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societyteaseo · 4 months ago

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Masala Tea – The Secret Ingredient to Unleashing Creativity for Writers

Writers often find themselves chasing that elusive spark of creativity, trying to break through the mental fog that can make ideas feel like they’re hiding just out of reach. Whether you're racing against a deadline or simply having a quiet moment of reflection, a hot, steaming cup of Masala Tea can work wonders to ignite those creative fires. This spiced delight, with its heady aroma and vibrant flavours, does more than comfort—it’s like a little invitation to pause, recharge, and let your imagination soar.

We all know that sometimes, the mind needs a little nudge to get into gear. That's where Masala Tea comes in. It’s not just any drink—it’s an experience. With every sip, the blend of spices—cinnamon, cardamom, ginger—hits all the right notes, creating a sensory jolt that clears away any mental cobwebs and gets the ideas flowing again. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll be back in the groove, fingers dancing across the keyboard, as those tricky sentences finally come together. It’s like a little creative pep talk in a cup, helping you to shake off writer's block and dive back into crafting your next masterpiece.

But hold up, Masala Tea isn’t the only tea that can work its magic. If you're looking for something a bit more soothing, Himalayan leaf tea could be your new creative best friend. With its delicate yet complex flavour profile, Himalayan leaf tea gently calms the mind, allowing you to focus and let your thoughts wander in peace. Much like the serene hills it comes from, it’s all about slowing down and breathing in that calming energy. This tea is perfect for writers who need to clear their heads and let their words flow freely without distractions.

Now, why not combine the best of both worlds? Picture yourself sipping on the bold, spiced warmth of Masala Tea, followed by the calming, smooth notes of Himalayan leaf tea to settle your thoughts and breathe life back into your creativity. The punch of Masala Tea gets you started with that much-needed burst, and the subtle undertones of Himalayan leaf tea provide a grounding, peaceful flow to keep you in the zone. This perfect tea blend can help you tackle any writing project with a renewed sense of energy and clarity.

But the magic doesn’t stop at the sip itself—brewing your tea is a ritual in its own right. There’s something meditative about waiting for the perfect moment when the tea leaves unfurl, releasing their flavour into the steam that fills the air. That brief pause, that moment of quiet anticipation, allows your mind to reset and refresh. It’s like a mini break for the brain—giving you just enough time to step away, daydream, reflect, and maybe even come up with fresh ideas. And when you return to your writing, you’re met with a renewed perspective, ready to take on whatever words come next.

Let’s not forget the most glorious thing about tea breaks—especially when it comes to Masala Tea. A cup of this spiced goodness gives you the perfect excuse to step away from your writing for a few minutes and indulge in some much-needed refreshment. Whether you're working on a novel, a blog post, or an article, taking a Masala Tea break can do wonders for your creativity. After sipping on the rich, comforting warmth of your tea, you’ll find yourself feeling more energized, with your mind sharp and ideas flowing more freely. By the time you return to your work, you’ll have a fresh burst of energy and an ever-growing list of ideas.

Let’s face it: some of the best ideas come when you allow your mind to wander a little when you create a space for stillness amid the chaos. That’s where tea—whether it’s the bold kick of Masala Tea or the calming touch of Himalayan leaf tea—becomes an invaluable ally. It’s the perfect excuse to pause, reflect, and tap into that well of inspiration we all have. A cup of Masala Tea isn’t just a drink—it’s a ticket to unlock your creativity, helping you think deeper, write more clearly, and dive into your work with passion and clarity.

So whether you’re crafting the next great novel or simply working on a blog post, the right tea can elevate your writing process. Masala Tea provides that energizing kick when you need it most, while Himalayan leaf tea offers a serene calm to keep you in the flow. Together, they form the perfect duo to keep your mind sharp, your ideas fresh, and your words flowing effortlessly.

Next time you sit down to write, don’t just grab any old cup of coffee or water—treat yourself to a cup of Masala Tea and feel the creative energy surge. With each sip, you’ll feel more in tune with your writing, more inspired to tackle your ideas, and more excited to create something special. Masala Tea is your secret ingredient for unleashing the writer within—making creativity as easy as taking a sip.

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kote-the-inn-keeper · 8 years ago

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“You son of a bitch!”

Glass shattered loudly, cutting through the loud brawling in the main room of the inn. Chairs and tables screamed across the wood floors before toppling and crashing over, some cracking and breaking. Bottles and cups hit the floor, splintering and clanking before rolling through the thunderous shuffling of bodies. Shouting and screaming was booming, nearly echoing off the thick and wide room as the fight continued, several men in and others trying to pull apart the fight. None the less, alcohol and blood were a present smell over the wood polish and firewood that was there normally.

The inn was not silent. It was anything but.

“What? Can’t handle seeing me in person?” Kote chuckled snidely, unlike himself. A heavily sour smirk came to his face, cutting the line of blood dribbling down from his nose and down his chin. “Maybe I shoulda ha--” He was cut off with another punch to the face and slammed into the bar instead of the bottles.

A rally of shouting and cursing followed from usual patrons at the stranger, trying to rip them off of their kind and humble innkeeper they ‘knew’ so well. But, the attacker never let go, gripping the red head’s shirt and apron tighter with one hand, the other struggling to get out of two men’s grasps to get another punch in.

“You know what you did! And now I know you’re here! You’re done for!”

The innkeeper grit his teeth, letting out a grunt like snarl from behind clenched teeth. He could taste blood down the back of his throat, bruises already tender and coloring on his skin, and fingers tingling with a sensation he hadn’t had in so many years. Managing to get his hands up from being braced against the bar, Kote grabbed the hand holding onto him, throwing the other one up and trying to jam his fingers into the assailants eye.

With a scream, they let go to shook their head out, barely managing to look up and un-cup their hand from their slightly damaged eye to have the innkeepers fist slam into their gut.

“Kote what he hell--!?”

“Who is this bastard!?”

“Kote, sir--!”

A flurry of similar shouts and questions followed as Kote grunted and hip threw the bastard as hard as he could. While he had been aiming for the floor, the attacker ended up on, over, and then off the bar, shattering a bar stool or two on his ass over tea kettle way down to the floor proper. More shouts of surprise and confusion were thrown to the air, shuffling and debate on what to do.

The innkeeper spat on the floor and wiped his sleeve across his bloody nose, blowing loose strands of messy red hair from his eyes as he maneuvered over the bar easy enough. Landing hard on his feet next to the attacker, who was slowly getting to their feet, Kote glared. “You come into my inn, in the middle of a fucking rush, and try to pick a fight!? Of all decent times, you couldn’t have picked a damn worse one.”

“Not like anything you did had perfect fuckin’ timing either. Bloodless.” They spat, staggering and cracking their neck.

With such a title thrown around, the inn went quiet for a half moment, before whispers erupted and a bit of snide laughter. Him? Bloodless? The Kvothe bloodless? He was an innkeeper, and clearly bleeding! If an innkeeper could be Kvothe the Bloodless then half of them were immediately in line for the thrown! What a dumb thought, it was clear they were drunk and just picking fights -- at least, so everyone there thought.

Kote’s blood ran cold, eyes widening for a small moment, before narrowing once more. “Oh, so it’s someone from then. I see.” He mumbled carefully, trying to remember faces and names

The attacker looked furious, “You don’t even have the decency to remember people who you screwed over?! You coward. You low life, two faced, terror!”

“Is that all you have to say? If it is, I have to clean up your mess here and get back to work. I don’t care to associate with people like you, nor do I bother to remember simple jackasses.” Kote replied, trying to keep his slowly waning temper. His hands tingled, the feeling crawling from his fingertips to his palms to his wrists. No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

They swung out at him again, only to find open air. But just once. While Kote had been an experienced fighter years ago, he was out of practice and slow now, so the kick to the knee sent him nearly toppling. Taking the opportunity, the attacker shifted their feet, turned their hips, and forcefully flat footed kicked Kote in the chest and at and upturned table.

Hitting the table, the innkeeper shouted in pain and crumpled, back crashing into one of the cross supports and shoulder hit just right to have his arm go numb for a moment. Grasping at his knee, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stand quick enough before the next hit, gritting his teeth and managing to look up just in time to get a boot to the face. His head cracked against the wood floor, meeting spilled ale and shattered glass. His ears rang and the world spun for a moment, the smell of alcohol almost wanting to make him throw up and the sharp pain in the side of his face the only thing keeping him grounded from blacking out.

Several locals pulled Kote up to his feet by his shoulders and arms, holding him up steady as he tried to get himself together again. While others held back the attacker and shoved them as far to the other side of the room as they could mange against someone more skilled than themselves.

“You’ll pay for what you’ve fucking done! Do you hear me?! All of this is your fault, you coward! How dare you hide in such a shitty place with such a shitty fucking excuse of a name!”

Kote blinked slowly and lifted his head, hair partially obscuring his vision and one eye kept shut to keep glass from entering his eye. “Coward?” He asked, “Can’t you people call me something else? I’ve heard more of that word from myself than the likes of you.”

“You piece of shit! How dare you claim to be a hero! Look at all you’ve destroyed and ruined!!”

“This guy is bat shit!” Aaron, the smith boy, hollered above all the other ruckus. Which, got everyone else in the room to agree and shout about how they were out of their damn mind and too drunk to be there anymore.

Though, it all fell silent. Almost as silent as it always was, if the attacker hadn’t been the only one stomping about and struggling still.

Spitting out blood from his mouth, Kote blinked slowly again and looked up to see Bast had arrived to the inn once more. He stood at the main door, alone, and silent. His presence was that of a human, as always around so many people. But what caused everyone to go quiet wasn’t his presence necessarily. His demeanor and the very aura he gave off caused everyone to go silent. It was cold and violent, like a storm. Louder than any shouting that could have gone on without saying or making a noise. It was cut throat and dry, suffocating and ripping away and all possible pride and ego from a man’s words just by the look on his face.

Well, and blade in his hands.

“All of you. Out. NOW.” The fae demanded, voice easily carrying through the crowd and overpowering the thrashing and snapping individual trying to carry on the fight. “The inn is now closed and no one is allowed back in here for two days time.”

“But--” Someone tried.

Bast’s gaze flickered to the one speaking immediately, locking eyes and staring. “Did. I. Stutter? I said, everyone out. Now.” Walking into the inn slowly, his steps were soft and heard for once. As though he were stepping harder than usual on purpose to make his point. “I will start picking who leaves first by my own hand if you don’t all leave now.”

No one moved, and the attacker even stopped to watch the strange man enter and threaten so many people at once.

Bast stopped behind the table Kote was propped partially against, lifting the sword and pointing the tip at the first person near by. “Maple,” and continued to point to each one with each word, “Maypole catch and carry. Ash and ember. Elderberry.” The sword ended up pointed at someone he and Kote knew rather well, but a wicked, toothy smile passed his face none the less. “Oh, what a shame.”

“Bast.” Kote snapped, side eyeing him.

Giving a sigh, the fae settled for lifting the sword above his head. With proper inhuman strength, he cut down against the table, wedging the sword too far down into it for anyone human to do. “Next verse, this is going to be someone’s body; may your petty Tehlu have mercy on your poorly atoned fucking souls.” He threatened.

As soon as the last words left, everyone scattered. Rightfully so, since their lives were on the line proper. Those who were nearest him scrambled for the back door through the kitchen, others closer to the door shoved over others to get out first and down the road as fast as they could get. The inn was cleared out in seconds. Including the person who had started the whole fight got away.

But, not before Bast could get a good look at their face and the direction they were going...

Once everyone had cleared, Bast left the lodged sword in the table and grabbed onto Kote, holding him upright and immediately moving his bright hair and picking glass from his face.

“Bast, you-- argh!” Kote tried to argue, only stopped by glass tearing his face more as it was messed with.

“I don’t care. They will forget about it in less than a week. You humans blame everything on drinking and being excited.” The fae argued sharply, continuing to work. His eyes were still bright blue, like a cloudless spring day and clean water. A clear sign he was still not grounded and ready to break someone measly human in half if need be.

Kote grunted and tried to shift his weight, knee giving out from the blow it received earlier and nearly dropping. If Bast hadn’t had an arm around his waist and holding him tight enough to keep still, he would have eaten more glass.

Bast grumbled under his breath silently, picking glass from his friend and mentor’s face, trying to be tender and gentle. Thankfully he had nimble fingers, so it was no issue to get even the smaller bits out. “I’ll repair the table, and have the carpenter replace some of the chairs for being here tonight. He won’t argue. If I tell his wife he was in a brawl, she’ll make him do that, and some for free. And I’ll have --”

“Stop, stop, stop. Stop.” Kote nearly begged, exhausted and already having a hard enough time processing his own thoughts.

“What happened here? Who did this?” Bast pressed, glancing around to finally see the whole extent of the damage. Most of the tables had some form of damage, chairs as well. The floor and bartop was littered in cups, plates, glass, and food. The racks behind the bar were mostly empty, bottles either shattered or cracked on the floor, or about to roll off their shelves to join the others. There was blood splatter here and there as well, though shifting with the flows of alcohol leaking about.

Kote shook his head and grunted in pain, closing his eyes tightly for a moment with his throbbing headache. “I don’t want to talk about it... Just...”

“Reshi--”

“I don’t--”

“KVOTHE.” Bast snapped, holding him tighter and grabbing his face with his free hand. Making Kote look at him, Bast took a deep breath and spoke again, more quietly. “Tell me. What. Happened. Please.”

Kote grimaced and hissed as he was squeezed and made to look at Bast. Everything hurt, he was tired, and he just wanted to sleep. He wanted to lay down and remember to ignore the world. “...Someone came in... claiming they knew me. Things got out of hand and they decided the best course of action was to beat what they wanted to hear out of me.”

“I can clearly see that much. Did you know them?”

“Not that I can remember... And I remember things well enough. So it had to be someone connected to someone else or I’ve forgotten.” Kote explained, speaking and breathing more evenly as time went on. Less light headed and the tingling away, he felt like he was going to pass out instead of do something reckless.

Bast was quiet for a long moment, before nodding. “Right. Well, I’ll get all this fixed up in the next few days. I promise. You aren’t going to do anything but keep in your room and rest -- after I patch you up, okay? Everything is going to be fine. They won’t come back here after that.”

Kote gave a half chuckle, “Neither would I. You nearly chopped a table in half with a sword, Bast. I’d shit myself and pray to Tehlu as well that you never look at me.”

The fae gave a proud smile, “Well, someone has to be able to keep strangers in line. And I don’t see you even able to keep one from fighting you.”

“Ha, ha, ha. You’re lucky I didn’t put beets into dinner...”

“Yes, yes I am. Let’s get you upstairs and cleaned up. I’ll clean this up after you’re settled.” Bast replied, looping his arm around Kote in a more supporting manner for walking instead of holding as he helped the innkeeper hobble upstairs and to his room.

