#incorrect seven o'clock

[aggro-my-beloved]

Angel + David Incorrect Quotes

Angel: You're the love of my life and my best friend, I would do anything for you.

David: I want you to eat three meals a day and have a decent sleep schedule.

Angel: Absolutely not.

★☆★☆★☆

David: You're overthinking.

Angel: What if-

David: Don't.

Angel: WHAT IF.

David:

Angel: What if everyone else is underthinking?

★☆★☆★☆

David: I’m going to take you out.

Angel: great, it’s a date!

David: I meant that as a threat.

Angel: see you at five! :3

★☆★☆★☆

Angel: David is not a morning person. Or a night person. There’s really only about seven minutes a day you are fun to be around.

David: The best part is you never know when they’re coming.

★☆★☆★☆

David: I fell—

Angel: From heaven?

David: No, I literally fell—

Angel: In love with me the moment you saw me?

David: MY ARM IS BROKEN!

Angel: Okay, but do you think I'm pretty? Be honest.

★☆★☆★☆

Angel: How do tall people people possibly sleep at night when the blanket can't possibly cover you?

David: Angel, it's four o'clock in the morning.

Angel: So, you can't sleep, huh? Is it because of the blanket?

★☆★☆★☆

David: You’d be stupid to lay a hand on me.

Angel: Oh, you’d be surprised how much stupid shit I do.

[demonangelgirl134]

Boneheads incorrect quotes

Noisy neighbors

(All six of the boneheads had a sleepover at Lewis's house & stayed up late, but his neighbor decided to blast loud music at 7 o'clock in the morning)

Brook (sitting at the kitchen table with Jack, Daniel, and, Manolo): I love music, but there's a time and a place for it!

Jack: I agree with you, Brook.

Manolo (has his head down on the table): *groans* no puedo creer.

Daniel: *covering his nonexistent ears*

(Nobody notices Manny storming over to the window)

Lewis: *pouring himself coffee* Do they SERIOUSLY have to play their music this early?? We at least kept our music quiet enough to not keep the neighbors up last night

Manny: (opens the window & sticks his head outside) SÃO SIETE DE LA MAÑANA, HEIJO DE PUTA!!!

BAJA LA MÙSICA!!!!

(Everyone whips their heads over to Manny in shock)

(The music immediately turns off)

Manny: ¿Qué tan aburrido puedes estar si escuchas música a todo volumen a las siete de la mañana?! BASTA!!!!*Slams the window and storms off*

(Everyone is sitting there stunned)

Manny (now pouring coffee like nothing happened): ... What?

They all only got 3 hours of sleep.

@jirlshi @loki104-uwu @hey-imma-fangirl @yugo-possum @ribbonjc

Translation to what Manny said:

It's seven in the morning, you son of a b**ch!!! Turn down the music!!!!

How bored can you possibly be to blast music at 7 o'clock in the morning?! ENOUGH!!!!

[pub-lius]

RACHEL HAMILTON FACTS

Help I have a wax museum project for school and I’m doing her I cannot find anything about her

OKOKOK This ask is the reason I opened my inbox and discovered all my unanswered asks FSHSJKHFSKH mb. My source for this is Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton (because when isn't it) because exactly as you said, there is very little information about Rachel, and Ron walked so the rest of us could run. Here we go

Rachel was one of seven children

Five of Rachel's siblings died in childhood, leaving only our girl and her sister Ann. Ann went on to marry James Lytton after she fled Nevis (where they lived) due to an agricultural plague. Ann Lytton could not take in young Hamilton when he needed it, but she was the only blood relative on Rachel's side that he maintained contact with, and helped her out financially later on.

She was a child of divorce (basically)

Her parents had a very rocky relationship, and this possibly impacted her later relationships with men. Eventually, her parents separated, and she lived with her mother. She seems to have been very close with her mother, as they moved often together, or at least stayed close to one another.

She was previously married, and divorced

Before she met James Hamilton, she was married to man named Johann Lavien. Lavien was really horrible to her and financially and mentally abused her. When she ran away, Lavien sued for divorce, but long story short, Rachel didn't show up for court, and ended up being imprisoned for several years for adultery. The way divorce worked at the time was that a man could win a divorce case with just one accusation of adultery (especially if the woman didn't show up for court) but a woman needed several different, confirmed charges against the man to win. So, it would have been very hard for her to have won in the first place. Also, because of her no-show, she was forbidden from ever remarrying, hence why Hamilton was a bastard.

It is not incorrect to call her Rachel Hamilton and/or Rachel Faucette

While it is probably more respectful to use her maiden name, Faucette, there was a time where she lived as Rachel Hamilton, even though her marriage to James could not have been legally valid. While they lived in Nevis, James and Rachel lived with their two children as a married couple. However, it was when they moved to St. Croix that people recognized her as the former Mrs. Lavien, and tormented her and the boys with their illegitimacy.

She was a very independent woman

If Hamilton inherited anything from his mother, it was his quick thinking and independent mind. Rachel had her own income, and was able to provide for her two sons and tutor them after James left them. She was described by one of Hamilton's sons as "a woman of superior intellect, elevated sentiment, and unusual grace of person and manner. For her he was indebted for his genius." These are all words used to describe Hamilton later in life.

She supported other local women

In teaching her son in his earliest education, she chose a local Jewish woman to do so. Hamilton recalled being taught by her when he was small enough to sit on the table to read next to her. Towards her death, she was tended to by a woman named Ann McDonnell. In a society that was incredibly hostile to women, this was very important.

She died of an unknown illness next to her son, Alexander

She caught a fever in 1768, and was tended to by the aforementioned Ms. McDonnell and a man named Dr. Herring. She was given valerian, and bloodletting was used on Alexander (medicine of the 18th century is a whole other can of worms). Unfortunately, she did not recover, and died at nine o'clock on February 19, 1768.

Those are some of the most important and interesting facts, I believe, about Rachel Faucette. She is really one of my favorite historical figures, and I could talk about her and Maria Reynolds all day. I just love women who overcome the disadvantages they were given in life, I respect them so much. Hope this helps with your project!!!

[bookofmirth]

Azriel found himself at the library at 7 o’clock. Sarah is Jewish and the number seven means completeness, fullness, the center point which unifies all of nature and the covenant of holiness and sanctification. I read that seven happens to be Judaism’s most sacred number (I could be incorrect though so please correct me if I’m wrong!) and many spiritual gates become unlocked. I saw someone say 7 is the length of time for a natural cycle to transpire, often ending with holiness/sanctification of some sort, the pattern set by creation. Seven days for an impure person to go achieve purity and parenthetically, this leads to the number 8 being associated with new beginnings, after having finished the cycle of seven: circumcision, becoming pure after the seven days of the purity cycle, beginning of a new week. It seems like the number seven is important in her series. Seven High Lords, and originally seven Asteri before Sirius was killed. I don���t think it’s a coincidence Azriel went to the library to give Gwyn that necklace at 7 o’clock. If I said anything wrong please inform me!

She does take from different faiths and cultures pretty liberally, and so I wouldn't be surprised if she's intentionally using that number! It's one of those things where maybe sjm thought "heh, neat" and used 7 o'clock, or it could be one of those things where she's twirling her imaginary writer's mustache and wondering if anyone will understand. I don't know enough about Judaism (read: I know almost nothing) to understand the importance of that number but I am pretty sure that she studied theology in college.

[incorrect-multi-kpop-quotes]

Taeyoung: Why do you have forks taped to your fingers?

Hyun: *Grabs popcorn with fork-fingers* Improvement of human being.

[dancingkingvaan]

Minseok: Why do we water plants?

Hangyeom: So they grow bigger.

Minseok: Oh, so we need water Jinyoung then.

[eve6262]

happy birthday to the worst man ever [AINI spoilers, date/ryuki]

"Date, Ryuki is calling you."

"That's great, Aiba, but can you please focus on the situation at hand?"

"Hmph. Ineffective without me as ever. Five o'clock."

Three men get felled- one with a stun shot, two with a kick, and the third coming from behind on his right thwarted easily with Aiba's warning. "I will put him on the line."

"Wha-"

"Hey, Mr. Date! What are you doing right now?"

"Oh, you know, only something Aiba should NOT have picked up the phone during!"

"Seven o'clock."

Five more go down to his pretty good skills at combat, thank you very much. He's not Mizuki or Ryuki- both of which, in his defense, had plenty of time to train and never lost their memory- but he can hold his own in a decent fight. For as much as Aiba likes to berate him, it is fairly impressive how many people he can take on at once.

"Tama!" Ryuki cries, sighing. "Sorry if I interrupted something…"

"You didn't interrupt anything, Ryuki." Considering he's still fighting, and these guys are not stopping. In fact, they might as well be deaf, because he's not exactly responding in his mind. Aiba has presumably turned that off so she can yell call outs or suggestions in his ear. Speaking of which: "Date, the oil drum!"

Convenient. They're all bunched up by a couple of oil drums next to the waterfront. He loads up a scattershot round and takes a deep breath, steadying his aim.

"O-oh, um, that's good, I think?? I was just wondering?"

"Yeah?"

He nearly misses the shot, because he forgot Ryuki was still on the line. Thankfully the scattershot was still a good pick, because his near miss is redeemed by the sheer volume of sparks that set off a massive explosion, throwing everyone in the water. Aiba's calm cadence picks up in his ear: "The police will be here in five minutes tops. You may as well confirm the state of the hostage."

Date lets out a massive sigh of relief, putting away his gun. "Finally."

"Hahahah!" Tama's familiar laugh sounds over the call. "Man, you really did a number on Ryuki there. Too busy with your mags, huh?"

"What?" He spots the hostage, who looks at them with pleading eyes. He heads up the stairs of the warehouse- right next to the accursed freezer of a place. It still fills him with dread just thinking about going in there.

"You were really going at it there…" "TAMA!"

"Well, yeah. Can't exactly stop what I'm doing here." The hostage looks at him in confusion, and this is exactly why he- and for whatever reason he alone out of every ABIS detective- wears his hair long enough to cover his ears. He points to his ear twice, as if to say I have an earpiece in, and they totally buy it.

"You could, you know. It's common courtesy."

"Would you stop if you were getting shot at?"

There's a dead silence from the other side of the call. Then, Ryuki's voice, "Oh my god, Mr. Date, you were in a shootout!?"

"Well, yeah. What did you think was going on?"

Again, Tama starts cackling on the other end of the line. He can hear Ryuki groaning, and begging her to stop, please, this is all her fault, if she hadn't planted the idea in his head he wouldn't have thought it at all. Aiba, too, groans, but as he leads the hostage down and tells them quietly to stay here and wait for the police that should be arriving in less than a minute, he reminds her, "this is your fault."

"Incorrect. This is your fault for not elaborating on the situation properly."

"What do you mean, elaborating on the situation properly? I was in the middle of fighting!"

"Mr Date," he hears from the other end of the line, "I almost forgot to ask! Did you have any plans for today?"

"No, why?"

"W-well, would you like to come to my apartment once you're finished up there?" Tama, clearly forgetting she's on the mic as well, adds, "Ooh, Ryuki. You could finish him up."

"Tama! What is that even supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means."

"Sure, where are you at?"

"The Psync room. Boss wanted me here in case something happened with Mizuki's Psync right now, but she just got out. If you're coming back I can wait for you here."

"Perfect. I'm heading out now," he says, seeing the police cars arrive. For whatever reason Kagami is here despite the case being still active, so he makes a point to ask him his name before leaving.

---

The Psync room used to be a lot less crowded. Nowadays, however, with everyone knowing everyone else involved, it started to get crowded on more demanding cases, so Boss did the most obviously natural and professional thing and added two booths to the corners of the room. They wouldn't look out of place in a nice little diner- aside from color, throw them in the corner of Brahman and they'd look perfectly suited. Ironically, this now means it's replaced the collective office as The place to be, and so it's usually got a few people in it.

Today is no different. Pewter is, as per usual, sitting at his six monitors typing away; Ryuki and Mizuki are on the right side of the door, which awkwardly blocks one of the exits of the booth when open. Boss said it was to discourage lounging around here, which is something she does frequently and openly, so everyone figured it was just because she didn't wanna do more construction than necessary.

