#ive had them since i was like 10 and never gave them a proper. series name

[snickeringdragon]

drawing some of my silly ocs... ^_^

[nctsiren]

Thank you for turning on anon uwu for the ask game thingy can I ask these for all of the girls? daydreams, caress, ivory, golden, freckles, twilight, poppy, clouds, roses, lollipop, dimples, whisper, pencil, honey, velvet, strawberry, kiss, shampoo, lace, sapphos?

hewwo anon!!! thank u for requesting!! i’m sorry it’s late :(( hope you enjoy, nonetheless!! i enjoyed writing it 🥺

daydream-

hyeyoung: “i think i’ll say joan jett or debbie harry!! i admire them a lot, i love their music, and i think it’d be fun to be a rock singer.”

mila: “i think it’d be nice to be beetle. i’ve always wondered how his mind works. being a dog seems cool”

evie was answered in my other post!!

jimin: “seulgi unnie!! i’ve always wondered what it would feel like to be perfect ;)”

caress-

hyeyoung: “i love to snuggle... i like when johnny lays between my legs with his head on my chest. it makes me so happy.”

mila: “yes... but i play hard to get with some of the wayv members. i feel at ease cuddling with ten.”

evie was answered in my other post!!

jimin: “there are hundreds of youtube comps of me being snuggly and affectionate .. i just love my members”

ivory-

hyeyoung: “i wear matching sets. like the pants and the button up shirt? or the silk/satin shorts and matching tank tops. i love cute pajamas, i always have.”

mila: “i usually wear a sports bra and boxers or shorts.”

evie: “big shirt and my underwear.”

jimin: “usually a big hoodie and shorts!”

golden-

hyeyoung: “i cannot choose!! i own lots of stationary, and i scrapbook, as well.”

mila: “i’m not really a stationary person. just gimme some lined paper and i am all good.”

evie: “i love a good pen.”

jimin: “AHH i’m a sucker for the cute stationary cards. i like writing letters and notes”

freckles-

hyeyoung: “honestly, i have a pair of black cigarette pants that i love to pieces. i wear them often- they just go with everything and are so comfortable!”

mila: “i... honestly probably this hoodie i stole from lucas. it’s super big and comfy. if i don’t wear it at certain times i feel like something bad will happen ://“

evie: “i have this big, chunky grandpa sweater that’s striped and i wear it to the point where it might start falling apart.”

jimin: “it’s not really a clothing item, but i’ve worn the lily necklace chenle gave me every day since i got it. and my necklace that’s just my name, jimin, in cursive.”

twilight (this is their best friend outside of the other girls)-

hyeyoung: “i know it’s cheesy, but johnny, for obvious reasons... i’m also quite close to irene unnie, as well as jaehyun and taeyong. it’s hard for me to pick.”

mila: “ten.”

evie: “i legitimately cannot pick outside of the girls... maybe lucas... or yuta... or doyo... i don’t fucking know.”

jimin: “chenle- i’m stuck with him.”

poppy-

hyeyoung: “pink. i’m not even much of a pink girl, but pastel pink is lovely.”

mila: “is... pastel orange a thing? i see it in my mind, but i don’t know if anyone else can.”

evie: “green. green is my favorite color in general, all shades.”

jimin: “lavender and periwinkle are my favorite colors outside of grey and white.”

clouds-

hyeyoung: “it was me alone in a practice room, but the room had large windows in it and it was so light. i was dancing- there was no music playling, but i still was. i felt so happy, and i stopped after twirling because johnny had arrived and he just smiled at me with so much love in his eyes.”

mila: “i honestly don’t remember my dreams, but i remember how i felt during them?”

evie was answered in my other post!!

jimin: “all of my dreams are weird and i don’t have a favorite because they’re too bizarre to enjoy.”

roses-

hyeyoung: “red roses... my late grandma, who was the person i loved most in the world, loved red roses.”

mila: “i think... tulips.”

evie was answered in my other post!!

jimin: “lilies, but not because of my name. my loved ones give them to me because of my name, but i love them because i receive them from my loved ones LMAO”

lollipop-

hyeyoung: “lipstick is my favorite. nice reds and pinks. i never go dark with lipstick- only dark eye makeup.”

mila: “i love ALL makeup”

evie: “i kind of hate wearing makeup, but i guess i’d pick eyebrow stuff.”

jimin: “mascara and blush! i like the heavy blush look.”

dimples-

hyeyoung: “my favorite thing is when i see people’s eyes crinkle when they smile. smiles and lips- oh, lips- are so beautiful.”

mila: “i love the variety of expressions that people can show even in a matter of seconds. i love seeing the range of emotions and thoughts on people’s faces.”

evie: “i love noses. all noses. also, i think facial structures are so lovely and unique. everyone is different.”

jimin: “smiles and eyes. i think eyes are so, so beautiful. i’ve never met anyone with eyes that aren’t beautiful. and smiles are heavenly because seeing a person’s joy written on their face is priceless.”

whisper-

hyeyoung: “i usually get the amount you’re supposed to get. i tend to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. my alarm is santeria by sublime, like johnny’s...”

mila: “i have horrible, horrible insomnia and only get a very little amount.”

evie was answered on my other post!! ++ she also will sleep through ANYTHING even her alarms

jimin: “i either get too much or too little.”

pencil-

hyeyoung: “i bullet journal to plan, and i also write down the things that make me anxious during the day so that i can reflect and see what i could do next time to sooth myself more”

mila: “lined notebooks full of songs that i keep in a specific drawer. if i need to get out anything, it escapes my mind in a song”

evie: “my journals are 10% words, 90% drawings.”

jimin: “i have my song journals, but then i have my jimin journals which hold every intimate thought or emotion i have ever felt.”

honey-

hyeyoung: “baby or love. those are what johnny most commonly calls me. he likes to call me angel, too, and that really gets me :) .. we also call each other chipmunk.”

mila: “i used to hate being called lala, but now i love it. it’s also cute when evie calls me baozi, because i call her shumai. i also like bun.”

evie’s is answered on my other post!!

jimin: “uhh... baby, minmin (thanks, jisung), i like when people call me flower too 🥺”

velvet-

hyeyoung: “my first crush? i saw kurt cobain when i was little and thought he was the most handsome man i’d ever seen- i listened to a lot of nirvana growing up. a lot of people don’t expect me to like things like grunge or rock, but it’s very much my style!! im just shy and don’t dress to reflect it.”

mila: “i watched hercules when i was really little and became obsessed with meg. yup. it was the classic ‘i just thought i wanted to be her!’ but nope. gay.”

evie: “i don’t remember?! i think it was when i was in secondary school, because i didn’t like anyone for a while. just this classmate... and i was a cringe little fuck.”

jimin: “the first notable one i remember was when i was in second grade... i was reading twilight and fell in love with edward. yes, i was reading twilight in second grade, yes when i got to breaking dawn my mom didn’t let me read part of the honeymoon. i also had a crush on bella, and to this day, i would be in a throuple with robert pattinson and kristen stewart.”

strawberry-

hyeyoung: “cherries and strawberries, because they taste best covered in chocolate.”

mila: “mangos are so fucking good.”

evie: “grapes are arguably the best fruit and gumdrop grapes are arguably the best kind.”

jimin: “watermelon, bitchesssss”

kiss-

hyeyoung: “i mean, my first kiss was with a boy i was friends with when i was in america. we had both smoked a cigarette before it (i just wanted to try it) so it tasted bad. the other guys i kissed i weren’t proper friends with, and then johnny.”