#my writing #gotta find a name for this later #kinda venty kinda just #need to writ to get into a groove again #im also dissociating hard asf #and need somrthing not bad to ground me #so writing it is #and yes its singular they get over it #i didnt know if or who #the attacker should be #since we dont know ALL the story yet #and i didnt wanna make an oc (tm)

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colorguardsweetheartblurrsgirl · 2 years ago

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If your wondering why I'm not posting daily. I got sick this last weekend (haven't gone anywhere just happens when caring for my disabled mom, and well with my dads line of work hes always infront of others who are in all sorts of conditions.. hes the kind ot cough without covering up. So I'm a petri dish if he bring home germs n' stuff or mom does from her appointments wether wearing or without masks... (were a mask wearing family even before the pandemic due to this fact and mom being heavily asthmatic)

Thus last week been dealing with a stomach crude. I keep thinking I'm over it then a day later stomach feels iffy again and its almost a repeat. Luckily, it's not as bad as the first two days I mean, God willing and fingers crossed. But it's difficult to concentrate or do much. Muscles soar, hace a pile😭😱😓😩😨😱 of things to do and everyday I need to get to and thsi is holding me back from.🤒🤢🤕🤮😷🤒😵 Sp under the weather lately. I wake up often and I think Yeah it will be good, or I'll be good & I take a turn for the worst. I nearly threw up several times today. If it lasts for another two days I'm gunna head to the doctor. But this is just annoying for me as it may be for you. It also may or may not be one of the reasons for several recent all nighters. Friday I slept over 12 hours despite thinking I was Okay I was shocked and still felt beat for most of teh day lien I wanted more sleep... I woke today with a strong heavy (for me didnt go over 100 or anything but still wants considered high for me) fever and felt sick for hours.

Just keeping you updated that updates may remain slow till I can beat this. With it being stomach crude I defiently have energy. Drawing is legit one of the few ways (including above writting as that doesnt settle my stomach as often as I'd hope in these tokens due to focus... I think it's the feeling of drawing on paper and not the computer thst calms my nerves or soemthing or the motions against the teeth of teh paper [the bumps on a paper my art teacher at college called teeth, also some call it grooves. Her vocab for it just stuck with me🤣😂]).

I can get my mind not to focus on it and can settle down the sickening feeling by usually drawing and on s ok me occassions reading. Today read outloud and talked out a story I bbn hadn't touched much lately, it helped me settle when I was near hurling before that.

But that being said, I may want to wait to made while sick before I outline them is still up to par... To make sure what I make when I'm sick is actually up to par with what I want to post. I do have old stuff I can post. It's just the process of the pictures, trying to jot get the glare and stuff that keeps me from doing it I may have one or two potential picks I can share at the moment. But I have ti feel good enough to go through it. Literally was holding in the need to hurl while writting thus as I'm trying to distract myself from being sick. But it's a one step at a time situation.

Just keeping you up to date. Take care everyone. Stay healthy out there.

💖🥰😍

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Donatella (Taywhora) - Holtzmanns

read on ao3 | word count: 2924

George’s hand lingers on Tayce’s shoulder for a millisecond too long once he’s done adjusting his outfit, before he lets it drop to the side. There’s a tiny hint of disappointment that swirls in his chest upon the realization that he has to move on to another model, because the show is about to start any minute, and the last thing he wants to do is piss off the show director, who already has a vein throbbing along her forehead as she yells at the poor man fiddling with the lighting fixtures-

“Hey. Go ahead. I won’t take it personal,” Tayce murmurs, and the twinkle in his eyes lets George know that he’s absolutely taking the piss.

Nonetheless, he’s powerless to stop the upward curve of his own lips. “No?”

“Maybe a little.”

He swears he sees Tayce wink, but maybe that’s just the brightness of the fluorescents overhead.

A/N: Hi, I'm still alive, I swear. Life has been fun and also full to the brim of changes, though I'm trying my best to get back into the groove of writing again. Next chapter of vampire fic (and maybe level up) to be revisited soon for sure. In the meantime, enjoy this short and sweet oneshot and let me know what you think! Thank you Writ for betaing 💖

The final day of London Fashion Week tends to feel like the culmination of a week-long bender.

It sort of is, if the thin white lines of powder on blatant display on the dressing room tables are any indication. Not that George has gone near them, not today. Not when tonight’s the Versace show and he’s cut most of these garments and helped to sew at least two of them, and they’re going to be out on the runway in half an hour’s time. Grunt work is the opposite of glamorous when he’s hunched over a sewing machine at two in the morning, but it’s worth it at times like this, when he’s about to show his work with fucking Versace.

Well, not George’s own designs. Not yet. But he has to start somewhere, doesn’t he?

George tries not to wrinkle his nose when the model whose dress he’s pinning lights up a cigarette in between her fingers. Backstage at Fashion Week is never too strict when it comes to smoking, because hell, the big names would throw a fit. It does raise George’s blood pressure just a tad, though, when the ash that the model taps off of her cigarette falls just a little too close to the dress.

He refuses to have his creations ruined by accidental ignition.

It’s almost a relief from George to step away from her, moving onto the model beside her who’s not smoking, thank the heavens, except-

“I remember you!”

Oh, no.

Tayce, at least that’s what George thinks his name is, remains as gorgeous as he was during his fittings a few weeks back. Enough to make George’s carefully planned comebacks fall to the wayside, leaving his lungs empty because of the sharpness of Tayce’s jawline and the sparkle in his eyes. There’s something about Tayce that dries up any remnants of confidence swirling around in George’s system, enough so that he turns into a bloody schoolgirl with a crush.

Not that he has one. He’s at work, for God’s sake.

“I remember you too. Funny how memory works, isn’t it?”

Shy George can sometimes get snarky. Not in a mean way, though. He hopes.

Luckily, Tayce doesn’t seem very bothered. In fact, his smile grows bigger as George kneels down, fiddling with the sides of the trousers he’s got on for the show. The blue fabric isn’t falling quite right, but maybe George can take them in a smidge with a few pins so that they’re more streamlined-

“You’re cute when you’re focused with a handful of pins in your mouth,” Tayce’s wry voice distracts George from the fabric in his hands, and he nearly nicks himself in the process.

He curses internally, not only because of the poke on his finger but also because he probably looks right clumsy in front of Tayce. Model Tayce who knows he’s the shit, if the way he stomps down the runway is any indication, the very one who has an amused look on his face due to George’s internal turmoil.

“Are you trying to make yourself late for the runway?” George asks, but he can’t be stern the way he wants to, not when Tayce is so ridiculously charming and looking at him like he’s a challenge he wants to solve.

Tayce lets out a scoff. “Please. We both know these shindigs never start on time. My afternoon show was forty five minutes late and I wasn’t even the last one to show up.”

George snorts as he gathers the fabric once more. “Oh right, you were second last, weren’t you?”

“The cheek!” Tayce exclaims, crossing his arms, and George only has to shoot eyes in his direction for him to return to his original position, enough so that the fabric falls properly. “I’m on time, everyone else is simply early. Isn’t that the saying?”

George pauses. “Isn’t that from The Princess Diaries ?”

“So what?” Tayce shrugs. “I may have watched that movie but you have too, right? Recognized it and all.”

“Course I did. You don’t take me for someone with shit taste in movies, do you?” George asks as he gets back to his feet, scanning his gaze down Tayce’s torso to make sure his shirt is falling properly, nothing more.

He can feel Tayce’s gaze on him in return and it almost wants to keep him from looking up, because if he does then Tayce is surely going to notice when his cheeks inevitably redden.

Better to focus. Since he’s at work and all.

George barely taps on Tayce’s shoulder, a cue for him to turn around and Tayce readily does so without question, pushing his shoulders back. It’s as if Tayce already knows what George is looking for, anticipating his moves before he has the chance to make them clear. Nothing different from what Tayce would do with any other stylist responsible for checking his garments before a show, but it still feels as if Tayce is paying attention. Noticing George’s little routine.

It’s enough to make his heart beat just a little bit faster.

“Hey. Go ahead. I won’t take it personal,” Tayce murmurs, and the twinkle in his eyes lets George know that he’s absolutely taking the piss.

Nonetheless, he’s powerless to stop the upward curve of his own lips. “No?”

“Maybe a little.”

He swears he sees Tayce wink, but maybe that’s just the brightness of the fluorescents overhead.

George can feel Tayce’s eyes on him as he moves on to the next few models, taking a fraction of the time because really, they don’t need that detailed of a onceover. It’s all for the best because the crowd is quieting on the other side of the curtains and the lights are bright enough to make George squint, even while backstage, as the line of models head out one after another.

Being in the audience for a show is night and day from actually working backstage - it’s as if the curtains dull all of the yelling, the quick-changes, the utter chaos that threatens to spill out onto the stage itself. Once the show starts George runs back and forth, darting between models to help them into their next looks, the rich colours draped along their figures looking straight out of an oil painting, one that he’s lucky to have helped to create. He almost doesn’t notice when he reaches Tayce once more, too caught up with the blueprints of all of the looks in his head until he feels a flick against his shoulder.

“Mighty brave, tugging on my clothes before even saying hello,” Tayce grins, somehow cool as a cucumber while shimmying into the blazer that George holds out for him, the patterns on the sleeves catching in the light.

George has to ignore the slight stammer that catches his tongue, hoping the chaos of the show is enough that Tayce doesn’t either. “I don’t see you complaining about it.”

“Who says I’m complaining?” Tayce throws back, holding George’s gaze before tilting his head to the side, “you’re better than old Muriel over there.”

George has to hold in a laugh as he follows Tayce’s gaze. The older stylist he’s pointing to has been on the scene for decades upon decades, working with the likes of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, and someone George could really learn from, though he’s learned to keep his distance. Probably for the best, because as George watches, she barks at the model whose dress she’s adjusting and passes her the sandwich in her grip so that she can use both of her hands for the job.

Tayce makes a face. “So pushy. And I swear, she wears the same perfume as my nan. Can’t forget the scent of Guerlain Shalimar.”

“Muriel’s bringing back those memories, then?” George asks, snorting when Tayce lets out a shudder.

“Just imagine Muriel as your nan. She wouldn’t feed you Sunday roast until she’d gotten you in cute little outfits with lace and petticoats, all the while threatening to put out her cigarette on your arm if you moved even a centimetre.”

“What an upbringing,” George whistles as he gives Tayce a onceover. “There. Good to go. Back to your place in line, then.”

Tayce blows a kiss, and George swears it’s for the sole purpose of making his face flush beet red, if Tayce’s delighted snicker as he walks away is any indication.

George finds himself peeking over at the curtains leading to the edge of the runway more than once as he’s running around backstage between the clothing racks and all the models, travel sewing kit in hand. Maybe it’s a bit pathetic to keep a constant eye out for Tayce every time he steps off the runway, but George can’t help it. Not when Tayce manages to catch his eye right back every single time.

Tayce sidles up to George once the show’s over and he’s packing up the clothes for travel, taking extra care of the ones he’s helped to put together. No matter how many collections he’s participated in, endless hours of painstaking work, it somehow still feels special. The excitement of it all hasn’t quite worn off just yet. George reaches for a garment bag but Tayce plucks it from the rack before he can, unzipping it so that George can stuff in the dress that’s currently draped across his arms.

Tayce grabs another bag and does the same thing, and it makes George pause for a second, look over towards him. “Don’t you have the afterparty to go to?”

George remembers his first Fashion Week back when he was a student, when the afterparties were glitz and glam and miles away from the clubs near Worksop. All the celebrities and the models and the designers that he would try to network with while they were drunk off their tits, so it would never get too far, anyway. Still, though, it felt almost thrilling.

Now, though, it feels like the novelty has worn off. The seventy-hour work week that is required during London Fashion Week, combined with very little sleep, means that the first thing George wants to do after helping with the pack up is go back to his flat and crash.

“I came here to ask you the same thing,” Tayce counters, rocking on his feet and not looking tired in the least.

George, though, shakes his head. “Me? Nah. I’m knackered.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Tayce gives him a look. “It’s the last day. What else are you up to tomorrow, anyway? You can sleep in, can’t you?”

“I can also sleep now,” George shrugs, and the dramatic sigh that Tayce lets out makes him grin.

It’s sort of nice to feel wanted, almost.

And so George acquiesces, because the possibility of spending more time with Tayce, with Tayce even wanting to spend time with him, is enough to set off a current in his veins and wake him up despite the late hour. “Fine. I’ll only come for a little bit, though. Then it’s bedtime for me.”

The triumphant yell out of Tayce’s mouth makes it worth it, even as Muriel shoots them a dirty look.

Sleep is overrated, George has decided.

It doesn’t come close to the alternative, his current reality where Tayce is tipping back a shot as the chains around his neck catch on the pulsing lights overhead. It’s Tayce’s second one in a row without so much as a wince, and maybe it’s because the bar has watered down the drinks the closer the clock gets to midnight, but it’s hard for George to look away nonetheless.

Tayce doesn’t call him out on it but instead grabs his hand with a glint in his eye, as if the attention is pure energy that charges his system. George swears he feels the electricity through their connected palms.

The way Tayce dances parallels his runway walk - he’s determined with his movements while simultaneously the mirror image of a gazelle getting used to its long limbs as he throws his arms up. Not that it’s a bad look on Tayce, not in the least. Maybe it’s Tayce’s confidence, or maybe it’s just the way George has fallen in too deep, but it works on him.

Tayce tugs on the corner of his shirt before he spins in place, his yell barely audible over the music. “Dance floors aren’t made for standing like a statue. C’mon, then.”

George can accept the fact that Tayce won’t remember tonight with his inevitable hangover tomorrow anyway, while simultaneously wanting to keep himself from looking like an idiot. “I don’t dance.”

“Sure you do,” Tayce chirps, lifting their intertwined hands as if they’re ballroom partners, but pauses when George lets out a squeak. “Wait. Babe, you’re stiffer than Dua Lipa attempting an eight count.”

“I told you!” George huffs, but the embarrassment he expects to feel doesn’t heat his cheeks up, because Tayce is too busy flinging his own limbs around in some sort of interpretation of the music.

It’s almost refreshing, the way Tayce doesn’t seem to care about what other people think, how he almost feeds off of the attention because none of it is ever negative. Even if it was, George isn’t sure that Tayce would ever let any of it tear him down, because he seems more the type to let it roll off of him without so much as a glance over.

It’s not until the remix overhead blends in some Gaga that George feels inclined to sing along, move his hips and his arms a little more because he’s self conscious, yes, but he also has an appreciation for the finer artists in life. He doesn’t miss the way Tayce’s face lights up, the whoop he lets out audible over the music before he grabs both of George’s hands once more as he dances.

“Atta boy!”

George wants to swear that the crowdedness of the dance floor is responsible for how close he’s getting to Tayce, because he doesn’t remember taking a step but Tayce is close enough that George can see the glitter on his cheekbones, the one hair curl swooping onto his forehead. It has to be the crowd that’s pushing them together for sure, enough that Tayce’s fingers are trailing down his biceps and along his waist and grabbing onto his belt loops to tug him in closer.

George lifts his eyebrows up in question, ignoring the way his heart is pounding and the racing thoughts in his head, because if he focuses too much on them he’s going to lose his mind. So instead he watches the way Tayce nods, biting his lip and the subtle waft of cologne that hits him when Tayce wraps his arms around his neck makes his eyes flutter.

Tayce kisses the same way that he moves on the dance floor - unabashed, taking, enough to leave George breathless and gasping, but who needs to come up for air when Tayce invades all of his senses so deliciously? George rakes his nails along the silk on Tayce’s back, and Tayce’s hiss against his mouth is intoxicating, muddying his thoughts more so than the alcohol flowing through his veins.

