#i personally think this looks nothing like jesse but pretend its a style thing and not a i wasnt looking at a reference thing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beca-mitchell · 4 years

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Summary: When Beca and Jesse get married, the second last thing anybody expects is for them to separate soon after. The actual last thing anybody expects is for Beca to move in with Chloe. Set after PP2.

Notes: i told myself i would fucking finish this and mark my words i will even if this ends up being the most horrible thing in the world. fic title from "Cornelia Street" by Taylor Swift

Read below or on AO3.

* * * * *

Beca looks beautiful, all clad in white. The bodice of her dress is snug and fitted. Sleeveless and strapless, baring her delicate shoulders. Her hair, so carefully styled and pinned by Chloe's own hands.

Beautiful, Chloe repeats in her mind. She tries not to stare, but it is too difficult not to marvel at the way Beca just seems to glow. It is reminiscent of so many memories Chloe previously held close to her chest (radiant smiles from across the room, hoisting championship trophies, graduation, smiles from across a flickering campfire), yet here Beca is in front of all their friends.

For all the world to see.

A tinge of joy sparks in Chloe’s chest before spreading into a flame that sends the most pleasant of aches through her body.

She is so indescribably happy for Beca’s happiness...and yet—

It’s just that now, in this moment, there is a kind of impossibleness about Beca that rattles Chloe’s heart. She looks beautiful with a nervous - but unmistakably radiant and happy - smile adorning her face. It’s the kind of smile that art only hopes to capture - the kind of happiness that makes people envious.

Chloe remembers that her brother once told her that a person’s perspective and emotions could change completely by way of simply tilting their head. He had then taken the opportunity to push her into the pool while she had observed an adorable bird flapping its wings in the cool spring air. It had all been a ploy of course, but for some reason, Chloe knew that she would not have seen that bird if not for a change of perspective. A change of heart, maybe.

She wonders if she can tilt her head now if only to right all the wrongs in her life. Her world is already bent and skewed and she navigates through it on shaky legs. She has navigated and navigated and brought herself here. To this moment.

To Beca’s wedding day.

It makes Chloe sigh with how breathtaking Beca looks. She clutches her bouquet a little tighter, watching Beca practically glide down the aisle while holding on to her father’s arm.

Beca is a force in Chloe’s life. She perpetuates this constant push and pull somewhere deep within Chloe’s chest, like she is pulling Chloe to shore, but Chloe resists because she knows Beca isn’t hers - not really. It’s a little akin to self-preservation, but she’s resisting the one thing she knows will make her happy beyond reason.

It’s why Chloe is here today; it’s why Chloe is trying to stop herself from crying, lest she break down very publicly and very inappropriately.

It’s because today isn’t about her, not one bit.

It’s about Beca marrying her college sweetheart.

Or rather, in other words:

Beca chose Jesse.

Beca chose Jesse all those years ago and now Chloe pays the price for never having spoken out; she’s paying the price by watching the love of her life marry somebody else, while she smiles and pretends she’s okay with it all.

And she is - she’s okay, really. She knows that Beca is happy - from what she can tell - and she knows that Jesse will take care of Beca.

But she would absolutely be lying if she said “being okay” meant that it didn’t hurt at all, because it does hurt. It hurts like a bitch, and that’s putting it lightly if Chloe’s being honest.

So Chloe lets her heart bleed out, not caring that she leaves remnants of her love for Beca along this path they’ve walked together: she’ll accept whatever fate comes to her, even if it means just being Beca’s friend because it’s better than not having her in her life at all.

They’ve all known each other for years at this point.

Chloe’s world has been spinning slowly from the moment Beca told her she was engaged and now...watching Beca kiss Jesse softly—tenderly—Chloe’s world slows so much that she thinks she stops breathing for a moment.

Though all eyes are on the happy couple, Chloe’s world slows and blurs until she’s the only one there, witnessing this unfold before her eyes. She feels an unreal sense of nothingness well up inside her while happiness struggles to fill the void, a happiness she struggled to find for as long as she can remember.

And here, Jesse and Beca are, having found that happiness for themselves.

So she borrows some of that - thrives tragically off the love her life being happy because it’s what she deserves. It’s what they all deserve.

Then, when Chloe comes back into herself, her world is bent and twisted - tilted on its axis in all the wrong directions.

Beca is smiling at her with tears in her eyes, holding on to her husband’s hand and there’s nothing Chloe can really do about it.

Beca turns with Jesse and hand in hand, they float back down the aisle. Chloe watches them as they go—float seems like the only apt word because they seem to drift, like they are simultaneously fading from her own conscience.

She marvels at how quickly they became Jesse and Beca. No longer Jesse-comma-Beca.

Chloe’s hands are numb from clapping, watching from her own perch as the maid of honor, though she finds little honor in her position, considering she is kind of sort of very much in love with the bride herself.

Still. Clapping. She plasters a smile on her face even as her heart thrums uncomfortably, like a warning sign. The only real physical reminder that she’s present; that she’s there.

* * * * *

It wasn’t even that long ago—

“Are you happy?” Chloe had asked. Well before the wedding. Well before the preparations for the wedding. Something that Chloe had always enjoyed about her relationship with Beca was their ability to communicate with each other, mostly because of all the struggle they had endured to get to this point. They talked often and sometimes for hours at a time. It brought—continues to bring—joy to Chloe whenever they managed to steal away into their own world for a few moments. The distance between them, distance which only grew with time, was a buffer, but nothing permanent.

Chloe was and still isn’t good with boundaries.

The distance was somewhat of a buffer, but Chloe was never good with boundaries. She had allowed herself to be sucked in by Beca and consumed by Beca's wants and needs, even if Beca hadn't wanted her. It hadn't mattered. Didn't matter, especially not then as the precious minutes ticked on by.

Even less than an hour ago, when Chloe had been staring at the back of Beca’s head for an entirely different reason, hair brush in her hand, ready to help Beca become the bride she wanted to be.

“Are you happy?” Chloe had asked, once again.

She was Beca's maid of honor. She had duties to fulfill. Hair to comb and brush. A smiling and happy bride to please.

It was a special kind of hell, waiting for Beca to respond. It felt like a stupid question, in retrospect.

So. Hell. A special kind of hell for those who inappropriately fall in love with their best friends.

As for Beca—

Beca’s eyes had lifted to catch Chloe’s in the mirror and for a moment, their breaths had stilled. Beca always prided herself on knowing Chloe well. Probably better than she knew herself at times. Still, the question had jarred her - but not because of the context. It had been the way Chloe asked: trepidation and emotion bleeding through the three simple words, like another set of three words that set people's hearts aflame.

(There had been times where Beca found herself instinctively wanting to respond with another three words. Equally simple, but equally capable of setting people's hearts aflame, much like her own. How natural that would have felt.)

A range of possible answers flooded through Chloe's mind as the silence stretched. She imagined and imagined, combing through Beca's hair with slow, gentle fingers. Then, Beca finally turned to face her and the imagery changed. Chloe imagined all kinds of things that Beca could say – all the ways Beca could have broken her heart.

The happiest, Beca could say.

Or-

I love him with all my heart.

He’s everything I want and more.

Instead, all Beca managed to do was hesitate; all Beca managed to do was say a soft - the softest - “yes” and that had been the end of that conversation.

Chloe hadn't been sure if she should have breathed a sigh of relief or if she should have sucked in a breath of despair.

* * * * *

Shockingly, at a wedding reception for two of her friends (Jesse is a friend, Chloe tells herself), Chloe finds it difficult to pick out a familiar face.

She is seated between Benji and one of Beca’s cousins. It’s one of the odder tables she’s ever been a part of, but Chloe can’t complain, being a part of Beca’s life.

“Hey,” Benji says quietly.

“Where’s Emily?” Chloe asks, equally quiet as they watch Beca and Jesse share their first dance as husband and wife. Something heavy rests on her shoulders.

Benji laughs, a little self-deprecatingly. “We’ve been over for a while now.”

Chloe thinks she could facepalm at that exact moment if she weren’t cradling her wine glass precariously. “I...I’m so sorry. Yes, I knew that,” Chloe murmurs, embarrassed. “I totally knew that and I just…” her gaze flickers, practically automatically, back to Beca and Jesse.

Now, somehow, her eyes lock on directly to Beca’s eyes. Beca’s eyes which are glistening as clear as day.

Beca’s voice rings in her head, suddenly drowning out all other sounds.

“I...I’m sorry,” Chloe repeats. “Got caught up in memories, I guess.”

She misses Benji’s sympathetic expression. He pauses before speaking. “I totally get it if you don’t want to do the song.”

And there’s that.

(Also, it figures that Jesse’s best friend is as intuitive as ever. Chloe thinks that her and Benji must make a fine pair.)

“No,” Chloe murmurs. “We’ve practiced it enough and it’s on the itinerary. Aubrey will kill me if I don’t sing the song.”

Benji grins, as boyishly handsome as ever. “Weren’t you the maid of honour?”

Chloe cuts him a playful glance. “You think Aubrey Posen would pass up an opportunity to plan something? Especially for a fellow Bella?” She clears her throat. “And...it was probably for the best that she ended up taking control of the whole thing.” At Benji’s inquisitive expression, she falters. “I’ve been busy with work. New school year and all.”

He nods, but doesn’t push. Instead, he rises to his feet and holds out a hand. “Dance?” he asks. “Just to get the pre-performance jitters out.” His smile is genuine. “I know it’s…” he lowers his voice. “...it’s been a while since you’ve performed.”

Chloe snorts, already feeling something unclench from around her heart. “And who won Nationals three times in a row?” She accepts Benji’s hand nonetheless.

“Okay, super senior. Win any awards for that?”

The laugh she lets out is one of the easiest ones she’s let out in a while.

* * * * *

Watching Beca and Jesse grow together was in itself a long and tumultuous road. As with most college relationships, they had their ups and downs, had their moments apart, but somehow - always somehow - Beca would talk herself (and Chloe) back into the idea that her and Jesse were meant to be together.

If Chloe had to pinpoint important moments from her college experience, she’d use the markers of Jesse and Beca’s relationship to pinpoint specific moments where she felt like her and Beca were something more. The way Beca’s eyes would flash or change whenever she looked at Chloe - or even the way Beca’s body always somehow angled towards her, attentive and caring and confusing all at once.

As for Jesse and Beca, there were many times where Chloe believed they would separate permanently, but they somehow always forced themselves back together. Forced. Not found. What that meant was that Beca would find herself distressed and huffing and pacing in Chloe’s room, nearly rubbing a hole into her floor with how frequently she did that.

Chloe privately thought—feelings shared by Aubrey and Amy from time to time—that Jesse and Beca were better off as friends, but there was something a little romantic, she supposed, about marrying your significant other from college and building that idyllic life together. There was something a little picturesque about that - about growing together to the point that they were ready to spend the rest of their lives together.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that Jesse and Beca were that couple: they were both successful and talented and both agreed to live together in Los Angeles. It was almost annoying how well they worked together, but even Beca, on a drunken whim at Barden during her junior year, had confided that she sometimes had felt that something had never really clicked between them.

Chloe never pursued that line of thought because Beca had still been happy.

So they graduated, won the Worlds, and everybody went their separate ways.

That’s the short story.

The slightly longer story is that Chloe planned and planned until she grew so terribly weary of seeing her career advisor between classes. She grew weary of dragging half-eaten sandwiches into her equally exasperated career advisor’s office. She studied until she saw black spots in the corner of her vision.

By the end of her senior year, she had plans to leave Barden and never look back.

She contemplated moving home. She contemplated Portland and her parents’ comfortable home. She contemplated the fair weather, the nice trails, and the free meals.

She thought of stability and mediocrity and everything that came with the idea of settling - not even settling down.

Just, settling.

So, instead, she called her brother and asked whether she could stay with him in San Francisco. She called her brother because she barely talked to her sister. She called her brother because he was where she wanted to be.

(California. She wanted to be in California. Beca’s determination and drive bleed into Chloe, as expected when two bodies exist in such close proximity. Chloe is helpless to stop the ebb and flow of Beca’s spirit and drive into her own body.

She craves it.

It makes her better—makes all of them better.)

Despite Aubrey’s insistence that she take up a position at Fallen Leaves with all associated perks and benefits, Chloe declined that offer and finally settled on working towards being a teacher.

(“In California?” Aubrey asks, trepidation in her tone. Disapproval, maybe. Chloe doesn’t want to get into that now.

“Yes. Eventually.” Chloe responds because what else is she supposed to say?)

* * * * *

“You’ve always been weirdly good with kids,” Beca says lightly. They’re folding their blankets while the last embers of the fading campfire flicker away.

It surprises Chloe because Beca had been oddly quiet while the rest of the Bellas made their way back to the tent for their final night. Taking pause, Chloe watches Beca’s face for any clues as to why she’s bringing this up now or if Beca’s going to continue her train of thought.

“I guess,” Chloe says slowly. “I mean, I don’t really think that I could find a steady job teaching underprivileged children how to sing.” A small smile works its way across her face. “That’d be nice though.”

“Not just that,” Beca says quickly. “I just...think you’d make a really good teacher. Of the general sort. Like, teaching kids...how to read. Or do math.” Beca seems to grow more embarrassed as more words flow from her mouth. “You know what I mean. You’ve always had the most ridiculous patience with the Bellas and you’ve also always managed to…” Beca’s voice grows quieter. “You’ve always helped me believe in myself. So, that’s...yeah.”

That little monologue is surprising enough that it’s Beca who is rambling nervously in front of Chloe. But it’s the added touch of Beca being bashful - shy almost - as if she’s revealing something intimate about herself that really makes Chloe’s cheeks warm.

“And maybe,” Beca suggests casually, evening her tone out like she’s talking about the weather, but Chloe knows better. “Maybe that’s a job you could do in California.”

And there it is. The blurry lines and deep-seated emotions finally rising to the surface.

Chloe adores this side of Beca. It’s rare to see such vulnerability shine through. Chloe thinks she can count on two hands the amount of times Beca’s walls crumbled in front of her, enough so for her to seek comfort in Chloe’s room in the dead of the night, or to find Chloe at her favorite spot in the library.

“Yeah?” Chloe asks, almost too afraid to break the silence.

Somehow, Beca looks younger, standing in front of her. Like she's standing in front of Chloe in her freshman year, asking for a chance somehow.

“Yeah,” is Beca’s equally soft reply.

Chloe gently tugs the half-folded blanket from Beca’s hands. She smiles and helps Beca refold it without saying another word.

There really isn’t much more Chloe can say.

* * * * *

And even since then – since that fateful evening, sitting around the campfire without a care in the world – she says nothing and does nothing. The memory of one of their last nights together as college students and as Bellas is seared into Chloe's mind.

It’s not like she can do or say anything, really. For all intents and purposes, Beca is happy and Jesse is sweet. They work together and Chloe isn’t in the business of breaking up solid couples.

So she throws herself into work after Jesse proposes. She buries herself in work after the wedding. Buries and buries like an ostrich with its head in the sand because it is easier to pretend than face the reality.

Chloe is terrible at coping mechanisms. A product of how she grew up, she supposes.

Amidst all this – amidst the hurt, the separation, and the desperate bid for happiness, she completes her teaching certification. Even worse, she moves to L.A.—fully moves, boxes and all—and she goes out to dinners with Jesse and Beca like some hapless third wheel, pretending everything is fine and she is completely and totally okay with seeing Beca and Jesse hold hands like they’ve done so a million times before.

Chloe is nothing but resilient and maybe a bit of a masochist. She wills her crush away (prays for some kind of reprieve for sinners like her) but she learns the hard way that it is useless because she can’t will away something that doesn’t exist.

