#yes there are actual recordings of Tennyson’s voice

[infactilovetea]

if you come across my blog pls vote :)

[lecliss]

Do you ever think how Ben is the only one that remembers the original universe before it got destroyed then he remade it and that everyone he knew is dead with replaced by the copies he made in their place?

😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦😦

I have thought a little bit in that area but I didn't actually consider that specifically. Yikes.

Man, like, Ben goes through so much dude. The episode before For A Few Brains More(can't remember the title, too lazy to look) right before Khyber started chasing Ben as Ditto with his Panuncian, Ben was bragging and showing off a ton of confidence while visibly nervous and you could TELL he was trying to reassure himself and hopefully convince Khyber that he WAS that confident he'd make it out, so it's not even a theory that a lot of hero stuff stresses Ben out immensely and he's not as confident in himself as he lets on.

Also he got REAL pissed at Vilgax during Vilgax's re-introduction episode in Omniverse. And it was clear he was pissed about everything Vilgax had put him through previously.

THEREFORE! There is canon evidence to believe that many things, not just these two villains, have given Ben some trauma that he hides and tucks away and tries not to think about.

He doesn't show it in So Long And Thanks For All The Smoothies or Tennyson vs Universe that he feels something negative about recreating the universe, aside from not getting the grape smoothie right. But judging by the evidence above, considering its just a smoothie, he might be trying to diminish his overall concerns about doing that by projecting everything onto the smoothie. He cries in court about the damn smoothie. It's just a grape smoothie, Ben. I know you love smoothies but are you sure you're not dodging your feelings by fixating on the smoothie???

He gets all haughty to Rook and Argit, like, 'be glad I recreated you' or whatever it was specifically that he said. That, like, they should be thanking him for saving them. And, bro? You're gonna brag about that? Considering your track record you're clearly just covering up how freaked out you are that the 'original' ones DIED and you could only receate them instead of save them.

(I say 'original' because the universe has been remade prior to that by other Celestialsapiens as proven in Tennyson vs Universe.)

And like, imagine that from Ben's place. Go home that day, say hi to your parents, check to make sure everything is how it should be, watch them for a second, realize they're acting normal like how they were earlier 'that day', understand that even if they seem the same as before, they still aren't the ones from before, they're entirely new ones.

Spend the next couple days checking to see what else is different aside from Mr. Smoothy's design and the new jacket, stare at Grandpa Max for a minute too long, stare at the road signs in the truck with Rook a little too closely, listen closer to everyone's voices when they speak. It all seems to be in place, yes, but is it really truly? Can it really be the same as before when it's all completely remade from scratch? You can argue that if it's not different, then it's still the same. But the only thing remaining from the previous universe is Ben. Based off that, everything after the recreation is different because Ben is the same.

Does he feel 'other' then? Does he feel like because it's a new universe then he doesn't belong in it since he's from the previous one? Does he lie awake at night thinking about that? He still thinks about the smoothie in Tennyson vs Universe, but once again, it's not about the smoothie is it Ben? It's because the smoothie is a reminder of what you did. What you had to do. Every time you drink it you're reminded everything is indeed, not the same. You recreated the universe. You couldn't save it and you lost everything and you did recreate it yes, but that doesn't erase what you lost. You can never erase that. You will live with that forever. And you will drink the grape smoothie hoping beyond hope that this time it will taste like it used to. But it never will. And you've long forgotten the old taste now. But that doesn't matter. Nothing will ever taste like the old grape flavor, because nothing will bring back the pervious universe. And you will never let that go. Never.

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

A Thousand Beach Boys Songs

PART TWENTY-EIGHT OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: drinking, drugs (just marijuana), smoking, anxiety about future, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 6.8K (idk this just happened)

Summary: Jess and Ella visit California.

The sun was high and bright in the Philadelphia sky, beating down on the concrete of the city, when Ella finally awoke at half past nine to the sound of a siren outside. Early August had brought a heat wave to the East coast, and the hot air always rose to the top floor of Truncheon. They were sleeping only under a thin blanket, and Ella had found she had thrown it off herself at some point in the night. Or perhaps Jess had. He was a light sleeper, often had bad dreams, tossing and turning. But his side of the bed was empty, with a sticky note left on the pillow in his place. She furrowed her brows; it was Saturday, the beginning of her last two weeks before classes and office hours started, and she didn’t know of him having any plans. Stifling a yawn, she picked up the note and squinted at it in the harsh sunlight streaming through the window.

Morning Daria,

Went to get coffee. Be back soon. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

-James Dean

In spite of the roll of her eyes, Ella snickered before rising out of bed. She pulled a mauve cotton dress over her head, tying her hair into a low bun. Padding on bare feet into the living room, she smiled as she noticed Chris was up, pouring himself some cereal at the tiled island. Matthew had stayed over at some woman’s house, though he wouldn’t tell them her name. Ella went to the corner of the living room and put a Joni Mitchell record on. Then, she hopped on a stool across from Chris.

“Where’s your boy toy?” Chris asked through a mouthful of cereal, his hair sticking up in all directions.

She snorted a laugh. “Getting coffee. He left me a note.”

“Adorable,” he deadpanned.

“Mm. Sickening, isn’t he?” Ella asked, mocking fondly.

Chris nodded, then tilted his head over in the direction of the record player. “Really? Joni Mitchell?”

“She’s a genius. Choose your next words carefully,” she warned.

“Isn’t she just a little...too sweet?” he asked.

Ella scoffed. “No one who likes disco as much as you do should be allowed to criticize a Renaissance woman like Joni Mitchell.”

“Disco is the best,” Chris said casually. “And Joni Mitchell is the worst.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Ella groaned, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I had this girlfriend last year who hated Joni Mitchell. It was, like, half the reason we broke up.”

Chris’s eyebrows shot up in an expression of surprise as a smile broke out on his face. “Girlfriend?”

She nodded. “You’re looking at your resident bisexual.”

“Yes! You’ve got to come to Pride with us in September! Jess and Matthew came last year, and they’re great, but, they’re also both so very straight,” he said, laughing slightly.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Ella allowed her own grin to appear. She’d never been to a pride parade before, though she had always wanted to. Eventually, Lane, Zach, and Bryan had figured out she was dating a woman for a couple months during her third year of college. And they’d taken it surprisingly well. Lane wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but Ella wasn’t shocked, given the strict Christian Kim upbringing. They didn’t kick her out, didn’t speak to her hatefully, only shrugged (with a few lingering, confused looks from Lane) and went about their day. And so they had been added to the list of four people in the whole world who knew about her sexuality, though she’d never actually told them her label. Jess was the only one who knew the details of who she was.

But Philly was different, she had to remind herself. Chris was openly gay, held hands with his boyfriend in public, even kissed him occasionally. There were some looks, but no remarks. No one made jokes at their expense. It was refreshing and liberating and, at times, almost made her feel like crying. And though she was dating a man, she was still just as bisexual. There was a part of her Stars Hollow would simply never have been able to swallow. Especially since Jess had been her boyfriend for so long, she knew some people in town wouldn’t have even believed it. They would have told her it was a phase, it would pass, or she would eventually be a lesbian. The only people in town she thought might be able to understand were Miss Patty or Lorelai, though she had never gotten the courage to tell them.

“Yeah, I’d love that,” she replied, trying to ignore the sting in her eyes. She blinked back the wetness, tucking her hair behind her ears.

Over the speakers, Joni Mitchell crooned a long, lilting high note, making Ella giggle as Chris uttered a grunt of dissatisfaction.

“She really broke you two up?” Chris asked, beginning to sip the sweetened, sugary milk from his bowl.

Ella shrugged. “Partially. Her name was Angie and she was this badass singer. But we just didn’t click. Music tastes were only a small part of the equation. She was a little too jealous and I was a little too hung up.”

“Hung up?”

“On Jess,” she said shortly, thinking back to the last morning she’d spent in Angie’s apartment. When Angie had accused Ella of having lingering eyes for the men at her concert the night before. And Ella hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way Jess had never cared she liked both men and women. Had never bought into the stereotype of bisexual promiscuity.

Putting his bowl in the sink, Chris shot her a smirk. “And he’s the sickening one?”

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But, hey, not like Jess has great taste, either. He loves Hemingway and hates poetry.”

“I know,” Chris said, commiseratory, as he leaned against the counter back across from her. “When he bad mouths Tennyson? It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to homicidal.”

“I don’t know. Tennyson’s nothing compared to Byron,” Ella argued, shrugging slightly.

Chris gasped. “Not you too! And here I thought we were beginning a beautiful friendship!”

Just then, Jess returned with a bag of coffee in one hand and his keys in the other. He always locked the door out of instinct, even when someone else was home. It was a habit Ella had noticed, but didn’t know the origin of.

“Your girlfriend’s a traitor,” Chris said, feigning shock.

“Old news.” Jess went behind Chris to the coffee machine, his eyes tired without a dose of caffeine. Though he was nowhere near Gilmore level, Ella had noticed how dependent on coffee he had become since his teenage years.

Chris shot Ella a final, joking glare, which she returned, before retreating back into his and Matthew’s room to get dressed.

When the coffee was started, Jess put some tea on for her without having to ask. “I can’t believe you’re awake. Thought you’d still be out when I got back.”

“Not everyone likes to get up at sunrise, jackass,” she retorted with a smile.

“I’m not judging you, Morticia. I know how the sunlight drains your vitality,” he said, smirking.

“My God, you’re still so hilarious.”

“It’s been said.”

As Jess finished what he was doing, he walked toward her, elbows on the counter. He leaned over and pressed a long, sweet kiss to her lips.

“Hi,” he said softly.

“Hey,” she replied, a dreamy, sleepy glaze in her hazel eyes.

Waiting for the coffee and tea to brew, he took one of her hands in his own across the island. For a moment, they were both seventeen and holding hands as she took her break at the diner. Luke often chided Jess for getting distracted by her while he was supposed to be working, their fingers tangled together over the counter while they had murmured conversations, customers around them long forgotten.

“Thanks for the note, by the way,” she said. “Very 2003 of you.”

