment building. She looked around frantically trying to get her bearings and realized that she had just been dreaming.

“Home sweet home.” Alan sighed as he got out of the car.

Their building a three-story, grey brick building with old masonry carvings on the eaves and corners. Small and old fashioned were the reasons she and Alan had picked the apartment, well that and it is in the same small city where Alan worked. Melinda always believed in reusing the old and antique until you couldn’t any longer and this was exactly why she loved the apartment, especially if you ignore the people who lived in the building.

Melinda stretched the sleep out of her muscles and tried the door handle. For the first time in months, the door opened with no problem. She looked at the door for a moment before shrugging and moving to the trunk where Alan was removing the overnight bags. He strapped the bags to his shoulder, shut the trunk, and went up the steps to the main doors.

Once inside the main hall, each step that Alan took showed just how tired he was. Melinda wanted to hug up to him but she knew that he was an absolute bear if he was tired and traveling, and she had no interest in fighting with him. They waited for the elevator in silence, listening to each floor bell going off and the whir of the old motor moving the car to their level. The car came to rest and the slightly tarnished copper-plated doors opened with a groan. Stepping inside they pressed their floor and with a jerk of the cables, they were on their way up to the second floor.

Melinda held the elevator door open after it opened on their floor so that Alan could maneuver out of the car. They were halfway down the hall when kicked something with her foot. Just as she was about to look for what it was, apartment 2-D opened up to reveal Mrs. Carlson. Mrs. Carlson was the old widow of the building and the biggest busy body on the block. The only time she didn’t know the comings and goings of tenants was when she was in the hospital with one of her “ailments”. Melinda believed that the hospital kept her overnight to makes sure she wasn’t losing her mind because Mrs. Carlson was a sweet woman but one sprinkle short of a Christmas cookie.

“Oh Alan, how are you tonight?” Mrs. Carlson said in that saccharine high-pitched grandma voice that everyone knew was her actually saying ‘what’s the dish?’. God bless Alan if he didn’t indulge her just a bit. One thing for Alan, he could charm the hell out of old ladies.

“Evening Mrs. Carlson. I’m doing well. But it was a long and tiring trip." Alan said forcing a half smile onto his face.

“Well, you do look worn dear. Oh, by the way, did I tell you about the Ferguson’s on the third floor?” she excitedly asked, never missing a beat when making her segue. All it took was for Alan to say no and she would go on forever about this tenant and that tenant. As she told Alan the story in a conspirator’s whisper, Melinda looked around the floor, trying to locate what she had kicked earlier.

She looked down at her brown shoe and saw something staining the leather. As she looked at the stain, she noticed that the stain started again on the floor in intermittent spots. She followed the path of the stains with her eyes until she was looking down the hall by her and Alan’s apartment. In pairs all the way down the hall were severed human heads sitting neatly side by side, facing in all directions. Melinda tilted her head to the side and furrowing her forehead in confusion. Her stomach turned and pitched, threatening to empty there in front of her but she forced herself to take a deep breath and take a step forward. As she got closer, she noticed a young girl of seven or eight, dressed in a yellow sundress, kneeling beside one of the pairs of heads. The girl was dipping her fingers in the blood and drawing figure eights around them, all the while reciting the last half of the Hail Mary. Each time she said the prayer it was in the same singsong voice that children use in playground verses.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

She would say the prayer three times all the while making a figure eight and then move on to the next pair. Melinda watched and was unable to look away until she heard someone say to the left of her.

“Don’t worry; she’s just having one of her spells.”

Melinda turned to see who had spoken, but there was no one there. She looked back down the hall and the girl and heads were gone. Turning back to Mrs. Carlson and Alan, she found Alan finally breaking away from the dowager and moving towards their door. Melinda never felt as happy as to get in her own apartment. Between the dream in the car and the incident in the hallway, she was ready to get into bed, hold on to Alan, and forget the awful images that filled her brain.