Speaking of which, Mizuki is laying almost completely horizontal on one side of the booth. On the other, Ryuki sits mostly straight, leaving the third part of the u-shaped couch for both their gifts. Pewter's sits there as well, though the box is plain and unmarked. Mizuki's is a gentle blue, with her name hastily scribbled on top in a permanent marker that was definitely on its last legs, and Ryuki's has a cute little bow on it.

"What are you going to do when he gets here?"

"Punch him in the arm, tell him that if he drinks too much I'm gonna toss him on my bench when he passes out, and leave."

"What about your present?"

"I don't need to be here for him to get the present."

"It'd be nice, though! I'm sure he'd appreciate it."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate a good right hook to the face."

The door opens, and they both turn, expecting Date. It's Boss instead. "Hey, where's Date?"

"He said he was getting back from his case."

"Not here yet though?"

"Nope. Hasn't shown up yet," responds Mizuki, flicking a braid into the air in boredom.

"Good. Here, give them these, will you? I had to go talk to Iris for something, and she started begging me to deliver his present." She puts two boxes on the center of the table. One is small and red, with Boss written on the top in gentle cursive; the other is wide but short, and pink. It's got the A-Set A on top, and the words A-Set, You Bet!, but they're written in what looks like mechanical pencil.

"You had to talk to Iris for something?"

"Actually, I had to give her something."

"What?" Tama's curiosity gets the better of her, and she leaps out of Ryuki's eye socket. "A birthday present?"

"No, obviously. I gave her a key to the backdoor, because I'm pretty sure someone's gonna narc if she keeps coming through the front door."

"No one's gonna narc on Iris," Mizuki deadpans. "They're all either A-Set fans or too embarrassed to admit it."

"You never know," Boss replies. "And it's not like it matters that much, considering how many times she's been here. That, and she gets into a lot of trouble somehow. Giving her a key is probably safer than anything else."

She finally bothers to look over the table and her eyebrows knit in confusion. "Where's Ryuki's present?"

Mizuki stretches her arm and pats the seat with the three boxes. "Over here."

"Oh, gotcha. Mizuki, if you're not gonna get him anything, at least tell him he's not the worst or something. And Pewter, that's rude."

"What are you talking about?" Calls Pewter, while Mizuki pouts, "I did get him something, thank you very much!"

"Oh, you did?"

"Yeah."

"Pewter, even Mizuki got him something."

"So did I!"

"Where is it, then?"

"It's right here," Ryuki says, moving the plain box into view. "Pewter," Boss calls in response, "What kind of box is that?"

"I was rushing this morning, alright? You're the one who called me in two hours early."

Boss just rolls her eyes. "Wake up earlier, then."

As per usual, a long-suffering sigh comes from the computer, followed by more rapid typing. Boss settles into the booth on the opposite side, and for a brief moment Ryuki wonders why she didn't just put them on her table. At least with this setup, Boss isn't trying to open all the unsealed presents and figure out what's in them so she can pretend she's psychic.

Tama, though, hops back into his eyeball; unexpectedly, because he caught her staring at Boss's chest, and had assumed she was going to jump on. "Come on, Ryuki! I wanna know what's in those boxes."

"Tama! That's supposed to be a surprise!"

"Yeah, for Date! Not for us!"

"Absolutely not."

"Come on! Ugh, Killjoy."

"You should totally look," says Mizuki, but Boss shuts her down. "Don't you dare!"

"Boss~," comes the responding complaint.

"No buts. You get to wait for him to get here."

Mizuki pouts, but obliges. She does get up, though, stretching out her back before settling back into laying on the cushions. They're not the kind of weird plasticky stuff they have at actual restaurants, because these shouldn't need to be cleaned of beverages and food residue nearly as much, and as a result they're a lot more comfortable. More than once someone has been found napping here. More than once it has been Pewter.

No one ever has the heart to wake him up, either, because the alternative is he passes out at the computer. Bibi even once told him directly to go do some work on his laptop at the couch if he was feeling too tired, a directive he has seemingly ignored on almost every occasion.

Finally, the door opens, and in comes a mop of blonde hair. He's already holding a hand up to his eye, and Aiba jumps out, her little hamster paws and ears wiggling. "Thanks so much for that again, Aiba."

"Of course."

"That was sarcastic."

"I was aware. Look, Iris got you a present."

"You're just gonna ignore mine?" Complains Boss, as Date picks up the A-Set box. "Did she do the lettering in pencil…?"

"So?" Retorts Mizuki.

"What do you mean, so? It's weird, is all."

"You're so mean."

"I am not!"

"Whatever, asshole."

Date opens the package, because there's no real need to respond to Mizuki's empty insults. Inside is a lot of pink and blue tissue paper, and a few sparkly paper stars of the same color. They're seemingly stuck on with craft glue, as they weigh down the paper wherever they are, which seems a little sad for how much effort she put in.

The first obvious thing is a letter, which Date reads to himself. Aiba seems to consider reading it out loud, but he pockets it, and no one really questions it. Considering Iris is the second person for him to have pseudo-adopted, what with his unconventional relationship with Hitomi, it's one of the few things they don't pry about too much.

Underneath the letter is a copy of Shovelforge.

"Oh my god," he groans, and Aiba gives a soft hmph. "I am NOT playing Shovelforge with her."

"You're so rude! She gave it to you as a birthday present and you're just gonna waste it like that?" Mizuki finally gets up, peering at him with a very familiar expression.

"Birthday?"

"What do you mean, birthday? It's your birthday, idiot."

He turns to vaguely face Boss, arms out. "And you didn't give me the day off?"

"You didn't ask, but I wouldn't have even if you did."

"Why not?"

"Well, how else was I supposed to give you your present?"

"What present?"

"What do you mean, what present? It was on top of Iris's!"

"You gave me that?"

"My name is on it!"

Date rolls his eyes, and takes the copy of Shovelforge out of the box so he can put the box on the floor, presumably. Except under the game is a little sticky note- JK! teehee written on a pink post-it stuck to a uncharacteristically dark purple and black notebook. It looks nice and thick, and the spine fairly sturdy, too.

There's a third note stuck on the inside. For when you need to look cool on an investigation :)

"This is really nice," Date says, smiling, feeling the pages. From Ryuki's spot, they even look soft. "I gotta tell her thanks the next time I see her."

"I could call her," Aiba suggests.

"Nah, I wanna tell her in person."

"Understood."

This time there isn't anything left, so he does put the box on the floor next to the exit of Ryuki's side of the booth. Boss's gift comes next, and she leans over from her spot to see him open it.

To no one's surprise, it's largely undecorated on the inside. It was small anyway, enough to Ryuki thought it might've been jewelry if it were for anyone else. But lo and behold, Date pulls out a thin silver necklace with a red eye charm on it. "Thanks, Boss. This is really nice."

"No problem," she says, sighing like she did a great deed. "Nothing like promoting office wellness."

Date rolls his eyes, then picks up Iris's box and puts Boss's in it, too, presumably so he can throw them all out together. "Ryuki, you still on the clock? Cause if not, I'm ready to head out."

"You're just gonna ignore my gift?" Mizuki retorts.

"You got me a present?"

"Of course, I'm not an asshole. Unlike you."

"Hey, every year I could I've gotten you a present!"

"Yeah, and you always give it to me in the middle of the night when you're drunk."

"Not true! I always leave it on the table in front of your chair and you never open it!"

"Who opens a random box you leave on the coffee table?"

"You! Every time I leave a box on the coffee table! Except for your birthday!"

"That's because I have to confiscate your stash."

Date groans, but takes the box handed to him. He thankfully ignores the lackluster packaging and gently opens the lid- not even taped, which is awfully confident of Mizuki to bring on her bike- and sets it down inside the A-Set box. Characteristically Mizuki, it's got no fanfare of any kind, and if the box wasn't blue Ryuki would've assumed she stole it from Date last minute.

The gift itself is, of course, precious. It's a little model of their apartment, accurate down to the smallest details of the usual Adorrabit placement and usual state of the corkboard on the wall. He wouldn't be surprised if the speakers are removable, though doubts she put anything behind them.

There's also three people figurines, probably posed at some point but jostled around from the aforementioned bumpy ride it probably experienced. One is very clearly Date, with Aiba in his eye; the other is Mizuki, with her eye patch on but pipe nowhere to be found. And speaking of Aiba, her projection form stands on a little plastic circle colored red and white, with a smile on her face.

"Mizuki…thanks."

"Yeah, yeah," she says, looking away but with a gentle smile on her face.

Date doesn't remark on that part, and instead carefully closes the box again. "I know you wanted to hang out, Ryuki, but do you mind if I stop back home to drop this off first…?"

"Don't bother," Mizuki says, "I'll bring it back."

"Mizuki, that is not a very good idea," Aiba interrupts. "I am glad it arrived here unharmed, but it may not withstand the ride back."

"What? My bike is great, thank you! And I'm a way better driver than Date."

"I would have to disagree."

"Hmmph! Fine, take your stupid present back yourself."

"Sure thing."

While Mizuki takes the next box- Pewter's- out from the seat, Ryuki's head begins to spin.

It's one thing to get a nice notebook (and a gag gift) from Iris, and another thing for Boss to buy him jewelry. I mean, he's rich, yeah, and he didn't spend as much as Boss did on that, but it's Boss. She's just the kind of person to get you something expensive as a mark of her appreciation and willingness to spend money on you. Hell, he heard her swearing Mizuki to secrecy before asking her what to get for Bibi's birthday, because she can't get a young girl she mothers the kind of gift she can get anyone else.

But that model? It makes sense, though he hadn't thought about it- Lemniscate probably produces plenty of merch of their talent, so it makes sense Mizuki had access to a place to get a miniature done. That, and she's vaguely friends with Shoma, who loves the stuff. It's the sort of thing that's in her wheelhouse, so it's not extravagant in that sense, but still takes plenty of effort and planning, and clearly a lot of love went into it. Even Aiba, who is metaphorically inseparable with Date, was represented.

Guilt grips at his heart like a hand rising from hell to pull him down into the depths. There's no way he can measure up to that, right? He put his heart in soul into his gift, of course, there's no way he couldn't- he's talking about the man he loves, here. Hell, there's a reason Mizuki didn't have a single objection or question when Ryuki said he was going to invite Date over if he had no plans.

Tama, who he had almost forgot was still in his eye socket, pipes up. Oh my god, this again. He's gonna love it.

You don't know that!

I do know that.

How?

I asked Aiba? Duh.

"Tama," he groans out loud.

"Fine, I'll hand him your gift myself," Mizuki complains, and belatedly Ryuki realizes Pewter's present has already came and went. It's still on the table, though- a little plush version of Aiba's hamster form. He has no idea what material Pewter used to make it see-through, and frankly, he's not asking. The only reason he knows it's not the real Aiba is because said AI companion is currently in Date's eye socket again.

"Ah, sorry."

"Don't get too in your head about," Boss says from her perch. "I locked him a pair of fuzzy handcuffs for like three hours one year and he still thanked me for the drinks I bought him later."

"Unfair," Date retorts, "I was drunk. And holy shit, Ryuki, did you wrap this up and everything?"

"Er, yeah…"

As he did the rest of his packages, Date carefully undoes the tied ribbon and unfolds the box. The wrapping paper falls apart neatly- thank you Tama for visual guidelines- and forms a nice little halo around the plain cardboard.

Ryuki waits with baited breath.

He says nothing at first, but his eyes- both- go wide. Mizuki's gift certainly stunned him for a bit, but it was probably the lengths she went to for something so simple as a birthday gift. But of course, Mizuki is his daughter- she'd get him something night. He's a good father, everyone knows it, and Mizuki will indicate it (never say it out loud, because there's usually a sentient eyeball around to record it) constantly when he's not there.

"Ryuki, breathe, please."

He barely remembers to. Mizuki, annoyed, peeks over the side of the box to see what Date's looking at, and immediately backs up in surprise. "Whoa. Really?"

"In a good or bad way?"

"Are you kidding me, Ryuki? Good! Absolutely good!"

"I wanna see," complains Boss, and she gets up to come peek as well. "Oh my god Ryuki, you didn't."

"What is it?" Pewter calls from his computer(s?).

