#i will never be over them referring to adam smashing people to death with a skateboard

[agentcricket-art]

finally watched the gay sk8 anime

[until-we-fall-in-love]

creature-song

Pairings: Wanda Maximoff x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, light Steve Rogers x Reader, light Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers, light Wanda Maximoff x Bucky Barnes

Summary: You should turn away. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready.

1600s America AU, Witch!AU, Possesed!Bucky, Gothic, Horror

Warnings: Smut, gore, violence, demons, possession, sacrilegious themes. This is 18+ as most of my works are.

If you are under 18 you should not be reading this!

A/N: hello guys!! this is a little late but its for @barnesrogersvstheworld​ writing AYAOTDchallenge!! it was supposed to be for halloween, but i’ve been insanely busy and i think November is spookier anyways because it’s when things truly die and whither away and the cold comes on lol. this is a whole mess, but i’ve been heavily inspired about witches and possession because of a class im currently taking! it got long so i’ll split it into two parts! enjoy and pls let me know what you think!!

my prompt was: the task of navigating darkness by candlelight

***

1692, Massachusetts

The day is filled with fog and smoke, a bleak grayness that shrouds all in it’s gloominess. The whole town seems washed out, everyone’s faces grey and slack. The crops are dying, growing brown and muted in color, fading away into death and nothingness. Your world seems covered in death recently, in the thick, heavy, inescapable blanket of it. 

There’s been another two murders. People torn apart, their bodies lie in the main road of town for all to see and gawk and pray over. 

Their blood is the brightest color you have seen in all of November. Saturated and sticky, sliding from them like the juice of berries in high summer, like the color the leaves had been before they’d all fallen away, like poppies and roses. Their skulls are bashed inward, as if made of clay, the sludge of them leaking through as flies buzz, buzz, buzz around them. As if they weren’t people once, but always food for insect, for the earth. Their limbs are twisted at strange, rag doll angles, and you think there was nothing but softness inside of them. No bone, there couldn’t have been with the way they lay there, all twisted and slack.

Their eyes are hollow. Open. Their mouths agape as bugs skitter and crawl and press outward in their feast of flesh.

There’s moaning in the streets, howling cries of a mother or a sister or a wife. It’s horrific, if you dig into the pit of yourself, but it’s the fourth pair of bodies that have been found dead in recent weeks. It almost isn’t shocking anymore. 

Wanda presses closer to your side, your dearest friend, her body warm and soft. Flushed with color and light, the cold nipping at her cheeks, her nose. The wind lifts her auburn hair from her cheeks, her lashes fluttering in the breeze. She catches your hand with one of her own, tangling your fingers together. Her palm fits yours easily and swiftly, as if it’s where she belongs, as if it’s where you belong, too. 

“At least he’ll stop breathing down your neck about an engagement.” Wanda says quietly, her lips brushing the shell of your ear. She is warm and lulling in the cold autumn air that seems to be pushing through your wool dress, your scarf. Trying to worm it’s way beneath and make a home of your body. 

Perhaps you will never be warm again, if the cold decides to settle deep into your bones.  

“What?” You ask, blinking away from the bodies, from your murky thoughts. 

“Mr. Fowler.” Wanda murmurs, nodding to one of the bodies, “He always upset you, he always pressured you for an engagement.” 

You glance towards the bodies once more, find the shape of them, the faces so crudely misshapen now, but you finally catch the lines of his features. The dark hair, short and balding. As if you finally see the full picture. 

Oh. It’s Mr. Fowler, then. And Mr. Adams rotting beside him. 

“Yes,” You say quietly, weary of the spark in Wanda’s eyes, the glimmer that ensnares you, “I suppose so.” 

Wanda is all you have in recent years, another orphaned girl your village does not wish to worry or feed. So you worry and feed each other. You both claim to be trying to find husbands, trying to marry off into another household. Truthfully, though, neither of you have ever searched. You’re content to live together, secluded, removed from all of the prying eyes of your small, imposing world. You wish to go home with her now, in fact, want to curl up beside a fire and lean into her side until your eyes grow heavy and soft. You want her nimble fingers carding through your hair, her touch upon your neck-- 

A broad hand comes down upon your shoulder then and you jump, almost let out a yelp in surprise. You whirl around to face them, tilting your face up to find Steve Rogers looking down upon you. The sculpted lines of his face, the shocking blue eyes, the flush to his pale cheeks. He has always looked like a tragic hero to you; a Hercules, Perseus, noble and damned and fighting against all odds. 

Beside him, Bucky stands broad and pale faced. He won’t look at the bodies. There are deep, darkened blossoms beneath his eyes. It makes his already depthless and haunted eyes look worse, blackened out, charcoal blue. He crosses his arms across his great, wide chest; one of them the off-beat shine of metal, iron and leather creaking with the movement. Like a piece of armor, the leather strap reaching up to his shoulder, so that if he moves it, it may move the forearm of his appendage. The fingers lay motionless, cold and gleaming. Such an odd, strange invention to the rest of the town; they fear him because of it. But he has only ever helped you and Wanda, the way Steve has kept a watchful eye on the pair of you. 

If Steve looks like a Greek hero to you, you think Bucky looks like a Shakespearean one; damned because of his own choices, falling from grace; A Hamlet, Macbeth. 

“You shouldn’t watch this,” Steve murmurs to you two, already turning you from the gore and bloodshed with his warm hand, wishing the flesh of him would sink into you and flush you with heat, “Come on,” He then urges you gently, “Buck and I will help you with some morning chores.” 

He’s always been so giving, overly helpful, a twinge protective over the pair of you. Loyal, terribly so, as he stands beside Bucky, the pariah of town. 

And you let him guide you away, your fingers still woven tightly with Wanda’s, who still peaks over her shoulder at the seeping crimson of flesh and blood and body, as if they were petals of flowers to admire than corpses to rot. Her eyes glitter strangely when she turns back to you. 

Bucky follows like a shadow, head hung low. 

***

The crack, snap of wood being split into two is felt in your chest, the steady motion and sound falling into tune with every other beat of your heart. Bucky lifts the axe high with one arm, before bringing it down sharply upon the wood. It splits easily, a crack of lightning, of metal as it falls apart then. 

You feed the few hens that you and Wanda share, spreading feed onto the ground as they cluck and scurry around you. 

Steve helps Wanda fix the barn door, their figures blurry and grey in the fog and bleakness. 

You gaze at Bucky, the shadows that seem to cling to him. 

“You look tired, Mr. Barnes.” You speak up, tossing the rest of the feed to the chickens who scurry after it. You leave their pen, the gate creaking as you step nearer to him. The axe falls with strength and brutality, bursts the wood in half. 

“I haven’t been sleeping well.” He grunts, tossing the wood aside. He sets another piece upon the block, lifts his axe high. You can see the movement of muscle, the strength and cutting edge of them.

“No?” You ask, curling your fingers into your sleeves; you’re so cold still, stiff and frigid and snow hasn’t even touched the ground yet. You shiver, you think it will be an awful and long winter. “Why not?”

The axe smashes down upon the wood. 

He lets out a breath, shakes his head, the dark locks of his hair brushing his cheeks which are deeply flushed from the cold, from the exertion. He looks handsome, you think, with the peak of his chest beneath his long shirt. 

“I’ve been having strange dreams recently.” He then admits with the soft gruffness of his voice, eyes flickering to you.

You stand idly, know that idleness is a sin; you should be working. Working, busy hands can never sin. But you step towards him and your eyes watch the movement of his chest and torso, wonder what he looks like bare--

“What kind of dreams?” You ask, voice gone soft as you peer at him.

He straightens up a moment to his full height, now turning his eyes on you, “Curious little thing, aren’t you?” He half scolds you, and you feel small but suddenly bold. There’s a catch in his eyes, a gleaming not dissimilar to Wanda’s. It’s haunting, exhilarating, it makes you take another few steps closer as if drawn to him by an unnatural force. And then he answers, “They’re nightmares. Horrible dreams.”

“Of what?” 

His lips twist into a ghost of a smile and he shakes his head, “They’re not for a girl’s ears.” 

“I’m not a girl,” You counter, “I haven’t been for many moons.” 

His eyes flash to you, at the rather crude reference of the blood that spills from you monthly. He is not appalled, he is not shocked or scandalized, instead he peers deeper into you. As if he can see the twisting of your innards, all of the blood that might spill from you the way it had from Mr. Fowler. Would you paint November in the bright flare of red, too? Bring color to this washed out world. 

“I dream I slip from my body.” He says and his eyes grow glassy, far-off. You near him as he continues, “Or that I no longer control myself.” His breath stutters and you are fully ensnared in him now, “And I do monstrous deeds.” 

“Of what?” You breathe, looking up into his face, so haunted and hollow and frightened.

His lip trembles, and he exhales;

“I knew they would be dead this morning.” 

“Mr. Barnes,” You gasp and his eyes suddenly snap to you, wholly black and wide, and you are so startled that you try to lurch back. 

But he grabs you with speed and strength, and cold metal wraps around your wrist, around the fluttering, lively pulse beneath your thin skin. A moth’s wings pinned, a rabbit in a snare. When he speaks, it is strange and spellbinding, “I know you hated Mr. Fowler.” He says through a wall of his white, white teeth. 

You look down at the metal hand that seems to have come to life, yelp at the way the unnatural fingers tighten upon you, squeezing, as if they are his very limb. As if it is flesh and bone, a steel skeleton come to life. 

“I have peered into your soul, temptress, and I know you thought his blood was pretty.” He snarls low and guttural, his eyes digging into you like a curved, arching dagger. 

Wildly, your eyes fly over his face, now twisted into such misery and rage. You try to pull your wrist from his metal grasp, your face flushing with color from exertion. Your eyes glitter with sudden tears, the cold air pricking at them. “Mr. Barnes--” You gasp, voice catching, breath curling into the air between you two. 

All he does is pull you forward, jerking you into the strong expanse of his chest as he lifts your wrist. “I know your thoughts are rotting.” He rumbles, and the sound vibrates through him and down into the marrow of your bones “You want more than this. Your heart longs for what it shouldn’t.” 

“Bucky, you’re hurting me.” You whimper, trying to twist and squirm but it's useless against the strength of him.

“Am I?” He hisses, voice like insects swarming, “I know what you want, little one.” He then croons so lowly that it slithers down into you like a serpent, coils into the darkest, most wretched parts of you. Sinks down into your core to unfurl in a sudden burst of heat--

And with the way he looks at you; as if you are to be devoured, as if you are to be torn apart by him or worshiped on an unholy altar. Your heart beats an unsteady, thunderous rhythm in the cavity of your chest. 

It echoes inside of you, demanding of you something you don’t know how to feed. 

His body is warm against yours, unnaturally so, save for the frigid hand constricting around the delicate skin of your wrist. You think he’ll bruise you, you think he’ll mark you for all to see and you’ll carry his brand. His eyes are as dark as a starless sky, blown out black as coal, as black as the he goat in the barn, as the smoke of hellfire.