“Well, I didn’t wanna wake you up and I figured you might miss me too much if I didn’t leave one,” Jess said, shrugging.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Mariano,” she teased, rolling her eyes at his smug expression.

“I would never,” he replied. Then, she saw his face grow more earnest. “So, I got a call from Jimmy while I was out.”

“Really?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

He nodded. “Yeah, I started talking with him again about six months ago. Not like we’re close or anything. But he called to tell me he was marrying his girlfriend, and then he started checking in every month or so.”

“And you’re okay with that?” she asked. Images of a crestfallen Jess, shivering in the backseat of his car, flashed in her mind.

Again, he shrugged. “He apologized for kicking me out. Which is more than my mom ever did. I mean...he’s still a deadbeat. I’m not ever gonna call him ‘daddy.’ But he lives in Venice.”

“Yeah. And?” she asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

“And he said we could come visit any time we want. You’ve still got two weeks before you go back to school, we just finished this month’s Zine yesterday, and Chris and Matthew can manage without me for a few days. What do you think?” he asked, a familiar hesitation lacing his voice.

She took a moment to consider it, her eyes calculating. The look on her face almost made Jess want to smirk out of pure nostalgia; he could practically see the gears turning in her head. “California?”

“Yes. The subject of a thousand Beach Boys songs.”

“Thought you said I’d hate it there?”

“Well, when we get there you can decide for yourself.”

She snickered half-heartedly. “But does he mean you can visit? Or we can visit? I mean...I don’t want to go if he doesn’t expect me.”

“He knows about you. And I can guarantee his wife will like you a hell of a lot more than she likes me.” Averting his gaze sheepishly, Jess ran a thumb over the back of her hand.

Again, she took a long pause before she spoke, tugging at her earring with a free hand. “Well, we obviously can’t afford to fly. And your car is out. So, we’d take my station wagon?”

“My car is not that bad,” Jess scoffed. “It’s driven me across the country a couple times.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” she said, “that car is death on wheels. When would we leave?”

“I don’t know. After breakfast,” he suggested, nonchalant.

A surprised, breathy chuckle escaped her lips.

Smirking small and hopefully, Jess continued. “We’d be there by Tuesday. There’s bound to be a few cheap motels we can stop at on the way.”

No matter how well Ella knew Jess, there would always be a part of him capable of catching her completely off guard. The part of him which was wild and impulsive, while she often trapped herself in monotony. But, as she searched her mind for reasons not to go, she came up empty. Once she started school, there wouldn’t be any time. And though she was still feeling a little overwhelmed, away from Stars Hollow for the first time ever, she grasped on to the jewel of excitement shining within her. She had never really been anywhere. And it was finally time to go somewhere. She smiled widely.

“Okay, Mariano,” she said. “I’ll finally get to see what Joni Mitchell’s been singing about.”

.   .   .

The sky was a pale gray, blurred with a drizzly morning rain. By afternoon, they would be on the West Coast, after having driven for two days. Their backs were slightly sore from the lumpy motel mattresses and their stomachs uneasy from greasy diner food along the way. But Ella smiled softly as they sat in sleepy silence, a Led Zeppelin CD Lane had given her before she left playing on the station wagon’s speakers. Her fingers tapped silently on the steering wheel with the beat, the cracked pavement highway before them free of almost all cars. Only about six more hours to go. She didn’t know what to expect, and the nerves were brewing within her. Jess had told her some about his father and his family, but not enough to make her calm down. Enough to make her calm down probably didn’t exist.

She let her thoughts wander, the anxiety in the back of her mind quieted momentarily. The fingers of her right hand were laced with Jess’s, her free left hand steering.

“Y’know, I can see why you and Matthew are friends,” she thought aloud, breaking the comfortable silence.

“How do you mean?”

Ella shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. You’re both into Bukowski and obscure quotes on t-shirts. You’re both shy. Though Matthew doesn’t have the whole broody writer thing going on like you.”

“I’m not shy,” Jess said defensively, brows furrowed.

She scoffed, tossing a doubtful glance his way. “Of course you are, Jess. You’re blushing right now.”

Sighing in frustration, Jess waved a dismissive hand. He could feel the heat of his face increasing. “That’s because you’re you. Not just anybody can make me blush.”

“Well, you also barely talk to anyone else besides me,” she continued.

“Maybe there’s just no one else worth talking to.” A crease of annoyance formed between his brows, almost a pouty look on his face.

“Whatever, tough guy.”

Jess breathed out through his nose, unable to get the flush to leave his face.

“Hey, being shy is not a bad thing, Mariano,” she said emphatically. “It’s just the way you are. It’s cute.”

Jess ran a hand over his mouth. “I am not cute.”

“Sure you aren’t,” she replied, her voice a sigh as she feigned innocence.

“At least I’m not a Stevie Nicks groupie,” he said dejectedly.

Ella only laughed again as they made their way West.

.   .   .

As soon as they reached the shore, Ella took Jess’s hand and squeezed tightly. He smirked over at her, squinting in the harsh August sunshine. The sky was free from all clouds, deep blue against the lighter shade of the water. People dotted the sand, but they had a pretty substantial amount of space as they laid out their towels and Ella dropped her purse down. Saltwater stung her nose, and she shaded her eyes with the flat of her hand as she looked around. It was low tide, and she could see fishing poles stuck in the sand far  away in both directions, until the figures shrunk down to the size of ants and disappeared behind the horizon. Before she could succumb to her nerves, she stripped her flowy black dress off, left in nothing but the dark green bikini she’d bought for a trip to the lake with Lane a summer earlier. Raking her hands through her hair, wild in the sea wind, she wished she had paints with her. She’d brought her sketchbook and her charcoals of course, but an easel and a set of oils would be just too much to lug around. And, too expensive.

Jess could see how anxious she was, as she tugged absently at her earlobe. Standing across from her in only his black swim trunks, he took her hand again. “Hey, earth to Eleanor. You wanna go in?”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Ella shot him an indecisive look. “Or I could sit here and draw. Or we could read. Or do literally anything else but get swallowed up by the Pacific.”

He scoffed. “So dramatic. I’ll be right there. It’s low tide. C’mon. World bites you, you bite back.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you’re interpreting that phrase correctly.”

“And I don’t think you’re as good at stalling as you think you are,” he shot back smugly, smirking. “C’mon.”

Though she let him lead her to the water, she still muttered begrudging hesitations. Her skin was crawling with anticipation, not only because she was about to feel the ocean for the first time in so long. They had yet to arrive at Jess’s father’s place. Both he and his wife were at work, his step-daughter at school. It made more sense for them to visit the beach first, then be at the house by dinner time. It wasn’t as though she was worried about them not liking her, or about being intimidated by them. The feeling was hard to pinpoint. Maybe it was because she was stepping into a part of Jess’s world she had never bore witness to. Almost the way it felt to go visit him in New York as a teenager. Then, however, there hadn’t been two days of driving to precede it, allowing time for her to stress.

The water was cool as they walked in, making goosebumps rise on her freckled skin. Small shards of shells crunched beneath their feet uncomfortably until they were in up to their knees. She could feel the current against her legs. Waves crashed into whitish foam and bubbles around them, spraying droplets of water on their faces. Her hand tightened on Jess’s the further out they walked. Soon, they were up to their waists in water, the ocean crashing. Jess could see the fear shining in Ella’s hazel eyes as the tide beat against them, though the waves were nowhere near jarring or difficult to stand through.

“Hey, Daria,” he said, disentangling their fingers and bringing a secure arm around her waist instead. “Relax. Once we get out past where the waves are crashing, it’ll be easy.”

“Remind me again why I agreed to this?”

She scanned the water ahead of them frantically, the point past which the waves were only forming and not crashing looking both near and impossibly far. Her muscles were rigid and she squeezed her eyes shut as they turned their backs against a particularly strong wave. Water rushed over her, wetting the ends of her hair. Jess’s solid form felt almost like a life raft as they turned again and finally made it to the calmer part of the water.

“Because this is an exercise in adventure and spontaneity,” Jess answered finally, voice raised slightly over the noise as he repeated the words she’d spoken in the car yesterday verbatim. If they were going to California, it would be a crime to waste the chance to swim in the Pacific, she’d said. Above them, seagulls squawked in the cloudless sky.

Ella had to admit, as scary as it was, dipping into the water felt an utterly refreshing break from the summer heat. Still, her hands shook with anxiety. “I’m plenty fucking adventurous.”

He chuckled. “And now this can be a reason why.”

She rolled her eyes, then glanced back to the shore, where their small pile of towels and other belongings looked small and insignificant. Sighing through her nose, she faced Jess again. “Doesn’t it seem like we’re really far out?”

“We’re not,” he said, shaking his head and gesturing to the other swimmers much closer to the flat horizon than they were. “It’s low tide, so it just seems far away, okay? Don’t worry.”

She raised a doubtful eyebrow.

They waded in the pristine blue water, deep enough for Ella to be unable to touch the seafloor. Jess could still stand if he tried, but it was a stretch. Instead, they floated over the constant waves, mounds of water which carried them up and deposited them back down over and over. At a particularly high peak, Ella, acting on instinct, wrapped her arms around Jess’s shoulders and hugged him tightly.

A grin formed on his face as his arms wound around her, his heart practically jelly in his chest. He could count on one hand the amount of times Ella had allowed him to see her so vulnerable. It made him feel wanted, needed, in a way so foreign to him he had to bite his bottom lip to keep an astonished laugh from escaping him. When they were down near the bottom again, he ran a comforting hand up and down over her back, under the water.

“Relax,” he repeated, more softly this time, close to her ear. “I’m right here.”

Sighing heavily, Ella nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’m relaxing.”

“I can see that.”

A petulant scowl crossed her face, but she released him from her strong grip. Their hands were still linked, but she began to gain her own bearings as the waves continued, slow and steady. Eventually, she was brave enough to submerge herself in the water, wetting her flushed face and frizzy hair. Jess’s own locks fell over his forehead boyishly, dripping on his cheeks. Ella smirked as she pushed it back and away from his face.