Tayce’s eyes are unfocused, dazed when they pull apart and it’s the first time George has seen him look anything less than in control. “Fucking hell.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” George can’t help the way his pitch rises in concern as he nearly has to yell over the music, because what if Tayce is more disgusted than anything-

“You idiot,” Tayce snorts, pulling him closer again with a hand on his waist, and George can feel the smile on his lips when they kiss. “What do you think?”

“Just checking,” George mumbles sheepishly, though the chagrin fades when Tayce pulls their hips up against each other and he can feel… oh.

A good thing, then.

“Happy end to Fashion Week, indeed,” George gets out, leaning in closer to Tayce, but it’s short lived when Tayce pulls back, and George has to stop himself from pouting.

Tayce looks entirely too gleeful as his fingers gather in the hair on the nape of George’s neck. “Shall we end it with a bang, then?”

“Oh my god,” George mutters, shaking his head, and it only exacerbates Tayce’s snickering. “Is that really how you get others into bed with you?”

“Is it working?” Tayce asks, and George pauses, his eyes catching on the curve of Tayce’s eyebrow, the sheen of his skin.

As if his answer would be anything else.

So George intertwines their hands, gives a little tug to pull them off of the dance floor, and snorts when Tayce lets out a whoop. Tayce is ridiculous yet somehow suave and hot all at once, a puzzle that George hasn’t quite solved.

Though with their fingers linked as they head out the back door of the club, George is looking forward to getting the chance to do so.

#rpdr fanfiction #rpdr uk #uk2 #taywhora #tayce #a'whora #m/m au #fashion au #holtzmanns

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le-switch · 5 years ago

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Yes, that’s right, 125 pecking headcanons

This has been in my notes for way too long dfjkdf

I’ve been writting down headcanons for the switch in time au for a while. I stopped doing that now so i thought i might as well share what i got done

@switch-in-time It is time- JK you already saw these

💫 Empress thinks the other kids are really cool but doesn't wanna admit it 💫 After sneaking through the manor, Snatch started to strongly dislike cold weather, and even became a little afraid of it 💫 Moonjumper also started to dislike cold weather, just not as much as his brother 💫 The florist is taller than everyone else. She makes fun of everyone for it but will stop if someome gets actually upset 💫 Grooves prefers instrumental music over lyrical music, since he can create his own lyrics for them 💫 Despite being a very popular and talktative kid, Grooves doesn't feel comfortable enough to sing in front of others yet 💫 Connie is the only one who has heard Grooves' singing voice. It was an accident, but he doesn't regret it 💫 Empress would be nicer if everyone taught her how to do the things they are able to do (Like MoonJumper's arts and crafts, for example) 💫 The moon penguins got to know each other thanks to Grooves, and they'll always be grateful to have him as a friend 💫 The express owls already knew each other before meeting Connie 💫 The express owls know that Connie isn't really as mean as he pretends to be, and they all care for him 💫 Hattie's bed is not hers anymore. It was completely invaded by the kids and she now mostly sleeps in her pillow fort 💫 Split Nessa is more unorganized than Gen Nessa, since her appereance doesn't really matter anymore 💫 Snatch stole everyone's left socks at some point 💫 Split Snatch and MoonJumper have an ant farm and they love every single one of their ants 💫 Connie and Grooves will overdramatize everything since they wanna be actors, no matter how mudane the situation is 💫 Mafia Bab once tried to "kidnap" Mu by trying to block her way with chairs. It did not work 💫 To join the mafia you must shave your hair since "Mafia boss is only mafia member allowed to have hair" 💫 Split Snatch and Moonjumper can't be found separated from each other. If you see one of them alone, the other must be nearby 💫 Nessa is usually very polite and shy, but once she's comfortable around you she can become a little bratty 💫 Everyone thinks Split Snatch is adorable and he hates it 💫 Empress doesn't like to play in mud 💫 After being defeated in his "boss battle", Snatch became so exhausted he accidentaly fell asleep on Hattie 💫 MoonJumper loves to swim and play with water 💫 Snatch on the other side, hates water and it's a pain to force him to bath 💫 Empress was supossed to get temporary glasses after her eye got scarred but she refused, and will refuse for the rest of her life 💫 Every kid has called Hattie "Mom" at least once. Most of them are accidents tho 💫 Nessa is the only one who hasn't called Hattie "Mom" by accident because they're all on purpose 💫 Shapeshifter is one of the kids Connie considers an "enemy" since the day they tricked him into giving them his nuggies 💫 Shapeshifter also wants to be an actor like Connie and Grooves, but their shyness wont let them even practice 💫 The Prince from the Split timeline was a Gemini 💫 Every mafia kid wants to be an actual mafioso when they grow up, except for one, who wants to be a paranormal investigator 💫 Despite wanting to be a paranormal investigator, this particular mafia kid is afraid of paranormal stuff. He's trying his best tho.... I'm talking about Goofy Mafia obviously- 💫 The Subcon trio once played 'Kingdom' and Nessa got to play as queen. They never played this game again 💫 Mafia bab and Goofy Mafia were the most hurt by Mu's betrayal, and yet, they were the first kids to forgive her 💫 Snatch was caught trying to steal Hattie's cereal once. Instead of giving it back like a normal child, he started to run yelling it was HIS cereal now 💫 Empress used to like theater until she learned it was for "nerds" 💫 Split Snatch is not an actual ghost despite being like one. He still has to eat, sleep, breath and has a heartbeat 💫 How are babies made? This is a question only Badge knows the answer to 💫 Mafia bab and Goofy Mafia love pizza but the other Mafia kids like hamburguer better 💫 Connie can, and will bite your legs if you make him mad, wich is very often so you better wear long pants 💫 It's very hard to make Grooves mad, but if you do, he'll give you the silent treatment 💫 When Snatch gets sick he will either take full advantage of the situation or pretend he's perfectly fine and push himself to his limit 💫 Mafia bab to Empress: What do you MEAN theater is for nerds??? 💫 Shapeshifter likes to hang out with the penguins and Grooves the most 💫 After a while, Snatch learned that calling any of the alien gals "mom" is the ultimate manipulative move 💫Goofy Mafia and Mafia bab, despite having pretty much opossite personalities, get along so well to the point of being considered best friends 💫 Mafia bab somehow recognizes and knows the names of every single one of the Mafia kids 💫 Mu subconsciously plays favorites. She can't help it, she has to take care of almost 100 kids, if not more 💫 Nessa has a small crush on Snatch. The feeling is, sadly, not mutual 💫 Snatch snatches Nessa's crown sometimes. He likes to pretend he's a king 💫 Mu's cape looks REALLY messy and it's mostly an amalgamate of stitches and fabric. That's because Mafia made it. It was a Mafia gift 💫 Goofy Mafia's other best friend is Thor. Thor would like it better if he spoke like a normal person tho 💫 Bow is a GREAT actress. She can save entire shows with the power of her presence alone 💫 The reason Snatch is more afraid of Victoria than MJ is because he was the closest to being caught. This means he got to see her eyes and the cold stare she always carries with them 💫 This may sound ironic but Snatch strongly dislikes snowball fights. He'd rather build a snowman while drinking hot cocoa 💫The only way Snatch and Empress get along is when it's winter and neither of them want to go outside 💫 Shapeshifter and Empress both have a massive sweet tooth 💫 Thor eventually manages to break Goofy Mafia's habit of speaking in third person. The Mafia kids are confused and Mafia bab is scared 💫 When Nessa gained a lot more confidence, she started to show public affection towards Snatch with the sole purpose of making him flustered. He hates it 💫 Thor can tell when Mafia bab breaks his stuff on accident, even if he tries to pretend it was on purpose. He can identify when he's nervious or guilty 💫 When Split Snatch gets REALLY mad, he burts into flames. The Fire spirits love when this happens 💫 When someone dies, they are given the options of going to the afterlife, stay as a Subconite if they feel like they died before it was their time, or stay as a Dweller to guard the forest if they don't have any issues left but want to be helpful 💫 The Dwellers don't remember their past life, since it'd get in the way of their duties. However, they can feel conections to those who were close to them 💫 If you were really REALLY close to a Dweller when they were alive, they might give you a flower 💫 A particular Dweller gave Nessa a flower once. She was really confused but felt the need to keep it anyways 💫 The swamp tries to drown Hattie at first, for she is an intruder. However the forest eventually warms up to her and stops trying to harm her 💫 Even if the forest didn't warm up to her it would've made no difference since the Subcon trio likes her 💫 The forest also may or may not be a little jealous of the kids' attachment to Hattie. Especially the Split timeline's forest 💫 Goofy Mafia learned about the types of cables and what they're useful for against his will. Guess who taught him 💫 Thor learned about far away planets and the life forms they might contain against his will. G u e s s w h o- 💫 Empress calls Snatch adorable nicknames like 'Marshmallow'. Don't missunderstand, she does this in a mocking way with the sole purpose of making him mad 💫 When Snatch and Empress fight, it's never certain who will win. The Mafia kids like to bet when it happens in front of them 💫 Split Snatch can sing decently. He usually gets the notes right, but he's not a great singer either, so he almost never sings. Gen Snatch's voice cracks every time he tries 💫 Star kid is a very good writter. They make whole stories by their own and sometimes help Grooves with the creation of his songs 💫 Goofy Mafia actually, geniuenly needs his weird swirled glasses to see 💫 Thor convinces Goofy Mafia to be as nerdy as he wants to be. Being a "cool boy" is overrated anyways 💫 The one thing Mu succesfully taught Mafia bab is that beating kids that can't or won't fight back is stupid. It's not like you win something from it. It's not even fun 💫 Snatch is surprisingly good at strategy videogames. One would think he'd mindlessly go for the strongest attack in rpgs, but he doesn't 💫 Goofy Mafia can, and will kick your butt in racing games like Mario kart 💫 Empress is a natural in fighting games. She knows and plays games she really shouldn't. Like Mortal Kombat 💫 Thor and MJ prefer games where you build and take care of a place 💫 Empress is great at biology. She knows body parts, functions and where to stike to kill you. She doesn't want to be grounded for life tho, so don't worry too much about it 💫 Hattie interrupted a Mafia theater play once. The options she inmediately thought about for that situation were -Say sorry and leave -Play dead -Sweat a lot and stand there awkwardly 💫 Thor can be VERY sassy when he wants to be 💫 Goofy Mafia eventually learns about the power of sass thanks to local goggle boy. He barely uses that himself tho 💫 One of Snatch's biggest dreams is to bite Victoria's ankles 💫 Goofy Mafia makes sure that everything "behind scenes" goes without problem at the Mafia theater when there's a play. He even has a checklist 💫 The checklist is actually nothing but scribbles no one except him can understand 💫 Hattie started a "Too self-conscious to act/sing in front of crowds" club to try and help some kids and herself to be more confident in that aspect 💫 Since Goofy Mafia is like the theater's manager he rarely acts in plays. But he's surprisingly good at playing villains. This confuses E V E R Y O N E, no exceptions 💫 Thor often visits Alpine Skyline when he gets tired of being in Mafia Town. He does this especially when he's working on small projects that don't require big tools or too much material 💫 Little Grooves tried to befriend Empress once. Keyword Tried 💫 Caw agents are the type of children that will carefully observe their toys to see if they move after watching Toy Story 💫 Mu hesitated for a second in The Finale when she saw that both Goofy Mafia and Mafia bab were scared of her 💫 Caw agents often say the same thing at the same time when talking to someone else. No one knows how they do it 💫 Caw agents can be described as 'those kids everyone says are weird, but secretly think they're cool' 💫 Warm weather: Nessa, Empress, Snatch, Connie, MJ, Starkid, Express owls, Hattie, most Mafia kids, Mafia bab 💫 Cold weather: Mu, Grooves, Moon Penguins, Caw agents, Goofy Mafia, Thor, Cookie, Cap'n Warlus and his crew 💫 Both are good: Shapeshifter, Badge, Bow, The Nomads, Nyakuza cats 💫 Nessa spaces out often when not in the manor. Don't laugh at her if she crashes into something or someone when walking, it's already embarasing enough 💫 Badge may not talk much but when they do it's always something wise or confusing that leaves people thinking. Goofy Mafia loves it 💫 Just so you know, wise and confusing can also mean out of place and things kids shouldn't know yet 💫 Badge likes snakes and snakes like them back 💫 Nessa doesn't know how to write things other than her name. Her mother told her that's the only thing she needs to know how to write so she can sign stuff 💫 Split Snatch taught his Nessa how to write. Gen Snatch tried with his, but he's more impatient 💫 Victoria moves similar to a snake when mad. Her massive hair starts moving slightly like tentacles, giving her a medusa-like look. What makes it so scary is that she remains calm and calculating when moving like that 💫 Nessa hates her name. There's people who actually believe her name is Nessa and not Vanessa because she never introduces herself like that 💫 Don't forget that despite that, Nessa is still Vanessa in a sense. She can get REALLY clingy. They're working on it 💫 Mafia kids are REALLY strong. They can take a lot of damage and hit hard 💫 Goofy Mafia is not strong. At all. He is however w a y more agile than the other Mafia kids 💫 Thor doesn't find Mafia bab as annoying when he's geniuenly thinking and trying to understand something. It's even endearing sometimes 💫 Cookie is, unsurprisingly, not very good at acting. But she sometimes plays secondary characters in Mafia plays, since some of those characters might need a more unique look and Mafia kids can't provide that all the time 💫 Empress, after a l o t of self-convincing attended one of the "nerd plays" to see Cookie act, and saw how she rarely fit her roles 💫 Cookie expected Empress to regain at least a little bit of her former love for theater with the play she attended to. She didn't 💫Mafia bab once told Goofy Mafia that he would teach him how to be tough. He didn't believe him, and it didn't really work anyway. If anything it was Thor who taught how to be tough 💫 Empress forces the Nyakuza cats to watch Cookie's cooking tutorials. They ended up liking them so it's not that bad 💫 in stressful situations Goofy Mafia will often hide behind Mafia bab. If he doesn't then Mafia bab will automatically put himself in front of him, so it might as well just happen 💫 Subcon's favorite holiday is halloween. They adore it and will put a lot of attention to detail. Even the queen enjoys some parts of it 💫 The reason Victoria enjoys some of it is because she chooses a group of random people to terrorize all night 💫 The candy for halloween is not for the children. It's for the people Victoria keeps up all night, and it's their decision if they wanna share it with children 💫 Mu actually lives in a cave. She can actually get a normal home, but the cave is cooler and bigger 💫 Mafia was not born in "Mafia Town". One beautiful night Mu woke up to find 100+ children, all of them asleep in boats 💫 If you ask Thor what the worst day of his life was, he'd tell you it was day he woke up to a bunch of random children running around in the usually pacific and quiet town, only to have one of them yell at the top of his lungs that they were staying 💫 Shape can be very forgetful sometimes. Don't call them out if they say "happy birthday" 10 times on your birthday

#a switch in time #switch in time

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gvf-imagine · 5 years ago

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JOSH X READER

Part One

warnings: none!

word count: 2255

summary: reader goes to the water park with their roomate\best friend, while there they meet Greta Van Fleet who are playing a small live show in the beer tent. The reader sees Josh and is instantly attracted to him on many levels but what happens when Josh reveals something to her about his personal life. will they become friends or perhaps more than that?