Because she doesn’t have a crush.

It’s not a crush and never was. She’s just hopelessly in love with Beca Mitchell and she’ll have to spend the rest of her life figuring out how to deal with that.

* * * * *

Regardless, it doesn’t take long for things to go to shit.

* * * * *

It starts with Beca moving in with Chloe. The irony is that Chloe had assumed the end of Jesse and Beca's wedding meant the beginning of their life together—a new life without Chloe, all things considered. It ends up being the beginning of something, just not quite the life that Jesse likely envisioned. Chloe had prepared herself to be completely boxed out because a married couple, she assumed, typically didn't have time for a tragically single woman who were in love with one half of said married couple.

Or maybe it starts with Beca and Jesse’s relationship souring entirely, prompting them to split hastily and messily. It sends Beca right to Chloe and her new Los Angeles apartment, having finally found her footing in the teaching department.

Or maybe it starts with the beginning of Jesse and Beca’s relationship, all those years ago.

Chloe isn’t sure, but she thinks maybe—just maybe—she isn't remiss in thinking that the story starts and ends with her and Beca somehow. She just has difficulty figuring out how the pieces fall.

* * * * *

Beca is only living with her for about two weeks when it happens.

When Chloe comes home one Friday afternoon, she isn’t expecting to see a mess in her living room. The rumpled blanket, headphones haphazardly scattered across the floor. Beca's laptop perched precariously on the edge of the coffee table as if its owner couldn't be bothered to put it away neatly.

She knows Beca and this isn't Beca's usual behaviour.

Panicking, Chloe darts around the corner, calling for Beca’s name. She is worried that Beca hurt herself somehow. Her brain immediately conjures up the worst possible scenarios - all of them worse than the previous ones.

She stops in each bedroom before she realizes there’s a quiet sort of sniffling happening behind the door to the guest bathroom.

“Beca?” she calls softly, not wanting to startle Beca.

She hopes it’s Beca. The thought that Beca might have been harmed makes her heart pound and it spurs her into action again. She reaches into her purse, resting her fingers on the small canister of mace (a gift from Aubrey) and tries to still her racing heart.

The crying becomes more apparent as Chloe nears firmly-shut door. "Beca?" she calls quietly. The sniffling stops for a moment before it starts again. Chloe is both relieved and upset: relieved that Beca is safe, but upset that Beca is hurting for whatever reason. She rests a palm against the wooden door, her heart aching at the sound of Beca’s quiet crying.

“Bec,” she tries. "I'm coming in, okay?" She waits, listening for protest. Upon hearing none, she finally pushes open the door. “I – what’s going on?” she asks, trying to stay calm when she sees Beca huddled in the furthest corner of the room, hastily wiping away her tears. Even after years of knowing each other, Beca Mitchell is still self-conscious of her own tears in front of Chloe Beale – Chloe, who is an avid crier herself. It would be cute if not for the fact that Beca doesn't look like she's about to calm down anytime soon. Chloe bites her lip, unsure as to what she can say. “What…happened to the living room?” Chloe finally asks tentatively. “I-I’m not mad. I’m just concerned,” Chloe says hastily. “We can clean it up later, I’m just…” Chloe trails off, gesturing vaguely with her hands.

This moment is rare. She’s not sure whether Beca wants her to approach or not.

Beca finally makes a sound other than a sniffle or a sob. She laughs, but it’s dry and void of emotion. Not quite the sound Chloe is expecting. The sound is jarring and echoes in the space around them. It alarms Chloe because Beca has generally either been sad or happy since moving in with her. The two solid emotions are at least something that Chloe can deal with. This Beca is scared – terrified, maybe – and a little hollow. It makes Chloe’s chest feel tight, as if she’s about to have some kind of bomb dropped on her.

“Beca,” Chloe says softly. She finally kneels in front of Beca and puts her hand on her shoulder in an attempt to get her to look up. “What’s wrong? Did...Did Jesse say something to you? Say something about you?” It's the only thing that Chloe can think of as the most recent trauma in Beca's life – her separation and subsequent divorce proceedings from Jesse. She lets the question hang in the air, hopes it doesn't upset Beca too terribly, and waits.

Chloe doesn’t have to wait long. It feels as if time stops for a moment when Beca’s eyes flick up to hers, but they’re filled with pain and sadness and a kind of longing that Chloe doesn’t know what to do with. She can’t dwell, however, because Beca’s mouth is opening and she takes a deep, pained breath-

“I-I’m pregnant, Chlo.”

Chloe’s world tilts all over again.

tbc.

#mine #bechloe #bechloe fic #my fanfic #pitch perfect

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writingsfromhome · 4 years

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A June Love Story: Epilogue

Part 1 / Part 2

June. Present.

My bladder presses on me as I watch the lift move like a snail to the 17th floor.

“Come on, hurry,” I mutter, moving from foot to foot.

I don’t even wait for the doors to fully open before I squeeze past, open the door to my flat and rush to the toilet. The relief is immediate, my mind clearing of the fog it got in when I had to go really urgently. I couldn’t wait to regain control of my bladder again, and not have to pee every half hour!

When I step out into the hall, my boyfriend stands on the opposite end with his hands raised asking what was going on. He must have closed the door behind me.

“Sorry,” I blush. I imagine I looked like a tornado rushing in and locking myself away. “Baby’s fighting my body these days trying to get out.”

He walks over slowly, his eyes on my big bump. When he reaches me, his large hands wrap around the sides and finally, his eyes meet mine. I remember the first time I looked into those green eyes, I couldn’t have guessed the rollercoaster the last seven years would’ve been.

“Due date’s next week,” he licks his lip, sometimes it seemed like he was more nervous than I. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Him?” I cross my arms on my chest. “When did we decide it was a him?”

“Well Jack put his bets on a girl so naturally I had to put them on a boy and-“

“Are you guys putting bets on unborn children again?” I scold him. Jess and I had already forbade them from doing it after she told me they’d done it for Lucas and April.

“Babe,” his hands move from the bump to behind me, wrapping them securely around my waist even though the bump meant I was still a foot away from him. “Harry Styles Jr. is going to be the most beautiful boy the world’s ever seen, and we’ll be £250 richer.”

“Harry,” I hold his face in my hands. “Stop placing bets on our baby! It’s not like you even bloody need the money!”

“I know! I know.” He laughs, leaning down to kiss my forehead. “It’s not about the money though, it’s about winning against Jack.”

I close my eyes, I didn’t have the time for Harry and Jack’s games. If the last few years taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t hold onto every disagreement. “Just help me to the couch, I’m exhausted from standing here arguing about this.”

“As you wish,” Harry guides me down the hall to the living room with its amazing view of London below. It was almost a year since I moved in but the view never got old. I stretch my legs out and Harry picks them up to sit under. He stretches his arm along the back of the sofa and picks up the remote.

“Did you want me to put anything on while I start on dinner?”

“Wow that sounds nice. I would’ve gotten pregnant a lot earlier if I knew I would get this sort of treatment,” I tease. Harry raises his eyebrows, caught off guard by my joke and I lean forward to whisper, “Hey love, have I just made you...speechless?”

“You did not,” Harry finally speaks. “You can’t use my own line on me like that!”

“And you expect me to follow your rules?” I ask, pretend shocked.

“Obviously,” Harry lays my legs back on the cushion and crouches over me. “I’ll make you regret disobeying my rules.”

“I’m carrying your baby,” I use the only line that he’s unable to find a comeback for ever since my bump went from cute to enormous.

“Not for long,” he whispers, a devilish grin on his face. He leans down the rest of the way and kisses me so I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer, wanting him all over me but he stays cautious as usual.

“The baby,” he takes his hands off of me and moves away nervously. I don’t know why he thought kissing me could crush the baby or something.

“The baby is okay! Come back and kiss me!”

Harry shakes his head, “Not taking any chances.” I sigh as he leaves me unsatisfied with a kiss on my cheek but as he walks to the kitchen he spins around, “As soon as I can though, I’ll knock you up all over again. don’t worry love.”

I tip my head back and laugh, I can’t help it. Harry’s mind was a thing of it’s own: one second it was serious and contemplative, the next it was tender and thoughtful, and the next just downright dirty. I could hardly keep up.

But later, as we tuck into dinner, I have to stop and admire him for a moment. We had a dinner many years ago when Harry had refused to come back to my place. That felt like so long ago, so did all the years I wasted with Nate, the years he was in his own wrong relationship with Alyssa. The years we spent not talking—I regret those the most.

But a miracle happened last summer, while I did my Great American Friend Tour, Harry was in LA at the same time as me. We’d met up the night before I was meant to go home and something about finding each other so many thousands of miles away just erased so much baggage we were carrying along with us. The trip I’d taken had cleared my mind too, making me realise I had to go for what I wanted. We decided then life was too short and if fate brought us together in LA like that, we owed it to ourselves to go on a proper date. To finish the love story that started seven years ago in June.

I hadn’t flown back home the next morning like I was supposed to. Instead, I finished his tour with him in August and we came back home together. He proposed to me one morning while we had breakfast. A simple ring with a simple question. And even though we were technically dating for only two months, the amount of history we had was worth decades. We were married a month later, rushed only because I’d found out I was pregnant. The joy on Harry’s face when I’d told him was brighter than anything; his stage personality a dim spark compared to it.

I didn’t know why it took so long for us to find each other and settle, Jack says we were under a six year curse but I think life got messy sometimes and we slipped and got caught up in it all. At the end of the day, literally, I came home to a man who loved me and who I loved so much.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Harry asks, interrupting my internal monologue.

“Can a wife not admire her husband?” I ask.

“Not when he’s shoving chicken parm into his face like I am,” Harry shoves another bite into his mouth which makes me laugh and sets him off choking.

“You’ve proven your point,” I push some water towards him. “Nothing to admire, just a man choking on his chicken parm.”

As he downs his water and tries to say something only to choke again, I secretly take it back. I could stll admire him, goofiness and all.

I help him clear his airways and he teases me about what I’d said. I tease him back and thus begins our evening banter, ended only as we settle in for bed.

“I don’t know if you know,” Harry says seriously, as we lay facing each other in bed. “But I love you infinity times 6.”

“Only 6?” I ask, knowing where this was going.

“For each year I couldn’t tell you how much I loved you.”

“And now?” I ask, snuggling under my covers as sleep blankets me and Harry’s hand weighs comfortably on my side.

“I get to show you everyday.” Harry whispers.

I feel him kiss my forehead and whisper I love you just as I finally drift off to sleep, warm, happy, and blissfully complete. Our love story may have started out rocky, but we turned out okay in the end.

#harry styles x reader #harry styles #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #i hope this redeems all the angst this put you through #!!!!!#yearly #epilogue

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lesbiansastiel · 4 years

Text

i asked my gf who’s never watched spn to tell me what these pictures of spn characters make them think:

he has very bad promo pictures

ofc its sam! .. is that sam?

your favourite, theres at least 8000 lgbt headcanons for him

he definitely peels apples before eating them

no idea

he looks like hes in a cereal commercial

propably plays fortnite???

oh my god what the fuck

his parents needed money so he was forced to do promo pics for a school and if u uncrop this picture hes holding a backpack and a book that says like. ABC

haircut is making me think thats young sam but im not sure

me: that is young sam

ok cool!

thats a homophobe. i know a homophobe when i see one

me: the actor is

i know that thats dean, leather jacket looks smelly

i dont like or trust him bc his voice is too low, no offense

but he was funny in that episode when they thought they were... when they were the actors, i like that they shamed the actors (jensen ankles?) trailer

i always assume hes dead, every time i see him im like oh fuck hes not dead yet????

he looks like he dies first in a zombie game protecting the protagonists daughter

opens beer cans with knives (stabbing them from above)

has touristy fridge magnets

hillbilly neighbour that just stuck around

later: OH HIS NAME IS bobby

um........ lost journalist from a chick-flick

looks too enthusiastic to be in this show

name starts w an R and dies dramatically and causes trauma for multiple people?

me: its charlie

oh....

me: do you know who that is?

shes the one that causes angst in ur fanfic? someone’s ex? writes paranormal articles- like someone who works in a pokemon centre and takes care of the reporting to the media i know this is not true but that’s how it should be based on characted design

why.. what is that shirt

she looks like she’s from twin peaks but like a weird 90s techno nostalgia version

probably not real, but someones hallucination, like a little sister that someone lost and then hallucinates coming back?????

me: that’s jess.. from my fic

oh no im so sorry, i thought that the previous one was that one

then thats like a college person who sam did like drugs and beer with and they were happy and then she died.. tragic :(

umm öööööö, uhhhh

kinda looks like a serial killer, like a bad one who hasnt killed anyone in years so his face is tired. he wants flesh

um,i say um to everyone im so sorry

he has a conflicted expression

i think he’s sassy or just tired of everyone

no idea who that is.. i just feel sorry for this character idk why

*laughs*

a 12-year-old who got a toy gun for christmas bc hes american

hes gay probably and pretending to like guns so his dad doesnt get disappointed

for real, in this show, a young new hunter and messes up and then does one heroic thing and dies immediately after?

this looks like the perfect love interest who dies dramatically and is relationship with an important man character whose controlling when she wants to be independent and doesnt want to hide in a basement like the man wants her to

me: ??????????????????

she also looks like a cop like every woman in this show somehow but her character design is too soft to be a tv cop woman lady

2009 hair

probably a cop?

is styled in a way that always looks way too make-uppy and probably wears heels to work bc this is a bad character design show

me: shes not a human i can say that much

then shes a demon bc thats what all the women are in this show, theyre all demons

i hope shes not evil, this might be trap she looks friendly but that isnt the truth

this looks like a slightly messy and like, bohemic twin of the reporter that works in a pokemon centre

is probably rich

lots of anger that is not showcased in this picture

clenched fists

all in all, suspicious

probably supposed to be related since theyre in the same picture and different ages but they dont look related at all

they look like they’re from teen wolf

and probably would star in a scene where they see that someone has key’ed their car and theyre like fuuuuck

i think this character is supposed to be a cool friend woman whose not supposed to be super feminine and love-interesty bc shes wearing plaid and drinkin beer but they Failed

probably a werewolf

also is she wearing nothing under that plaid what is this...

me: oh fuck why is this picture so HQ compared to the rest...

it’s bc he’s an angel

obscene amount of powers that seem useless bc if he actually had Power they wouldnt need this show and he could just figure everything out

i know that people wear those annoying pins that say theyre waiting for an angel in trench coat. but i dont think he’s ever going to come :(

i think his name is castiel and mishaapocalypse happened w his face

and i saw his face taped to a mcdonald door in a small town in finland

yet another teen wolf character

looks like a suspicious teenager who lives in a town where they (the brothers) stop to get gas and he’s hanging out at the gas station

hes like heyyy youre not like other people here are you perhaps... hunters bc my mom died and now my house is haunted

daddy issues

me: correct

um. another beer lady. probably, people have decided, a lesbian

looks like a stock photo of someone eating salad at a rural setting after a hard day at work milking cows

also somehow looks like works in a lab

is related to the weird open-flannel-no-t-shirt woman (the beer one), probably her mom

thats all

um. major demon

probably has a scene where she tries to kill someone with a knife seductively

hated in the fandom and in fanfic someone who tries to steal deans man (which is stupid bc deans a homophobe anywaY)

also looks like fantasy show self-insert but evil

me: i think that’s a teenager

welcome to my twisted mind

im sorry...

happy

which is making me think that he probably dies, sadly.

probably takes care of an older family member

has some demon problems

that’s all

post-apocalyptic show character where theyre trying to have something else than 40yo white hilbilly men bc thats not media sexy

i hope that she doesnt die but probably does bc shes not a major character

me: can i reveal something i know

yes please

me: her and the blonde that you called demon had a thing canonically

cool!!!!

probably lives in a ranch that has no electricity due to demon problems

me: :D

and still does her hair somehow

uuummmm this looks like someone’s weird flashback version that is supposed to look like a teenager but actually looks older

me: uhh this is a bad picture let me find a bettter one

me: there we go

looks like this character needs a cowboy hat

probably writes dean’s name in her diary??