mila: “um, ive kissed evie, like, when we were dating. i havent kissed many people to be honest...”

evie: “i kissed mila, i’ve kissed lily (a friendly peck), i’ve ALMOST kissed hyeyoung, i’ve kissed some of my guy friends and girl friends predebut- so, yes, i have kissed friends. and people who aren’t friends. i just like to kiss.”

jimin: “... sigh. renjun, chenle, evie, The Ex We Don’t Talk About, yeri (friendly, like with evie), and probably a few other friends in a non-romantic way? i dunno”

shampoo-

hyeyoung: “my favorite scent is johnny’s versace cologne, his shampoo, and his skin. definitely roses. i also love my perfume smell, clean linen, and i love the smell of champagne.”

mila: “i like the smell of cigarettes... YES i know it’s bad, but it calms me down. i’d also pick the smell of rain, or beetle, because he always smells good.”

evie: “the smell of paint and pencils is so comforting. i also like nature smells. when the air smells cold, it’s so nice. and the OCEAN.”

jimin: “home-y smells? laundry, and warm smells... lavender and florals, my perfume, and the smell of summer nights and bonfires. also any of my members.”

lace-

hyeyoung: definitely a dress person, is definitely in love with the classiness and sleeves of that first one, and is definitely happy about how sexy she looks in that second one.

mila: is NOT a dress person and prefers dresses that she can go braless with and are comfortable

evie: this is just Evie and we all know it

jimin: the first one is cute on it’s own AND with a big sweater/sweatshirt over it, and the second one make her feel like she on a european holiday

sapphos-

hyeyoung: “jiminnie :) she writes such beautiful poetry- i’m very thankful that she chose to share some with me!”

mila: “i don’t think i have a favorite poet, to be honest... i like kate bush, though, and i know she’s a singer, but she’s truly a poet.”

evie: “michael faudet. he wrote a series of poetry books, his first is called ‘dirty pretty things’ and it’s really 18+ but i thought it was gorgeous. i have all of his books.”

jimin: “asking me to pick a favorite poet is like asking me to pick a favorite member- can’t do it.”

[sondepoch]

IV: Neutral Route (Y/N)

Where Futures Begin

Life used to be simple for you. Peaceful. But the Savior had other plans for you, and in moments, she ruined what you thought was your one shot at happiness. Blinded by anger, you escaped the Mint Eye, but that triggered a series of events that would bring you further into the world of brothers Saeran and Saeyoung. And further into the twisted world of your love for them.

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

MASTERLIST 

The first one to hug you wasn't Saeran, as you had thought it would be.

No, as soon as you stepped outside the Commitment Room, the Savior had embraced you, drinking in the beautiful sight of you. Her smile was dazzling as she stared at your changed hair and irises, and not a single word was exchanged as she pulled you to her personal chambers.

Your head was still in a slight daze, your mind a second late in processing everything, still healing from the pain. The Savior must have known, though, because she didn't do anything that would further tangle your thoughts.

Instead of bombarding you with questions like you had expected, she had simply told you what to do.

It was strangely comforting, being given simple commands that you were able to carry out without fear of messing up. The Savior was thoughtful like that. There was no room for error in her words, they were so simple.

Shower with soap and shampoo. Change into these undergarments. Dry your body and hair. Come out and wear this.

"Oh, silly (Y/N), do you need help with that?" The Savior asked from across the room as she observed you struggling to pull yourself into the dress she had laid out for you. For some reason, the velvet fabric wasn't gliding over your skin as smoothly as you thought it would. "Here, (Y/N), you forgot to tie the waist down first. There we go."

The Savior smiled as she continued to dress you, ordering you to stand still while she applied makeup to your face for the first time, giving you a dab of lipstick and subtle eyeliner. "It seems that Ray decided to tattoo you on your back, so all your dresses from now on will have low backs or will be backless. Now that you're fully committed, you'll want everyone to know that you've embraced magenta. They should realize that from your eyes, but showing off the mark of the Mint Eye will reinforce their suspicions on your new position."

The Savior beamed at you as she finished straightening out your dress and makeup, moving on to style your hair. Her fingers were deft, and they worked quickly, but Saeran did it better.

"I know your mind must be a jumble right now, but don't worry. You'll go back to normal as soon as you get a nice, long sleep. Tonight, I'm going to introduce you to the other members of my council. Others who have gone through the second commitment. You want to look pretty for their very first impression of you, don't you? Ray and I are the only ones who are already personally acquainted with you."

The Savior continued on, and you were relieved that she hadn't asked you anything. If she threw a question your way, you'd need a long time before you'd be able to answer it. "Wonderful. You're really quite beautiful, (Y/N). It's a shame you weren't already born with magenta hair and mint-green eyes. That would be really perfect, wouldn't it? Well, white hair suits you fine. Here, come, follow me, you're going to meet your fellow council members!"

The Savior's smile wasn't contagious, bright as it was. You followed the blonde woman to a part of the Mint Eye that you'd never been to before, the ceilings high enough and the chandeliers extravagant enough to put the Hall of Mirrors of the Versailles Palace to shame.

It was a long walk to the end of the hall, but when you finally reached the door, you found yourself nervous. It was strange. You couldn't form a single manual thought in your head, but you felt a rush of adrenaline at the thought of meeting the other council members. Or was it Saeran specifically that you were nervous to see?

The Savior laid a single knuckle across the door, the lonely syllable echoing throughout the hall despite its delicateness, and the door opened.

Everything afterward was a daze.

Not the same kind of daze you'd been in since leaving the Commitment Room, though. It was a more numb feeling, brought forth by the crushing realization that in the month you'd been gone, things had changed.

"Saeran," You whispered upon entering the room, his name possessing your lips the first time you'd opened your mouth all day.

But the male didn't stand up to greet you.

He barely even acknowledged your presence. "S..." You were about to call him again, but stopped when you saw the image before you. Saeran, laughing openly, laughing in a way that you had only seen once before, with his left arm draped around a girl you've never seen before.

"Well, (Y/N), this is my council. What's wrong, hm? Oh." The Savior followed your line of sight to where Saeran sat, and you clenched your teeth. "That's MC, our newest admit to the council. She joined last week, actually. She's...special, so she was accepted without making any primary or secondary commitments."

You didn't catch the venomous tone in the Savior's voice.

The Savior stepped further inside, her heels echoing in the small chamber, and all chatter ceased. The council members quickly darted to different seats in the room, and for the first time since your arrival, Saeran acknowledged you.

You kept your eyes on the floor, not wanting to greet anyone as the Savior gave a short speech about who you were; she took you to your seat by the hand, as if you were a child.

And in that moment, you felt like a child.

Breakable as a baby.

Like a single caress too rough would be enough to maim you for life.

And seeing Saeran laugh so openly around another girl, staring at her with eyes full of admiration, well, he may as well have just taken your heart and used it as a punching bag in one of his workouts.

"(Y/N)?" The Savior nudged you, "Is there anything you would like to add?"

You thought about saying no. You thought about asking to be excused. You thought about ignoring the Savior.

Instead, you opted for the safest route of them all. "I look forward to working with you all in our paradise," You pulled your gaze up to Saeran, then to the brown-haired woman supposedly called MC, "Where everyone is happy."