A\N: Hi everybody! this is a brand new fic I wrote, its based on a dream I had a while ago I couldnt get it out of my head so I just had to write it! there will be a part two and possibly even more than that depending on what you all think of it. if you like it and want to be on the tag list just message me or comment ☺️ also like always all critisism is welcome and appreciated, let me know what you think in the comments! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writting it.

thanks to @callmekane for beta reading! ❣️

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“Are you ready to go?” your roommate questioned excitedly, a bright smile beaming on her round face. You looked at yourself in the mirror that hung perfectly on your pastel pink bedroom wall. You wore an egg shell white one piece bathing suit that hugged your body nicely and paired well with your smooth skin tone. You wore your hair down, it hung like a veil over your shoulders, framing your face and making your eyes stand out marvelously. You were very attractive although you often felt the opposite.

“I suppose this is as good as it's going to get” you say, slipping on a pair of jean shorts and black sandals, smiling at your friend.

“You look great!” she chimes, always your hype man.

“Better than me,” she added.You nudge her lightly with your elbow “you look beautiful….you'll definitely get a cute guy's attention” you reply with a coy smile and a wink. Your friend breaks up with laughter , it filled the air, shattering into little twinkling shards, it reminded you of the color orange. Abrasive. Noticeable. Pretty.

“Guys don't notice me” she said softly as if feathers fell from her mouth. The twinkling shards of her laughter faded from the air and from your mind. Ready for a fun day, the two of you got in her car and made your way to Mount Olympus, the water park. You loved water parks, they were always so fun, weather permitting. Today called for sunshine, perfect.

“I heard there’s going to be a live band playing at the beer tent” your friend says bringing a smile to your face.“We should check them out” you say with a nod , of course your friend agrees with you. The two of you loved live music and were always open to new bands and new sounds.“Some band called Greta Van Fleet” she adds, you think for a moment.

“Never heard of em” you respond watching other cars pass out your window, you couldn't help but wonder where everyone was in such a hurry to be. A few minutes later your friend pulls into the parking lot of Mount Olympus. She smiles excitedly before opening her door and stepping out, you followed suit. The sun blanketed your skin making you take a deep breath, you suddenly felt tired but that feeling was quickly lost as your friend sprayed you with cold sunscreen.

“Don't wanna get all burnt up!” She speaks happily. You never understood how she could always be so warm and upbeat. You hardly needed the sun in the sky, having her around gave you the same warm feeling. When she was done rubbing in the sunscreen she handed you the bottle before holding her arms out. You sprayed her arms, legs, and torso then sprayed some in her hands so she could put it on her face and neck. “Alright let's go” you said, stuffing the sunscreen into your bag. The two of you made your way to the park entrance. Dozens of other people clad in bathing suits and towels made their way through the park gates. Endless, untraceable conversations filled your ears as everyone chattered happily, it was very busy and looked to you like colorful static. You smile as you watch the vibrant hectic specs leave the mouths of strangers and float in the ears of others. Your imagination has always been a huge part of your life, you could hear everything you see and see everything you hear. Every sound has a color and physical property in your mind, your best friends laugh for example, the orange twinkling shards of glass.

“The beer tent is this way” she says, ripping you back to reality. Once the two of you reached the tent, there was a small crowd of people gathering as the band was about to start. You and your friend wound up in front of everyone else somehow. You smiled up at the stage, patiently waiting for what was, unbeknownst to you, going to be the start of the rest of your life. A great, great adventure.Then, as if on cue, four men stepped on the stage, one settled behind the drum set and the others grabbed their guitar and bass. The last man to walk on headed for the microphone with an exuberant smile. The guys said nothing just looked at each other and a heavy groove started to play from the speakers as they handled their instruments. The drummer bobbing his head to his own beat, his dark hair blowing through the air. Just then the singer belted out the most perfect and exhilarating note possible, this stunned you and everyone else in the crowd. He sounded so classic. His words floated out of his mouth, a turquoise stream of spiraling liquid filled the air around him, his voice. Purple glitter blasted out of the speakers, their music. It was so surreal to hear and see their sound. The singer looked so focused and almost as if he wasn't here mentally, as if he was singing to himself in his head and he was just imagining everyone around him. Your best friend was completely focused on the guitarist, you could see the attraction in her eyes, you couldn't blame her, he was a beautiful man. You however, couldn't seem to take your eyes off of the singer. He had chromatic hazelnut hair, chocolate browneyes, olive skin and a voice that made clouds seem harsh. You felt your body swaying to the music.

“Oh mama what you gonna do with all that love in your heart?” he belted his body twisting and jolting with the music. You laughed at his charismatic presentation. He was having fun, they all were, and so were you. You let the music take control as you danced , letting your body flow with the beat of the drums. Just then you noticed the singer looking at you, he smiled. You smiled back as you jumped up and down to the music. Your eyes met and locked onto each other. things went silent and blurry but only for a short moment, he looked away hesitantly and continued to sing. “Oh my god he totally just checked you out!!” your friend yelled over the loud volume of the rock and roll music. It didn't feel like he was checking you out, it felt like he was checking your soul out. Any thoughts he was having about you at that moment had nothing to do with your physical appearance or his, not yet decided, physical attraction to you. They finished the song and you noticed the small crowd had grown into a surprisingly large crowd. There were people all around you, jumping, shouting, throwing their arms in the air.

“JOSH I LOVE YOU!!!” you heard one woman yell, her voice was red with passion and slammed into your ear drums like a train. Ouch.

Josh.

Nice name, you thought to yourself, strong and somehow soothing. They played a few more tunes , the one they were playing at the moment was a song , Josh announced, that was titled, flower power. It was a beautiful song and you couldn't help but wonder who he was thinking of when he wrote it. Maybe no one at all. The free spirit of the song made you feel like you were flying with all the flowers in the world surrounding you, lifting you gracefully through the clouds and sky. You loved their music, and you were now decidedly a new fan of theirs, Greta Van Fleet.

The singer , Josh, made eye contact with you once again as he sang “ As the days pass by my mind, are the wrong , the right, you are my sunshine. As the night begins to die, we are the morning birds that sing against the sky” and with that lovely little note , the song ended. You and your friend applauded loudly, as did everyone else. To Josh’s surprise the crowd reacted with loud continuous support. He looked to his band mates, his brothers, and smiled, he was proud of all of them. He looks back to the crowd, he had to find you.

He looked, his eyes searched the crowd but there was no sign of you anywhere. All the clapping and cheering was muted as he focused on finding you, images of your face flashed across his eyes. ‘She was very pretty, uncommonly pretty, in more than one way’ he thought to himself then, there you were, walking away from the crowd with another girl, who was also pretty, but was eyeing Jake the whole show.“Go get her” Jake said as if he could hear josh’s thoughts, josh smiles and steps off the stage.

“They were great right?” your friend said beaming as the two of you sat down at a picnic table with some drinks.

“Yeah they were amazing, I hope they find a way out of this town with all that talent” you respond taking a small sip of your lemonade. Your friend's eyes suddenly grew wide.

“Speaking of” she whispered, nudging you gently. You looked at her and she nodded her head in the other direction, you turned your gaze and saw Josh making his way over to you. You felt your face flush, you adjusted your posture and smiled.

“Uh hello” he said sweetly

“Hi!” you exclaimed, trying not to seem as nervous as you really were.

“Did you enjoy the show?” he asks with a half smile, his hand reached behind him and he rubbed his neck. Perhaps he was nervous too.

“Oh absolutely! You guys were really great, very beautiful sound, I felt like I was flying with flowers” you said. Your face burned red as you realized how stupid that last part must have sounded.

He chuckled lightly

“you looked like you were flying” he said softly, now his face was red.Your friends' eyes darted between you and Josh.

“I'm gonna go get us a locker!” she said standing up abruptly. She smiled at Josh and winked at you as she walked away.

You laugh “sorry about her… she thinks life is one big rom-com” you voice , playing with the straw that stuck out of your drink. Josh laughed and sat down.

“She seems nice,” he replied. There was a moment of comfortable silence.

“Look I came over here because….I couldn't help but notice the chemistry we shared, I know you felt it too” he said. You could tell it took a lot of courage for him to say that, and that he wasn't usually a very forward person, not with women at least.

“Yeah” you smiled

“I felt it” you added. Josh grinned with a sigh of relief. He glanced around and fidgeted with his fingers before speaking again.

“What's your name?” he asks looking into your eyes now.

“(y\n)” you answer sheepishly.

“That's a gorgeous name, im-” he began.

“Youre Josh, I know” you interrupt with a small laugh.

“I just heard about fifty different girls screaming it a second ago” you continue smiling, your eyes looking back over to the stage, which still had a pink aura pulsing around it.Josh smiled and looked down

“yeah… I'm still not used to that” he admitted. Another moment of silence.

“You know i'm not really sure why I came over here...I seen you and just had to meet you...but…” his voice trails

“Let me guess...you have a girlfriend” you finish his sentence for him, praying you were wrong. He lets out a defeated sigh.

“Yeah….” he spoke, so quietly you almost couldn't hear him. You felt your heart sink.

“Of course you do” you speak, sadness lingers on your tongue. Josh picks up on your tone and feels as though he's done something wrong, but he didn't. He didn't like the solemn expression on your face.

“well , are you hungry? Do you want to go get some food or something? As friends?” he asks as if he already knew what your response was going to be.

“I don't know if that's such a good idea….is your girlfriend here?” you ask, eyes looking around the park again.

“No” he answers quickly, maybe a little too quickly. You think for a second but don't let temptation over take your better judgement.

“I don't know josh…” you chime.

“Well here at least give me your number” he says pulling his phone from his pocket. You think again, you knew you felt something with him and that usually didn't happen with people. You grabbed his phone and entered your number, he smiles as you type it in.

“There” you remark with a smirk as you hand it back to him.

“Great… I should go but I'll definitely text you” he assures as he rises from the table.

“Actually, the guys and I are playing at a college party next weekend if you want to come, bring your friend too. I saw Jake looking at her” he says. You laugh excited for her, she'll be all too happy to hear that.

“Count us in” you answer.

“I'll text you the time and address tonight” he adds before smiling at you again.

“It was really nice to meet you (y\n)” he grins.

“You too Josh, thanks for the music” you reply.

He smiles at you slipping his phone back in his pocket before making his way back over to the band, you watched him until he disappeared in the crowd of people.

(to be continued...)

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adevotedappraisal · 5 years ago

Text

Magdalene by FKA Twigs, a review.

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I’ve been learning some shit from women from as long as I’ve been alive. Always some other shit that I never asked for but I got told it. I used to treat them things they said as laws as a child, but I never saw them in a book, so then I stopped believing them. They were always hushed laws though, laws told with squinted eyes and italicized whispers, laws told when no one else was around.

I mean, now of course men make the real laws that we know and live by. Well come on now, we write them on parchment, and display them on lights, we code them into computers, inscribe them on coins and stone. But these women…man women tell you some other shit, like glue shit, in low, muttered tones in the quiet part of the house. Like advice on… well not how the world works, but how to deal with the world when it works against you, and how to make it work for you. But you see, I’ve come to believe that the fairer sex tells you different laws than the vaunted laws and advice of our fathers because they all around see the world differently than men do. They may, in fact, have been harbouring different goals than us all along.

I mean for christssakes us men have our hero’s journey as clear as day, writ large and indelible across history books and entertainment. You could take that Joseph Campbell mono-myth theory and see it expressed in Arthurian swash-buckle, the middle earth ring-slaying of Tolkien, or in the recently concluded tri-trilogy of Star Wars galactic clashes. We’re in the empire business, as Breaking Bad’s Walter White infamously said. But still, the question always lingered to me: what is the heroine’s journey? Is it really just a lady in a knight’s armour? Or some tough-as-nails spy for some interloping government’s intelligence agency, delivering kidney kicks in a designer pencil skirt?

Well, I’ve come to believe that the heroine’s journey is navigating the waves of history we imperial and trans-national men make from our railroads and pipelines, our satellites and wars, them at once preserving a culture and sparking a path and creating a bond between cultures in order for them and their (il)legitimate brood to survive. That old chestnut about how behind every successful man is a woman always unnerved me by its easy adoption. I kept thinking ‘bout that woman. I kept thinking, what the fuck was she thinking?

You see women’s heroes, they ain’t as clear as day to me. They don’t kill the dragon, they don’t save the townspeople, they don’t shoot the Sherriff, or the deputy, or anyone most times. When I ask people in public at my job what super power they would like, most men go for strength, flight, and regenerative abilities (my pick). Most women went with mind reading and flight. In late night conversations though, with the moonlight coming through the white blinds and resting soft on us like so, I sometimes manage to hear that women’s heroes heal and clean the sick of the nation, in sneakers with heels as round as a childhood eraser; they feed a family with one fish and five slices of wonder bread; they would run gambling spots in the back of their house, putting the needle back on the Commodores record and patrolling the perimeter of the smoked-out room with a black .45 nested by their love handles; they climb up flag poles and speak out loud in public for the disposed and teach children those unwritten, floating laws while cloistered in the quiet part of the house.

Although their heroines are sometimes from the top strata of society –a Pharaoh here, an Eleanor Roosevelt there, an Oprah over there—they also name a healthy mix of radicals and weirdos with modest music success, people like Susan B. Anthony, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, or Nikki Giovanni, I mean did Nina Simone or Janis Joplin even crack the Billboard top ten? Yet there they are, up on the walls of a thousand college dorms across the country. So even though I couldn’t’ve foreseen it, it makes sense that of all the ultra-natural creatures, of all the great conquering kings and divining prophets of the Holy Bible, Mary Magdalene ends up the spirit animal for the album of the year for 2019.

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jewish Rabbi Jesus during the first century, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, a figure who was present for his miracles, his crucifixion and was the first to witness him after his resurrection. From Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church portrayed her as a prostitute, a sinful woman who had seven demons exorcised from her. Medieval legends of the thirteenth century describe her as a wealthy woman who went to France and performed miracles, while in the apocryphal text The Gospel of Mary, translated in the mid-twentieth century, she is Jesus’ most trusted disciple who teaches the other apostles of the savior’s private philosophies.

Due to this range of description from varying figures in society, she gets portrayed in differing ways, by all types of women, each finding a part of Magdalene to explain themselves through. Barbra Hershey, in the first half of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) plays her as a firm and mysterious guide, a rebellious older cousin almost, while Yvonne Elliman, in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation of Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is lovelorn and tender throughout, a proud witness of the Word being written for the first time. In “Mary Magdalene,” FKA Twigs, the Birmingham UK alt-soul singer, describes the woman as a “creature of desire”, and she talks about possessing a “sacred geometry,” and later on in the song she tells us of “a nurturing breath that could stroke you/ divine confidence, a woman’s war, unoccupied history.” Her vocals that sound glassy and spectral in the solemn echoes of the acapella first third, co-produced by Benny Blanco, turn sensual and emotive when the blocky groove kicks in. That groove comes into its own on the Nicolas Jaar produced back third, and when this all is adorned with plucked arpeggios it sounds like an autumnal sister to the wintry prowl of Bjork’s “Hidden Place” from her still excellent Vespertine (2001).

