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fangirlshrewt97 · 5 years

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Venom Meets Goose

For: @lurkerviolin. Chancy I wanted to have this done by midnight but obviously I missed the deadline by a long shot, but I hope you like this!

Author(s): Fangirlshrewt97

Fandom: Venom (2018); Captain Marvel (2019)

Pairing: Venom/Eddie (can be romantic or platonic)

Characters: Venom, Eddie Brock, Goose (Captain Marvel)

Rating: Teens and Up

Warnings: Lots of swearing

Additional Tags: Attempt at humor, Crossover, Crack-fic (ish)

Summary: What would happen if/when Eddie and Venom met Goose? My 3k take on it.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18429209

“Stop being grumpy. It’s lame.”

“I am not being grumpy, I am angry with you V.”

“Stop being grouchy then.”

“Venom!”

“Eddie, I already apologized for eating all the chocolate Anne got us.”

“Venom, sorry is not enough. It was my favorite kind of chocolate. And you said that even if I eat it, you can still use the calories and taste the chocolate. You also know that that brand of chocolate is my favorite and it is imported. So in conclusion, fuck you.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Bullshit! You live inside my freaking brain. How the hell am I supposed to believe you.”

“...I’m not a mind-reader?”

Eddie growled out loud with enough anger to have Venom doing the equivalent of curling into himself and sending a wave of shame through their bond. Eddie hunched in tighter into his coat as a cool breeze passed through the street. He knew rationally he was acting childish, but could you blame him? He was finally getting his life back together, and after a full year with his stupid symbiote, they had finally figured out they were it for each other. He was happier than he had been in a long while. But he was also more petty than ever. And bloodthirsty, but at least the latter could be wholly attributed to the Symbiote.

“So where are we going?”

“Why don’t you just read my mind?” Eddie bit back.

“Eddie…” Venom whined. And god, how disconcerting was it to have an alien who lived inside him whine. Venom didn’t even have proper eyes, but somehow managed to convey the feeling of puppy dog eyes. Eddie hated him.

“Fuck off parasite.”

“Eddie!” Venom yelled, hurt and pouting. Pouting. His 10,000+ year old alien significant other was pouting at him because he was scolded for eating Eddie’s chocolate. God, when had his life become so fucking weird?

“I’m not apologizing.”

“Apologize.”

“No.”

“APOLOGIZE!”

“Ok, jeez, fine. I’m sorry. Quit yelling, someone is going to notice.”

“Who will notice? It is past midnight on a Wednesday. Everybody who is sane is already in bed. And if someone insane catches us, what is the difference?”

“I….” The more Eddie thought about it though, there was a weird logic to Venom’s point. “Fine, even if there is no difference, I’d rather avoid drawing unnecessary attention. Neither of us have a great history with good luck.”

“Are you going to tell me where we are going?”

“No.”

“Eddie.”

“You are getting repetetive.”

“You are being stubborn.”

“Wow, great observation there V.”

“What do you mean, no?

“I mean no, wanna hear it in Spanish? No!”

“Eddie!”

“Venom relax. We’ve been cooped up in the apartment for the past week so that I could finalize my article, and we just finished. So I thought we could celebrate by splitting open a certain box of chocolate. But since you already took care of that bit by yourself, we are just doing the second part of this celebration: going to the park for some fresh air.”

“Why are we doing this at midnight?”

“Because I finished the final edits past midnight.”

“Couldn’t the celebration have waited till tomorrow? You need sleep. Your seratonin levels are seriously low.”

“Low seratonin huh? Explains the depression.”

“Not funny.”

“I disagree. But anyways, do you really want to this tomorrow in the morning. In the sun. With a lot of other people?”

“It’d be a Thursday morning. There would not be a lot of people.”

“Still more than now.”

“Why the park?”

“Why not?”

“Because frsh air and going to the park are good for your health. And your history has been a tendency to often do the opposite of what is good for your health?”

“Oh you mean like accept an alien parasite into my body that tried to eat me from the inside out?”

“Eddie!”

Eddie just chuckled, sometimes Venom was just too easy to rile up. He started whistling as the two of them made their way to the lake in the center of the park, Venom liked to see the ducks. Well technically he liked to comment on all the different ways he’d like to eat them, but who’s paying attention to those details?

Eddie made his way to one of the benches on the edge of the lake, just before the bike path and sprawled onto it, spreading his legs and resting his head against the back of the bench.

It really was a quiet night for the city, if he concentrated he could hear faint sirens in the distance, and a screech from where a car skidded on the roads which were still slightly wet from the rain they had had that evening.

Of course, when does quiet ever last when you were part-time hero/part time human magnet for bad luck? Though in hindsight, no one could have predicted the shape this particular disaster was going to take.

Eddie was close to straight up dozing in the bench when Venom startled so bad Eddie spasmed off the bench and braced himself on the ground to ease the fall.

“V, what the fuck?”

“Eddie, Danger!”

Eddie tensed, eyes scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary. “Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“What? What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I just. Damn it, there is something strange in the park Eddie. I don’t like it, but I can’t … find it.”

Eddie took a calm breath to calm down because this was Venom we are talking about, he could feel everything. If something was able to avoid him, they were in such big shit. Damn it, Ann was going to kill him if he died in the park to an alien at 1 in the morning.

But before either could think of a plan, a meow sounded behind them. Venom covered Eddie and launched himself over the bench, mouth pulled back to reveal all his teeth, expanding to make himself look as big as possible.

There on the bench they had just been sitting on was a cat. Just a normal orange cat. It tilted it’s head at the sight of them, but otherwise showed no other reaction. Huh, most cats tended to flee from him when he was masked by Venom. They also had been avoiding him in general since he had bonded with Venom.

“Venom?”

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me that you are also sleep deprived. Because what other possible reason could you have for being so terrified of. A. FREAKING. CAT?”

“Eddie. That is not a cat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That is not a cat.”