COMPHET

thats all

#spnedit #pls rb #personal #i thought this was so funnyyyy

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badgergreene · 4 years

Text

One Morning in a Cafe in Byron Bay,

Jess stood looking at the road. She was bored, so bored she didn’t even play with her biro, lodged safely in her pinny. The lady and her son whom she had sat down a few minutes earlier were ready to order. Jess found this out as the lady started talking at her, even though she was far enough away for it to seem she was talking to herself. I’ll have poached eggs on toast. She looked at her brat of a son, who was of the age where he wouldn’t shut up at home, but now, in public, was barely able to string a sentence together, fiddling with the salt mill, desperately trying to break something. She looked at Jess, who by this time had moved closer to their table and had exaggerated her pose, which, if in a mime, would indicate she was about to write something down: order pad ever so slightly further from her body; pen on paper but motionless; mouth open, ready to anticipate, perhaps even encourage, a sound. And he will have a... she paused, pouted and turned proudly to her son, urging him to continue. Yes, thought Jess, and? What the fuck do you want? The boy turns his body towards his mother and mumbles something into her armpit Urgg, a, umm, babychino. His mother looked adoringly at her son and whispered Good boy. She looks back at Jess, as if, somehow, that was that. Clear as coffee. Jess turns on her heels and scribbles something on the pad. When you’ve worked as a waitress in a cafe for any length of time, you already half-suspect what the children will have. Ruminating on what other habits the child will eventually develop, thanks to Mummy, Jess rips the ticket and places it on the tab grabber. Fucking babychinos. Fucking kids.

A man totters up the step and sits down cautiously on the nearest seat. He was one of those guys you feel sorry for. The clothes he wore had faded past the point of being dirty, to the extent his clothes resembled his core. Everything in his look, manner, hygiene, every move his fragile skeleton made, said ‘tired’. His hands were trembling, reaching into his pocket to count his change. You couldn’t tell if he was an alcoholic or just miserly and scared to hand over any cash. Anywhere else, it was the former. But this is Byron, where millionaires rubbed linen-clad shoulders with the homeless. Either way, the truth was that you stare at his hands for long enough you just want to go over and grab them. Stop fucking shaking!

Jess walked over to the lady and the kid. How’s your eggs? She didn’t care, but it was her job. Not to really care, but to pretend to care just enough until she either tipped or didn’t. If she did leave a tip, Jess knew that all the pent up anger she felt towards the lady who had acted from the outset as self-entitled and superior, all of it would disappear, leaving her with a faint guilt and coins in her pocket. She retreated back to the position she was at when the lady had started to talk at her and played with her fingernails, silently whistling the tune that was playing from the speakers. She’d better fucking tip.

A lady walks in with her dog. She is wearing bracelets you find in those machines in arcades. They were probably expensive but they looked cheap. She had on a grey, eighties-style jacket: raised shoulders, short sleeves, disgusting. Her hair is big, wild, but more than likely ‘styled’. She paints a tragic picture, completely incongruous to the setting, and decade. She strolls in, her scared-shitless Jack Russell following behind her. Jess looks at the dog. Sorry, can you keep your dog outside please? The lady, still with her sunglasses on inside, explodes. Listen, there’s a gas attack outside and I’m not leaving him out there! Jess and the other waitress look at each other, unsure how to proceed. Byron has a habit of attracting the Very Strange. Placating, Jess starts to stroke the dog, before telling the lady once again it has to stay outside. It’s a cafe, we serve food. We’re not allowed dogs inside, she implores. Don’t you fucking touch my dog, she pushes Jess’ hand away from the dog’s head, I don’t care about you, I haven’t eaten in three days. I just want a coffee. We’re not in a movie here, just get me a coffee. The lady, who incidentally looked like she had just been pushed off set in an eighties drama, started to get more wound up. The waitresses looked at each other again, wondering whether they should call the owner for guidance and/or muscle. So extreme this little scene, so above and beyond the normal ‘extreme’, Jess was sure that men in white coats would soon come and remove this lady, who, like the stain from table four, didn’t look like she was going anywhere. The dog can’t stay in here. Don’t you touch my dog. It can’t stay in here. I don’t care about you. Excuse me? Just make me a coffee, please! Can you take the dog outside? We’re not in a movie here. No, we’re not. Take your dog outside. I don’t care about you. There’s a gas attack outside. What? Smell it. I can’t. Exactly, I’m not subjecting my dog to the gas. What gas? I can’t smell any gas. It’s all over Byron. It’s deadly. I think it’s time you left. I don’t care about you. Please leave. We’re not in a fucking movie. Please go. Stage left if you want. I don’t care. I’m a regular here. I haven’t eaten in three days.

And so the record kept playing. The men in white coats never came, but she left, eventually. The Jack Russell, who presumably had observed such insanity before, remained obedient, shivering, head down, tail between its legs, following its owner who wasn’t on this planet. It looked thin, sad, and was totally subservient to the lead. It would have been perfect for someone looking for love. Jess felt far more fondness toward the dog than its owner and quickly, fleetingly, wondered if she could, so to speak, give the dog a bone. If Medussa hadn’t eaten for three days, how long had the dog been without food?

In walks the Cunt. His name is Eric, but Cunt is a better name. He is a short man, much shorter than he would wish and speaks in a volume that no one can ignore. He comes up to the table of Lee, a girl waiting to start work and was sitting down reading the paper, and pushes his groin onto her knee. Oh, and I missed you too! He smiles pure cheese. Lee, the waitresses, indeed all the patrons on the cafe continue as if he didn’t exist. Realising that this conversation was dead on its feet, that he was, in fact, boring the world, he shouted over the restaurant, hey Gaudi, can I have a coffee? The desperation for people to know he ‘belonged’ was palpable. There was no answer from out back, so he cupped his hands together. Gaudi! Gaudi! Soy latte please. Wanker. He sits down and invites the girls to sit around him. He starts talking about -yawn- business and money. Yeah, I try to make 2k a day, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but, you know, there’s a real fine line between fear and intuition, and that’s what I love about it -I really have to dig deep. And because there’s a lot of money, I mean a real lot of money, and that’s what is fascinating – I don’t get passionate about much, but this I do. The thing is, yet another reason why he is such a cunt, yeah, did 60 trades yesterday, burnt through my account, lost a lot, is that whilst he is saturating the girls with this horseshit, he thinks he is being not only interesting, but charming. Brick subtle in letting them know how humble he is to admit to losing money and then not worrying about it; building himself back up, showing strength of character, yet everyone can feel a show. I just double my money, and see what I can do. He owns an Italian restaurant, which is going down the pan. It’s been in the paper for sale and the price keeps dropping. If the suppliers to his restaurant could hear him waffle on about trading, whilst they have been chasing him for a five-figure sum, going under themselves because of a bill he didn’t pay, they would want to kill him. Yep, 0421, 31, 76, 34. The fact he is selling his restaurant and not paying his suppliers, then trying to impress waitresses with talk of trading, when what they know about trading is about as much as I know about the moon, is a sickening indictment of the character of this cunt. Okay, so let’s organise something, shall we? The next few days might be difficult, but I’ll juggle some things around and see what I can do. He has a son who is seriously depressed. It makes you wonder why. The girls leave and he looks at his iphone, his world, and says for everyone to hear, this is a disaster. Like he wants everyone to know that he is playing the market whilst he sips a soy latte, whilst his restaurant goes under. What a twat. Now he starts to whistle. Tunelessly. Gaudi walks past, how are you? Fine Gaudi, how’s things with you? The cunt doesn’t look up from his phone. He makes a phone call. The volume increases. Yeah, what it is, he’s attention seeking. He’s a 21 year old boy acting like a 14 year old. He’s talking about his son. Everyone can hear. All he does is smoke pot and do nothing. He needs to grow up. I’ll have him fucking committed, he’s suicidal, well, he’s not suicidal but he’ll climb to the top of a cliff so that everyone can see him. If he just took the pills. He’s the father. Cunt. I think he’s being selfish, difficult. I’ve given up. He’s so defensive. Personally, he needs a kick up the arse. He’s just attention seeking. Yeah, where does he get that from? Not from you, Cunt, obviously. I’m basically waiting for him to try and kill himself, so I can get him fucking committed. Yeah, I’ve given him the responsibilities of the restaurant... yeah he’s earning more than me. He’s on 450 a week, which at the moment is more than me. What happened to the 2k a day? Cunt. If he was really trying to help by giving his son the responsibilities to a failing business, rather than complaining about his attention-seeking, selfish behaviour, he might start by being there for him, giving him the attention he needs. It might be the only sweet bite of an apple rotten to the core. The more I listen to this heartfelt conversation about his son, the one person who needs his father, the less I want to cave his face in and the more pity I feel for him.

Two guys sat down, each very much in love with themselves but worried people would think they were in love with each other. So they sat with tense ease, unable to relax, blocking off any proper contact by keeping on the mirrored aviators, looking around to see who was looking at them. The taller of the two, stretched back in his chair, invading the free space of the cafe and crossing his legs, confidently asked Jess, How’s work today? Fine, thank you. She was short and it shut him up. He straightened in his chair and they were both silent until their meals came out.

He hunches over his table, looking at his phone. He is short, wears a white shirt, tucked into his jeans no less and he is from New York. His eyes are intense and his hands gesticulate wildly, perhaps to make up for having no forehead. The man has a very small forehead, made smaller by the furrows created by his perpetual frown. When he concentrates, he looks – in the words of Jess – like a window-licker, a bit special. The guy oozes money. He holds a centurion AMEX card, shouts down his phone and has stomach ulcers and very few manners. He eats like a pig, or someone who has money on his mind. He gets on his phone, gets up from his table and starts walking out to the pavement, then into the road. He bends over double and screams into his phone. Oblivious to the traffic, he wanders into the road shouting. He’s back in NYC and angry. The stress of the city has not left him. Maybe he needs to move here, but it won’t do any good. His ulcers will still secrete acid; he’ll still flap his arms Can I have the check please, and a hug?

#Byron Bay #writing #travel #coffee #you can't make this up #Moses #cafelife

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

Text

HECK there’s so much in 1.06 I still find fascinating. In its own way, there’s even the aspect of the “truth spell” to it, when the shapeshifter takes on Dean’s form and talks to Sam about Dean’s state of mind and thoughts, and the entire episode revolves around Sam’s “normal life” past through his college friend Becky.

Big themes: lying and telling the truth (both to each other AND to the general public about what they do and the reality of monsters), identity (and the things they keep hidden from each other, which have focused on Sam in 1.05 but now get a spotlight on Dean’s internal headspace via the shapeshifter).

They show up lying, drawn into the case by Sam’s connection to her and the mysterious circumstances of her brother’s murder charge-- he was supposedly two places at once and had an alibi. Sam talks Dean into detouring to help her, and everything goes almost immediately sideways. Sam has history with Becky, which is effectively a history of lying about his entire life.

He almost immediately lies to Becky that Dean’s a police officer, forcing Dean to go with it to gain access to the crime scene, because Sam doesn’t want to tell Becky what they actually suspect. He desperately wants to keep the “civilian” side of his life untainted by the supernatural. He wants to protect Becky from learning the truth. Ironically that ends up hurting them all in the end, and they still can’t protect her from either the monster or from learning the truth-- Sam’s family hunts monsters, and the monsters are real. This little bit of unrealistic sanctuary Sam had found with his friends at Stanford has been corrupted yet again. It’s an ongoing case of “this is why we can’t have nice things.” He can’t even think back on that life he lived under false pretenses with the same “purity” anymore, you know? Can’t unring that bell now.

Yeah, Jess dying the way she did (and that guilt is STILL weighing upon him unvoiced to Dean yet) kinda wrecked the possibility of going back to that life for him, but the truth of it, the truth of the rest of his life and the monsters had still been contained. The rest of his friends were still “unpoisoned” by this knowledge and would still welcome him as the friend they’d known for four years at college. The fact Sam kept in touch with all of them via email had served as a sort of lifeline for him, an anchor to the “normal life” he’d tried to build for himself where he could pretend the monsters weren’t real.

And then he’s confronted by a literal monster wearing Dean’s face. Everything the shapeshifter taunts him with here is a fascinating early case study in Dean. Wearing a literal false face, it reveals an awful lot about Dean-- from the fact he was jealous of Sam for getting out and going to college while he was stuck in the hunting life to what he personally gave up to make sure Sam even had that chance in the first place. This is also the source of the “everyone eventually leaves me” agonizing facet of Dean’s personality:

Shapeshifter Dean: I am your brother. See, deep down, I’m just jealous. You got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I’m a freak. And sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave me. Sam: What are you talkin’ about? Shapeshifter Dean: You left. Hell, I did everything Dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too. No explanation, nothin’, just poof. Left me with your sorry ass. But, still, this life? It’s not without its perks. I meet the nicest people. Like little Becky. You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let’s see what happens.

There’s a reason this shows up in so many fanfics, you know? It explains his cavalier attitude about relationships, flirting-- all of it. He puts on the mask, no chick flick moments, and he can be the guy who always leaves at the end of the night or the end of the case (which we learn in another 7 episodes has additional painful rationale after we learn about how Cassie broke things off with him... what IS it with this show and episodes that invoke “college” as a symbol of freedom and normalcy? I say while 1.07 runs in the background, set at a college...). But Dean has accepted that his life is what it is. For one reason or another-- be it the nomadic lifestyle of hunting going from case to case, or just having to hide the truth of his entire life from a disbelieving public-- he’s isolated and in self-defense he wears this mask of the happy-go-lucky ladies’ man and macho BAMF. He’s accepted that normal life can never be his life, and this is the way he deals with it without getting hurt.

Ironically, it’s the very fact that Sam had been trying to keep these two sides of his life separate, untouched by one another, that “got Dean killed” here... Secrecy may have been the expected reaction for him and Dean in their investigations, but Becky reacted like a “normal person” and disclosed everything to her lawyers.

REBECCA: I told the lawyers that we went to the crime scene. (SAM scoffs.) SAM: Why would you do that? REBECCA: Well, I told them that we were with a police officer. And they checked it out, and they told me that there is no Detective Dean Winchester. SAM: Bec— REBECCA: No, I don’t understand why you would lie to me about something like that. SAM: We’re tryin’ to help. REBECCA: Oh, trying to help? Do you realize that that was a sealed crime scene? This could have just ruined Zack’s case. SAM: Bec, I’m sorry, but— REBECCA: No, goodbye, Sam.

This leaves Becky unprepared when the shapeshifter shows up at her house looking like Dean... and uses that to gain her trust while also telling her about the monster, about what Sam had actually been investigating. And it also leaves Sam entirely unprepared for what he finds when he actually goes himself to Becky’s house to attempt to explain the truth to her. She’s already been replaced by the shapeshifter, and the moment he DOES explain the truth of the monster, she clocks him. And then Dean is forced to kill the shifter while it looks just like him... talk about an unsettling experience, but also a really freaky mirror situation, killing a mutant version of oneself. D:

But this is also Sam effectively severing his connections to the last hope of being able to go back to his life at Stanford as if nothing happened. He’s burned a bridge. And while Becky does her best to understand, for Sam, a large part of the idealization of that life as somehow “normal” has been forever shattered. He can’t pretend to be just another guy anymore.

