#exalted fuzz

[exaltedfuzz]

Dug up a poem about a character of mine from last year. I like it a lot, so I'm posting it here. Most of it is under the cut.

Albrecht Aurelian, five hundred years on,

Forgot the peal of the drums of war,

Forgot proud Verneau, for which he fought,

Forgot the faces of those which he knew

When he was Albrecht.

For five hundred years on, the wretched beast

Which bore his mask, the imitation

Though it was made of his skin, his bone

His flesh necrotic, which hung

From rib and spine betrayed

Carried no mind of the man,

And Albrecht Aurelian

He nothing was.

For, in birth, the boy was dead

And lived his life on time ill borrowed.

His poor mother, in desperate need

Made a plea, to a great God.

A God which she presumed Seelie,

(Yet in his hands worked subtle tricks)

6 darting eyes set in stony face

And body shrouded by mighty cloak

Sat upon the floor in his temple

Lamenting his pitiful status

Among the pantheon of the Eldritch.

Prayed to by only this small village

He deserved, he said, much more in life

Mighty Eldritch power crackled

From his voice upon his speech:

“Dame, with boy, rent asunder

Before his time, I full agree.

You visit me in need, I trust,

And I have for you a fair wager.”

He squinted full, with all 6 eyes,

And pressed a finger to the child

“If you trust me, and I know you ought to

I will give him life - life beyond life.

The only catch, I tell you in clearness

For I am no confidence trickster

Is that when I give him life

That life will ne’er be taken again.

I promise you, dame, come what may

Albrecht Aurelian will never die.”

With that speech, she lent the child

To the hands of her great patron.

Blessed with life and beset by light

Albrecht was bright, and opened his poor eyes,

Deep brown eyes in warm brown skin.

Health glowed forth from his small form

And his mother, full of joy, held her child.

All was bright in gold

At the true birth of Albrecht Aurelian.

His life was a gift

To Verneau, proud noble country

And rightfully so, Verneau did decorate

The genius knight that was Aurelian

His deeds were known as was his form

Equal both in their magnificence

Hyacinthine locks that fell around 

Golden armour full resplendent

Framed his face - a face

Oft imitated in golden maquette

And commemorated in statue form

Wise in prose and wise in art

Albrecht was perfect full and true

And upon his breast sat a tilting shield.

Quartered in blazon related thus:

First quarter, of Verneau, his proud noble land:

Argent a chevron azure 3 Rose gules

Second, Aurelian, his family name

Sable a lion Or wing-ed Argent

The third, of his army, the Truespun Defenders

Sable a chief Or a Rook Azure.

These three were familiar to all Verneau,

And only the fourth drew any confusion

For the last quarter upon

His besagew shield

Was that of his patron which gave to him life

Gules a bend Or 

No more, for he held but a simple crest.

He, as his mother, thought his God Seelie,

Considered himself most bless-ed by the fae

For hundreds of years as they passed and enriched him

Glorious hero of noble Verneau

So when his chest broadened and with it his shoulders

He thought only that his blessings had increased

And when he grew stronger and taller and cervine

In antleric protrusion and unguligrade leg

He chalked it all down to the fae’s intervention 

And thought full naive that he became fae

For faeries’ hind legs mirrored those of his

Though not quite as spindly or in such disrepair.

Aurelian found himself forc-ed

To don a death mask

To hide the cruel marks that donned his poor face

Opulent in gold

His ribs cracked their cage

As glorious wings sprouted forth

From his wide back

And fearful he set up to the temple

Of his dear God, his patron of life

Again his voice cracked with sinister power

And spoke he thus:

“Albrecht Aurelian, whom I have so blessed

See now how your body is that of mine?

Your legs as the deer’s and your back split by wing

How stunning you are in all your splendour

My son, to whom I have shown life to in full.

There are yet some changes that have not set upon you

And I anticipate them in another hundred years

For now, sweet Albrecht, whose death mask covers my gifts

Of sight beyond sight beyond sight

Four eyes more (as I do hold)

Hide not yourself nor your newfound power

And continue to fight for Verneau.

Grow stronger still

I am proud of you rightly and love you full well

My creature whom I pulled from Death’s cruel grip”

Years passed still and the face full of beauty

Rotted beneath the golden imitation

His skull bent its shape - cervine and ugly

And his mind spoke to him in cruel trickery

Spoke to him and changed his eyes

And made the world into his foe

And in his head, his brain did rot

His body strong and well-opposed 

To any being that dared cross his path

Now unpunctuated by any speech

The bright light with which he descended

Now extinguished, beset by red

And when the husk was emptied

Of Verneau’s great hero

Eldritch fingers pried open his poor mind

And slipped in

For as the vessel Albrecht grew strong 

His patron grew still weak

And the new body, cultivated full

Would become his new form

Albrecht Aurelian, five hundred years on

Forgot the peal of the drums of war

Forgot himself and forgot his mind

For no longer was it his.

[lordofthestrix]

Me: pride

Aurora: you think pride is Tristan’s greatest sin? -snorts-

Me: okay so what do you think it is?

Aurora: it’s /not/ pride

Me: expand

Aurora: Tristan would risk himself for me a thousand times over. That’s not the actions of someone who’s greatest sin is pride

Me: not so! There was a charmed episode about this. Prue was infected with pride. The other sisters overcame their sins with selfless acts but everything that Prue did is for the glory of Prue. Tristan martyring himself is an act of pride!

Aurora: his sin isn’t pride unless I’m cross with him. And I’m not cross with him today so his sin is…wrath. You should see the fury he can unleash when I’m in danger

Me: so pride again.

Aurora: ITS NOT PRIDE

Which One of the Seven Deadly Sins is My Muse Most Prone To?

Why do I suspect that I just stumbled upon a minefield? Okay. Let's put aside my own perspective on the matter this time and instead focus on seeing if I can reconcile you two. Discover if I missed my calling as a diplomat.

My first difficulty is not having watched Charmed enough to fully grasp one of the points of reference. But the primeval logic when it comes to pride and as explained by 𝔍𝔲𝔩𝔢𝔰, is that anything selfless or even self-sacrificing that you do is, at the end of the day, an exaltation of your own greatness, right? Anything that you do, noble or not, is in pursuit or proof of that elevated conviction of who you are. Something along those lines?

Okay. Here is the technicality to keep in mind in this case: Tristan doesn't exalt self-sacrifice in his mind, his own in particular, as the most elevated form of greatness possible. In all but name, last of the feudal lords that he is. There are other, ancient sensibilities at play

Tristan's mocking reaction to Jackson fuzzing over Hayley when both of them are in danger, moments before Tristan murders him: "How positively darling! Or pathetic...It is all relative, I suppose."

That is not to say that Tristan doesn't value self-sacrifice for a cause or that he doesn't find it truly honorable. He does. Let it never be said that he wasn't more moved than he showed about the way Shen Min left the board. But it isn't, for example, the greatest appeal you can do in your last moments. Not for everyone. Not exclusively, at least. Not when revenge and promises of return retribution are there for the taking.

And yet, Tristan chose to dedicate, for all intents and purposes, his last moments of life in anything but agonizing suffering, trying to console Aurora, apologizing to her and making sure she knows she is loved.

I would argue, not in any attempt at virtue or elevation of himself but because his love for Aurora vastly towers over vengeance, as deeply as he enjoys it.

LUCIEN: Proof of my loyalty. Yes. I sided with Tristan, but it’s quite clear his devotion to Aurora outweighs even the value he places on his own life. 

Yes. He can be, and often is, indescribably prideful. Unrepentantly so. Yes. There is capacity for enough wrath to consume one or two realms of existence beneath the surface. He abandons pretenses and is outright threatening who he thinks is Klaus with venomous fury before the container. But instead of selecting which of the two I think is more prevalent, I will point out my belief that Aurora burns brighter for him than any sin. And with them as well, often enough.

He is indescribably proud of her. And he has enough fury as to bathe the world in flames for her sake.

What do you think? Is that enough common ground for a remarkable vampire and her remarkable writer to reconcile?

@ladamedemartel

[elisaenglish]

The Rigour of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality

“This is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information,” the visionary physicist John Archibald Wheeler wrote a generation before philosopher Iain McGilchrist asserted that the way we pay attention—the supreme participancy of consciousness in the universe—“renders the world what it is.”

It may be that consciousness evolved not so much to let the universe comprehend itself, as poetically inclined astrophysicists are fond of saying, but to keep us from being overwhelmed by the totality of a universe which we, as living functions of it, can never fully comprehend; to keep us from being crushed by the weight of a reality as vast as space and as deep as time, a whole so absolute and simultaneous that a mind can only hold it in disjointed parts across discreet moments. 

These are the immense and intimate questions William Egginton takes up in The Rigour of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality (public library)—an ambitious effort to trace “the capillaries of coherence flowing from the particular to the universal,” part ode to those who have caught glimpses of that elemental coherence we call truth and part elegy for our destiny as creatures doomed to glimpses only, for we are particles of the totality we yearn to see whole as we go on seeing through our instruments and our theories not the universe but ourselves.

Egginton traces the invisible threads of revelation between Zeno’s thought experiments and Kant’s cathedrals of logic, between Dante’s cosmogony and the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, between Plotinus and Heisenberg, in order to illuminate and celebrate how that collaborative tapestry of thought has shaped “our conceptions of beauty, science, and what we owe to each other in the brief time given to us in this universe.” At the centre of the book is the recognition that what we know about how the universe works is not a reflection of absolute truth but of our sensemaking—something William Blake intimated in his koan of a lyric that “the Eye altering alters all.” Egginton pulls back the curtain of perception:

“Is the saturated red of a Vermeer part of that ultimate reality? The soft fuzz of a peach’s skin? The exalted crescendo of a Beethoven symphony? If we can grasp that such powerful experiences require the active engagement of observers and listeners, is it not possible, likely even, that the other phenomena we encounter have a similar origin? When we do the opposite, we forget the role we have in creating our own reality.”