“Bucky!” Steve shouts suddenly, and the two of you lurch away as if something has forced you apart. You cradle your wrist, try to rub the ache away, your heart still ricocheting around inside of you, as if it very well might escape entirely. 

Bucky blinks in horror, his eyes returning to the gentle midnight blue that you know so dearly. He stumbles back, his metal arm returning inanimate by his side. If it weren’t for the frightened, wild look in his face, you’d think it would’ve never happened at all.

“I need your help for a moment!” Steve yells, voice echoing. 

A flock of black birds burst into the shapeless, endless, grey sky at the loud noise. You jump at their sudden explosion of flight. They squawk and screech, wings flapping like your heart beating. 

Whatever had filled Bucky has fled now and his eyes are clear and shining, his cheeks flushed again, no unnatural darkness tracing the edges of his features. You watch him warily, your mind suddenly feverish with what he’d said to you, with the searing touch that now seems to scorch your skin. 

I knew they would be dead this morning. 

You should tell someone; Steve, Wanda, a minister. You should flee. 

But all you say is, “Go,” And you nod your head towards Steve and Wanda, “I will light a fire to warm you after.” 

He looks at you warily, as if he might apologize or thank you or question you; there’s such confusion in his eyes. He is lost, swimming in that black sea. What did I do? He asks silently, pleads with you, what have I done? 

You look away, unwilling to answer. He moves on cautiously, towards Steve and Wanda in the distance. You begin to make a fire as if all is normal, and all you can think about is how you are no longer shivering with cold. 

As if an ember has sparked, been cradled to a small flame in the cavernous depths of your soul. 

***

Some days later, Wanda wakes you at an odd hour of the night, moonlight spilling in through the small window of your shared bedroom. It fills the room with reaching shadows and cutting, silver light. You’d been sleeping soundly, curled onto your side when you are roused by small, seeking hands. 

You turn, eyes fluttering, a blurry shape in front of you. You make out Wanda’s impish features, the shadow of her slender figure. And her eyes--

Oh, her eyes. 

They’re glowing strangely, fever bright and glittering like rubies in the night. She sinks upon you, her body sliding so she straddles your hips, laying herself along you. You can feel the soft lines of her; her chest to yours, the heat of her nose and lips upon your neck and shoulder. 

“Wanda,” You exhale, twisting, a little confused. Her fingertips are hot, like little embers, dancing along bare skin. 

“Hush, my heart.” She shushes, “My little shrike.” She cooes, “My moon and stars.” Her nose and lips brush your cheek, her searching hands dipping underneath the thin, cotton nightgown that wraps around your body. 

“Wanda,” You gasp as her lips settle into a kiss upon the flamed skin of your cheek. “What are you doing?” 

She pulls back so that you may see her in all her nightshade glory, her hair sliding along her bare shoulders, her nightgown down, spilling around her arms so the tops of her breasts are revealed. She looks almost wild-eyed, strange and beautiful and seductive in the night. Her eyes swim before you, blood red and glittering and enchanting. There’s something heady and intoxicating about her, something you want to taste, that you want to sink into and drown in. 

“Giving you what you want,” She says on a simple sigh, just as her fingers find the curve of your breast, little dancing flames that have you shutter and arch. She tilts her head with wide, bright eyes; there’s a sweet, coy smile playing at her lips, her lashes fluttering like moth’s wings, as she asks too innocently, her voice gone high and soft and beguiling;

“Isn’t this what you want, little one?” 

Her clever fingers find the peak, make you squirm, make heat flood through you. She draws back the covers with her other hand to find your bare leg, your bare thigh, sliding up to your bare--

“Wanda!” You jolt, suddenly shy, trying to sit up but she forces you down. 

She grins wickedly, “Don’t hide from me.” And her nimble fingers stroke between your legs where you’ve become slippery and warm and silky. You feel flushed and heady, hypnotized by her. She sighs against you, settles deeper into your body like a corpse sinking into a grave, pushing her finger inside to make you gasp aloud. To claim you, to touch you in a way that no hand has ever touched before. 

“This isn’t new to you, though, is it?” She breathes, almost hisses, “I know because I hear you some nights.” Her fingers twist and a moan tumbles out of your lips, and she laughs, bright and warm, “Just like that, dearest.” 

You squirm, and slowly lose your inhibitions with every push and pull of her fingers, every glide of her. Had you not dreamed of this? Had you not wondered with a sinful mind what it might be like to feel her like this, to taste and be tasted by her? Had you not wondered what heaven or hell might have felt like? She’s damnation, sweet salvation; something so visceral and entangled within the pits of you, something profound and holy. 

The world falls away so that it is only you two and the moon, the pleasure she gives and torments you with. The town slips away, the rules, the Bible, your Holy God all dissipates like fog until you are only born of this warmth and vicious sweetness. She keeps you teetering on an edge, cruel mistress of night that she is. She trembles with you on a new beginning, baptized between your thighs, between hers. She lets you touch and explore the softness of her body with curious and hungry hands, no longer idle. 

She brands you with lips and teeth and tongue, makes you wild and insatiable. Her fingers wrap around your tender throat as she guides you towards another sharp and jagged edge. 

Her cheeks glow against yours, a face of fire and heat, her breaths tumultuous and warm against your shoulder. “You’re mine,” She seems to half-sob, her little hand tightening upon your throat as if to claim you, “Mine. I live in you, and you have possessed me so thoroughly I think I could die.” 

A broken moan from you, a gasp. 

“Say it,” She then hisses through her teeth, “Say you’re mine.” 

You whimper, push your hips into her hands as if she has bewitched you, taken hold of your very soul. The words fall from your kiss stung and abused lips, eager and knowing it to be true, “I’m yours, Wanda, I’m yours--” 

And then she claims you with lips, with body and soul, forces you into oblivion. She laughs with delight against your mouth, drinks up your cries and buries herself into the crooks and corners of your body. Of your very being. 

She lays with you beneath the moonlight, a new strange power surges through her, a brightness that cannot be dimmed. You think she might be a devil, a witch, a creature of the night with her lullaby voice and twilight kiss. You think she is damned and maybe you are, too.

You think she has claimed you and, as you tighten yourself around her body, your nails digging into her soft flesh, you think that you have claimed her, too. 

***

Wanda has never looked brighter, more flushed with life and vitality. She is radiant, even in all the grayness of devouring and lonesome autumn, when winter is on it’s tails. The town is thoroughly terrified and sick with horror as another two bodies arise. They’re just as the others, a bright mess of crimson and maroon and sludge. 

Steve and Bucky stay near you and Wanda, watch over you both closely. Bucky is changed, too, something in him has been bent and broken and fractured. You think he’s bleeding internally, you think there is something in him that needs to be taken out. 

Or maybe it doesn’t. His smiles are more hooked, shadowed, strange and tempting. You wonder what his teeth would feel like against your neck-- if he would taste like Wanda, if he’d touch you like her, too. 

You’ve never touched a man before. You’ve never been touched by one, either. 

Wanda and Bucky are strange together, you think. And you grow jealous when you see her fluttering her lashes at him and cooing. You don’t know who you’re more jealous of, which one of them you want to claw and tear apart with viciousness, with love and heat and something demented.  

Steve notices this new change, too, and he tries to console you when you pout. You think he would make a good husband if a husband was something you were interested in. So valiant and golden, too polished for your unclean hands. 

But husbands are so base, so simple. Wanda has opened your mind to something higher, something more enchanting and powerful. 

And in the middle of the nights, when it is only you and her, she promises to give you more. She promises to guide you further into such wonder that she has discovered. Then she devours you and makes you tremble and shake with her might and love. 

She grows stronger with each day; odd happenings following her. She grows angry and a glass may shatter. A neighbor who glares at you suddenly loses two of his cows. Someone calls Bucky an abomination and suddenly they are struck ill. 

When she returns to you, while you still pout with Steve, still mad over her attention to Bucky, she smiles brightly. She wraps her arms around your shoulders and kisses your cheek, “Tonight is the night, my stars.” And then she nuzzles at your jaw, amorous and warm, “Tonight is the night that I give you all the power I have been harboring.” 

She takes your hands in hers, kisses the inside of your wrist, “Tonight you become like me, in eternal darkness.” 

Her teeth nick your wrist playfully and she looks at you with burning, hooded eyes. You think if she could, she’d lay you out on the dirt and take you right there. Hitch up your skirts and grind her hips against yours until you were both desperate and wild for release. 

But Steve is there, and Bucky, too. 

You wish she would, still. 

She laughs and saunters away as if she knows your thoughts. The wind howls and bays, as if it knows, too. 

***

She dresses you that night in a thin, white gown. You whine that you’ll freeze to death, but she shushes you with burning lips. She promises not, promises that you will never feel cold again after tonight. 

She leads you barefoot and shivering out to the forest by the dim, flickering light of a candle. It burns in her hand, wax dripping and sliding the way honey does in the summer. You long for summer suddenly, for the warmth and sea of green. The candle casts little, dancing shadows that seem to lurk and follow you both.

She leads you by hand, guides you into the thick of the forest where the wolves howl and the foxes yip and the coyotes yowl. The owl cooes, eyes peering at you in the darkness. You are lead to a clearing, and the small, fluttering candle that you’ve used to navigate illuminates the shape of a man.

Large and muscled, broad shouldered and lonesome in the woods. 

“Don’t be scared,” Wanda coos, “Go to him.” 

Warily, you ease past her, past the flickering, gold light of the candle. And even in the darkness, you recognize his face, the unnatural metal arm--

Bucky stands bare from the waist up and you flush at his nudity, at the shape of a man. Hadn’t you wondered about his chest beneath his clothes? About his abdomen? Your eyes flicker lower and you blink, quickly avert your eyes as your blush grows deeper. His body is far different than Wanda’s. 

“Mr. Barnes,” You breathe, and Wanda comes to your side, lifting the candle up to illuminate his handsome and shadowed face. 

His eyes are purely black, inky, the way they’d been that day not so long ago, when he’d seized you so tightly. He looks different, cutting and jagged. 

“Somewhat.” Wanda answers you with a smile. “He is changed, though.” 

“Possessed,” You gasp, the thought striking you deeply and suddenly. Like a blow to your chest, you realize you gaze upon a demon. 

His eyes snap to you,“Hello, temptress.” He says in a voice that is his and not his all at once. 

“Are you afraid?” Wanda purrs and you shudder at her voice, at the cold that pricks your skin, at the hungry, hollow look in Bucky’s face. The forest seems alive and breathing, shuddering with you, terrified and expectant of what it is to transpire. 

The moon is full, hanging and heavy and open mouthed in a horrified scream against the sea of blackness. 

“Should I be?” You ask quietly, a whisper of the wind, and Wanda’s eyes glitter excitedly. Her eyes flash red, warming and shimmering like embers. 

Wanda sets the candle aside, comes to your back. She slides her fingers beneath your nightgown, begins to ease it down past your shoulders. You should protest, you should force her to stop, shield yourself from the gaze of the man in front of you. From the demon in front of you. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready. 

It runs its teeth along the tender, pink inner flesh of you. It’s creature-song sings to you now, a siren to surrender to.