“Look at you,” Jess said proudly as she finally let go of his hands, gliding over a wave on her own. “You’re halfway to Blue Crush.”

She snorted a laugh at his odd reference. “I was actually thinking more like Splash. Always choose the mermaid over the surfer.”

“My mistake,” he said lightly. “Does that make me Tom Hanks?”

“In theory, but, in practice, you’re always James Dean.”

.   .   .

Beachy decorations adorned nearly every inch of the walls in Jimmy’s house. The kitschiness charmed Ella immediately, as did Jimmy’s wife, Sasha. She had bleached blonde hair, cropped close to the head, and deep blue eyes radiating generosity. Upon arriving, she gave Ella a big hug, enveloping her in the scent of cinnamon. And Ella had to keep from raising her eyebrows in surprise when she saw Jimmy. He looked almost exactly like Jess, though the hair and the eyes were lighter, and he was slightly taller. It made far more sense to her why Jess looked nearly nothing like his mother. Lastly, Ella came to meet Lily when Jess opened the living room cupboard to reveal her sitting with her knees to her chest, reading. Ella could tell by the way no one else batted an eye that the habit of cabinet reading was not a one-time thing. The girl, around twelve, short and bespectacled with straight, mousy brown hair, reminded Ella almost of Rory. Though Lily radiated a peculiarity which Rory never had. It was welcome. Ella appreciated Lily’s confidence in her odd behavior, much the way she encouraged April’s long, winded rants about science or math. Weird girls were everywhere, just as Ella thought they should be.

Heated and tired, Ella and Jess sat on one side of the ramshackle dining table, hands clasped underneath the surface, as they watched Sasha clear the dinner plates away and go to get the ice cream for dessert. Both Jess and Ella offered to do the dishes themselves, but Sasha would hear none of it. Instead, they sat with the other two of the house’s residents, in near-silence. The air was suddenly tense, Jimmy and Jess sharing a few charged looks between them. Without Sasha’s hospitable aura, there was nothing to keep them from facing each other for real. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Jess had been kicked out, and in-person was always so different from the phone.

“Lil, did you finish that science poster you had due tomorrow?” Jimmy asked, Sasha having gotten up from the table at the tail end of a conversation about Lily’s interests in school.

Her nose was already buried back in her thick fantasy novel. She had picked it up from the ground next to her as soon as her mother left the room. Nodding, she gave a small grunt of confirmation, but didn’t look up.

Jess’s grip tightened slightly on Ella’s hand, and she could see his shoulders grow taut. He held onto her just as she had him as they drifted along the waves earlier in the day.

Clearing her throat, Ella ran her free hand through her hair and put on the most convincing smile she could muster. “So, Jess told me you’ve got a pretty cool record collection?”

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been working on it for about twenty years.”

“Cool. I only have a couple dozen, but one day maybe I’ll have a whole shelf,” she said, grasping at straws to keep the conversation going.

Jess said nothing; small talk had never been his forté. Especially with the man who had come into his life again eighteen years after abandoning him. But he was trying his best to keep his bitterness at bay, just as he had when he had lived there before.

Chuckling under his breath, Jimmy leaned back in his chair. “That’s a nice thought, but it’ll cost a fortune if any of those records are worth a damn.”

“Yeah. Hopefully someday I’ll get there.”

“You sound just like me at your age. But I ended up with two hundred records and eighteen cents in my bank account. Math was never one of my strengths,” he replied, taking a sip of the white wine from the glass in front of him.

Jess scoffed. “Eleanor has a college degree and no kids to flake on. I think she’ll be just fine.”

Narrowing his eyes just a touch at his son, Jimmy maintained an air of easy-going composure. He had his shirt untucked and one leg crossed over the other lazily. Though she tried to stop it, the word ‘slacker’ definitely came to Ella’s mind when she saw him, partially due to Jess’s influence, she knew.

“And what about you? How’s Truncheon?” Jimmy asked.

Jess shrugged.

“The Zine for this month should be coming out tomorrow. It looks great. There’s a lot of abstract stuff,” Ella chimed in, lamely, when she saw Jess wasn’t going to respond further.

“Here’s hoping it’ll stay afloat,” Jimmy said.

There was nothing malicious about his tone, nothing manipulative. She could see almost nothing of her own father in him. But Jimmy was a different breed of faulty fatherhood. No hope. Very little encouragement. Sasha took the reins with most of the dinner conversation. And Jimmy mostly added stories of his days spent homeless or in crappy housing out in Hollywood when he’d been scheming to become a musician. He spoke about the pointlessness of his dream. Of dreams in general. Ella thought his life seemed perfectly fine, even if managing some stand on the boardwalk wasn’t what he’d envisioned. But he was almost making himself more washed-up. And he saw Jess the way everyone in Stars Hollow had. In fact, he seemed to see Jess as himself. Maybe Jess being successful in his dreams was what drove the stand-offishness. Even with the compulsory invitation to visit and the monthly phone calls. Given the interactions she had witnessed, Ella wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been Sasha who forced Jimmy to play parent to his son after so long.

“Here’s hoping,” Jess echoed, voice flat and face expressionless.

Mercifully, Sasha then twirled back into the room with bowls of vanilla ice cream and questions for Ella about grad school. Jess retreated back into brooding silence while Ella rubbed circles on the back of his hand with her thumb.

.   .   .

Taking a sharp intake of breath, Jess jerked awake. The air mattress on which they slept shifted and squeaked at his sudden movement. Ella, who Jess’s arm had been draped over, was jostled as well. He sighed quietly, reminding himself of where he was. Waiting a moment to change position, Jess thought Ella was still asleep. But, after a few more seconds, she stirred and her hazel eyes opened a crack. The open window in the spare room let in warm nighttime air, and the hum of cicadas was the only other sound in the house besides their breathing.

“Go back to sleep,” Jess whispered hastily.

Instead, she lifted her head to look at him. His eyes shone in the moonlight and she could feel his slightly winded breathing. Sympathy washing over her face, she sat up despite his murmured protests. She ran a hand through his disheveled hair affectionately, then moved the back of her hand to his cheek. His face was reddish even in the low glow of the room, and his skin was warm.

“You got a little sunburnt,” she said quietly, her voice groggy. Her touch was soft and gentle.

The small gesture of concern was enough to make Jess have to avert his gaze. His chest was tight with panic from a dream he didn’t even remember, and he didn’t trust his voice enough to speak again. Swallowing thickly, he stared out the window at the stars peeking through the wispy clouds, pale against the dark sky.

Breathing a long breath through her nose and clearing her throat, she began stroking his hair again. “Did you have one of those dreams?”

He only nodded. While Ella slept heavily, could fall asleep anywhere, Jess almost never made it through a night without waking up at least once. Sometimes for no reason at all, but many times due to nightmares. Often he dreamed in hazy flashes which jolted him back to consciousness with feelings of dread and anxiety. As a teen, the only solution had been blasting loud music to get to sleep, a remedy he still wasn’t sure the cause of. With Ella at his side, though, he needed his headphones less and less. Not every time, but sometimes, she would wake up upon feeling his movements. Would stay up talking until he was finally lulled back to at least a doze. He would never wake her if she didn’t on her own, and always told her not to worry, to get back to bed, but she never did. Not until he did too.

And it wasn’t as though she was surprised, or not used to it. The first time she’d found him breathless in the middle of the night, eyes embarrassed and full of fear, had been in high school. Only around the second or third time he’d slept over with her. The rest of the night was spent playing cards and discussing books. His cheeks had burned with shame the entire time, despite her constant reassurance. She didn’t mind at all. She still didn’t.

Ella followed his eyes out the window, where there was a view of the beach. The moon reflected against the water, and the shore was empty. “Hey. You wanna go for a walk?”

He furrowed his brows in silent questioning.

“There’s no one out there. And out there we won’t have the Children of the Corn staring at us,” she said, gesturing to the strange artwork hanging on the wall above the desk. There were four drawings, each of a Victorian child with large, gaping eyes and a lifeless face.

Jess snickered half-heartedly, considering it for a moment. Then, he nodded again. Ella let a small smile across her face, standing up and throwing her simple black dress on again, with the flannel Jess had been wearing earlier over it. Though he felt shaky, Jess rose and tugged on his jeans and a t-shirt. Barefoot on the creaky wood floor, Ella took Jess’s hand and led him outside. He flinched away from the many dogs sleeping in the front yard. She pulled him through the garden and past the front gate quickly.

The walk down to the sand was short and silent. Most of the time, after a nightmare, Jess didn’t want to talk. Ella hardly knew what he dreamed about. Instead, she would talk to him about her day, tell stories, list her favorite things, until his heart calmed and his eyes began to get heavy again. But, as they walked down to the beach, they both just took a moment to breathe in the surroundings. The houses painted ostentatious colors and the cheesy stands on the boardwalk. Palm trees rustled in the nighttime breeze, stronger as they got close to the ocean. Soon, the soft, cold sand was beneath their feet. Wordlessly, Jess took a seat on the beach a few feet up from the waves. Ella plopped down next to him, criss-cross applesauce with her hands resting behind her for support. She closed her eyes and listened to the ocean. The whoosh of the water and the air. The smell of the sea and the slight chill of the wind. She didn’t love going in, but she certainly could understand the Pacific’s unique beauty.

Taking in a deep breath, Jess stared down at his legs and tried to fight off the mixture of emotions churning in his stomach. He still felt ashamed every time he woke Ella up, though it was always accidental. And he couldn’t shake the sick uneasiness coursing through him. Whatever the dream had been, he was glad he couldn’t remember any specifics.

“You okay?” she asked, opening her eyes again and facing him. Her long hair fell over her shoulder, unkempt.

Looking out at the ocean, Jess smirked sharply. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” she replied, nodding in understanding.

The tenderness in her voice struck him, but he swallowed down the feeling. Another long silence passed between them, comfortable, before a thought occurred to Jess. His smirk was more genuine when he turned to her and undid the button on one of the breast pockets of the flannel she had thrown on. She tilted her head to him in askance, but her eyes lit up with realization as he pulled a small plastic bag and a lighter from the pocket. The shirt was baggy on her frame, and she hadn’t felt the weight of them with Jess in the forefront of her mind.