He, of course knows what it is. He gave himself five months- to which Tama complained, thinking there was no way his gift would take five whole months to make a reality. But this was Date's first birthday after the two of them getting together properly, and he wanted to do something super special, so he'd been ruminating on it for a long time. And at first, he wasn't sure what to do.

Jewelry was nice, but too impersonal for someone like Date. And he didn't want to do something small, like Iris had, but thoughtful, because that would seem like too much of a common birthday present. Maybe for some other years, or as an anniversary present, but he wanted this particular occasion to be special.

If he'd thought of the miniature idea like Mizuki, he might've gone for it, honestly. Extremely personal, highly customizable, and just this side of expensive to justify it. But he doesn't know the first thing about custom miniatures.

What he does know a lot about is what it feels like to break.

Not even the kind of world-melting dissociation that leaves the world feeling like disconnected pieces of code and glitches. Not the random stupors that the Naix videos would leave him in. Not even the trauma of his brother and Date's supposed death.

It's the little things. People staring too much, someone being disappointed in him for something he felt so strongly about, sometimes even Tama bringing out her riding crop is enough for him to shatter, just a little bit. And those add up, as he's well aware; he'd been dealing with these even before his parents died.

The gift itself is actually fairly simple in his opinion, which is mostly what had been causing him grief. It's built off a simplified system of an orrery- one center orb, three orbits around it that can rotate at any angle, and a stand for all of them combined. It's built off magnetism and careful calculations, and so any time one of the circles is rotated, the rest will follow in their dance. The stand keeps it all balanced.

The stand is thus made out of glass, but it's got cracks on the inside. Broken and battered, chipped away at every day. But it stands unwavering, undaunted.

The first ring is representative of Mizuki. Barely, but it should be obvious- an orb of blue with two tails circling around it like Saturn's rings, and a yellow streak. Being the innermost ring, it wavers the least.

The second is dotted with smaller orbs along the orbit. Red for Boss, green for Pewter, a pink-blue hue for Iris, even a small beige one for Hitomi.

The third, of course, holds the most unstead of all. It's orange with red streaks. Fairly simple, because he didn't know how else to communicate himself to Date.

And of course, at the center of it all, is a purple orb with swashes of black. It floats evenly, unbothered, unchanging. The amount of calculations Tama had to do for it had him running errands for her for a week, but it was well worth it. So was the money spent on custom making it.

He is extremely thankful his parents ran a veritable electronic empire, because without that this would never have gotten made. It's simpler than Mizuki's gift- that included so much detail, so much love, and specificity to Date especially. Tama even told him once that apartment was in Mizuki's Somnium, and it clearly means a lot to her and him both. This is a bit less personal. Or not. He's not really sure. He's pretty sure he's running a fever, actually, until finally Date speaks:

"Where did you even get this made?"

"Oh, uh, I don't know if I ever told you, but my parents ran a pretty big tech company, so that's where my fortune comes from. I sent them the blueprints and they made it in less than a week. All I had to do was assemble it."

"Ryuki, you made the blueprints for this?"

"Kinda. Tama did most of the work."

"That's a lie," Tama says, jumping out of his eyeball. "He did all of the designing. I just did all the calculations to make sure it all stays balanced."

"Well, that's part of the designing."

Tama gives him a Look that says she's gonna beat him senseless if he continues down this line of logic, so he shuts up.

"I don't know what to say. This is…I really don't know what to say. It's amazing, holy shit, thank you so much Ryuki, I don't know what I did to deserve this but it's amazing."

He's quickly wrapped in a huge hug by Date, and all those pesky thoughts of inadequacy go silent for the moment.

"Of course, Mr. Date."

---

They drop off Mizuki's gift at Date's house, but he agonizes over what to do with the magnetic display. "I don't have anywhere Mizuki proof," he says, "Because if I did she would make sure I didn't."

"She wouldn't destroy it," Aiba remarks. Date scoffs. "Not intentionally."

"Then you need only be careful around her. Perhaps if you do not do anything to deserve getting hit, she won't hit you."

"Aiba, both you and I know that's impossible."

"It is certainly possible, if you shape your act up."

"That'd be denying who I am, Aiba! The very essence of my soul."

"You are awful. I wish it was not your birthday so I had an excuse to stay with Mizuki for the moment."

"Aw, you don't wanna hang out, Aiba?"

"My apologies, Tama, but Date is being absolutely insufferable at the moment."

"It is my birthday, you know. You could be a little nicer."

"Absolutely not."

In the end, Date asks if it would be okay to keep in Ryuki's house. Somehow, Ryuki does not pass out from the implication that Date would feel comfortable enough in Ryuki's house to keep a gift he clearly treasures so dearly that he would attempt to insulate it from Mizuki of all people, and manages to get them both back into the limousine.

The ride there is surprisingly good natured. Date holds him close and talks about how happy he is that Boss actually let the two of them off for an occasion for once, and that Ryuki's feeling well. Despite it being Date's birthday, of everyone, he doesn't talk much about himself, prompting Ryuki to ask: "What about you?"

"Me?"

"Yeah. You keep talking about what happened to me these last few days…"

"Oh, that's just because it's been boring recently. Been on a couple of petty cases and some paperwork, you know how it is. I don't have much to talk about, honestly."

"I'd still love to hear about them!" Ryuki insists, warm and happy and content and eager. "You're a good storyteller."

Date grins. "Glad to hear."

---

In the end, it ends up on one of Ryuki's shelves. It looks perfectly in place there, and honestly he thinks it might represent him better than Date at this point- the way Date is the thing keep him together, the one thing that keeps his sanity more than anything. With the others, there's some magnetic pull, some attempt to keep him in orbit, but they're just as lost without the central orb that floats regardless of what anyone tries to do to it.

The cracked base was honestly the hardest part to do, and Tama did get angry with him that he was half ignoring it when thinking about how the whole piece turned out, but it's the icing on the cake. It adds just a slight bit more depth to the whole thing, in a good way.

Him and Date are on the couch, Aiba and Tama both off to do whatever. Probably flirt, knowing Tama. The conversation slowed to an occasional trickle, but they're both content, like two lazy cats enjoying each other's company. Date's sprawled out with Ryuki practically laying on top of him, and occasionally they indulge in lazy, slow, mind-melting kisses. Date runs his hand through Ryuki's hair.

"Hey, Ryuki?"

"Yes, Mr. Date?"

"Thank you so much for everything. It's been a wonderful birthday."

Ryuki smiles up at him. "No, thank you, Mr. Date. For everything you've ever done, for all of us."

He kisses him again, and smiles. "And especially for me."

--

will be crossposted on AO3 sooner or later. also hi I'm not dead I just dissociated into the stratosphere for a while

~Eve6262

[toyahinterviews]

POP, THE HISTORY MAKERS WITH STEVE BLAME 8.5.2023

STEVE BLAME: I want to start with your childhood. We are formed from our childhoods. Your father was a businessman, your mother had been a dancer. What's written in Wikipedia is that she gave up dancing to have a family. Tell me about your early childhood because you were born with a bent spine and had a limp   TOYAH: My early childhood was really idyllic. My parents were wealthy. My father was incredibly wealthy, right up until I was 12 years old. He ran a construction business in Birmingham. He had three factories. He  came from the Willcox-Lang dynasty. He was a very hard working man. We had a new Rolls Royce every six months   I never knew I was disabled. I think the thing about disability is you don't know you have it until other people treat you as if you're disabled. I was born at home. My mother literally prepared Sunday lunch for the family, my brother and sister and dad. She went into labour at about 11.15   The midwife came and she gave birth to me in her bedroom at 11.45 and was back down with the family by one o'clock. This is what life was then. And just to reflect back even further, my father was born at a time of high child mortality. He was one of 13 children and only three survived   So there was a toughness about life back then. We didn't have central heating. We very rarely had hot baths until I was about seven and that was normal wealthy British life back then. With my disability, I knew something was up because every six months I was in hospital. Every morning and night my mother had to give me physio, which I really enjoyed   This physio included things like painting with my feet, things that I became very expressive with. I could write with my feet. I could paint with my feet. I didn't know that to be called "Hopalong" by my family was politically incorrect (laughs) I thought I was being favoured!   STEVE: It was the 70s or 60s (they both laugh)   TOYAH: Mainly the 60s. I was a child of incredible braveness and bravado because I was singled out and I thought I was special (laughs) My mother had to buy two pairs of shoes. Small pair on my left foot, the larger pair on my right foot. I would fall a lot. I had raises on my left foot built into the shoes   I just had a disability (laughs) It really wasn't until I reached the age of 11, when the corrective surgery started, that I started to be really pissed off with my body because the corrective surgery didn't work. Up until that point I was training to be a junior ice skating champion. I trained alongside John Curry. And then suddenly everything kind of went a bit kaput. I just started to fight against it because I was being labelled and I didn't like it                

STEVE: Well, that's what I wanted to come to because children can be very unempathetic and any differences highlighted. At school, if you were any different in any way to other people, then you would be a target and there would be name-calling. I would think that to a certain extent that difference would also change you. So did been seen as different change you? 

TOYAH: I think I was very liked at school, but also people picked on the speech impediments (laughs) I’m only laughing now because it's only in recent years I've seen with clarity how others saw me. I had no idea. I was dyslexic and had a very unique use of language and it made people laugh and I would get bullied. I’d get bullied because I was sensitive. I was easy to make me cry   But the most extraordinary abuse I ever had was when I was about four and a half. In our class there was a Wendy house (a doll house) and two girls would take me into that Wendy house. They would remove their shoe laces and strangle me till I lost consciousness. I didn't know this was abuse. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't tell the teachers. Then I started to get abused because of the way I sounded rather than the way I moved   And again, I didn't see it as abuse. But one day, after a night of no sleep and anxiety at home, I walked into the class and I picked a chair up and I smashed it over the bully’s head and that changed my life. After that point I became a bit of a leader in my school STEVE: You've also got a lisp, which I have. Some of the things that we have and we possess and people see as difference provide our drive in life. So in a sense that negativity can become later on. You've got to go through the shit, but later on it can be a positivity. Abuse wasn't only from other school children - your mother was quite abusive, wasn't she?   TOYAH: My mother was severely mentally damaged by a childhood experience, which we only learned about three years ago after her death. ancestry.com showed us press cuttings from a court case that involved her when she was about 16     She'd witnessed her father murder her mother. My mother was illegitimate, which terrified her. Putting the pieces together I can see why my mother was the creature she was. My mother would have been terrified of people discovering not only was she illegitimate, but a member of her family murdered somebody

My mother was the absolute double of "Hyacinth Bucket" from a comedy called “Keeping Up Appearances”. So as children we weren't allowed to talk to anyone who had an accent. We weren't allowed to misbehave or even talk in public. She was very strict and my father was very strict and my schooling was very strict. But my mother's greatest fear was her history being found out     When my father met my mother, she was touring with a comedian called Max Wall.  She was 18. She'd already been chaperoned since the age of 16 and my father never understood why the chaperone was with her 24 hours a day. A female chaperone, who was with her even right up untill the wedding night         The chaperone would never let my father be alone with my mother. We've now discovered that my mother's father, who murdered her mother in front of her, got out of prison within three months, and the chaperone was there to protect her from her father So my mother was living in constant fear. She didn't want to talk about this in our lifetime, not even to my father, who she was married to, or to my brother and sister. She carried this for the whole of her life. So my mother would fly off the handle with the greatest of ease       She had real emotional difficulty, but as a very beautiful dancer and a woman who was a beauty queen in her teens, had given birth to a daughter with a physical defect ... she had a real problem with it. But also, she was abusive in that she couldn't control her emotions My sister, who is eight years older than me, has no memory of her childhood. My brother and I do because we remember my mother chasing us around the house with a carving knife shouting “I'm going to kill you!”. With me, the abuse was she felt I had no future. So every time I achieved something, the abuse was in the way of “don't believe in it. It's not going to happen”   I when I won Best Female Singer in the equivalent of what is The BRITS in 1982 (below with Leo Sayer (on the left) and Dave Lee Travis), I phoned her and said “I've won”. And she said, “Well, don't brag about it. It's not going to continue”. And I said, “but I've got this beautiful trophy”. “Oh, you will fall on it and it will kill you”     Everything to do with happiness, everything to do with joy, everything to do with eating was going to kill us. As soon as we put food in our mouths, she'd say “you will choke on it���. Every time I said “I'm going for a walk” ... “You will be murdered” was the reply We were tough children. My parents never knew how they had the children they had. My brother was a Harrier fighter pilot. One of only three to actually fly that plane at that time because it was so complex to fly. My sister is right at the top of the NHS. One of the runners of the accounting in the NHS       In the July the 7th bombings (London, 2005) my sister is the one that emptied all the double decker buses, filled them with oxygen, got them into the underground and saved all those people. She made that decision above everyone else. We are tough children and my parents were the complete opposite