So you stand in the darkness, the guttering flame of the candle upon you, bare and shivering in front of evil.

And evil lies you on the cold, unforgiving ground. Wanda is there beside you, stroking your face and your hair with warm, gentle fingers. More gentle than she has ever been with you, as if she can hear the fearful, pounding of your heart caught between your shuddering ribs. You’re suddenly new to touch, virginal and trembling, a new flower to be opened.

The weight of Bucky settles upon you, his body unnaturally warm and burning, his broad shoulders wide upon you. His lips and nose nuzzle your jaw, your neck, also with surprising care. You shift your legs, open them tentatively to fit his waist in the cradle of your hips and—

You can feel him there, the hard line of him and you flush, suddenly squeak. 

“Don’t be afraid, little one.” He rumbles, and his voice sounds clearer, as if the demon doesn’t speak for him any longer, but only the midnight timber of Bucky’s sweet voice. He lifts his head and only the slate, blue eyes of him gaze down at you. “I’ll be gentle,” He promises, rubbing his bearded cheek to yours; so rough compared to Wanda’s smooth one. 

“I know this is what you wanted.” Wanda says softly, her lips at your ear, tucking your hair from your face. “I know how you gaze at him.” 

The first touch of Bucky’s hands are rough and make you jolt; one calloused and scarred and another cold and metal. They slide along the dips and curves of you, firm and gentle. You squirm slightly, base and animal upon the ground. 

“I’ll make you mine,” He murmurs, nosing at your neck, his teeth skimming lightly there. “My bride of darkness, queen of beasts.” His voice dips now into that lowly, snaking one of a demon, “I’ve been waiting for you for so long, my love.” 

His hips roll, a push against yours that have you clinging to his large frame. He is so much bigger than what you know, so overpowering. Wanda ravishes you but she is slight and nimble. You make a noise of surprise, a whimper, a squeak. 

“Relax,” He coos darkly, his flesh hand sliding up your bare legs. “You’re hurting here, aren’t you? Aching in the pit of you.” And his warm, rough fingers slide against you; revealing that, despite your fear, you’ve become molten and slick. You can feel his hooked grin, “Oh, little queen, and how you’ve longed for me, too.” 

He strokes until you are pliant beneath him, urging you on, Wanda pressing kisses to your cheeks and neck, collar bones and shoulders. You shudder beneath him, let something inside of you curl and coil, like a serpent, like the tightening of a rope, pulled to its full length, creaking and swaying as everything grows that much tighter. 

“You were born for me,” Bucky’s rumbling voice is in your ears, against your throat laid bare for him, his voice seems to echo in the darkest pieces of your mind and heart. “Born for this.” He sighs, leaning heavier into you before he suddenly pushes down the length of your body.

He settles between your legs, spreading them wide with his shoulders. Pearl moonlight, silver and opal fall across his features like pale silk that you have only ever dreamed about. In this light, he could’ve been an angel, a creature made of softness and delicacies, his black eyes turning up to find you and stuttering back into lovely blue. 

He bows his head like you could be holy, like you are to be prayed to. His hair tickles the bare skin of your thighs, his fingers prodding gently and then his mouth presses to where you’re most sensitive. 

You arch like a bow off the ground at the first touch and Wanda is there to comfort you. She eases you up slightly, let’s your back lay against the soft warmth of her chest and strokes your face and neck, down to your breasts. 

She grasps your hands when you pull and twist at him so that you lay helpless in her arms, helpless to the too-hot glide of his mouth against you. The forest is silent save for your cries, you are the wolf that howls, the crying fox, the whining coyote. You let go, let them consume you until you don’t recognize yourself. Until your nails feel sharp and your heart feels so full it could burst from all the aching. 

“Please,” You whimper, your hips pushing towards his lips in desperation, “Please, I can’t take this any longer!”

He laughs darkly against the slick pink flesh of you, “Didn’t their God teach you patience, darkling?” 

And he waits until you’re nothing but an animal for him, until your head is spinning and there are tears streaming down your heated cheeks. Not until you dig nails into Wanda’s hands so deeply that you have broken skin and she hisses through her teeth. He gives you no release, cruel as he is, and eventually slides up along your body once more. 

He grasps Wanda by the back of the neck and pulls her sharply to his shining lips. She moans, the sound going straight down into the depths of you. 

“My loyal servant,” He tells her, his eyes once more black as a raven, shining under the flash of silver moonshine. “You brought her to me.” He murmurs reverently and she looks up at him adoringly, her wide eyes that flare deeply red and maroon are glittering like gemstones in a cave.

“Make her ours.” Wanda then breathes, and he smiles all sharp and gutting. 

He grasps your hips with metal and flesh, draws them closer and slides you towards him. Your head falls to Wanda’s abdomen, her lap. Her fingers brush your wet cheeks and you mewl, twist into her touch. He kneels before you, worshiping, and opens his trousers. 

You don’t have time to think because you can feel him between your legs now. He brushes the hard length of him along where you’re most sensitive and desperate. You feel empty suddenly, knowing that he will fill you, and suddenly tentative. 

He is large and burning and the crown of him dips inside of where no man has been. He exhales harshly, eyes seeped in black, so depthless and dark that it swallows the moon light. The first slow, heavy push of him makes you cry out.

“I-I can’t—“ You half beg, feel the stretch and breach of him deep inside of you, the pressure and heat that terrifies you. 

“Oh, you will,” He almost growls, as if you’re undoing him. His eyes are fixed to where he eases in deeper, slides slowly and he groans, broken and in the back of his throat. “You will, even if you’re so small.” 

Another slow push and then he sinks into you entirely, sinks down so that he covers you in all his strength. His breaths are ragged; he is unwoven by you, falling apart as he stretches you open.

You give another cry, hold incredibly still beneath him as the pressure mounts. You feel as if you’re splintering, broken open like ripe fruit, bursting forth with a new heat. Your hand squabbles over the muscles of his back before sinking into his skin with nails. 

You become overwhelmed, drag your nails deep into his skin to mark him, to urge him on or force him out, you can’t tell. You bare your teeth, let out a broken moan, a half-growl against the vein of his neck. You realize your own vulnerability, belly-up and soft to him, open and waiting. 

Wanda soothes you when he begins to move in you, traces her fingertips over your swollen lips, sinks inside the sweetness of your mouth and lets you suckle and kiss and bite. There’s a fever inside you, tormenting your insides. You whimper, the sound pulling at Bucky, and when he looks back down at you, his eyes burst back into blue. The demon seems to slink away, or Bucky has regained control, again. 

You almost expect him to jolt away again, to flush with fear but—

“Oh,” He gasps instead, unraveled man, fallen from grace. He gathers you in his arms, pulls you closer and tucks you into him, as if he could pull you beneath his skin and bury you behind the strong bones of his ribs. He holds fast to you, suddenly lifts you into his lap, into his arms. “Oh, pretty girl.” He murmurs as he moves you slowly over him, foggy and heady with you. 

Your world begins to blur. You don’t know where the demon ends and Bucky begins. You don’t think you care, when all of that pain and burning gives way to a hedonistic pleasure. You move over him on your own, can feel the slickness of you, you can feel the deep seated ache you need to ease. 

The teetering edge, the right and creeping rope, ready to snap. The leash on the beast inside of you begins to splinter. 

Wanda’s at your back then, lips at your neck, brushing your ear. “Repeat after me,” She murmurs, voice a lulling warmth that sinks into your marrow. 

“Et dabo tibi animam meam,” She murmurs, her voice gaining a haunting, otherworldly inflection, as if other voices buzz alongside hers. 

So you repeat with a thick, honeyed tongue the Latin words that seems to simmer and etch themselves into you. You feel the power surge in her, in him, in you; a tether woven tightly between you three. His thrusts become rougher, his eyes flooding with crude black once more. 

“Nunc, et in perpetuum magis.” Wanda finishes in your ear, a possessive hand curled around the bones of your waist, along the curve of your breast. 

The words fall from your mouth as easily as if you’ve known them your entire, unforgiving life. And then there is a pull, snap of your heartstrings. The howling mongrel in you bursts loose, the heat and life and viciousness unfurls from within. You feel as if you’re being torn apart, as if another creature is clawing its way out of your core, your soft stomach and aching chest. 

The demon groans, spills inside of you; his seed so hot that you feel it may burn you. As if it burns its way through you, into your womb and heart and being. 

“You’re mine now,” The demon and Bucky say, rough hand cradling your cheek. “Semper magis.” He hushes against your lips and seals it with a claiming, damned kiss.

Then he sinks talons into your soul, teeth into your bottom lip and your heart, locks his essence tight to yours and throws away the ancient, heavy key.

***

Part Two

[shannaraisles]

Comfort & Ploy - Chapter 5

Carver Hawke needs a girlfriend for the festive season. Filipa Trevelyan needs an excuse not to spend Satinalia with her parents. Best friends pretending to be lovers … what could possibly go wrong?

[Read on AO3]

*****

"Auntie Pip?"

"Hmm?"

Filipa turned toward the curious little voice just in time to get a face full of snow, thrown by the most mischievous child she had ever known. Spluttering, she batted the stuff out of her mouth, eyes narrowing at the giggling Alys.

"Oh, you're for it now, Nuglet!"

She bent to scoop up a handful of snow herself, ducking as Alys tossed another snowball her way. It hit her shoulder, scattering soft crystals everywhere, but Filipa was already straightening up with her own snowball, taking aim as Alys squealed and ran for it over the snow. The ball hit the redhead square in the back, making her shout with laughter again as she grabbed for more herself. Babysitting unexpectedly for an afternoon was turning out to be fun.

"Carver?" she called back toward the house.

There was a pause before the kitchen window opened and the tall man leaned out, tilting his head toward her as another snowball smashed against her hip.

"This might take a while," Filipa informed him with a grin and a wink, chuckling as he laughed and ducked back inside out of the cold.

Alys' own grin faltered a little when she saw the size of the snowball her aunt then started to put together.

"Nooo! Uncle Carver, you havta save me!"

Filipa took off running after the little girl, already breathless with laughter at the squealing that erupted from her sister's little girl in the face of being thoroughly beaten in a snowball fight. It seemed as though Alys wasn't used to people fighting back for real. She certainly screamed loudly enough when her aunt brought the big snowball down on her head, cackling along with Filipa at the ridiculous playtime she had initiated.

"No fair!" Alys complained through her grin. "You've got longer legs than me!"

"You started it!" Filipa countered, scooping more into her gloved hands.

She grunted as Alys barrelled into her, knocking her off her feet and into the snow on her back, her half-made missile disintegrating in the fall. As Alys scuttled off, she sat up, patting the snow out of her hair.

"Who's cheating now?" she demanded, only just getting her hands up in time to fend off another attack aimed straight for her face again.

"It's not cheating when it's me, because I am cute!" was the counter.

Filipa laughed as she rose onto her feet, swiping packed snow off her backside.

"That is not a good enough excuse," she argued in amusement. "I'm at least as cute as you!"

"Betcha my Daddy doesn't think so!"