“Where did that come from?” she asked, chuckling through her words.

Jess shrugged, the lighter in one hand as he opened the bag, which held a small stash of marijuana and a pack of rolling papers. “I forgot this here when I went back to New York. And either I’m great at stashing things or daddy dearest is clueless, because it was still in the closet where I left it. I found it earlier when you were in the shower.”

Her eyebrows shot up, impressed. “It’s probably a little of both.”

“True,” he said, rolling a joint with deft fingers. “I’m the son of Liz Danes. And no one can hide drugs like that woman.”

Biting at her cheek, Ella took a long look at him. His profile was clear in the moonlight, strong and handsome. Stubble shadowed his cheeks and his hair, messy from sleep, fell into his eyes. There were moments, few and far between, when Jess let the pieces of his childhood slip out. Since meeting him, Ella had slowly begun to put the puzzle together. He almost never told her an outright story, or made a big deal of things which he should have. The drinking, the drugs, the boyfriends, the violence, the instability, financial and otherwise. His past wasn’t who he was, but it, in a way, made things click for her. Everyone had a story. Jess didn’t often share his, but it still affected him every day. Less and less now that he had a life of his own, but, on the rarest of occasions, Ella could see ghosts of the scared, lonely boy Jess had once been. A boy whose only defense had been sarcasm and only escape had been books. Her heart twisted in her chest as she watched him, but she said nothing. She only ran a hand up and down his back, and placed a kiss on his shoulder as he worked. He smiled a tiny smile, keeping his eyes on his hands.

Soon, he had lit the joint and passed it to her. The tip glowed orange in the moonlight as she inhaled deeply, the familiar smell filling up her chest. She exhaled the smoke in a long stream, handing it back to hin. Neither she nor Jess were big on pot, not even in high school. The last time she’d smoked pot was the first time Lane had. Hep Alien’s guitarist, Gil, owned a sandwich shop, and one of the shop guys grew pot in his basement. His stuff was pretty good, though Lane had gotten incredibly paranoid and sworn it off for good after the first few hits.

“So, was California Jess a stoner, surfer type?” Ella asked, words snaking out from between her lips in clouds of smoke. Her mind was already beginning to buzz and smudge around the edges. A warm, pleasant tingling enveloped her legs.

Jess chuckled. “No. He was a leather-clad loser who didn’t graduate high school and owned nothing but a duffel bag full of books.”

Her expression fell, growing somber. “You weren’t a loser, Jess. You’re not a loser.”

Scoffing, he passed the joint to her again. “Right...I just…”

Pausing, he sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Ella could see him struggling for his words, in a mood she couldn’t quite decipher. Part of it was the high, but part of it was something else completely.

“Even Luke kicked me out. And you were going to college. I didn’t want to...I couldn’t stick around and keep you from anything,” he explained, head growing light with the influence of the drugs. “My mom didn’t want me, my uncle didn’t want me. No one wanted me there.”

Ella furrowed her brows and shook her head sadly, handing the joint his way again. “I wanted you.”

Breathing out shakily, he felt the joint begin to burn his fingers and stubbed it out against the cool sand. He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his elbows on them, hands clasped in front of him. Hiding his face with a bowed head, Jess tried to fight the tears which formed in his eyes. Coming back had brought memories he didn’t remember forgetting. Long nights filled with regret, unhappy days dealing with customers at the bookstore, uncomfortable family dinners where he could never really find his place despite how hard Sasha tried. The feeling of not belonging was so similar to the one he’d had in Stars Hollow. But, in Stars Hollow, New York was just a bus ride away, and Ella was just a walk down the road. Isolation took on a new meaning during his six months in California.

Ella was surprised to hear him sniffle and see his form begin to tremble. She whispered his name, but got no response. After a moment of hesitation, she brought her arm around him, her head next his own as it rested on his shoulder. Shivering with his small sobs, Jess looked up again and let silent tears fall down his cheeks, though his skin flamed with shame.

“And imagine my surprise when I got here and my dad was just as big a loser as me,” he said, breathing short, frustrated breaths. “But, he managed to get a new family anyway.”

Sighing heavily, Ella pressed another kiss to his shoulder. “Jess, you’re not like him-”

“Oh, I’m not?” he asked doubtfully.

“Absolutely not,” she said, a new firmness to her tone. “You wrote a book. You own a business. You were employee of the month at Walmart!”

He shook his head.

“No, Mariano, I’m serious,” Ella continued, insistent. “You think Jimmy would ever be able to get employee of the month anywhere? Just because you didn’t love school doesn’t mean you’re not a hard worker. Jess, you’re the most passionate person I know.”

“Very funny, Stevens.”

“Believe me or not, it’s true. It’s just a fact. Your dad is a fucking idiot. But you’re not him. You are intense and shy and funny and kind and so fucking smart, alright? You’re only 21 and you’ve already done more than he ever has. And I know it fucking sucks that he didn’t grow up in time for you, but that wasn’t because of you. In spite of all that, you still manage to be you,” she said, her voice soft but ardent. The words spilled out of her mouth in a fervent rush, her mind loose and clear and high. “He really fucking missed out. Because he doesn’t know you.”

Jess could feel her voice rumble in her chest against his arm as she leaned on him, holding him. And he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He didn’t know what to say. The emotions bubbling up from beneath the surface muted his words. He stared out at the waves again, and a reluctant smirk formed on his face after a moment, though his cheeks were still damp.

“Haven’t heard you go all motivational speaker in a while,” he said, voice watery but smug.

She let giggle escape her lips and straightened up slightly. Wiping away his tears with her thumb and kissing the top of his hair, she drew his head to her shoulder. “Yeah, well, desperate times.”

“Thank you, Eleanor,” he murmured, noticing how the sky had begun to lighten to a soft bluish gray.

“Don’t mention it,” she replied.

And they sat on the sand, sheltered in their embrace against the wind, into the early hours of the morning as the sun rose over the ocean.

[cultheir]

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑬𝑻  /  VINCENT TENNYSON

repost, don’t reblog !

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME. vincent james tennyson NICKNAME. vinnie, vin, tennyson GENDER. cis-male. HEIGHT. 6′0″ AGE. 27 in main verse, generally 16-18 in teen/fandom verses ZODIAC. libra SPOKEN LANGUAGES. english, some french

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR.  dark brown EYE COLOR. green SKIN TONE. fair BODY TYPE. athletic VOICE. i’m bad at describing voices, so just watch this clip of taron with an american accent and that’s vinnie DOMINANT HAND.  right POSTURE. has good posture, tends to stand straight with a slightly puffed out chest. raised to be as elegant as he could be, which meant conveying a certain look of elegance and wealth within the way he stands SCARS. stitch scar on right shoulder slightly below the collarbone after being stabbed by the night watch TATTOOS. none BIRTHMARKS. none MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). height is noticeable, as is the fact that he’s dressed the exact way you’d expect a wealthy guy to dress. he’s in suits almost 24/7, when he isn’t in a suit he’s still in dress pants and a designer polo shirt.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH. barren falls HOMETOWN. barren falls SIBLINGS. older brother named thomas who died when vinnie was seven, his parents convinced him (and to an extent themselves) that he was an only child after this, and vinnie wouldn’t remember the truth until his stint in the house of mazes a little while before his main verse takes place PARENT(S). michael and patricia tennyson

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION.  host on the podcast ‘investigations in the strange and unusual’ CURRENT RESIDENCE. verse dependent, primarily barren falls CLOSE FRIENDS. mallory evers, billie v, jude masterson RELATIONSHIP STATUS. verse dependent, generally single unless discussed otherwise FINANCIAL STATUS.  upper class DRIVER’S LICENSE. yes CRIMINAL RECORD. clean, has nearly been arrested for drugs and assault many times but always pays his way out of being in trouble VICES. many one night stands, uses sex as a form of validation, cannibalism within the cult, drug use

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. bisexual PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch LIBIDO. high LOVE LANGUAGE. physical touch, words of affirmation RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. has more flings than relationships, has slept with plenty of people over the years but hasn’t had an actual relationship since high school, constantly risking everything for someone if he does have feelings for them, doesn’t say he loves someone unless he’s really sure and he really trusts them

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. 7 rings by ariana grande HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. shopping, travelling, drinking, occasional drug use LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED. has been raised to show more of a left brain approach, occasionally has some right brain tendencies FEARS. falling in love, dying, his parents, the cult, the urban legends around barren falls, the concept of ghosts being real SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. he’s highly confident in himself and his beliefs, while he has insecurities he doesn’t tend to show it unless he’s really opening himself up to someone. his wealth gives him a lot of confidence because whenever people find out that he’s rich they tend to suddenly think he’s a really cool guy VULNERABILITIES. the cult and his parents and all that goes on around them lowers his confidence in himself and genuinely scares him. he’s afraid of falling in love and can often come off cold when trying to avoid feelings he has, if he can’t pay his way out of a situation he doesn’t really know what to do and doesn’t know how to talk or act his way out of a bad situation - simply throws money at things and hopes it goes away

Tagged by: @bansheeintuition​ Tagging: @tragicher​, @spiritboxd​, @diffrentnow​, @friendsfought​, and anyone else that wants to do it!

[aftermathdb]

DEATH BATTLE Review: Ben 10 vs Green Lantern

Two guardians of the universe, clad in green. Though, one will be going home in blood-red stained clothes.

So, apparently  the reason it’s not Ben 10 vs. Beast Boy is because Ben  just outclasses Beast Boy with his variety of aliens.

Ben 10′s Preview.

Benjamin Kirby Tennyson started out as just your average ten-year old kid. But on a strange day for his summer vacation, an alien device did what it did, and stuck itself on his wrist with secrets that it hid. Now he’s got super powers, he’s no ordinary kid, he’s Ben 10!

Look, the theme song is catchy. It would be a crime not to reference it in some way.

Anyways, the alien device was the Omnitrix, a portable library that houses all sorts of alien DNA. It allows Ben to “Check out” an alien to transform into and use their superpowers.