The Savior smiled, as if that were a test, and you had selected the correct answer.

"In the magenta of dreams and hope." The council chorused back to you.

***

The Savior was the leader of the Mint Eye, the supreme ruler, the sovereign head. Her blonde hair and gorgeous, green eyes suited her. They made her look distinguished among the crowd of disciples and believers, and even the council members.

As you stood in front of the mirror, though, you realized that while her face was the head of the Mint Eye, yours was the embodiment of it. With the faint touch of makeup the Savior had decorated your skin with and the simple updo she had worked your snowy white hair into, your eyes were especially prominent, practically shouting mint eyes at everyone who would ever make eye contact with you.

And the dress she had selected for you to wear - it was truly stunning. The design was elegant yet provocative, the modest length and full-sleeve arms making the violet dress look almost prudishly designed, but that only furthered the provocativeness of your completely open back, where your Mint Eye tattoo caught the eye of anyone who looked your way.

Mint eyes, magenta dress; no other colors could be seen on you, with your hair bleached, and your skin faded as if someone had put a grayscale filter over the rest of your body.

The Savior was right.

You really were beautiful.

A knock killed the silence, and your eyes darted to the door, expecting it to open. When it didn't, you walked over to it in intrigue. "Yes?" You asked, opening the door a crack, sighing in relief when you saw that it was only Saeran, "Why didn't you come in after knocking?"

Saeran strolled into your room, his expression blank, "I may be supervising your work, but we're technically the same rank in the Mint Eye, now. It would be unfitting for me to enter your room without proper authorization."

You frowned.

"Why are you being so formal, Saeran?"

"The same reason you're being so distant, (Y/N)."

You pulled your gaze up from the floorboards and met Saeran's expression. He looked...hurt? Upset? What did he mean? Were you being distant? That was only because he had started it first, with MC. Or were you overreacting? Who even was MC?

You groaned out loud, bringing a hand to cradle your head as you felt your head shake with a sudden earthquake of pain. "Please don't..." You whispered, unable to remember the words to communicate your desires. "Please don't be so confusing right now, Saeran. I can't handle it. My head hurts too much..."

Whatever emotion had taken control of Saeran in the previous moment, it was gone as he watched you try to soothe the pain coursing through your mind, so preoccupied that it seemed as if you had forgotten him altogether.

His own secondary commitment had been many years ago, but he still remembered how nothing was quite right until the morning after. Saeran sighed. "Let's get you to bed, princess. Come here."

You willed your legs to move forward, almost tripping on your own feet as you tried to escape the headache that had suddenly rooted itself in your mind. Before you could fall on the floor, you felt a pair of strong arms catch you. In seconds, you were being carried to your bed by those same arms.

Saeran held you upright with one hand, deftly undoing the hairstyle the Savior had done, and even managed to remove the makeup from your skin.

You hadn't even realized that you had fallen asleep until Saeran was waking up. "(Y/N)," he whispered, shaking you. "(Y/N), you can't fall asleep just yet. You need to change out of those clothes..."

"This is a new room. I don't even know where my wardrobe is, Saeran," you murmured, rubbing your eyes. You couldn't have been asleep more than a few minutes, but your head already felt clearer. "And I'm too tired to find out. I'll just sleep in this, it'll be okay."

You could practically feel Saeran roll his eyes at your words, and you heard him grumble, "You really like being treated like a princess, don't you, princess?"

You giggled lightly in return, and heard some shuffling in front of you.

You opened a single eye lazily and saw Saeran, shirtless, offering you the large white T-shirt he had been wearing when he came in. "Change into this, at least. It'll be long enough on you to cover everything, and I promise I won't peak..." Saeran made a show of turning around. "Tell me when I can look, okay?"

You rolled your eyes, too tired to argue. Without getting out of bed, you somehow shrugged the dress off your body and changed into Saeran's shirt. He was right. The shirt hid everything that needed to be hidden, but it still exposed the greater majority of your thighs. It was like another, shorter dress. Though if you shuffled around too much, you knew he'd see your bright (f/c) panties.

"Y-you can turn around now," You whispered, slightly embarrassed at the fact that you were wearing Saeran's clothes.

"Oh come on, (Y/N), really?" Saeran gestured dramatically to the small lump on the floor where you had uncouthly dumped your dress. "Alright, I'll fold this up, and then I'll see you tomorrow, okay, princess?" Saeran leaned over to plant a kiss on your cheek, but you pushed him backward.

"No." You said with a pout.

"You don't want me to fold the dress?" Saeran asked, arching an eyebrow.

"No. No, 'I'll see you tomorrow.' You're staying here tonight." You blurted, too tired to be embarrassed by the absurd request.

Saeran sputtered out a few syllables of shock, utterly unaware of how to handle the situation, so you took control, throwing a pillow at the light switch and you miraculously hit your target, leaving the room pitch black. "Good night, Saeran," you whispered, laying your head on one of the two remaining pillows, pulled Saeran into the bed, snuggling up against him as he resigned himself to his fate.

"Yeah, yeah, princess," He grumbled with a chuckle, acting amused even though you knew he was blushing as you wrapped your arms around his bare torso, "Good night."

You fell asleep within seconds, exhausted after a month of pain and suffering, and then a full day of actively following the Savior to meet with the council members. Your mind was far away, finally free to explore dreamland without promises of agony in the morning weighing down on your mind.

You slept with a smile on your face, blissfully unaware of how Saeran stared at you the whole night, the midnight moon through the window illuminating your face. You didn't feel him trace the tattoo he had needled into your once-bare back, or notice him playing with the hair he knew would never look the same, or even sense him staring at your closed eyes, where light circles from the eye brace still left a shadow on your face.

You didn't see him cry as he realized, once again, what he had done to you; and that every time he looked at your mint green eyes, he would be reminded of his sins against the world, against God, against you.

He stared at your soft lips, recalling how he had stolen a kiss from them in one of his attempts at getting you to drink the Elixir of Salvation. No doubt, you had no recollection of the moment—the memory drowned in the pain that followed immediately after. It was an action he regretted.

He had always wanted to kiss you, but in the right way.

Now, he didn't know if he'd ever be able to let himself get close to you again. Much less, kiss you.

As you slept, he knew you had forgiven him from the way you clung to his chest and intertwined your legs between his. He loved that quality about you. You would always forgive him whenever he messed up, give him another chance when he fell short, move on when he found himself unable to. This past month was no different in that regard, he knew. You understood his position, and you were still able to forgive him for all the suffering he'd inflicted on you.

He, on the other hand, didn't think he'd ever be able to forgive himself.

MASTERLIST

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

Word count: 2.5k 

Notes: Life is ew wtf everything sucks :\ well, not everything, but more than usual. I've been sick and, honestly, this week just hasn't been good for me. I've had almost no time whatsoever to write, and I feel strangely stressed :( Here's hoping that life gets better by the next update

Comment & Like

Next Update: 1/13/20

I do not own the rights to Mystic Messenger or any of the characters within it.

[peckhampeculiar]

Jade’s journey

WITH A CAREER SPANNING TV, THEATRE AND FILM, ACTOR AND POET JADE ANOUKA CAN TURN HER HAND TO ANYTHING.

She talks about filming with Idris Elba, her one-woman show Heart and how she took hundreds of local youngsters for a night out at Peckhamplex

WORDS: EMMA FINAMORE; PHOTO: LIMA CHARLIE

Some people just seem made for storytelling, and the magnetic Jade Anouka – equal parts actor and poet – is most definitely one of them.