Alys ducked as Filipa tossed more snow her way, snickering happily. None of them had been expecting Cullen and Mila to be called back to the zoo, but then, no one could accurately predict the birthing habits of Antivan tigers, it seemed. It was a pretty huge compliment to be trusted with Alys and their home, and with Carver busy in the kitchen, no one was going to go hungry. Filipa was well aware that she was a hopeless cook - left to her, Alys would have been eating take-out tonight while her parents hovered over a laboring tigress.

Game over was called, however, when Alys managed to get a handful of snow up and underneath Filipa's coat, leaving droplets of freezing water to trickle down her back and soak into her shirt.

"Fine, you win," she conceded, catching her niece about the waist to swing her around to face the house. "And your lips are going blue, so we're going inside, Nuglet."

"That was fun!" the little redhead exclaimed as they tramped over the porch, kicking the snow from their boots before stepping inside to divest themselves of said boots, coats, hats and gloves. "Daddy says Mama liked to play in the snow, but when him and Mum play, they always let me win. I like winning for real."

"I still maintain that you cheat," Filipa assured her, smiling warmly.

It felt strange when Alys referred to her birth mother, Rory, but it was getting easier to deal with. Rory's death had left a hole in Cullen and Alys' lives that Mila was adamant she would not even attempt to fill, instead making her own space alongside the memory of the woman who had made them both so happy to begin with. Still, it was a good thing that both mothers were so precious to Alys. Filipa could not be happier for her sister to have found so warm and loving a home to be a part of.

"Maker's breath, look at the state of you two," Carver said, peering at them from the kitchen door. "Just as well I made cocoa, isn't it?"

Alys' eyes went round with hopeful excitement.

"Real cocoa?" she asked. "With real chocolate and marshmallows?"

Carver grinned at her.

"What do you take me for?" he replied. "I'll have you know that I refuse to drink cocoa made with powder, thank you so very much."

"Go wash your hands," Filipa told her niece before Alys could pounce on Carver and give him one of those hugs that seemed to completely flummox him. "I'm going to steal one of your mum's tops, since mine is mysteriously soaking wet."

Snickering cheerfully, Alys obediently disappeared upstairs in the direction of the bathroom, leaving Filipa usher Carver back into the kitchen so she could reach the laundry room. Mila was hardly going to begrudge her a spare top after an emergency babysitting afternoon.  

"So cocoa before dinner?" she asked, ducking into the laundry room to grab the first clean top that came to hand.

Carver was already back at the stove, stirring the contents of the saucepan. She had to admit, it smelled delicious. He had almost certainly added spice to it as well as using real chocolate.

"It's going to be at least an hour before dinner's ready," he said absently, glancing over as she came back into the kitchen.

"Oh, I guess that's not so bad, then," she agreed, pulling her shirt off over her head.

She missed the sudden catch of breath in his throat, dropping her wet shirt onto the table so she could pull Mila's dry one on instead. It wasn't as though they hadn't changed clothes in front of each other before; it happened all the time in the firehouse, and she was determined not to act as though anything had changed between them. After all, she was the one with the emotions making themselves known. He didn't deserve to have her feelings sloshed all over him.

Pulling her hair out of the collar of the shirt, she turned back toward Carver, only to find him staring at her. And ... is he blushing? He was. Carver, her best friend who never seemed to have noticed she was female before, was blushing at the sight of her changing her top in front of him. Despite her best intentions, Filipa felt herself grin.

"Enjoying the view there?" she asked innocently.

Carver cleared his throat, jerking his gaze away from her to the cocoa on the stove-top. Even his ears were pink. Blessed Andraste ... he likes me, she realized, feeling happy warmth blossoming in her chest. He actually fancies me! How in the Void did I miss that?

"You don't need to be embarrassed," she added, moving closer to gently nudge her shoulder to his arm. "I generally enjoy the view from here, too."

All right, so maybe it wasn't the best way to broach the subject of mutual pining, but it was worth it to see his mouth drop open in genuine surprise. She had rendered Carver Hawke speechless. If she wasn't so delighted about the actual cause of it, she would definitely have made a show of marking the date in her diary.

"Are you going to smooch?"

Alys' interruption might have been perfectly timed. Filipa was pretty sure neither she nor Carver were quite ready for this conversation, nor was it something they should talk about in her sister's house when Mila and Cullen could walk in at any moment, not to mention be overheard by a nosy little girl. She smiled at Carver, winking at him, and turned to Alys as he reached for the mugs.

"No, Nuglet, we are not going to smooch," she informed her niece, wrapping an arm about the girl's shoulders. "You and me are going to choose a movie for everyone to watch while we have cocoa and wait for dinner to be ready. Sound good?"

Alys nodded, tucking her shorter arm around her aunt's waist easily. Filipa was pretty sure the kid was tired from playing outside in the cold, but was at that age where she would never admit to needing a quick nap to recover from having fun. A movie and a warm drink should sort that right out. Carver seemed to have recovered as well; he turned to follow them, three mugs clasped securely in his large hands.

"Let's get to it then, shall we?" he suggested, gesturing with the mugs for the two ladies to go ahead of him.

Predictably enough, Alys was fairly insistent on watching "A Muppet Satinalia Carol", a movie that Mila also loved and apparently Cullen was very good at appearing to tolerate with good grace. He was subjected to it multiple times every year, after all. Filipa, however, had no objection to the silly movie, settling down onto the couch with Alys curled up under her arm. Carver hesitated only a moment before easing his long frame down onto the couch beside Filipa, comfortably settling his own arm about her shoulders.

She glanced up at him, absolutely certain she was blushing but stubborn enough to smile through it and brazen it out. He smiled back down at her, and turned his attention to the screen, lifting his cup to his lips. Grinning to herself, she turned her own attention to the movie, relaxing into the couch and the nonchalant cuddling on either side of her.

They might have started this as a means to an end, but that end had definitely altered now. Now all she had to do was work out exactly how to break it to Carver that this relationship of theirs was real.

That might take some planning.

[clairen45]

Planets and Star Wars ... an ask

Ok, dear, @jd1234fan, for some weird reason I am not able to answer your ask, but I managed to capture it and will address it. This is the message I got:

Thank you so much for reaching out and the kind words. They are deeply appreciated!  This is all good. Of course you are supposed to think of the planets in terms of symbolism for states of minds or states of beings, internal conflicts and the evolution within the psyche of the characters. And you understood it beautifully.

I think it is highly revealing that they have Rey and Kylo meet, as you point it out, in such a classic fairy tale environment. This is a place that has achieved perfect balance in terms of environment. It is the ideal. And this is where they meet. Not Finn and Rey. But Rey and Kylo. The balance planet, the dream, the ideal. Because that’s the goal, and there is no other place where they could have met, not even Jakku when they actually got so close to each other and where their near proximity sets everything in motion. But had they met in Jakku for real, I would not have given much about the outcome of their relationship. But it did not happen this way. And they chose the most perfect background for the core couple.

About planet symbolism, and if you are interested, I will if you don’t mind, point you towards different metas I posted on this topic. References and some extracts. Sorry, if it appears disjointed

Meeting in the forest: Comparing TFA with Legend by Ridley Scott-part 2

Their first ever meeting takes place on Takodana, in an environment, that, in a way, strikes as totally alien for both of them. Neither seems to belong there, and with their costumes (a far cry from Endor camouflages attire in ROTJ), they stick out like sore thumbs. He has been established as belonging in the darkness and high technology environment of the First Order, she has been established in the blank page of a desert, and has never seen such green in her life before. And since we first discover this place through Rey’s eyes, it is truly depicted as a fairy tale, an enchanted, Eden-like environment, complete with a lake and a castle. I will even add that it is a forest that is for the audience eerily familiar. There was no attempt at creating an imaginary forest with bizarre plants and creatures. The point is not only to keep the focus on the characters but also to put them, for us, in a very identifiable context,something that taps into our universal conscience. We are in the woods, a no man’s land, rich with subtext and infinite literary plots, in a place that marks boundaries between light and dark, culture and nature. We know these woods, we have read so much about them before, heard countless stories. Brought together by fate in a set that has been ripped out of the pages of a fairy tale book, Kylo and Rey become, de facto, fairy tale characters.

More on Takodana and the Edenic planets: I was flabbergasted to discover that my entire essay on Visions of Paradise has apparently totally disappeared. I am guessing due to the inclusion of “BLUSH” paintings of naked freaking Adam and Eve!!!! I am shocked, but I will repost it. Not even a notice to warn me about that!!!This is an extract in the meantime:

VISIONS OF PARADISE

Each FIRST installment of the trilogies presents us with a lost paradise: Naboo in the PT, Alderaan in the OT, Takodana in the ST. What do all these worlds have in common?: lush greenery, water, lakes, waterfalls, gorgeous castles or castle-like structures.

They are also most decidedly the place of the mother, a stance that strays from the male-centric vision of a Garden ruled by God the Father and Adam, the creature made in His image. Naboo, Alderaan, and Takodana are literally and/or symbolically ruled by female figures: the elected Queen of Naboo, Padmé Amidala; Queen Breha Organa on Alderaan; Maz Kanata on Takodana. In the symbolic of Star Wars, these three women are mother or godmother figures: Padmé is the mother of Luke and Leia, Breha Organa is the adoptive mother of Leia, and Maz plays a bit the role of a fairy godmother to Rey, by giving her the saber and her advice.

What do these places of paradise also have in common?: they get smashed, right off the bat, by conflicts, attacks, war, utter destruction in Alderaan’s case. Every paradise is a paradise lost… Moreover, these visions of paradise, like the Garden of Eden, actually already hold the seed to their own destruction, they are not as guiltless as one might presume: Naboo is already rife with inner conflicts between the Naboo and the Gungan, and the core of the pristine and exquisitely civilized home to the city of Theed is peopled by devouring monsters; Alderaan (that Leia presents as peaceful) is probably a spy nest plotting the Empire’s destruction (rightfully, but still, not as innocent as portrayed); and Takodana’s castle is actually Mos Eisley Cantina glossed-over with a castle, a derelict version of the past splendour of Naboo and Alderaan. 

So, to sum up, the vision we get of paradise in EVERY trilogy of the saga is that of the homeplace, the womb, the place of the mother, destroyed or attacked, and the characters forced to leave it behind, or snatched away from it. It is the classic myth of coming of age, with the initial trauma of being separated from the mother, something that you could link with the article I wrote about the metaphor of growing up in Star Wars.

There are also some interesting differences of course. Naboo and Alderaan are intimately connected with two leading female characters: it is the birthplace of Padmé, and the adoptive home of Leia, a place that they both see as a happy place, with lots of fond childhood memories (in Padmé’s case explicitely in AOTC). For both women, it is also a place they will never be able to come home to, because it is ultimately connected with death. Padmé wanted to give birth to her child on Naboo, but will only come back as a corpse.

For Leia, it is the death of her entire adoptive family, and the annihilation of the whole planet as a test to the new power of the Death Star. As the first released version of Paradise in  Star Wars (albeit not chronologically for the story), Alderaan is actually really interesting: this was a Paradise that we were meant to never see, the Paradise that was promised but never attained, as we watched with horror, along with Leia, the destruction of a planet that we did not know one thing of, but that she described as a peaceful place. It took the brief glimpse at the end of the PT, in ROTS, to see what Alderaan looks like.