This blending of the affairs of the body and of Christian theology is found in the moody “Holy Terrain” as well. While it is too hermetic and subdued to have been an effective single, it still works really well as an album track. In this arena, Future is not the hopped up king of the club, but a vulnerable star, with shaded eyes and a heart wrapped up in love and chemicals, sending his girl to church with drug money to pay tithes. Over a domesticated trap beat he shows a vulnerable bond that can exist, wailing his sins and his devotion like a tipsy boyfriend does in the middle of a party, or perhaps like John the Baptist did, during one of his frenzied sermons, possessed and wailing “if you pray for me I know you play for keeps, calling my name, calling my name/ taking the feeling of promethazine away.”

Magdalene, the singer’s sophomore release, takes the mysterious power and resonance of this biblical anti-heroine, and involves its songs with her, these emotional, multi-textured songs about fame, pain and the break up with movie star boyfriend Robert Pattinson. With “Sad Day,” Twigs sings with a delicate yet emotional yearning, imbued with a Kate Bush domesticity. The synth pads are a pulsing murmur, and the vocal samples are chopped and rendered into lonely, twisting figures. The drums crash in only every once in a while, just enough to reset the tension and carve out an electronic groove, while the rest of the thing is an exercise in mood and restraint, the production by twigs, Jaar and Blanco, along with Cashmere Cat and Skrillex, leaves her laments cosseted in a floating sound, distant yet dense and tumultuous, the way approaching storm clouds can feel. Meanwhile “Thousand Eyes” is a choir of Twigs, some voices cluttered and glittering, some others echoed and filled with dolour. “If you walk away it starts a thousand eyes,” she sings, the line starting off as pleading advice and by the close of the song ending up a warning in reverb, the vintage synths and updated DAWs used to create these sparse, aural haunts where the choral of shes and the digital ghosts of memory can echo around her whispered confessional.

In many of these divorce albums, the other party’s role in the conflict is laid bare in scathing terms: the wife that “didn’t have to use the son of mine, to keep me in line” from Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear from 1979; the players who “only love you when they’re playin’” as Stevie Nicks sang on Fleetwood Macs Rumours (1977); or as Beyonce’s Lemonade (2017) charges, the husband that needs “to call Becky with the good hair.” At first though, Twigs is diplomatic, like in “Home with me,” where she lays the conflict on both sides here, expressing the rigours of fame, the miscommunication –accidental or intentional –that fracture relationships, and the violent, tenuous silence of a house where one of the members is in some another country doing god knows what, physically or mentally. “I didn’t know you were lonely, if you’d just told me I’d be home with you,” she sings in the chorus over a lonely piano, while the verse sections have the piano chords flanked by blocks of glitch, and littered with flitched-off synths. Then, the last chorus swirls the words again, along with the strings and horns and everything into a rising crescendo of regret.

Later in the album however, her anger once smoldering is set alight, in the dramatic highlight “Fallen Alien.” Twigs sings with an increasing tension, as her agile voice morphs from confused, pouting girlfriend to towering lady of the manor, launching imprecations towards a past lover and perhaps fame itself. “I was waiting for you, on the outside, don’t tell me what you want ‘cuz I know you lie,” she sings, and, after the tension ratchets up becomes “when the lights are on, I know you, see you’re grey from all the lies you tell,” and then later on we have her sneering out loud “now hold me close, so tender, when you fall asleep I’ll kick you down.” All while pondering pianos drop like rain from an awning, tick-tocking mini-snares and skittering noises flit across the beat like summer insects, the kicks of which are like an insistent, inquisitive knocking at the door, and then there’s that sample, filtered into an incandescent flame, crackling an I FEEL THE LIGHTNING BLAST! all over the song like the arc of a Tesla coil. The song is a shocking rebuke, and it becomes apparent upon replays that the songs are sequenced to lead up to and away from it, the gravitational weight giving a shape and pace to the whole album. Because of this, the other songs on Magdalene have more tempered, subtle electronic hues and tones, as if the seductive future soul of 2013s “Water Me” from EP2, and the inventive, booming experimentation of “Glass & Patron” from 2015s M3LL1SSX, were pursed back and restrained until it was needed most, and this results in an album more accomplished, nuanced and focused than her impressive but inconsistent debut LP1 (reviewed here).

This technique of electronic restraint has shown up in the most recent albums by experimental pioneers, with the sparse, mournful tension of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (2017), it’s cold, analog synths and digital embellishments cresting on the periphery of the song, and with Wilco’s Ode to Joy from last year, an album bereft of their lauded static and electric scrawl, mostly embossed in acoustic solitude and brittle, wintery guitar licks. Twigs and her co-producers take the same knack for the most part throughout the album, like with closer “Cellophane,” where the dramatic voice and piano are in the forefront, while effects crunch lightly in the background like static electricity in a stretched sweater, and elsewhere, as the synths of “Daybed” slowly intensify into a sparkling soundscape, as if manufacturing an awakening sunrise through a bedroom window. And it is this seamless melding of organic and electronic instruments, to express these wretched and fleeting emotions of heartbreak that makes this the album of the year.

It makes sense that an artist like FKA Twigs would be drawn to a figure like Mary Magdalene. Of the many Marys in the New Testament, she stuck out as palpably different, or rather, she depicted a differing part of womanhood than the other two. She wasn’t the chaste, life-giving mother of Jesus, or the dutiful Mary of Clopas. Instead, Magdalene was this mixture of sexuality and spirituality, one of those figures that managed to know men and women in equal measure, wrapped up with the blood as well as the flesh. Twigs also played with this enrapturing sexuality in her work, writhing around in bed begging some papi to pacify her and fuck her while she stared at the sun, then making you identify with the lamentations of video girls, and then telling you in two weeks you won’t even recognize who you were seeing before. There was something mysterious and layered to her millennial art-chick sexpot act though, layers that have begun to be revealed with this album.

We realise now, that what she was depicting all along was more like the sexual heat that lays underneath devotion, as opposed to fleeting, mayfly lust, and that she now understands the weight and half-life of love. That is, that beyond the sex and patron and fame there is a near sacred love we build between each other for a while in time, lasting as long as both hands can bear to hold it, and also that the death of a relationship still has the memory of the love created warm within it that then radiates off slow into the air. A love that then falls into our minds for safekeeping dark and unobstructed now, the way Jesus’ blood fell from his wound into Joseph of Arimathea’s grail held aloft.

“I never met a hero like me in a sci-fi,” FKA Twigs sings, an evocative line less so for the hegemonic patriarchy of the worldwide movie and comic book industry suggested by ‘the sci-fi’ here, and more for the ‘hero like me’ part, which suggests she had to make her hero origin story all up, without the scaffolding of centuries of relatable mythologies, presenting us with an avatar of millennial love, in all of its tortured luster. And you hear this type of love in her voice, no longer changed up and ran through a filter for Future Soul sophistication most times, but out in the open now, to express particular emotions, whether it’s in that swooping, falling ‘I’ in the heart-break closer “Cellophane,” or her assured realisation, later on “Home With Me” where she says “But I’d save a life if I thought it belonged to you/ Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down.”

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It’s never about how to conquer with these women you see. In the end of all relationships it’s how they find their way out after us temporarily embarrassed conquerors are about to leave, jacket slung over shoulder, standing by the door. You squint your eyes back at her this time, and you listen this time, while she tells you, or tells the ground in front of you, what parts of love to let go of, and what parts are worth holding on to in this age of Satan, the parts that will help you become yourself. “I wonder if you think that I could never help you fly,” the song tells you then, one of those stinging admissions that only women come up with, and you wisely stay silent, and then the piano chords part, the synths subside. And for a while there as she looks at you, as the breathy sortilege in the song keeps going, it all sounds like something worth believing in again. And then, the words she says to you start to come across like laws.

#music #music review #rnb #rnb music #r&b #soul #future soul #future pop #alt soul #electronica #fka twigs #magdalene #mary magdalene #cellophane #Long Reads #sad day #hiro murai #new music

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idealistsinc · 5 years ago

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better off

content warning: arguing, some nsfw dialogue, then tooth-rotting adorable

When it came to matters of presentation, reining in Rin Weise was as futile as laveering a schooner in a storm.

Rin had swathed the sofa in every last tunic and pair of trousers Vhox owned. Vhox languished in a nearby armchair as he watched Rin gnaw a hangnail, pacing from one rumpled, sun-bleached shirt to another with a brow so furrowed it looked like it was trying to migrate to his chin. He had only agreed to let Rin choose his outfit because Rin had already bitten his fingernails to the quick over this whole Maelstrom business; letting Rin expend his nervous energy on something productive tended to go far better than the alternative. Anyway, thought Vhox, draping himself over the arm of the chair, at least he had an excuse to lounge about shirtless without Rin accusing him of being deliberately provocative. If he could just get Rin to stop fretting for long enough to look at him…

Rin paused from wearing a hole in the rug to hand Vhox a sedate white shirt, miraculously unblemished by seawater, sweat, or other unmentionable substances. “Try this one.”

Vhox held it up for inspection with a suggestive flex of his bicep. “Y’know,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “I think this is th’ one I wore on that Lower Decks tavern crawl, when you dragged me off be’ind the dumpsters an’—”

“Thank you,” said Rin. “I recall. Please put on the shirt, Vhox.”

Sighing theatrically, Vhox navigated his arms through the sleeves. “Never thought I’d see the day where y’wanted me to put on more clothes.”

That didn’t elicit even the ghost of a smile. The moment Vhox had his head through, Rin attacked him with all the deadly focus of a predator, tugging out wrinkles, straightening sleeves, and tightening the collar so that it near strangled him (“You tryin’ t’kill me?” Vhox griped. Rin, rolling his eyes, graciously undid one more button than his sense of propriety demanded). Then, Rin stepped back and looked Vhox over with such a critical gaze that Vhox resisted a childish urge to squirm.

“The sleeves are rather billowy,” Rin remarked, finally. “A bit too high seas.”

“The Maelstrom’s an armada. High seas’s what they’re goin’ for.”

“Point taken.” Rin frowned, then reached to brush Vhox’s bangs out of his face, a gesture Vhox mistook for affectionate until he added, “We ought to do something with your hair.”

Vhox’s stomach wrenched like a rudder grinding against a rock. “Nothin’ wrong with it,” he said. He caught Rin’s wrist; Rin pulled out of his grip in a huff, his tail twitching.

“Perhaps not, if what you’re going for is ‘lawless rogue.’ I’m only going to tie it back—”

Yeah, thought Vhox, because that fuckin’ tattoo will go over so well. He could imagine the sight he would be, a beaten-down, washed-up wharf rat parading himself in front of a Maelstrom lieutenant with a godsdamned cult brand on his cheek. He moved out of Rin’s range, hurt sharpening his voice. “Hell no. It’s one thing to pick out somethin’ nice, but I ain’t gonna start puttin’ on airs.”

“It’s not about ‘putting on airs.’ It’s about getting your foot in the door,” Rin said, with the infuriating patience of a parent for a tantruming child. “The Maelstrom administers to eight other squadrons. You’re going to need to show more than your usual bureaucratic finesse; I expect their standards aren’t exactly lax.”

If before the rudder had merely scraped on a rock, now Vhox felt the jolt of the whole bloody ship beaching on the shore, splintering the hull like matchsticks and throwing half the crew in the bay to drown. He’d been standing there for all of five minutes. If Rin judged that he didn’t pass muster, what the hell was Vhox even doing, thinking he might have a shot at making something more of himself than a lawless rogue?

“You think I can’t get in.”

Rin, reading the change in Vhox’s face, stilled. “I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t need to.” Vhox swung an arm at the tangle of tunics and jackets sprawled on the sofa. A prickling heat burned beneath his collar. “That’s what all this is, ain’t it? You don’t think they’ll take me ‘less I’m somethin’ I’m not—”

“That isn’t what I—”

“—so I’ll save us both th’ godsdamned time. Why go?”

“Because they might pay you,” said Rin. His voice went pitchy in his attempt not to raise it, cracking like a prepubescent kid whose balls had just dropped. “I’m sorry you feel that’s encroaching on your bloody gods-given right to do whatever you want, but what do you want me to say? That appearances don’t matter? That nothing you do will make a difference so that you have an excuse not to try? Because they do matter, and it does make a difference. Here in the adult world, sometimes you have to play the part just long enough to get hired.”

“Yeah?” Vhox said, before he could think better of it. “How’s that workin’ out for you, Rin? Tell me all about how good you're doin' at your job."

Rin’s expression blanked. Just like that, like closing a window, and just like that the air was crushed from Vhox’s lungs in a horrible vice of regret.

A fortnight past, Vhox came home from hauling nets at the docks to find Rin frozen in the grips of a panic attack so severe he couldn’t catch his breath to tell him what was wrong. Vhox had held him for nearly an hour, feeling the pounding staccato of Rin’s heart against his sternum and his shallow gasps on his neck, before Rin calmed down enough to give a disjointed and dissociative explanation: Rin had made a calculation error on a shipment through Maelvann’s Gate. It was a minor error, but such a taxing and expensive fix that Rin’s boss had called Rin into her office to suffer a formal reprimand, which utterly convinced Rin he was as good as fired—without an income, Kallu couldn’t go to school, Luma would never forgive him, and Rin would lose the flat and everything in it—without the flat, Rin would have to move back in with Isha’a, they would argue because Rin had never learned how to keep his damnable mouth shut, and Vhox would be turned out on the streets and maybe starve, maybe wind up stabbed to death in the gutter—

There were other inevitabilities that whirled in Rin’s head, Vhox was sure, but Vhox didn’t get to hear about them. By the time he got to the part where Vhox would clearly die without him, Rin was sobbing too hard to finish.

That was the funny thing about Rin. When Rin believed he needed to play a part, he played it so well that not even Vhox had seen the burden on Rin’s shoulders until Rin had already collapsed beneath it. Vhox realized that day he had no idea when Rin had begun to take on Vhox’s well-being as his responsibility—and it was for that reason, and that reason alone, that Vhox had sought out employment with the Maelstrom, determined to relieve Rin at once of that weight.

In the present, Rin forged doggedly through the silence. “I am trying to help you.”

“An’ I didn’t ask for your help!” If taking that burden off Rin’s shoulders was Vhox’s aim, his failure was already writ in the stress-carved canyons on Rin’s forehead and the heavy bruises under his eyes. Rin was trying to help him, and how did Vhox repay him? By shouting at him. By pissing away the last twenty-odd years of his life, time from which Vhox might never be able to recover into the kind of person who could hold a steady job, the kind of person who might actually be deserving of— “I never asked for you to feed me or put a roof o’er my head. I ain’t a godsdamned charity case, some beggin’ starveling needin’ you to play benefactor—”

“No, you’re not.”

“Then maybe don’t act like you’re doin’ me such a favor, dolin’ out gil to stroke your own dick—”

“By the bloody fucking Twelve, Vhox!” said Rin, very loud. His frustration trembled in his legs; he strode up to Vhox and took him firmly by the shoulders, but...even upset as Rin was, his touch was gentle. “Is this what we’re doing now? Being vulgar for the sake of it, hoping I’ll storm out in disgust so you can tell yourself what a terrible person you are? Because you’re not, and I won’t. You can’t push me away—shockingly, I take care of you because I love you, you brainless twit—”

Vhox heard nothing else Rin said. It was as if the floor had pitched beneath him and dropped him to his knees, knocking the breath and the anger out of him in one fell swoop.