REBECCA: So, this is what you do? You and your brother—you hunt down these kinds of things? SAM: Yeah, pretty much. REBECCA: I can’t believe it. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes. And, I mean, does everybody at school—nobody knows that you do this? SAM: No. REBECCA: Did Jessica know? (SAM looks thoughtful.) SAM: No, she didn’t. REBECCA: Must be lonely. SAM: Oh, no. No, it’s not so bad. Anyway, what can I do? It’s my family.

Must be lonely... and that’s it right there. That’s what Dean/Shapeshifter Dean had said as well. But Sam doesn’t really get it yet. He spent years with his friends at Stanford and none of them ever knew this HUGE aspect of his entire life before. Not even the woman he lived with and considered marrying and spending the rest of his life with. Sure sounds lonely to me, having to cut out so much of himself to pretend like that... and this is one of Sam’s ongoing major themes for a very long time to come-- through his soullness and shattering of self after his wall is broken, to the promise he extracts from Dean to go live that apple pie life after 5.22, to running away with Amelia and abandoning hunting yet again while never actually talking about the truth of any of it. At least Dean had Lisa, who was at least aware of the hunting and the monsters (though that didn’t help her much in the end... it did make for a situation where Dean could actually recover from his trauma without having to lie or hide huge portions of the truth from her, which is something Sam never even allowed himself to consider until the whole “something, with someone in the life” speech in 11.04).

And these themes continue over the next two episodes. Sam’s impression of going to college as his shot at freedom and normalcy, a chance to choose his own future for himself, while that illusion slowly shatters.

His conversations with Lori about how going to college got her out of her father’s home, gave her a chance to try new things in her own life, while literally carrying the baggage of her father’s beliefs of morality around her neck, “punishing” her every time she tries to step out from under his rules. The fact her father has defied the moral code he’d always taught to her-- having an affair with a married woman-- crushes her own faith in herself and her long-standing beliefs. It’s only by uncovering and destroying the symbol of that baggage that she’s able to free herself from it.

Makes it kind of ironic when in 1.08, Sam’s the one who earns the “not a liar” tag:

DEAN We're students from the university. JOE No, you're not. You're lying. DEAN seems taken aback. DEAN Well, truth is JOE You know who starts sentence with "truth is"? Liars. DEAN exchanges a look with SAM. SAM Have you heard of Oasis Plains? It's a housing development near the Atoka Valley. JOE (to Dean) I like him. He's not a liar. (DEAN looks angry.) I know the area.

Back to 1.07 for a moment, because Dean finally gets the chance to pretend, to live a bit of the college experience vicariously, and in true Dean chameleon style, he fits himself right in, makes himself at home in the frat house, even while Sam remains uncomfortably on the fringes and only really engages when Dean leaves him no other choice-- leaving it to him to paint the purple guy while they talk, dragging him to the party while Sam confesses that he didn’t really enjoy parties while he was at Stanford (which we saw in the pilot episode how even while he was there pretending to be normal, he still didn’t really let himself have that full experience and tried to keep the wall up at the halloween party). But for Dean, this is just one more experience to throw himself into with a casual lie about who he is and why he’s there, knowing full well that they’ll move on to another case, another town, another persona for him to adopt for the next case. Sam just... has trouble packing away parts of himself like this and truly letting himself be the chameleon Dean’s mastered. Not that this is healthy for Dean, either, but it’s how he’s learned to cope with his entire life.

And this “college as freedom” theme strikes again in 1.08, from several angles, telling Matt that things will get better between him and his father, and explaining to Dean as they talk about how different their experiences with their father were-- Sam feeling like the “freak” of the family for wanting to get out and live a normal life, despite possibly being the one person in their family who was already incapable of it (because hey, demon blood! psychic powers! even if we don’t know this yet, it’s painfully ironic when we’re eventually given that context).

SAM Matt, just listen. You have to get your family out of that house right now, okay? MATT What, why? SAM Because something's coming. MATT More bugs? SAM Yeah, a lot more. MATT My dad doesn't listen in the best of circumstances, what am I supposed to tell him? SAM You've gotta make him listen, okay? DEAN Give me the phone, give me the phone. (He grabs the phone from SAM.) Matt, under no circumstances are you to tell the truth, they'll just think you're nuts. MATT But he's my DEAN Tell him you have a sharp pain in your right side and you've gotta go to the hospital, okay? MATT Yeah. Yeah, okay. He hangs up, and so does DEAN. DEAN Make him listen? What are you thinkin'?

Matt, of course, tries to tell his father the truth, and it nearly gets everyone killed, because of course his father doesn’t believe him. After the night they have, his father will be convinced and their lives will all be changed forever. There’s no going back once they know the truth.

And all of this still through the lens connecting them to the still murky mytharc, finding their father and learning the truth, uncovering and unraveling the mystery that drew them into this life in the first place. And this is still just level one of that grand tangle of cosmic deceptions that will lead them through the next 14 years to the end of their ultimate quest for the truth, and the unraveling of their fate so their final battle can be for their own freedom and free will from this eternal cosmic game. :’)

#spn 1.06 #spn 1.07 #spn 1.08 #spn 14.20 #s14 hellatus rewatch #spiders georg of the tnt loop #lies and damn lies #practicalities of monster hunting #it's spirals all the way down #there's so much more i wanted to say about all of these episodes too >.>#performing dean

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dracosollicitus · 6 years

Note

Ah! Thank you for the last one! Here’s another ;) Damerey #55!

#55: “Just shut up and kiss me already!”

@thiscompletemess-blog

Poe had found himself locked in a utility closet…

With the last Jedi. Who was currently steaming mad at him.

“C’mon, Dameron, you could at least act like the very idea doesn’t repulse you.” In the dim emergency lighting, he could see her perched on a crate that used to house koyo melons. He tried to focus on that little detail, and not the way her foot was swinging back and forth like the tail of an angry Loth-cat, or the way her hair was out of its usual three-bun style, cascading in chestnut waves around her slender shoulders. Distract yourself, Dameron, don’t think about - that thing you don’t think about.

“I didn’t say the idea was repulsive,” Poe protested. Rey snorted and kicked her foot against the crate with a resounding, irritated thwack. Her arms crossed in front of her chest, and Poe heaved a sigh, tapping his chronometer to check the time.

“There’s four and a half minutes left,” Rey snapped. “In case you were considering chewing your leg off to get away from me.” Gods, she was right. They did have four and a half minutes left - four minutes, 36 seconds, to be exact. He could do this.

He didn’t know whose bright idea it was to play Seven Minutes in A’philiar, but he was going to make them pay (It was probably Jess. Jess always suggested Seven Minutes in A’philiar). And he’d be checking those dice, too. Poe was eight-five percent certain they were loaded.

“Some party,” Rey muttered, resting her head against the durasteel hull behind her. “Are they all this disappointing?”

“This was your first party?” Poe asked before wincing. Gods, he was ruining her first party. No one wanted to be trapped in a closet with a man twelve years older than them, while their friends chanted kiss kiss kiss KISS KISS outside the door, at their first party.

“Not really a room for a lot of revelry on Jakku,” Rey commented dryly, pretending to examine her nails. “Shocking, I know.”

“Ah.” Four minutes left. He could do this.

Rey sniffed. He turned away from the door which he’d been staring at impatiently and looked at Rey through the low light. Was she allergic to something?

She sniffed again.

Oh Kriff. She was crying. All his disaster-aversion training, and he had absolutely nothing for “beautiful and unattainable woman starts crying after being locked in closet with you during bizarre and honestly problematic party game.”

“Rey,” Poe fought back sweetheart. “Are you okay?”

She wiped her eyes and turned away from him slightly. “No.”

“No?” Poe started forward before catching himself. They had limited personal space in here - honestly, probably conducive to Seven Minutes in A’philiar - and he didn’t want to infringe on hers. “Do you want me to get them to open the door? Because even if we’re off hours, they technically have to obey any formal order I give them as their commander.”

“No.” Rey shook her head and continued to stare at the back of the closet like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. “That’s not what I want.”

“What do you want, then?” Poe asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I want you to tell me why the idea of kissing me makes you so aggravated.”

Uh. “I’m not aggravated.”

Rey snorted. “Yeah right, your entire Force signature is aggravated. It’s all - spiky.” Good to know. Poe mentally made a reminder to never lie to Rey; built in detector. “So, why? Don’t trust the desert rat? Embarrassed that anyone might think you kissed her?”

What? That’s - “Rey, I don’t think about you like that,” Poe said, aghast. “You aren’t a desert rat, please don’t think that way about yourself. And - and of course I wouldn’t be embarrassed, I’d be–” Elated. Over the moons. Ecstatic. Thrilled.

“You’d be what?” Rey hopped down from her crate and walked over to him, stopping about a foot away. “Horrified? Disgusted?”

“No.” Poe dragged his fingers through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the universe to wake him up from this nightmare. He opened his eyes. Still in the closet. With Rey. Who, upon closer inspection, looked hurt. Gods, he kriffed this up. “No, Rey, that’s not why I’m upset.”

“Why are you upset then?”

Two and a half minutes left.

“Because.” Poe dragged his hands through his hair again, curls beyond salvageable now. Rey watched his movement; her eyes took a moment to resettle on his face. Her pretty, hazel eyes. He wished it were lighter in here, so he could see them better. Sighing, he let it out. “For months, Rey, all I’ve wanted to do is kiss you.”

She stiffened in surprise, and he saw her mouth pop open. Gods, that was cute. Distracting, not helpful, but cute.

“I’ve wanted to pull you aside and kiss you every kriffing day - in the hangar, in the mess, in the rec. It’s getting worse. Do you know how hard it was not to drag you out of your X-Wing last week after you barely got out of that dogfight? I wanted to kiss you right then and there, in front of the entire Resistance, just grab you and press you up against your ship and kiss you until you couldn’t think straight, kiss you until you agreed to never pull a stupid stunt like that again.”

Rey was uncharacteristically speechless, so he plowed forward. “And of course my crew knows. They know I’m wild about you - but unlike me, they won’t admit how inappropriate it is - and they probably arranged this, loaded the dice, so you’d be stuck in here with me, so I’m sorry. I’m so kriffing sorry that you got roped into their nonsense. Because this is your first party, and you should be spending it out there, with people your own age, people who aren’t 32 year old pilots with a bad temper and a lot of baggage and no chance in the nine hells to ever deserve you. So yeah, please don’t think that I don’t want to kiss you. Because I do. I really kriffing do, but I also know how not-okay it is to kiss you in a closet, where you’d feel forced or obligated to because of some stupid party game and-”

“Poe,” Rey cut in finally. “Gods, Poe. Finn loaded the dice.”

“What?” Poe blinked in surprise.

“Finn knows that I’ve had a crush on you since,” She blew air out of her pert mouth, nose wrinkled in consideration. “Crait? That sounds about right. So he said he would ‘take care of it,’ and I begged him not to, but here we are. Of course I want you to kiss me. Nothing you’ve said or have apparently worried about changes that.”

His chronometer beeped.

“We have a minute left,” Poe said, checking the time. He lifted his eyes to Rey’s face, and startled when he noticed how much closer she was.

“Then you better just shut up and kiss me already, flyboy,” Rey said, her hand pulling at the front of his jacket. He grinned at her and wrapped his arms around her small waist, tugging her close up to his body. Their lips found each other in the dark, and Poe’s eyes drifted shut in pleasure as he felt her mouth, warm and soft against his own, so much better than his dreams of this. One of her hands tangled in the back of his hair, the other remained in his shirt, holding him close (not that he needed any help).

They took a second to breathe before diving back in, their noses bumping against each other - “Sorry, sorry,” Poe laughed, “Big nose, I know,” to which Rey murmured, “That’s my favorite nose you’re talking trash about,” and okay, yeah, Poe was utterly karked - before he tilted his head to the side for the perfect angle to gently nip at Rey’s bottom lip. She opened her mouth with a sigh, and he took the opportunity to slip his tongue in, just enough to run along the sensitive inside of her lip. She shivered, he smirked - but then, she did the exact same thing to him, which caused him to moan obscenely, his hips jerking forward of their own accord. He mumbled another apology, which she swatted away.

He stumbled backward until his back hit the door, more than a little guided by Rey’s insistent hands, and she broke the kiss to dot kisses along his jaw. Her clever, hot mouth had just found the spot under his ear that would officially make him lose his mind when -

Bang bang bang.

“You decent?” Finn hollered through the door. “Time’s up.”

“Go away!” Poe shouted, leaning in to capture Rey’s smiling lips one more time, quickly. “Seven more minutes, Finn.”

“Not my fault you wasted five of them talking!” He said gleefully. Poe grumbled but refused to lift his hands from Rey’s waist, holding her tighter, possessively. He just got her, he wasn’t about to let go, not -

“Poe,” Rey whispered. “Poe, we can just - leave the party and go to your room. We don’t have to stay here. We’re…adults.”

“Oh, shit!” Poe blinked at her and then kissed her cheek quickly. “Thank the gods you’re smarter than me.” Clasping her hand in his, he pushed off from the wall and threw the door open.

Cheers from Black Squadron, Finn, and Rose, filled the room, and Poe flicked each and every one of them off as he tugged Rey towards the door.

“Leaving so soon, Commander?” Snap teased, his arm slung around his wife’s shoulders, a cup of hull stripper in his hand.

“Yep,” Poe wrapped his arm around Rey’s waist while keying open the door. She was giggling, her cheeks pink with pleasure and/or embarrassment, and she buried her face half-heartedly in Poe’s shoulder; he couldn’t resist, kissed the top of her head, and nuzzled his nose into her hair, which caused a collective “awww” from their audience. The doors hissed open, and Poe led Rey out.

“Morning drill is cancelled!” He thought to shout behind him before the doors closed, the coos of their friends becoming a cheer.

“Generous,” Rey said, as they walked quickly down the hall to his room. “Do you intend to have a late night?”

“I’m not going to stop kissing you until the suns come up,” Poe admitted. He looked over at Rey, pleased to see that her blush matched the one he felt on his face. “If that’s alright with you, of course.”

“More than,” Rey said cheerfully before breaking into a jog. “Race you there, Commander.” He shouted with laughter and chased Rey down the corridor to his room.

She won.

#damerey #jedipilot #fluff #quote prompt #ask #sw #i made up a'philiar #one shot #poe dameron

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doverstar · 5 years

Note

I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A TUMBLR. This isn't really the ask thing, but I was wondering if I could have some advice? I love how you fit dialogue, action, and keep the point of view of the character. I can write pages of basically script but when I try to turn it into paragraphs... I stutter, falter, and quit.

I DO HAVE A TUMBLR. I WASTE SO MUCH TIME HERE.SO MUCH TIME.

This is gonna be so much reading, be brave.

I’ll try! I’m not used to giving advice, but for you, Jell-O Square, anything. I’m self-taught when it comes to creative writing, remember, so my advice won’t sound like a seasoned scholar’s would on the subject. And I might be doing it wrong? I’ll just tell you my thoughts, okay?