Now living in Camberwell – near her favourite brunch spot, Kurdish cafe Nandine on Vestry Road – Jade grew up in Bexley, later moving out to Dartford. She kept up her local connections though, going to secondary school in Lewisham, and it was here in south-east London she had her first proper break in acting.

Inspired by Saturday drama classes, a 17-year-old Jade entered a competition in the local paper and landed a week-long workshop at Greenwich Theatre. It ended with a production of the musical Golden Boy, alongside Olivier-nominated Jason Pennycooke – now in hit West End show Hamilton – and Sally Ann Triplett, whom Jade describes as a “musical theatre legend”.

“I was actually doing a project on her at school when I went to Greenwich Theatre,” she says. “Whenever I was in a play I enjoyed it so much, it would become my world. My parents could see it too, before I even knew I could do it as a job. I just loved it.”

It was a love she grabbed with both hands. Jade headed to the National Youth Theatre on a scholarship and then on to university, to Guildford School of Acting.

“It was a bit of a culture shock,” she remembers. “There were lots of people there who knew the whole ‘acting world’, they knew people’s names, they knew playwrights – and I didn’t know anything. I just liked messing about on stage.

“There were people there whose worlds were so different, who’d had totally different upbringings to me. So that was a bit of a shock. But I made mates for life, friends from different worlds, which is really good but also from the point of view of an actor – to be able to empathise and not be closed into your own world. It was amazing to meet an array of people and make friends.”

Despite once being told by her voice teacher she would “never do Shakespeare – I got completely slated for my voice”, Jade was hired immediately after graduating in 2007 by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, where she not only landed a spot in an internationally touring play but earned a postgraduate award in teaching Shakespeare.

She was hired by the RSC for a role in The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood’s twist on Homer’s epic The Iliad, focusing on a group of women who make just a brief appearance in his original. The all-female cast took the production to Atwood’s home country of Canada, where she came to see it, setting Jade up for a 14-month stint with the company.

Since then, she has taken the worlds of both stage and screen by storm – picking up numerous awards and accolades. In 2011, she received a commendation at the Ian Charleson Awards for her performance as Ophelia in Hamlet at the Globe, and in 2014 she won the Stage Award for Acting Excellence for her one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe. She was also named among InStyle’s Bafta breakout stars for 2018.

A woman of many talents, Jade has landed television roles in Doctor Who, Chewing Gum, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and Trauma. Earlier this year she appeared alongside Sheridan Smith in Cleaning Up, a six-part drama on ITV.

Her most recent adventure in television is alongside megastar Idris Elba in his Netflix comedy series Turn Up Charlie, based in London and Ibiza, in which he plays a down-on-his-luck DJ, while Jade is Tommi – a slick, successful sound engineer.

“That was so much fun, I’ve never worked so long on a comedy before. I’d done a bit on Chewing Gum but nothing like this,” she smiles. “And he [Elba] created such a great vibe on set, because he was producing it too. I loved the cast – Piper Perabo [of Coyote Ugly fame] is great, she’s so cool. We went to Ibiza to film too – I got the jammiest deal.

“Idris is great – he improvises a lot, so we’d finish the scene but then keep rolling. If it feels like something’s fizzing they’ll keep it going.”

She has fond memories of when the cameras switched off too. “Oh my God, I swam in that sea,” she laughs. “Everyone was there, cast, producers, crew... we all had a dip and I remember looking round and thinking, ‘This is mad! Work should not be this fun’. I was proper pinching myself.”

Jade had another pinching-herself moment in March, when her film Fisherman’s Friends hit the cinema screens and made the top four movies in the UK – behind only Dumbo, Captain Marvel and Us. It follows the story of 10 fishermen from Cornwall who get signed by Island Records and achieve a top-10 hit with their debut album of sea shanties.

Jade plays a key role in the story. “It’s a proper feel-good British film,” she explains. “I play the head of Island Records, who signs the fishermen, who is a real person in real life, but is a man.”

Gender-hopping in roles isn’t unusual for Jade, who despite proudly flying the flag for female actors – in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy at the Donmar Warehouse in 2016, for example – has played parts such as Henry IV’s Hotspur and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, and has spoken previously about wanting to tackle James Bond.

“I was thinking about that the other day. And I also play roles on stage that are ‘male’ roles too. I kind of love that,” she smiles.

The idea of playing with identity feeds into her other life as a poet, in which she writes and performs verses, often exploring issues like gender and ‘otherness’.

Poetry has been with her since drama school and it was something she embraced on the road on acting jobs. “It was a way to be creative and be in control,” she explains. “When I couldn’t be in control in the acting world, I could be in control of my poems.”

In 2016 this led to her publishing a volume of verses – called Eggs On Toast – and last summer she gave a TEDx talk at Theatre Peckham on “being black, being a woman, being other”, featuring many of her own poems. Bounty, for example, explores the complexity of race and identity, with powerful, emotive lines.

“It ended up that the talk was going to be about identity,” Jade explains. “I knew I had to use poetry, because that’s how I can communicate with my voice best.”

She closed the talk with I Am A Woman – a powerful homage to Maya Angelou and her seminal poem Phenomenal Woman – peeling away societal expectations of femininity, getting to the root of what being a woman means to Jade.

What it means to be a woman of colour, and an actor, is also important to her, and it inspired a local event she organised last year called Black Panther Peckham.

“I love superhero films,” she explains. “I grew up obsessed with them, but there were so few black women. I was so disappointed with Halle Berry as Catwoman, because I love Halle Berry and thought it would be amazing... and then it was such a bad film. The script was just all wrong.

“So when I heard about [superhero film] Black Panther I thought, ‘Oh my God this would have been my absolute life when I was young’, and I just thought that people like my little cousins needed to watch it.”

Seeing Oscar-winner Viola Davis raising money in the US to send underprivileged young people to see the film, Jade sought to do something similar here in London. “We shouldn’t take it for granted that everyone can just afford to go to the cinema. Peckhamplex is obviously good anyway – £4.99, get in! – but even that for some people is a luxury. So I just started a GoFundMe page, and it went absolutely mental!”

Jade raised thousands of pounds for hundreds of local children to see Black Panther at Peckhamplex, with popcorn, drinks and Disney merchandise donated to the evening, along with a post-show Q&A for the young audience.

“It was so heartwarming,” she smiles. “It was so great that we could do it. I kept popping into the cinema and hearing the crowd’s reactions. There was something about a load of young people being in a room alone with their peers, that kind of shared experience, that was really special. They were having so much fun.”

Jade recently took another 140 young people from Peckham and other parts of south-east London to see the play Emilia in the West End. “I just thought it was so important for young people to see this production,” she says.

“The first of its kind with three women of colour in the lead and on the poster, in a play set in Shakespeare’s time about a forgotten, hidden story of a woman who found her voice. I was able to use some money left over from Black Panther Peckham to help make it happen.”

The second half of this year is set to be as action-packed as the first, with Jade appearing in A Black Actress – a photo exhibition celebrating black actresses that is set to open this summer. She will also appear alongside Blake Lively and Jude Law in The Rhythm Section, a big release hitting cinemas in November.

When we meet, she has just finished a run of her own one-woman show, Heart, at The Vaults under Waterloo Station, and it marks another branching-off in her creative life.