From aliens that can control water, ice, electricity, and fire, Ben’s got it all. And if he finds an alien that isn’t in the library, the Omnitrix will scan and replicate the DNA, allowing Ben to have another alien to use.

(Ignore that timebar at the bottom. I thought I had cropped it out).

Though, the Omnitrix has numerous defenses to fight back against anyone who wants to take it from Ben’s wrist.

With all those superpowers, Ben also has aliens for smarts as well. Including Brainstorm, an alien who has an I.Q of one nonillion. That’s a one, followed by…

THAT many zeros. And still not enough to beat out EXE’s record of highest number ever recorded.

But if Ben wants to just suck, he can turn into Walkatrout… Who is a fish… with legs.

It’s easily his worst alien. And that’s saying a lot, considering he has an alien literally named “The Worst.”

Though, if Ben wants some refinement, he can turn into Molestache. Boomstick’s favorite alien, who does fisticuffs with his moustache.

The Omnitirx is easily one of the most powerful tools ever created. And apparently… Boomstick has one?

But if there’s ever a weakness of the Omnitrix, it would probably be the cooldown timer.

… Which is thankfully negated with Master Control, giving Ben unlimited access to everything.

But, there is one alien that blows the rest of them out of the water. Alien X.

Alien X is a Celestialsapien, a being that exists beyond the universe, and has control over all of reality. It even once survived the universe being destroyed by the Ahnialarg, and then recreated it. Hell! Alien X didn’t just survive the Universe being destroyed, he basically didn’t even notice!

HA! now we beat EXE’s record! Alien X managed to survive an event worth 4x10^69 Joules of energy!

Ben even managed to get past the “Needs to come to a unanimous decision“ thing later on, making Alien X the most powerful being in his universe.

And as Alien X, Ben has managed to fly fast enough to create a black hole.

If there was ever any real weakness that Ben himself has, it would be his immaturity. Sure, he’s pretty great at ingenuity and thinking on his feet, but for a long time, Ben was pretty immature, and has a bit of an ego.

But when lives are on the line, you can set your clocks. Because there would be only one time it could be.

HERO TIME!

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)′s Preview.

Hal Jordan was just your average devilishly handsome Military Test Pilot. Until the day that destiny fell from the sky (sound familiar?).

Upon investigating an alien crash landing, HAl Jordan found Abin Sur, an alien being who had a powerful device known as a Green Lantern Ring. This device belonged to a group of protectors known as the Green Lantern Corps.

The Lanterns are essentially like space cops, and the universe is divided into sectors. Hal’s sector is designated Sector 2814, and he was given the prestigious job of Green Lantern.

The GL Power Ring is the ultimate weapon against those who worship evil’s might. It has a variety of tools to help with a fight.

Think of the Power Ring as the ultimate Swiss-Army Knife. Now think of that thing on steroids. Now think of those steroids as also being on steroids. Now think of the Swiss-Army Knife as having special treatment so as it doesn’t die from those steroids, add some more steroids, then times a thousand.

It gives Hal a bunch of different powers. From time travel, to matter manipulation, to phasing through objects, to a powerful shield.

It can also protect his mind.

And Hal can also reasonably scale to other Lanterns, like the time when Kilowog survived the Crisis on Infinite Earths event.

With all this power, you gotta be wondering: What the hell does this thing run on? And the answer is willpower. Part of the emotional spectrum that makes up sentient life.

Red is linked to rage, Orange to greed, Yellow to fear, Green to willpower, Blue to hope. Indigo to compassion, and Violet to love (This isn’t actually mentioned in the episode, but I thought I’d mention it here).

And Hal is definitely a powerful Green Lantern. Like…

With all that power, that definitely solidifies Hal as being the most powerful Green Lantern. It also means that he can irrefutably scale to other Lanterns.

Hal also could move from the center of the universe to a planet in moments.

This puts Hal in the high-end of the spectrum.

And being so fast that you nearly enter the Speed Force is all kinds of impressive for someone not connected to it.

And one time, Hal was without his ring. Meaning that he had to fly a ship moving faster than light on his own.

That is to say that Hal managed to avoid stars, planets, without the ring helping him.

And as a being who defeated the physical embodiment of willpower with his own willpower, Hal can do things that other Green Lanterns can do.

Green Lantern Kyle Rayner once survived the Big Bang, since Hal did that previous thing, it’s reasonable to say that Hal can do the same.

But the ring aren’t perfect. They do have a limited power source, and the constructs are limited to the user’s imagination and confidence in themselves. If they aren’t confident enough, they lose their will.

But there’s also a really big elephant in the room. An elephant painted yellow.

Thankfully, this was done because Paralax had corrupted the Green Battery, and is now a non-issue. Not that it compares to the weakness of Alan Scott, who had a weakness to wood.

But Hal is one of the best. Be it brightest day, or blackest night, no evil will escape his sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, beware his power…

GREEN LANTERN’S LIGHT!

(That’s not the end quote, so I figured that I’d put it here).

The Battle Itself.

Zack and Luis (Animation director) on animation, Ben will be voiced by Nicholas Andrew Louie and Green Lantern will be voiced Bradley Gareth. , Jerky on sprites, Therewolf on music (Emerald Warriors), and audio is led by Chris Kokkinos.

So, as we know from the preview, Hal tries to take in Ben for having a “Class A” Superweapon, and Ben fights back. Which immediately makes this one of the better stories around, as it fits both characters and their roles very well.

… I’ll put the reason why some people were put off by the use of kid Ben sprites in the “Overall Impression” part. Meanwhile, let’s look at this hand-drawn animation of Ben going Fourarms!

But, given that Hal has handled stronger blows before, he takes it in stride. Leaving Ben to go for Heatblast.

And one explosion later, Ben boasts that he could possibly beat Hal with Grey Matter… Which he turns into. But he quickly recovers and goes big. Way Big.

Hal, obviously not impressed, creates a meteor to smash Way Big with. So Ben brings out the big guns.

Behold! Alien X!

The fight is taken to space, where Alien X opts to just erase Hal.

But, as he possesses a device that lets him take a retcon to the face, Hal doesn’t break.

So Ben goes for a swarm tactic and tries to break Hal’s shield.

Hal recites his Lantern Oath to break free and summon a weapon to attack with.

This attack works, but Alien X rewinds time to knock Hal back.

He politely reminds Hal of a thing that he forgot about.

Which means that finishing blow in 5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

I wonder if that was a size ten sorrynotsorry.

I can’t tell if Present!Hal is talking about the battle wounds that he has, or the one-liner he made, and I’m okay with that.

Verdict + Explanation.

So, right off the bat, one of Ben’s biggest advantages was his absurd versatility in his transformations and his ingenuity. But Hal outclassed him in many areas.

Sure Ben has an absurd amount of versatility, but here’s the thing: He can only use one alien at a time. Whereas Hal has his whole package in his one little ring.

Essentially, even with Master Control, Ben is always playing catch up. Fourarms and Way Big are strong, but not on the level of what Hal regularly faces. Diamondhead is tough, but not planet busting tough. XLR8 is fast, but- You get the picture, right?

Alien X was really Ben’s best shot at winning. But Hal has not only fought alongside allies with that kind of power (Like Dr. Fate), but he’s also fought against that (Like Darkseid).

And even then, Alien X is still vulnerable to damage (albiet, it has to be super absurd). Ben’s own fight with the Galactic Gladiator proves that Celestialsapiens can still lose fights. And the fact that Alien X failed to stop the Anihilaarg was because Ben was busy arguing with the other two personalities about what to do. In other words, Alien X isn’t omnipotent.

There’s also no real evidence to suggest that Alien X could resist anything that Hal could either. Ben’s versatility put up quite the fight, but it wasn’t enough to match Green Lantern’s speed, strength, durability, tools, and literal willpower.

And don’t be green with envy. That pun was Ten out of Bens… Yes, these are all of Boomstick’s puns.

Overall impression.

7.8/10.

Overall, the fight is impressive. There are great hand-drawn moments in it, though I do have to knock some points for using Kid Ben sprites. Not only does the voice sound more appropriate for a teenager, these guys went on about how if the had “trimmed down Ben to his original 10-15, then it would be more fair of a fight to put him up against Beast Boy.”- That’s stuff that would lead people to think “Oh. So they’re going to use teenage Ben sprites.” This isn’t like using younger sprites of Jotaro or Naruto. The big heads never said anything about how “If we had used pre-Kurama friendship Naruto, then pitting him against Luffy would be fair” they just went straight into the battle due to power levels.

In short: Had they not made a big deal about it, then this wouldn’t be a problem.

Also, I think there’s a valid criticism about them primarily pulling from the classic-era aliens and only having Alien X from the AF/UA be the only one not from that era. Like… would have using Humungousaur instead of Fourarms been too much?- What about Atomix from Omniverse?- He’s delightfully hammy.

But, I can’t blame them for using so few. It would be a pain to try and animate all those alien forms.

But the spritework is nice, the research is solid, and it has great moments and callbacks to each character’s respective series. So it gets points for that.

Next Time…

*Inhales*

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Y’know, the last time a RWBY character fought, an entire hate group for them sprung up on Deviantart (I’m not kidding). So, this will be fun. Please excuse me for my lack of enthusiasm, but I have bad memories of that hate group and I am not looking forward to having to go through that again.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

… Yeah, I got nothing.