“Yes it is. Look at it. It is orange, it is feline shaped, and it is just sitting there.”

“That doesn’t make it not a cat.”

“What the hell else is it?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t like it. Can we please leave?”

“Are you telling me you’re scared of a stray cat?”

“Eddie shut up. Can we leave?”

“But…”

“Now.”

Eddie debated whether it was worth it to argue, but his exhaustion won out over his curiosity and he agreed. “Fine, let’s go home.”

---

It was almost 2 weeks before they saw the cat again, and Eddie was aware of each day of those two weeks because Venom was doing the equivalent of pacing a hole in the floor in his brain and Eddie was getting a stronger urge by the second to find a way to strangle his symbiote.

“Venom stop that!”

“Eddie I can still feel that strange presence around us. Something is following us.”

“Where? Even in the park all there was was a normal cat.”

“It wasn’t a cat!”

“What was it then?!” Eddie bit back, tired of arguing this point.

“Can we go patrolling tonight?”

“No, I have an assignment due soon.”

“But, please. Eddie. We will be fast.”

“No.”

Venom whined and then started doing his stupid ‘puppy-dog-eyes’ emotion vibe again and Eddie growled because as much as he did have to complete this assignment, he hated to disappoint his symbiote. Venom truly asked for very little. Didn’t mean he was going to go without a fight.

“Why do I keep you around?”

Without missing a beat, Venom replied “Because the alternative would be developing a conscience of your own.”

“Fuck you.”

“I love you too Eddie!”

---

Their patrol that night was a bust, but Eddie knew it would be better to let Venom burn off that energy now rather risk Venom becoming restless again.

“V, stop complaining, it is a good thing that there are less bad guys!”

“You didn’t even let me eat one bad guy tonight.”

“That’s because the only ‘bad guy’ we saw today was a teenager trying to sell weed who pissed his pants the moment he saw you.”

Venom continued to grumble as they made their way to their apartment. He stopped when they reached their landing though, stopped abruptly enough that Eddie froze where he stood.

“What?”

“It’s in our house.”

“What?!”

“The same weird vibe from the park. I can feel that same energy again. Coming from beyond our door.”

Eddie swallowed before he nodded, tightening his hold on his keys and slowly turning the lock.

“Venom, mask.” Eddie ordered quietly. Venom slid over him slowly but completely covered him by the time their door closed behind him.

The two of them looked around the house for the intruder, moving cautiously though the apartment trying to identify the threat. Which was why they startled so hard they almost broke the coffee table they fell on when they heard a familiar meow.

“Ow, what the hell?”

“Eddie it is here?”

“V, how is that even possible?”

“It came in through a window!”

“None of our windows are open. Also we are on the third floor!”

“It’s a cat!”

“You just said it wasn’t.”

“It’s a cat that isn’t a cat.”

Eddie growled as he stood up, Venom having retreated back into him, and made his way over to the wall to flip the light switch. There on top of his kitchen counter, laying as though on its throne was the cat from the park.

Eddie approached the cat which was watching him lazily, one eye open as it swished it’s tail gently through the air. Venom was trying to metaphorically hold him back by the back of his hoodie, but Eddie just shut him down and kept walking till he was right next to the cat. The only acknowledgement he received was the cat turning its head to look at him with both eyes.

And yeah ok, this was definitely not a normal cat. Normal cats did not have eyes that looked 100 years old. Normal cats did not look like they could see into his very soul. Normal cats definitely did not have eyes that seemed to flash a different color. Eddie shook his head to make sure he had just imagined that.

Tentatively he reached out a hand and in full view of the eyes that were tracking his every movement, he laid it on the furry back. Venom had gone oddly quiet now, and Eddie didn’t want to think about it but it almost felt like the quiet someone has in a horror movie where they are quiet because they are about to scream.

Eddie started to pet the cat gently while Venom started doing weird high pitched keening noises in head.

“V, I don’t think she is too bad.”

“We need to give it back to it’s owner!” Venom said, voice higher than Eddie had ever heard it.

“Owner?”

“Yes! Look it is wearing one of those trackers.”

“Tra- Oh.” Hidden under admittedly magnificent fur was a thin collar with a round tag. Tugging it a little forward Eddie saw the word “GOOSE” emblazoned on it. He flipped the tag but the flip side was bare.

“Well so much for that idea. Is you name Goose kitty?” The cat started to swish it’s tail a little faster at the name. “Oh yes you are Goose are you. What a good kitty. How did you get up here though?” Eddie cooed as he started to pet Goose freely. Goose started to purr when Venom lashed out, a flash of inky black tendrils the only warning Eddie had before Goose was sent flying to the opposite end of the apartment and onto a wall.

“VENOM WHAT THE HELL?”

“Eddie that thing was preparing to eat you!”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

“I JUST SAVED YOU!”

“FROM A HOUSE CAT?”

“FROM A FLERKEN!”

“A what?”

“That thing is not a cat, it’s a Flerken.”

“What is that?”

“An alien capable of taking any form and swallowing anything it wants to.”

“...Repeat that last part?”

“There have been rumors of a Flerken that once swallowed a small universe.”

“That is impossible.”

“Like having an alien symbiote live inside you that can heal any injury you have and which extends your lifespan considerably by virtue of being a compatible host?”

“...Fuck. Fine. We have a Flerken in the house. That could swallow us if it wanted.”

“It could swallow this whole building if it wanted.”

“That could swallow this building if it wanted. That you just threw into a wall. You knew what that thing was and you threw it into a wall. What if it is dead? What if it’s not. God Venom, you’re a dumbass for doing that.”

“Is that your way of thanking me?”

“No, that’s my way of calling you a dumbass.”

“I panicked.”

Eddie swallowed before approaching the corner of the room which boasted of a new dent in the wall. That was going to be a bitch to explain to his landlord. When he crossed the sofa that had been blocking his view, the cat was sitting on its hind paws, lickling one of its front paws without a care in the world.