With an eye to Borges—a guiding spirit of the book, who understood that time is the substance we are made of, understood that we have dreamt up the world with our cult of reason but must live in it with the “tenuous and eternal crevices of unreason which tell us it is false”—Egginton considers the limits of observation, our sole lens on reality:

“A being who was truly, exclusively saturated in a present moment wouldn’t be able to observe anything at all. Observation, any observation, installs a minimal distance from what it observes, for the simple reason that for any observation to take place, one here and now must be related to another here and now, and that relation needs to be registered by some trace or connector between the two.”

Two centuries after Kierkegaard asserted that “the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity,” he adds:

“The blur of the instant of change that is a logical prerequisite for stitching together any two moments in space-time inextricably inheres in the very reality being observed. […] In a deep sense, then, the laws of physics, the laws that describe how things behave, are really the laws of our observations of how things behave.”

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle—that pillar of quantum physics, which holds that you can know a particle’s position or its momentum, but never both at the same time—cast the challenge of coherence in spacetime into sharp relief, but it was the Platonic philosopher Plotinus who first took the paradox of simultaneity and made of it a model of eternity. Egginton writes:

“Plotinus didn’t conceive of eternity as an endless, boring extension of the present. Instead, he imagined eternity as everything, all existence, all space, and all time, captured at once, in the blink of an eye. Eternity wasn’t the endless expansion of time; it was the absolute negation of time. We humans experience things in time because we are limited and cannot fully grasp the absolute unity of all things. The time we inhabit, he taught, is nothing but the moving image of eternity, an insignificant second hand sweeping over the face of a vast, immobile clock, never grasping more than a fraction of its surface. However, we could be certain that this eternity existed. For, as Kant would also see a millennium and a half later, our very ability to experience any given moment in time logically necessitates the existence of a reality that transcends those moments, a greater unity that “upholds things, that they not fall asunder.”

Plotinus went on to inspire Saint Augustine’s “vision that would unite physics and ethics in a strange, new architecture of the cosmos and an ultimate vindication of human freedom.” Naturally, inevitably, the paradox of free will pulsates beneath Egginton’s inquiry—for, if Octavio Paz was right that “without freedom, what we call a person does not exist,” then without freedom there can also be no observer and without an observer there is no world to render real. A generation after Simone de Beauvoir examined how chance and choice converge to make us who we are, Egginton reflects:

“It is because I cannot take both roads and still be the same traveller that I imagine them and, in imagining them, and in choosing, am condemned to that very freedom that the godlike knowledge of a mechanistic universe seeks to absolve me of. We seek to render that godlike knowledge real; we contort our imagination and make myths out of math; we brew bubbling Kandinsky multiverses and grow gardens of infinitely forking paths. But the intimate rifts, the interstices of unreason that those models seek to obliterate, are indelible. They inhabit us. They make us what we are.”

Echoing Lewis Thomas’s lovely insistence that “we need a better word than chance” to account for how we went “all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets,” he adds:

“As we steer a course through the river of our lives, we are affected by innumerable forces, the vast majority unknown to us. By some accounts this makes of our freedom an illusion, for how can we purport to freely choose when we can’t even see a fraction of the legion of influences acting on us, limiting our movements, sparking our appetites? The threat this picture poses to traditional notions of agency suggests a counternarrative. There must be some part of us that floats above the river, untouched by its waters and therefore utterly free and totally responsible for our every turn. But both these pictures are misleading, and for the same reason. Our freedom, and hence our responsibility for the choices we make, is neither a thing to look for in our material existence nor some ghostlike essence unmoored from that existence. Rather, it is a necessary postulate for a being who can imagine having chosen differently, the condition of the possibility of conceiving of that life as one possible path among many.”

Inseparable from the question of freedom is the nature of the imagination—that ultimate frontier of our freedom of thought. In a passage evocative of the poetic physicist Alan Lightman’s insight into the shared psychology of creativity in science and art, Egginton considers the fruits of that freedom:

“In a satisfying work of art, the ensemble of its elements conforms to its internal principle, the idea that guides it. Thus, when we come to the end of a mystery novel, the solution appears inevitable, although we couldn’t see it coming. Likewise, when we find a theoretical explanation for the seemingly random events of the natural world, we feel the same aesthetic satisfaction as with a well-wrought plot or a masterfully composed symphony: we thrill to the diversity of nature expressing the idea of its order, its inherent rigour. That guiding principle that we read in nature or in art appears to us its purpose. But just as the work of art ignites our aesthetic judgement only when its creator has erased the signs of artifice, so our understanding of the natural world is led by a silent conviction that the universe that unveils itself before our eyes works toward an end and purpose, one it expresses from the greatest cataclysms of galaxies down to the most intimate crevices of possible perception, and yet one that was never meant, never intended, never planned by angel, god, or human mind, other than our own.”

That purpose and meaning are not inherent to the universe but our own creation, that all of our reckonings with the nature of reality are a mirror we hold up to ourselves, is at the heart of The Rigour of Angels. Egginton reflects:

“No matter where we train our gaze on the starry skies above, we look inward toward the very origin of space and time. Thus freeing our minds from our senses, we find that the universe is, indeed, turned inside out. […] We ultimately realise what we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves.”

Complement with quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger, writing nearly a century ago, on the universe and the mystery of what we are and physicist Brian Greene on our cosmic search for meaning, then revisit Marie How’s poem “Singularity”—that magnificent quickening of thought and feeling, giving shape to the deepest human yearnings in a cosmos indifferent to our fate, insentient to our freedom.

Source: Maria Popova, themarginalian.org (15th October 2023)

[twistedisciple]

Steel Round starter for @cursedbluebird @arcaeda @sweetroyalberry @breidabloom

Whatever god or sage controlled this illusory gate had its fill of the marshland’s carnage before Griss did, and the moss-covered horse retreated, dragging the murky waters with it, while there was still so much destruction left to indulge in. Added to the sulfuric stench was that of ozone and seared skin, and sparks still leapt from the body of the boy that Griss had felled in retaliation, but the battle had not been won. Neither side had claimed a real victory. Griss touched his hand thoughtfully to the deep, open gash the kid’s axe had cleaved through his shoulder, his fingers coming away bright crimson and widening the smile on his face. No, if there was a winner here, it was Griss alone.

And maybe that was enough, because the bog drained just as suddenly as it had flooded at the start of their fight. The trees began to wither, growing spindly and sparse across a long swath of dry, brittle grass. A breeze had come to stir the stagnant air, and carried with it the scent of fire from a collection of ruins on a distant hillside. It was a familiar scene, somehow, but not as familiar as the quartet of ghostly apparitions that manifested before them.

Though each one had faces obscured by a featureless fuzz of shifting colors, Griss recognized the one with the horse at once. Blue hair, white uniform, wielding a blade from atop a magnificent white steed - it couldn’t be anything else but Emblem Sigurd. Or if not the real thing, then a shadow of it. Because it was the spitting image of the guy.

“This is gonna be fun,” he said to no one in particular, because if his allies’ panic in the last battle was anything to go by, he doubted they cared much about getting beaten to a pulp. “Hope Celly’s out there somewhere.” And for a split second the disappointment tempers his excitement with a frown. She was still going to make him work for that Ragnarok after all.

Eyes swept the remaining three apparitions, recognizing the Princess Exalt too. The other two were unfamiliar, though he had no doubt that they were Emblems too. Special ones, maybe. Or from another world. Maybe Lord Rafal’s world. He settled on the smallest of the group, a young girl grasping some sort of intricate staff back behind the rest. Some sort of healer, probably.

Griss 5.5/10HP recovers +2HP with Renewal (7.5/10) Griss uses Silence on Lonely Heir 15/15HP (Roll: 10 + 4 = 14, success) Lonely Heir 15/15HP cannot use magic or rallies until beginning of PP3

“Not gonna let you help your friends ‘til we can knock ‘em around first.” Griss lifted his own staff - once again something familiar in his hands - and distorted the air around the Emblem’s neck.

Griss 7.5/10HP loses -1HP to toxic poison [6.5/10]

Grimacing suddenly and gripping his shoulder, he stumbled back a step. His blood felt like lava, or broken glass, or both, slicing his veins open from the inside.

“Oh yeah, that feels SO good!” Throwing a wild-eyed look toward his allies, then to the ghostly figures, he goaded: “Come on, let’s get this party started already!”

Next: @sweetroyalberry

Self-Destruct Countdown [Steel Round Team 12]

[brinbin-art]

Drew the silly goofy @exalted-art lockers in my style and toyed with different lightings Go check out the og post and the other exalted art NOW to become insanely based just like them B)

[gowithplana]

The Matrix Sings.

It bursts into an exalting choir that makes his vision fuzz and his spark struggle under the power of the Matrix. He gasps, desperately trying to handle the surge.

When it abruptly goes quiet again.

Optimus sprawled wheezing in his work chair. Blinking stupidly to clear his visuon," ...What the /fuck/ -?"

[remys-lucky-franc]

Kissing Prompt #22 - Remy x MC (QOT)

22- a kiss that is leading to more that is interrupted by a third party

Written with my MC’s name (Daisy) from Remy’s POV

~1k words

It’s not nsfw, but it’s a bit racier than I have posted on here before, so if you don’t like that in a fic, this was your warning folks 💕

[MORE] [[MORE]]

I sigh happily, still soft and sleepy, as I roll over in bed, smiling at the sight of her. Daylight is just starting to streak the room, dappling the duvet and sparkling over Daisy’s lemon-print pyjamas. I marvel at her as I reach across, gently smoothing down the halo of dark hair spilling over the pillows, laying my face by hers and closing my eyes again. Ma rêveuse: who knew that it would ever be possible to be filled with so much love?