[fastesttalker]

Busy..busy...busy

In the studio It's been a busy week here at mission control I have had a very busy and productive week in the studio ( My den, I call the studio cosh it's a bit posher innit) but I don't really have much "end product" to show for it. I recorded a "fast talking" video 😯, yes these steroids I am on are working wonders in that respect,I was able to do some fast talking for a while. I recorded me speaking "The Charge of The Light Brigade" a famous poem by Tennyson. I also started a new Podcast and recorded a channel trailer and episode 1, both of these were in post-production for nearly 4 days, not each, in total just editing my voice to make it sound better. My cancer and BX have left me with lots of issues with my voice, it's not as deep and resonant as it was, I gasp and rattle when I breathe in, I smack my lips a lot and make other weird chirruping noises as well as stuttering in places. All of this has to be edited out in post production and that takes time. Live Video To test my streaming set up I made a live video on YouTube of me doing some editing on my voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YdM0s6nc-E Not the most exciting of videos I'll admit. Foodie videos I also made 2 "Foodie" type videos for YouTube.Nothing really exciting some friends were talking on Facebook about the new McDonalds McPlant burger and how it actually tasted like beef and I thought I'd give it a try, so I made a video about me reacting to the burger. I made a glaring mistake though, I should have had some B-Roll footage of the food in the bag and cut to it several times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfl7uNARdjA The Facebook conversation went off on a tangent Facebook conversations always go off on a tangent, this one went from the McPlant to the burger McD's actually use, something called "Beyond burgers" so seeing as I already tried the McD's one we got some of these Beyond Burgers and I gave them a try as well. Again, almost same mistake as with the McDonalds one except this time I did get some B-roll of the burgers frying but for some reason I didn't think to get any of them on the plate and It was only after someone else pointed this out to me did i realise what I had left out. Still lesson learned for next time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epOs-Vdwv2I I also made a short video about where I was with my channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYWhlgkCnIA These videos aren't really for public consumption, or rather I didn't make them to get Youtube hits, subs or likes. They are on YouTube and if anyone finds them great, if they don't and no-ne ever sees them that's great as well. I made them to practice and prefect my techniques with filming, motion graphics and editing. I started to do a Podcast which can be found here. This really was time intensive as my voice wasn't brilliant when I recorded it, see live video above. USB Audio Interface On 2 of the sound recording and editing courses I am currently taking the advice ids to get a USB Audio Interface for my mic as this will make everything sound better, I looked on Amazon at the ones they suggested and they were over £100 each. Then I realised I already had one, I have a Tascam DR-40X PCM 4 channel recorder And I had seen somewhere that it can be used as a USB audio Interface, so after a quick google I found out how to do that, connected it all up and plugged my boom mic into it, and yes, you do need an audio interface because being able to change the gain before recording means a lot less time spent sorting it out in post. The model progress I also did some more model building and have a couple more hours of footage in the can to edit, this model I just taking me longer than I anticipated because it's just so complicated. So all-in-all it's actually been quite busy and I have loads of footage to turn into videos eventually. I think if I was bothered about monetising YouTube and releasing on a schedule I'd be panicking about now, but as I am not I am just going along at my own pace. I guesstimate it's probably going to be another year before I have all the skills I need to really produce great content. Read the full article

[onestowatch]

Q&A: Meet Mark Johns, Lover Of Pasta, Yaeji’s Biggest Fan, and OWSLA’s Rising Star

I’ve done a number of interviews before, but none quite like my interview with Mark Johns. Settling in at the shared storefront of Moving Castle and Next Wave HQ on iconic Melrose Avenue, I set up my recording equipment and scrolled through Instagram as per usual. I watched Instagram story after story all in the hopes of calming those slight nerves that always seem to creep up when one is preparing to talk to someone whose music you’ve obsessively streamed on repeat before the idea of talking to them was even a reality. So, I can’t say with absolute certainty what I expected, but it most certainly was not a lively terrier-mix, who I would come to know as LiLo, darting into the storefront and leading the way of Naomie, the person behind the Mark Johns moniker. 

Singing Yaeji’s “raingurl” aloud and making herself comfortable on the carpeted floor below me, Naomie wasted no time before delving into her love for Yaeji and the undeniable banger that is BLAISE’s “Dua.” As LiLo ran around the storefront, occasionally stopping to play-fight and bite at my arm, Naomie continued to expand further on her clear and insatiable love for music. It was hard to envision the moment as a semi-formal interview and not as a casual conversation between friends who were simply catching up on their recent music discoveries and obsessions. 

Yes, before me sat, Mark Johns, the only singer on Skrillex’s record label, OWSLA, who was signed off of a single cover and inevitably poised for massive things. Yet, more than anything, the artist I found myself lucky enough to be chatting with was one with a genuine and irrefutable love for not only the music she was making but music itself as a whole. And yes, without a doubt, an artist clearly poised for massive things as well.

OTW: How’s the day been going so far?

Good. I’ve just been listening to that one Yaeji song over and over and over and over again, took my dog out, and made breakfast. I ate a healthy breakfast; I’m proud of that. 

OTW: Going back to where it all started, the first track you put out was with Manilla Killa, a flip of Lido’s remix of Yung Lean’s “Gatorade.” How did this collaboration come about?

That was my first thing ever. I was writing for this blog called Run The Trap. I was super heavy into curating playlists and my whole thing was I wanted to be in A&R. I'm still heavy into that. That's what I spend the rest of my time doing if I'm not making music. I met all these DJs through Facebook when I was covering them or adding them to playlists. It starts in the DMs. So, Manilla Killa is in this other group called Hotel Garuda with this kid Aseem. He used to live in Singapore too and we went to the same school but missed each other by a couple years. So, what happened was somebody that I went to school with in California ended up going to college at Occidental, which Aseem also ended up going to. We were introduced via Facebook and he introduced me to Manila, who introduced me to AObeats, who introduced me to robokid, who introduced me to the rest of Moving Castle. That's when they added me to Moving Castle and that's what formed the whole core brick of my social life. And that’s how I met Manilla Killa!

So, when we were just talking, on this SoundCloud where I was making all these other playlists, I had a couple of covers that I had recorded on my iPhone with an acoustic guitar in my bathroom. And he was like, “Can you help me out? I'm trying to do this cover.” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” I had this hundred-dollar USB mic that my friend bought for my birthday, and that's what I recorded the vocals on. That's also how I met Sable, and we made that “In Paris” remix together that got me signed to OWSLA. And that’s why I’m here, long story short!

OTW: Your rendition of not only “In Paris” but “Rehab” as well, felt much more like a reinvention than a simple covers or remix. What inspired you to tackle that track in that particular manner?

I was just listening to the Tennyson song and then I started singing “Rehab.” I was doing something else at the time, the song was just on one of my playlists. So, I recorded it on my phone and didn't do anything with it for a minute and then I watched that Amy Winehouse documentary. I have the weirdest relationship with Amy Winehouse. As much as I love her and everything she's done, she's so much more of a cautionary tale to me, because I see so much of myself in her, in terms of our characteristics and tendencies. So, I just look at her whole story and I'm like this is what cannot happen. That's why that whole Lil Peep thing hit me so hard. The whole scenario felt very similar. But when I watched that whole documentary, I felt this person is too important to me to not do something, and I remember that Amy Winehouse voice note and just did it. I put it out without telling anyone, because I was so emotional. They were so pissed at me the next morning. They were like you can't just do that! I was like, “But why? It's just SoundCloud.” Anyway, everything worked out for the best.

OTW: How has the journey been from that original collaboration all those years ago to being part of Moving Castle now?

It's cool to see something that started as a group chat grow into what it is now. I remember the Facebook group and the goals that we had then, they seemed so big to us back then, and, in comparison to the goals we have now, they seem so small. So, just to see that trajectory and that growth, it's so exciting. I'm stoked for everybody. I’m very excited that it’s all happening! It’s such a good feeling.

OTW: You’re a clear standout on Skrillex’s electronic and DJ-leaning label, OWSLA. Is it ever a worry for you being the only the singer on OWSLA, or is it something you find to be empowering?

That's kind of why I signed to them. I know how it goes with most labels, at least major labels. The last thing I wanted to do was sign to a developmental deal. They sign you off a single or give you a certain amount of time to come up with a single and you have that single moment, hopefully. If you don't follow that up, they kind of shelf you. I've just seen it happen to so many people, and that's not what I want. And I don't want anyone trying to tell me what to do, because I don't know what to do. I was signed off of a cover. I wasn't even writing original music at that point, so I know this is going to take me a hot minute to figure out, so when OWSLA was like we’ll give you full creative control that was tempting. They set me up with a place and studio space, and I dropped out of school and moved here. My parents weren't too excited about that at the time. So, I would wake up every day and eat pasta, go to the studio, come back from the studio, eat pasta, and go to sleep. It took me awhile, but they've been super patient with the whole process, and that's exactly what I needed at the end of the day.

OTW: Speaking more on your love for pasta, so much so that you have a Spaghetti Sauce Spotify playlist, walk us through your favorite pasta recipe.

My favorite pasta recipe probably starts at Trader Joe's. They have pappardelle egg pasta. I get that, and then I make a cream mushroom sauce with pesto. That’s my favorite stuff. I can eat a whole pot of that. It’s the best.

OTW: Your debut EP, Molino, is beautifully downtempo and emotive. What are some of the inspirations lying behind the album?

I was writing so much music, because I felt the need to be experimenting trying new things, and working with new people, but it kind of had this opposite effect on me where it diluted the music I was making. I felt at one point I needed to just step back and just write songs. Let’s just really write how we feel and get that all out, so then we can go back to experimenting and figuring all this shit out. So, it was a very introspective moment for me. It sounds like a love song EP. All them sound like I'm talking to a dude or significant other, but, at that point, I didn't know how to write about my relationships or just people in my life without using romantic metaphors. So, a lot of these songs are about everything, and I had to use these pronouns to make it make sense in my head.

OTW: And what was the feeling like as an artist putting out their first ever release?

I think there was too much weight on it. I know this happens everywhere, but it took longer for this actual project to come out. When you're sitting on something, and you just want the world to hear it because you're growing in that whole period and changing as an artist as well, you’re starting to not feel the same way you did five months ago. You get scared of what you made, especially as your first project. It’s so defining in a way and you don't want it to be. I don't think anyone ever wants any of their projects to be defining. Because I think everyone, as an artist, hopes to grow throughout their careers at some point, as long as you plan to keep on doing this for your whole life, which I hope most artists do. I was just scared that would be too big of a defining moment for me, because even for myself I felt that it was a too little left field for what I usually make, but I was very relieved. I felt I had gotten a lot off my chest, and I feel every artist should have those songs to go back to.

OTW: So, was music an integral part of your household growing up?