Dialogue is really really fun and really really easy for most people. All you have to do is imagine the character’s reaction to things and pow, you can hear them. (If you know the character. If it’s an original character of yours, take the Myers-Briggs test AS your character and read your results. If you’re like YUP, THAT’S THEM, then you know you know your character. That’s just one test. Not the be all, end all, but it’s an idea.) The hard thing about dialogue (I think) is weaving it in between exposition and thoughts, so that you don’t have pages and pages of just script. Pages and pages of script are fun to read, but only for like two seconds, and then people get bored. And that’s confusing; most people don’t think they want to read ages and ages of non-dialogue, but you’d be surprised how much it’s needed.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was making a sandwich

it was PB&JSo when you sit down to eat a meal you really love (for me it’s pizza, quesadillas, pad thai, burritos, Lucky Charms), and you’re so ready to be satisfied by this food that’s already one of your favorites, you have a drink with it. Let’s say it’s a beverage you also really love–soda, iced tea, blah blah blah. You eat and eat your food and it’s so darn good, but if you’re like me, you wait a significant amount of time before you wash it down with the drink you like. You’re so enjoying the food that you have to wait until you’re nice and thirsty before you drink that drink, and when you do, it’s the best drink ever, following the best food ever. Because it’s so satisfying and feels great to eat the food you love and drink the drink you love. You make it last by weaving it all in together to get the best experience.Stay with me, maybe this isn’t the best analogy? I’m not hungry right now, I swear–

Pretend the dialogue is your drink. And the paragraphs–exposition, the setting of the scene (like the room they’re in, or the trees outside, or the way it smells/how bright it is) and the characters’ thoughts during the scene–the paragraphs are your food. There’s a lot more of your food overall than there is of your drink when you go to have lunch (yes, you can get refills, but there’s still a whole plate/bowl of food and like 12 ounces of liquid). It’s the same with dialogue [drink] and paragraphs [food] for me.You need enough exposition, setting, and character perspective to help the reader feel the scene. They know what the kitchen smells like while the characters argue in it. And they know why Character A just yelled that at Character B because you’re inside her head right before or right after she yells it–that makes the reader understand the characters in the scene and feel connected to the emotions in the room. (At the same time, you don’t wanna tell them everything the character is thinking. Leave some stuff open to the readers’ imagination–that’s where headcanons and fan theories come from–and if you’re not telling them in a paragraph, show them with the dialogue. I struggle with this a lot.) The paragraphs, describing things, whether it’s thoughts, actions, or the setting, are the big plate of food. That’s what the reader needs to make the drink valid. I’m drinking this soda and it hits the spot, but I now I feel like I could go for a nice bag of chips, or a sandwich. Having one without the other is fine, but it’s so much better with both. And the paragraphs are what’s going to sustain the reader, keep them grounded, make them full in the end. Satisfied. If it’s all just soda, just tea, just water, that’s good but it’s only gonna last so long. It’ll only satisfy the reader for so long. You have to keep them interested, and this 2-liter of Sprite ain’t gonna cut it when their stomachs start growling.Okay, I am getting hungry.Dialogue is the drink. (Beat that dead horse, Doverstar. BEAT IT.) It’s fun and sometimes it’s heavy [and if you’re Steven Moffat, it’s ridiculously poetic and people don’t really talk like that, but oh so pretty to hear–]. There’s not a ton of it in comparison to all the paragraphs, and it has to happen sprinkled throughout, or there’s too much drink and nothing really sustainable, nothing to chew on. Dialogue is usually easier to write. If it’s not, that’s another crumbly lesson for another time.Dialogue can be several lines and then a few paragraphs in between, or one line between actions, like body language. Or a line or two between thoughts (or a line or two between LOTS of thoughts, dramatic thoughts, if you’re me). But it should never fill the whole page. That’s too much drink. Now I have to pee and I’m HUNGRY. Not as satisfying!You’re writing dialogue to keep the reader engaged, but for different reasons than paragraphs do. Dialogue brings the characters to life. They each have voices, and they each have reactions to everything. The key (for me) to weaving (for me) dialogue in between paragraphs (FOR ME, MAYBE NOT FOR YOU) is to make sure you’ve got their voices down, so you know when they’ll react and what they’ll say when they do. What would make them suddenly burst out angry? What about this thing that another character did would make them cry? What do they say to explain an unexpected hug? How to they justify this rash action they just carried out? Dialogue also has a lot to do with drama. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s carrying the plot forward or dishing out information, but most of the time it’s drama. The show Gilmore Girls thrives on dialogue. Everyone talks all the time. Fast, loud, witty, they talk and talk and talk. It’s one of the show’s creators’ trademarks. Each character has their own distinct voice, from Lorelai Gilmore to Taylor Doose to Emily Gilmore to Jess Mariano. They’re all different, and you start to predict their general reaction to things before those things happen. Maybe you don’t know Jess is about to spit out a “Whatever!” exactly, but you know the feeling behind what he’s going to say to Luke is similar to one of his “Whatever!”s. It’s helping you get to know the characters in a relatable, personal way. Because we all communicate. I can’t read paragraphs of your thoughts while we’re having a conversation, but I can get to know you by listening to you and watching what you say to different scenarios in our lives. I can ask you questions. And you’ll answer. And then I’ll know you better, little by little. It’s the same with dialogue in a story. You’re getting to know the characters, and the characters are getting to know each other. A drink of something after eating a lot is always welcome. Reading a conversation between Sam and Frodo during their journey in LOTR is heavenly after so much freaking traveling. I know all about the area they just walked through and the worries they’ve got. I don’t need anymore of that, someone please, SAY SOMETHING! My brain is full!Action and POV are tailor-made for paragraphs. Unless you’re my beloved Spider-Man, you don’t need to talk a lot while you’re fighting someone. And unless you’re Doc Brown (great Scott) or the Doctor, you don’t need to think out loud all the time. Writing is one of those easier ways to convey thoughts, especially. Movies and television and comic books can all do action. That’s a lot of what they’re comprised of; it’s what they were made for–motion, or the illusion of motion–to get a story and emotion and adventure across to its audience. Writing is the perfect medium for thoughts. You can use analogies and the 5 senses and the character’s unique voice in a paragraph, helping the reader understand the character in a different way than dialogue would, in your own writing style. In a way that movies can only do through dialogue or the actor’s incredible facial expressions (here’s lookin’ at you, RDJ). You just have to know when to put action and POV in there. Yes, they need to know what the room looks like, what it smells like outside, what kind of year it is. But they also want to know what that character is thinking at this point, how they’re moving, what their faces look like. Dialogue can only show so much. That’s not to say you should be writing miles of paragraphs. Don’t be like me, kids. I need to work on that. But if there’s more dialogue in your story than paragraph, that’s just not a good balance. You need more chicken and less iced tea. Your body isn’t thirsty anymore, it needs something to sustain it for a while! It’s the same with a reader’s brain.Hopefully that helps. I know it was long, don’t kill me! If you read all of that–wow–I don’t–I’m so impressed. I am applauding you. You can’t hear it, but I applaud.And remember, everyone writes differently. Everyone. What works for me may not work at all for you, and you won’t know until you try new things! Everyone says that “what works for some mightn’t work for others” thing, but they say it a lot because it’s true. It’s vague, sometimes it’s unhelpful, but it’s facts. OKAY, STOP TALKING, DOVERSTAR.Love you, Jell-O Square! Let me know if this helps. Remember, practice makes perfect. You’re gonna develop your own style and your own flow the longer you write. The key to any of this is writing. A LOT. Fail a lot so you can get the big fails out of the way and start improving. The better you are, the less doubts you’ll have, and the more freedom you’ll feel like you have. (Really, the freedom was there all along, but the doubts like to hide that from you.)Thanks, J-Square! Gosh, I need to stop typing–

#doverstar answers #ask doverstar #answered #writing #writing advice #author #author advice #writing help

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halothenthehorns · 3 years

Text

The Supernatural Gospel

Chapter 10- Interrogation 35-111

Neither of them have acknowledged the bed behind them, even to take turns. Not in this room, with dad's absence staring at them from all sides.

Sam's pacing, holding his phone, and sits down on the bed. He can't decide if he's relieved or worried she didn't answer. It's just a nightmare. as her voicemail message plays. "Hey, it's me, it's about ten-twenty Saturday night—"

Dean, clean again, his short light brown hair back to its careful style and a change of clothes, comes out of the bathroom and grabs his jacket and pulls it over his jean jacket and gray shirt. Sam had taken the liberty to run it through the wash for him while he'd been in the shower, along with the towels, and was rewarded with a warm glow when he saw Dean had even taken the time to pick the mud out of the edges of the medallion Sam had given him years ago that was still strung proudly around his neck. He shrugs it on one shoulder as he crosses the room, Sam trying to ignore him with the phone still pressed to his ear.

"Hey, man. I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?"

"No." Sam watches him at the door without moving.

"Aframian's buying." Dean reminds, as if that's supposed to make it better.

Sam shakes his head, pressing the phone tighter to his ear.

Dean walked into the bright morning sun, ignoring the fact the 'do not disturb sign' got caught in the door as he closed it, and finished shrugging on his jacket as he crossed the lot, keeping the collar popped to help it air out a bit more.

He looks over and sees a police car, where the motel clerk is talking to Deputy Jaffe and Deputy Hein. The clerk points at Dean, who turns away and pulls out his cell phone.

"-So come home soon, okay? I love you." The phone beeps. Sam looks at it and presses to delete it, still unsure whether to call her back or not, then puts it back to his ear when he sees Dean calling him.

"What?" He'd literally just stepped outside, the doofus.

Outside, the deputies are approaching Dean.

"Dude, five-oh, take off." Dean's voice is low and firm.

Sam stands up at once. "What about you?" He wasn't just going to leave him now. Were they going to meet around back, or another motel?

"Uh, they kinda spotted me." He wasn't worried about that part. "Go find Dad."

Dean hangs up the phone as the deputies approach. He turns and grins at them. "Problem, officers?"

"Where's your partner?" Jaffe demands, completely faking casualness now as he crossed his arms.

"Partner? What, what partner?" Dean pretends the same.

Jaffe glances over his shoulder and jerks his thumb towards the motel room. Hein heads over there. Dean can't stop his eyes following him and licks his lips, but he's had enough practice to not really give his face away.

Sam sees Hein approaching and darts away from the window.

Jaffe's still interrogating Dean with a less friendly demeanor by the charge. "So. Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?"

Dean thinks for a moment before grinning. "My boobs."

Sam had just managed to get himself behind the hotel door when it burst open from the sheriff's kick, holding in a grunt of pain as it flew into his gut but managed to catch the handle before it ricocheted back off of him. The small town sheriff did his duty in checking the bathroom and even glancing under the bed, but Sam blended too well behind the door to be spotted, and he released the door as the Sheriff reached for it to slam it behind him.

Hein slams Dean over the hood of the cop car.

"You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law-" Jaffe begins his Miranda Rights while Dean's still grinning in triumph for the other returning empty handed, Sammy had gotten away.

…

SHERIFF'S OFFICE

Sheriff Pierce enters the room, carrying a box. He sets it on the table at which Dean sits, uncuffed, and goes around the table to face Dean across it. "So you want to give us your real name?

"I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent." Dean even considered spelling it out.

"I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here." The Sheriff looks almost pitiable at Dean's grin.

"We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?" Dean plays along.

Sheriff Pierce isn't letting any runaround. "You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall." Dean looks away, easily hiding his discomfort and worry that was his dad's stuff, he should be out there looking for him. This was a waste of time! "Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect." The sheriff answers Dean's question of just how much trouble he's in.

"That makes sense," Dean's impatience at all of this is growing by the second, "because when the first one went missing in '82 I was three."

The sheriff had put together more than Dean realized though. "I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing." The cops had been busy, putting together Dad in the same motel they'd found them in, maybe they weren't as idiotic as Dean had thought. "So tell me. Dean." He tosses a brown leather-covered journal on the table. "This his?"

The man has Dean's full attention now as he stares at Dad's journal. Sheriff Pierce sits on the edge of the table. He flips through the well worn pages: it's filled with newspaper clippings, notes, and pictures, just like what's on the walls of John's motel room.

"I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out—I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy," Dean leans forward for a closer look, what exactly had Dad put in there to blow his cover? "But I found this, too."

He opens the journal near the very back to a notebook page that reads 'Dean 35-111', circled, with nothing else on that page.

"Now. You're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means."

Dean stares down at the page, then looks up. He had to get out of here and find Sam, now.

Chapter 11 - The Other Side

WELCH HOUSE

Sam, seen through the chain-link covering a grimy glass window, knocks on the door the window is in. An old man opens it: Joseph Welch.

"Hi. Are you Joseph Welch?" It was the polite way to start even if Sam was sure.

"Yeah," he does not seem happy to be agreeing.

"Would you uh, mind if I talk to you?" Sam put up that endearing little smile he'd learned as a kid. Dad said people always went easier on him when he brought Sam along and he smiled like that, so hopefully it would come in handy now.

To his surprise, it seemed to, as the man stepped onto his porch and shoved his hands in his pocket as answer.

"Um, thank you," Sam dug around in his pockets and pulled the photo he'd taken from the motel. Good thing too, as not moments after he'd gotten the car started and drove away, another police car had showed up and tapped the whole place off as a crime scene.

When Joseph sees the photo, he gives an exhausted sigh and starts walking, Sam hurrying to keep up and realizing at once he was on a time limit, all but shoves the photo into his hands. "Do you recognize this man," he jabs at his Dad.

"Yeah, he was older, but that's him," their shoes are now crunching up a gravel driveway. Joseph hands the photo back to Sam. "He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."

Sam was both thrilled, and instantly a bit more worried. If Dad were still in town, how had they missed him, unless- "That's right. We're working on a story together." He forced himself to focus now. Just keep working the case, like Dean would do.

"Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?" Joseph glares off into the distance, his hat dipping even lower to shade his eyes, voice going even more gruff. Sam's timespan was quickly shortening.

He kept pushing. "About your wife Constance?"

"He asked me where she was buried." Joseph still sounded disbelieving over this fact.

"And where is that again?" Sam wished he'd brought along a notebook or something now to make this more credible.

"What, I gotta go through this twice?" He demands on the petulant youth.

"It's fact-checking," Sam quickly fibs. "If you don't mind," he adds on, though what he would do if Mr. Welch did mind would be a problem.

"In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge." He sounds exhausted just thinking about it.

"And why did you move?" Sam's imagining the poor man tortured by his wife and finds it even more of a miracle he's still alive.

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died." He sounds very tired now, and Sam believes him.

Sam stops walking. Joseph stops too.

Sam's gotten all the information that he needs, he should politely thank the man and be on his way. It's what Dad would have done. "Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"

The split second decision to not echo his dad doesn't give him time to decide where this is going.

"No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

Sam hesitates, teetering on the edge of asking about his infidelity, but softening the blow instead. "So you had a happy marriage?"

He hesitates. "Definitely."

"Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time." Sam really did begin to walk away then, let this man pretend and have his remembered happy normal life.

He stopped though in front of the impala, playing with his spare key he'd had for all these years on the same chain as his apartment key. As Dean's words echoed back to him on the bridge, as his unanswered voicemail to Jess still sat in his pocket. There was no normal in this life, and he was tired of being the only one to know and feel that. "Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?"

Mr. Welch turns around.

"A what?" The confusion is genuine. It would not last.

"A woman in white, La Llorona, or sometimes Weeping Woman? It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really."

Sam starts back toward Mr. Welch. The edge to his words are purely scholarly, at first. "Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women." Sam stops in front of him once more. "You understand, but all share the same story."

Mr. Welch is a head shorter than Sam, but his tone still holds aged dismissiveness. "Boy, I don't care much for nonsense." Mr. Welch walks away. Sam follows, his conviction moving his feet and mouth. He was not going to be the only one unable to escape his past today.