“What?” said Vhox.

Rin paused. Vhox saw him mentally backtrack through his tirade, saw the moment Rin realized what he’d said cross his face. All at once, the tension between them sagged like an empty sail. Rin’s fingers clenched in Vhox’s shirt, his chest deflating in a long, defeated sigh. “I love you,” he said again. “That’s—that’s not how I imagined I would say that, but…”

Vhox didn’t know what Rin meant to say next, and somehow, he didn’t care. An eddy of warmth had washed through him, a feeling like the heat in his stomach on the first sip of ale, like sun-warmed skin on a summer afternoon; and he noticed for the first time the flush in Rin’s cheekbones that made his markings pop, the curl of his hair over the rims of his glasses, those wide eyes behind them. Gods, but he really did have the prettiest fucking eyes Vhox ever saw. The color reminded him of the sky right at sunset, when the sun seemed to douse itself out in the sea in a final burst of violet—

Before Vhox could think about what he was doing in the slightest, he was already kissing Rin.

To be fair, Rin kissed him back. Then, as though Rin suddenly remembered he was supposed to be upset with Vhox, he pulled away, bewildered. “Wait. What are you…?”

“I’m a fuckin’ blockhead,” said Vhox. His hands settled in the familiar and well-tracked groove at the small of Rin’s back, and Vhox tugged him closer, enjoying the shiver that quailed up Rin’s spine. “Why would I wanna argue with you when there’s so many other things I can do wi’ my mouth—”

“Are you seriously—you’re flirting with me?” Rin barked a short, baffled laugh. “We were just in a row. I legitimately thought I was going to strangle you. Perhaps we should, I don’t know, talk about that?”

“Later. I wanna make it up to you.”

“And how, pray tell, are you going to do that?”

“I was thinkin’ I’d start with a blowjob,” Vhox said. He considered, then added, “The stranglin’ can be negotiated.”

Rin stared at Vhox long enough that Vhox almost let him go, suddenly anxious he had come on too strong after an argument the caliber of the one they’d just had. But then something in Rin’s face thawed, and Rin twined his arms about Vhox’s neck with the kind of laughter that always buoyed Vhox’s heart to hear—his real laugh, soft and somehow shy.

“Far be it from me to turn down such a compelling offer,” Rin said. Then, his smile turned suggestive, a promise that often led to future orgasms for Vhox—which was to say, if Vhox had at all been thinking before, he certainly wasn’t now. “With ever so much to make up for—well, you’d best get started.”

And Vhox, indeed, got started.

. . .

Some bells and several orgasms later, Vhox and Rin lay entwined beneath the sheets. The light ebbed through the window, leaving shadows in its wake as the sea leaves shells. Vhox fought against a sated, comfortable sleepiness by staring up at the ceiling and counting the cracks in the plaster. Over the years, he’d seen many ceilings, usually while a buxom woman rode his cock—smoke-yellowed ceilings, ceilings splotched with mold, cobwebbed and fissured and sometimes falling in. But Vhox already knew this ceiling. Rin led a furious crusade against the spider infestations with a broom for this ceiling, mopped the walls when the seaspray made the room too damp, and already talked about whitewashing over the lone crack—

Llymlaen’s tits, Vhox thought, catching himself. It’s just a godsdamned ceiling.

It wasn’t just a godsdamned ceiling, though. It was Rin’s ceiling. Vhox didn’t know why, but that seemed like an important distinction to make.

The problem was that the warm, steady weight of Rin’s head on his chest kept dredging up all manner of complicated and incoherent feelings. Vhox knew he would have to wade through them sometime, plumb down to the bottom of the muck where Rin’s confession rested like a small, glimmering gem and take it in his palm, see if its facets would cut. Maybe, though, for only a moment, he could just…

Rin moved away from Vhox to prop himself up on his elbows, his tail weaving in restless sweeps against the mattress. Vhox was a little disappointed, but not surprised; Rin’s post-nut clarity always came in the form of anxious tidying. “I should iron that shirt if you’re to wear it tomorrow,” Rin said, proving the point. “As I recall, it was rather unceremoniously discarded in the hallway.”

“Leave it,” said Vhox. “I’ll take care of it later.”

“Vhox, you’ve never ironed a shirt in your life.”

No, he hadn’t. But if it was important to Rin to iron that shirt, goddammit, Vhox would iron the bloody shirt. “It’s a metal bit an’ some heat. What could go wrong?”

“You could burn the flat down.” Rin sat up and shifted his legs over the side of the bed. “I won’t be very long. I’ll just—”

Vhox grabbed his hand. He hadn’t expected to do that, and so for a blank string of seconds he just limply held it, forgetting everything he might have wanted to say. “Rin,” he finally managed, his name soft in his mouth. “Stay here a while.”

Rin hesitated. Then, crossing his legs beneath him, he stayed.

Vhox didn’t believe in that gooey bullshite about two bodies fitting perfectly together. He had seen enough bodies to know that, whether they were lithe or bulky, gangling or lumbering, bodies were awkward. They shat, smelled, vomited, leaked out snot or tears, came too soon or not soon enough, fumbled, choked, and sometimes jabbed him way too hard in the side with those bony fucking elbows, Rin. But...as Vhox folded Rin into his arms, tracing the delicate skin that hardly clothed the cage of his ribs, Vhox found himself staggered beneath a surge of protectiveness for this particular body, a built-up flood with nowhere to go. It would be one thing if Vhox had to protect Rin from the pirates, bandits, and thieves that nested in the dark corners of Limsa Lominsa—Vhox could throw a punch like nobody’s business—but that wasn’t the threat Rin faced, day after day after day.

The most dangerous person in Rin’s life was, and had always been, Vhox himself.

“Sorry we fought,” said Vhox. “I didn’t mean that shite about the…I just…”

I, what?

But Rin spoke before Vhox could name that shipwrecked feeling. “No, you were right to be upset. I was much too critical,” he said, drawing idle lines between the freckles on Vhox’s forearms with a ragged fingernail, his ears folding back. In Rin’s words, Vhox heard the blistering echo of a man Rin tried so hard not to be—for that alone, Vhox would’ve decked Senan fucking Weise in the goddamned teeth. “It’s not that I think there’s something wrong with you, only that…people are judgmental. I—I wanted the Maelstrom to give you a chance.”

“You didn’t need me t’fix my hair or any o’that to give me a chance.”

Rin scoffed. “The way I remember it, you hardly gave me a choice in the matter. I couldn’t have avoided you even if I wanted to.”

Vhox remembered, too: Rin’s dull, stringy hair. The sharp, hollowed angles of his face. The preternatural stillness with which Rin had held himself, a living ghost of a person. Rin had bitched the whole walk to the Bismarck, of course, but what Vhox remembered best was how his eyes came alive at that first taste of Bianaq bream. Gods, how Vhox had craved him. How badly he’d wanted to see how he might come alive at the tang of a malty Limsan old ale, or the flavor of Vhox’s tongue in his mouth—

“Did y’want to avoid me?” Vhox asked.

“…No,” he said, as though it were some kind of confession. “But I wouldn’t have admitted it on pain of death—I suppose I had my biases, too.” Rin faltered, his voice falling. “You don’t have to wear that shirt tomorrow, you know. I didn’t intend to be quite so forceful about it—”

“It wasn’t about that. I was—” What was it Rin had said earlier? “I was bein’ vulgar for th’ sake of it. Pickin’ a fight.”

When Vhox didn’t continue, Rin prompted, “What for?”

“I dunno. ‘Cus...” Vhox drew an uncertain breath, something in him quavering like a loose sail in a hurricane. “‘Cus I’m scared, I guess.”

Rin turned his head as though to look at him. Vhox squeezed Rin tight to keep him still, already more exposed and vulnerable than he would have liked to be, and so was surprised when Rin nudged his face into the soft space under Vhox’s chin and, very faintly, began to purr—a gentle rumble against Vhox’s pulse that evoked not so much a memory as a primal bond, something that soothed even as it bound, something that growled, Mine. Vhox closed his eyes and let himself, for a moment, be comforted.

“I don’t have a handle on this ‘steady job’ thing,” said Vhox, when he was again capable of speech. “Even if the Maelstrom takes me…I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’. I’ve been runnin’ from th’ law my whole life, not bein’ its bloody arm. An’—th’ job’s dangerous.”

Even as Vhox said it, though, he knew that wasn’t what he meant. When he dug down to the rotting root of it, every fear was really one fear: What if I hurt someone?

It wouldn’t be hard. One stab, one shot, one punch too many and Vhox would slaughter someone he hadn’t meant to kill, waking up again with pooled ichor squelching beneath his nails, waking up again to the fear like drowning of not knowing whose blood it was. And Rin. Rin would come for him even if Vhox got thrown in gaol. Rin would come even if Vhox was hurt, even if Vhox was the kind of hurt that made him do worse—

Vhox had never harmed Rin so far, and by the good graces of the entire pantheon of the Twelve, even motherfucking Azeyma, Vhox prayed he never would. But that didn’t stop Vhox from thinking about the flintlock pistol he made Rin keep in the bedside drawer, ostensibly for security reasons but really for Vhox’s own peace of mind. That didn’t stop Vhox from trying and failing to scrape together the courage to tell Rin outright what he wanted him to do with that gun if Vhox ever went feral in Rin’s presence again.

That small, glimmering gem had a sharp edge, after all. Even if Vhox was killing him, Rin would refuse to shoot.

“I’m dangerous.” Vhox swallowed. Though Rin already knew, admitting it still felt like opening up bleeding wounds in his throat. “An’ I think sometimes you’d be be’er off with some Sharlayan milksop whose job doesn’t come wi’ a risk of killin’ him, somebody who ain’t got a chance in hell of layin’ a finger on you—”

“Vhox—” said Rin, twisting to face him.

“Hang on. I’m not finished talkin’ yet.”

Rin’s tail flicked uneasily against his thigh. Vhox's gaze dropped to the clean line of Rin’s collarbone, his narrow chest that rose and fell with each quiet breath—and then a soft hand cupped his jaw, a thumb gliding over that scarred tattoo Vhox always hid beneath his mop of reddish hair until, finally, Vhox lifted his eyes to Rin’s. He didn’t know how he felt about what he saw there except that it ached in an inarticulable way, like prodding fingers into a healing bruise. The lesson Vhox had learned in his twenty-odd years of life: the people in his life didn’t come back. The people in his life didn’t stay.

But Rin did.

“It’d be for the best if you left,” Vhox said, an echo of something he told Rin once in a cave in bumfuck nowhere, Gyr Abania, and something he still in his heart of hearts believed, “but I...I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want you to run off with some struttin’ prick from Sharlayan. I want you to be wi’ me—an’ that? That scares the everlovin’ shite out of me.”

Because Vhox had never felt like that before. Because Vhox had drifted unanchored through his life until that day Rin had gored a ravenous, insatiable hole inside of him as he left, ripping away that which Vhox hadn’t even known he had to lose. Because when Rin left, Vhox wouldn’t just lose Rin. Vhox would lose the screams of Rin’s violin as he practiced, a barrage of tuneless notes like a streetcat’s mating call that, when Vhox least expected it, resolved into a chord so full it raised the gooseflesh on his arms. Vhox would lose the sweet familiarity of tossing his jacket over the same chair every evening, falling into the same warm bed with freshly-laundered sheets, never worrying he might get shanked in his sleep, his money stolen halfway to Ul’dah before his corpse was even stiff. Vhox would lose that little hiccup in his chest he got every time he washed up into Bloodshore after dark and saw that Rin had hung a lantern for him, though Vhox hadn’t told him he would be coming by that night—or any night, because Vhox refused to take a key to the flat on the grounds that he couldn’t bear to love this place and then be forced to leave it.

But, somewhere in him, Vhox also knew that there wouldn’t be a when. There were words for that knowing, and they were...

Rin kissed him before he could speak, lips brushing just long enough to pull the air from Vhox’s lungs. “I am a strutting prick from Sharlayan,” he said softly. “So if that’s what you want, I’m not going anywhere.”

If that’s what you want. As though there might actually be a fucking time when Vhox didn’t want him. As though Vhox’s wanting Rin wasn’t built into the fabric of the universe like death, taxes, and people jacking off.

“I love you.”

Rin obviously hadn’t been expecting Vhox to say it. Neither had Vhox—but now that Vhox had said it, he felt that warm, gentle wash through his chest again, like the calm waters of a tidepool. Instead, it was Rin who seemed stripped of his armor, small and unsure in his arms. “Are you certain?”

“I’d swear it on my honor, if I had any o’that,” said Vhox. Rin’s face wavered, so that Vhox felt compelled to keep talking in the hopes he might stumble on something stupid enough to make him smile. “What else do people swear on? Fresh out of mothers' graves, uh. I’ve got my life, for whatever that’s worth, an’—”

“Vhox?”

“What?”

Rin did smile, then. He also made a strangled little coughing sound in the back of his throat, because Rin was, in fact, heroically trying not to cry. “Your life will do,” he said. “Now, for Thaliak’s sake, stop talking and kiss me.”

And who would Vhox be to say no?

vhox still somehow belongs to @mimiorzea maybe we share custody by now, who knows

#my writing #ffxiv rin weise #ffxiv vhox tia #the target audience for this is me #it's my blog and i do what i want

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birb-and-bairn · 7 years ago

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Redd pt 14

Shorthair, from across the room, was very slowly getting to his feet. The last blow had knocked the air and the last bit of fight out of him. He leered at the Conductor and the unconscious Redd. Even with Redd out, the other one could still fight enough to cause trouble. Right now, he needed to retreat and recover. Then he could come back and rip Redd’s throat out and throw the other one in front of the train.

The Conductor watched Shorthair carefully as the cat slowly advanced, his feathers puffing up in anger. Carefully, he dropped Redd to the ground and picked up a piece of table. He didn’t know what the cat’s plan was but he’d be plucked and roasted before he’d let that damn cat get away. Sure, his left arm felt like it was on fire and his back felt like a dart board in a bar after a long weekend, but he could deal with that later. He hadn’t found Leia and the biggest threat to her safety was slowing maneuvering himself either to attack or run.

“This ends here, Shorthair,” the Conductor growled, the piece of wood raised like a club.

“Mmm, I think not, my dear Conductor,” Shorthair said through his grin before bolting towards the door.

Swearing, the Conductor dashed forward to intercept him. Swinging the piece of wood like a golf club, the Conductor tried to knock Shorthair away just as the two of them met.

The wood met Shorthair’s body with a meaty thwack. Stunned, Shorthair flew back and hit the wooden door of one of the VIP rooms with a loud crack and slumped down to the floor.

The Conductor stood still, the piece of wood still raised above his head.

Shorthair didn’t move.

He let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Walking over to Shorthair’s limp body, the Conductor checked for a pulse or sign of breathing.

“Yer still alive, huh? Tough little muyrder aren’t ye?” He grumbled once he felt a steady pulse.