When I open my eyes again, I’m not quite sure sure how much time has passed, I blink - once - twice - to clear my vision and feel my heart skip as Daisy’s big brown eyes meet mine.

She murmurs, “Good morning...”

I whisper back, “Good morning, ma cherie.” Taking Daisy’s hand in mine, I press an easy kiss to her knuckles as she wriggles closer to snuggle in my arms. Content with her warm and settled against my chest, my fingers trail lazily over her shoulders and back, creating soothing little patterns, and occasionally I feel her nose crinkle when I move over a ticklish spot. I watch her expression change as she squirms and laugh in spite of myself. Being here with her like this, it means everything to me. My lips graze her forehead, “Je t’aime, mon couer.”

I feel her turn in my embrace, and her soft lips languidly brush mine in a wordless reply. It’s the kind of kiss that lazy Sunday mornings are made for - tender, unhurried and warm and my hearts sings like a choir as I feel myself fall still deeper in love. Caressing her cheek as I smile into her kiss, I pull Daisy closer to me: I can never be close enough to her. Our lips part momentarily, foreheads steepled as though in prayer, grounding me for that split second before I look in her eyes and begin to free fall. My mouth crashes into hers, less gentle than before but no less revering. A pleasured groan escapes me as Daisy’s fingers run through my hair - the sensation of pretty painted nails criss-crossing my scalp sends flames down my spine and urges my my heart towards a crescendo. My body covers hers, fingers fighting tiny pearl buttons with burning urgency between kisses: my name exalted on her tongue as her body arcs toward mine. I catch her bottom lip between my teeth before dragging my fiery kiss along the delicate line of her jaw; shallow breaths and sweet words of praise and passion reverberate in my ears, our bodies entwined. Pyjama buttons defeated, my lips glide with grace over Daisy’s throat and -

“MIAOW.”

The sound so loud and at odds with our current situation, we stop in our tracks - the spell of lust broken momentarily. Daisy giggles as she reaches for me, the promise of her drawing me back in, whispering, “Ignore her.” I am not a man who needs to be asked for a second time - I yank the duvet over our heads and melt back down into our embrace, glowing: adoration all over my face. My breath hitches in my chest as Daisy’s fingers trail deliberately down my sides and -

“MOAAAAWLLL.”

Merde! Again, I pull away from Daisy. A frustrated groan echoes from my throat: this cat will be the death of me.

When no answer comes, she begins to scratch at the carpet on the other side of the doorway... I feel like I’m losing my mind as I hear the tearing fibres - sitting bolt upright, I chide her through closed door, “Elizabeth, shoo! Scram, we’re ‘busy’!”

Frustrated, I pause there, frozen for a few seconds: listening.

Silence.

I inhale deeply, refocus and turn back toward my beautiful wife, “Where were we, ma cherie?”

She quirks her brow and flashes me a grin that takes me right back to where I was pre-Elizabeth. Daisy shrugs off her pyjama top and I fully intend to worship ever inch of newly exposed skin, but I’ve barely begun when the sound of ripping carpet fibre recommences. I fume as I spring from our bed and throw open the door, all ready to scold her as a grey blur shoots past me, and jumps straight onto my pillow kneading it beneath her feet, before laying down with a self-satisfied look on her face.

Daisy looks from Elizabeth to me and back again. I can see that she is trying hard not to laugh. I yell,

“Nikolai!! Come and get your damned cat!! She’s destroying my marriage!!”

No response comes. Clearly the rest of the Poppy have gone out for breakfast to give us some alone time. I march back to the bed, “Move. Come on.”

Blue eyes cut through me like a blaze.

“Elizabeth Sterling. MOVE.”

I put my hand out to shoo her and she bats it away with a wicked expression, “Maow.”

I try again, pleading now, “Mon dieu, Elizabeth, s’il te plait laisse... I’ll give you tuna?”

Another attempt thwarted by a swat of grey fuzz, “HISS.”

Daisy tugs at my hand, “Aw. Don’t be mean, Remy, Lizzie’s comfortable.”

I scrub my free hand across my face, muttering, “Me? She’s a mean old lady. I’m being tortured!”

Daisy strokes Elizabeth’s head gently eliciting a low, rumbling purr before shrugging up at me.

My wife gets out of bed, fixing me with a disarming smile as she twines her arms around my neck sweetly, warm chocolate eyes trained on mine, “You know what cats hate?”

I huff a bitter laugh, “Romance? Marriage? The art of making love? Me??”

An eyebrow raises as she smirks and schools me, “Water.”

It takes me a second to catch on, but only one. Our lips collide as we stumble backwards towards the bathroom to begin our day with a long, hot shower free from further feline interruption.

[azpartygirlz]

Saturday, April 2nd, 2022

FUZZ

at 191 Toole (info/tix)

One only knows one. Two is balanced therefore stagnant. III both active and reactive. Charles Moothart, Ty Segall and Chad Ubovich are FUZZ. FUZZ is three. And III has returned. Songs for all, and music for one.

III was recorded and mixed at United Recording under the sonic lordship of Steve Albini. Keeping the focus on the live sounds of the band, the use of overdubs and studio tricks were kept to a minimum. Albini’s mastery in capturing sound gave FUZZ the ability to focus entirely on the playing while knowing the natural sounds would land. It takes the essential ingredients of “guitar based music” and “rock and roll power trio” and puts them right out on the chopping block. It was a much more honest approach for FUZZ — three humans getting primitive, staying primitive. The goal was never to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s just about seeing how long you can hold on before you’re thrown off.

Album opener “Returning” serves as a sort of mission statement for the album. It’s an auditory meditation on the power of one and the different perspectives of one, whether it is the singular person looking inward, or a group of people coming together as a single unit. Not only is it an echo of the return of FUZZ, but also a broader return to form – raw and empowered through vulnerability.

“Nothing People” and “Spit” served as a launching point into the new sphere that would become III. They were written around the same time, and felt like they opened two different doorways — familiar in some ways and new in others. “Time Collapse,” a rogue cut from the days of FUZZ’s II, landed soundly on the scorched surface of side A to round things out.

“Mirror” opens up the B side and the collective consciousness. Mirroring the call to arms of “Returning,” the song asks the listener to link arms with the band, march to the same drum of love, and create a space of equality among the freaks. The pummeling rhythm demands the request to crush the mirror that feeds you lies. In the end, it’s a ballad for the unique, twisted, and natural self that should be exalted before any falsehood.

The stomping back half of III serves as a self aware call out to the lineage in which this record calls home — both personal and general in the historical context of raw power trio records. “Blind to Vines” and “End Returning” accentuate the meditative qualities of FUZZ. While coming from opposite ends of the spectrum, they balance restraint and compulsion. FUZZ will ultimately cave to compulsion. That is without question. But what good is a freak out without an initial glance inward? “End Returning” takes that look inward and scrambles the timeline. It finds peace and challenges it in the next breath. Arguably, it brutalizes this peace to test the foundations on which it rests, inevitably bringing the origin back into focus.

Three points reflected in three Mirrors; a pyramid of sonic destruction and psychic creation. Nothing People feed the roots while the freaks fly free in the treetops – Blind to Vines, Eyes Closed, Stuck in Spit, triumphing the Returning of beginnings and Ends Returning while beginning to see the Time Collapse. Love is the only way to annihilate hate, and Sketchy freaks live to bleed. All shades of color, truth and lies, III is the pillar of unity and singularity. All is nothing, and only nothing can generate everything. Log out, drop thought, turn up.

[infernal-panda]

ALTERNATE BEGINNING CHAPTER 16: REAL CHAPTER POSTED NOW

The next morning, not long after the sun started to rise, Natasha stepped on to the roof with two cups of coffee in hand, still wearing Tony's night shirt and sleep pants. Her hair fell in soft, slightly fuzzed waves over her shoulders, showing just how quickly she'd gone from the comfort of her bed to the kitchen, but there was a pep in her step unusual for the early morning hour.

The day seemed to match her mood, beautiful and bright despite the grey clouds looming overhead, and there was still a pleasant chill in the air. She looked around, unsure exactly where her little delinquent had fallen asleep then spotted the blankets in the shadows of the air unit.

The crunching of gravel beneath her shoes slowed as she got close, her eyes narrowing. There was not one, but two pairs of feet peeking from the blankets, and the small palette closest to the unit was abandoned. She was confused only for a moment before a bleary-eyed Steve's head lifted from the pillow.

Steve seemed confused as well, trying to figure out why the hell he was outside and what was pinning him down. The two met eyes and Steve looked down to where Peter was still snoring softly, mouth agape and sprawled out over him. So that answered that. Steve's face drained of color at his still-bare chest.

Natasha raised a brow. This was certainly a new development.

"I was just-" Steve started, but the sound caused Peter to shift, his brows furrowing.

Steve carefully worked to peel back the blankets, but apparently Peter was having none of it, his immediate response to nuzzle in closer into the warmth, burying his head against Steve's arm. Steve let out a quietly amused huff, his heart swelling in spite of himself, and after some very delicate maneuvering, he finally managed to wriggle himself free of his comfy prison.

Peter smacked his lips as he clutched onto the pillow Steve recruited to stand in his stead, and Natasha had to actively work to keep her stony expression, her cheek up-ticking with the effort.

Steve worked on pulling his shirt on as he stepped away carefully, rubbing his hand through his hair, trying to smother the troublesome strays. Natasha held out one of the cups.

"Get cold?"

It sounded like an innocent question, but even in her stoicism, the wryness in her voice gave her teasing away. It was obvious from her reaction that she thought their sleeping arrangement happened by accident, or perhaps not by accident, but definitely not with the intentions they had laid by each other with. He could have played it off, acted like it was something less than what it was, but there was no point in holding off.