Takodana, on the other hand, has nothing to do with any of the leading characters, not even with the main female character. As far as we know at this point, this is not her home planet or a planet linked to her childhood or her family. It is irrelevant to her personal background. Yet, it is clearly presented to Rey as a vision of Paradise, and becomes “incidentally”  the place where she gets her first brush with the Force (through Anakin’s lightsaber) and gets to meet Kylo Ren.

So, to come back to the notion of Paradise, in the Biblical story, and in Milton’s poem, when you think of Paradise, you think of Adam and Eve. And, as far as the shoe fits, this can only seem to apply to Naboo and Takodana… with twists. Padmé and Anakin do NOT meet in Paradise, they meet on his homeplanet, Tatooine, that hardly qualifies to the title (sand…. yuck…). PM ends with both of them on Naboo though, during the celebration after the victory against the droid army. When they meet again, it is on Coruscant (not Paradise, obviously). But for them as a couple, Naboo is the place where they fall in love, share a first kiss, and eventually get married (and have sex…one can only assume…).

Adam and Eve seem at first glance a non-issue in the OT, even though, if you really want to nitpick, the fact that Han and Leia do share the last kiss of the movie in a forest has to mean something on some level. I will argue later that there is a rewriting of Adam and Eve, but with a variation.

In the ST, though, the Adam and Eve subtext is obviously back by having Rey and Kylo meet in a forest on a place that is designed as a vision of Paradise insofar as it reminds us visually of the planets that have so far represented Paradise in this universe.

And even more as the characters are clearly construed (admittedly by the cast and directors) as two halves. If Eve is most of the time represented as being formed with Adam’s rib, some have argued that there was a misunderstanding or a mistake in translation and that she was actually “a side of” Adam, aka his half (hence, my better half when talking about your spouse…). Much has been said about the fact that Kylo departs this place symbolically claiming Rey as his bride: by carrying her in his arms and insisting that he has all that he needs. Eve is also all that Adam needed, the one that was meant to be his.

Visions of Hell about Mustafar and likewise planets:Visions of Hell…

And of course about Crait: Blood and Sand on Crait: the Bull and the Matador… and a story of Blood in the SW movies

Crait and Symbolism: blood, wounds, salt, foxes, the mother and the nest.

I really like the way you felt that the aridity and “masculinity” of Jakku meant that Rey needs to find out about womanhood. Yes, that is definitely part of the journey. Instead of masculinity, I would myself rather envision the arid planets of Jakku and Tatooine as the white page, the blank space where a story needs to be written. A void is what it is. The main difference between Tatooine in the OT and Jakku in the ST is that in the OT we were indeed starting on a totally empty page, with no preconceived ideas about the world we were going to discover, or the characters we were about to follow. In Jakku, very poetically, this blank page is “polluted”, or distracted, by the corpses and remains of the OT world, the Imperial destroyers, the mementos of the past... As it should be. Because we, as an audience, are not a blank space anymore when it comes to SW. We know of some stuff. And this stuff jumps onto the page and our interpretation of the story constantly... And like Rey, we have been going about, shelling carcasses of the story for a very long time, between the end of the OT, as well as the PT, before finally accessing new material...

[handeaux]

Cincinnati Accepts Rock ‘n’ Roll Very Slowly, And Despite Much Tut-tutting

You can make a strong argument that Rock ‘n’ Roll was born right here in Cincinnati, Ohio. In fact, Jon Hartley Fox, author of “King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records,” insists there is no argument:

“Did Wynonie Harris record the first rock and roll record in 1948 with ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’? That is, of course, a highly subjective question and impossible to answer, but, yes, he did.”

Harris recorded his version of Roy Brown’s song on 27 December 1947 at the King Records studio in Cincinnati. As might be expected, Cincinnati paid no attention to this monumental event, even when Harris’ platter soared to the top of the rhythm and blues charts and stayed there for most of 1948.

It appears no one really thought rock ‘n’ roll was a thing in 1948. Cincinnati newspapers reported with some regularity on King Records, but every article identified only two types of records sold by Sid Nathan’s hometown label – hillbilly and “sepia”. The latter term referred to rhythm and blues or, less politely, “race” music.

Likewise, Cincinnati media largely ignored Elvis Presley’s 1954 cover of “Good Rockin’ Tonight”. It wasn’t until the early part of 1955 that rock ‘n’ roll began seeping into the consciousness of the Queen City. As you can imagine, the Queen was not amused. A columnist in the Cincinnati Enquirer [20 March 1955] summed the quandary:

“Sad but true: Recent blasts at the leering lyrics in the rock-n’-roll discs have boosted their sales.”

The Cincinnati newspapers repeatedly announced the death of the rock ‘n’ roll fad. Here is the Cincinnati Post [31 May 1955]:

“Well, it was fun while it lasted, but rhythm and blues – or call it rock ‘n’ roll – has gone from a national mania down to a cult. The rock ‘n’ roll craze – involving blues music with a heavy beat and words that didn’t necessarily make sense – sold millions of records and put struggling independent companies into the black. But it also gave the industry a black eye, temporarily at least.”

A year later, the Enquirer editorialized [18 July 1956] that rock ‘n’ roll was an “Audible Drug”:

“The effect of ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ is to whip its addicts into a frenzy of mob violence, police have found. The results of its mass hysteria, noted on police blotters, include bottle-throwing, beatings and stabbings, besides the wanton smashing of dance halls.”

Magee Adams, the Enquirer’s radio critic, followed up a few days later [22 July 1956] with a grateful eulogy on the death of rock ‘n’ roll:

“Teen-ager riots have demonstrated that, when administered en masse, ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ acts like a drug, as potent in its way as chemical compounds. This is the effect that was ignored when the craze started. To their credit, many stations, including some of the locals, long had banned the more objectionable forms of the craze.”

To be more accurate, Cincinnati’s radio stations seem not to have actually banned rock ‘n’ roll, but they tried to ignore it. Cincinnati teenagers must have found their rock ‘n’ roll music via word of mouth, record stores, or juke boxes at the neighborhood malt shop, because it wasn’t until the spring of 1956 that WKRC scheduled one lonely hour of rock ‘n’ roll at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday night. Competing stations added a “Teen-agers” show on WCPO and “Juke Box” on WSAI, making a grand total of four hours of rock ‘n’ roll amid the standard programming of classical music, show tunes, farm reports and baseball.

Rock ‘n’ roll finally landed like an atom bomb in Cincinnati on 9 May 1956. The epicenter of the explosion was Cincinnati Gardens and the detonators included most of the big names of rock ‘n’ roll: Bill Haley and His Comets, Bo Diddley, The Platters, Clyde McPhatter, The Drifters, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers and The Flamingos. Cincinnati Post reviewer Jim Johnson [10 May 1956] expressed shock at the behavior of the audience:

“By the third quarter of the show, they were in the aisles, all over the floor and unaware of anything but the music. Even performers were dancing back behind the band stand. Those who have gone through a rock ‘n’ roll frenzy say it’s something they can’t help. It’s caused by over-exposure to the beat.”

The Enquirer sent a serious music critic, E.B. Radcliffe, to a repeat show that autumn, apparently under the impression that rock ‘n’ roll was a new direction in jazz. Radcliffe [25 October 1956] opined:

“The program also proved that Rock ‘N Roll is opening up new avenues for jazz. Some of them do not have to be followed very much farther to lead right back to the tall trees where the cats move about on all fours and hang by their tails, and swing is always a means of locomotion rather than a musical term. Wherever it is heading (and the monotonous quality of some of it indicates oblivion is a close and likely terminal point) Rock ‘N Roll gives plenty of exhilarating pleasure to its fans.”

Notably, photos from the Cincinnati Gardens shows reveal that they were fully integrated. And it is apparent that the audience was composed almost entirely of high school students. When the Enquirer surveyed readers [27 October 1956] about rock ‘n’ roll, all of the respondents were high school students, typified by a young lady named Ivadean Gadberry of St. Bernard High School:

“Rock ‘n’ roll has a good beat to it for dancing and is terrific for jitterbugging and I just love to do that. Waltzing, etc., is just too slow for me, although slow dances are good for older people.”

Speaking of “older people,” rock ‘n’ roll did not dent the college crowd until the 1960s were well underway. Jazz concerts and folk hootenannies provided a level of sophistication at area universities, where rock ‘n’ roll was definitely considered “kid’s stuff.” A crack in the intellectual façade opened at the University of Cincinnati when The Grill at the Student Union began offering rock ‘n’ roll sessions on Friday. A reporter for UC’s student newspaper [2 November 1961] described the scene as if she was an anthropologist:

“Inhibitions are cast aside as the true beat of the music is reproduced in weird and amazing bodily contortions. The stomp, the continental, and especially the twist – done as you’ve probably never seen before . . . and perhaps never hope to see again.”

We’ll allow Cincinnati icon Al Schottelkotte to have the final word. Not yet a TV anchor, Schottelkotte was a Cincinnati Post columnist on 5 July 1956, when some exotic sounds assaulted his ear:

“Something for the town to talk about: The rock ‘n’ roll recording blasting forth from a speaker in front of the Albee Theater to split the late evening calm around Fountain Square. Ugh!”

[dfroza]

how will you respond to rebirth?

to the baptism of the heart (inside, Anew) by the Spirit and to a baptism of the body in earth’s water?

Paul illuminates this in Today’s reading of the Scriptures as a chapter from the New Testament in the Letter of Romans:

How should we respond to all of this? Is it good to persist in a life of sin so that grace may multiply even more? Absolutely not! How can we die to a life where sin ruled over us and then invite sin back into our lives? Did someone forget to tell you that when we were initiated into Jesus the Anointed through baptism’s ceremonial washing, we entered into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through this baptism into death so that just as God the Father, in all His glory, resurrected the Anointed One, we, too, might walk confidently out of the grave into a new life. To put it another way: if we have been united with Him to share in a death like His, don’t you understand that we will also share in His resurrection? We know this: whatever we used to be with our old sinful ways has been nailed to His cross. So our entire record of sin has been canceled, and we no longer have to bow down to sin’s power. A dead man, you see, cannot be bound by sin. But if we have died with the Anointed One, we believe that we shall also live together with Him. So we stand firm in the conviction that death holds no power over God’s Anointed, because He was resurrected from the dead never to face death again. When He died, He died to whatever power sin had, once and for all, and now He lives completely to God. So here is how to picture yourself now that you have been initiated into Jesus the Anointed: you are dead to sin’s power and influence, but you are alive to God’s rule.

Don’t invite that insufferable tyrant of sin back into your mortal body so you won’t become obedient to its destructive desires. Don’t offer your bodily members to sin’s service as tools of wickedness; instead, offer your body to God as those who are alive from the dead, and devote the parts of your body to God as tools for justice and goodness in this world. For sin is no longer a tyrant over you; indeed you are under grace and not the law.