“Good kitty, I am so sorry for my … Venom. He didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean it right V. V? Come on out. Tell the cat we are both very sorry.”

“No way!”

“V!” Eddie bit out.

Slowly, Venom’s head emerged over Eddie’s shoulder, looking as remorseful as it could. The cat- sorry Flerken had put down it’s paw and was now watching them intently.

“I’m sorry Flerken.” Venom said, tone filled with regret. Eddie wondered if the regret was for the action or for being stuck in this situation.

The Flerken tilted its head again before standing up and making its way to them. Both human and symbiote were rooted to the spot as the alien circled their feet before standing and bracing itself against Eddie’s legs.

Exhaling calmly, Eddie bent down to pick up the cat, trying to hold it as far as it could from him. The Flerken let itself be picked up, seemingly aware of how much they were afraid of it.

Once Eddie was standing straight again, the cat - well it grinned. Eddie didn’t really know what else to call it, but it’s eyes looked almost pleased, as if it had been testing the two of them and they had passed. Whatever the reason, he almost felt like collapsing from the relief that coursed through him.

The cat then lifted a paw and gently swatted at Venom’s disembodied floating head, causing the symbiote to yell and try to back away, knocking Eddie off his feet and sending then all falling and landing in a pile on the floor.

“Owwww.” Eddie exclaimed as he sat up, rubbing a sore spot on his back where he had landed. So much for a symbiote cushion.

“Sorry Eddie.”

“Venom can you just come out. This cat is not going to hurt us.”

“Yes it will.”

“I think you’re wrong.” Eddie shifted to look at the cat on his chest that was still looking at them and not moving. “You’re not going to hurt us right?”

Well, Eddie could officially say he knew what a cat would look like with an exasperated look on its face.

“See, it’s not going to hurt us.”

Venom carefully emerged again, still hovering. The Flerken hopped off Eddie’s chest onto a distance about 5 feet from them before opening its mouth and -

“OHMYGOD WE ARE GOINGTOBE EATEN BYANALIEN CAT!” Eddie screamed as he scrambled to back away from the TENTACLES that were coming out of the Flerken’s mouth.

“No wait, Eddie. Stop.” Venom said, sounding reasonable. Which what the hell, up until this point Venom is convinced they are going to be killed by this cat and the moment when it seems like that act is going to happen, he is suddenly chill? What gives?

Without waiting for a reply, Venom masked Eddie, and leisurely put out tendrils of his own. Then the two met in the middle and did this almost weird dance thing before they came back to normal.

“What the fuck?”

“We are cool now Eddie.”

“What. The. Fuck?”

“Me and the Flerken made an agreement.”

“What?”

“You are being repetitive again.”

“Venom, I am confused. Explain.”

“The Flerken asked if it could stay with us for a while. I said ok.”

“That is not an explanation.”

“It doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that it will be staying with us a couple weeks until its friend comes back for it. And it wants us to call it Goose.”

“When did all this communication happen?”

“During our tentable handshake.”

“Tenta- you know what. I’m too tired for this. Just tell it to stay out of the bedroom. I am going to bed.

“Goodnight Goose!” Venom called back, sounding stupidly cheery.

Eddie wanted this all to be over.

---

The weeks they had with Goose were surprisingly normal, the cat stayed out of their way for the most part, just following them out when they went on patrols, and on one memorable occasion when it ate a drug dealer that had kept shooting at Venom.

Venom had been annoyed at the missed meal.

The other memorable occasion was when Anne came by and found out the cat wasn’t a cat.

She had been rightfully angry. And scared. She had forgiven them eventually though. Thank god. They would be lost without her.

---

Eddie was almost sad when they came back from the apartment at the end of three weeks of cohabiting with a Flerken to an open window and a note thanking them for taking care of Goose, signed on the bottom by a M. Rambeau and an orange cat paw print.

Eddie had to buy a large chocolate box to console Venom who had grown surprisingly attached to the Flerken he had been terrified of. Eddie hoped they got to see Goose again. He had grown fond of the cat too, damn it.

… What even was his life that he was missing an alien with the ability to swallow universeres that almost tried to eat him too.

Maybe he should go visit that therapist friend of Anne’s…

THE END

#my fanfic #@lurkerviolin #venom (2018)#captain marvel #fanfic #venom movie #eddie brock #goose the flerken #goose the cat #happy birthday chancy!#hope this makes some sense #because this fic did not go as planned

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the-dream-team · 4 years

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For his birthday, I thought I’d re-post my one-shot in which James Potter punches wizard n@z!s. Happy birthday, Prongs :) Read on AO3

"It is our punches, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -James Potter, probably

Tensions ran high around the halls of Hogwarts once the Head Boy and Girl appointments became known that September.

James Potter hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary at first. Sure, it took a little getting used to all the new responsibilities, having never been a Prefect, but the busywork wasn’t so different from that of being a Quidditch Captain. Nobody treated him abnormally, save for Padfoot of course, who’s endless barrage of teasing hadn’t let up since James received his Head Boy badge earlier that Summer. But everyone else, his friends, acquaintances, and especially his Professors, were taking him more seriously than ever. Which he actually liked.

No, he hadn’t noticed the jeering, the shifts in attitude, or threatening whispers until his Head Boy duties required him to spend more time with the Head Girl, Lily Evans.

Sometimes James wished he could go back in time and take a picture of Evans’ face that day on the Hogwarts Express. When she walked in to see him sitting comfortably in the Head’s compartment, her red hair blazed as fiery as those bright green eyes he had admired for so many years. He always knew she would be selected as Head Girl. There wasn’t a single student at Hogwarts with half of her compassion, determination, or heart.

Once she’d picked her jaw off the floor, Lily spent half an hour searching for “the real Head Boy” before crawling back to their compartment to shake James’ hand, the shock still evident on her face. It was that kind of tenacity that made him so fond of her. Even if he was on the opposing end of it.