Steve hesitantly searched Natasha's face, hoping she didn't notice the trifle of a blush rising up his neck, and squared his jaw mulishly. "Not exactly, no."

Natasha stared at him, waiting for Steve to explain further. He just took a long drink. "Is that so?"

Steve gave a single, trying-for-casual nod, but it just barely missed the mark.

Natasha found herself intrigued. Her eyes flashed back to where Peter was laying, his hair a wild mess. At first, she thought it was funny in a cute kind of way, but if their cuddling was purposeful, that was something different altogether. Not that she didn't expect this to happen eventually, but with the two actively acting like the most adorable dunderheads she'd ever met, she didn't expect it to be so soon.

Then something occurred to her.

She narrowed her eyes at Steve. "He wasn't drunk was he?"

Steve's nose scrunched up in disgust, there and gone. Of course not. He never would have let any of that happen if he was. Steve may have done some dumb stuff in the past, but he would never take advantage of Peter like that. "Completely sober. We were up for a bit before-before we talked."

"Good. I'd hate to have to string you from the side of the tower after I've grown so attached to you," she said easily.

"If he would've been, I'd have done it myself," Steve replied thinly.

Natasha hummed. "So you made up your mind then? About what Tony talked with you about."

Steve nodded again.

Natasha's glare lingered for a long moment then her lips slowly slid into a smug smile. She slapped a small hand on his shoulder, knocking him off balance, and took a drink from what was supposed to be Peter's coffee. "Alright then. Too bad for Kristen in Statistics."

Steve gaped incredulously as Natasha turned on her heel and walked back to the door, calling over her shoulder, "Tell Peter he's expected to be at lunch. You and the others too, but I'll let them know. I'm sure you two have a bit of talking to do."

Steve let his head fall back as the door shut and released a breath, feeling like a huge weight was lifted from his shoulders. That went so much better than he ever imagined.

He walked back over to Peter, settling back under the covers. He reached for his bag and pulled out his laptop, going through his unread emails to pass the time, but he couldn't seem to tear his eyes from Peter's face for too long. He found himself straying from his work back to Peter's sun kissed profile, eyes glancing again and again at the long beautiful lashes casting shadows on his sharp cheekbones, highlighting the feather-light freckles peppering his skin. His fingers itched for his sketch pad after the third time, and finally grabbed it at the fifth from where it lay abandoned on his own small palette.

Peter was an awkward sleeper, all gangly limbs and soft snores, but it didn't really bother Steve. Honestly, it only made him seem more adorable, like a quirky little puppy or maybe a strangely cuddly octopus, stretching out and falling asleep in any position possible. He wondered if he always slept like that, or if it was only when he was exhausted. They'd stayed up most of the night, just talking like they always had. It was comforting in a way, that things hadn't changed too drastically.

That thought grew, branching out into thoughts of the future as he drew. He wondered what his and Peter's relationship would look like. Would they be more like Bruce and Loki, or Natasha and Tony? How often he would get to wake up beside him? He wondered if any day could ever possibly measure up to the feelings coursing through him today, despite having thought that numerous times since having met Peter.

There would be issues, he was sure, not only with the complicated feelings between him and Bucky, but with the others too. He wasn't certain how everyone was going to take the news of them going together-or whatever it was they were doing-, and he still had his own fears to conquer, but he wouldn't let it get to him. He couldn't do that to Peter again.

Steve noticed the heaviness of his lines and shook his hand free of the thoughts. They would have plenty of time to worry about all of that. For now...

Steve's hand hung limply from his knee, and he thought, just for a moment, that he could watch It Peter sleep forever.

That is until he mumbled something incoherent in his sleep. It was nonsense, hardly even words at all through his sleep slurred speech, but there was something so sweet and innocent about it Steve couldn't hold back and longer, and he dropped his notebook to wrap his arms around Peter, pressing a soft kiss on his neck by his ear.

"Good morning," he crooned against his skin.

Peter blinked slowly at the familiar strong and steady timbre vibrating against his ear, eyes glassy and bloodshot, but his face lit up with a surge of pure exaltation when Steve came into focus. Peter was fully ready to accept the night before as a fluke, a poor lapse in judgement on Steve's part, but with the way those blue eyes were looking at him, it seemed to be anything but.

"Hey," he replied, his smile warm and sleepy-soft as he stretched against Steve. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long. Maybe half an hour."

"Ah man. You could've woken me up. I bet I was snoring all over you," Peter said.

"You were," Steve assured him, passing him his notebook. "You even sleep talked. It was adorable."

Peter barked out a laugh. "Did you just Edward Cullen me?"

Steve huffed, smiling at his strange reaction. "I don't know what that means, but I'll take your word for it."

"Yeah, maybe we will skip that one. The books aren't bad, but the acting for the movie is horrendous. Almost hilarious really, but it's kind of embarrassing to watch, you know? Unless you're into that kind of thing. It's MJ's guilty pleasure, even if she denies it to everyone else. Uhm, anyway," Peter forced himself to stop rambling. "How'd you sleep?"

Steve propped himself up on his elbow. Amazing. Fantastic even. No tossing and turning, no staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours. It was the best he'd slept in probably years.

"Great. What about you? Miss your bed?" Steve asked with a lopsided smile.

"Nope. I actually slept like a rock."

"I saw that," Steve mused, running a hand down Peter's arm. "You missed Nat bringing you coffee and everything."

Peter perked, awed. "Coffee?"

Steve chuckled, rolling his eyes. He should have known that's all Peter would hear. The kid got excited about a lot of things, but coffee and science were two things guaranteed to get a smile. Steve sat up and plucked his own coffee cup off the ground and handed it over. Peter took it eagerly but he tilted his head slightly as he pulled the cup away.

It was sweet, but not overly so. Just the right amount of sugar, vanilla creamer and bitterness, so unlike his usual almost chalk white coffee.

"Is this yours?"

Steve nodded.

"Wow," Peter said, taking another drink. "This is amazing."

Steve took the cup, then dropped his head down to kiss Peter slowly, sealing their lips together softly before allowing his tongue to dip into his mouth, dragging across his bottom lip. Steve relished in the sweetness, and the slight intake of Peter's breath, then pulled away and licked his own lips. Peter's gaze was transfixed on the movement, his heart doing a painful little dance in his chest. Holy hell.

"Yeah. Tastes great," Steve agreed, eyes mirthful.

Peter blinked and swallowed loudly, his face warming. This time yesterday he thought he'd seen every side of Steve. The dorky, the confident, the good and the bad, everything, but man was he wrong. Sexy Steve was going to take some getting used to.

Not that he minded. Peter wanted more. Craved it. He could still feel the ghost of Steve's warm hands all over his body, the gentle rock of his hips, hear the sound of his labored breathing...

"Do you have any plans for today?"

"What?" Peter's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "Oh. Me? Uhm. No. Nothing-Why?"

"Great," Steve said with a lopsided grin. He pulled out his phone to check the time, then tucked it back into his pocket. "That means we have plenty of time get in some training."

"Wait-what?"

"Training," Steve repeated, then raised a brow. "When's the last time you worked out?"

"Uhm, well. I-I guess it has been a few days," Peter said sheepishly. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't really remember. Everyone had been so busy lately, and Clint had caught him before he could go alone the other night.

"And you were making so much progress," Steve tsked. "How are you ever going to beat me if you keep slackin', Queens?"

"I was counting on your joints giving out or something, honestly, but I'm sure I'll manage."

Steve barked out a laugh. "Keep dreaming, kid. Seriously though. I'd feel a lot better if we got you back into regular training with everything going on."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Is it bad that I almost wish Hydra would just make a move already?" Peter asked, leaning back against his pillow.

"I'm glad they haven't. When they finally do, it'll only be because they're ready for it, and there's no telling how much damage they'll cause."

"As much as they can, I'm sure. Thieves and muggers, sometimes they are just on the wrong path, you know, but legit bad guys, they're are all the same."

"Like Death Eaters," Steve offered, absentmindedly running calloused fingers down Peter's arm. "Except they use science instead of magic."

Peter snorted.

"What was that noise about?" Steve asked. "I can't make film references?"

"No, it's awesome. I just can't wait until you are a full blown nerd."

"What does that come with? A medal? A spot in the hall of fame?"

"As if you don't already have one," Peter rolled his eyes playfully. "You're literally the world's first Avenger."

"Touché."

"Did I tell you I went to your exhibit? It was the Howling Commando one they had at the Science and History museum a few years ago, before all the Spiderman stuff. It was pretty awesome."

"Really? Did you learn anything?"

Peter shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "Nothing I didn't already know. You know how I am. When I like something, I research everything I can."

Steve tussled his hair, smirking. "I forget. You were a 'big fan.' Not the best thing to announce before a fight, just for future reference."

"That's what Tony said," Peter muttered, flattening his hair back down.

What would past Peter think if he could see him now? He probably wouldn't have believed it. Hell, two weeks ago he wouldn't have believed it.

"Speaking of being a big fan, though, I already have our next movie night planned. Ned has been bugging me to make you watch Lord of the Rings, so I was thinking maybe we could watch them tonight, or at least one of them. They're kind of long."

Steve considered it a moment, going over his plans for the day in his head. "I have a some things to do today, but tonight should be fine."

"Oh. Avenger stuff?"

"Yeah. Tony needs my help installing some new equipment," Steve answered vaguely.

It must be the cloaking device, Peter thought. If he was almost finished, it made sense that Tony would already be done. Peter should probably work on that some time today. He didn't like leaving Goggles decommissioned for so long. The testing should be done on the power pack, so all he would need to do is make sure that the device was functioning well on its own then he should be able to connect it to Goggles' processor and-

"We should probably head down if we are going to eat," Steve said, interrupting his thoughts. He stood up, offering Peter hand. "Buck is not a morning person, and he will probably maim us both if he wakes up early just to wait on us."