"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them." Mr. Welch stops walking, and Sam finishes the blow, "and these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children."

Mr. Welch is watching him now, his face stoned.

Sam carries on, almost vindictively, still with that forced polite edge. "Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."

Mr. Welch can barely speak his outrage. "You think...you think that has something to do with...Constance? You smartass!"

"You tell me." Sam's knowing smile is triumphant he'd made his point. Mr. Welch would bury his head in the sand again when Sam left, but for this one moment, Sam had gotten through to someone what was out there, he could see it in his eyes.

It was that look, why he'd never share any of this with Jess.

"I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes." Mr. Welch copped to that, his breath still trembling. "But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!" His face shakes, whether from anger or grief it's impossible to tell. After a long moment, he turns away. Sam sighs for what he'd done, but he doesn't regret it.

Chapter 12

…

November 2nd

"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo." Dean had denied a lawyer, he hadn't slept in days, and he'd now repeated that no less than a thousand times today. His attempts to charm the man into believing him had vanished in the early hundreds. He needed to get to Sam, now.

"We gonna do this all night long?" Sheriff Pierce seems more than prepared to do such a thing, to Dean's dismay. He hadn't even been offered a donut. Maybe he should ask for a lawyer, it would add more problems later, but the point was he didn't intend to be around for later. He just needed five minutes alone with that-

A deputy leans into the room. "We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road."

"You have to go to the bathroom?" The Sheriff offers.

"No," that wasn't true either.

"Good."

The sheriff handcuffs Dean to the table and leaves. Dean nabs the paper clip poking out of the journal he'd been staring at since noon, and smiles at it. He was the one to teach Sam how to pick locks after all, and that kid had it easy with the kit.

Dean waited patiently for the commotion on the other side of the door to die down before waltzing into the row of desks and digging through them. His phone wasn't present, probably in another room somewhere being looked over, but his gun was in a baggy for holding and evidence and he didn't have the time, nor inclination to risk staying longer when he knew the number Sam was using, slipping to the nearest window and climbing down the fire escape, dad's journal safely in his arms.

Sam is driving the impala up to Breckinridge road It had taken him the rest of the day to go online and match county records with abandoned lots and try to match them against the year Constance had died to figure out which was the right house on the long ass stretch of road with far too many acres on it. By the time he'd sussed out a good pick, he'd realized how late it was and sent the police for the opposite side of town, realizing if Dean wasn't here by now he must not have gotten his chance yet to bail in his own way. They'd waited long enough, maybe Dad was there. He set the impala off now instead of waiting for his brother. when his phone rings. He pulls it out, spots the unknown number, but answers it quickly.

Dean is in a phone booth; not having taken the time to steal his back.

"Fake 911 phone call? Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal." He can hear Dean's grin through the phone.

"You're welcome." Sam smiles back.

Thanks out of the way, Dean tries to get to the message Dad left. "Listen, we gotta talk-"

"Tell me about it," Sam misses the message hint. "So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop."

"Sammy, would you shut up for a second?" Dean tries again, man that kid had a motor mouth when he got going.

"I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet," the timing of it all is still bothering Sam greatly.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho." Dean finally got in.

"What? How do you know?" Sam's foot eases off the gas instinctively to turn in this new direction.

"I've got his journal." Dean grips it tighter, the worry for his dad increasing with every clenched finger.

"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing." Sam needlessly points out.

"Yeah, well, he did this time." Dean sighed, the reasons why rolling through his head, each worse than the last.

"What's it say?" Sam wants verbatim, like Dean had misread the message.

"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going." Dean glares around the glass to assure no one was listening in, if Dad had been worried about that maybe he should be to.

"Coordinates. Where to?"

"I'm not sure yet," did he look like a satellite phone?

"I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?" None of this was adding up in Sam's head. He follows a bend in the road, and slams the brake, dropping the phone: Constance right in front of him. The car goes right through her as Sam brings it to a halt.

Dean heard the squealing breaks like a flatline. "Sam? Sam!"

Sam is breathing too hard to even realize he'd dropped the phone yet, the car idling masking his brother's voice, but not Constance's echoing words from the back seat. "Take me home."

#superntural #fanfiction #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #John Winchester #jessica moore #Chuck Shurley #spn #The Winchester gospel

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pissfartboy · 1 year

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not woobifying if he's already woobie to begin with btw

#brba #brba fanart #breaking bad #breaking bad fanart #jesse pinkman #jesse pinkman fanart #jesse breaking bad #jesse brba #she jessied on my pink till i manned #i personally think this looks nothing like jesse but pretend its a style thing and not a i wasnt looking at a reference thing

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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August 2020

Black Crown Initiate - Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape

Black Crown Initiate are one of those bands who have so much going for them in terms of their potential and so much about them on paper sounds like exactly the kind of thing I could nerd the hell out over, yet neither of the band’s previous two albums really made that connection with me or showed themselves to be anything other than respectful substitutes for albums like Cynic’s Focus, or Rivers of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name, or Opeth’s Watershed. Like The Wreckage of Stars and Selves We Cannot Forgive, Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape draws moments of exceptional strength from modern metalcore to produce a few highlights such as “Years in Frigid Light”, “Sun of War”, “Death Comes in Reverse”, and the closing solo of “Holy Silence”, but its awkward balancing of softer passages and smoother clean vocals just serves as a reminder of how easy Mikael Åkerfreldt makes it look. The band again certainly showcase what great talent they have and that they have the chops to hold their own with this sound, but until they take their compositional style beyond Soen-plus-death-metal, they will have a hard time escaping the shadows of the big names in their field.

6/10

Misery Signals - Ultraviolet

Misery Signals’ output has slowed with the NWOAHM it was borne from, but after only gracing the previous decade with a single full-length (2013’s ironically titled Absent Light) with members preoccupied with side projects, the band re-united its original line-up with long-absent vocalist Jesse Zaraska and a reignited commitment to the phased-out version of melodic metalcore that they sported at the movement’s height of cultural relevance. There are some bright spots of greater melodic vocals invigoration like “Some Dreams” and the quick “Through Vales of Blue Fire”, but Ultraviolet sounds as out of place in this decade as it would be obscured into the background fifteen years ago, serving less as a testament to the glory of 2000’s metalcore and more as a reminder of how saturated the movement became with recycled material.

5/10

Year of the Knife - Internal Incarceration

I missed out on it last year, but Year of the Knife put out their debut album, Ultimate Aggression, last February, a half-hour ripper of no-nonsense metalcore that embodies the current movement that has fixated on reinventing metalcore’s grooves while staying in line with its central aggression. While Ultimate Aggression indeed embodied its title thoroughly, I was hoping it would serve as a filling appetizer for the main course of the group’s sophomore album, Internal Incarceration. After such a promising debut, I have to say Internal Incarceration is a bit underwhelming. The band still flex their hardcore muscles to the point of bulging out of their t-shirts and provide plenty of slam-inducing groove, which there are a few especially good highlights of on “Nothing to Nobody” and the title track. Unlike the creative grooves Ultimate Aggression teased an expansion upon, Internal Incarceration is a more generic display of strength, which makes for this longer listen unfortunately much less exciting. It’ll still get the kids in the pit swinging and kicking once that gets re-instituted, but they sound more like your average local hardcore band who heard Knocked Loose than an up-and-coming powerhouse of the genre.

6/10

Mesarthim - Planet Nine & The Degenerate Era

I feel like such a fool for taking this long to catch on to the prolific Australian project Mesarthim, whose expansive catalog has been all over Bandcamp in the five years since the band’s first release, with this year’s The Degenerate Era being their fifth full-length and Planet Nine being their seventh EP! I may be late, but I made it to the party to see what Mesarthim is all about. I’ve seen a few bands on Bandcamp tag their sound with the “void metal” label, and of the bands I’ve heard, I’ve not really found it to mean much beyond atmospheric black metal with a bit of a space-related aesthetic associated with it, but after hearing Mesarthim, I can see now that this migh be a genuine sub-genre branch of ambient black metal, the subtle but fearless incorporation of shimmering, chime-like electronics and synthetic choral elements really does evoke the vastness of space and the divine wonder of the cosmos. And the band’s two-song EP release this year, Planet Nine, definitely captures that with its bright melodic progressions and expansive synthetic whirring. It’s definitely very atmosphere-based, very dependent on the lushness of the sounds, which are unfortunately hampered in a few of the softer spots by some messy production, but the band’s smooth transitions do help them make up for the flaws in production quality (which I’m amazed they haven’t ironed out this many albums in), and the fixation on gorgeous atmospheres and intentional transitions makes me strongly suspect they take some notes from fellow celestially themed black metal ambient innovators Alrakis.

7/10

Clocking in at around 44 minutes, The Degenerate Era isn’t that much longer than its EP co-release this year, nor is it all too disparate in style, although the band do dip into more traditionally heavy black metal territory here and there, but otherwise it’s lots of expansive synthetic orchestral elements, lots of spacy guitar-playing, and a pretty gutsy dose of the kind of electronics that would send any already-squirming black metal purist over the top into a full blown temper tantrum. The greater range of emotional diversity on this LP in comparison to Planet Nine puts it a little bit higher for me, although both have a similar appeal and are indeed definitely worth checking out.

7/10

In the Company of Serpants - LUX

In the Company of Serpants continue their culinary tinkering with the latest melting pot of metallic styles on LUX, stirring various chunks of 90’s New Orleans sludge, modern death metal a la Rivers of Nihil, and even late-80’s thrash into a broth of atmospheric post-metal (which serves as a gratifying climax specifically to the opening track, “The Fool’s Journey”) that may not be the most groundbreaking dish in the planet, but the freshness of whose ingredients and the skill of whose chefs comes through in the good consistency of the project. I liken it to a soup in that it’s based heavily on atmospheric post-metal and that it’s hard to get a bite of this album without it, and that there are various pieces of meatier genres in there usually popping in one spoonful at a time. Personally, it’s a soup I enjoy and one I think anyone who enjoys some dynamic post-metal or likes their atmospheric metal with a spiritual feel would enjoy.

7/10

Terminal Nation - Holocene Extinction

Terminal Nation are a five-piece from Little Rock, Arkansas who make their full-length debut through the excellent upstart curators 20 Buck Spin, and the band’s aptly titled debut meshes death and doom metal in a flurry more angrily condemning than the average record in the field, occasionally unable to keep from spiraling into grinding blasts of fury in their rage against the capitalism whose very design has oppressed so many and ushered in ecological catastrophe and a new wave of fascism. 2020 has made political commentators out of many, and Terminal Nation are not shy about where they stand and where they place the blame for our world’s ills, targeting the military industrial complex on “Death for Profit”, for-profit medicine on “Caskets of the Poor”, and capitalism as a whole on “Master Plan”. Despite the songs being easily stylistically categorized, the band refuse to let one hybrid genre label define them as a whole, exuding old-school grindcore through filthier guitar tones on songs like “Thirst to Burn” and “Leather Envy”, while slower tracks like “Cognitice Dissonance” and “Expired Utopia” opt for a slow roast kind of scorched Earth, borrowing the occasional nasty metalcore breakdown along the way. Covering a relatively wide range of styles and an array of apocalyptic topics, Holocene Extinction is as blunt in its delivery instrumentally as it is lyrically, and it hits as hard as an album of its nature should, setting this band up on a great start. Fight on!

8/10

Krallice - Mass Cathexis

Already the eight LP for New York’s prolific black metal experimentalists, Mass Cathexis finds the ordinarily forward-thinking band at a loss for major ideas beyond doubling down on he technicality of their sound to the point of stepping on a few of the land mines in the techdeath minefield. They still work in plenty their of their usual progressive song structuring and cerebral atmosphere, and I do enjoy it enough, but I know Krallice can do better than this. And I’m sure they will, and it’ll probably be pretty damn soon too.

6/10

Drouth - Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy

On their sophomore effort through Translation Loss Records, Portland-based quartet Drouth dress up their abundant competence with the basics of blackened death metal as a grander artistic statement than it really is with five epic, yet dragging, showy, yet shallow songs of rather generic material for the genre. I respect the band’s commitment and I give them credit for the performative abilities they showcase on their second album, but I can’t pretend to be wildly excited about 40 minutes of run-of-the-mill blackened death metal.

6/10

Faceless Burial - Speciation

This is the second full-length record from Melbourne three-piece Faceless Burial who have kept a pretty steady pace after their first demo release in 2015 and their independent full-length debut in 2017. Released through Dark Descent Records, Speciation is a refinement of the blunt, bellowing death metal that the band presented on their debut. Packed with delicious low-register guitar riffs, rumbly bass lines, and manic blast beats, Speciation is a candid portrait of much of what makes modern death metal what it is, and what makes it so delicious even looking up at its top tiers. I think Faceless Burial could certainly one day reach those top tiers, and Speciation is a strong step in that direction.

7/10

Avatar - Hunter Gatherer

Swedish quintet Avatar are nothing if not creative, and their decision to go all-in on the circus-freak aesthetic seems to have catalyzed the wildness with which they reimagine and remold melodic death metal. And they’ve certainly been actively prolific over the past decade that saw their emergence into the spotlight, releasing consistently every two years, and they’re right on time this year with Hunter Gatherer. Coming off of the bombastic tale of 2018’s Avatar Country and knowing that the band have a penchant for concept albums, I was eager to see what Hunter Gatherer’s might be, and while there’s no connective narrative, the album generally sticks to a theme of gazing into a chaotic future. The sensational Swedes kick off this year’s effort with its most uncharacteristically generic display, the standard melodeath “Silence in the Age of Apes”, but the album doesn’t take long at all to get to Avatar’s usual extravaganza as the second track, “Colossus”, immediately kicks of with a punctuated siren wail and from the get-go you know you’re in for a ride, and the track’s swaggering mid-tempo march is headbanging as fuck. Oh the invigorating melody just keeps coming too; “A Secret Door” balances alternative rock’s soaring triumph with the natural tendencies toward that feeling from melodeath. The song “Child” captures Avatar’s essential traits with its risky stage-production sway, its soaring chorus, and it’s rumbling low-tuned foundation that all serve the band’s grand ambition in spectacular fashion, and the subsequent “Justice” only soars even higher from there with its palm-muted-backed chorus and Johannes Eckerström’s absolutely fist-raising vocal melody. And the Swedes keep the high-stakes moves coming with the grippingly candid piano balladry of “Child”. As with every Avatar release, though, there are some songs that don’t fly over so well, but only two out of the ten. The band’s switch into half-measured seven-stringed eccentricity on “God of Sick Dreams” is just one of the moments that feels like it could have been a bigger display of creativity, while “Scream Until You Wake” is a clumsily cheesy collision of melodic heavy metal and arena butt rock that unfortunately puts the band’s theatricality in a bad light. The album finishes on two powerful notes, though, with the quick thrash of “When All But Force Has Failed” that immediately reminded me of Bullet for My Valentine’s “Waking the Demon”, and the epic eight-stringed cinematic finale of wormhole. While I still may not have been in love with an Avatar album from start to finish, I still look forward to reviewing their music whenever they have a new album out because even if not everything they do on a particular record, the group’s zealous drive to put on a good show always yields an eccentric and exciting track list and the enthusiasm the band has for whatever imagination it is they’re realizing comes through in their performances. So even if there are a few acts during the show that don’t dazzle me personally, I stay for the whole performance because there’s never a dull moment, and there really is nothing else like it, and Hunter Gatherer has proven sticking around to be worthwhile, because the band have struck their most consistent effort yet, and one I can say I really do love as a whole even with its momentary flaws.