STEVE: That's amazing. My my father never loved me. I found this out from my mother after he died. She told me that she had a third child to keep him and of course because of that he never had anything to do with me in my early years     I ended up being a presenter on MTV to get, I presumed, what I felt would be love from the whole world, which will compensate not having love from my father. When you hear me say that - this word compensation - do you you instantly know that this is what your fight for a career was as well?   TOYAH: I was loved. I do believe I was loved in their way. I don't know about your dad, but my father had spent six years away at war, World War Two. And my mother is obviously going through a complete lack of education and a complete lack of support. They loved me in their way   But their negativity always baffled me. It broke me. It meant that I could never experience joy, because they have programmed me to suffer when I experienced joy. I think my fight for survival is the industry never accepted me on a particularly large level. Mostly because I'm minute. I'm barely five foot tall, but I'm not proportioned like a model or like Kim Kardashian   So I was always fighting for my presence as a viable woman. Every barrier I come up against, I will push back. I will push that barrier down. And I do think yes, you're right, that the contribution to that is my upbringing. But also my upbringing taught me to see injustice towards women. It taught me on a level that is deeply subconscious because my mother didn't use that language   My mother was breathtakingly beautiful. When she delivered me to my first party with boys when I was 13, the whole room went quiet and a boy said “I want to snog her” and pointed to my mother. So my mother's breathtaking beauty got her through her life. But psychologically she was deeply broken   STEVE: You mentioned that when you got the equivalent of a BRIT award back in 1982 you called your mother  - TOYAH: Well, I was really calling my dad but my mother answered the phone (laughs)   STEVE: But it's also looking for confirmation, isn't it?   TOYAH: Oh, God! Yeah!   STEVE: That's another thing that we look for in our lives ... the wounds that we have in our childhood - we look for the confirmation, but we never get it   TOYAH: You don't get it. I got it in a very strange way that in the five days before my mother left this world she was screaming for me. She only wanted me with her. My mother had no faith, but my mother could see that I saw something different. I sat with her for the five days as well as the other family members But she knew that if I was there, I could help her get through those five days and release. Because it's just so bloody obvious. We never stop. Our consciousness is a continual thing. She only saw that in me or acknowledged it in the end. With my father it was the same. My father wanted me by his bedside. But they acknowledged it in the end   STEVE: How difficult has it been for you to touch, in your life, on this trauma over your life? I've been trauma therapy. It's therapy where it's about how you hold things in your body and it's affected your health because of what happens in your past and then it's really trying to go deep inside   It's a very painful process, but it's an important process. But I just wondered how you have dealt with that throughout your life. Just with other people on your own or with therapy?  

TOYAH: The one person who saved my life is my husband, Robert Fripp (above with Toyah in 1988) He just saw it immediately. As soon as he met my mother he saw the problem. Robert’s had trauma in his life and I've had trauma. We sit down and we talk through everything. We sit down at least for an hour to two hours a day and just talk   He helped unravel how I was physically responding to the experiences of negativity. He pointed it out. He said “what your mother has just said is just not logical”. I was suicidal after every time I met her. We were fighting until two weeks before she died!   My husband would sit me down and say “you know what she just said is illogical”. Still, after 30 odd years, she would make him a cup of tea and he'd say “no milk, no sugar”, and she would deliver a cup of tea with milk and sugar. She would do completely the opposite       So I'd say “I'm so excited! I'm going to be playing “Calamity Jane" in a national tour!" and she'd say “well, it will close in the first week and if it doesn't, you'll break a bone”. It's absolutely illogical! And I would hit the f***ing roof   I started fighting back with her when I was 12 and eventually I was sent to live with a gorgeous Hindu family in Edgbaston in Birmingham, who just saw that we were going to kill each other. So we've had a long relationship of causing trauma to each other   But Robert is the one that helped me deal with what I call career abuse - which is ironically the way my family treated me, calling me "Hopalong" - reflected also in my career with critics and reviews and general comments in showbiz press. It reflected, it was there. It was as if I was showing it on my shoulders   Robert and I will often sit down and talk about why would a reviewer a lie. We had a review once from playing The Roundhouse with our band called The Humans. We volunteered to open a festival at 6 pm knowing that the ticket said it started at 7 pm. A reviewer said that no one was there to see us. “They decided not to come till 7 pm. The music was awful” and a reviewer wasn't even in the f***ing room! So we've always had to deal with dishonesty in the press and we talk about it a lot. I would say as a creative human being, my relationship with dishonesty in the performance field, I've had to deal with more than my parents. It's only since my parents passed and I learned my mother's history that I've been putting two and two together as to why I was treated the way I was treated   And actually it's given me a feeling of being very well grounded. My survival instincts kicked in and I just see that the problem was theirs. So it wasn't mine. It was nothing to do with my disability. It was nothing to do with the fact that I'm small. Small people do get kicked. I am a survivor anyway. I'm a strong person   STEVE: You just said that you moved in with a Hindu family. My father left when I was about 13. There were enormous rows. He was a market trader. He would throw money - we had these wooden panels that looked a bit like East Germany after the war and eventually they would be pockmarked because of all the money flying around   I remember going around to a friend's house and his mum and dad sat on the sofa holding hands and I said to him “what are they doing?” because my only vision of a relationship was dysfunctional, horrendous   I didn't see them in the early days, when, I presume, they were in love. I only saw them in the period when I was there. It's very hard not seeing and not having that feeling of love that you obviously didn't have from from your mother when she was alive   TOYAH: I did. I did have love but there was part of her that was so broken it was like a split personality. She did give love and she did protect but it came with extreme outbursts of very confusing anger and despair. I said that my parents were very wealthy till I was 12. When I was 12 my father lost the entire family business in a stock market slump. We went from having Rolls Royces to having no food by Friday   I think one of the reasons I am such a survivor and I'm so educated and I self-educate about everything, from money to investing to stocks and shares is because I saw my parents lose everything. So by the time I was 14 I was lying to get work so I could bring money into the house. But what really destroyed my parents and you've got to keep in mind that my mother was living a lie anyway about social status - for them to lose their money ... they lost their social status

Very wonderful people stepped in and gave them money. One is still alive. He's my uncle and not a blood uncle, but we call him uncle and he's 100 this year, and he stepped in. A very wealthy man and gave them a fund to live off   Then I started working and I started to be able to fund them. Eventually I bought the family home off them and then I bought them a new home. I was giving them more money a week than I was earning when I was at the height of my fame. They were in that much shit financially. To watch two people be destroyed, who were so hooked on social status taught me a lot   It meant that when I was being knocked and being criticised and being treated like the cheap version of Kate Bush in the press, I had to survive. I had to keep my parents alive. I had to keep them in a home. It did nothing but make me tougher and more determined and more self aware of how utterly f***ing brilliant and unique I am. I'm the toughest you can ever meet. That's what my upbringing did to me 

STEVE: That's wonderful. I think that power that you have is incredible. The 70s were an era of unbelievable sexism, misogyny, racism and homophobia. They were everything. I was 13 in 1972 so we are the same age, I think. And as a gay teenager, along came David Bowie and suddenly there was this world where I felt I could belong. David Bowie played a similar role in your life   TOYAH: His career trajectory was a gift to every artist because he struggled! He really struggled up to “Space Oddity”. He was just struggling to find his place. He was obviously phenomenally creative. Then after “Space Oddity” he had to deal with prog rock coming in, heavy rock coming in. It confused his writing. But I think “The Man Who Sold The World” is one of his best albums   Then he found his place within “Ziggy Stardust” working with Mick Ronson, working with Tony Visconti. There's a producer called Scott, I can't remember his full name (Edit: Ken Scott), who really brought Bowie out. That career trajectory that then brought him into the most remarkable 10 years of any artist’s life is utterly inspiring to someone who wants to create something new every time they write but would really like commercial success with it. Bowie never let go of what he believed in and that was himself   STEVE: One thing that was really very particular about Bowie was the fact that everything he did was imbued with different cultural aspects from books to art to dance to mime. It's all in there. When I first encountered Bowie on TV as a teenager, I wasn't aware of all those factors   It was only later as I got to know his music and then realised there were other, including William Burroughs colour technique or whatever - there was other things within it. When did you become aware that there were so many cultural things within his music?   TOYAH: I think the NME and the Record Mirror made it all very clear with excellent interviews with Bowie around 1972, possibly 71. Those magazines circulated in my school. But there was a brilliant Alan Yentob BBC documentary on Bowie, which explored his writing process and by this time he was already “The Man Who Fell To Earth”   STEVE: That was “Cracked Actor”, wasn't it?   TOYAH: “Cracked Actor”. Absolutely brilliant. At that point he really ignited the potential in me because I never fitted in. I didn't fit in with the education system because of my dyslexia and dyspraxia, but I saw a way I could fit in. He introduced me to more literature than my school did. The literature he read was high class   I've only recently got into a surrealist artist called Leonora Carrington. She put a play on call “Penelope” about 1934 and the male lead has “Ziggy Stardust” makeup on. I only discovered this two months ago and I ran to my husband with a picture (and said pointing to the photo) “Ziggy Stardust!”. This is how he got his makeup! He got it from a surrealist artist called Leonora Carrington!” I thought that is just so brilliant! He was a fisher of culture. He threw the fishing rod out with the hook, pulled it back, and he made it work for him   STEVE: What culture and books were you into as a teenager?   TOYAH: All the typical ones. “Lord of the Rings”, which took me about three years to read. That led me on to “The Hobbit”, that led me on to all of J.R.R Tolkien's writings. A girl I went to school with called Angela Power, her father was Canon (Norman S) Power. He wrote similar literature to J. R. R. Tolkien and his books didn't break but these books are wonderful. He used to give me his books and I loved them   I was also reading Mary Stewart, which is kind of romantic, legendary mythology, but I really loved the darker stuff. If I could pick up a Dennis Wheatley book from the library then I would. I loved things that led on to “Dungeons and Dragons” and all of that culture. I really loved it   I also loved Black Sabbath. I loved Hawkwind. I went to see Uriah Heep but didn't quite get the music, but I loved being in that audience. I was only 11. I used to break into these venues. I love Moody Blues, and I probably would have loved King Crimson if I knew they were playing. There were probably many times I've broken into venues when my husband was in that venue STEVE: How did you break in?     