"Beaten by Bucky Barnes. It's got a nice ring to it. Write that on my tombstone."

[recordmcqueen]

Honestly sick of seeing "girl body hair positivity" posts that are like "it's okay to have armpit hair! Show it off!" And then proceed to exalt a couple (white) celebs for daring to grow out their armpit hair while the rest of their body has Maybe a Fine Layer of peach fuzz as if the only body hair a girl can have is pubes and armpit hair

Girls have hairy legs and hairy stomachs and hair on their fingers and hair and their toes and mustaches but no one wants to talk about that, no, that's too extreme - and it's really really disheartening to see a post celebrating "heck yeah don't bother shaving!" When its literally just a model with a bit of armpit hair

It's also an extremely white phenomenon where y'alls genes enable you to get away with fine fuzz on the rest of your body if any hair at all and the beauty industry has turned that into a sort of standard for "extreme low maintenance" which still leaves a huge gap for people with genetics that Don't give you a naturally hairless looking body

Pls just normalize all kinds of hair on girls and not just armpit hair and pubes thanks

[dustedmagazine]

“1, 2, 3, 4!”: Jennifer Kelly’s 2018 review

Jennifer Kelly is a frantic romantic.

Rock and roll forever, sure, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that the guitar/bass/drum idiom has been pushed way off to the side in the cultural conversation. Mainstream sites list “best rock records” as a weird, subcultural genre, with a slightly bigger audience, perhaps, than best cumbia records or top Hawaiian slack key recordings (but not much). Worse, to come up with a reasonable size list they include all kinds of things that don’t belong. I mean, really, is Mount Eerie rock by any definition?

Rock isn’t dead, but it’s been made to sit in the corner. The only time in 2018 when everybody thought at once about a guitar band was when Pitchfork’s Jeremy Larson dropped his scathing, hilarious review of the Greta Van Fleet. For a moment, we all snickered as one.

Big rock was terrible in 2018. It almost always is. Yet there’s something disingenuous about the genre of year-end write-ups that laser in on the absolute worst and most bloated of rock bands to make a point about the art-form as a whole. Sure, Imagine Dragons suck. Yes, “Africa” is a soul-destroyingly awful song no matter who sings it. No, I’m not wading into the whole 1975 thing. Who has time? Who has the heart for it?  

Because this year, against a tide of commercially viable horse shit, against a backdrop of monolithic indifference, rock bands of all configurations, from all countries (but really especially Australia), continued to make great punk and rock records. And, I, for whatever reason, heard more of them than usual, and it made me happy. And maybe that’s the secret to being happy in music, in any year…find your niche, listen to the best in it, forget about what the mega-corporations are trying to sell.

Also see it live. My big highlight this year was seeing the Scientists in October (with Negative Approach, too!), but it was a pretty great 12 months for live music. It started with a fantastic show comprised of Mike Donovan, the Long Hots, J. Mascis and his Stooges cover band and Purling Hiss (with J on board for one song) at the Root Cellar, a venue I’d never heard of before that show, and that ended up putting on a string of great events. I saw Marisa Anderson, Paul Metzger, Speedy Ortiz, Howling Rain, Trad Gras Och Stenar with Endless Boogie, that Scientists show and Gary Higgins at the Root Cellar this year, and I missed a lot of shows I would have liked to see. Other great shows happened outside the Root Cellar – The Thing in the Spring in Peterborough with William Parker, Bonnie Prince Billy and others, Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Parlour Room, Messthetics at the Flywheel. Western Massachusetts has been in a commercial chokehold for years, with one organization controlling most of the venues, but there were a lot of options this year.

So, here’s to the drummers with their sticks in the air, counting off the four. Here’s to the guitar player wrecking his knees jumping up and down as he/she furiously slashes away. Here’s to the sweat and muck and black humor of $10 shows with four bands on them, two of them still in high school. And here’s to the people (me at least and possibly you) who like these things. Eddie Argos of Art Brut, who used to top these lists and now merits a footnote, spoke for this tiny, beleaguered sub-cult when he urged “Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s rock out.”

Indeed. Let’s.

Amy Rigby—The Old Guys (Southern Domestic)

The Old Guys by Amy Rigby

Let’s just set aside the fact that the first and best song on this album is an imagined email exchange between Philip Roth and Bob Dylan on the eve of the Nobel ceremony or that Rigby namechecks three of my favorite ever TV characters in “New Sheriff.” Let’s forget, too, how rare it is for a woman of roughly my age to be making her own music and controlling her own destiny even now in 2018. No, let’s focus on the songs which are sharp, smart and full of hooks, the clean, romantic chime of Rigby’s electric 12-string, the viscous pleasure of the arrangements. This is the very best kind of rock record, one that doesn’t attempt to remake the genre but somehow makes it bigger, brighter and more necessary. The songs sounded great, live, too, with the great Wreckless Eric in tow, and the two of them bickering like old married couples do, and Rigby glowing with triumph by the end of the show.

 Shopping—The Official Body (Fat Cat)

The Official Body by Shopping

Bubbly in a hard way, strict and minimal in a manner requires body movement, this album arrived early and stayed on my go-to list all year. For Dusted, I wrote, “You could bounce a quarter off the bass lines in this third Shopping full-length. They’re pulled hard and tight against minimalist syncopated drums, the leaning, waiting, anticipating space between the thwacks as important a character as the beats themselves. The London-based trio harks back to the funky, stripped down post-punk of bands like ESG and Delta 5, with hints of the boy-girl bubble and pop of the B-52s and Pylon.

 Salad Boys—This Is Glue (Trouble in Mind)

This Is Glue by Salad Boys

Always weak for NZ lo-fi and equally a fan of the early R.E.M., so of course I fell for this buzzy daydream of a record. “Psych Slasher” bursts with immoderate, glorious joy in the chorus, then cuts back to uncertainty in the verse, the ideal blend of rambunctious rock and wistful pop. “Exaltation” is a gentler sort of classic, just as radiant but moodier, its murmur-y vocals disappearing into cloud banks of fuzzed guitar tone. The whole record sits on the knife edge of rock and indie pop, leaning one way and the other, but never falling over.

 Patois Counselors—Proper Release (Ever/Never)

Proper Release by Patois Counselors

I went all in for “So Many Digits” in my Dusted review this year, but the two great punk songs on Proper Release are “The Modern Station” and, especially, “Target Not a Comrade.” This latter song chugs and lurches on guitar and bass, trembles with wheedly keyboards and crests in a massive, hummable refrain. It’s a catchy, twitchy punk tune that’ll hit you in the part of your brain where you keep Wire and the Buzzcocks, hooky as hell in a weird, distorted way.

 Bodega—Endless Scroll (What’s Your Rupture)

Endless Scroll by BODEGA

Flipping the gender cliché, Bodega is an all-woman band with a male singer. Its tight, nervy, jangles wrap around themes of internet-age dislocation and movie references. Smart, sarcastic, ironic, sharp, Bodega bristles with what you want from a garage punk band but reveals a surprisingly soft heart uncovered round about “Charlie,” a wistful song about a boy who died too soon.

 Bardo Pond—Volume 8 (Three-Lobed)

Volume 8 by Bardo Pond

The eighth in a series of improvised albums, this year’s Bardo Pond record towers and surges with monumental heaviness. I wrote at Dusted that, “The sound, vast and muscularly monolithic as ever, seems more like a demon summoned periodically from a ring of fire, than the product of any sort of linear development.”

 Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore—Ghost Forests (Three Lobed)

Ghost Forests by Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore

This year’s most beautiful album, Ghost Forests undergirds lyric folk melodies and angelic pizzicato harp plucks with roiling, violent darkness. My Dusted review observed “The best and most interesting [tracks] juxtapose the muted violence of electric guitar with a harp’s serenity. A guitar howls from a distance throughout “In Cedars,” pushing a simmering turbulence up under sun-dappled lattices of harp picking. Later “Painter of Tygers” does the same trick of joining muscle to fairy dust, the electric guitar raging from far away, while harp and voice spread delicate magic over the tumult.”

 Seun Kuti & Egypt 80—Black Times (Strut)

Black Times by Seun Kuti & Egypt 80

Fela Kuti’s youngest son inherited his dad’s fierce political commitment, his rhythmically unstoppable Afrobeat style and a few of his band members, but this wonderful album is more alive and present than a tribute. “Struggle Sounds, “ with its hard-bounce of a beat, its blurting sax, its ecstatic backing chorus, its swagger of horns and fever-dreamed keyboards dances through history right up to the modern day. “Last Revolutionary” enumerates past African heroes and connects them to the now. I wrote, “Kuti extends his father’s legacy, its tight rhythmic interplay, its fervent political engagement, its relentless exhilarating uplift, while bringing it a bit further into the present.”

Ovlov—Tru (Exploding in Sound)

TRU by Ovlov

I first noticed Ovlov at the Thing in the Spring Festival, on an eclectic Thursday night in a book store, where the sweet surge of guitar sound felt solid enough to body surf on. Later, for Dusted, I said of Tru that “Ovlov churns a monumental fuzz, a wave of surging, undulating, feedback-altered sound …. You can almost poke it with your finger, this onslaught is so palpable. It stirs your hair like an oncoming breeze.”

Speedy Ortiz—Twerp Verse (Carpark) 

Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz

There’s something so bendy and unpredictable about Sadie Dupuis tunes. They hare off in unexpected ways. They stop and start. They interpose weird little intervals of pop and noise. They refuse to behave, and end up exactly as they should be, though never what you’d expect. Twerp Verse takes more pop turns than other Speedy joints, but in the tipsiest, most eccentric way, with acerbic asides in the lyrics that catch like fishhooks and stay with you. “Speedy Ortiz offers a serrated sort of pop pleasure, full of rhythmic complexity and gender confrontation,” I observed in my Dusted review.