So what do we do now? Throw ourselves into lives of sin because we are cloaked in grace and don’t have to answer to the law? Absolutely not! Doesn’t it make sense that if you sign yourself over as a slave, you will have to obey your master? The question before you is, What will be your master? Will it be sin—which will lead to certain death—or obedience—which will lead to a right and reconciled life? Thank God that your slavery to sin has ended and that in your new freedom you pledged your heartfelt obedience to that teaching which was passed on to you. The beauty of your new situation is this: now that you are free from sin, you are free to serve a different master, God’s redeeming justice.

Forgive me for using casual language to compensate for your natural weakness of human understanding. I want to be perfectly clear. In the same way you gave your bodily members away as slaves to corrupt and lawless living and found yourselves deeper in your unruly lives, now devote your members as slaves to right and reconciled lives so you will find yourselves deeper in holy living. In the days when you lived as slaves to sin, you had no obligation to do the right thing. In that regard, you were free. But what do you have to show from your former lives besides shame? The outcome of that life is death, guaranteed. But now that you have been emancipated from the death grip of sin and are God’s slave, you have a different sort of life, a growing holiness. The outcome of that life is eternal life. The payoff for a life of sin is death, but God is offering us a free gift—eternal life through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King.

The Letter of Romans, Chapter 6 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 25th chapter of the book (scroll) of Isaiah that points to God humbling the pride of the world and bringing Justice to His people, and also pointing to a time when death is removed from the picture, mirroring John’s writing in Revelation:

Eternal One, You are my God.

I will lift You up and praise Your name.

Because You have made wonders marvelous and beautiful—

the most ancient designs holding strong and sure.

Your power is awesome. You have brought down whole cities,

turned fortresses and strongholds into piles of sticks and rubble.

A citadel of foreigners is no longer even a city.

Those structures are gone forever.

This is why nations strong and mighty will glorify You;

the cities of ruthless people will fear and respect You.

Because You stand up for the poor and weak,

You comfort and empower them in their distress,

Giving them safe harbor and cool shade when it’s hot;

You shelter them from their oppressors’ blows

As a strong wall holds back the driving rain.

You shelter from the relentless heat of the desert.

You quiet the clamor of outsiders, ease them to stillness.

Like a full, dark cloud relieves the heat,

You silence the arrogant song of the violent.

The Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, is preparing a feast,

a feast for everyone on this mystical mountain

With aged wine and good food, the finest wine and choicest meat.

And God will swallow up the oppression that weighs us down.

He will take away the heavy shroud

that is draped over all peoples of the world.

God will swallow up death forever.

The Lord, the Eternal, will wipe away the tears from each and every face

And deflect the scorn and shame His people endure from the whole world,

for the Eternal determined that it should be so.

And in that moment, at that glorious time, people will say,

People: This is our God! We put our hope in him.

We knew that He would save us!

This is our God, the Eternal for whom we waited.

Let us rejoice and celebrate in His liberation.

For on this mountain, the powerful hand of the Eternal abides.

He will smash and tread Moab like straw on manure.

And God will reach out, like a swimmer pulling water,

and drag down their arrogance and everything that made them proud.

God will bring down their strongest walls, their impenetrable defenses,

and grind them to the ground until they are only dust.

The Book (Scroll) of Isaiah, Chapter 25 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Saturday, july 3 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about knowing someone:

There is an old Chassidic story of two men sitting and enjoying a drink together. One of them then says to the other, "You know, you’re my best friend. I really love you, brother!" The other man responds, "Oh yeah? If you really love me, tell me where I hurt..."

The point of this simple story is that we can’t really say we love someone without taking the time to know them -- and that means knowing how they suffer. Most of us are suffering, of course, but are we able to transcend our own pain to genuinely empathize with others? Conversely, how many people do we trust enough to to confide our own pains and heartaches? The Law of Messiah (תוֹרת המשׁיח) is to bear one another’s burdens (τα βαρη, “weights,” Gal. 6:2), and that means making ourselves vulnerable -- and making room inside our hearts for the vulnerability of others. James tells us that personal healing comes from confessing outwardly (εξομολογεισθε) our sins (τας αμαρτιας) to one another so that we may be healed (James 5:16). Of course it’s humbling to acknowledge our sins, our failures, and our hurts to another person, but without an audience for the inner voice of our pain, we suffer all the more...

If someone loves us, they will know “where we hurt”; and if we love them, we will know where they hurt, too. This same principle can also be applied to our relationship to Yeshua... We take comfort that Yeshua sticks closer to us than a brother, praying for us and “knowing where we hurt.” But if we say that we love him, are we are not claiming that we know “where he hurts?” Does Yeshua suffer today? The Apostle Paul wrote: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24). What is “lacking in Christ’s afflictions” is our present sacrifice for the sake of others... Yeshua hungers with those who are hungry, thirsts with those who are thirsty, feels loneliness with those who are abandoned, shivers with those who are cold, weeps with those who are forlorn, is imprisoned with those who are incarcerated, is sick with those who are ill, and so on (Matt. 25:31-ff). Yeshua feels the pain of even the “least of these my brothers.” This is where he hurts, chaverim...

The essential difference between the righteous and the unrighteous is revealed in their response shown to those in need. After all, on the Day of Judgment, both the righteous and the unrighteous will account for their choices in light of the selfsame needy and pain-riddled world. The destiny of each person will be determined by whether he or she took the time to genuinely engage the suffering of others. May the LORD help us to share His heart and passion for a lost and hurting world. Amen. [Hebrew for Christians]

7.2.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

July 3, 2021

Lights in the World

“The sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.” (Philippians 2:15)

The Hebrew and Greek terms for “sons of God” are essentially the same, but the Old Testament always uses the phrase in reference to angels, whereas the New Testament always references the twice-born saints of God.

Our text for this day emphasizes the precise reason that our Lord Jesus prayed: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world....They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:15-16). We who share this marvelous relationship bear both the “love the Father hath bestowed upon us” and the unique rejection that “the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not” (1 John 3:1).

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), and we who are His disciples are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14. We, unlike the angels, are to remain in this unfair and distorted world as lights. Consider this! We are the light that the Lord Jesus left in this world to represent Him and His message after He returned to heaven (John 9:5).

That is why the Scriptures refer to us as saints (holy ones) and disciples (followers); even the pejorative “Christians” (Acts 11:26) identify us as representing the King! We must therefore shine with the truth (John 3:19) and shed the “light of the glorious gospel of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4), attempting to “lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9).

Finally, we are surely commanded to “walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7). Our light should never be covered in a “bushel” (Matthew 5:15) but set on a “hill” for all to see (Matthew 5:14). HMM III

[irlbop]

Finnrey, Reylo, and Goddamn Human Decency

Okay, so let’s sit down and dissect the situation since my buddo, Sithskywalker, has only been met with harassment in her attempts to do so. Initially, I was going so ask that we try and settle this but frankly and ashamedly towards y’all, I know that that is an impossible task to expect.

               Let’s start with something simple before we get into the complexities of this entire Reylo/Finnrey debacle: Reylo is, at best, problematic. At worst (of which it is most often appearing to lean toward in my observation), Reylo is ignorant in the lightest term that I can think of. Now, the beautiful thing about ignorance isn’t always intentional; in these cases, it is obliviousness and, if the oblivious one is willing, this can be adjusted. But in more commonly observed cases, the ignorance I’m seeing is done out of spite and with an intention to inflict pain or disturbance. And no, don’t go “Just let me ship it!” or “It’s my freedom to ship it!” or “But did you see the way he – ” No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s a myriad of issues surrounding the Reylo situation on a scale regarding what a healthy relationship is, regarding race, and your own personal consideration for your fellow man as well as the films this entire fandom is based around. If you stick around, great. If you’re seeing the same things you’ve heard before, then maybe the problem isn’t the fact that you need a billion reasons to cut through your skull. Also, trigger warning for rape, abuse, and racism

Abuse: I’m going to say this right upfront and now: I have never been in an abusive relationship, nor have I survived sexual assault. I’m lucky. I am blessed. But my experience isn’t everybody else’s. therefore, it’s important to consider the situations of those who haven’t gone through life without an invasion of personal space or emotional boundaries. If you don’t believe me, look at the media: We’re constantly smitten with the guy who “takes what he wants” and can literally shove the object of his affection against a wall and suction his face to hers. This is often done during the “chase” stage and while many (including myself) buy into it at first, if you take a moment to step back and actually analyze the situation, it’s actually disturbing. I could probably write a good page or two on just how the media practically contorts and romanticizes some actually abusive traits but I’m already on this bad boy. 

But the point is, when you take Kylo Ren’s actions out of context and mix it with the whole “rough-loving bad boy” persona we’ve been spoon-fed since God knows when, it’s easy to contort it into something appealing. But for some people, it’s not. For some, seeing Rey get smacked against a tree can bring back literally painful reminders. Seeing him trying to basically mentally manipulate isn’t an opportunity for him to read her mind about how she’s “totes thinking he’s a hottie” so then they start making out or whatever. To be frank, romanticizing this situation was under absolutely no intention of the director, screenwriter, producer, etc. It’s exactly as it’s meant to be: hostile, ambitious, and nasty as it should be between enemies. Nothing more, nothing less.          

However, it appears too many people refuse to understand this or even begin to fathom it. Furthermore, they actually take it upon themselves to harass those who express discomfort over people making goo-goo eyes at what can practically be a reminder for a very dark time for them. Someone I loved had PTSD and I can attest to this just by observing him: That shit does stuff to you. You can still smile, you can still laugh. You can even go on with your life and do what people expect you to do i.e. go to school, get a job, maybe even start a family if you so please it. But trust me: It doesn’t leave you. You can’t “get over” something that hits you so hard that it streaks right down into your soul. I can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like. Many people can’t.      

But it’s for that very reason that you have no right to march up to somebody who has it and tell them to “suck it up.” Because if you’re telling them to suck up something that has impacted them for the rest of their lived, then you should certainly be able to suck up criticism over a fictional relationship that you will probably forget about once you realize that shipping doesn’t pay the bills or help take care of student loans. You can’t be petty over something that’s literally hurting somebody else, it makes you look like a disgusting waste of human. Especially since we’re entering an age where the goddamn assigned leader of this forsaken country has very likely committed those acts upon others, is getting away with it, and is basically doing every and all things that he and his stooges can to assure that it keeps happening. You know that thing that a girl in Africa made? That sorta condom-like thing with teeth that goes inside her and will shred the dick of any man that tries to put it inside her without her consent? If you don’t and want to know why this isn’t a thing here, it’s because it’s illegal in the U.S. It’s literally seen as a form of torture. So a man’s pride and literal junk is worth protecting more than a woman’s safety. Yeah.            

But I digress: Reylo has no bones to form a healthy relationship. Stop acting as though it does. Because what does have a proper foundation is Finnrey. Which leads us to …

Race: Disclaimer, I think both John Boyega and Adam Driver are fine men. Both physically and based on their personalities. I harbor no ill will toward Adam, nor any favoritism towards John. I don’t even really ship anyone! However, this is something that needs to be said because after the bullshittery I’ve seen go down on buddo’s blog, I felt it needed to be done. But geez, where do I even begin to delve into a centuries old and ongoing system bent and formed to assure Caucasian superiority on an educational, residential, aesthetic, etc. level? Hmmm … I guess, once again, we’ll start with something simple: Why is Finnrey superior not by opinion, but by overall character?         