8/10

Moloken - Unveilance of Dark Matter

This came out way earlier in the year, but this is the fourth full-length album from Sweden’s version of Ulcerate, Moloken. I totally kid with how reductive I’m being there, but I mean that comparison as a compliment because Ulcerate are one of death metal’s most interesting acts at the moment and their album this year definitely bolsters their already-high reputation for post-death metal alchemy, and I’d say Moloken’s new album this year showcases how they perform similar sonic sorcery with the vile, grungy sounds of old-school sludge metal, transforming the heroin-intoxicated street babblings of depression into a cleaner, progressive form. And while some of that hyper-perceptible mental anguish is suppressed in that evolution, there’s still enough vibrant torment there inthe clangy bass lines and the yowling screams of agony underneath the layers of more complex, heavy, and modernized instrumentation. I think the song “Hollow Caress” probably highlights the span of older and newer sludge elements on this album best out of the tracks here, but really this whole album is an enthralling window into the spasms of the tormented psyche that might look all too familiar.

8/10

Ingested - Where Only Gods May Tread

Ingested cook up nearly 50 minutes of crusty blackened death metal similar to that of Ancst with a punchy deathcore edge a la Despised Icon or Venom Prison on Where Only Gods May Tread, and for as predictable as the results are, they do pack a solid punch that presents the rhythmic battery of deathcore as a worthy tool of death metal aggression rather than a purist-discredited development. And the band have even tapped a few members of the new and old guards to endorse their metallic campaign through collaboration; Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein joins in on the sludgy barn burner “Another Breath”, while hardcore advocates Matt Honeycutt and Vincent Bennett contribute their talents as well. While it’s, again, not the most groundbreaking of releases, Ingested certainly get the job done satisfactorily beyond what any reasonable purist could gripe about.

6/10

Thou - A Primer of Holy Words

After dropping their compilation of Nirvana covers just a few months prior, Thou hit us again with another compilation of cover songs they’ve done over the years that exemplifies their greater aptitude for the cover song when it comes to styles closer to their wheelhouse like the hardcore punk of Minor Threat and Born Against and the doom metal of Black Sabbath as opposed to the lo-fi grunge of Nirvana, though the band still insist on trying their hand at sludgifying a couple of 90’s grunge classics on a misguided cover of Alice in Chains’ “No Excuses” and Soundgarden’s “Fourth of July”. Like Blessings of the Highest Order, A Primer of Holy Words more or less just runs all the songs on it through a Thou processor to churn out a rather homogeneous mush of sludgy cover material out the other end. It’s a more complimentary batch of songs to the machine the band puts the songs through than the Nirvana covers were, but it’s not something that revolutionizes the originals or outshines Thou simply doing their own thing enough to have me itching to return to it.

5/10

Halestorm - Reimagined

Halestorm take all the punch out of their best hits like “I Get Off”, “I Miss the Misery”, and “Mz. Hyde” in this unnecessarily partially stripped back, partially minimally electronic remix/re-recorded EP of their gutsy modern hard rock catalogue, along with a passable cover of Whitney Houston’s classic “I Will Always Love You”. The unplugged mix of these songs spotlights Lzzy Hale’s booming voice even more than usual, but, again, unnecessarily removes her from her most fitting and supportive context. The neutering of the songs’ instrumental rock swagger to back Hale’s attitude-rich vocal delivery has mostly unfavorable results, the still-vibrant swoon of “I Miss the Misery” coming out the most unscathed, but the most butcherd of the bunch has to be the band’s most storied hit, “I Get Off”, which is about as lifeless as re-dos get. Honestly, the only point I can imagine the band attributed to this project would be the center Hale’s already very centralized voice, which is, not to be a broken record here, just unnecessary. I doubt it was her actual motive, but it’s like she didn’t want anyone else around her sounding good too, so she could stand out better. But more likely it was just another poorly conceived misfire of an acoustic EP of many, not the first or last of its kind. Perhaps my sharp distaste for this one is the impressive display Breaking Benjamin showed on their acoustic re-do album earlier this year.

3/10

Batushka - Raskol

Despite being lambasted as frauds by most fans of the original incarnation of the band after the legally-backed and Metal Blade-released Hospodi was embarrassed by the rushed, but clearly more artistically sound, Панихида (Panihida) from Krystov Drabikowski’s unofficial version of the Batushka project, and more or less exposed as such through the side-by-side release of the two albums, Bartłomiej Krysiuk’s version of Batushka still managed to strike a deal with Witching Hour Productions to release more material this year. I reviewed both Batushka projects last year and despite Drabikowski’s album feeling a bit rushed due to the circumstances of its release, it still blew Hospodi out of the water. Whereas Krystov’s album captured the aesthetic and compositional essence of the seminal Batuska debut, Bart’s album sounded like a generic blackgaze imitation of the real thing, which put the debate to rest for me and most of the Batushka fan base as to who was the deserving artist of the Batushka name. Nevertheless, Bart is giving it another go with the Batushka project in an attempt to earn back the trust he squandered amid the feud that boiled over last year. Biting off a smaller piece of material this time with the modest half-hour slab of Raskol, Bart actually does refine his craft to a slightly more respectable level after shamelessly pimping the band’s name out last year. Fans embroiled in the feud on Krystov’s side seem to forget that even if he wasn’t the driving force of the band, Bart was a part of Batushka from the start and for a long time, so it’s not really that outlandish or surprising that he would actually get better at doing the Batushka thing. While it does still lean on standard shoegaze elements to bide time when Bart’s imagination (or whoever he might have brought on to assist him this time around) runs dry, Raskol is a vast improvement on the cheap, inauthentic-sounding Hospodi, feeling like a much more believable part of the Batushka canon. I still understand fans’ skepticism of the validity of Bart’s incarnation of the Batushka project and I myself still don’t feel totally comfortable lending my full support to a man who hasn’t done much to contest the allegations of unethical actions against him. If this is to be the legal version of Batushka, so be it, at least it’s a little more believable now.

6/10

Primitive Man - Immersion

Denver’s Primitive Man have been the poster child for gargantuan, muscular death-sludge-doom for their entire career, whether it be on their various splits and collaborations or on their full-length projects. The band have played around with harsh noise as a supplement to their absolutely merciless core metallic sound, especially on the lengthy demo, P//M, but the hulk-powered trio have largely kept their main projects free of bells and whistles, which has certainly not led them astray. The band’s 2013 debut album, Scorn, was a sweat-inducing warm-up of direct, no-nonsense, hate-filled sludge metal, and the band quite literally doubled down on it on 2017’s 77-minute Caustic, whose undeniably captivating and fearsome ferocity and tapped so simply yet so tangibly into the core ethos of metal music in this day and age made it one of my favorite albums of that year. This year, the band trimmed it back to six songs clocking in at just 36 minutes, and despite its relative shortness, Immersion spends its time savoring the band’s doom at its usual slow-burning pace. Aside from the noisy two-minute interlude, “∞”, Immersion is another unyielding slab of the vibrantly hateful doom metal that made Caustic such a monolithic album. Despite its being built similarly to it predecessor, Immersion’s half-length feels like a half measure, checking all the boxes, but not really giving the band enough time to vary up their very thick but very homogeneous style except for the harsh noise interlude and the anticipatory buildup of “Entity”. The band are definitely powerful enough to doom-slam their way to finishing the mission though, and Immersion is by no means a failure to showcase that raw power.

7/10

Atramentus - Stygian

Donning your funeral doom metal debut album with a Mariusz Lewandowski art piece after 2017 is a pretty gutsy move in at least that it immediately draws comparisons to Bell Witch’s masterful Mirror Reaper, yet that is the first move Atramentus have opted to take (plus it’s not like a hundred other bands haven’t commissioned the Polish surrealist since then), but they were a bet that 20 Buck Spin has had no problem pitching in to for the Québec-based band’s long-awaited emergence onto the scene. The band’s sudden arrival with a sole release deceptively suggests they are a super new act, but the project has been on the shelves of vocalist/guitarist Philippe Tougas since 2012, who composed the album and kept it in the vault until 2018 (perhaps inspired as many of us were by Mirror Reaper) to finally record it. Stygian is a less melancholic doom metal album than a first impression of the cover might suggest given how many bands have adopted much of Mirror Reaper’s aesthetics. Instead, the debut album’s three tracks offer a refreshingly frightful mix of thundering, mega-chambered drums, Halloween-ish organ hums, dark ambient echoes, and deep rumbling growls and augmented throat chants that are similarly hellish, but also divinely ceremonial hums and emotive soloing during the last of the three movements that serve to maintain the vastness the album invokes. Indeed, the third song (which is half of the album’s length) rolls back some of the menace in favor of some more familiar mournfulness. And of course, this is all delivered at an absolutely tortoise-ish pace as is the key feature of the genre (save for the final burst of blast beats three minutes before the album ends), and of course it can very easily be reductively summed up as a condensed version of Four Phantoms or Mirror Reaper but I really do think Stygian will stand out from the largely homogeneous doom metal crop for what it does do differently with its more ominous elements and hopefully inspire Atramentus to stay active.

8/10

Innumerable Forms - Despotic Rule

The Boston five-piece are back with a two-track demo after a smashing debut in 2018 that captured the vile sludgy doom of Primitive Man and the adrenaline of brutal death metal. The first song on this year’s short offering, “Philosophical Collapse”, explodes out of the gate with deathly quick pace and fury until like a fatigued distance runner after a minute-long burst of speed, it succumbs to doomed sluggishness for the bulk of its runtime. The second and titular track is based on a slower Iommi-esque doom riff that slowly takes the modernized sounds of Sabbath into thrashy territory over the course of its nearly five-minute runtime. Both songs capture the aggressive doom at the heart of Innumerable Forms’ sound that made me love Punishment in Flesh so much, and I hope these songs are at least a sign of what is to come from the band.

Innumerable/10

Unleash the Archers - Abyss

I feel like for power metal especially, putting out a boring record can be worse than an incompitent or poorly executed album, and Unleash the Archers definitely provide strong support that with Abyss, whose moments of mild euphoria (which is an extremely generous description) are much too few and far between the slog of totally formulaic and under-delivered melodic autofill. Vocalist Brittany Hayes showcases her capacity for power metal drama on the epic “The Wind That Shapes the Land”, which only makes her utterly bland, zero-effort delivery across the rest of album that much more offensive. Yeah, I’ll keep it short and keep myself from going too in on this album, because, yeah it’s just boring, which is a massive and avoidable mistake to fulfill an easy baseline requirement for power metal, which, to me, is grounds for failure.

3/10

Incantation - Sect of Vile Divinities

Good ol’ Incantation are back with another 45 minutes of doomy death metal, the likes of Ossuarium, for example, have harped on, which, to give a ratio for clarity, is like 80/20 death/doom. Definitely more death metal gusto than doom metal void-gazing to avoid that pitfall of lethargy, the trade-off for this clearly minimally ambitious album being the numerous pitfalls of death metal. Sect of Vile Divinities definitely gets the job done and it’s sometimes pretty savory along the way, but it’s definitely not an above-average slab of meat from this particular slaughterhouse.

5/10

Kolossus - The Line of the Border

Kolossus is the one-man atmospheric black metal project of Genoa-based creator “Helliminator”, who released this debut LP back in March to relative silence. And with how saturated bedroom ambient black metal is, I get how easy it is for things to get lost in the weeds, but for anyone who stumbles upon this one, it’s definitely a good few leagues above your typical atmospheric black metal release, and Satanath Records did well to catch wind of Kolossus after the independent split release with Manon in 2018. The Line of the Border is a confidently dynamic record whose fluidity in its shifts from acoustic melancholy to post-metal sludge and somber, yet seething, black metal agony showcases Helliminator’s and his collaborators’ compositional ability. It’s a hard album to sum up, and that’s a good thing for an album in a field so easy to reductively describe.

7/10

Humavoid - Lidless

Lidless is the patiently-awaited sophomore album from Finnish four-piece Humavoid, who’s 2014 independent debut album caught the attention of up-and-coming German label Noble Demon through its bold, progressive approach to experimental death metal that, when even just competently executed, gives off such a naturally heady vibe. But Humavoid are not about taking the path of least resistance and not about just creating the appearance of innovation with metal music, and their second record’s thrilling firestorm of Meshuggah-influenced djenty jaggedness that puts Veil of Maya and Jinjer to shame and jazzy eccentricity that fires a warning shot past Imperial Triumphant in the larger-than-life swirl of sounds that would make Devin Townsend cream his britches make for quite the decisive statement. Lidless may be comprised of very familiar ingredients, but the compositonal ingenuity the band wield and the constant headlong drive into the unknown make the combination of sounds on this album. The frightful, falling-stalactite-feeling piano-playing and synth work especially keep the mood of the album ever-shifting and the rest of the band excitedly on their toes, along with anyone hearing their overachieving madness. This is definitely one of the year’s best, and I am so eager to see what lies ahead for Humavoid.

9/10

Expander - Neuropunk Boostergang

Of the bands partaking in this past decade’s thrash metal revival Austin, Texas’ Expander are one of the less hokey, more serious-sounding bands to emerge recently, but of the handful of (2) EPs the band have released and the debut they put out in 2017, nothing the band has done has really sounded any alarms in my ears that they might be one of the bigger movers of the genre in the coming, now-current decade. Reliable underground curators Profound Lore and little-guy-supporter producer Kurt Ballou, though, disagree with my doubt in the band’s potential and have backed their sophomore release here, Neuropunk Boostergang. Harnessing some industrial elements and aggressive shouting that hearkens to American Head Charge and labelmates Lord Mantis and angular riffing reminiscent of both nasty sludge metal and crossover thrash with a more futuristic technicality, Neuropunk Boostergang is definitely a significant step up from Endless Computer, and an album that finds the band zeroed in on an attractive sonic identity. Not many thrash albums beckon the descriptor of atmospheric, and if so it’s certainly more of a generous way of saying it’s boring and blends into the background. Yet Neuropunk Boostergang manages to touch on meditative chords with its immersive and fascinating take on thrash metal, forward-thinking and avant-garde with an early version of the genre that most bands think simplistically to nostalgia-trip over. I wouldn’t have backed Expander to put out anything of major value based on their entire back catalog, and I wouldn’t have guessed that they would actually carve out a little niche for themselves to really blossom in. But the gnarly Texans (and Profound Lore) have proven me wrong in my favorite way with my favorite thrash release of the year.

8/10

Seether - Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Seether have not been doing so well, at least creatively, for the past several years, their last album before this one, Poison the Parish, being a completely unmemorable late-career display of the creative dryness within the band and the expiry of the post-grunge they capitalized in the early 2000’s. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum is not a full return to form, but it is a step in the right direction that the band desperately needed, which just comes from more meticulous songwriting this time around. The opening track “Dead and Done” is an energetic and vibrant start to the album and “Beg” revisits that “Fuck It” type of energy that the band need to embrace more frequently, while the silky “Wasteland” adds a scoop of Deftones’ shoegazy guitar work and captures the emotive potency that makes post-grunge so appealing when it’s at its best. The swinging “Bruised and Bloodied” offers a taste of the wackier side of Seether, while the more traditionally grungy “Pride Before the Fall” shows just how much the band appreciate Alice in Chains, and they actually help diversify the largely dragging energy of the album. Indeed, the bulk of the album is still unfortunately rut-entrenched filler that could have been better trimmed. It’s passable filler, but it just means that this album is still one that I’ll only be partially returning to to visit its best tracks.