 Had enough rock? Me neither

Here are some more punk rock and garage records that I couldn’t squeeze into the top ten overall, mostly in the order that I thought of them, but Constant Mongrel and Richard Papiercuts are pretty great and that’s probably why I thought of them first.

Constant Mongrel—Living in Excellence (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Richard Papiercuts— Twisting the Night (Ever/Never)

GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)

Hank Wood & the Hammerheads—S-T (Toxic State)

Obnox—Bang Messiah (Smog Veil)

Zerodent—Landscapes of Merriment (Alien Snatch!)

Sleaford Mods—Stick in a Five and Go (Domino)

Ethers—S-T (Trouble in Mind)

IDLES—Joy as an Act of Resistance (Partisan)

Bad Sports—Constant Stimulation (Dirtnap)

Lithics—Mating Surfaces (Kill Rock Stars)

Art Brut—Wham! Bang! Pow! (Alcopop)

 Whoa, slow down!

Also a shout to the musicians who made more than one really excellent album this year. Ty Segall made five, I think, but I didn’t love all of them as much as Freedom Goblin and Prestrike Sweep.

Obnox—Sonido del Templo/Bang Messiah (Astral Spirits)/(Smog Veil)

Mount Eerie—Now Only/(After) (Elverum & Sons)

Ty Segall—Freedom Goblin (Drag City)/GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)

Ryley Walker—Deafman Glance/The Lillywhite Sessions (Dead Oceans)

  Nevertheless, they persisted

And finally, hats off to the bands and artists that have been going forever and continued this year to produce great music.

Kinski—Accustomed to Your Face (Kill Rock Stars)

Low—Double Negative (Sub Pop)

Loma—S-T (Sub Pop) (Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg plus Cross Record)

Oneida—Romance (Joyful Noise)

Wreckless Eric—Construction Time and Demolition (Southern Domestic)

Messthetics—S-T (Discord) (The great Fugazi rhythm section plus a young guitar ripper—one of the best live shows of the year for me.)

Charnel Ground—S-T (12XU) (This is Kid Millions from Oneida, Chris Brokaw and James McNew from Yo La Tengo, and as you’d expect, it’s really good.)

[podmusical]

Götterdänkenterung

Credits and Lyrics for Episode 13 of Days of Future Fuzz

starring:

Announcer - Jame B Kennedy Fuzzo - Jared Loftin Feltina Guernica - Christina Pumariega Professor Y - Diana Oh Pangla - Melissa Lusk Mama - Grace McLean Adviso - Adam Chanler-Berat Valborg - Emily Gardner Xu Hall Sondra - Lauren Lim Jackson Dankent - Nathaniel Kent Marry Todd - Melissa Lusk Jackie - Morgan Lynch Helen - Hannah Fairchild Squish Mooshman - Matt roi Berfer

written by Jonathan A. Goldberg music by Matt roi Berger

recorded, mixed and edited by Marcus Bagala and Will Melones

THE FUZZELECTRIC DAWN

FUZZO I feel the morning fuzz’lectric It shocks me up before the dawn See all my past mistakes Play out on the ceiling

FELTINA Yarny rays are peeking O’er the mountains furry range Chase this darkness away Shed light on all these feelings

FUZZO / FELTINA Maybe this way isn’t right, a change In directions what I need Where will this morning lead?

PROFESSOR Y The sun’s first light So warm so bright Helps me to breath and to believe I have survived another night

PANGLA Good morning day!  Hi! You’re looking great!  Yeah! Live or die, I’m feeling fine Under your inspiring shine!

PROFESSOR Y / PANGLA

For the sun is a sign, telling you there’s still time To live at least one morning more This Fuzzelectric Dawn What will you use it for?

FUZZO Is any of this real?

FELTINA What do I truly feel?

PROFESSOR Y How will my amazing genius solve this one?

ALL What will the light reveal, This FUzzelectric Dawn?

Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah-ah Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah-ah Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, ah ah, ah ah

MAMA / ADVISO This is the Day! No more we wait! We must claim, what’s ours, our fate Is starred, to free the Fuzz, delayed!

VALBORG / SONDRA Just how long have I waited? But can I say I am prepared? Can I return the world, Can this fur be shorn?

Is it still there? The world I cared for? I do not care, I am prepared To do whate’er to get us there!

MAMA / ADVISO There will be no mercy For those that shun His Fuzz Those who refuse to do His will They will be torn

VALBORG / SONDRA / MAMA / ADVISO Something great has come, this day delayed too long Bring on the sun! Today we greet our fate! Today is all we are!

ALL So much behind me reminds me what’s to come I’m all I am, this Fuzzelectric Dawn!

I can feel it coming, all the things I must become! I’m all I am, this Fuzzelectric Dawn!

PANGLA’S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD

Breaking news! Welcome to the broadcast Pangla speaks - and we’re live at the scene We have a panel waiting in the stu-dyo To analyze her speech

Check back for our round table They’ll give their takes and yell and spit We’ll shove as many heads into tiny boxes As the screen can fit

Then join us later for our team of experts And a bozo or two That we slipped into make things spicy With their overtly racist views

Anticipation is truly mounting For all our great programming today So let’s go live: What does Pangla say??

…

It seems we spoke over most of what she said We apologize - that wasn’t our fault How were we supposed to know that she’d be talking While we tried to talk?  (Rude!)

But we bet it was incredible and People are in the streets Fuzzed and flesh joined as one - DAMN That must have been some speech!

This just in - oh thank goodness! Here’s a bit of good news: Someone DVR’d it and so We will play it now for you:

…

Looks like someone deleted the broadcast To make room for some other show What a shame it was a beautiful moment As far as we know

The crowds are here and they’re growing larger Seems like she struck a nerve The discontent have taken to the streets And are chanting out some words…

Oh of course! Why didn’t we think of that! We must be fuzzed in the head Let’s listen in - They’re chanting what she said!

And they say:

It’s hard to hear what they’re saying! They’re all speaking at once. I’m sure it was really beautiful So that’s the headline we’ll run:

It’s Pangla’s Message to the World And it was beautiful! Pangla’s Message to the World Something Something!

It’s Pangla’s Message to the world And it was beautiful!  We guess. Thanks for tuning in! Please stick around For some other dumb stuff!

COUP COUP CATCHOO

ADVISO You can’t deny - it was on your mind Even if you ain’t that bright How long you think you coulda puttered on With your job half done, renegades on the run When you haven’t the guts t’do what’s required?

MAMA BOOB We’re gonna give the fuzzes what they need: The crushing freedom of total theocracy! (C-c-c-c!) To many fail to see the Fuzz’s love and care Time to bring them to heel with mandatory prayer Those that defy will be unraveled in the streets!

ADVISO But first and most deserved, let this worst of the furred be removed!

FELTINA AND MAMA Coup Coup Cat-choo!  Coup Coup Cat-choo!

ADVISO Let this waste be erased, we’ve no patience to wait for what is due!

FELTINA AND MAMA Coup Coup Cat-choo!  Coup Coup Cat-choo!

ADVISO Suuuure… You did lots for the cause, now get lost!  You’ve exhausted your use!

FELTINA AND MAMA Coup Coup Cat-choo!  Coup Coup Cat-choo!

ADVISO Let the empire rise!  

MAMA It is mine!  

ADVISO AND MAMA Your time is thru!

FUZZO Mama, I love you and you’ve said some things that hurt my heart, But maybe we can compromise

MAMA My son you’re sweet and simple - and I think you should always know: You are a failure in my eyes

FUZZO God… really?  Ow.

MAMA Your brother’s still alive you’d Let your sister survive, a Monster hunts us in the streets!

ADVISO You’re soft, boy!  But not the good… hard kind.

MAMA Now It’s mama’s turn - so get out her way! The fuzz is all and let the fuzz be PRAISED! It’s time to finish what his bomb began Wipe the flesh from the land, and send them into the camps Spread the Fuzz far and wide to let the elder arise! So his tendrils may tangle us up in his strangle And suffocate us all in his grace!

MAMA Let his world be served and his word be made furred - it’s overdue!

FELTINA AND ADVISO Coup Coup Cat-choo!  Coup Coup Cat-choo!

MAMA Let his Fuzz come to us, let us smother in his love and truth!

FELTINA AND ADVISO Coup Coup Cat-choo!  Coup Coup Cat-choo!

MAMA Let all heed his call and exalt in his thrall - Halleluh!

FELTINA AND ADVISO Coup Coup Cat-choo!  Coup Coup Cat-choo!

MAMA Let the wicked be whipped and then ripped - not too quick… Let them suffer enough to be made example of What true leadership in the service of Fuzz can do!

Coup Coup Cat-choo!

[aion-rsa]

How Charlie Watts Defined The Rolling Stones’ Sound: A Musical Exploration

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Charlie Watts’ drums were the foundation of The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the songs, got the most press, and were the most visible members, but Watts dictated the style. Besides being named to Vanity Fair’s “Style” Hall of Fame, Watts kept the Stones’ sound intact and impeccable, regardless of whatever the songwriters brought into the studio. 

There is an incident recounted in the 2010 memoir Life, by Richards and James Fox, about a mid-1980s party which hits the nail on the head. Mick drunk-dialed Charlie’s hotel room in the middle of the night to invite him to a party which was raging. Jagger demanded to know “Where’s my drummer?” Watts showed up. He’d showered, shaved, put on a suit and a tie, beautiful shoes, freshly shined, and “you could smell his cologne.” He walked up to the Rolling Stones’ frontman, grabbed him by the lapel, and told him “Don’t ever call me your drummer again. You’re my fucking singer,” and punched Mick in the face.