The 50-minute monologue is a journey of the heart, following a woman from her wedding day for the next seven years. “It’s a kind of call-to-arms, a call to look at society,” she explains.

“Really, again, it’s all about identity, and maybe feeling ‘other’. The idea of that and of heartache –where that sits you in society. It’s funny, but most people were crying at the end. They said they could recognise their own stories or moments in it.”

Opening on International Women’s Day with an all-female team made it all the more poignant, along with the fact that Jade was performing her own material in the setting of a play, rather than someone else’s script, or speaking poetry.

“It was different because it was my words,” she says. “There’s nothing to hide behind, but it was amazing. It was the start of a journey – I’m definitely going to do it again [Heart will be coming to a London theatre this autumn] and hopefully publish it. I just want it to live on, I want it to be told and told.”

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

[earthvsjazz]

How to Properly Watch Poltergeist - By EarthVsJazz

A Guide To Watching My Favorite Movie of All Time (1982)

Listening to: Doug Stanhope Podcast #312 

Playing: With iMovie trying to put out My First YT Reaction Video

Eating: Dollar General Sour Neon Crawlers (Gummy Worms)

Drinking: Soda 

Smoking: Colorado Best Dabs “Mother Earth”

     The other day I had the Pleasure of watching Poltergeist the other day with some of the people from the cast on Rabbit (Link Below)...

Back in the day, This was a tradition for me. On Halloween...I didn’t dress up or pass out candy....but I would have a certain ritual that I invented to make me happy while enjoying my favorite movie of all time...

Over the last couple of months I have been collecting some Poltergeist Memorabilia and I realized that it had been too long since watching this movie...

I gave this list on cast the other day...but I wanted in depth to be able to show others how I would go about enjoying any of three movies in this series...

So here is a list of How to Properly Watch Poltergeist:

#1 Own Poltergeist

      This might seem redundant to say, but in todays world it’s easy to forget that people used to buy movies...I come from the world of Video Stores, My Father worked in Video Distribution for years, I still remember the Huge show room floor, where I would spend hours looking at every movie cover..

    My Parents used to Own a Video Store, As a teenager (1998-1999)I worked for Hollywood Video when DVD’s first came out....I was with Blockbuster from 2005-2008 right before the Titanic Sank..and was replaced by Redbox...I was there for it all...

   I want to stress that everyone should have this movie in their collection...Not on the Cloud...Tangible, physical Media that you can put on your shelf...If you can’t there are other popular Streaming services that have this movie...Own it, don’t steal it...You’re better then that..(Enjoy a stock photo of the 80′s Big Clamshell VHS version)

#2 Watch with Someone

Yes this is an important Step...Not to be taken likely...I’ve Said this on cast...I will say it here, and I will one day make a T-Shirt

“Being Alone Should Be Illegal” - EarthVsjazz

The best way to enjoy this movie, and to make sure that future generations continue to enjoy this cinematic masterpiece is to watch with Friends or Family..A loved one....A Co-Worker, Your Grandma, Your Cousins, anyone you can invite to watch this will do..

Bouns Points: Someone who hasnt seen it.

Double Bonus Points: If that someone also is under 10, and hasn’t seen it yet. This movie terrified me as Child...

#3 Turn Down the AC!

     It Needs to Be Cold. Like Really COLD! Colder then You have ever had your AC...If at all possible rent a Hotel, or cover your entire house in loose broken ice cubes from your refrigerator... 

I recommend watching this in the Dead of winter, or hacking your AC system to allow for colder then normally possible temperatures...

I cannot stress this enough....If you have the chance to  watch this movie in a igloo,ice cave or Fortress of Solitude...Take the Chance...YOLO!

This Step should be done during the prep for the movie to ensure maximum viewing pleasure...

*Life Hack: If you are unable to get your AC unit to the proper temperature (69°F or Below) Top off with Freon .

#3 Meal Prep

Supplies Needed:

1 -  Bowl, Possibly Ceramic...If you’re not a knuckle dragging neanderthal, you should already own some Stoneware on hand...

*Life Hack...Cover in water and Place in Freezer for at least 20 Min before showtime

1 - 1/2 Gallon of RED LABEL WHOLE MILK (Depends on how many Guests you are entertaining) 

This is non-negotiable...I cannot and do not drink Milk anymore...It destroys my insides up like Broken Glass...but that doesn’t mean I can’t live vicariously through you the reader...No Almond, Soy, Powder, 2%, None of that will do..If you drink Skim milk, you should stop torturing yourself....WHOLE MILK that is as cold as you can get it with out actually freezing it.

1 - Giant Bag of Coco Dyno-Bites 

If you live overseas I’m not mad at you...but if you live in the Good Ol’USA you have a Dollar General or Walmart and they sell Giant Bags of Cereal...Then you are in luck....

*Yes, you are free to choose any cereal you so desire, but if you are still reading this, then the purpose of this particular article is to have the specific “EarthVsJazz™ Poltergeist Experience”

1 - Spoon *Also Stored in Freezer

1 - Napkin *As Needed

*Life Hack, Have materials ready on hand, but do not combine milk to cereal before you are comfortable and all other preparations have been met..

Remember Kids!

Always “Pour At the Lion’s Roar”! 

(No one Says that I just made it up)

#4 Surround Sound 

    I cannot recommend enough the importance of Surround sound when viewing this movie. Especially if you are viewing this Digitally or Remastered Versions it is essential..A Soundbar will not be enough, the viewer must have a subwoofer as well as 5.1 or above calibrated Surround Sound to ensure maximum viewing pleasure..

#5 Turn off the Lights!

Once you have all the requirements met...Place any additional items that might be needed by you...Extra Blankets, Pets, Drinks Etc....

When Completed it is now nessesary to TURN OFF THE LIGHTS...Mute your cell phone, and get ready to Pour the Milk as described in Step 3

*Life Hack: Use Dark Blankets or Flex Seal to get rid of unwanted light sources.

If someone in your group suggests that they only saw the remake...Unfriend them and ostrasize them from your group or tribe...Keep in my mind I did not see the remake, but thats not the point...I can hate things Ive never seen before and never gave a chance.

#6 Final Thoughts

Matt Suggested that the viewer should not wear pants during the movie...Normally I would include this on my list, but I feel it would be conterintuive to the low temperatures described above...so I leave it as an honrable mention..

I really enjoyed putting this post up..and wish I had more subjects to blog about...My lifestyle consists of Chinese food/Jerk off/repeat...so when I actually get inspired to an actual blog post..I jump at it..That being said..if you have any subjects that you would like me to cover or talk about Please LMK..

I pride myself on trying as hard as I can to provide original content and wish I could do this more..

This is my favorite movie of all time..Im not even sure why..But it has always had a special place in my heart...

If you tried the techniques described here I would really love to know if it added to the experience.

I know this is TLDR but I do appreciate it...Feedback is more then appreciated..

Thanks for your time

- EarthVsJazz

[cowboyarc]

tagged by @lostnoise​ ty!!

1. do you prefer writing with a black pen or a blue pen? black pens, because in english they always asked us to use blue. and english was awful for me so no blue :p

2. would you prefer to live in the country or in the city? city, i lived in the bumheck middle of nowhere for 18 years and hated it.

3. if you could learn a new skill, what would it be? oooh, i really want to get better at the guitar, or learn to sword fight.

4. do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar? Yes, but very very little.