Dragging the unconscious cat into the bluebird suite, the Conductor pulled off the cat’s blazer and tie and used the tie to bind Shorthair’s writs behind his back. He then searched the blazer for Shorthair’s wallet. He had a feeling he wasn’t actually going to get paid for this so he might as well see what he could get. It was, after all, in the contract Shorthair had agreed to when he bought the tickets.*

The Conductor pulled a velvet covered box out of one of the pockets. It didn't look like much other than a nice box with a silver lock. Nor did it weigh much. Setting it aside, he checked the other pockets and found nothing other than balls of lint and bits of string and feathers. Strange that but whatever. He could always check with Gregg to see if there was any reward money for turning Shorthair in.**

Pocketing the box, as a nice little gift for Leia, the Conductor closed and locked the door behind him. He paused and then moved the bits of furniture that hadn't been destroyed in front of the door. Once it had been satisfactory barricaded, he turned around to tend to his fallen brother.

“Redd, ye idiot…” the Conductor muttered sadly as he checked on his brother’s limp form. “What did ye get messed up in this time?”

Redd hadn’t moved from the spot where the Conductor had dropped him. Slumped against the broken table, the other bird didn’t look too different from the last time the Conductor had seen him. Other than the hat. The hat was new.

The Conductor let out a deep sigh. It was depressing that the only time he ever saw Redd these days was when he was either beaten half to death or running from some trouble he had caused.

He sat down on some of the remains of the table near Redd and. His feelings on Redd were mixed, to put it nicely. While he did want to slug his brother right in the beak for abandoning Leia on the train and then showing up a year later with a murder in tow without even a phone call in the intervening time, the Conductor couldn’t help but feel a twinge of gratitude for Redd saving his life. Then again, he was also sure Redd was to blame for the whole situation.

“Ok, so when ye wake up, Ah’ll thank ya fer stepping in and helping as Ah smack ye on the head,” the Conductor joked out loud. “Then, Ah’ll drag yer butt over tae the first aid kit.”

The Conductor winced as his left arm throbbed.

“Although, Ah get first dibs,” he said as he gingerly touched his left arm.

The sound of approaching voices snapped the Conductor to attention. He didn’t recognize them. Which meant that they were Shorthair’s cronies.

Peck.

Lifting Redd’s body onto his already aching back, the Conductor made a run for the locked second floor room. It was just enough out of the way that if you didn’t know where to look, you wouldn’t find it.

Redd’s ridiculous hat fell off his head and bounced along the ground. Cursing, the Conductor debated on turning around and grabbing it. It had glowed during the fight meaning it must have some power. But, he didn’t have much time as it was and it was better to hide away till he knew what he was up against.

The Conductor unlocked the second floor room and darted inside. Right now, he’d have to hope Redd would wake up soon. On his back, Redd began to snore.

* The Conductor, in a move to protect his train and his bottom-line, had added an additional terms to the terms of service you agreed to when buying a ticket for his train which stated that if anyone were to try and attack or rob any staff of the owl express or if any misdoings done to another passenger were to be reported, reviewed and found to be true, any valuables of said offending party would be forfeited as payment for the Conductor having to deal with it. Whether or not he could actually get away with this in court has remained to be seen as most animals stupid enough to try and rob the Owl Express didn't end up surviving long enough to go to court.

**The Conductor did not think of himself as greedy, he just knew the chances of getting Shorthair or the cat’s mysterious employer to pay his medical bills or for the damage to the train was as likely as Grooves deciding to shave his head and abandon the studio to become a monk while declaring the virtues of living a simple, quiet, normal life. It just wouldn't happen.

#Redd Chapter #The Conductor #Redd #Mr. Shorthair

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amoralto · 8 years ago

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Hi there, Paul has said that Hey Jude was a hopeful message to Julian Lennon. I've often wondered if he ever told John the song was about/to his son? and if so, what was his reaction? Thanks, Niall

If Paul ever did tell John explicitly that it was for/about/to Julian, he’s never related it as such to the press, as far as I can recall. It’s certainly possible, although I would contend that a straight discussion about Julian between John and Paul would have been more likely to go wrong than right, what with John being John - i.e. laden with protracted issues of insecurity, possession, and entitlement, which compounded when it came to Paul especially - and harbouring his (not entirely unfounded) suspicions of Julian preferring Paul over him well into the mid-70s, as this early-spring 1975 interview w/ Francis Schoenberger indicates:

SCHOENBERGER: How is it for an 11-year-old boy to have John Lennon as a father?

JOHN: It must be hell.

SCHOENBERGER: Does he talk about that to you?

JOHN: No, because he is a Beatle fan. I mean, what do you expect? I think he likes Paul better than me… I have the funny feeling he wishes Paul was his Dad. But unfortunately he got me…

(In a similar vein, insert Paul’s off-the-record emotional outpouring to Hunter Davies after John’s death about John not allowing him to hold baby Sean as applicable here.)

As far as John’s side of things goes, mere months after the release of ‘Hey Jude’ he relates an exchange he had with Paul about the song’s intended subject, with John thinking it was about him, and Paul insisting it was about himself. From John’s Rolling Stone interview w/ Jonathan Cott (November 23rd, 1968):

COTT: In “Hey Jude”, as in one of your first songs, “She Loves You”, you’re singing to someone else and yet, you might as well be singing to yourself. Do you find that as well?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. Well when Paul first sang “Hey Jude” to me – or played me the little tape he’d made of it – I took it very personally. “Ah, it’s me!” I said. “It’s me.” He says, “No, it’s me.” I said, “Check, we’re going through the same bit.” So we all are. Whoever is going through that bit with us is going through it, that’s the groove.

COTT: Was “Hey Jude” influenced – perhaps unconsciously – by mantras?

JOHN: No, it’s nothing conscious – you mean the repeat at the end? I never thought of that, but it’s all valid, you see. I mean we’d just come back from India. But I always related it to some early Drifters song or “You’d Better Move On” or Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” or “Send Me Some Loving” – it has that feeling.

A few years later, John reveals (or at least acknowledges) in his song-by-song commentary for Hit Parader in April 1972 that it was (at least originally) intended for Julian, which could mean either that he’d gleaned it from an interview Paul had done in the interim or had heard it personally from Paul himself, assuming he hadn’t always known to begin with:

Paul. That’s his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian because Paul was going to see him. Then he turned it into “Hey Jude”. I always thought it was about me and Yoko, but he said it was about him and his.

And then a few years after that, he brings it back full circle in his 1980 Playboy interview w/ David Sheff (by which I mean, he brings it back to it being about himself):

JOHN: ‘Hey Jude’ is Paul’s. It’s one of his masterpieces.

SHEFF: Do you have anything – was that one where he came and said, “Listen to this song”?

JOHN: I don’t think I had anything to do with it. Ask him! [laughs] I don’t feel as though I had anything to do with it. He said it was written about Julian, my child. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian, then, and so he was driving towards [Kenwood] to visit me, or Julian. I think it was just to see Julian, to just sort of say hi to him, ’cause he’d been like an uncle, you know – he was always good with kids. And he’d come up with ‘Hey Jude’.

But I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it, Yoko’s just come into the picture – he’s saying, “Hey Jude.” “Hey John.” I mean, so now I’m sounding like one of those fans who’s writing things into it, but you can work – you can hear it as a song to me. Although it’s also a song about him and [Francie] Schwartz at the time, too. Uh, but you hear “lies a chip on your shoulder” [sic] and all those things, [which] I always took personally, because I was the one with a chip on me shoulder. And “go out and get her,” you know, and forget everything else. So subconsciously I take it that he was saying, “Go ahead.” On a conscious level, he didn’t want me to go ahead. So subconsciously, he… The angel in him was saying, “Bless you.” The devil in him didn’t like it at all. Because he didn’t want to lose his partner.

My candid take on things: At that point in his life and their partnership, John wanted and needed to believe ‘Hey Jude’ was permission writ by Paul to proceed wholeheartedly into his new partnership with Yoko and to make a conclusive break with his old life in order to begin a new one; it would have done his conscience no good at all to consider Paul bereft in the aftermath, and in the more poisonous interpretation of their symbiotic relationship he needed Paul to be the weaker one for himself to be stronger. (Although on a certain level I believe the thought of Paul being in a weaker position in comparison to and directly because of John and what John did was also something alien and so profoundly uncomfortable for John that he could only cope with it by 1) lashing out even more and exacerbating the circumstances, 2) projecting his own guilt upon Paul and other people around him, and/or 3) avoiding it entirely and retreating into denial.)

My decidedly candid take on things: John rather fancied and indeed preferred the idea that Paul’s “masterpiece” and “best song” was about him and not his son, because hey, who was his first/best/only/foremost creative partner and influence? Not Julian, that’s who.

(In any case, I’ll have to go through my Beatles cache again to see if there are any Paul interviews pre-1972 which mention Julian in conjunction with ‘Hey Jude’; I’ll edit this post accordingly if something crops up.)

#1968 #1972 #1975 #1980 #interviewer: jonathon cott #interviewer: francis schoenberger #interviewer: david sheff #interviewed: john #john and paul #john lennon #julian lennon #ask #context

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enkisstories · 6 years ago

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The android cemetery (Chapter 11)

A while later Daniel was standing at the top of an open shaft, keeping watch. Meanwhile Gavin was down on his belly and wiggling his flashlight around.

“You were right”, the detective said. “It is a PL600 indeed that’s lying there on the bottom. Damn! This could have been our lucky break on this godforsaken “quest”.”

“Why only could?” Daniel asked back, not averting his attention from their surroundings. “Something wrong with the shaft? It looked stable enough earlier.”

“Uh…”

“Uh” was, in fact, a pretty good summarization of the shaft’s state. For one, it was made out of android bodies piled upon one another. Some had reverted to their factory settings state, but on most of them the outer skins were still online. Nearly all of the ones with their skins intact were also still wearing android uniforms, but in one case also - and upon noticing that Gavin had vomited into the shaft - a baseball cap with the stallion of the Detroit Pistons. Seeing all the standard android attire was one thing, but another altogether to spot individuals you could relate to within the mass grave. The Pistons cap was even worse than the various hands and feet sticking out of the walls and into the shaft. Or the fact that some of those were still moving…

“I, uh, erred. It’s kinda unstable, after all.”

“Oh. Too bad.”

Nearby, although still in a safe distance from the would-be graverobbers, a crane yanked around. The claw opened to release more dead bodies into the landfill. Daniel registered it with clenched teeth.

“Yes, too bad. Too bad for US, meerkat!” he exclaimed. “Sorry, but, not sorry. We’ve wasted enough time and I’ll probably have nightmares of that dead polar bear chasing me for weeks to come. Calling out for me in Connor’s voice for bonus points. We’ve got to get that PL600 so that we can finally be done with this expedition!”

“Heh! Now you are talking, slide-rule!”

Gavin moved away from the shaft’s opening to where his backpack stood. It was time to put some of its contents to good use! The man took out the bigger of the two grappling hooks. It was of the folding variety. Daniel thought that the device would not do them much good. They didn’t want to dredge the android carcass up a gentle slope, but lift it upwards. On closer inspection the presumed grapnel turned out to be a grabber. The claw’s opening was facing away from the handle, not towards it. In its ready state the device consisted of four arms that were held apart by a wedge. On contact the wedge would drop and the claw snap shut. It was the same principle grabber machines at fun fairs employed, the difference being that this one wasn’t rigged against the user.

“And now you and me are doing some wholesome family fun – we’re going fishing!” Gavin said, waving invitingly. “Give me a hand here, will you? And the metal pole!”

Wordlessly Daniel handed over the pole they had found earlier. Gavin had used it to test the ground before them so far. Now he slammed two narrow metal bands that the dump had provided down the pole’s length to roughly the middle. They formed a groove just wide enough for the grabber’s rope to run through. Daniel recognized the improvised construction as a very basic pulley system. Only then did it dawn to him that one was needed. They didn’t want the android corpse to scrape along the shaft’s wall, after all. Together they put the pole across the shaft’s opening. They secured it on both ends with more garbage and the help of, much to Daniel’s astonishment, a small welder. But having seen his boyfriend pack all the stuff honestly he should not have been surprised to find a build-your-own-android kit at the backpack’s bottom. Or in a side pouch.

“Okay, this shit’s sure to stay in place”, Gavin said after having tested the construction.

They ran the rope over the pole and lowered it slowly into the shaft. As Daniel watched it descent, he couldn’t help but notice the heads, torsos and limbs.

“Oh”, he uttered.

“Right.”

Nothing else was said.

The hopeful fishers let the grabber dangle over the PL600’s body. The dead android wasn’t helpful enough to lie directly below the device, therefore Daniel had to maneuver the rope into place with a poker. The whole operation seemed unnecessarily complicated to him, but then again, so was cooking to Gavin. Daniel had to trust his human that he knew what he was doing.

Finally the claw snatched the body. Gavin re-aligned the rope until it sat firmly inside the groove and then they could start pulling. As the torso got lifted off the ground it bent somewhat, with head, arms and legs dangling. The good news was that none of the limbs detached during the process. The corpse seemed to still hold together after however long it had lain on the shaft’s bottom. Hopefully not too well, Gavin thought. The last thing they needed was the android snapping back to consciousness and say “Hi” to them. The bad news was that the attachments made the while package unstable. Despite all the care the graverobbers had taken, their corpse was moving towards the shaft’s wall, after all. It bounced off, only to drift into the opposite direction – where it was caught by a set of moving fingers! They grabbed and caught a hold, unwilling to let go again.

“What the…!” Gavin uttered. He looked down more closely and yelled: “Gah! A zombie android’s fucking stealing our corpse!”

“Well, just pull harder!” Daniel suggested.

“Can’t! We might lose our PL!”

They stopped pulling and gazed down into the shaft. Whatever had grabbed the PL600 had to be under the impression of having caught onto something it could use to pull itself out of the mass grave. It was tugging harder at the corpse now...

“This is no good”, Gavin whispered.

“I know.”

Daniel looked down. Not because he felt like shit now, or better: Not just because he felt like shit. The android was also trying to gauge how deep they would have to dig to reach the moving fingers’ owner. The tools needed… the risk of the whole shaft collapsing, destroying all the other still wriggling half-dead androids in the process… the statistical probability of there being deviants in the mess… But the numbers were not adding up favorably in any sub-calculation. Probably if they had more time on their hands. An army of helpers. An official writ of some kind. But as things stood, there was nothing they could do.

Slowly Daniel drew his submachine gun.

“I’m sorry, stranger”, he whispered. “But it’s you or me now…”

Tears in his eyes Daniel tried to pull the trigger, but his grip was as shaky as the dying android’s down in the shaft. Standing next to his partner Gavin remembered something from earlier today. Something Daniel had said when they had been cuddling on the couch. Something they had laughed about!

“Between the two of us”, the man said in a calm, quiet voice. “You ARE the good guy.”

“Maybe”, Daniel replied. “But not right now.”

And then he emptied his weapon’s magazine into the shaft. If there was a cry of pain down there, they didn’t hear it. But the hand let go and the dead PL600 started spinning in circles like a panicking spider. The grabber was holding it firmly for Gavin to pull it upwards. The corpse hit the metal pole, Daniel grabbed it and dragged it on firm ground. Gavin stood towering over both the dead and the living PL600, the rope and the grabber still in hand, as if unsure what to do with them.