6/10

Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot

I have never been too big on electro industrialist project Powerman 5000, which wouldn’t even make a B-team picked by frontman Spider One’s own big brother Rob Zombie. My introduction to them was through their 2009 album, Somewhere in the Other Side of Nowhere, an astonishingly character-less and generic caricature of the industrial metal Zombie so exuberantly champions. The band have their better projects like Tonight the Stars Revolt!, but nothing they’ve put out so far has really ever convinced me that I should be paying them more attention. This year’s The Noble Rot is a pretty non-offensive outing, but also typically devoid of imagination. Not to stoke sibling rivalry that’s not there or anything, but it’s like if Rob Zombie were trying really hard not to upset suburban parents from the 90’s. It’s a lot less butt-rocking than the band have shown they can be at their worst, and it’s overall passably listenable. The metropolitan swagger of “Black Lipstick” is a notable highlight where Spider One’s sultry delivery actually works in the track’s favor. But unfortunately there really aren’t any other significant positives to speak of, and listenable is about as kind of a thing as I can say about this album.

4/10

Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

San Jose’s Gulch definitely get points for their all-out work ethic and for leaving everything on the stage or studio, but the band’s sophomore effort this year simply echoes the same need for continued growth that their debut did. The group’s exaggerated but still-maturing take on hardcore punk is thrilling in the short moment it occupies, but entirely forgettable.

5/10

Venomous Concept - Politics Versus the Erection

Like Gulch, Venomous Concept definitely get points for the effort they pour into their very similar brand of aggressive, off-the-wall hardcore punk, but theirs turns out to be another similar case of too little of that effort directed toward really arranging their outlash in an efficient way. It works for the stages and getting kids kicking in the pits that aren’t around anymore for the time being, but only at that baseline level that all good punk music in this vein does. Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough creativity in this project, or traditional punk ethos done exceptionally well for me to be all too enthused about it.

5/10

John Petrucci - Terminal Velocity

Show-off.

7/10

Pain of Salvation - Panther

A lack of ambition has never been a weakness for Swedish prog zealots Pain of Salvation, who love biting off sometimes a bit more than they can chew with their consistently lengthy and overly galaxy-brained concept albums. I definitely respect the massive inspiration the band always seem to tap into and I find them quite capable of fulfilling their creative mission more often than being too heady for their own good. The band do insist on integrating a perplexing degree of early 2000’s nu metal into their sound, and including some rapped verses that seem like a quota they just have to check for some reason. And Panther is, for the most part, another solid display of talents from Pain of Salvation, whose impressive compositional prog chops do more than enough to obscure the odder choices that pop up here and there.

8/10

Ulver - Flowers of Evil

I don’t know why but for some reason I thought Ulver’s venture into synthwave was a one-day stop before they moved on to whatever was next for them. I wasn’t expecting the genre-polyamorous visionaries to make another album in the same synth-y new wave vein as 2017’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar, yet Flowers of Evil is an unexpected and welcome sequel to an album that opened up a whole new avenue of sultry smoothness for the band, and it’s just as cool as it’s predecessor. Are Ulver the new Depesche Mode? I don’t know, if they are, I’m okay with that.

8/10

Necrot - Mortal

Necrot are a recently established trio from Oakland, California who have certainly generated a lot of buzz around their sophomore LP release here since their announcing it a few months ago. I mean I saw memes about the cover relating to coming home and taking off your pants or bra after a long day back in July. The band’s straightforwardly deathly 2017 debut, Blood Offerings, certainly didn’t seem to drum up too much hype around the time of its release, but the band are certainly releasing Mortal this time around to quite a captive audience, and after all the anticipation for their second album, Necrot show the world that can definitely play some death metal. Honestly, I went into this with a pretty open mind and eager to see what Mortal would be al about for the new group with the spotlight on them, but apart from a more old-school approach to riff-writing that does indeed come as a breath of fresh air in today’s death metal landscape, I don’t really see what else about it is such a big deal. I’m not saying there aren’t some tasty grooves or even a good few attention-grabbing solos on here, but I really don’t get what the death metal world is getting all hot and bothered about for this album beyond its checking off all the usual boxes and maybe doing a little smoke and mirrors to present themselves like a modern incarnation of Death or Morbid Angel. I mean I like it as much as, if not a little bit more than, any other average death metal project and I really do like what they band are doing with vintage riffs in this context, but I just don’t see what it’s doing with the very typical elements of the genre that it employs so much better than their average contemporaries that’s ramped up such astronomical hype.

7/10

Pig Destroyer - The Octagonal Stairway

Probably the EP I have been the most pumped for, it’s nice to hear some new Pig Destroyer not so long after their 2018 release, Head Cage, which took some getting used to for me, but I can say I regard it pretty highly as a step toward a more full-bodied sound for the band. I mean they’ve never been short on the shrapnel-spraying volatility needed to wholly carry a project, their groundbreaking creativity with the building blocks of grindcore setting them at the top of their field to look down at the grindcore masses far far below, and J. R. Hayes’ impressive poetic lyricism being a hefty bonus, and Head Cage wasn’t really that big of a stylistic departure for them apart from adopting the sound pallet of their contemporaries. The Octagonal Stairway is definitely more of an interim project for the time being, the first three tracks continuing the band’s mass-building with their sound; they’re as hard-hitting and representative of Pig Destroyer as any song off Head Cage, the title track in particular. I can grant to the pickiest Pig Destroyer Fan that there still isn’t as much slasher-film gore being invoked through samples of such, overtly grotesque lyricism, or scraping guitar tones that mimic the sharping of rusty bone saws. The last 14 minutes of the 25-minute EP are consumed by sample-driven ambient industrial music that the group have definitely had more creative and immersive experiments with. The 11-minute closer, “Sound Walker”, has its flashes of cool industrial manipulation, but given how high Pig Destroyer have set the bar for their ventures into this kind of territory with the cinematic horror of Natasha and even Mass & Volume, this massive track, while a respectable slab of industrial noise ambiance that flows as well as the aforementioned projects, lacks that narrative immersion and grandeur the band have shown to harness so well to bolster their music. For what handful of their talent the band offer here, it’s just enough to remind us of their immense prowess and that they’re still there, watching, waiting.

7/10

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wineanddinosaur · 5 years

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Uproxx, Brewbound, and the Internet Gaze on Women in Beer

In July 2019, pop culture website Uproxx published a list touting the best beer influencers on Instagram. The 12 individuals included bloggers, brewers, and photographers, and 10 of them happened to be women.

In a now-infamous episode of the Brewbound Podcast, former editor Chris Furnari derided these women. In a transcript of the episode, Furnari names the first two Instagrammers, who are male; then, he says, the list “goes to s*** and it’s all chicks who basically take photos of themselves in like low-cut tops with beer.” He refers to the women as “girls in tight clothing and bathing suits,” and their beer-focused Instagrams as “ones where we’re just looking at chicks.” This portion of the podcast has since been deleted.

Following the incident, Furnari made multiple public apologies, writing, “I unfairly stereotyped and made generalizations about a group of individuals who have clearly earned the right to be recognized.” He continues, “The comments I made were out of line and demonstrated a complete lapse in judgment.” His words proved to be insufficient, however. On July 25, 2019, Forbes.com announced Furnari left his position at Brewbound, an award-winning beer news website where he served as editor for more than eight years. It is unclear whether he resigned or was terminated.

For the record, the women Furnari referred to are Bella (@onehoppylady), a food and beverage photographer who did not share her surname at press time; Caitlin Johnson (@bigwrldsmallgrl), blogger and content manager; Heather Lewis (@beerbitty), blogger and former operations projects director at Brooklyn Brewery; and Megan Stone (@isbeeracarb), brewer at DuClaw Brewing Co. Some of their photos indeed include plunging necklines and bikinis, but there is diversity among their profiles. Stone (@isbeeracarb), for example, shares her beer-focused travel adventures and collaborations with other brewers; and Lewis (@beerbitty) posts about life experiences through the glass of memorable beers.

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So I had the pleasure of interviewing THE Sam Calagione of @dogfishhead at work recently!! I tried very hard not to fan girl over the legend I’ve been reading about for at least a decade, but I think a ton of my co-workers fan girl/fan boyed quite a bit when he came into the office. And I couldn’t resist getting a selfie 😅💁🏻‍♀️ What a fun guy! Super grateful that he made time in his schedule for this interview during his trip to NYC! We’re so proud to be distributing Dogfish Head at @unionbeerdist 🍻🍻 Head over to the @unionbeerdist IG and click on their link in bio to read the full interview!! And give them a follow too! ☺️🍻🤩

A post shared by Bella (@onehoppylady) on Feb 4, 2019 at 5:04pm PST

Furnari’s comments sparked fast and furious responses from men and women in the industry, many of whom are avid readers of Brewbound, fans of the slandered Instagrammers, or both. His departure caused even more controversy.

“Calling BS on this,” New Belgium spokesperson Jesse Claeys tweeted on July 25, 2019. “Furnari has always been a pro and a strong advocate for craft beer. Taking female beer/boob Instagram ‘influencers’ to task for essentially returning to misogynistic 70s era beer marketing is not a fireable offense.” (Update 8/12/19: New Belgium’s PR department requested VinePair clarify Claeys made this comment personally, not in his capacity as a spokesperson for the brand. His Twitter account has since been deleted.)

Beer writer and broadcast journalist Tara Nurin noted how easy it is to say something “stupid” on air in a Forbes.com piece, writing, “I feel the hosts were actually speaking up for women by chastising those whose personal branding suggests that their chests are more important than their faces and that their bodies speak louder than their minds… We still have a double standard but now it’s women who are commercializing themselves and trying to silence the men who give their opinions about it.”

Others argue these women deserve the same reverence and respect as Furnari or any beer professional. “I’m tired of women having to prove themselves as beer drinkers,” Melis, a.k.a. @thegirlwithbeer, who was also included in the list and prefers not to share her surname for safety reasons, wrote on her feed. Melis is a communications manager for a craft brewery in San Diego. “I work full time for an independent craft brewery, support the Brewers Guild and Pink Boots Society. […] You want beer culture to be more diverse and inclusive? Stop sh*tting on the people who bring diversity to it. Do better.”

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I have three significant things happening soon. The first one is that Melis @thegirlwithbeer and I are going to PANAMA next week!! I was invited to collab with @fulaicaza at @boquetebrewingcompany, and asked Melis to come along. Ale has a whole itinerary packed full of exciting things that we can’t wait to share with y’all. If you happen to live in Panama City, we will be doing a little meet and greet event. Check my stories for info. TAG your friends in Panama, we’d love to meet them!! And stay tuned for the next drop of news. 🇵🇦 ✈️ . . 🍻🍹: @southernbeergirl, myself, and @thegirlwithbeer drinking some @brooklynbrewery Bel Air sour and beer cocktails at @thepearlhotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #craftbeeronly #craftbeerlove #craftbeerbabe #craftbeergirl #brooklynbrewery #brooklynbeer #sourbeer #unicornhair #rainbowhair #craftbeercommunity #panamacitybeach #panamabeer #visitpanama #beerblogger #travelblogger #gypsybrewer #ladybrewer #girlswithbeer #dippindaisysswimwear #beerus #boquete #boquetepanama #sandiegogram #visitsandiego

A post shared by megan ✻ beer ✻ travel ✻ style (@isbeeracarb) on May 30, 2019 at 2:39pm PDT

Bella, a.k.a. One Hoppy Lady, also defended her right to control her own image in an Instagram post following the podcast, writing: “Does my fitted shirt discredit the 9 years I’ve spent in the beer industry? Does @isbeeracarb’s bikini erase all her brewing knowledge? Is @la_petite_biere too sexy to enjoy beer? […] I’m disappointed in Brewbound for publishing this harmful speech against women.”

(Ironically, or perhaps not at all, the Brewound Podcast topic was “diversity and inclusion.” It later featured an interview with D.C. brewery owner Julie Verratti, former chair and current member of the Brewers Association Diversity Committee.)

Womanhood, like beer, is political. What women say, wear, and do with our bodies in public is regularly politicized and policed. When the collective expertise of a group of young women is called into question because of the ways they present their bodies online, it opens our eyes to the ways conservatism and unsolicited criticism are unfortunately still present in the beer industry — and the world at large.

Interestingly, this is not the first time a listicle of influencers sparked controversy within the beer community. In 2017, “30 Female Beer Lovers You Must Follow On Instagram,” published by Men’s Health, also ruffled feathers. Some responses, from women as well as men, were strikingly similar to Furnari’s recent remarks.

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Quality is so important to me when I make beer, I make sure all of my ingredients are fresh and healthy before using them. I taste the wort and beer in every stage to make sure things are progressing as they should be. I’m so concerned about quality, which is why since I’ve started at @jaggedmountaincb we have been using the lab company @fermlyknow ! They have the specialized equipment that most breweries can not afford or have space for. They are able to test a wide range of things from ABV to calories. If you are worried about a contamination they can test for other unwanted yeasts/bacteria. I was able to visit their lab the other day and pretend like I was helping 😝 in all reality it was super cool to see how they go through the samples that us breweries send them. I was most fascinated by the way they test for calories! If you want to have a more in depth view be sure to check my stories. Fermly is a great option for breweries concerned about their beer quality, or just getting a more in depth view at your beer. Both of the owners have been in the beer industry, and give you a personal touch with direct communication. This is why if you mention me, southernbeergirl, you can get 10% off your first order with them! Check out the link in my bio to see all the services they offer 🔥 THEY TEST INTERNATIONALLY TOO! Have you ever gotten your beer tested? What are some things that surprised you the most?

A post shared by Alyssa (@southernbeergirl) on Jul 29, 2019 at 8:35am PDT

“I just think that championing these so-called IG ‘beer chicks’ is not the best vehicle for [recognition]… IG has just become an endless T&A parade with nearly naked pics being posted to lure you to their paid sites,” Hopgoddess312 wrote in a BeerAdvocate forum discussing the article. She also referred to the list as “a bunch of pics from women’s IG accounts, a good chunk of which are just tit pics and nothing to do with beer.” (Ironically, or perhaps not at all, Hopgoddess312’s profile photo is also a close-up of her breasts and a beer.)

“I feel this type of attention sets us back and demeans the hard working women who are in the industry,” Afro Beer Chick wrote in an October 2017 blog post. “There is no need to be a ‘hey look at me’ type beer chick… Let’s keep the boobs and butts for the other Instagram thots.”

On the other hand, the Men’s Health list was published in its “Sex” section. This is a meaningful editorial decision that reinforces the idea that attractive women and beer experts are two different subjects that often overlap.

Two years later, we are still grappling with these nuances. When members of the beer community see women baring it all in their photos, and earning more “likes” and followers, it’s easy to critique them for marketing to the male gaze. Yet when a male figure enters the ring to publicly condemn these same women, many jump to the women’s defense. What’s the deal?

It’s all about agency and respect. All members of the beer community should be able to present themselves however they choose, so long as they’re not hurting anybody; it’s not up to us to dictate what’s best for anyone else.

Yes, many of the Instagrammers included in last month’s list have sexy public personas. They’re also equipped with brains and beer expertise. Assuming anything less does a disservice to us all.

The article Uproxx, Brewbound, and the Internet Gaze on Women in Beer appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/beer-boobs-misogyny/

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ouraidengray4 · 6 years

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16 Dating Strategies to Be Your Best Self (and Avoid Being a Dick)

The most classic, useless dating advice of all time—which you've undoubtedly heard countless times from your mom, magazines, and self-help books—is to just "be yourself." The idea here is that if you're just super authentically you, everything will go right! You'll find a boyfriend, girlfriend, make-out buddy, lifetime partner… whatever it is you're looking for.