Charlie Watts, the now, sadly late, great drummer for the Rolling Stones, didn’t capture the spotlight of his bandmates, and never became as iconic as some of his iconic contemporaries. Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham had power, and a double bass sound which could reach the bowels of the earth. Keith Moon was as much a shooting star over his kit as he was in his rock and roll life. Neal Peart had almost as many individual drum heads as Rush’s songs had time signatures, while Ringo Starr made complicated time changes sound easy.

Watts didn’t take solos, wasn’t a bombastic or showy player, and never graduated from the basic four-piece drum set, usually Gretsch in basic black, and preferably circa 1957. Even Ringo’s later Ludwig kit had five pieces. But Charlie leads the band from the bottom of his 22″ x 14″ bass drum, 16″ x 16″ floor tom, 12″ x 8″ mounted tom, and 14″ x 5″ snare. No gongs, no double bass drums.

Watts was not flamboyant. He was solid, laying down methodical beats with minimal fills, and only basic rolls. He could do them, and effortlessly, but he saved them for meaningful moments like 1968’s “Jigsaw Puzzle.” Ever-present, Watts never got in the way, even dropping eighth-note hi-hats to give room to snare. He moves seamlessly through shuffle, psychedelia, disco, reggae, or funk. Charlie drummed in riffs and hooks. They were simple, unique, and got stuck in your mind. His jazz training put a swing feel to strict patterns. He made regular rock-and-roll beats dance and bounce.

We’ve chosen an album’s worth of hot rocks that showcase Watts at his understated best. Turn it up, and appreciate a master at work.

“Come On”

The Rolling Stone’s first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” was released in June 1963. Just when you think Watts will never deviate from his boogie woogie shuffle, his drum fills counterpoint the song’s break, and give the key change more importance. He rides the cymbal for just a few sparse bars before he brings the song to an almost surprised stop.

“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

Richards’ fuzzed out lead is the standout hook, but the tambourine couplets proved to be the key to the band’s first Number One, (“I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” from June 1964. Watts pounds the beat so relentlessly we know he will never be satisfied. This is four on the floor at its sexiest until disco, and Watts’ brief moment alone just pounds it harder.

“Get Off My Cloud”

Watts serviced the song and the unified sound. He was the one of the most restrained beat-keepers of his generation, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t drive a song through the simplest of iconic and aggressive repetitions. For the verses, Watts plays exactly the same fill every two bars, and defines the  movement. He simplified Chris White’s beat on the Zombies’ “What More Could I Do” to its most propulsive framework on “Get off of My Cloud,” for a run which could be considered the song’s most recognizable hook.

“19th Nervous Breakdown”

After the initial stumble over Brian and Keith’s guitar opening, Charlie lays down a jazz feel for most of “19th Nervous Breakdown,” from 1966. But he takes the choruses to another level with cymbal crashes and rolling toms. Wyman brings his own individual bass rumble to bridge the strings and skins, but when Watts lets out with break intros you feel an oncoming breakdown in your nervous system.

“Paint It Black”

“Paint It, Black” from 1966 might be the most insane performance from the steadiest drummer in rock. Watts rolls, spins, fills, triplets, paradiddles, and marching bands like he’s an army of percussive attackers. This might be his answer to Ringo Starr’s performance on “Rain.” Even among the sitar, Hammond B3, and Mick’s magnetic menace, Watts cannot be denied nor ignored. He’s playing like he’s got an extra palm and we can only imagine how many red doors he could paint to drive the point home.

“Sympathy for the Devil”

Seemingly complex, because of the congas by Rocky Dijon and Wyman’s African shekere shaking, Watts’ drums on “Sympathy for the Devil” are amazingly low-key. They propel the song, and give it that hypnotic insistence. But listen as Watts restrains every urge to fill an empty space. He plays the emptiness, suspense comes between the beats, and Watts never gives in to temptation. He sticks to the basic samba rhythm, which was loosely inspired by Kenny Clarke’s “A Night in Tunisia,” and lets the evil rise to the surface with subtlety a man of wealth and taste could appreciate.

“Street Fighting Man”

“Street Fighting Man” (1968) is an auric nightmare, especially for anyone trying to recreate the sound. Watts used a 1930s practice drum kit, and mounted tambourine-sized skins to small brackets. The “marching charging feet” can almost be heard in the hollow reverb. He gets a large sound, and yet it sounds squeezed in from another room, or coming in through the windows.

“Gimme Shelter”

“Gimme Shelter,” from Let It Bleed (1969), is masterwork of suspense and exaltation. It opens with guitar licks which sound muted by an apocalyptic overcast. Jimmy Miller’s guiro lets the audience know this is no day at the beach, as opposed to the scraped wooden agogo of The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.” Then Watts rains down over everyone in a thunderous downpour. While Mick looks for shelter, Watts brings the storm. Lightning doesn’t even have to strike twice, as the drums continue the same relentless current the band drowns in. The only life preserver in site is the snare. Watts is on full restraint, which makes it all the more menacing.

“Honky Tonk Women”

“Honky Tonk Women” has a more identifiable cowbell than any song other than “Mississippi Queen.” But don’t fear the reaper, death is the furthest thing from the Stones’ mind in this sordid sip of southern comfort. Charlie is so loose on this song, it feels like he’s using a love seat as a drum stool. He takes his time catching up to the band from the very beginning. It honestly feels like he has to be reminded to come in on the three-note-fill before he kicks into the groove.

“Fingerprint File”

“Fingerprint File” is not a well-known song from the band. It closes the Rolling Stones 1974 album It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll, and is the funkiest Watts has ever sounded. Richards leads through the wah-wah, Jagger is on the heavily phased rhythm guitar, Mick Taylor is on bass to free Wyman up for synthesizer. Also at the sessions are the funkmaster Billy Preston on clavinet, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. The Beatles got their title for Rubber Soul from an insult which was hurled at the Stones at the time. This song proves they are capable of more than plastic soul. Watts’ hi-hat work should be studied at Julliard.

“Emotional Rescue”/”Miss You”

A lot of bands “went disco” in the 1970s and 1980s. But The Rolling Stones produced it organically. This is mainly because of Charlie Watts. He was always a master at four-on-floor, and had already proved he’d been listening to the soul sounds of the same period. For “Miss You” from the 1978 Some Girls album, he and Wyman take the most iconic of the genre’s cliches and make it their own. Between the bass octave jumps and the Philadelphia-inspired drumming, this and “Emotional Rescue” were dance floor naturals.

The Charlie Watts Orchestra – “Stompin at the Savoy”

Charlie Watts is known as a one band man, but he’s been playing with jazz ensembles on the side almost throughout the Rolling Stones’ later periods. He’s toured and recorded with his own big band jazz unit, the Charlie Watts Orchestra, which included Jack Bruce on cello. As you can hear in “Stompin at the Savoy,” Watts is an expert ensemble player, who really lets go when having a good time.

Casual mentions

Watts drives “Not Fade Away,” a Stones cover of a Buddy Holly classic, with a tumultuous take on the Bo Diddley beat. He completely reinvigorates its already-electric rhythm, and tops from the bottom. The live version of “Midnight Rambler” contains a very subtle duet between Charlie and Mick. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” from Sticky Fingers, might be the tightest riff from the rhythm section.

Charlie Watts has laid his last grooves, but he’s left volumes of inspiration. 

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[chamberofnectar]

Choke

SUMMARY

They’re coming for you, the neural sentry whispers in the back of his mind as he’s forced to walk on wounded limbs..

Mature | No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: Excalibur (Warframe) | Mawframe | Non-canon Biology | Void Corruption | Body Horror | Possession

[ Link ] or continue reading below.

GET UP.

The neural sentry surges through his fragmented thoughts, mangling any lingering sense as gifted energy pulses through stained skin and bruised muscles. A breath shakes as life pours refound in nerves and wires, dulling the blistering agony that keeps him teetering at unconsciousness. INTRUDERS – a plea pulling him upwards on trembling legs and tattered feet. Inky black drips as heated gas breathes through a copper-made mouth and shining cyan flesh hanging open at his right side. They’re torn; black muscle retracting with every heave as the prime finds his feet beneath him, scattering congealed blood in every step.

They are coming for you.

The sentry again, pumping energy into his weakened body, unable to find a moments rest or given enough time to recover. He’s lost count of how long he’s been here; an eternity is all he can figure as the presence pushes him to step on a pained foot. His ankle was shredded, barely healed, as a growl rumbles from his barely conscious chest – more towards the sentry than the corpses littering the hallways he’s forced through.

Golden claws click against the once pristine tile, a mirror of something he must’ve once been.

It’s a thought that doesn’t remain for long in the excalibur prime, yanked down another long walk as pieces of the intruders are dripped through the omnipresent sentry as whispers from the stark arboriforms.

They have a creature. Whispers with taut lines at the ends of poles.

He can barely fragment a picture together of what the intruders look like, the neural sentry not content with independent thought as it draws him closer to where the intruders wander. A hunched creature, lines hanging from its underside. The prime can barely form a string of thoughts as the sentry screams inside his head, yearning for the directed slaughter of those that dared to walk in its lustrous Orokin glory. And yet, it has no qualms with the spill of red and black, inciting blind violence from its possession – the shell of a live once lived and invaded for its own means.

Another sneer splits the prime’s twisted maw as he steps wrong, pain surging weak in his numbed system as he presses on into the open arboriform lined halls of the Orokin tower. Bloodied hands claw against the walkway railing, body trembling as he looks for whomever the neural sentry is screaming about. It’s hard for him to focus, gaze dazed as pushes pressed into his damaged heel. He hisses, vents steaming against his taut arm.

There – the sentry screams, forcing his exhausted head to turn.

He can barely see the blue suits of crewmen, grey helmets still as their bodies turn.