Having an excuse to spend so much time with Evans was a dream come true, but it also opened James up to a world he had never seen as a Pureblood wizard. A world where glares and whispered slurs followed you through the hallways. A world where catching a Slytherin in the corridors at night could lead to threats that weren’t quite as empty as the ones James was used to.

James wasn’t thick. He’d known for years that Voldemort had been stoking the flames of hate and division in the wizarding world, but he’d never seen the burns they left behind until now.

Barely a week had gone by before the first petition was sent around. A ballsy Ravenclaw had the nerve to ask James if he would sign the piece of parchment calling for Lily’s resignation from her Head Girl position. Anger wasn’t a strong enough description for the white hot electricity that coursed through his veins. He could feel the rage in his knuckles as he clenched his fists and then unclenched them.

He calmly gave the Ravenclaw detention, then transfigured the parchment to glass before throwing it to the ground, shattering the petition into a million little shards.

Of course, that little demonstration landed James in detention, too. But it was worth it. Especially when Evans heard what happened and attempted to reprimand him despite the impressed smile playing on her lips. His heart skipped every time he thought about it.

After the petition incident, the Slytherins became louder, claiming their rights were at risk if James Potter was allowed to single-handedly destroy official student body documents. It was rumored a group of seventh year snakes even managed to get an appointment with Dumbledore, though nothing came from it. Still, those whispered insults grew louder every day, as did James’ admiration for Lily as he watched her deflect the hate with her chin up and head held high.

He thought she was the definition of grace. She claimed it was just learned from years of practice growing up Muggleborn. The electric current inside him gathered into an exasperated ball at the thought of an eleven year old Lily faced with such hatred. At anyone faced with that kind of prejudice. He couldn’t see the color green anymore without turning red.

So when the two Heads walked back late from Herbology one afternoon to discover a crowd of Slytherins waiting for them at the castle’s door, James’ fury was already quite close to the surface.

“Oh,” sneered a bulky sixth year, “did you think you were going back inside?”

“Move aside,” said James, as evenly as his temper allowed.

“I don’t think we will,” taunted Mulciber, a seventh year James had plenty of experience dueling with in the past. He smirked, knowing he could take the slimy git in combat if that’s what it came to. “You see, the school’s administration refuses to address our little Mudblood problem, so we reckon it’s time we take things into our own hands.”

The electricity bolted through James’ chest and he reached for his wand, but Lily was quicker.

“And will you be using those same hands I covered in warts last week?” she responded, so casually she could have been asking about the weather. James glanced at her (ignoring the butterflies now mingling with his protective anger) in awe, unaware that she had been behind Mulciber’s recent trip to Madam Pomfrey’s. He beamed. She still managed to surprise him over and over again.

Mulciber fumed and turned to send a look at Severus Snape, who had originally hidden himself towards the back of the crowd. James watched Lily falter for the first time at the sight of that greasy twat. The lightning grew hotter.

“I think we’ve had enough of this,” said James, putting a hand on Lily’s shoulder to lead them both back into the castle. He felt his fingertips spark at the contact, connecting them like a united front. She regained her composure and confidently followed his lead, but the agitators held their ranks. A fourth year girl James recognized as the Slytherin team’s beater even had the nerve to unwrap a green and silver banner and wave it in Lily’s face.

“Your magic will never be real like ours is,” called Mulciber as he took a step closer, blocking them from the entrance. This is our school, for our magic, and you will never belong here.”

The lightning in James’ chest struck and ignited every cell in his body with unbridled rage. He caught Lily’s eye and she nodded, giving him all the permission he needed to release the thunder. Without dropping her gaze, he let the electricity pulse through his arms and gather in his knuckles.

With a quick rustle of his hair and a chancy wink in Evans’ direction, James cocked back his fist and let it soar, making sweet contact on Mulciber’s jaw with a CRACK.

The sharp pain on his knuckles felt like victory and a rush of adrenaline begged him to continue. James threw his punches with pleasure, reveling in each blow. Next to him, Evans shot off hexes and charms in every direction, bounding up and petrifying every lousy bigot in her path. Her wandwork was unmatched and the beauty of it energized James’ fight more than attention or popularity ever had.

For years he had fought out of spite, out of traditional rivalries, and boyhood grudges. But as he watched Lily Evans brush hair out of her face to shoot him a blinding grin before sending a devastating hex in Snape’s direction, he knew now he was fighting out of love.

#james potter #happy birthday james #james potter punches wizard n@z!s #jily fanfiction

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useryoumna · 3 years

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Happy Birthday! Hope you have a great day! 🥳❤️🎉

Thank you so much Chancie! 💖💖

#rebelkingbell #asks #25

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Maria Bustillos, Lester Bangs: Truth-teller, The New Yorker (August 21, 2012)

Every reader, starting from childhood, draws his own map of the world of letters. There is liable to be some outside guidance here and there, naturally. Certain landmarks are supplied to us, say in English class. But teachers aren’t found only in school. As a kid, my chief literary mentor was the rock critic Lester Bangs, who wrote for Creem magazine and The Village Voice in the seventies and early eighties. He shaped my nascent taste, and taught me to read much the way I still read now. And as much as I relied on his irresistible humor and wisdom for advice on how best to blow my birthday money at the Licorice Pizza record store, I sought him out still more to learn about books, in particular the forbidden and arcane books no conventional teacher would ever mention.

Lester Bangs was a wreck of a man, right up until his death in April of 1982, at the age of thirty-three. He was fat, sweaty, unkempt—an out-of-control alcoholic in torn jeans and a too-small black leather jacket; crocked to the gills on the Romilar cough syrup he swigged down by the bottle. He also had the most advanced and exquisite taste of any American writer of his generation, uneven and erratic as it was.