TOYAH: I would get someone going in through the front and say “please go around to the back, there's a fire escape, just open it. I’ll get in quickly and close the door”. There would always be about 20 of us there     It's a habit we kept going when we were touring as punk rockers. We would let people in at the fire exit once we'd sold enough tickets to pay our expenses. It was a culture back then, the fire escape entrance. People were very generous and they'd let us in   STEVE: One thing that I read about is that you experienced a ghost. Another being from the other side of your bedroom. You used to communicate?   TOYAH: Very special   STEVE: Can you tell me about that? I had an experience when I was 45. I was in this hotel room in Luxembourg, actually. This family used to visit me every night and eventually I had to move out because it's freaked me out so much   TOYAH: Tell me what they looked like? How many of them were there?   STEVE: It was a nuclear family. It was two parents and two kids and they would hold on to them a bit sort of like the "American picture"   TOYAH: What year was it?   STEVE: This would have been 2001. I just wondered if that hotel was on something or whatever, but everyone thought I was a nutter by saying it the next day. No one wants to believe you. I really found it fascinating that you've also had similar experience   TOYAH: Geographically where were you?   STEVE: I was in Luxembourg   TOYAH: Oh, that's very interesting. If you told me you were in Seattle, or you're in Minnesota, I would have said it was a shaman coming to teach you a lesson. We used to live and write with a musician called Bill Rieflin, who was the drummer in R.E.M and I had a band called The Humans with (below, live at Bush Hall, London, 2011) The month he was diagnosed with his terminal cancer I was at his house in the spare bedroom   I was woken up by white man, he came in through the window. He was in a loincloth. He woke me up and he said “I’ve come to teach you how to die. It's like peeling off the layers of an onion. When you die you will go through a process where each layer of your life comes off and the purity of your soul is all that's left.” I woke up and I thought what the f*** was that about?   I told Bill and he was then diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer. It freaked Bill out because I don't think he believed in the afterlife. I've realised now that I could pick up the energy of the shaman but Bill couldn't and the lesson was for Bill. So sometimes you meet these experiences because they're lessons, which is why I've just told you that story   With me - I was 14. My sister, my father and I always had very bad poltergeist experiences, which freaked my mother out. My mother used to lock herself in a room at night because she didn't want to hear what was going on. My sister, who's eight years older than me, was training at Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham   They trained the nurses back then by putting them in the terminal cancer wards. My sister was emotionally destroyed by this but it made her very strong. She would come home in tears because her favourite patient would have passed away One night all chaos broke out in the house when my sister was woken up because the duvet was flying around the room. Then my father was woken up because his duvet was flying around the room. And my bedroom door was slamming. We went through a period of about four years where the house was like this. We’d experience things like the wallpaper just flying off the walls, soaking wet   My mother felt that it was I was the nucleus because I'd never been christened. So I then went into religious education and I was confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I was locked away for three weeks until I was christened and confirmed. And then slowly - I wouldn't say it stopped - it became under control

When I was about 14, I had something that would be explained as a dream, but it's the most tangible thing I've ever experienced in my life. I've had this experience four times and I yearn for this experience. Because it's as if the layers were taken off me and the true part of me was taken out to be taught something. You read about this a lot. A lot of people have had this experience. It's part of a culture. It's a cultural, mythological, repeating experience throughout time   I woke up and at the end of the bed was about a nine foot tall silver man and he was standing in a breeze. Everything was moving. His hair was moving, his clothes were moving. He was incredibly thin. He was dressed in long gowns. He put his hands out and he said “come with me”   I lifted out of my body and he took my hand. We travelled right through the window and we kept travelling. The stars was zipping by. Zip zip zip zip! We suddenly stopped at a gas nebulae. We went into the gas nebulae, and there were these huge, colourful spheres. The most beautiful colours I've ever seen. They passed through each other and as they did they made different notes     Within this space was a monolithic building. Absolutely monolithic, three towers. I don't know why that was there. But I do know that the spheres were souls. And he said “this is your true self. This is your soul”. And then he brought me back, put me back into my body The next time he came I was about 15 and this is where it's really strange because I'm dyslexic. He took me out of my body exactly the same way. He took me up into the stars, but this time into the blackness amongst the stars. He gave me an equation lesson. He said “I want you to learn this equation”. And he wrote it out. There was algebra, there was Pi. There was everything. I remember thinking “why the hell are you teaching me this? I can't do maths or algebra”   And then he brought me back.  So skip right forward to the age of 45. He came back here to this house. He just stood at the edge of the bed and he said “are you okay?” It’s astonishing. Every time this happened, I felt more real and more in place than I do in this body 

STEVE: Wow. That's amazing. Have you been around someone at the moment of death?   TOYAH: Yes. My mother. It's can be a very beautiful experience if the person is willing to let go. It's very beautiful. I've been in hospices with people who've died. The nurses have the same experience. You see a transition, and you know that the consciousness is there for at least 14 hours 

The nurses say “open the windows, let the soul free itself.” It's very important at that point that we accept we need to leave this body. It's like watching a mirage 

STEVE: I was very close to my mother in the end. I spent many years as her carer. The last few weeks I had a hospital bed in the front room and I slept next to her and did everything that a carer does   It was incredibly tough to witness the death of someone that you love so much. But at the same time, it has these aspects to it and one of them really threw me completely because my mother used to sit in a chair and watch the birds in the garden   That was her favourite occupation and all the birds she liked came back on the day she died. It was really bizarre and it was noticeable. For me that was this moment where the environment in which we live connects to us on the deepest levels   TOYAH: It really does. We're just not encouraged to see what's going on around us. Also the loss is tougher for you. I believe once you're in the process of going you understand what the process is. I think we are hardwired for survival in this biological body. That's our experience. Personally, I have absolutely no fear of death. I only fear how I die STEVE: I'm exactly the same. Dave Simpson wrote a book on the on the Sex Pistols. I interviewed him not long ago. In that book, there's this wonderful quote from you. You'd gone to see them at Bogarts in Birmingham in 1976 and you said “it was fantastic. I'd already dyed my hair bright pink and I was wearing bin liners because I couldn't afford clothes. I'd been ridiculed for the way I looked but I walked into the club and suddenly I wasn't alone anymore“   TOYAH: It was a tribe. I walked in and I thought “where have you all been in my life?!” I’d been making my own clothes since I was 12. By this time, I was probably 15 or 16. I'd always be ridiculed on the street for looking different. I was a hair model so I used to have different colour hair every week. And even though I was still at school I looked outlandish   I walked into Bogarts and there’s 350 people who all look similar to me. Not uniform, but they have all made their own clothes and they all had different colour hair. “Oh, my goodness! Why have I never met you?” It was fabulous!

STEVE: This was the community that you were looking for?   TOYAH: It very much was the community but also it sparked something quite competitive in me in that these people look really good and they look really sophisticated, some of them. I was thinking "I want to look like that. I want to take this further." None of us knew how to behave at the gig. We didn't really understand what pogoing was   So we just stood there, and we're kind of ingesting what we were seeing. Johnny Rotten found us profoundly boring and kept going off stage. But we were just learning. We were eager, we were hungry. We were learning what this new movement was and it was extraordinary   STEVE: You really notice it in his book that for so many artists at the famous Sex Pistols Manchester gig it was the moment that they decided they wanted to do that in some form. Their own version of that. Was that it with you?   TOYAH: Yeah, exactly. I saw what looked like a pretty ramshackle performance. Full of energy, full of excitement and incredible attitude. But I saw it and I thought “I can do that. I'm going to do that. This is what I'm going to be”. It was very releasing   Considering I'd come from a background where people were really accentuating that I wasn't pretty, I wasn't tall, I wasn't slim. I was never going to fit into show business. I suddenly saw how I could do it. I saw my place and that was amazing   Having seen Bowie do “Ziggy Stardust” you were looking at a bird of paradise. You were looking at the most perfect, most complete human being you've ever seen. But then you looked at the Sex Pistols and they were performing as broken people and I thought “I can do it!”  It was fabulous

STEVE: I always remember that era because I think it affected me such a lot. As a gay man I got beaten up by the police coming out of a gay nightclub, snogging some guy. I got beaten up by football supporters. All these events. Having different coloured hair, being a different sexuality. You also define yourself as a third gender, don't you?   TOYAH: Third gender, yeah   STEVE: But being different was being a target in that era. How did that make you feel?   TOYAH: I'm very sorry you went through that. One of the most extraordinary experiences of me being saved ... I was walking down the King’s Road about 1977 and some football fans beat up the gay boy I was with. He was called Howard. He's a boy because he was a boy. I'm not using slang. Very beautiful boy. They beat him up and then I was protecting him. So they started to try and throw both of us through a glass window. A big sheet of glass and they were flinging us at it   Derek Jarman saw this happen, because he had an exhibition at (the shop) Worlds End. He got a broken chair leg. He ran out of the exhibition, across the King's Road and started to hit the shit out of the football fans and save us. It was extraordinary! Gentle, beautiful Derek Jarman, who I've never seen be physical with anyone was beating the f***ing shit out of these footballers. He dragged us back to the exhibition and looked after us   STEVE: Well, I love him even more   TOYAH: Yeah, made me love him even more. I used to get laughed at. Buses in Birmingham wouldn't let me get on. A very common thing you'd hear ... “what are you? A f***ing clown?”   Taxi drivers wouldn't give me a lift. But extraordinarily when I moved to London walking down Oxford Street I’d get spat at because women from other cultures just could not understand why a woman was dressed this way. They instantly thought I was a sex worker or something. They would spit at us. They'd throw dogshit at us if they could It was extraordinary because I was dressed like that and I thought "I'm really quite a nice person. I want to get to know people. I want friends. I don't want to dress like this to make enemies". That was quite a dilemma for me. The aggression was extraordinary     But it also created my career because directors wanted to meet me. Directors knew that I wasn't afraid to be experimental and wasn't afraid to do different things on stage or to look, what a very beautiful actress will be called, looking demeaning or bad. It didn't scare me so it led to my career STEVE: It's the Jean du Plessis “tub of Vaseline”, isn't it? Jean had a tub of Vaseline in his prison cell and the prison guards would beat him up and he realised that this object had power. This is what pop stars are able to use. They have their objects, which can be their words, their image, their music and that is their power. And that was your power. That was probably the a moment where you realised that power

TOYAH: Absolutely. Am I a power player? I'm incredibly empathic. I don't like to hurt people. I don't like aggression. But because of my past if people try to either hurt me or be aggressive towards me, they meet a tidal wave of well practised self-survival   But I really like to be part of the team and I like to be a good friend and I like to be supportive. But sometimes when I stand on a stage where you're in front of an audience who haven't specifically come to see you, like big festivals, then I can turn that power on 

STEVE: I've heard you talk about stories where your anger has been incredibly excessive, if I can use that word. It's been enormous. Have you understood that over the years and been able to live with it rather than actually tried to deal with it?   TOYAH: I haven't done therapy because my husband is really the greatest person I can talk to. I hope I'm a big help to him as he is to me. I don't really bottle things up. But what I’ve really enjoyed doing in a really perverse way … there are certain types of snobby literati types who will always attack me

My passive anger, violent response … I love it.  I really get off on it. It gives me the deepest thrill to walk in front of them and be f***ing amazing. It really does. They don't know that they're feeding my ambition. And that probably has come from my childhood   STEVE: You have had these two distinct passions in your life, acting and performing, singing and so on. How did they work at the start? Because you said you saw the Sex Pistols and that's what you wanted to be. That was it. But you were at drama school, I presume, at that time?   TOYAH: Yeah, I was at drama school studying plays, dancing and stage singing. My acting career took off way before my music career, but my heart was in music and that's a youthful choice. I knew if I was going to be the musician I wanted to be I had to start as soon as possible     I was spotted because to be a punk rocker back then was really rare and people were talking about this girl on the streets of Birmingham, who was dressing in her own clothes and had peacock hair   And two brothers called Bicat heard about me. They're a playwright and a musical writer. They work together doing their own stage and TV plays. They ended up tracking me down and casting me in a play about a girl who wanted to be on Top Of The Pops and breaks into studios. That led to me writing two songs with a band called Bilbo Baggins for the TV filming. That led to me joining the National Theatre, which led to me being able to form a band STEVE: That was “Glitter”. Your character lusts after Midge Ure   TOYAH: I'm not good in the play. I’m a rough diamond. I've never been on camera before. But by coincidence, Kate Nelligan, the actress, watched it when it broadcast three months later, and said to the superstar German film star Maximilian Schell, who was directing her at the National Theatre ... “I want that girl to play “Emma” in “Tales from the Vienna Woods””   And four weeks later I was living in London, socialising with Brenda Blethyn Warren Clarke, Elizabeth Spriggs. I was launched immediately into the glitterati of London Theatre. I had five astonishing years where angels were just throwing stardust in front of my feet. I managed to form the band and get a recording deal and build a huge audience   STEVE: That was it. You were in “Jubilee”. You were in “Quadrophenia”

TOYAH: “The Tempest” (as "Miranda", below with David Meyer as "Ferdinand")