5. what was your favorite book as a child? I dont remember having a favorite book? but my dad had this whole story written out and he’d use that to tell me bedtime stories. it was so cool.

6. do you prefer baths or showers? Showers, i am get anxious in baths? i feel weird just sitting there.

7. if you could be a mythical creature, which one would you be? d-r-a-g-o-n-s. in my dads stories that i mentioned above? there was an elf that was a half-ling and could turn into a dragon.

8. paper or electronic books? I dont read much? but definitely paper.

9. what is your favorite item of clothing? a ramones t-shirt my dad bought me on a business trip once. (its the rocket to russia album)

10. do you like your name? would you like to change it? I friggin hate my name, i wanna change it so bad but i dont know to what.

11. who is a mentor to you? i um.. dont have one?

12. would you like to be famous? if so, what for? I don’t know if I want to be famous, i’m very private person, but i guess if i had to maybe like a jenna/julien type of deal? like his aries kitchen series.

13. are you a restless sleeper? Very Much Yesss, I’m move so much.

14. do you consider yourself to be a romantic person? no... i’ve never had the opportunity to be?

15. which element best represents you? I’d say fire. maybe?

16. who do you want to be closer to? probably a couple of people? i dont talk to many people? but physically? my best friend i miss her a lot.

17. do you miss someone at the moment? my best friend, audi and alex and thier dogs, and my pops.

18. tell us about an early childhood memory. a lot of my childhood wasn’t the greatest? so i dont remember a lot of it? but i guess the bedtime stories my dad would tell

19. what is the strangest thing you have eaten? fried kool-aid with powdered sugar from the south carolina state fair.

20. what are you most thankful for? um.. being able to have a place to sleep/and food?

21. do you like spicy food? ohhhhh yes, its all i grew up on. audi’s ma is chinese and she cooked the best food all the time. and gave me sooo much.

22. have you ever met someone famous? Not that i remember

23. do you keep a diary or journal? i’ve tried several times, but i stop pretty fast, because i have nothing to say or the way i write starts to piss me off.

24. do you prefer to use pen or pencil? Mechanical pencils

25. what is your star sign? Aries babbey.

26. do you like your cereal crunchy or soggy? Crunchy? um... i know that maybe the crunch would be hard on some peeps teeth, but not in my house.(crunchy)

27. what would you want your legacy to be? i dont tend to think that far ahead.

28. do you like reading? What was the last book you read? i wish i did? its really hard for me to find a book that will hold my attention, and audio books are not a fun time for me because some sounds/voices i cant handle like that.

29. how do you show someone you love them? im definitely more of physical/small gestures kinda person. i’ll buy/make them little gifts, or offer cuddles (if they’re cool with touch) that type of stuff

30. do you like ice in your drinks? very little if at all, i only drink water, hot tea/coffee, and i dont like iced tea/coffee at all so.

31. what are you afraid of? um... nothing really that i can think of

32. what is your favorite scent? im very sensitive to smells, but i really like this sandlewood body wash i have.

33. do you address older people by their name or surname? soooo... i grew up in the south-south. so it was always yes ma’am, no sir, mr. smith, ms. jones. like even if someone was like call me betty or whatever it was weird to do that. but i’m slowly getting away from that since i moved away.

34. if money was not a factor, how would you live your life? I’d really like to help people, not sure in what capacity but yeah.

35. do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean? i did grow up about 40 mins from the ocean and would go there all the time. the water was gross and i wish the waves had been better, i’ve always wanted to surf proper. so ocean i guess.

36. what would you do if you found $50 in the ground? probably see if someone comes back for it? prob give it toward food or something for someone

37. have you ever seen a shooting star? did you make a wish? okay so audi’s house was prefect for star gazing and we’d do it all the time and we saw a couple over the years, and got torn up by misquitos.

38. what is one thing you would want to teach your children? dont want kids, but i’ll prob be a godparent eventually so just to be happy and comfortable with themselves.

39. if you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it? I have several but the next one I want to get the doom symbol with my pop’s birthday (probably in roman numeral cause that look best) and whenever he passes his death date. a little morbid but ive always wanted that cause its his fav game.

40. what can you hear now? animal crossing, netflix (hannibal) and my smuckers pb&j wrapper lol (strawberry ofc)

41. where do you feel the safest? uh... my room sometimes?

42. what is one thing you want to overcome/conquer? a lot i dont wanna talk about.

43. if you could travel back to any era, what would it be? the 70s/80s to go to some concerts i guess

44. what is your most used emoji? im on pc so i have no clue, but the shaka sign 

45. describe yourself using one word. sarcastic

46. what do you regret the most? there was a girl and we didnt have a lot of time together because i was leaving and i hurt her i think, i apologized later but that doesnt make it okay so yeah i hope shes doing okay.

47. last movie you saw? I watched the new animated Scoob! movie. i loved itt, scooby doo is my shit always.

tagging: i dont know i dont wanna bother folks, if you see this and it catches your fancy :)

[notbemoved-blog]

Civil Disobedience and the Legacy of The Catholic Worker

After publishing last Part III of this series last week, a friend and colleague commented how unfortunate it is that the conservative Supreme Court justices (all of whom profess to be Catholic or were raised Catholic) do not seem to share this passion for social justice that Dorothy Day embodied. I agree and find it confounding. The Catholic Church took a hard-right turn in the 1980s and continues on that path today, despite Pope Francis’s best efforts. In any event, it is well to remember that there is (or was) a place in the Church for dissenters, for activists, and for those with a passion for the poor and afflicted—even if they don’t make it to the highest echelons of ecclesiastical or political life. 

Dorothy Day never seemed much interested in climbing any ladders or achieving a certain status within the Church she served. “Don’t call me a saint,” she would say. “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

 Here’s Part IV of my series on Dorothy Day and the history of The Catholic Worker newspaper.

*********************************************************************************

The Post-War Period

After Peter’s death, Dorothy Day continued to publish the paper, to run the New York House of Hospitality, and to oversee the growing Catholic Worker Movement. By the start of 1950, the paper’s circulation had increased slightly to 60,000; circulation remained at this plateau throughout the fifties.

The paper was still an eight-page tabloid and it looked the same as it had for more than 15 years. Only woodcuts were used for artwork; photographs were too expensive to print. In the thirties and forties, the paper featured woodcuts of Catholic worker-saints—St. Peter the fisherman; St. Paul writing in prison; St. Joseph the Worker, and many others—all the handiwork of Worker Ade Bethune.

Woodcuts by Ade Bethune ...

In the fifties, another artist, Fritz Eichenberg, produced some stunning works of art for the paper. Eichenberg, a Quaker, portrayed most sensitively in his woodcuts and engravings the spirit of The Catholic Worker. His “Christ on the Breadline,” “The Labor Cross,” and “Last Supper,” captured visually what The Worker’s writers were trying to express in words. Day wanted to touch those poorest of the poor who could not read so she often printed full, front-page reproductions of Eichenberg’s work.

... and Fritz Eichenberg graced the pages of nearly every issue of The Catholic Worker. 

The Catholic Worker continued to be built around Dorothy Day’s writing. She changed the name of her column to “On Pilgrimage,” a title that seemed to describe the nature of her life.