Bangs, who was born in 1948 and grew up in El Cajon, California, had been driven out into the wider world by a complicated, shambolic family: his mother, Norma, was a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and his father, Conway, was an incorrigible drunk. Many imaginative kids who feel trapped in oppressive surroundings find solace, pleasure, excitement, and every other kind of relief in music and literature: in Bangs’s case this tendency was exceptionally pronounced. The community of Witnesses Bangs’s family belonged to believed in an end-is-nigh ideology, and they disapproved of Christmas presents, birthday parties, and education beyond reading the Bible. Here is the root, perhaps, of the seductive ease and fluidity with which Bangs riffed on culture high and low. As the Witnesses equally rejected Coltrane, Miles Davis, Superman comics, and science fiction, so did this rebellious son love and accept them all equally and on the same plane. Bangs’s biographer, Jim DeRogatis (“Let It Blurt”), described Bangs’s nascent rebellion—and his growing sense of the untrustworthiness, incompetence, and hypocrisy of authority.

“The drawer where I kept my Classics Illustrated collection was subject to stringent, arbitrary and rather sudden swoops of censorship,” Les wrote at age twenty. “Things like ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells and ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ by Jules Verne, my literary mentor of the third grade, would suddenly appear in ripped piles atop the ashes when I’d go out to empty the trash into the incinerator on a winter morning. My mother thought science fiction was demented nonsense; all the Witnesses do. They hold that since the Bible never mentions life on other planets, there must not be any, and no one can sway them from their conclusions.”

And yet Norma indulged Lester enough that he seems to have managed a childhood of nonstop reading, listening, writing. “Days home from school faking flu I would put Trane on loud … and stand up on a hassock reading Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’” he wrote. But there are indications, too, that mother and son were very close. When Bangs found himself broke and washed up, his mother and sister would enclose sawbucks along with the Watchtower tracts they sent him. They had all shared Conway’s disgrace and death: they loved him, it seems, but he died in a fire, drunk and alone, having fled the family in shame.

The adult world outside Bangs’s childhood home bore unmistakable evidence of the same weaknesses he’d discovered inside it. The false Donna Reed visions of a happy, healthy, snow-white America of the postwar years, the disillusionment of the Vietnam war, and Nixon’s downfall; everywhere, the rebellion that had begun to precipitate in the Summer of Love now saturated the air and fermented. Bangs developed a pure hatred of the lies and whitewashings of religion and government, his mutiny balanced against a bone-deep love of the truth—no matter how messy or unpretty it might turn out to be—which he equated with the refuge he’d found in literature and music. In fact, the messier, the more “real” art could be, the better. He talked about this in what might be his most famous review, of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”:

[T]he fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled almost to none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid … [“Astral Weeks”] assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what’s more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction. It sounded like the man who made “Astral Weeks “was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison’s previous works had only suggested; but … there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work.

Along with many of his contemporaries, Bangs concluded that if “authority” was not to be trusted—and clearly, it wasn’t—then whatever “authority” detested must be O.K., or probably great. Hence the reactionary excesses of the nineteen-seventies, the chancy legacy of “don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Cocaine: a pure plant-derived substance that wouldn’t hurt you. Government: barely worth ignoring. If the squares were in favor of monogamy, then monogamy must be avoided at all costs, whether it appealed to you or not.

As for Bangs’s audience, the children of those years were far more sheltered from adult culture than they are now. While the rock stars whom we so admired were getting high and indulging their vast sexual appetites, the adults who were in charge of children were hell-bent on terrifying us with tall tales about sex and drugs and rock and roll: take acid and you might throw yourself out a window, certain you could fly, or become permanently convinced that you were a glass of orange juice. The cruel fates of these mythical victims were transparently bogus even to ten and twelve year olds, particularly those whose older siblings were already getting us stoned. Growing up at that time felt something like “The Truman Show”: the young intuited that they might break through the papier-mâché walls at any moment and into the “real world,” which probably really was scary but at least would be real. We sought reliable guides who wouldn’t lie to us, infantilize us, or sugar-coat anything, however flabby and wild-eyed they might be.

Sure there were other magazines and there were other writers. But for a certain cohort of bookishly-inclined kids, there was only one magazine and only one writer. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to learn that my contemporary, the late David Foster Wallace, had dedicated his first co-written book, “Signifying Rappers,” to Lester Bangs.

Bangs, then, was a moralist. He understood that what young people wanted was something still more than to break free of parental bonds. We wanted to know exactly what was being hidden from us. Bangs’s great gift to the kids who formed his most passionate following was the news that this information was available to us; it could be found in books.

It would be difficult to say where the expression of Bangs’s moral universe was clearest, because he’d habitually compress a sublime insight into any old photo caption or throwaway remark, in whatever throwaway piece about whatever throwaway band. But a lot of fans, I suspect, would nominate the aforementioned review of “Astral Weeks” for the honors.

“Astral Weeks,” insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boils down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.

All this would send the questing reader straight to “Les Fleurs du Mal.” There was scarcely a book mentioned during Bangs’s tenure at Creem that I didn’t eventually hunt down (including a new edition of Borges’s “The Aleph”; I couldn’t make head or tail of that.)

In this way, a whole generation of kids was led to see “subversive” or countercultural literature through the lens of rock and roll—and also to become attuned to a new kind of critical voice, a voice far more intellectually honest than that of the academic critics. Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” holds itself at a lofty, self-regarding remove from its determinedly hip subject matter, but Bangs never held anything at arm’s length in his life; he was rushing headlong into the sea of the world, arms thrown wide open, to embrace it, to drown in it.

Let’s take “Of Pop and Pies and Fun: A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review, or, Who’s the Fool?,” published in Creem in 1970. I was too young to have read this when it came out; I would have read it in one of the thick bound volumes I used to spend summer afternoons with at the library, some years later. This is just to give an idea of the fun that Bangs could provide in such an afternoon, if you were a young teen-age fan fiendishly devoted to the Stooges and their “crazed quaking uncertainty.” Because Bangs had already won you over with his uncannily exact description of your own love of the Stooges: “an errant foolishness that effectively mirrors the absurdity and desperation of the times, but … they also carry a strong element of cure, a post-derangement sanity.”