STEVE: You were in so many acting roles that gave you an enormous profile. You were clearly an absolute workaholic, weren’t you?   TOYAH: I still am. Back then it was really frowned on to do both acting and singing. If an actor did a voiceover or a TV advert they would never work again in theatre. It was that bad. And theatre actors didn't talk to film actors. Film was considered the worst back then. So it was quite renaissance to do both. I'm a workaholic and you've got to remember I supporting my parents financially   Making money and being creative were almost equal because making money represented survival for my family. I loved every bit of work I ever did. I really loved it. I love the closed environment of the film set. I really did like working at the Royal Court and the ICA and those highly prestigious theatres. I loved being on stage with a mad punk audience pogoing away. I felt really lucky   STEVE: Are you someone who was really concentrating on developing yourself and your knowledge of the things that you were involved in? Or were you just living?   TOYAH: Oh, no, I was in full development, and I still am. Part of that is because of my physicality. I always have to work on my physicality. I always have to keep my legs working. That's just something to do with the journey from my brain to my legs. So I'm always working on my physicality. I will never ever get to a stage where I'm as physically controlled as someone like, let's say, Madonna or Lizzo or anyone that uses dance in their their musical interpretation - because I do have disability   Also with my memory, I have a very strange memory. You could stand outside  a door in London and I'll tell you the address. I have visual memory. It’s absolutely bizarre! I can tell you exactly what I was wearing 12 months ago to the day, and I can tell you that right up until I was about 15   But tell me your name, or tell me a fact in literature … (that) I will have to keep relearning, relearning, relearning. For me, when I'm writing songs, I have to keep relearning the eighth notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G. There's something not in that neural journey going on So I have phenomenal experiences and knowledge of some things and on the basics I am permanently frustrated that I cannot remember faces and names. I know this so I can work with it and I can do the exercises I need to do to keep the neural connections. But I will always be learning and that's because of how my body is   STEVE: So you're in London, you've been involved in these amazing stage plays and in these films and in your heart is still music. How did the music part then come about?   TOYAH: It was tough. I put the toughness down to my physicality. When record companies came to see a female singer, they wanted to lust after her. When I made “Quadrophenia” I made a conscious effort to lose about three stone in weight and change my appearance. That was because up until that point I'd had two years of us not being signed to a record label   We had enough for a set, we were doing regular touring, we were drawing 2000 kids into pubs they couldn't fit in. They were surrounding pubs yet we were still not being signed. I made a very physical decision that I was going to have to change my appearance so people saw me differently. During “Quadrophenia” I was also making (the TV series) “Quartermass” (below as "Sal" with Ralph Arliss as "Kickalong") with Sir John Mills so I was working day and night     I just took a lot of speed and I lost three stone. That helped me readdress how the industry saw me because by the time I started gigging again, after making “Quadrophenia”, I was a completely physically different person

STEVE: It also made you ill   TOYAH: I was so ill! I think the longest I've ever been without sleep was 10 days and the longest I've ever been without food and water was three days. I was on a two week shoot of “Quadrophenia” while working at Wembley Stadium on “Quatermass”     My agent didn't put two and two together that I was actually working 24 hours. So I wasn't eating and I wasn't sleeping. The makeup lady was watching me get smaller and smaller and my clothes hanging off me   I had a very bad cough and she saw blood in what was coming up and she literally slammed down her brushes, grabbed my wrist and said “I'm taking you to the hospital. Now.” And she walked me the hospital and said “test this girl now!” I had pneumonia. So I was put on antibiotics and lots of things to support my lungs. I carried on working 24 hours … (laughs)             

STEVE: Pneumonia ... it takes a long time to get over 

TOYAH: It scars your lungs. But I just carried on. I carried on with taking speed and just working 24 hours (laughs) I love that! I absolutely love it. I love that athletes can run 24 miles. I can't do that but I can push my body to work hard   STEVE: You were really in the epicentre of music at that point because  you were in “Mayhem”, the warehouse. Lots of musicians were hanging around. Tell me about that and tell me how it felt, because in a sense they were already successful but you hadn't been at that point   TOYAH: I was cult. I was definitely ascending. But the people that gave great reviews to most of the bands didn't review me kindly. I definitely  had an audience. What made me impossible to ignore was my audience was enormous and also my output was enormous. So “Mayhem” was a British Rail warehouse (in Battersea) which we converted into a venue. We weren't supposed to. It's completely illegal A man called Keith was the main developer and keeper of it and I came in as a rent payer, investor. Aam Ant’s wife Eve was there. A music journalist from the NME, John Hurley, and his brother Kevin were there. We ran this place and it became incredibly popular     Steve Strange would take it over from Fridays to Mondays for four day parties. Spandau Ballet did their first gig there. Iggy Pop, rehearsed “The Idiot” there. John Cale was there. Bowie came to visit. It very, very successful. It was grotty, it was dirty, it was cold, it was dark. It had one toilet. It was totally underground. And it ran and ran and ran. It has now been knocked down. When it was about to be knocked down there was protests that it should be preserved because of the history of it   STEVE: Earlier when we talked about the Sex Pistols, you said this was your community. When people came to see you in pubs in the early days what do you think they saw you as? Was it also their community?   TOYAH: Yeah. I think what they saw in me ... I was definitely fancied by the boys and girls. All that was going on, but I think they saw the underdog that made good. I was brought up within my family as an underdog and I think to a certain extent in the industry that still goes on a little bit   But I think the fans that I talked to I had similar childhood experiences to you and me. People that were too scared to come out as gay. People who totally identified with my not wanting to be identified at all as a gender because it led to me being belittled. I wasn't a supermodel and I wasn't pretty and slim. My gender meant I was being undermined and criticised the way God made me   So when they came to my shows I think it gave them strength to answer back. It gave them strength to believe in themselves. Believe in their instinctive internal voice, which is our true voice. Follow who and what they are meant to be and not be told to be something else by others. That's always been my message. I believe that's how I built my audience   STEVE: What were you learning on the way to have the success that you had by playing these gigs? What was lacking in terms to get to the next stage?   TOYAH: I've always been my worst enemy. Always. Because I would never do the obvious. There were times if I did the obvious I could have prolonged experiences. When “Anthem” came out, which was a huge album, gold, multi-seller. There was obviously six singles on that album, but we decided it would exploit the fans if we released more than two off the album     If we went with four singles, we could have prolonged that success into putting me into arenas. I've never ever really gone that way. I've always gone against formulaic ways of moving, formulaic ways of writing So every album I'd have a different style. I realised that I was my own worst enemy by doing that. I can see that now, when I create, that what people want and need from me and my natural way of creating music and writing is to do it with energy. I am not a balladeer. I'm not a love song person. I'm a person that you come into the room to see to have your energy lifted. So it's taken me a long time to see, respect, trust and honour that   When I was a lot younger I would just go off on tangents that confused the industry. So I'd make an album, then I'd go and do a stage play. I’d then go and do a film. I was always moving because I felt each of those communities were making me more creative. I think it did work with me, I think it's made me a more interesting artist. But I needed to learn what the industry needed at a certain level

STEVE: So what was it about Joe Bogen (the guitarist of the Toyah band, above in the middle, 1981) that you connected with and him with you? What was this symbiotic relationship in terms of writing?   TOYAH: The word symbiotic is exactly what worked between us. We had a great understanding, like brother and sister. I've never laughed as much as when I was with Joel. And perhaps there’s similarities with Joel. His upbringing and my upbringing, but also how people physically responded to us. I think there were similarities. I have no idea why Joel trusted me or even liked me. No idea because we never had those kinds of in-depth conversations   But we were very creative together. We were creative in a way neither of us expected to go. Joel loved jazz. I loved energy and expression and performance. I think it made us create something very unique. I think “Sheep Farming In Barnet” is one of the best albums on the planet. “Blue Meaning” is stunning. It's stunning   “Anthem”. Recognised. Stunning. One album that did well but not as well as “Anthem” ... “Love Is The Law" and also “The Changeling” but “Love Is The Law”…   It’s a breathtaking album!  We can hear that influence in the rest of the 80s. We definitely were influential. I think with Joel and I part of it came from the fact that we laughed so much. I have a similar relationship with my current co-writer Simon Darlow. We go into a room and things happen   It's a deeper experience. It's not a formulaic experience. It's to do with whatever the base chakra is. It connects. We have a bond that connects and things happen. I've been in writing situations with many great writers and just thought “what am I going to do with this? There's no chemistry” and then you find someone and the chemistry is irresistible. I think it's a deeper, psychic, animal instinct level   STEVE: You said at the beginning of this interview that Robert Fripp saved you. Where were you mentally in your life when you met him?   TOYAH: Before I met Robert, there was no one in my life that could explain the psychology of my relationship with my mother. So I was in a really bad place. My mother would call me a slag because I'd had three boyfriends. “You're a slag! When are you going to get married?”     So I had nothing and no one protecting my identity. Joel tried. There were situations where Joel had to protect me. Nigel Glockler (above on the far left), the drummer on “Anthem”, definitely protected me. But when he left I felt that my world had gone because I was totally alone   I was living in a situation where I was in permanent fear. Joel did what he could to protect me and Robert came along. Robert had heard from the management about my living conditions and he bought me a ticket to America. He said “pack a bag, a car will be waiting around the corner and you're not going back”     He just really helped me from day one. It was a violent and very unsettling time. It put my parents life's in danger. It put everyone's, who knew me, lives in danger. I stayed in America till it was safe to come back STEVE: He instantly knew that you were the one, didn't he?   TOYAH: Yeah, he knew immediately. He knew before he met me. He was living in New York. He said “my diary is empty. I'm going back to the UK. I'm going to meet my wife”. He knew. You may think I'm wacky and the experiences I've had … Robert is exactly the same. He's exactly the same. He's had the same psychic and spiritual experiences   STEVE: So if he saved you ... did you save him?   TOYAH: That's a question only he can answer. I think I'm a handful for him. I think the way Robert looks on it is I'm his spiritual work. Because Robert comes from a background where you work on things that make you uncomfortable. You work on things that you disagree with. I think I'm his spiritual work. But you'd have to ask him that question 

STEVE: This year you're also going to be playing at the Isle of Wight TOYAH: We're doing everything this year!   STEVE: It’s amazing but the Isle Of Wight is a big one!   TOYAH: There’s an even bigger one … You can't broadcast this. Do you edit any of this?   STEVE: No. Tell me afterwards   TOYAH: We’re doing the biggest   STEVE: Oh, well, I've got it already (they both laugh)   TOYAH: (It has) not been announced yet   STEVE: Oh, wow!   TOYAH: Believe me, to be invited back to the Isle of Wight ... because I played it last year (above) and it changed my career. We were broadcast on Sky Arts. It changed everything. It was a magical performance. The camerawork was fantastic. The audience were rammed! We were in the big top, which takes a good 8000 ... you can see them rammed all the way outside! It was a magical day and we've been invited back   STEVE: You said also during the interview that the critics would be very mean to you over the years   TOYAH: Well, they tried. There's certain types that are just mean and victimise anyway, but I've won a lot of critics over   STEVE: You mentioned the Isle of Wight gig last year. Do you feel that all that past has been overcome and you're now seen in the way that you should be seen as someone who was really responsible for the way of the 80s in so many ways?     Musically, visually, your attitude, the third gender power and so on. Do you feel that you are now at the point where that respect and that love has finally really showed itself in a grown-up way?   TOYAH: It's lovely to be acknowledged. There's definitely a sense of relief in certain areas. A lot of very powerful female writers have picked up on my career journey. The Guardian has been remarkable to me in the last three years   Robert and I now have another hurdle that both of us have to face and that is we're being seen working together. Our social media, “Sunday Lunch” and “Upbeat Moments” are phenomenally popular and are really well loved. But we now want to bring to the stage a perfect rock show   I think that this year is going to be us having to prove ourselves again in many ways, even though both of us are at the height of our artistry. I never feel settled. I never feel I've arrived. I've never feel I've been accepted but that doesn't matter, because as an actress those are wonderful things to have in the back of your head while you're creating a character   It would be lovely to just feel “oh, I've made it“ but I don't feel that and I'm not sure I ever will. People acknowledge us as creative artists, and in America for the first time during lockdown and now, we're viewed as performance artists in a really respectful way. That it's very satisfying   STEVE: I find it wonderful. I wish you continued success. I love your story because it's tough. It's hard and it's got these really deep moments in it that are tough to hear, actually. But it has created you. In the last few years, because the world has changed and it's opened up people are more much aware ...     I think this is the era, in a sense, where you are now allowed, finally, to be Toyah. You've been a big part of my life and I just want to thank you for your creative contribution to our culture because it's been massive. And you're also a lovely person (laughs)   TOYAH: Thank you, Steve. Thank you so much. What I will say is love was always there. But love and hate are two very close partners. I think sometimes people just love you in the wrong way   When I’ve experienced violence in my life it's because of jealousy from someone else. Or with my parents they just didn't know how to love but they believed they were loving me. That's where forgiveness comes from

You can watch the interview HERE

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

The suicide of Pétion and Buzot (graphic)

Source: La liberté ou la mort: mourir en député 1792-1795 by Michel Biard (2015) chapter 1.

