#hotel california did win record of the year but also like shut the fuck up who cares

[captain-athos]

sorry people are talking about fleetwood mac drama again and I can feel the infodump energy so here are some great bits of information esp. w regards to Rumours (1977)

- The album isn’t as pessimistic as everyone says it is!! Dreams and Don’t Stop are pretty positive! Songbird isn’t melancholy so much as it is just kind of introspective! Gold Dust Woman has a determination to it that lifts it out of being just morose!

- Having said that though, You Make Lovin’ Fun is about Christine’s new boyfriend after she dumped John and he was the FLEETWOOD MAC LIGHTING GUY imagine having to play bass on a song about how cool your ex’s new dude is lmfao

- Are they gonna YES I’M GONNA MAKE THIS ABOUT THE EAGLES bc around this time was when Stevie Nicks started hanging out with Don Henley and his first year lit major ass was like “you shouldn’t put the emphasis on the second syllable of “washes” in the line “when the rain washes you clean you’ll know” and Stevie told him to fuck off and anyway Rumours won Album of the Year in 1977 so Hotel California whomst?

- The other hysterical thing is the fact that not long after Rumours Stevie and Don Henley dated and like... 70s Don Henley looked almost EXACTLY like Lindsay so like... imagine breaking up w ur gf and she starts dating ur doppelganger 

- The song Oh Daddy isn’t about Christine’s dad or partner or like anyone related to her in that way it’s about Mick Fleetwood bc the band calls him Big Daddy it’s like POV ur Mick Fleetwood’s wife

- Also like after this album but BEFORE the Don Henley era Stevie and MICK had an affair??? Like during the album tour??? and then Stevie was like oh  Mick omg ur married and Mick was like so true bestie and then left his wife and married Stevie’s best friend Sara like the messy bitch energy in this band is just neverending

- This isn’t relevant to rumours but their next album (Tusk) involved Lindsay doing all this weird experimental shit in the studio while everyone was just balls deep in drugs and like can you imagine being Dennis Wilson (whom Christine was dating at the time) showing up to see all that and just being like not this fucking shit again after the Smiley Smile fiasco w his brother Brian like god what a mess

[voidstilesplease]

untitled 3/?

~•~

Theo is always second.

He is the second son, the second businessman, the second acknowledged, the second option, the second opinion, the second to know, the second they ask about, the second to receive glances. He is never first, maybe because his entire identity is a hand-me-down.

He is an orphan - was - before the Hales adopted him. He was ten and an addict. His father used to inject him just for fun - but it was all right if it dulled his empty stomach from the feeling of hunger. His father died in a drug raid and left Theo to fend for himself. His father had all of two dollars in his pockets. How was Theo to survive without money and relatives to take him? The answer to that was an orphanage where the Hales were sponsors. He didn't know how he was able to charm the couple - probably it was during his rehabilitation period to wean him of toxin dependency. But in less than five months, he was out of the institution and into the Hale mansion.

The Hales owned businesses from advertising to small food chains. The two largest are the sister companies Alpha Advertisements in New York and Beta Promotions in California. They said as an official Hale he could be managing one of the branches in the future.

Theo set out to do just that.

But he is always second - second to the Hales' only son, Derek.

It was always transparent that Derek did not like him from the beginning, as well. Theo had developed a good relationship with his adoptive sisters Laura and Cora. But he and Derek had long had an unspoken agreement that they weren't going be friends, much less be brothers.

God, he hates Derek. It isn't enough that he's a real son. He also has to be the better one. He always has to be first.

•••

Theo is not thrilled to be going home to New York. But Laura is going to get married to her soulmate, and he loves his sister. So, he leaves Beta Promos and flies to the other side of the States.

Theo spends the entire flight listening to Laura's pre-recorded gushing about her soulmate. Theo rolls his eyes every time Laura says the word. It's an old belief, soulmates, but they still exist today. Everyone is born with a red cord around their little finger. It hangs about three inches long with its tip glowing in soft sparks, like a severed thread. Only they can see the string unless it connects to their soul-bonded. The red cord then lengthens and ties around the finger of its other half. Only a few people meet their soulmates in their lifetime. Most live and die without finding the other end of their thread. And Theo's all right with that. His parents had been soulmates. But Theo's older sister died, and his mother followed a year later by overdosing. His dad had turned to drugs after losing them. Then, Theo lost him, too. Even soulmates aren't guaranteed a perfect life. They can even be destructive. Maybe it's for the best if they never cross paths at all.

•••

He wakes up the next day in his hotel room and notices it. 