The perfection of this assessment led you breathlessly through the rest of the piece, which mentioned: Malcolm Muggeridge, the Panthers, the Yips, Holden Caulfield, “I took acid four days ago and since then everything is smooth with no hangups like it always is for about a week after a trip?” (ugh, speak for yourself, Lester); “fantasies of a puissant ‘youth culture,’” “Jimmy Page’s arch scowl of supermusician ennui,” Mountain, Cream, Creedence, “imagine throwing a pie in the face of Eldridge Cleaver! Joan Baez!” “the onetime atropine-eyed Byronic S&M Lizard King,” an MBE returned, “a giant pie stuffed with the complete works of Manly P. Hall,” “that infernal snob McCartney and those radical dilettante capitalist pigs the Jefferson Airplane,” Marxists, A. A. Milne, Mick Jagger (“a spastic flap-lipped tornado writhing from here to a million steaming snatches and beyond in one undifferentiated erogenous mass, a mess and a spectacle all at the same time”), “the bastion (Bastille) stage,” “the oppressor is fat and weak, brothers!”

Artaud, Tinkertoys, épater la bourgeoisie, Ed Ward, the “I Ching,” sock hops, “A.B. Spellman’s moving book ‘Four Lives in the Bebop Business,’” “Trout Mask Replica,” “the essence of both American life and American rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Mark my words.”

“Some peglegged Golem hobbling toward carny Bethlehem,” Porky Pig, “beautiful Pauline Kael.”

It ends like this:

Some of the most powerful esthetic experiences of our time, from “Naked Lunch” to Bonnie and Clyde, set their audiences up just this way, externalizing and magnifying their secret core of sickness which is reflected in the geeks they mock and the lurid fantasies they consume, just as our deepest fears and prejudices script the jokes we tell each other. This is where the Stooges work. They mean to put you on that stage, which is why they are super-modern, though nothing near to Art. In Desolation Row and Woodstock-Altamont Nation the switchblade is mightier and speaks more eloquently than the penknife. But this threat is cathartic, a real cool time is had by all, and the end is liberation.

Don’t even doubt that I looked up every single book, every musical reference, hell every single word I didn’t understand. You bet your sweet bippy, I did.

Bangs openly lamented having been born too late to hang with the Beats, but he loved William Burroughs and wrote about him constantly. Suburban librarians generally hadn’t the faintest clue what was in any of these books (or maybe, just pretended not to) and any curious teen-ager could borrow them freely at the public library, or buy them at a bookshop, head shop, or thrift shop. “Naked Lunch” certainly made a striking contrast with, say, “The Catcher in the Rye,” a book you might be reading at school. I was surprised to find, returning to “Naked Lunch” just a few years ago, how full of sap and hilarity it still is. The funniest thing is that “Naked Lunch” turns out to be a moralistic book, making a better, truer, scarier case against becoming a junkie than whatever nonsense you were liable to be hearing in health ed.

The literature of mysticism and the occult, representing as it did the anti-religious, was also of interest during this time; parents were still attending church regularly. Hence the popularity of unreadable Satanist tracts, astrology, Aleister Crowley, and assorted metaphysicians of all nations. What did the anti-religions have to say? I can still remember the pseudo-mystical mantra-recommendation sung by Todd Rundgren on the album, “Initiation”: “Steiner, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, and Boooo-dah.” I went dutifully along to the library to investigate and was soon bored out of my tree. By golly, that Madame Blavatsky is a pill. In general, you were liable to get some crackpot literary recommendations from your favorite rock stars. But Bangs could draw the marrow forth even from the metaphysicians. In the essay, “James Taylor Marked for Death,” he wrote:

Number one, everybody should realize that all this “art” and “bop” and “rock-’n’-roll” and whatever is all just a joke and a mistake, just a hunka foolishness so stop treating it with any seriousness or respect at all and just recognize the fact that it’s nothing but a Wham-O toy to bash around as you please in the nursery, it’s nothing but a goddam Bonusburger so just gobble the stupid thing and burp and go for the next one tomorrow; and don’t worry about the fact that it’s a joke and a mistake and a bunch of foolishness as if that’s gonna cause people to disregard it and do it in or let it dry up and die, because it’s the strongest, most resilient, most invincible Superjoke in history, nothing could possibly destroy it ever, and the reason for that is precisely that it is a joke, mistake, foolishness. The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. I could even be an asshole here and say that “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” which is true as a matter of fact, but people might get the wrong idea. What’s truest is that you cannot enslave a fool.

Here was one of Crowley’s favorite notions (“Nothing is true; everything is permitted,”), by way of Nietzsche, but Bangs brought it out of occult Thelemist incomprehensibility and into the question of discovering a practical intellectual justification for the satisfaction of every appetite. This was the way the twenty-somethings we admired were living. Why these strictures? What good were they? What if we simply chose to live real life in the U.S.A. entirely unhampered by any of them at all? It took some time, but eventually one inevitably blundered into Nietzsche himself, and asked the old question from a philosophical or logical, rhetorical or moralistic perspective. Was nothing true? Was everything permitted? What was spiritual freedom? Was Kerouac free? Was Burroughs? Was Bangs?

What he was really leading us to was the one true church of intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness. There was subtlety and elegance in his reasoning, generosity, and the best kind of skepticism: the skepticism that turns back on the author himself. This last aspect of Bangs’s writing was the most revelatory to me. It was the virtue I sought most to emulate, then and now.

Indeed no other writer gave me this feeling again so purely until I ran across David Foster Wallace, so many years later, and found he’d learned the very same thing; I suspect he learned it from the same doomed, messed-up, wounded, alcoholic genius of a teacher.

In 1977, Bangs accompanied the Clash on tour, which resulted in an immense three-part interview published in the NME.