No, not at all. I had the most fucked-up relationship with music ever. My parents are pretty religious and had a pretty strict stance on what we could and couldn't really listen to growing up. So, I just listened to the radio stations my mom would put on, so a lot of Celine Dion and Duran. It was very PG, and nobody else in my family was really into music, and I wouldn't say I was either. I wouldn't ever have considered music to be one of my defining characteristics. I didn't develop an intimate relationship with music until a lot later, not until high school when I had my own computer and was downloading shit off LimeWire and getting into YouTube. I was learning there was more than just the singles you heard off the radio; there were whole albums. Honestly, I think the whole suggestions tab off YouTube is the whole reason I got into music, because it was just like, “Here you go, here's a curated playlist of songs you might like.”

OTW: Your name is a play on the visual artist Marc Johns. What’s the relationship like between you and the Mark Johns moniker?

He does not like me. I was so bummed. So, last year there was this billboard, the first time I was ever in a print publication, and like two weeks after it came out I get an email from Marc Johns and he was like you just can't take my name. So, that was a little bit disheartening, but I still love everything he does. The reason I chose Mark Johns was because one of his pieces was the background on my phone, and I was stressed out and panicking so I just went Mark Johns, “That's the one!” It kind of sucks that he doesn't like me, but I still like him.

OTW: What’s your favorite part of making music?

I like wordplay. That's my favorite part of making music and writing, figuring out how to make a sentence clever, like double meanings and all that. I get a lot of my inspiration from just reading sentences and thinking that a sentence meant one thing and being like, “Oh wait, nope.”

OTW: You parents weren’t originally too keen on you dropping out of college and moving out to Los Angeles to make music. Have they come around at all since then?

They were so pissed. They didn't talk to me for a hot minute. Yeah, I think no mom and dad wants to hear from their kid, “Hey Mom! I want to be a singer that's what I want to be in life.” As you grow up in life, you realize obviously you should always chase your dreams and do what fulfills you, and as a parent, I can understand how scary that must be to hear. You obviously believe in your child and think the best of them, but you worry that other people don't. I haven't lived at home since I was 14, so I've always been a little bit detached from that and to hear that I was going to be even more detached from their way of living and perspective on life, it was scary for them, so I understand. I went back to visit, and that was the first time I had seen them in about a year-and-a-half and from that point they became a lot more tolerant. They ask a lot more questions. They’re more curious. It’s a good relationship, and that’s all I can ask.

OTW: What does the future hold for Mark Johns?

More music. I have so much music that unfortunately you get so caught up in the way that people talk about music releases and it gets so strategic, but I don't believe in that at all. It took me a minute to come to that affirmation, but I was like, “No, that’s not okay.” I make so much music, and I’m working all the time. Sometimes it takes me forty minutes to write a song and the forty minute songs don't mean anything less than the three-months-to-write songs, so I just want to be more consistent with the music I'm putting out and have a more open relationship with my fans.

OTW: Is there anything at all you’d want the world or your fans to know about?

Just that we’re in a good place. I know that it’s probably going to go down again at some point, and then up again, and then down again, and then up again, but it was definitely a long little dip there. We learned a lot, and I’m really excited for next year.

OTW: Who are your Ones To Watch?

I’ve always believed in this kid Matt Maeson. I’m really really into BLAISE. You should look up his song “Dua”. He was obsessed with Dua Lipa, so he just made a song about Dua Lipa and it went viral that day. He’s the one who introduced me to writing in a way. He can do anything and everything. He’s a Ones To Watch for sure. I’m heavy into this Yaeji girl. I think she was a house producer before, but now she’s been singing on her tracks. There’s this one song “raingurl” that’s so fucking dope. I can’t not listen to it from when I wake up to when I go to sleep.

[changachino-blog]

28 february 2018

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45364/the-lotos-eaters

Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters: A Dichotomy Between Life and Living

In two poems, Lord Alfred Tennyson depicts two outlooks of life: the Romanticist view in “The Song of the Lotus Eaters”, and the Victorian ideals in “Ulysses”. More specifically, their views regarding a pause, a lull, in living are in stark contrast with each other.  Using imagery, repetition, and simile, Tennyson proves the virtue of the Victorian ideals of his era using both perspectives.

The Lotus eaters and Ulysses are both set in stagnance. The island upon which the Lotus Eaters lay is representative of their sloth, even the air that they breathe is “languid...swoon[ing]”, in a state of perpetual afternoon. This builds on the image of stagnance, with the afternoon representing the transitional state of travel that the Lotus Eaters were mired in; between sun and moon, Troy and home. Afternoon on a tropic island brings to mind stifling heat, adding on to the day’s sun and toil that would wear on these mariners. However, the mariners rejoiced upon this piece of sand, “they sang, ‘Our island home is far beyond the wave...”, celebrating their freedom from weary travel. Using a repeating rhyme scheme at the end of the first choric verse, with the words “deep, creep, weep, and sleep”, he pulls the reader into some sort of a loop, resembling the loop, the trance, the travelers are bound in.

On the contrary, Ulysses has been filled with a dread for his life, as an “idle king, / By this still hearth, among these barren crags…”. Using the words idle, still, and barren, Tennyson establishes the king’s existential malaise within the first two lines of his poem. Ulysses’ life no longer has much of a purpose, after peaking many years before, “Far on the ringing plains of Troy”. This begs the question of whether life is worth living after a definitive peak. Ulysses answers with a resounding YES, exclaiming “How dull it is.../ to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”. Stagnancy is death to Ulysses, a dishonorable degradation, a sword not dulled by use, but by its scabbard, betrayed by the respite of his home.

The Lotus Eaters expose the flawed nature of the Romantics, the dreamers and consumers too occupied by the “watch[ing] (of) the crisping ripples on the beach” to advance, to trailblaze, and return home in a wash of glory. They try to rationalize their sloth, preemptively alienating themselves to their homes, wives, children and slaves, figuring that “...all hath suffer’d change..”, but that is a lazy alternative to the truth Tennyson presents through Ulysses. Ulysses has a fervor for life, a chance at another adventure and expanding the self. Tennyson shows us the difference between merely living and having a life, and while the Lotus Eaters indulge themselves in material comforts and absorbing the nature around them, Ulysses delights in burning a legacy in the annals of history, in spite of all of he has already accomplished. Tennyson urges us to expand our horizons, both internally and externally, to fight for another peak in life.

***

11 June 2020

Two years later, this essay is helping fend off the evils that come with stagnancy. As long as one is breathing, one has potential, and it’s a waste of energy and life to live a day in which you don’t try to get better at something. 

A paraphrased quote from my AP English Literature teacher at the time, Ryan Miller:

“If you’re on your phone, you’re basically asleep.”

This really redefined the way I view the information age, because it really is a perfect analogy for my experience with content aggregators and sleep. Dreams flit through my mind in little flashes, and only some truly carry any feeling that carries through to the morning, and therefore any memories I have of those dreams are unreliable. In a very similar way, content aggregators (in my case, mainly reddit) flood my eyes with a veritable onslaught of information. Most of the time, I don’t remember what I don’t save to my account or device. 

What even is the worth of information without any ability to recollect it? 

I typically want to use reddit to distract myself and find fun content that I can share with my friends, but in many cases it seems to become a timesink that gives me loads of impressions, and headlines, and little easily consumable nuggets of information, like well-made gifs, or innovative infographics, which are all tailored to my tastes. It’s a buffet of knowledge, but the problem is simple: you can’t eat like you’re at a buffet for your whole life.

Just like food, information needs proper digestion, reflection, to truly permeate into your memory and become a part of yourself that you can rely on for the rest of your life. In every minute of everyday, we have the opportunity to learn about what is happening to people all around the world, all around our nation, and all around our community. Social media is designed to be addictive, and it works, because it is a very human tendency to want to learn more about the world and connect to more people.

Our brains are not designed to operate on this level of social involvement.

Let’s talk about dunbar’s number. 

“According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.” -linked article

The idea of a hard limit to mental capacity is not novel, and it explains a lot of how the information age has adversely affected the mental health of millions of people. Being a “good citizen” in the age of the internet entails many tiers of communication and information processing as a result of globalization and the current ease of communication:

At the most personal tier would be your loved ones, your immediate family, your closest friends. With distance, the pressure to stay connected is kind of immense, given that it’s so easy to do so, but when life gets busy, people get overwhelmed and need time to charge. Our connectivity adds an unnecessary level of guilt in mild cases of estrangement. As a contrast, my mother’s relationships with her closest friends are built over years, and they personally check in month to month. 

The importance of this tier is on par with that of the next, but I think that there is a lot of tacit pressure to catch up with older family members and record their wisdom. The whole point of family and reproduction is to make each generation better, but if this knowledge isn’t captured, it slips away with each death. 

The next most personal tier would be your involvement in your community, whether it’s through your protests, sports, college friends/clubs, local charities, or churches. These are your tribes, and as social creatures, we tend to become a blend of whoever we surround ourselves with. The information age already pressures us to be as connected as possible, and I find myself straining to maintain involved in my current communities as I try my best to stay connected with my loved ones.

As I mature more, I’m becoming more aware of my responsibility to get involved with community legislation, and local government. I guess this would fall between community involvement and legislative participation.

As we start to zoom out, the next tier would be our involvement in state legislature, voting on bills and representatives in our counties and states. This is where my citizenship fails, I consider myself a patriot but I haven’t prioritized my right to a vote as a citizen in a democratic republic. 

Performing as a national citizen in the United States is also fraught with disappointment and disillusionment in your voice, and bipartisanship has led to rampant tribalism and polarization. Conversations about the administration, especially across people of opposite parties, are rarely nuanced and productive. Mass media on both sides tends to twist words and fails to truly inform. Fear-mongering has always made more money, and gets more awareness, so spreading a more negative depiction of the world is how many media outlets have found their success.

Learning more about international human rights issues, climate justice, and staying informed about our world and affairs is another burden on the mind

I find humor in the irony of privileged internet users reading about unprivileged people’s plights and hurting in sympathy for them, to no net good in the world. The adage that ignorance is bliss is based in reality

We get more and more jaded as we learn about how the world really doesn’t make sense, and as we learn more about how bad humans can be and have been to each other.