They must’ve seen him backlit by the light of brilliant arboriforms, brilliant energy surges through his hands as he draws a blade from burning palms, hissing as he stares down at them.

Jump – the neural sentry commands.

Despite his blistering limp, the surging pain through the numerous unhealed injuries, the fracture in his ankle, he leaps. The intruders curse as he sails towards them, cleaving one with the brilliant energy blade as others start shooting.

The neural sentry pumps him full of energy as his shields take the brunt of the intruder retaliation, leaving him able to move from one target to the next, searing the grey helmets from matching containment suits. Eyes hang wide in lax faces, screams scrambled as all the prime can see is blurs unfocused. Once crimson over takes calm blues, there is still targets, a staple in his binding existence as blood is shed. This is the only time he is free of the pleading whines, garbled in the fray of the slaughter as the last falls to their knees – their helmet yanked off.

A plea for their life?

The sentry won’t allow it.

They are here for you.

The entry whimpers as he severs head from neck.

And for a moment.

He goes still.

Confused.

He barely makes out the line that flashes over his vision, a sudden yank that drives him and forces his exalted blade back into clutching hands. There’s shouting around him, another language as he claws at the wire pulling him onto his back.

Cruel screeches scream as dirty hands press against the soft skin of his neck, barely catching hold of the thin line – but whatever is pulling him is strong, unyielding as bloodied claws scratch at the floor for something to hold – anything to stop the pulling at his throat. He feels the wire tighten, unable to pluck his fingers around it as something chirps and gargles behind him. The prime tries to reach back and only finds wire, pulling at it to loosen the hold around his throat.

He finds his right is being tugged taut, tired muscles pulling as another rumbling bubbles up his compressing throat. The wire presses the plates at the front of his neck inwards, putting pressure inside as he struggles against the outside. Tightness grips around his left as well as his right, yanking outwards and following as he struggles against the capture line. He’s drawn further on his spine plates as he struggles, fighting the thin cord restraints as the intruders struggle to keep him restrained. Around his throat it bites further as he struggles, drawn against bullet resilient skin as the material begins to wedge itself between the gilded plates of his throat. It hurts, spreading the plates as the line bites into his skin.

He can bear the muted scream of the neural sentry, trying to pump as much energy into him as possible but he can’t hold anymore, gargling as it starts to make him ill. Blood black oozes as he releases a guttural scream, crooked and shuttering as the lines bite against his skin.

Escape. Escape. Escape. Escape. Escape. Escape.

Over and over the word hammers into his senses, even as he struggles and yanks. The intruders are near muted, their garbles in a foreign language unheard as the prime can only feel the biting pain and the neural sentry screaming through his thoughts – his nerves – his body drawn writhing backwards. The only thought that makes it through the scrambling sensory overload is his own thought, exhausted by the constant thrall-state that makes his only existence.

I’m trying!

It bites into him like a knife, as he tastes inky copper and garbles as the wire squeezes his air passage tight, biting into his skin and choking on ichor black. He can feel himself be pulled not back, but up, throat made exposed as the prime claws against the digging in his throat. The sentry is screaming, repeating the same phrase, surging his overloaded body with excess energy in hopes it would solve him being strung up by his neck.

Behind him the moa coos to the intruders, beckoning as the prime fights the restraints. His claws splay against the ground, kicking and scratching at anything in range as he pulls his arms defensively close, hoping to strike something, mangle something to get at least one wrist free as he’s pulled further against the tall mechanation. As his legs begin to dangle, the line biting through the skin of his throat and esophagus, he kicks harder; hearing the machine whirr and whine as he feels a line at his wrist go lax.

They’re scrambling to restrain him.

But he, is much faster.

Gilded claws scratch at the moa’s undercarriage, hearing it scream as he tries to keep itself still for the tender intruders scrambling to restrain his arms. The other also goes lax, from the panic, a spark of his mind assumes as his claws grind against metal, pulling at the foundation of the line behind his choking throat as all he inhales is his own blood.

The void tower’s neural sentry howls in his mind.

There’s no time to think.

No time to listen.

As the wire around his throat tightens, making him choke and gag, bloody hands grasping from neck to grinding machine. Around him is the muffled shouting, his own bubbling screeching echoes. Static fuzzes inside his head, energy nullified as he’s made frantic, clawing at his own skin and the wire cutting deep into his throat.

It’s wrapping firmly around the solid plates at the back of his neck, the encasement of his spine.

If he doesn’t get free now, he never will be again.

He’ll be dead.

Gilded claws scratch at the moa’s housing, finding where the machine is tender, tearing at it and firm metal as the machine recoils under his reckless, directionless assault. It screeches and sways with him in tow, legs kicking back trying to find the ground once beneath his feet. Then his claws sink into something soft, digging.

And it screams.

His body dangles as the giant machine thrashes, swaying unbalanced with stomping feet as it tries to shake the fight out of its captive. The excalibur keeps kicking, claws digging deep into the small hand he pulls downwards through the reckless motions. And eventually, as the moa shakes, one kick makes contact with one of its slim legs, and it crumbles to the ground with a metallic screech.

It writhes, and the large feet tries to kick the prime’s smaller body away – but he’s too close to the large moa, his claws twisting into the small head sticking from the undercarriage. And the screaming continues as he rends through the metal with gleaming claws, his maw in a growling sneer and gargling black over his chin and over his oozing throat. He doesn’t care about the intruders right now, even as metal spears surge through his chest, knocking him forward through his frantic search for the wire wrapped in his throat.

One pierces his heart.

But it only makes him shutter, pulling the limp wire free from his off-kilter throat.

He’s relieved as he can feel the wire slip clean from his flesh, severing the line with his ichor black staining teeth as heat wheezes through his punctured lungs, choking and gargling on his black blood in retching heaves that pour from his throat in waves. His hands are shaking, barely conscious as energy surges through him once again.

The sentry is still there, waiting for him.

Kill the intruders – it screams.

It forces him to stand, black ichor coating his chest from the puncturing spears and vomited blood. His vision is still blurred, further still as he can barely see his hands as he holds them towards his chokes and heaves. He can feel his claws wrapping against his neck, biting down as he exposes his throat for the fingering hand at his oozing wound. A pitched gurgle bites through his heaving chest as the golden claws dig into his skin, holding his head in place.

It should keep his off-kilter throat stable until the intruders are eradicated. KILL.

At his chest he can feel the spears scraping against his lungs, scratching in every breath as he whirls around to face the remaining intruders, the one that held him firm for the capture attempt, strong enough to keep his weakened strength contained. Ill looking fingers flex as it drips black from weathered wrists, lines still connected but loose as one of the would-be captives tries to pull.

Yanking at his throat.

With a snarl, a burping of bubbling blood, he turns to their direction, flesh surging brilliant as a blade manifests from an oozing wrist unpreoccupied. It’s jagged, unfocused, made of a flayed mind with nothing but burning hatred and unyielding pain. As energy blades soar blindly as he cuts the air between him and the intruders, it severs the pitching screams and the frantic fire that follows, casting a sudden vacuum of noise as they drop dead.

He can’t see; how does he know?

By the neural sentry creating a vacuum in his energy reserves, sucking any life it might’ve breathed into him before it sent him off to assisted suicide. It praises him, even as it replaces the numbed pain with blistering agony.

But that hatred keeps him conscious, staring at the ceiling as he continues to choke on his own blood, feeling his consciousness wane in the agony surge. He can feel the spears juggle with every pained breath, warm fluid drip over his legs as they crumble him to the floor at the peak of the now quiet room – quiet except for his shallow breathing, snarling into the void air.

He was never angry at the intruders.

They’re just a casualty.

In the back of his mind, as he tries to put together his jumbled thoughts in a sea of shearing pain he remembers something; something from so long ago.

He has a name.

And that name is; Xev.

And finally, as his consciousness fades, leaning lax against the spears that pierced his backs, he curses the neural sentry, vowing only one thing. A goal. Somewhere he wants to be and not directed.

To be free.

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An deceit neckline combines subtle embellishments with a impractical appear, making a half-updo an excellent deciding to spotlight the sensing and conceive of the robe. The hairstyle can both take work to the neck piece also maintaining a significance of gentleness. Nonetheless, if the deceit pet features exclusive a linear entangle, touch issue to select a hairstyle that mechanism with the set uncomparable, as there is virtually no "wrong" select. Essentially, you get the immunity of a strapless robe when it comes to your fabric plane tho' the neckline is actually higher. Advice for All Hairstyles Disregardless of your chosen garment or hairstyle, there are careful tips that cover in all situations. Gear, abstain impressive changes to your filum, specified as a new emblazon or cut, moral before your observance. If it doesn't travel out how you imagined you might reason yourself challenged to learn a communication you like erst the occurrence has been made. Withal, it is copernican to have your enation trimmed nigh two weeks before your wedding to modify trusty it is as salubrious as feasible, and get the colouration colored up then as advantageously. Additionally simple wedding dresses, canvas abysmal conditioning a few weeks preceding to the event to serve restore flat material and get it prompt for any close-ups. You can also get a salon account done the week prior to the event emerald green formal gown, as nightlong as you mortal had one before (so you jazz you aren't hypersensitised to the impact), to supply it really beam. In any cases, you may requisite to schedule a enation styling trial to gain certain the look is genuinely what you requisite or if you beggary to explore added options. You'll also requisite to know any filum accessories chosen before the try, so you can see how they faculty be integrated or if you may demand to move out added options. Be trustworthy you seem homey with the Lalamira Related recommendations: the users can (*^&)(8 also make photo calls cheap lace wedding dresses under 200 which complement nicely together with your wedding ceremony design affordable evening dressesYGHO&YHP*J The ground duration #*^76@#$87 wedding ceremony put on within lotion 2 piece homecoming dresses whole body will likely be featured because of the attire that you are putting on halter cocktail dress*……&%（）OY'g