Finally [Mick Jones] looked me right in the eye and said, “Hey Lester: why are you asking me all these fucking questions?”

In a flash I realized he was right. Here was I, a grown man … motoring up into the provinces of England, just to ask a goddamn rock ‘n’ roll band for the meaning of life! Some people never learn. I certainly didn’t, because I immediately started in on him with my standard cultural-genocide rap: “Blah blah blah depersonalization blab blab blab solipsism blah blah yip yap etc. …”

“What in the fuck are you talking about?”

“Blah blab no one wants to have any emotions anymore blab blip human heart an endangered species blah blare cultural fascism blab blurb etc. etc. etc. …”

And even though this was meant for kids to read, note that there’s not a particle of condescension in it. That, too, made young people love and trust Lester Bangs with unswerving devotion. Indeed I’ve never swerved once in all these years.

#lester bangs #music #greats #music criticism #nostalgia #inspiration #art #art criticism

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tonyadoughty · 6 years

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Oh, to be as happy birthday as Chancy getting pet. #chancyfancypants #malamute (at Wenatchee, Washington)

#malamute #chancyfancypants

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sovranly · 2 years

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happy (late :(() birthday, chancie !! 💕💕

Thank you so much ily ☆💗

#text #💌

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fangirlshrewt97 · 6 years

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What happens when you trap a Black Panther and an Iron Man together?

Author(s): Fangirlshrewt97

For: @lurkerviolin (Happy birthday dearest Chancy, the fic is super rough cause I kind of threw it together in 2 hours, so there are sure to be a lot of mistakes and ooc moments, but otherwise, I hope you like it!)

Rating: General Audiences

Relationships: None

Characters: Tony Stark, T’Challa, Shuri

Warnings: None

Summary: When Tony and T’Challa find themselves captured by a witch, they have to find a way to work together to get themselves out. After all, who else could rescue them?

“Looks like we are going to be here a while.” Tony said as the wards went up around them.

“This is all your fault.” T’Challa said as he struggled to remove the ropes that were binding themselves even tighter around him.

“How the hell is this my fault?”

‘This’ being the situation where Iron Man and Black Panther had decided to go investigate some weird readings that Friday had picked up in the northern part of the Romanian forest while the rest of the Avengers had gone hunting after their baddie of the week. ‘This’ being Iron Man insisting that despite their injuries, there wouldn’t be any danger because it was just some weird signals, and if they did see anything suspicious they could report it to the others and wait, or head back to their temporary HQ and then return with the rest of the superheroes. Which was a relatively sane plan for these two, minus the factor that the weird signals had been magical ley line interference that had effectively fried their electronics and given out their positions to the witch - because of course there was a witch in the middle of the Romanian forest - who had promptly ordered the vines to bind them and drag them to her den. ‘This’ being Tony Stark and King T’Challa of Wakanda being bound together inside of a magical circle with magical wards while a hag - and a stereotypical one with long white hair and a huge mole on her nose and the cackling laugh and the whole shebang - was ominously cooking something in a giant black cauldron.

“Do you want the list alphabetically or chronologically?”

“Rude.” Tony said. His suit had been deep fried by the witch who had hit him with some kind of spell that knocked him out of the sky. It was only because he had a manual button to press for the parachute that he wasn’t a pile of goo inside his suit right now.

“Shut up! You two are the key to my plan! Now stop your incessant nagging before I decide to take your voices too!” The hag interrupted. She looked more frazzled, and the cauldron behind her was glowing green - which if one recalled any disney movie ever was never a good sign.

The two men quietened down as the witch started chanting something. The cauldron started to bubble, almost frothing over but stopping when she finished the incantation.

“I must go fetch something, but in case you try to escape, my pets will be watching you.” The hag told her prisoners before cackling and vanishing in a poof of smoke - because why not?

“I don’t know what is worse, being stuck with the one superhero who has issues with hurting a couple trees which would have bought us enough time to escape, or being held captive by a freaking Disney villain.” Tony grumbled.

“You did not want to hurt a couple trees Stark,” T’Challa said, voice sardonic. “You wanted to drop a bomb that would have wiped out a good section of the forest along with any animals that lived there to potentially get us away from her magical reach. Which if she managed to ping us with her magic and has, apparently, the power to teleport, would not have allowed to escape regardless.

“Whatever dude. What do you think she meant by -” Before Tony could finish his sentence, both men heard a growl guilding up by the mouth of the cave - sorry, den. Continuing the Disney Villain theme, a whole pack of lynx came in, all growling and eying the prisoners as if they were their next meal. “-pets”.

“Shit.”

“Language T’Challa!”

“Shut it Stark.”

“Well they aren’t that big-” And just as Tony started, the eyes of the lynx started to glow an eerie blue - although realistically, if you were in a cave and a bunch of lynx were in it with you, and their eyes started to glow, was the color of the glow the thing you would pay attention to? “This might be a problem.”

“You think?”

“Ok, ok, ok. How about you try to talk to them, cat to cat you know?”

“I just have the powers of the Black Panther god, I can’t actually speak to animals! That’s like thinking you can communicate with metals! Do you talk to iron? Your suit isn’t even made of iron. It’s made of lies!”

“....Wow. Touchy much?”

T’challa growled but tensed when the lynx started prowling around the wards.

“On the upside they can’t get past the wards either, so so long as we wait here nice and quiet, we should be fine. Right?”

As if in response the biggest lynx lunged at them, bouncing off the barrier, but leaving it visible with a crack.

“That response enough Stark?”

“This is a really shitty barrier.”

T’challa took a deep breath as he tried to think of an escape plan. He couldn’t focus though, because Stark was yapping in the background about the terrible wards.

“Tony. I am asking you to please be quiet, we need to get out of here now, before the witch comes back.”

“Tell me something I don’t know your majesty.” The billionaire replied. His tone had shifted from the sarcastic whining he had been doing before to a more serious one. He was thinking.