Let’s see … Finn is Rey’s first ever friend, by meeting him she was able to eventually come to terms with the reality of her situation, thereby meeting Luke (whom is 98.99% likely to be the father she had been missing), they shared an experience, they protect each other, they care for each other, Finn literally risks death just to get her back and she picks up a weapon she previously wanted nothing to do with to assure that he couldn’t get hurt anymore, and, most important of all, they goddamn respect one another. I’m not going to bring in the fact that it’s all but canon now because honestly, it shouldn’t be this hard to express the characteristics of what can present a decent foundation for a healthy romantic relationship. Especially because if you care about the loving aspect, then you should care about Finnrey. (If you care about a lusting aspect, then you only care about sexual characteristics which can still be found in Finnrey. If you do that in-character with Reylo, however, it’s extremely predatory since, you know, Kylo hates Rey and Rey hates Kylo.)             

So after taking all these factors into count, it begs the question, why don’t more people ship Finnrey? Well, kiddios, the first term of the day is “systematic racism.” Systematic racism, also called institutionalized racism, basically refers to a form of racism expressed in practices on a social and political level ranging from and entwining into literally anything from schooling to income, to criminal justice, wealth, healthcare, living situation, who’s considered beautiful, and, yes, relationships. Don’t believe me, you can literally read articles on anything from black women with white husbands getting mistaken for hookers or watch the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.          

Anyway, how does systematic racism tie into who we find more appeal with? Well, some centuries ago as Europeans started to venture outward more, it eventually become common word that dark things were associated with badness and white with goodness regardless of what sense it made (Jesus was more black than white, for example). Since then, this mindset has spread like wildfire. Or the smallpox the English brought over. In countries where dark-skinned persons are the norm, they’re more likely to promote or run advertisements with lighter-skinned people. And if they can get their hands on a white person, you know they’re gonna. This is because the white person is, in far too many cases, portrayed as the everyman. This is why we’re quicker to recognize when a protagonist is a POC – it’s just not an everyday occurrence.

We see this in our movies all the time with a white man being cast as the lead, or when they’re presented and promoted in rapid succession compared to their colored cast mates and so on and so forth.

And the thing is, this shit starts early. If you Youtube “Doll Test”, you’ll see small children (including black ones) calling the white baby doll good and the black baby doll bad. They even refer to the white doll as the pretty one, whereas its darker counterpart is ugly. The problem is, the media often does very little to help destroy this mindset so it often ends up blossoming into what we see today: sympathy for white killers, fictional or not, out of finding them physically attractive. (If you come up in here and tell me this isn’t true, I will smash your fucking face into the screen of a laptop and make you read all the bitches whining about Dylann Roof’s death sentence or how many twits wanted some other white boy killer to go free and creaming themselves after he showed up to court in a shirt expressing pride over his killing. I don’t have time for this bullshit.)

Basically, what we end up doing is sparing sympathy for lighter-toned people because, institutionally, light means good and dark means bad. (This is actually also a thing in the black community where lighter skinned people are treated differently than darker-skinned ones but this is also a story for another time.) Does this sound reminiscent of anything? Perhaps a fictional non-canonical pairing wherein people make excuses and slander the names of the characters’ actors to justify a notably unhealthy interaction over an actually more stable one?

Furthermore, while it’s becoming more commonplace in commercials and TV shows and film, the image of a black male and white female is met with criticism. I’ll admit that the reasons honestly differ among ethnic groups but for the most part, it’s usually a criticism born simply from the fact that it’s a black man and a white woman. Remember when I said Europeans began to use their position to promote ideas that pretty much raised their position for just being white? This was a favorite tactic used in America in the 18- and 1900s. The idea was that white women were fragile and needed to be protected from the brutish black bucks. A black man near a white woman would surely cause her harm! This was displayed in many forms from posters to pamphlets to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation wherein a rowdy and completely buffonish cast of blackface-donning actors were portrayed in scenarios that included harassing a delicate flower of a white girl, as well as lustfully celebrating over the ruling that they be allowed marriage to women women (which received more applause than being allowed placement in government).

So where have we seen people portray a black male as barbaric, invading on the safety of a young, white female and threatening her by so much as touching her hand? Could it be … in movies where the black man is a rapist or a thug? Maybe … in real life where numerous white women have claimed assault on an innocent black man but nobody dared to investigate the matter further? Or perhaps … a disgusting amount of Reylo-shippers, who have literally gone out of their way to portray John Boyega as a beast rather than a man and actual friend to coworker Daisy Ridley?

I could go on a tangent about how insulting this is not only on a racial scale, but also in regards to demeaning the situations of people who have actually been in unpleasant or altogether awful interactions with genuinely awful people but, like I said, this is what we’re focusing on right now.

But in the end, do you know what a lifetime of this can do to a POC’s mindset? I can think of an example: The second term of the day is “internalized racism.”   

As the name would suggest, internalized racism is when a person of an ethnic group displays racist traits towards members of their culture, including themselves. This can come about in many ways but one thing is for certain: it’s linked with institutionalized racism. You see, it gets quite easy to think very negatively of something that people subtly or even outright portray as a bad thing. Even if that thing looks like you. Maybe you’ve seen far too many black people get arrested on the news; maybe you just don’t feel pretty with your corkscrew curls and earthy skin; maybe you just feel an inherent need to hold your purse close to you when you see a big, black guy walking down the street despite the fact that he’s just making his way down the block to run an errand. The point I’m trying to get at here is that there’s various ways or showing or even experiencing internalized racism. I’ll be the first to admit that I experience it. I’m trying not to; a lot of people may be. But it’s hard to undo something you didn’t know existed until recently, or what keeps growing back with the constant exposure after every time you think you’re free from it. But this is no excuse to go out of your way to keep feeding it.

So anyway, when I talk about internalized racism, you probably have an idea where I’m going with this: Black Reylo shippers, we need to talk. What exactly is it that you find appealing about this dynamic? Be real with yourself. Is it because Adam Driver is attractive? That’s all fine and good, but that has nothing to do with his character. What exactly does Kylo offer Rey? By comparison, what does Finn offer Rey? If you feel Finn, after an entire film’s worth of interacting with her, offers Rey nothing whereas Kylo, after maybe a total of 15-23 minutes (most of which involved him using his fucking unstable lightsaber on her), offers her something, then it may be healthiest for you to step away from shipping for a while and think about what you truly do respect. If shipping is just an outlet for you, fine. But you should make sure that that outlet reflects what a good relationship is to you: not some sadistic, abusive game of predator vs prey. If that is what you want, then you seriously need to stop focusing on shipping and start focusing on your psyche.

All in all, there just a shit ton I could’ve said or still want to say, but I think this is long enough and most of y’all have either dropped out or have left to write an insult of threat without reading the entire thing or considering why it’s being written in the first place. Plus, I’m tired. Physically tired, but mostly, I’m tired that this shit actually needs to be said to a bunch of people who think their asses are grown enough to recognize what a relationship is, yet end up sending disturbing content to anyone who even so much as looks uncomfortable at the crap they’re promoting. Star Wars was never meant to be this way; no fandom is. But it’s because of inconsideration and intentional ignorance that things collapse. If you still feel a need to ship Reylo over Finnrey – especially if you have to actually change peoples’ characters and basically rob them of their principles – then maybe it would be best if you stepped away from shipping and asked yourself, “What does this say about me? How do my reactions towards people who do not agree with me reflect what I actually feel?” Because if you’re still willing to ship these two when it’s looking like they’re probably cousins alone, then you’ve got more issues to work out than just the fact that somebody doesn’t agree with your ship.

TL;DR – Reylo is a result of the entwined workings of the social romanticism of abuse and downplaying of female respect and a multitude of racial issues, including institutionalized and internalized racism and you need to go sit down and think about all this and what it says about you before you even so much as try to counter it. And for the rest of you where you stand by your stretching, I quote my brother: “Just say you hate black people and go. it’s not that deep.” It really isn’t; we can see you in your kiddy pool of defense.

@sith

[thesinglesjukebox]

THE CHAINSMOKERS - PARIS [4.87] Merci de ne pas fumer...

Will Rivitz: The lyrics are inane, the production is a cross between mediocre pop-rock and bland disco, Drew Taggart and Emily Warren work about as well together as cotton candy and Marmite, and yet the song is somehow incredible. I can't tell if it's in spite of all of this or because of it. My love for this group defies rationale, and I guess I'll just have to accept that all critical faculties go out the window whenever I put them on. All things considered, that's probably not so bad. [9]

Megan Harrington: The Chainsmokers are masters of turning the ephemeral, the ineffable, and the alchemical into the immediate, the obvious, and the true. "Paris" sounds almost simple, a string of hashtags and a few evocative synthesizer notes, but it's an ode to nostalgia delivered as an ode to the future. "When we go down" and "we'll show them" Drew Taggart sings about a love already past, complicating the straightforwardness of memory's opiates. By the song's end I'm left wondering which is better: the future endlessly rewritten but always triumphant or the past brutally specific and eternally stirring. [9]

Crystal Leww: With every passing single, the marketing campaign around The Chainsmokers grows more and more perplexing. Why play the asshole when your songs are about falling in and out of love in the most genuine of ways? "Paris," for Drew Taggart, is about Paris and the girl he loved in Paris, but "Paris" for anyone else can be about any specific place attached to specific memories of a person, perhaps remembered through rose-colored nostalgia glasses more than clear eyes. Last year, millennial nostalgia was one of the most fascinating storylines for me, and The Chainsmokers have doubled-down here in 2017, making a sweet little tune about falling in love in the most cliché of cities. Remarkably, "Paris" is actually about the boy in Paris for me, the one who exists only in my memories as handsome, quiet but confident, understanding and empathetic, the small town boy who made something of himself. I miss a younger me, too. [9]

Jonathan Bradley: Some music is better described with reference to literary genre than those conventionally used for pop song: Modest Mouse, for instance, makes a kind of Pacific Northwestern Gothic, while Arcade Fire's Funeral is children's fantasy. The Chainsmokers' artless and affecting "Closer" exists in the same territory as Carly Rae Jepsen, Taylor Swift's 1989, or the first two Bloc Party albums, which is that of publishing's nascent New Adult category. "Paris" attempts to add to the oeuvre with another narrative of twentysomethings negotiating the heady mix of possibility and responsibility offered by adulthood via the earnestness and emotional volatility of adolescence. But where "Closer"'s chorus of "we ain't ever getting older" worked because it was bold and affirmative and more than a little embarrassing for it, its equivalent here is "if we go down, then we go down together," a maxim more familiar and so less expansive with possibility. (In recent times, Colin Meloy invested it with more drama, Adam Lazzara with more urgency.) In fact, much of "Paris" has that musty, recycled quality that forbids the gauche possibility of "Closer": I enjoyed the slant rhyme of "Paris" and "parents" until I remembered that I enjoyed it more in "Ultralight Beam." The parts that work do so almost by accident: the proficient prettiness of the song's new wave throb; the cheap romanticism of travel; the easy evocations of ennui and aimless hedonism, so easy that to describe them thus is to over-intellectualize them, that attach to cigarettes and drunkenness and Instagrammable moments. Love and wanderlust and self-seriousness don't become any less inviting just because they've been delivered with artful design and posted to a Pinterest board, but this isn't even the best song in this milieu called "Paris" from the last twelve months -- and The 1975's one was mostly about London! [6]