Six tiers of investing yourself, your mental faculties, your resources, and your time fall beyond your actual person. 

So much of our presence and identity is invested outside of us, that it’s easy to be overwhelmed and forget to love and nurture ourselves. Every piece of trash information that we have to process stands as an obstacle in our path to a better self. Striking the balance between awareness of the world and mental health has been such a complicated task that we all have to juggle. While a quarantine during the information has posed serious implications for mental health, I’m jazzed about the ramifications of this quarantine. 

For many people whose lives have been uprooted and tossed around by this pandemic, this is a time of introspection, discovery, and a re-evaluation of what we want to live for. The potential for the my generation is staggering.

As a contrast, I truly felt like I was mired in a time of stagnancy during my depressive spells for the past few months. I felt like I was wasting my valuable time as a young adult, and the added guilt became a positive feedback loop that glued me to my bed for far too long. Writing out and processing my thoughts about what has led to these depressive spells gives me more answers and insights, and I’m excited that this is the first of many essays that seek to alleviate my headspace and free my mind for greater pursuits. 

To link my two essays together, here is the main theme I would like to impart to whoever wants to carve their own hope for their future:

A quote from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses:

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!”

It’s far too easy for me to grow comfortable in a non-growth-centered way of life, and it’s up to me to leverage the privilege that I have: a loving, financially secure family that feeds me. I must take ownership of my life and make the most of what has been given to me. I owe it to my parents, the universe, and the people I love to lead a life of growth.

“Stagnancy is death to Ulysses, a dishonorable degradation: a sword not dulled by use, but by its scabbard, betrayed by the respite of his home.”

[weneverlearn]

COZY: Pub-glam goofing from a Minneapolis four-piece that might actually be from England, or not.

                                                                                    Photo by Marty Perez

"Denim is simply the medium we have chosen to express ourselves as artists."

It's not clear if Cozy are kidding or if they’ve just aged really well. Listening to their bootstomp-tastic garage pop, one gleans fairly quickly that they are majorly influenced by the ever-expanding cult sub-genre of "junk shop glam." And basic snooping reveals they hail from Minneapolis. But deign to ask, and they can convince you they had in fact been cryogenicized back 'round 1974 in some cloudy northern British town, and HoZac Records paid to get them melted out and back on the road. Goofin' or not, on stage they can erase historical perspective worries from your craw with their huge hooks, beastly drummer, and frequent band makeout sessions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ COZY are: Bonkers Waddington – Vocals; Baz Bosworthy – Guitar; Gordie Leatherby – Bass; Archie “Swiz” Tugwell – Drums

Give me a basic history of the band.

Bonkers Waddington: Allow me to take this opportunity to dispel a common misconception. For years we were under contractual duress which forced us to peddle a fabricated origin story to the press. However, having asserted ourselves as artists on the heels of our recent smash hit “Denim Child” single -- which I must stress was written by us and not the songwriting team of Stately and Poundsworth our management previously enlisted the services of -- we now have unprecedented control over our destiny. So to be frank, and give you what I believe you Americans call “the straight dope,” the origin of Cozy does not lie in our manager Edwin Bickerton casting us in order to form a prefabricated pop group, as has been previously reported. The truth is we started out nearly a decade ago as a skiffle band that played under various names. As times changed we took on the name Silas Cozy and progressed into a more experimental psychedelic sound. We issued an album called Sidepiper at the Gates of Dawn on EMI, but unfortunately it failed to chart and has long since been deleted. The failure of Silas Cozy hit us all hard, and we briefly considered giving up on music in order to become lorry drivers and such. However, one fateful night Edwin stumbled upon a gig we were doing in a small Dongcaster pub. He was struck by our unrelenting power as a live band and offered to take us in a more commercially viable pop direction, provided we truncate our name. Six months later Cozy’s first single, “Cola Shock Kids,” was sitting at number one on the charts in 21 different countries across the globe. The rest, as they say, is history.

Baz Bozworthy: Four saunas. My house has four saunas.

Now of course music is the thing, but let us start with your clothing. What's with the vests? Who makes the fashion decisions for the band? And what bands / bands would be the prime inspiration for Cozy's evening wear?

BW: To be honest, I’m not sure I agree with the premise of the question. Granted, music is "a" thing. We take our jobs as recording artists and performers very seriously. However, in the pop music business, boots and flares are every bit as important as notes and chords. As for why we wear denim vests: why does Warhol work with paint? Why did Rodin choose to sculpt in bronze? Why did Tolstoy sit down and write War and Peace in the form of a novel rather than compose a philosophical treatise on the relationship between our concepts of fate and divinity? Denim is simply the medium we have chosen to express ourselves as artists.There are a number of bands who have been inspired by our choice in evening wear, but I’m not sure if I should be giving them free press for ripping us off. However, if imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then this young band called Hello appear to be the biggest Cozy fans around.

BB: Baz hate pant!

So you are the influential band? Who influenced you?

BW: Again, there are lots of bands coming up these days who appear to be influenced by Cozy. Have you heard of Slade? They show real potential, despite flagrantly nicking Baz’s signature guitar sound. But to be honest, I don’t feel they are a threat to our spot atop the charts just yet. The best thing I’ve heard recently is a song called “Memories” by this new band named Kenny. It has strong commercial potential and very moving lyrics. I think it could be a big hit.Oh wait, were you asking about what groups influenced us when we were starting out? To be honest, we don’t have any musical influences. Cozy doesn’t believe in following trends, we believe in setting them. If a group attempts to become the next Beatles, how can they expect to ever become bigger than the Beatles? We would never impose that kind of limitation on our success.

You seem a mild mannered lad, Bonkers. Do you think people are surprised by your forcefulness onstage?

BW: Sometimes even I’m surprised by my forcefulness on stage! But to answer your question, yes, I do believe some are confused by the dichotomy between my on and off stage personas. As you’re no doubt well aware, I’m often referred to as the voice of my generation for penning the lyrics to songs like “Sidepiping” and “Denim Child.” While it isn’t my place to weigh in on whether or not I agree with this assessment, as we both know a number of prestigious universities are already assigning my lyrics in poetry classes which normally focus on giants such as Tennyson and T.S. Eliot. However, academics are often shocked to learn that not only did I pen the oft-quoted couplet “You’re my denim dream/I think I’m gonna bust a seam,” I was also voted “Best Male Dancer in Pop Today” by Cub Beat magazine for the past three years running. Personally I don’t distinguish between my verbal poetry and my kinesthetic poetry. Both are heartfelt expressions of my essential essence.

Do the other bandmates ever express pushback against your frequent onstage kisses?

BW: For the record, I would never kiss anyone without permission. All members of Cozy have signed an “On Stage Skinship Waiver” which grants us the right to show physical affection for one another within the context of our performances. I’ve heard it said storytellers should show rather than tell. It’s in that spirit I sometimes take it upon myself to give our audiences a visual representation of the theme of kissing, which is so integral to our art.

Is there a good story of going for a smooch, missing, and falling down?

BW: During a recent intimate live performance held in Chicago to commemorate our American label HoZac Records’ 10th anniversary, someone in the crowd pulled my knickers off, leaving me fully nude on stage. Surprisingly enough, the culprit wasn’t Baz! If you ever get a chance to talk to him about it, Baz can go on for hours about what a repressive custom he finds the compulsory donning of trousers to be. He has assembled a flow chart on the issue which, I assure you, is quite persuasive!

BB: BAZ HATE PANT!!!

Who would you consider current bands-in-arms for your junkshop power pop sound?

BW: Like I mentioned before, Cozy is often imitated, but never duplicated. It’s almost cute when I hear bands like the Sweet try to copy our sound. I feel like patting them on their well-coiffed little heads and telling them, “Good luck with that boys, you’re going to need it!”That being said there are a number of bands we love and feel an affinity with. Giuda is one. Gorilla is another. The Jeanies, Baby Shakes, and Nobunny are a few more.

Any of your members in other side projects?

BW: Being in a band at the level of Cozy is like juggling multiple full time jobs, so none of us have the time for any outside projects right now. People have said Gordie looks like the leader of this band called Real Numbers, but trust me, Gordie is much better looking than that bloke. Same goes for the story going around about how Baz has started a new band called Private Interests. These rumours are just idle fabrications invented by fans with too much time on their hands.

How was that most recent end-of-summer tour I saw you on? Any good stories you wanna tell from that one?

BW: We had the time of our lives on that tour! Too many enchanted evenings to recall them all here, but Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Fidenza were especially magical. I can’t wait to tour the Continent again and see all the new friends we made! Special thanks to our promoters Jensie and Franz for their hard work. Extra special thanks to our tour manager Mr. Johnny Denim. Johnny was voted Most Valuable Piper for his dedication to Cozy above and beyond the call of duty. We love Johnny so much we have immortalized him in a new song called “Denim Delinquent” that we composed in his honour.There are many stories I would love to share with you from the tour, but our legal counsel has advised me against revealing the lion’s share of them for the time being. I could tell you about the time in Eindhoven when Baz held court with Russian dignitaries backstage while Gordie, Swiz, and myself were terrorized by ghosts in a haunted cornfield, but I don’t think anyone would believe me. Suffice to say, Cozy now wants nothing to do with cornfields ever again.

What's up for Cozy in 2017?

BW: We are taking a much needed breather, but reconvening soon to begin the recording of our much-anticipated second album, tentatively set to be a two-LP set called Double Denim. I’m very excited for our fans to hear how we’ve grown as artists since the recording of Button By Button (HoZac, 2014). A string of new singles is also in the works. I’m not sure when our next world tour is scheduled to begin. Hopefully we will have something to announce within the next few months. Rest assured we are all looking forward to hitting the road as soon as possible and making magical memories with our dear fans.

BB: Building up a horny corner.

Anything else you want to go on about?

BW: I would like to send a message to our fans: Don’t let anyone ever dissuade you from following your dreams. After all, following mine led me to a treasure of immeasurable worth – all of you!