The thread in his finger has expanded. He no longer sees the glowing tip - there is no more tip. Instead, there's a bright red cord flowing from his bed. Then, down to the floor, and out of the hotel room door. 

Theo's stunned. He pries his hand and stares at it wide-eyed. Experimentally, Theo tugs at the string - it feels concrete in his touch, instead of the usual semi-abstract existence. He can't believe it. His "soulmate" is somewhere close.

But when his initial shock has subsided, he decides to disregard the string. He doesn't have time for soulmates. He's going back to California after the wedding and obsesses over his work in the company. Theo will outrun Derek in the race. 

That's where his soul bonds to, not to some stranger that he's never going to love, anyway.

•••

He's supposed to meet Laura in the Alpha building before going out for the lunch date they had arranged weeks prior. So, Theo gets into the vehicle that Laura sent and rides the way to Alpha Ads in contemplative silence.

He enters the property thirty minutes later and is aware that his red string continues inside the building. He tries to neglect it once more, but when he steps out of the elevator to Derek's floor, he gives up on his avoidance. The string's other end is somewhere on that same floor, and it bothers him to no end. Barely catching the assistant droning on in his tail, Theo holds the thread and starts following its tug. 

He doesn't hear the assistant trying desperately to call his attention when he comes face-to-face with Derek's office door. He's only half-aware of the new voice attempting to warn Theo. The string goes through to the other side, so without second thoughts, he pushes it open.

What he sees is not exactly unexpected. Theo has heard from Laura that Derek has a younger boyfriend, about Theo's age, who works at a law firm owned by a Hale family friend. Theo's seen pictures, as well. And Cora has said his name is Polish from his roots, and a mouthful to pronounce, so he goes by the nickname Stiles. Theo has no doubt that the tall, slender man perched on Derek's glass table is that Stiles. 

He never imagined seeing him in person. Derek is not the long-term relationship type; one of the few things Theo understands and can relate to him. Stiles has been the first one to pass the six-month mark --- but they're not soulmates. Laura has said so. Which isn't a problem, she said, because she likes Stiles. Cora is friends with Stiles; their parents adore Stiles, and Derek has never willingly introduced anybody into the household. It's pretty apparent that Derek caught feelings this time. They didn't need to be soulmates to work. They didn't need to be soulmates to love.

Derek jerks back from his previous position in between Stiles's legs, hands clutching the man's hips and sucking at his pale neck. Stiles also promptly leaps off the table, flushed from ear-tip down to his collarbone, trying to smooth down the creases of his clothes. Derek turns slightly aside, hands reaching to adjust himself in his pants, before turning back around and sending Theo his most vicious glare.

Derek signals his assistant, hovering awkwardly by the door, face horror-filled - at catching her boss getting it on with his boyfriend, or for having no power to stop Theo from interrupting; he doesn't care either way - to close the door. When it's shut firmly, Derek doesn't waste time barking his displeasure.

"You can't barge into my office unannounced, Theo! Are you crazy?"

But Theo doesn't hear it. His eyes are on Stiles.

His eyes are on the other end of his red string.

•••

He laughs, bitter and dry.

Theo is always second. He's even second at finding his soul mate.

•••

The joke's on Derek. Maybe soulmates are meant to cross paths. 

Fuck if Theo's going to let Derek win this time.

~•~

check out this lovely moodboard by @sunel0. I can't appreciate it enough 😍🖤

[edit 12.30.20]

[snacksandcandy2]

I actually really loved new york. Both times. In winter 2009, crying in the snow in tomkins square park and listening to Nico’s voice urging me to leave in the fairest of the seasons. I was a terrible waitress. I liked stealing scarab beetle jewelry from that store in soho with all the bones and taxidermy. This was the end of a semi-shut-in phase with my aging hipster boyfriend/employer who never wanted to fuck me or talk to me, and when I tried to fix it, the lies I eventually unspooled from him just really bummed me out. They weren't even interesting lies, just...blandly sad. Like if your secrets are so dull, why bother keeping them.

Then soon after came one who I adored way too much for my own good, a film noir smooth operator 2 years my junior who acrobatically pinned me to the grimy velvet wall of a movie theater to lick my pussy on our first date. The kiss in the rain, broken umbrella. The cafe that only existed when it was raining. The expensive hotel and how it was half failure & half magic. He had a panic attack before we attempted to have sex, so we ate m&ms out of the minibar instead and confessed to each other that we had both been sexually abused as children. He was a popular writer on the internet when long-form essays were still the norm on this platform, and serious writers were getting their start on tumblr. actually a shy nerd who lived in a dorm at Rutgers, and I was a part time waitress who sold used underwear for pocket money, but we were very fancy together. When he met me in the city we looked up at the buildings and imagined our fantastical futures but still we were imagining separate things. He admitted he was just slumming it with me to make his Real Girlfriend jealous. When I visited him at college in Jersey he held my little chewed up paw and said, “when I’m forty and married and whatever else, I’ll remember you and your tiny hands.”