Claire Biddles: This is not the "Paris" acknowledged in my household. [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: I've been in the cult too long probably, but I'm spending the majority of this song going "...she's tragically posting pictures on the internet, he's entering a period of self-loathing beneath his vapidity, they named the song 'Paris.' Oh yeah, The Chainsmokers are into The 1975." Which, y'know, a shame that doesn't make them much better, but still. [3]

Anthony Easton: The ennui of easy money seems obscene after the 20th, the rhyme "terrace"/"Paris" is lazy, and this does that sexist thing where the heavy lifting is done by Emily Warren without even a guesting notice. All of that said, I am feeling a bit seduced by the production here: suburban American white boys pretending to be Neil Tennant, and it kind of works. [4]

Josh Langhoff: Living in Round Lake, my drunken death fantasies usually involve choking on pound cake, not falling off a terrace. My fantasies might not suffer from the nobility of these scrufflaws and their majestic dissonant V chord (which never resolves; neither does life), but my imaginary choking game definitely out-nobles them in one regard: How you gonna pledge your troth to Emily Warren and then leave her off the credits? [7]

Katie Gill: CREDIT [clap emoji] YOUR [clap emoji] GUEST [clap emoji] VOCALISTS. Especially when Andrew Taggart still kind of can't sing. Emily Warren pulls more out of her six words than Taggart does for the entire song. I don't know how many "mediocre EDM with corny rhymes and a guest female vocalist who's really deserves a part that's better than what she's given" songs the Chainsmokers have but "Paris" proves that they've at least got one more than I expected. [2]

Will Adams: An easy fix: here's a Chainsmokers song that actually credits Emily Warren, doesn't have Andrew Taggart struggling with a range of a major third, isn't yet another "Closer" rehash, and is much, much better. [3]

Scott Mildenhall: Replace your man from The Chainsmokers with chirpy evangelist Adam Young, and you basically have an Owl City single here. If ever some people needed a trip to "Umbrella Beach," it's these three. Even as a volume-based metaphor, flat does not magically connote "depth," so it's probably a good job that it seems what they want above all to connote is a false affinity with the marketing cliche illusion of a generation. Next time bring out those '80s drums quicker, and remember that you're the band 3OH!3 could have been. [4]

Alfred Soto: The piano and guitar parts drift in, worth accompanying a better song. No one will say this is clever or particularly offensive either: it's a nothing song anchored to a moronic couplet and a kind of desperate uplift. Nevertheless, the royalties ensure Andrew Taggart's ability to buy the most expensive hair products. [3]

Mo Kim: Barely qualifies as a text: at least "Closer" had petty larceny and overpriced cars to add background detail. The subdued instrumental fares a little better, at least, though frankly neither Andrew Taggart nor (uncredited!) Emily Warren are putting in enough effort to convince me there is romance or tension or much of anything here. Like staring at a drawing of the Eiffel Tower rendered in black Crayola. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Anyone who warns their daughter away from the Chainsmokers deserves a parenting award. Two, if they throw in uncredited frat-glurge. [3]

Joshua Copperman: The lyrics are RhymeZone-should-block-Andrew-Taggart's-IP-address lazy, sorely lacking the narrative specificity that made "Closer" a smash hit, but this is definitely a musical improvement on most post-"Roses" singles. The production is lush and warm, while still retaining the minimalism that's become their signature sound. Everything that works, though, probably does because it was lifted from "Midnight City," and "City" is the kind of song that even Imagine Dragons couldn't screw up. In fact, "Shots" actually sounds better when compared to "Paris" -- for all the faults of that band, their urgency feels far more engaging than Taggart and co's floaty lethargy. But even as the typically dead-eyed lead performance, the arbitrarily placed "One Dance" piano and those atrocious lyrics threaten to screw up the song, the builds soar and there's actually a climax instead of just a copy-and-paste drop. If anyone makes that work, it's Emily Warren, whose sadly uncredited contributions help glue the parts together and raise it above most of the Chainsmokers' other work. It's not quite as immaculate as "Roses," but it's easily one of the better songs they've released since then. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[thefuckgallagher]

i’m just gonna rave about beauty and the beast right now because I just saw it:

(spoilers under the cut)

plot/character-

the changes to the plot/characters gave the film so many more layers

big one: WHY EVERYONE FORGETS THAT THE PRINCE EXISTS! it was always so confusing that no one seemed to notice that their monarch/prince wasn’t around anymore? so fixing that was amazing. it made the story so much more poignant that the enchantress made everyone forget about him. it felt so much more isolating and made it so much harder for him to break the curse.

also i really liked how they separated families, like mrs. potts and her husband. like, the other world did exist. and it connected to the beginning when belle asks “monsieur john” (AKA MR. POTTS) if he has lost something *again* and he says “i believe i have but i can’t remember what” - HIS FAMILY. HE LOST HIS FAMILY. 

also in general the town was so well created! it made so much sense historically too, like them hating belle for her intelligence and her trying to teach girls to read. historically, that’s a scary amount of power for a woman, especially peasants/non-royalty

this also gave a more clear explanation to why belle was so ostracized from the town. educated women would have been scary in that era, especially because of the widespread illiteracy (see: lefou). then, it also made her connect more to adam because of their shared interest in reading as an escape from a world that rejected them

also the layers given to the town people. not everyone is bad. there were some people who were portrayed as just “evil” like gaston, but then some who originally try for justice and fairness but fail, like mr. potts, then some who stayed good like the priest

gaston- gaston was so much less cartoonish than the animated version but he’s so believable. first they made him an army captain from a war that was presumably won by the way he talks about it. that automatically gives him power in the town. then you understand why people look to him so much. he also is more cunning in the way he uses maurice to get to belle, making him scary. then, the way he manipulates the town both to send maurice away and to follow him to kill the beast. so relevant when powerful white men manipulate things to get people to listen to what they want. and he knows how powerful he is.

congruently, i love that they didn’t make maurice a crazy old man. instead, he was a sad widower and an artist. it made it more poignant that originally, people didn’t think that he was crazy but gaston convinced them

i also really liked that belle just asked for a rose when her father left and he tried to steal one for her. great hat-tip to the original fairytale!

overall, as i briefly touched on before, i felt like the relationship between belle and the beast was so much more believable for so so many reasons (included the aforementioned reading/escapism)

i love the story line about the mothers. with belle, it was more of a fill in to explain why she didn’t have a mother- with a great historical reference of the plague. and, why someone like the maurice they created and belle were stuck in that town. then it also helped her connect to the beast who also lost his mother. 

the death of prince adam’s mother was totally different. he didn’t have a loving father like belle. instead, he was raised by a cruel man, probably without love. so when he got older, he filled his palace with beautiful things to replace love. he sings in “evermore”: “i never needed anybody in my life, i learned the truth too late,” demonstrating how even though the palace was filled with people, they were more like things to him as he couldn’t feel love. but he wasn’t always like that, being raised by his father made him that way, giving a strong avenue for redemption. i love how the costumes back that up because in the beginning everything is gaudy and over the top with the french wigs and makeup, but then at the end everything looks more simple and light because the real beauty came from within (sappy, yes, i know). 

“I’M NOT A BEAST”- loved that he put gaston down and just told him to leave. then gaston proves that he’s the beast because he fucking shoots adam 3 times... then the crumbling castle kills him

and i love that belle stayed because of the kindness of the servants and their guilt at failing the prince and allowing him to become a beast. [kindness, if you didn’t notice is super big with disney films]

overall the characters all had so many more layers than their animated counterparts and they were so easy to really feel for (esp. the beast)

on feminism: was this new belle a feminist icon? not so much? i mean she was different than the original, in good, progressive ways but the constraints of the story and the time period kind of hinder a full progression to what we’d call a liberated women in the 21st century. she still takes care of her father (which despite what others say, there’s no problem with...), really just goes from her father’s house to her husband’s, and needs maurice to protect her from gaston. shown by how he gets in the way... but she is a more 3 dimensional character in this version but i appreciate disney’s attempt! and emma watson as a person.

gay-

i don’t really like that they used the queer story line for comedy

but i did some things about it:

gaston using lefou’s attraction to benefit himself

the end where lefou gets out from under the spell and is actually a good person. lefou actually has a conscience in this one and slowly begins to realize it (i.e. not wanting to leave maurice for dead and his line in “the mob song”: “there’s a beast running wild, there’s no question. but i feel the wrong monster’s released”), ending in him being smashed by a piano and left by gaston. the spell lifted and lefou was actually good.  

history-

loved the line in be our guest when lumiere says “after all miss, this is france!” and then the knife chops down #historynerd

loved the asylum vs. hospital comments

loved that she wasn’t just taking books from a bookstore but it was a church that had books that she could borrow

music-

alright here is where my few negative things about this movie come in

emma watson- not a great singer, yeah they used autotune but in our entertainment industry it’s not cool to use playback singers like bollywood does soooo what to do when someone is otherwise great for a role? overall, not as good as paige o’hara but good enough not to impact the movie

dan stevens- good enough singer for evermore, and i was overall pretty cool with him singing

emma thompson- as much as i love everything about her and her voice, you can’t really beat angela lansbury for “beauty and the beast”

audra mcdonald- slay.

but i really liked the reprise of “beauty and the beast” at the very end. especially the new verse and the ensemble at the end. cried so hard.

“day in the sun” worked better for the film than “human again” would have but it wasn’t a great stand-alone

"EVERMORE”. y’all can gripe about why they didn’t just use “if i can’t love her” all you want, but “evermore” was beautiful and fit the new beast character they created so much better. i cried so hard. 

josh gad singing “gaston” is bae

luke evans also killed it

and i was happy with ewan mcgregor too

random-

attempts at diversity? good job disney. you tried, and definitely improved. the ensemble was not all white people (plus plumette and madame) garderobe)

lol @ cogsworth’s wife(?)

the transformation: love that they did a lot of shot-for-shot remakes i.e. the hand transforming and the foot...

okay so idk if this influenced anything- but i feel like the enchantress in this film reminded me of the genre of greek myth called theoxeny by the way she stayed in the town as agathe. (theoxeny is when gods disguise themselves to test people’s hospitality and then punish them if they suck). everyone treats agathe like shit besides maurice so she saves him. then she’s comes back to change the beast back. 

the end when she asks him to grow a beard was slightly creepy... funny but ew...

i love the prevalence of roses throughout (the rattle, stealing the rose, etc.)

i also love how the petals falling makes the castle crumble more and more. awesome.

i’m sure i had more feelings... but this is long enough lol