“Yes, good idea”, Daniel said between sobs. He held the dead PL600 in his arms, but it wasn’t this already dead android he was crying about.

“What idea? I didn’t have an i… oh, I see.”

Gavin shrugged, then let the claw snap around the metal pole. He fastened a suitable piece of unrecognizable trash on the rope’s end and let it fall into the shaft. Maybe the climbing aid would do someone or something down there good, maybe not. It didn’t matter to Gavin Reed. All that mattered were Danny and, obviously, himself, and them still being together in the near future. The grabber he could replace easily, his Daniel’s happiness to the contrary could not be bought with money. Or rather, Gavin COULD have bought it, in a CyberLife store, to be specific. If only he had kept his trap shut! If only he hadn’t announced his plans to buy a pre-owned PL600 to replace Daniel in the evidence archive and if only that hadn’t offended Daniel, ultimately resulting in this crazy foray into the landfill!

Gavin touched Daniel’s shoulder.

“Come on”, he whispered. “Those floodlights are way too close to our position for my liking.”

The android nodded. Only one of the androids, as Gavin registered much to his relief.

Extending a hand Gavin repeated his “Come on!”. He dragged Daniel up and then, not letting go of the other’s hand, nosed his boyfriend.

“But you hate that”, Daniel said, still shedding tears.

“I hate a lot of things, but here we are, standing in roughly the middle of the one that’s currently topping my list”, Gavin replied, smiling at the partner. “Let’s get away from here!”

They started walking away from the shaft, trying to concentrate on the sounds their own feet caused instead of any noise possibly emerging from down in the dump or the machines at work around them. Daniel was carrying the PL600 corpse. Gavin slung his arm around both.

“Also I just remembered it’s election year”, he grunted. “We might want to have a serious talk about source-segregated recycling with our district representative!”

#non sims #sims4 dbh partfive #detroit become human #sims4danielgavin

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shinwhoohoo · 8 years ago

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LOl I'm back again. Please, can you tell us your favourite top 5 Infinite MV's (curious like always + needs a dose of your writting again lol).

I was a little busy this week, so I’m sorry my answers for this will be a little shorter ;;

5. Before the Dawn (BTD): So kinda similar to how I included “Beautiful Target”, I’m including ‘BTD’ for more nostalgic reasons than anything. It was the first comeback I got to see of their’s, and I can remember it being stuck in my head for the longest time after watching the MV! The whole MV played out like a drama/action movie (like a lot of their MVs actually lol), but that in combination with their dancing with the greenish filter scenes I thought gave the MV a much darker look and theme. And then we get to them fighting at the end, and somehow, Infinite have a way of making it look cool and intense and not corny at all? Like I still get a little anxious watching the ending scene with L and Woohyun looking out the screened in window with the orchestral music AHH gives me such feels~

4. Man In Love: One of the few non-dramatic MVs, it’s instead the perfect MV to go watch that makes you smile. I also love their styling in this MV!!! Perfection! Especially the black and white outfits they wear during the dancing scenes (Dongwoo’s outfits are my favorite actually). It’s just a cute MV, going through each of their days through class, teaching kids, KITTENS and perfect pastels and all pretty, shiny things. And again like all Infinite songs, the chorus is so catchy, along with their perfect dance moves that just leads to an wholesome happy song. I actually find myself going back to listen to this song quite a bit.

3. The Eye: ‘The Eye’ demonstrates how Infinite have now perfected the angsty, dramatic, 80’s-synth vibe that the majority of their songs and MV give off. The settings for the MV were gorgeous, with the dark wooden rooms and crystal chandeliers, to the scenes of them all sitting at the table and taking turns of trying to taunt L. The dance scenes are a good opposition, in a brightly lit, plain garage so that they play off each other well. And again, the DANCING IS AMAZING. I am NEVER disappointed with Infinite’s dances, and The Eye is no exception. Their styling is also on point for the MV as well. And the scene where Sungjong appears to L in the rain? Ugh what a beautifully filmed scene.

2. Back: So, like I had previously said, ‘The Eye’ showcases how Infinite have perfected their sound, but to me it is ‘Back’ that first exemplified this perfection. It is everything Infinite has to offer, in a crisp and emotional package. Everything about this look was amazing. They all look sharp and manly with their all black outfits and short hair, smashing shit with fires and explosions but again, it doesn’t look cheesy! They make it work! What i love about the filming of this though is how the majority of the MV is pretty colorless, with the exceptions of the bright red and purple tones that are scattered during the more intense scenes, from the fire, the bad guys’ outfits, the writing on the wall during the dance scenes, all representing the evil they are trying to take out. It leads to some really gorgeous imagery. And, of course, the music is top notch, the dancing top notch, etc.

1. Be Mine: WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS. I absolutely adore this song, this MV, this era. This is the beginning of them finding their groove, and they did a really nice job with it. The black and white scenes literally look like they could have been taken out of a MV from the 80’s, and with the slow-mo scenes of explosions and hair flying it serves as a theatrically intense, emotional juxtaposition to the dance scenes. It’s interesting to note that they show an older, 80’s looking movie on the TV a few times during the MV that similarly reenacts what’s going on in the MV. And speaking of the dance scenes, again, (or I guess for the first time, really), they play with having only one main color, blue in this case, that we see in their clothing. One of my favorite specific scenes is towards the end when they’re singing the chorus for the last time and they’re split in half, facing each other singing. I don’t know, it’s always just seemed like a good way of showing the tension that was building throughout the MV, and kinda releasing it as they’re all pleading, shouting the chorus.

#infinite #text #ask #reply

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rapuvdayear · 6 years ago

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1994: Illmatic Nas (Columbia)

I guess that 2019 is the year that I officially start feeling old. Illmatic turns 25 today. It’s old enough to rent a car now. I don’t necessarily disagree with the gist of what Lonzo Ball said about the man, but I also don’t think that you can dispute that this is an all-time classic and that Nas’s influence continues to ripple through rap history.

Illmatic is considered by many to be the greatest rap album of all time (just check out the definitions for “illmatic” on Urban Dictionary). I certainly used to be in this camp as well, though I think arguments about GOAT status, while fun, are ultimately pointless due to the stylistic shifts from era to era. Besides, Illmatic might not even be the best rap album from 1994, even if it was the first debut album--and at the time seventh ever--to receive The Source’s coveted “five mics” rating (just wait until September 13 when I’ll be posting another 25th anniversary post about a certified classic)! There will likely be a ton of think pieces written about it by music critics and rap historians who know far more than I do--and you should go read those if you like this album--but I would feel remiss if I didn’t chime in with what Illmatic has meant to me through the years. To wit: I played the first cassette version that I owned so many times that it snapped, I spliced it back together with Scotch tape, and it snapped again. Why a cassette, you may ask? Because this is one of those albums that can be played front to back without any need for skipping; every track is impeccable.

Before I get into the album’s content, there are some important historical details that help place Illmatic in its proper context and explain its lasting significance. In retrospect, 1992-1996(ish) represented a sort of sea change in rap. The playful party songs of the late 70s early 80s had given way to the hypermasculine, guitar-sample-and-808-heavy posturing of the mid-80s, and then the golden age of the late 80s/early 90s that pushed rap in new directions. With a few notable exceptions, every significant figure in rap’s first decade and change was, by and large, associated with New York (this is not to say that there weren’t a ton of awesome, influential local rappers around the country, but rather that nationally recognizable acts--to the extent that there were any--were concentrated in NYC and its environs). By the early 90s, however, the LA scene was producing more interesting, genre-bending, and commercially successful raps, as the G-Funk era was in full effect; The Chronic was released in December 1992, and Doggystyle followed a year later, occupying the top spot on the Billboard 200 for two weeks in a row (Black Sunday, while not G-Funk, was another West Coast success, topping the Billboard charts in August 1993, and the Hieroglyphics and early 2Pac in Oakland were also attracting attention). The New York sound was at that point represented by the Afrocentric jazz-laden grooves of the Native Tongues clique, the funky lyricism of greats like KRS-One, Rakim, Kool G Rap, and Big Daddy Kane, and the boom bap exuberance of groups like Main Source, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, and Gang Starr. A grimier, grittier, “Tims and Hoodies” style had begun to emerge in the early 90s from the Boot Camp Clik, the Hit Squad’s associated acts (Das EFX, Redman, Keith Murray), Onyx, and the Wu-Tang Clan, whose legendary debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) dropped less than 6 months before Illmatic.

Into this landscape stepped Nasir Jones, a 20-year-old up and coming Queensbridge rapper who had generated a lot of excitement among rap fans (at that time still a pretty niche contingent) with his verse on Main Source’s “Live at the Barbeque” in 1991 (he ended up sampling it in the Illmatic intro above). Along with fellow Queensbridge rappers Mobb Deep and with the endorsement of post-Juice Crew Queens mainstays Large Professor and MC Serch, Nas helped to usher in the East Coast’s response to “gangsta rap.” While not as explicitly concerned with gang life as G-Funk was, Nas combined grim tales of criminality with a breathless “lyrically lyrical” flow that allowed him to legitimately stake a claim as Rakim’s heir apparent (it’s not by mistake that years later he would record U.B.R.). Now, it’s no secret that Nas wasn’t intimately involved in the criminal world, but rather “witnessed it from [his] folks’ pad.” Nevertheless, on Illmatic he displayed an almost preternatural ability to spin storytelling raps of stick ups, drug deals gone wrong, and jail bids that--to a complete outsider like me, at least--had a veneer of authenticity (whatever that means). This was his Nasty Nas persona, before he tried to emulate the image that mid-90s Bad Boy was projecting with his “Nas Escobar” alter ego, and way before his redemption on Stillmatic, legendary beef with Jay-Z, explicit political commentary, marriage to and divorce from Kelis, and transition to mature old man rapper/disgraced abuser/Bitcoin billionaire (maybe?). (You can hear Nas’s own perspective on the early days here).

Once upon a time, Nas was my favorite rapper, and Illmatic was my favorite album, from any musical genre. Full disclosure, I didn't give it a serious listen until 1998--I was a little too young when it was released for it to have been on my radar--but I can still spit “NY State of Mind” from memory, and still get amped whenever I hear the opening bars of “Halftime.” Nas’s career might be one of the most disappointing in terms of wasted talent (there’s a strong argument to be made for 50, too). Once he moved on from Large Professor, Pete Rock, and DJ Premier, he demonstrated his inability to pick good beats, and has made some truly garbage songs. But he’ll always have Illmatic. Without further ado, here’s a track-by-track breakdown:

The Genesis (link above): A skit about Nas and his crew counting (ill-gotten?) stacks over a sample from Wild Style mixed his a sample of his own voice. 90s rap iconicity with the requisite Hennessy and Phillies references. “Representin’ in Illmatic.” It’s an intro that paints an imagined picture of Queensbridge life, and roots the album in “the culture.”

NY State of Mind: If you only ever listen to one track from this album, or even one Nas track, please make it this one. Nas shows off his full range of abilities here: deft storytelling, a relentless flow that rides the beat perfectly, and clever wordplay (e.g., “It was full of children, probably couldn’t see as high as I be”). The DJ Premier beat is flawless, with excellent and obscure sample selection. Nas announces his arrival (“I’m taking rappers to a new plateau”), and sneaks in some commentary on inequality and structural violence in Queens (“Each block is like a maze/ full of black rats trapped, plus the Island is packed”; “Cops can just arrest me, blamin’ us/ we held like hostages”). I only wish I had listened to his advice when he said, “Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes.”

Life’s a Bitch: There may never have been a better hook in all of hip-hop, at once bleak and oddly resigned. This track also has the only feature on the whole album (well, two features if you want to call Nas’s father, the jazz artist Olu Dara, playing trumpet on the outro), from AZ, a Brooklyn rapper and member of Nas’s short-lived clique, The Firm, who never achieved mainstream success. As Nas himself put it, “My first album had no famous guest appearances/ The outcome: I’m crowned the best lyricist.” I love how wistful this track sounds compared to today’s beats.

The World is Yours: The title is, of course, an explicit nod to Scarface, the go-to media reference for 90s rappers and a prerequisite for the sort of aspirational voicing that Nas is doing here. It’s a fairly conventional track about the dreams of a small time hustler that belies its strange juxtapositions (“I sip the Dom P, watching Gandhi ‘til I’m charged”). There are also some classic lines that would be sampled subsequently, including one that led Jay-Z to infamously proclaim later, “So, yeah, I sampled your voice/ You was using it wrong.” Interesting tidbit: Toward the middle, Nas says, “Thinking of a word best describing my life to name my daughter.” His daughter, Destiny, was born almost two months after Illmatic dropped.

Halftime: The first single, released six months earlier. When I think of rolling, unrelenting, boom bap beats, this is the first track that springs to mind. I challenge anyone to listen to this and not bob their head. Halftime also contains what is arguably the most quietly brutal boast in the annals of rap: “‘Cause I’m as ill as a convict who kills for phone time.” Additionally, there’s that signature Nas rhyme structure that would be so influential on rappers who came after him (you can even hear a little Eminem in there): “And in the darkness I’m heartless, like when the NARCs hit/ Word to Marcus Garvey, I hardly sparked it.”

Memory Lane (Sittin’ in the Park): If Life’s a Bitch is about the present, and The World is Yours the future, then this is Nas’s embrace of the past... at the ripe old age of 20. This is a love letter to Queens: the chorus, with DJ Premier on the cuts, samples two Queens/Queens-adjacent rappers--Biz Markie and Craig G--and the second verse spins yarns about organized crime figures Fat Cat, the Supreme Team, and Harlem’s Alpo... all of whom would be featured prominently in Queens’ own 50 Cent’s ode to his neighborhood, Ghetto Qu’ran.

One Love: Another example of Nas’s creativity, One Love takes the form of a series of letters from Nas to a couple of friends who are locked up. He relates news from the outside, expresses frustrations with injustice writ large, and reflects on how to persevere through incarceration. And all of it over a downright playful beat from Q-Tip (the quality of the production on this album, I swear...).

One Time 4 Your Mind: Okay, so basically every song on this album is designed to smoke weed to, but in my opinion this is the most “stonerific” of the bunch. The beat is a slow, deep-fried haze that complements Nas’s braggadocio. Nothing spectacular here, but I do love the line, “Y’all ****** was born, I shot my way out my mom dukes,” another sample that would show up in latter day Nas.

Represent: If there’s a weak link on Illmatic, this might be it. Others may disagree, but I’ve never been particularly drawn to this track. It’s another Queens-centric rap, with Nas warning anyone who would try to test the borough. That being said, it does contain one of Nas’s funnier lines--“The kind of ***** who be pissing in your elevator”--and another that would also become fodder for Jay-Z’s disses.

It Ain’t Hard to Tell: Ending on a strong note, here. I absolutely love this beat, another great Large Professor contribution. There are so many elements going on that you might miss the MJ sample if you’re not paying attention. And a bunch of these lines have been sampled to death, too. Despite his repeated assertions of “depth,” there’s not much of substance to this song, just your run of the mill Nas boasts about his prowess as a rapper. Of course, “run of the mill” for Nas is equivalent to the best that other rappers can offer, so... As he puts it, “Nas’s rhymes should be locked in a cell, it ain’t hard to tell.”

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