The next morning she opened her eyes to a bright and beautiful day. The images of the previous night although disturbing were nothing but bad dreams. Melinda rolled over to look at the clock and had a moment of panic thinking that it was eight o’clock Monday morning instead of the Sunday that it was. She turned back to Alan’s side of the bead but he was gone. Melinda figured he must have gone for the morning paper at the corner store she pulled back the covers and removed herself from the warmth of her bed to head into the bathroom. When she finished her morning toilet, she retrieved a cup of coffee from the timed coffee pot in the kitchen and came back to the bedroom to unpack the overnight bags at the foot of the bed. She was hanging up one of her dresses that were to be taken to the cleaners when something moved behind her and she caught its movement out of the corner of her eye. She quickly turned so she could see what had caused it but nothing was there. Returning to her task, she looked up into her full-length mirror and saw a girl standing beside the bed. The girl had a small frame and her skin was alabaster white. Dark black hair hung down to her chin with small sections turning out, giving it a slept in look. Melinda turned but there was no one in the room, even though every time she checked the mirror the girl was still there. The girl bent down to the bed, picked up a dress lying there, and smiled when she held it up to her neck as if to see if it would fit. The girl turned her gaze to Melinda and asked in a sweet whispered voice. “Do I look pretty?” Melinda blinked back the tears forming in her eyes, and spoke without thinking.

“You look very pretty.” Melinda gave her a small smile.

The girl smiled again, laid the dress carefully down and walked out of the view of the mirror. Melinda turned to the bed and again found no one in the room. She thought about what had just happened but wasn’t afraid of the girl, just of the circumstances and what it could mean. Two waking dreams in such a short time couldn’t be a good thing. She was afraid that she would have to tell Alan about the things she was seeing and then he would make her go to the doctor. She hated doctors, hospitals, or anything associated with them. The more she thought about that aspect the more anxious she became until she was sitting on the bed letting whatever tears would come, flow out of her along with any other emotion that show itself until she eventually cried herself to sleep

When she awoke, it was just getting dark and she could hear Alan in the next room, moving pots and pans, more than likely making dinner. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she went to check on him and found him walking out the door with a box. She tried to catch going to the elevator but he didn’t hear her call for him and she refused to go in the hall in a nightgown. She went to the bathroom to wash her face, which felt stiff and swollen from crying and change into clothes to find out what Alan was doing.

Turning on the cold-water faucet of the bathroom sink, she leaned over and splashed some onto her face, rubbing vigorously until she felt refreshed. She reached for the towel hanging on the wall beside her and patted her face dry. She came to a decision as she held the terry cloth to her eyes. She had decided to tell Alan what she had been experiencing even if it meant going to a doctor. With a sigh, she put the towel down on the counter and in the process knocked a brush on the floor. When she stooped down to pick up the brush she noticed something with a black handle behind the toilet. Reaching around the fixture, she grasped the handle and pulled out an open straight razor. She turned it over in her hand trying to figure out how it got there because it belonged to Alan’s father who had passed away years before. The box it was usually stored in was on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. She looked up to yell for Alan and saw red water in the bowl of the toilet. Quickly standing she turned to run out of the room and came face to face with the girl from the hallway, who was still wearing the yellow sundress, but this time sitting beside her was a large black dog. The dog bared its teeth and began to bark as if it was going to attack. Melinda backed up as far as she could until the back of her knees hit the edge of the tub and she fell into it. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound would come out, just a gasping-gulping noise as she tried to force her vocal cords to function. The girl raised her bloodied hand and pointed to the toilet. Melinda forced herself to look in the direction and on the toilet seat lid was a figure eight drawn in blood. She looked back at the girl who was advancing with the dog beside her and a straight razor in the same bloodied hand that she had used to point moments before. Raising her arms to defend herself, Melinda noticed her wrists her cut halfway up her forearms and her nightclothes were cover in blood. She opened her mouth to scream but again all she could do was gulp. She continued her silent scream as the girl and dog descended on her and knowing that no one would or could save her.

#My Writing #Horror #Original work #Happy Halloween

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