Others contributed articles regularly. Michael Harrington, a resident Worker who later became an economist, consistently provided pieces for the paper. Harrington’s most famous work, The Other America, written in 1961, is said to have sparked the Kennedy/Johnson War on Poverty. Ammon Hennacy, a pacifist anarchist, wrote extensively of his “one-man revolution.” Robert Ludlow, an intellectual and lover of Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence—he wrote a striking piece on Gandhi’s death—became an associate editor of the paper. Columns about the day-to-day activities of the House of Hospitality and about life on the farm provided engaging copy each month.

More Issues

The Catholic Worker continued to fight for justice and peace. When the underpaid gravediggers of Calvary Cemetery—Catholics and members of a CIO union—went on strike against New York’s Cardinal Spellman, Dorothy Day supported the gravediggers. The Cardinal thought the strike was inspired by Communists and refused to negotiate. He even used seminarians, of all people, to break the strike and forced the striker to dissolve the CIO affiliation and join an American Federation of Labor union instead. Day criticized the Cardinal’s tactics and the “shameful seminarians” who broke the strike.

At the onset of the Nuclear Age, The Catholic Worker denounced the continued testing of the A-bomb and the development of the H-bomb, and called for total disarmament of nuclear weapons. Indeed, The Worker even criticized the Catholic press for its “unbalanced” portrayal of Russia and its people.

The paper also opposed the anti-Communist Smith and McCarran Acts:

Although we disagree with our Marxist brothers on the question of the means to use and to achieve social justice, rejecting atheism and materialism in Marist thought and in bourgeois thought, we respect their freedom as a minority group in this country…. We protest the imprisonment of our Communist brothers and extend to them our sympathy and admiration for having followed their conscience even in persecution.

 The paper continued to criticize the Capitalist system. “Communism, considered as an economic system apart from its philosophy, is not so much the antithesis, the opposite and the contradiction of Christianity as Capitalism is.” Such critiques did not win the paper many friends in the highly charged “Red-Scare” atmosphere of Joe McCarthy America. One priest wrote to ask The Catholic Worker, “Why don’t you come out in the open, declare yourselves Bolshevik Communists and fight the Church like men?” Day, a woman, stood firm, even quoting the Popes and their attacks on economic materialism and Capitalism.

Civil Disobedience

In 1955, seven Catholic Workers, including Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy, staged a protest with twenty-three others from the War Resisters League against New York City’s annual air-raid drill. The Civil Defense Act required that all take shelter for at least 10 minutes.

The Workers considered the drills scare tactics and war preparations; they would have no part in them. The protesters informed the police beforehand of their intention to violate the law. When the siren sounded, instead of heading for shelter, the protesters sat on benches in City Hall Park. They were arrested and detained for nine hours before being released on fifteen hundred dollars bail.

When their case came to trial, the protesters made a statement explaining their brazen stance. They said they did not wish to participate in an action aimed only at creating a war mentality. Taking cover from an atomic attack was ridiculous, they said, and they offered their action, and any punishment for it, as a small act of penance for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. The judge found them guilty but suspended their sentence, so they served no jail time.

For the next four years, Workers along with others continued their protests. They were jailed each time for anywhere from five to thirty days. The Catholic Worker carried accounts of the demonstrations and explained Workers’ rationale for participating. Workers wrote about their own jail experiences and, thus, brought public attention to jail conditions and to the lives of those so confined. In 1960, one thousand people showed up to protest the “war games,” as The Worker dubbed them. When arrests were made, the Workers were passed over, prompting Hennacy to ask one of the arresting officers if he wasn’t shirking his duty. After 1960, the City gave up on its annual air-raid drills.

Slum Landlord

In 1956, Dorothy Day was handed a summons ordering her to appear before a City judge to answer charges of being a slum landlord and of running a firetrap. Since the thirties, The Catholic Worker had run a House of Hospitality, with rooms and beds for those who had no home of their own. The Houses were always liveable, although no one ever worried about conforming to any housing regulations. When Day appeared in court, she explained to the judge that The Catholic Worker was a charitable organization and that the apartments were for those who had no other place to live. “All the more reason for you to provide suitable housing” for them, the judge growled. He fined her $250 and told her that she and her fifty “tenants” would have to vacate in 10 days. Day was stunned.

Someone contacted The New York Times, which picked up the story. Public outcry about the incident caused the judge to apologize to Day, suspend the fine, and give her enough time to raise the $28,000 needed to make the house conform with local building codes. Because of the publicity, within a month most of the funds had been donated and soon the House was refurbished to meet City standards. But “Holy Mother City” had the last word. In 1958, the City informed Day and the Workers that they would have to move to make room for a new subway line!

About Cuba

When Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba succeeded in 1959, The Catholic Worker came out on Castro’s side. The paper’s critics were outraged. How could a Catholic paper endorse a government opposed to the Church? Even friends of The Worker were astonished and thought the paper had compromised its pacifist position. Day answered both critics and friends in the article “About Cuba.”

To her critics, Day said:

It is hard … to say that the place of The Catholic Worker is with the poor, and that being there, we are often finding ourselves on the side of the persecutors of the Church. . . . One could weep with the tragedy of denying Christ in the poor. . . . Fidel Castro says he is not persecuting Christ, but Churchmen who have betrayed him (in the poor). . . . (Castro) has said that the Church has endured under the Roman empire, under a feudal system, under monarchies, empires, republics and democracies. Why cannot she exist under a socialist state? He has asked the priests to remain to be with their people….

 To her friends, she said: 

We are certainly not Marxist socialists nor do we believe in violent revolution. Yet we do believe that it is better to fight, as Castro did with his handful of men … than do nothing. We are on the side of the revolution. We believe there must be new concepts of property, which is proper to man … there is Christian communism and a Christian capitalism as Peter Maurin pointed out. We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and will be happy to see how they work out in Cuba.

The criticisms continued, however, and Day, at age 65, decided to go to Cuba to report first-hand on Castro’s revolution. Her reports were printed in her “On Pilgrimage” column from September through December of 1962. She recounted day-to-day experiences among the Cuban people in a touching way that gave her readers an idea of exactly what was happening to both Church and State in Cuba. Many praised her Cuban reports as her best journalistic work. One admirer wrote simply, “Thank you for your courage on Cuba.” After Day’s personal reports on Cuba, the controversy stopped.

 (To Be Continued)

This is Part IV of a series of articles on The Catholic Worker. Click on links for Part I, Part II and Part III.

[mjsmum]

Does a beautiful birth experience even exist?

It might seem as if I've opened the blogging flood gates, but I'm very aware that baby challenges change as quickly as the direction of the wind, and I want to get my feelings in order about some of the early topics before they fade to make way for new parenting dilemmas.

Matilda will be two weeks old tomorrow, and I feel like I'm finally ready to talk about my labour experience. In fact, I may have left it a little too late, as I would contemplate having another baby now - whereas at the time I strongly declared to Jim that we were getting a cat next time! 

The naivety of going natural 

Like many women, I had a strong desire for a natural, holistic birth experience. I'd like to consider myself a tough cookie when it comes to pain management, and I told myself that the discomfort would only be temporary, and that I could feel empowered by the act of bringing new life into the world with minimal medical assistance.

To support this goal, I started arming myself with tools to help me prepare for a painkiller-free birth. I attended prenatal yoga classes to learn controlled breaths; I consulted a herbalist to learn about natural remedies; I rented a tens machine, and wrote a birthing plan that was all about a water birth and absolutely no pethidine or epidural under any circumstance. 