For Buzot and Pétion, whose bodies are found in the countryside after their suicide, tracking down accessories/accomplices can be difficult, given the very condition of the corpses which offers witnesses a real plunge into horror. [1] Indeed, on 7 Messidor Year II (June 25, 1794), a quarter of an hour before midnight, the justice of the peace of the district of Castillon, "[...] warned by public outcry that two corpses had been discovered in a patch of wheat [...],” went to the scene, taking with him the description of the proscribed representatives which had been given to him by commissioners appointed by Julien, himself sent from the Committee of Public Safety. He notes first of all, without further details, the night not helping with the recognition of the bodies, "[...] that the two corpses have been devoured by the dogs, the top of the body being very infected by it [...]". He also discovered various personal effects and weapons on the spot, including seven pistols and two swords, which he had deposited at the common house of Saint-Magne, then he left the bodies under guard and went back to bed. Does sleep remain accessible to him after such a vision? His night is in any case short, since the next day, at six o'clock in the morning, he goes to the scene a second time and finds there the commissioners sent by Julien. This time in the light of day, he undertakes to describe the two bodies with precision. For the first, he notes: "[...] we found a corpse lying on its back, with a very black face and the teeth on the right side of the lower and upper jaw broken [...] said corpse is being gnawed by worms in the neck and has gut coming out of its lower abdomen and is revolting and unapproachable". Then the justice of the peace observes: “For the second corpse [...] the face, the whole upper body is being devoured, only the bones, hair and greyish hairbreadth remaining there [...].” Under this second body, he discovers yet another pistol, probably the one used for the suicide. Unlike the first corpse, where the black face and the shattered jaw easily attest that the man shot himself in the mouth, the second is reduced to such a state that only the presence of the pistol indicates the suicide. The dreadful report continues as follows: “Having wanted to have the said corpses undressed to be represented to those who gave them asylum, the rotten limbs followed the fabric; the citizen Boulanger Lanauze, health officer, domiciled in Castillon, required to go to the scene, considered that it was not possible without danger for those who would be employed to proceed; consequently, in the opinion of the commissioners, we left the corpses under the supervision of the municipal officers of Saint-Magne for their burial, taking the necessary precautions to avoid unhealthy air. According to the information given to us by the said commissioners and the verification made by them [...] it is indubitable that these two corpses are those of Buzot and Pétion, ex-deputies outlawed as traitors to the fatherland [2]. This same 8 Messidor (June 26), the two bodies did not even obtain a burial in consecrated ground, due to their appalling state: “[...] the two corpses could not without danger be transported to the cemetery of this commune, according to the report of citizen Lanauze, health officer; we had two six foot deep pits made, in one of which Buzot's body was laid; and in the other that of Pétion, which we then had covered with earth [...].”

[1] Recognition report of the bodies of Buzot and Pétion (Châteaudun library, collection of manuscripts, cart. 6/7/17). The date of 30 Prairial Year II (June 18, 1794), proposed by historiography for this double suicide, is incorrect. Similarly, Pierre Bertin-Roulleau claimed that the arrest of Barbaroux and therefore the escape of his two companions dated from that same day, because all three left their hiding place after seeing Guadet and Salle arrested pass in front of them (La Fin des Girondins. Histoire des derniers Girondins, après leur proscription, dans la Gironde. Septembre 1793-juin 1794, Bordeaux, Féret, 1911, p. 163-164). Barbaroux was actually arrested on 6 Messidor and guillotined the next day (June 24), while Buzot and Pétion managed to flee. The two fugitives committed suicide at the end of the afternoon or during the night of the 6th to the 7th. Doctors Gérard Lahon, expert at the Court of Appeal of Rouen, and Jean-Georges Anagnostides, expert approved by the Court of cassation, consulted on this document, affirm that the death can date back to 6 Messidor around six o'clock in the evening, which leaves thirty-six hours between death and the examination carried out on the 8th at six o'clock in the morning (cf. following note for their medico-legal report).

[2] Ibid. Gérard Lahon and Jean-Georges Anagnostides underline that "the putrefaction of a body, which in general begins to be clinically visible twelve hours after death, is all the more rapid as the surrounding atmosphere is hot, even stormy, and the corpse is abandoned on the ground, in the open air, in a context of bleeding wounds". Abandoned in the sun in a field, it fatally very quickly attracts predatory animals, attracted by the smell, which feed first on the areas where the blood stagnates, which explains the state of the upper body. In addition, the corpse "attracts flies which land and lay eggs in the vicinity of it, or even in it, where the blood has flowed, which gives birth to larvae (or worms)". Finally, "the putrefaction of a corpse, especially if it remains exposed in a hot atmosphere, can very well be accompanied, from thirty-six hours after death and a fortiori beyond, by the following physical phenomena: phlyctenular desquamation (bullous appearance of the skin) explaining an epidermis that sticks to clothing; a production of endogenous gas generating a secondary intra-abdominal hyper-pressure, leading to the appearance outside the belly of an intestinal loop exiting through a cutaneous orifice” (orifice which may have been created by a stab, but here more likely by an animal).

[incorrectblanc7]

A-Day: All of the boys' snacks are organic.

Jean Paul: That's cool. My kids eat candy off the floor.

[theonlyjelly-iwillput-inmybelly]

Escapade- Chapter Four

A/N: Hi again, friends! Here’s Chapter Four. I know it is short, but fear not; Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight combined account for more than half of the fic’s 20,739 words (in total they amount to 12,245 words-whew!), so there are some big fat chapters heading your way. And BOY are they packed with angst and fluff. Just stay with me a little longer. 

Also, I’d like to apologize for not realizing that italics do not transcribe from Google Docs to Tumblr. Rookie move, Cole, rookie move. But this is my first ever long fic for any fandom ever (I don’t write much), so go easy on me. Errors have since been resolved.

You can read…

The fic in its entirety on my AO3 (the link will take you to the beginning of the story)

Chapter One on my Tumblr (this will take you to Chapter One only)

Chapter Two on my Tumblr (this will take you to Chapter Two only)

Chapter Three on my Tumblr (I think you get the drill at this point)

Thank you so much you guys I am S H O O K

Please let me know through a comment, reblog, or message if you want to be added to the taglist! Chapter Five is scheduled to be posted on Wednesday. Reblogs are deeply ppreciated!

Tagging people at the end. If I forgot your name, PLEASE TELL ME

As the night fell into morning, the wretched breeze from the west blew sharply across Roman’s sleeping face. The Prince blinked awake torpidly, his face numb from the incessant wind. Blinking thickly to dislodge the crust from his eyes, he peered to the east and saw the iridescent purple rays of the rising sun. The great wash of colors emblazoning the early morning sky took his breath away. He had seen thousands of sunrises, but every one he saw always felt like the first.

He momentarily forgot himself and his mission until he felt Maximus move beneath his shoulders. The horse was also staring into the sunrise, his ears swiveling in many directions. Upon feeling Roman looking at him, he nickered in greeting. The horse rose, leaving Roman to fall upon the ground.

“I know...I know, I’m up,” Roman hissed, rubbing his eyes and tensing as the horse stepped over him to get a drink from the creek.

As Maximus trotted up and down the length of his picket line, Roman set about clearing away his meagre fire pit. He did not want his route to be traceable, not only so evil things would not be able to follow, but also so the other Sides would not come looking for him should he get in trouble. Roman was well aware of Logan’s knowledge of navigation, and Virgil now had a very finely attuned sense of where he was at any given time. He wanted to keep them safe.  

Roman’s stomach rumbled. Rooting around in Maximus’s saddlebag, he pulled out a sandwich, courtesy of Patton, and munched as he thought about his plan for the day. He had calculated his position the night before, using strategies he had memorized from Logan’s book. With a swift journey and little distraction, he should arrive in the Dragon Witch’s territory by dusk. This would allow him plenty of time to get into a good position and eat something sustaining. He would then tie Maximus up, and trudge alone to the Dragon Witch’s lair. There, he would have to wait outside of the entrance, for the Dragon Witch always put an impenetrable shield around her den when she slept, making killing her in her sleep impossible. This was just fine by Roman’s standards, as, in his opinion, there was something unjust about killing a creature in its slumber.

And so, after giving Maximus ample time to digest his breakfast, Roman geared the steed back up, and continued off to the darker half of his kingdom. The sun behind them reflected on the clouds that banked against the western horizon, making them appear solid black and smoky.

Roman, despite the exhilaration he always felt when racing across open land on a horse, couldn't help but shudder. The black fringe of clouds marked the beginning of the Dragon Witch’s territory. It was a thick curtain of smoke, ash, and cloud. Roman could already taste it minutely when the wind blew particularly strong into his face.

As the sun drew higher and higher in the sky, the white equine streak topped with a shock of purple hair below began to become hazier and hazier as it was beginning to be lost from view, engulfed by swirling gusts of wind littered with dust and ash.

Throughout the day, Patton and Logan did their level best to keep Virgil occupied. They spent most of the day catching up on Stranger Things, but around four o'clock, Virgil had had enough and resorted to surfing the Internet on his phone.

Logan was impressed by the strong face Virgil put on; if he didn’t scrutinize the anxious side for long enough, he would have been convinced that nothing more pressing and nerve wracking than usual was on his mind. He would still crack inappropriate, self-deprecating jokes whenever the opportunity arose, and he still spent his time lying flat on his back on the commons couch, his heavy headphones over his ears with his hood up.

At first, Logan had assumed that Virgil was fine, and upon seeing Virgil acting what he deemed to be entirely normal, he went to Patton in a slightly bewildered state. “He seems to be acting normally. I theorized that the increased factor of stress would be having detrimental effects on him, but it appears that my prediction was incorrect.” he spluttered.

“Aw shucks, Logan,” Patton whispered cheerily, looking up from a bowl of cookie dough he was preparing, “Not all signs of feeling bad can be seen that easily, y’know?”

“I assume you are referencing signs of mental and emotional distress,” Logan said, speaking in normal tones, aware that Virgil was listening to music far too loud for him to overhear their conversation. In fact, Logan could clearly hear My Chemical Romance’s ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ emanating from Virgil’s headphones from his spot on the other side of the room.

Patton nodded, enthusiastically scooping dough onto the sheet in misshapen lumps. Logan, his perfectionist standards kicking in, took a spoon and began showing the moral side how to properly form dough balls.

“Have you listened for Roman recently?” Logan asked quietly as he guided Patton’s hands, suddenly feeling the need to murmur as he heard the song end.

Patton’s happy posture was minutely deflated at the question. He nodded, his head bowing down. “...He’s scared.”

Logan gently bumped his shoulder against the moral side, as affectionate a gesture as he was comfortable with at this present moment as his hands were covered with cookie dough, and mustered up a reassuring smile. “He is. But if it is any consolation, I’ve read a number of studies detailing the benefits of having fear before one engages in stressful situations. This goes for simple things like performing on stage, as well as more dire situations like the one Roman has found himself in. The major conclusion I arrived at was that having fear, and thus heightened adrenaline, is actually beneficial to-”

Logan was cut off by Patton surging upwards to kiss him. His mind went utterly blank, though his heart picked up its pace.

After a few seconds, Patton pulled away, grinning like a fool, and hugging Logan’s stiff form tightly. “Thanks, Lo, that was a big confirmation.”

“Consolation,” corrected a voice behind them. The two other sides looked around quickly to find Virgil coming over to investigate what they were doing, “And you’re both big fucking dweebs.”

Patton lightly smacked Virgil’s shoulder with his spoon in reprimand for his language, but he allowed for the anxious side to snatch a dough ball from the tray and pop it into his mouth whole.

“Oh,” Logan grunted in disgust, “Virgil, that’s not very healthy.”

“Your mom’s not very healthy,” Virgil retorted through the cookie, smirking.

“That response still does not make sense! None of us have mothers!” Logan hissed, at his wits end much faster than he had anticipated.

“Cut it out, Virgil, you know how much he hates it when you say that,” Patton chided, waving a dough covered spoon at the anxious side.