“You have a plan?”

“Of course I have a plan.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I hadn’t finished coming up with it! Now do you want to hear it?”

When T’Challa kept quiet, Tony took that as a sign to continue speaking. “I realized that whatever weird signals were coming out of here were interfering with electronics before my suit stopped working, so I used the last of the power to send out a distress signal. So whoever was at HQ should have seen that signal by now and be coming to track us. My worry is that the transmission stopped at the edge of the magic signals, and since we were dragged into this cave, it will take them a while to locate the cave. And if the witch is smart, she probably has hidden it so it can’t be seen from the outside. So we need to find a way to get outside and signal to the Avengers our location.”

“Ok, but we still need to get out of these magical ropes, escape the magical lynx, and whatever other traps the witch has set. What do we do for those?”

“Um, haven’t thought so far ahead.”

T’Challa just sighed heavily. “Alright, let’s do this one step at a time. We need to remove these bonds. Before the cats break the wards.”

“Your claws can’t cut through them?”

“I tried but they keep reforming.”

“Wait, I have an idea. You said Shuri gave that update that allows you to store kinetic energy and release it in blasts right?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t release it here, it would kill you!”

“Your concern is touching, but I meant to save it for the lynx, we could use it to knock them out. For the binds, I just thought of something that could work. Can your claws cut through my suit?”

“What?”

“Can they?”

“I think so?”

“Good. Then cut near my lower back, right below where my wrists are tied.”

“Tony, what-?”

“Just listen. I built in an inflation tube in case I lost power over the ocean or was dumped into it. When the tube inflates, it will push us far enough that the ropes will before loose for a bit. Use that time to get out of the ropes. And when they reattach to me, we just need to cut it temporarily enough to open my suit and allow me to step out of here. Got it?”

“That might actually work.”

“Get to it then!”

“Hold still.” T’Challa ordered before moving to find the dents in the suit, running his claws lightly over the smooth panels before finally feeling a small dent.

“Is this it?”

“I can’t really feel it, but it should be.”

“Ready.”

“Go!” Tony shouted as T’Challa dug his claws in, the suit easily giving way. As Tony said, the raft inflated fast, the ropes loosening enough for T’Challa to jump out of the ropes. Once free, he stood straight and stretched.

“Still tied up Kitty.”

“Call me Kitty again, and I’ll leave you here for the cats.”

“Yeah sorry. Help me out though?”

T’Challa brandished his claws, kneeling by Tony’s elbow and looking him in the eye before swiping his claws down while Tony pressed the manual suit ejection button. T’Challa grabbed Tony’s hand and hauled him away, leaving the ropes to tighten and crush the suit under their grip.

“Come on, that was my favorite one.” Tony whined as he saw the crushed metal now sitting in the middle of the floor.

As T’Challa opened his mouth, someone clapped behind them, laughing.

“Good hustle boys!” Shuri said as she lowered her arms. Around them, the lynx were all knocked out, and Shuri was standing with a smug grin on her face.

“Wha-” Tony and T’Challa started, looking around and trying to figure out when that had happened before looking back at the princess.

“Stand back.” Shuri said as she raised her hand blasters and aimed for the wards. Both men walked back as far from as they could nad ducked while Shuri blasted the wards. It only took a minute before the wards shattered.

“Come on, everyone’s waiting at HQ.”

“What are you doing here Shuri?” T’Challa asked, jogging a few steps to close the gap to his sister, Tony at his heels.

“Yeah, and what happened to the witch?”

“Long story short? I came to HQ and saw the distress signal, analysed it using my own tech, found the wavelengths to be unlike anything that could be emitted by electronics, contacted the Avengers, had Wanda identify the magical signal and pinpoint the location of the witch who she then proceeded to kick the butt of, got the location of the cave while they were busy, came here, got rid of the other traps by blasting them, found you executing a truly hilarious plan, and rescued you. Just your average slice of incredibly complex!” Shuri finished, turning around to find both men staring at her.

“You managed to do all of that in … how long has it been?” Tony asked.

“90 minutes.”

“You managed to do all of that in 90 minutes? Tony finished.

Shuri tilted her head, adopting an innocent face “What, like it’s hard?”

T’Challa just chuckled, of course Shuri just rescued them.

“Oh that reminds me brother, I wasn’t sure which photo of you being at the mercy of magical rope and medium sized cats while tied to a man in a tin can I should send to Nakia, so I sent both.”

T’challa’s eyes widened as Tony complained about his suit being so much more than a tin can. “You didn’t.”

Shuri just smiled wider, prompting her brother to lunge for her, but she was expecting it and dodged, running for the cave entrance. “Come on brother, it was funny!”

“Shuri, I can’t believe you!” T’Challa yelled.

She stopped running once they reached the mouth of the cave, a Wakandan sip hovering in midair with the doors open for the three of them. Nakia was leaning against the entrance and staring at her phone, lips pressed together in an attempt not to laugh.

T’Challa froze, causing Tony to bump into him, leaving both men stumbling to stay upright.

Nakia’s shoulders started shaking as her lips turned into a smile, eyes alight with glee. Shuri wasn’t trying to hold back at all, clutching her belly from laughing so hard.

“We be the cavalry gentlemen.” Nakia said, pushing off the edge to greet T’Challa as he approached the door. She ran a finger over a small scratch he had acquired and bent to give him a kiss on the cheek, before moving out of the way to let him board the ship.

“What no kiss for me?” Tony said, earning the glares of all the Wakandans on board. “Just kidding!”

“Let’s just go Stark.”

And so they did, returning to HQ only to see the Avengers watching footage of them Shuri had captured as they came up with and executed their plan. It was going to be a long while before they lived this adventure down.

#my fanfic #mcu fanfic #@lurkerviolin #tony stark #iron man #t'challa #black panther #shuri (marvel)#happy birthday Chancy!

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