Then later, skip 2 years and some change. New life new battle scars. Drinking on the roof of the Met with my blue hair, blue like a ballpoint pen. wearing my expensive stilettos, feeling like the fanciest newly adopted stray with my new cool boyfriend who cooked for me every day, and loved Leonora Carrington’s art, and was always trying to sell me on this horrible cocktail called a negroni. He looked like disney’s fox Robin Hood if that cartoon fox wore blazers. And uh, he had a huge dick. Immediately I knew I’d marry him. 

But also. My weird, pervasive crush on James the other roommate, aka Holden Catfield (never meant as a dig, never an insult. Mild tease at best. He loved it and blushed and punched me in the arm.) Anyway he didn’t do much other than watch movies about government surveillance and he flipped the scrabble board when I won, and i always win. The perfect, hot, disgusting day at Coney Island. The ill-fated truncated threesome right before autumn started, squirming with whiskey sweat in the alternating hot and cool currents of air drifting from the open window, that's the last I remember. The Arthur Russell record James put on. “i’m A Little Lost”. Me blacking out and then coming to in the bathtub, crying and spitting venom. I don't remember why I was so mad. Maybe because. It could've been nice but I made it awful. Don't remember how one thing led to another that night, but it must have been my idea. Who else in that drunken trifecta would have thought up something like that? They seemed so close before that night, like brothers. Before that night I was rarely without one or both of them, former altar boys flanking their scraggly priestess. Things were awkward after. But I dressed up as James for Halloween, I was Holden Catfield in his tartan coat and dumb earflap hat with cat ears attached. He did not dress up as me. He went to Boston to visit his family of 7 siblings and dying father. 

The all night pharmacy in south slope with the bikini-wearing gremlin doll in the window. I was less of a shut-in this time around, but always ragged, my chameleon-changing hair falling out and breaking off at the scalp, swollen lips and black eyes because I needed to be hit too hard during sex when I was all fucked up and I couldn’t feel the sting through the suffering. How it had to be, then, because of everything that had happened to me before. Not knowing what good was meant to feel like.

On our first date when I met B in savannah I was crying and he said "did I make you cry?" I said, "No, this is from earlier. This is something else."

Moving in with fox Robin Hood was originally meant to be restful, but I couldn’t. Always crying in stairwells at parties, lying down in the snow and begging to be left for dead. As one does. 

Then I left with B for the healing lemonwater light of California. I ran through the hills with flowers i'd bitten off at the stem clenched between my teeth. "This is an act of magic" I'd think every time. I revived my cutting habit and called it bloodletting for magic. I mixed blood into my henna hair dye and swam naked in a lake with other witches.

And now we are leaving again. A new old city where people eat confetti off the street for breakfast and you never have to leave the bar if you don't wanna. Not New York. My best friend sold me on moving to New Orleans, she’ll show me all the best places to sniff poppers and eat hallucinogenic flowers and roll in the warm grass.

The Destroyer song with the lyric “I gave you a flower because foxes travel light”. The little hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Anyway. I want to visit new york again soon though, maybe before we settle into our new-to-us old city. “The Big Easy”, corny as fuck, funny place to go when you are small and difficult.

But back to New York. Central Park is like a highly trafficked airport for birds. So many birds from so many places, just passing through. More types of birds traveling through that hub of migration than anywhere else on earth, someone told me once (an annoying girl at an art installment in Marfa TX). So few birds native to the area. Obvious metaphor. I wonder if the pigeons look around at the other birds and go, "ugh. tourists."

On good days Ive strolled the upper east side in luxe incognito, trying silk dresses on at a sample sale like I belong there. Stolen framed bugs and fossils from that store in soho specializing in framed bugs and fossils. Slammed back shots in some gnarly dive wearing ripped tights and a dumb hat. Fallen out of cabs and said, "leave me here to die". Traced the old symbols carved into the old buildings with my leather gloved hand. Some birds are native to nowhere. Clawing and beaking at some alternate universe, smacking into the glass wall. I build temporary nests that I remember forever. I know all the best places to be sad.