Virgil was about to say something snide when he took a sharp intake of breath. The other two also tensed, Logan coughing slightly and Patton hiccuping as they all felt a very distinct increase in Roman’s heart beat, and an overall feeling of apprehension sweep through them.

Logan shuddered. “Well, that was unpleasant,” he remarked, the first to shake away the feeling.

“Ohhh, I hope he’s alright!” Patton whispered, pressing his hands to his mouth and shifting his weight from foot to foot nervously.

They both looked at Virgil, who was staring blankly at the stove and rubbing his fingers together as if he had been outside on a cold day without mittens. His breathing was becoming shallow.

“Hey, Verge?” Patton whispered, “You alright?”

@celiawhatsherlastname @monikastec @jordandobbertin @greymane902​@lostgirlgwen  @kittenvirgil@iamahumanwaitnothatsalie @logan-logic @jet-black-hearted-girl@gay-ace-trash @shadowjag @thestoryoferissur@lexboydfandompanda

[the-witch-and-her-husbands]

How the Other Half Live

Jil let out a low whistle as the cab pulled up in front of the hotel her uncle was staying in. The Savoy, no less. Clearly he wasn't short of a bob or two. It dropped her off directly in front of the main entrance. She threw some money at the driver, got her suitcase, and went inside. It embarrassed her slightly having the door held open for her and the doorman even tipping his hat, as if she were someone important. Trying not to gawk at everything and give away the fact she was clearly out of her element, she made her way slowly to the front desk and approached the concierge. 'Well, hello, mademoiselle. How may I help you?' He gave her a friendly, wide smile. He looked exactly how a concierge should look, as if the Savoy had ordered him from a catalogue. Tall, immaculate in appearance, expensive suit, and pleasant voice and manner. She gave him a slightly nervous smile in return, although she was trying outwardly to act as if she stayed in such expensive accommodation every day of the week. 'My uncle has a reservation for two. Mr Cygnus Festerworth. And I'm Jilomena Festerworth. It's most likely under his name.' 'Certainly. One moment.' The concierge looked through the ledger where all of the reservations were kept. 'Ah! Here we are. Festerworth, party of two.' He made a note and then reached for a key to the room. 'I'll arrange for the bellhop to take you to your room.' 'Oh! No, that's really not necessary. Honestly,' she protested. 'I only have the one bag, and I can manage by myself if you tell me what floor the room is on.' 'It's all part of the service, Miss Festerworth.' He gave her a reassuring smile as he pressed the bell. She blushed in return. All this fuss for little old her. Plus she'd clearly given herself away just then that she was a fraud, staying in an environment which was FAR too nice for the likes of her. She put her bag back down on the floor and waited for the bellhop, wanting nothing more than to get away so she could die of embarrassment in peace. 'I love your bag.' The concierge nodded towards her handbag. 'Thank you,' she murmured, slightly surprised that he would notice such a thing. It was a gift from her uncle, and one of the nicer things that she owned, admittedly. When he'd asked her to come and spend some time with him now that she had finished school, he'd sent her some new clothing and accessories so that she wouldn't look and feel out of place. She supposed it was part of the man's job to pay attention to details, and in that she was entirely correct. She also supposed that he complimented every female customer, but this time she was incorrect in her suppositions. He was always professional and polite, that much was true, but without dipping into fawning or false flattery. 'I believe your uncle has an engagement tonight, but he has arranged for you to have dinner in our dining room if you wish to do so?' His pen was at the ready to make a notation. She nodded after a moment's thought. 'Yes, please.' 'Very good.' He smiled widely again as he made note of the reservation. 'Will seven o'clock be sufficient?' 'Yes, that's perfect.' It gave her a few hours to get settled in, and to shower and make sure she was dressed and ready for dinner. Just then, the bellhop came and collected her bag. The concierge gave him the key, and she was whisked off to her suite.

[adrias-au-rath-blog]

Adrias stood stalk still as he watched Slytherin house leave. The other houses were gathering around their own prefects, and he found himself trailing after the Ravenclaws as they began to leave. The prefects of Ravenclaw, Jonathan Blackwater and Susanna Proffit, both tall, slender and bespectacled, lead the new house students up a winding staircase to the Ravenclaw common room entrance. It was a door with no handle. Only an eagle knocker. It reminded him of home; the large eagle statue used as a portkey by his father. The statue had been in the house for countless generations, originating back to one of Adrias’ grandfathers who had kept and bred golden eagles and the giant, magical eagles known as Ghetsari, which could lift a muggle car easily into the air, for a sport known as Falconry. The prefects looked as though they could be twins. Both with sharp, angular features, analytical eyes and dark haired. Jonathan spoke first. “You’ll notice something about our common room entrance.” Susanna spoke next. “It’s obvious, so someone please speak up and state the observation.” The new students were silent for a moment before a short, skinny boy with khaki colored hair spoke up. “There’s no door handle. The bronze knocker there will ask us riddles in order to gain admittance.” His voice was small but he spoke confidently. He’d obviously done his research beforehand. Adrias studied the boy carefully. “Precisely.” Remarked Jonathan. “If you can not answer the questions correctly, tell me, how might you still get in?” A girl spoke out this time, almost as tall as the prefects, but with a round face and short, curly hair. “You can’t! I know all about the common room entrances and there is no other way in to our tower, at least none that I could find through reading.” Susanna replied this time. “True the door won’t open for you if you can’t answer the riddles, but still incorrect. There is one other way to get in.” “By waiting for someone else…” Adrias mumbled, half trying to answer, half trying to speak only to himself. “What was that?” Jonathan and Susanna said in unison, both looking toward him. The other first years looked around to him, many recognizing him as the boy who went to the Slytherin table and whispering. Adrias hesitated. “By… w-waiting for someone else to answer correctly.. You can go in with them… right?” He could still hardly use his voice. The shock of being put in the wrong house was only just beginning to loosen its grip on his throat. Jonathan smiled, obviously pleased that one of his lot, the boys, gave the answer. “Yyes! That is correct!” Susanna nodded, “Let me remind you all that it will become tiresome to you and annoying to the rest of us if you rely on this secondary method. It points to laziness. You were sorted into this house for a reason. Live up to it.” She turned to the door. “Let us in, please.” For a moment there was silence. Then the head of the eagle spoke with a melodious voice.. “What has a head, a tail, is brown, and has no legs?” Susanna turned to face the students. “Well?” A boy near the back called out confidently, “A brown snake, of course!” Jonathan and Susanna both frowned. The door did not budge. They obviously knew the answer. “I like where you’re coming from; simple logic; but no. You are incorrect. Anyone else?” Adrias racked his brain, thinking of everything he possibly could. ‘Puzzles to get into my blasted room.. ridiculous’ he thought to himself bitterly. After a few moments, as the prefects allowed everyone do practice their thinkers, he decided it might do well to think outside the magical box. Muggle money, coins in particular, had heads and tails, so to speak. And pennies would be considered brown technically. But did he really want to risk looking so dumb? Would they really be asked a question pertaining to the nonmagical world? He held it to himself instead of speaking up, which he immediately regretted as he noticed Jonathan glance at him expectantly. But it was too late. “A penny.” Susanna sighed as she turned to the door. Adrias could hear some of the other students mumbling to themselves and to others around them. “A penny..?” “What’s a penny..?” “Blimey, that’s muggle money! Muggle money from America, at that!” “We’re supposed to know codswallap like that?” “Looks like I’ve got some more reading to do..” Jonatha spoke up as the door slid open. “That one was considered easy. Study hard, Firstyears.” They filed in after the prefects. They entered a room filled with books and tables, and Adrias noticed a beautiful white marble statue of the house Patroness beside the door that he assumed lead to the dormitories. Immediately Adrias could feel drowsiness set it, and the prefects lead them to their respective dorms. He was partnered with the shorter boy who had correctly answered a question previously. They silently went about checking their luggage which was awaiting them upon their beds, changed into nightwear and got into bed. Adrias had his wand in hand as he lay in bed. The wind blowing through the windows was so soothing.. Maybe he could deal with not being sorted into Slytherin.. He was still at a school for Magic. Surrounded by witches and wizards apart from his family. No longer surrounded by muggles… Maybe this could work.. It was an hour or two before he finally drifted to sleep, without realizing it.

At seven o'clock Adrias was awoken by a soft, wind chimy tinkling sound emanating from the very air around him. It was so soothing, yet wouldn’t allow him to fall asleep. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and saw the other boy doing the same. He figured he should have introduced himself earlier, but he didn’t either, so oh well. “I’m Sam. Sam Waylund.” The boy had suddenly made his way over to Adrias. “I’m Adrias au Rath..” he replied in kind, then grabbed his wand, dressed In his new house robes and headed for the door. His heart fell a bit as he thought of being separated from his sister. They had so looked forward to being in Slytherin together. “Are you pureblood?” Sam asked randomly, having gotten dressed as well and was now following Adrias out the door. “My mom is a muggle and my dad’s a wizard, but he didn’t teach me to use magic before coming here.” Adrias was quiet a moment. For such a shy looking boy, he apparently wasn’t, this Sam. “Um, yes, I’m Pureblood. My Family are all magicians, as far as I know, and they use magic all the time. I picked up on some stuff and they taught me other stuff. I never had a proper wand, though. This is my first.” He held up his ebony wand, admiring it. Sam was almost gawking. “That’s brilliant! You can use magic! I’m glad you’re in our house! Pap knew I would be in Ravenclaw. So was he and his brothers and my grandpap. Imagine someone of your skill in Slytherin.. I saw you sit at their table. People were whispering about you. I heard Amy Nimbleton say your whole family tree is full of Slytherins.” Sam’s face was grave. Adrias’ face grew warm. “I really wanted to be in Slytherin.. My sister is there, and yea, my family were all Slytherins up until my older brother was put in Gryffindor, and now I’m in Ravenclaw. My parents will be so displeased.” He said with a tinge of venom in his voice. He had completely forgotten to look for his brother during the sorting. Sam’s face twisted in confusion. “Wha-.. Why?” He asked pointedly. “They’re no good! Why on earth would you want to be one of them?” Sam’s tone had changed. He could tell that the boy was not impressed by this. “I-I dunno.. I just.. I like the black and green.” He said stupidly. “I’m going to go have breakfast..” He added before the conversation could sink further. He wanted to find Antonia. But Sam was not about to be done with him yet. “You don’t mind if I go with you?” He asked. This was not how Adrias imagined his morning beginning. “Uh, sure..” They walked silently together to the breakfast hall.

———————-

Antonia stretched lazily before sitting up, rubbing her eyes and waving a hand in the direction of the bathroom. “Accio brush.” He said sleepily, and a solid silver brush whizzed from the doorway into her hand. She stroked her hair with it through half-closed eyes, swinging her legs out from the covers and over the side of the bed, stepping off and striding over to the mirror. When satisfied, she placed the brush down and gave her nightgown a look over in the mirror before grasping the the sides of the skirt and twirling about once. Upon facing the mirror again she was draped in her new Slytherin house robes, custom fit just for her, elegant. Her mother would never have allowed less, which suited Antonia just fine. “Now then.” She mused to herself, fixing her hair in the mirror, “what was it mother said? 'A proper Slytherin always makes friends of her house. Her house is her family and family extends its boons beyond school.’” She recalled to herself. Her eyes fell upon her sleeping roommate. “Well, we must begin somewhere.” She sang softly into the mirror, a smile cutting smoothly onto her face. Her smile faltered just slightly as she remembered Adrias would not be waiting for her in the Slytherin common room. She hoped dearly that he was taking his disappointment with grace and not lashing out. Antonia turned to the sleeping girl, folding her arms, willing her to wake up so as to not have to walker her up herself. She tapped her foot lightly with a bit of impatience.

@kadenlafuatte

[dancingkingvaan]

Hangyeom: Did it hurt?

Rubin: When I fell from heaven? Of course not! I descende-

Hangyeom: No, when you came in. You fell. I saw you

[incorrect-multi-kpop-quotes]

Taeyoung and Vaan: Hey, got any snacks?

A-Day: *Pulls out fruit roll ups out of nowhere*

[incorrect-multi-kpop-quotes]

Taeyoung: What goes first: the milk or the cereal?

Vaan: Doesn’t matter as long as you remember the bowl.