When reality starts getting in the way 

The first sign that my birth experience wouldn't be all it was cracked up to be came in week 28 of pregnancy, when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. After struggling to control it with dietary changes I was put onto metformin tablets with my evening meal, and nightly insulin injections. This meant two things:

1 - I would be induced around my due date if baby didn't make an early appearance

2 - the likelihood of needing extra monitoring was such that a water birth would be highly unlikely 

I could write a whole separate blog post on the impact of GD on my pregnancy experience, but the overwhelming effect on my labour plan was one of panic . That my choices were being taken away from me. And it's hard to remain empowered when the things you wanted for your birth experience are being taken off the table one by one.

However, as my due date drew nearer and Matilda's weight and measurements began to shoot off the chart, I was secretly glad not to be enduring the agonising two-week countdown of being overdue, and one day before her due date we decamped to hospital to be induced.

The long wait for labour to begin

In the middle of my labour, my midwife (who was incredible - more on that later) declared that unless it's for medical reasons, she doesn't know why anyone has an induction, and I can understand why. Turns out it involves a whole lot of waiting around - two days in my case - for something to happen. 

You're stuck in a side room while women in natural labour filter past you to the delivery suite, with someone poking their head round the door every few hours to take your blood pressure or shove a finger up your hoo-ha just in case anything has kicked off.

The best thing I did during this time was send Jim home for some proper sleep, as we had no idea how gruelling the first few days of parenthood would be. The worst thing I did was to let my mixture of fear and excitement keep me awake at night, as I could've used the energy for labour when it finally happened. However, it did give me the chance to binge watch my way through series 6 of ER on DVD!

Eventually, after a pessary, two gels and a sweep, I began to feel period-like pains in my stomach, and requested some light pain relief from the midwife. A dose of paracetamol and codeine later I got back into bed, and felt something start to trickle down my leg. By the time I got to the bathroom my waters gave way fully, and after a dramatic gush all over the floor I realised I was standing there with soaking wet pyjama bottoms. Things were finally kicking off!

Thank god for a hot shower

I don't actually remember much about early labour - it lasted around 5.5 hours, and Jim came back to the hospital as soon as my waters went - other than the fact I felt very alone. I was only checked by medical staff once or twice during this time, and it was hours before they would internally examine me to see how I was progressing.

It was a LOT more painful than I had imagined, and my yoga breathing went straight out of the window. My cries for more codeine were never answered, but one kind midwife did run me a bath. The water helped but I felt trapped in the restrictive porcelain tub, so got out after a handful of minutes.

Not being able to get comfortable basically summed up the early part of my labour. Standing was too much; sitting on the ball only worked between contractions; hanging off jim's shoulders worked temporarily, but didn't anchor me the way I needed. In the end, my absolute saviour was the en suite shower in my room. I turned it to maximum heat, grabbed hold of the hand rails in the cubicle and swayed from side to side for literally two and a half hours until someone came to check on my progress.

Everything...and then nothing 

The good news on examination was that I was 9cm dilated and ready to go to the delivery suite. I'd lost the will to put clothes on by that point, so the midwife wheeled me up there in a towel and blanket with soaking wet hair - oh the glamour! 

For me, the first hour in the delivery suite was the only moment of clarity and control in the whole labour experience. My midwife, Toni, was very calm, soothing and experienced. My contractions slowed to a manageable level, and I felt happy enough to proceed with my plan of as natural birth as possible, with just gas and air to see me through.

Had I known what was about to come, I would have taken the epidural offered to me at that point, but for some reason I was still hell bent on this badge of honour of pushing a baby out with minimal pain relief. Next time, I'm taking the drugs!

What should've been the beginning of the end was actually the start of 6 of the most tiring, painful and frustrating hours I've ever experienced in my life. And by the time Matilda arrived, I was so delusional and exhausted I felt like I was having some kind of out of body experience.

The slowing down of my contractions was the first of many things that started to go awry in those last few hours. They had to put me on a hormone drip to artificially stimulate me to contract three times every 10 minutes, and they also gave me IV fluid as Matilda was showing signs of dehydration. 

I still wasn't dilated enough to push, so had to put up with a couple more hours of intense pain before being given the green light to start trying to pop my baby out.

Throughout those couple of hours I pleaded and begged to start pushing, but had I known what real pushing meant, I would've shut up and made the most of the gas and air! The physical effort involved with each push was so intense that I was physically sweating, and I definitely shit myself on more than one occasion, but by that point I no longer cared.

Time for intervention 

What started to become apparent at the pushing stage was that Matilda just wasn't coming out. As much as I pushed her forward, she started to slip back, and after 90 minutes of body-wrenching squeezes, the midwife made the decision to call a doctor for assistance. 

What I didn't know at the time was that doctor intervention had been discussed more than once during those final hours because of my 'failure to progress', but that my midwife fought tooth and nail at every stage to buy me more time. It was this determination that meant I didn't end up having a c-section, and I will be eternally grateful to her for being so persistent. 

I don't think I'd really thought about what the end of my labour would be like in advance, but I never got that glorious moment of doing a final push to feel a slippery baby slide into the midwife's arms with a triumphant first cry. Matilda's heart rate began to drop, so the decision was taken to use forceps, and suddenly the room was filled with a team of doctors and nurses.

By this point I was basically hallucinating with adrenaline, pain and tiredness, so the final part felt slightly disembodied. I saw what I could only describe as a giant pair of salad tongs on the side, not realising that they were what was about to help deliver my baby, and then I was being dropped down and tilted backwards on the bed ready for the big moment.

The midwife explained to me that I needed to push hard with the next contraction, as the forceps were there to assist - they couldn't do the job for me. It was this next contraction where I basically had a total meltdown; the pain and discomfort of the forceps was like nothing I'd ever experienced, and instead of pushing I started screaming and begging for them to make it stop.

Here, the midwife stepped in with a bit of tough love and shouted at me to pull it together for the sake of my baby. It obviously did the trick as I gave it one final push and heard the staff telling me excitedly that my baby had arrived!

The eye of the storm - and the calm that followed 

Because of the way Matilda was dragged into the world, we didn't get that idyllic moment where she went straight onto my bare chest for skin to skin. I didn't know at the time but her shoulders had got stuck so they'd had to rotate her to get her out. The cord was wrapped around her neck, and her apgar score was only 5, so they rushed her over to the side of the room to give her some inflationary breaths. 

I remember everyone being calm but not hearing my baby crying, and repeatedly asking Jim and the staff if everything was ok. Then she let out the first of many wails we have since heard, and they briefly put her on a towel on my stomach to say hello.

At this point I was still lying flat on my back, legs akimbo in stirrups, unaware that I'd suffered a third degree tear and lost 800ml of blood. They explained to me that I needed to go straight into theatre for repair, so no sooner had I met my baby I was wheeled away, given a spinal block, and laid back down for repair.

Strangely, that moment in theatre was the beginning of the post-birth calm. I was so tired and overstimulated that I couldn't really think about the baby I'd left behind in the delivery suite - it almost felt as if it hadn't happened - and I zonked out into a deep sleep during the hour it took them to stitch me back together.

The next thing I remember is being transferred onto a different trolley and wheeled back to the now cleaned-up delivery room. I felt nothing but tingles from the waist down, and waiting for me was a plate of pie and mash and a peacefully sleeping baby, who was placed onto my bare chest. It still didn't quite feel real at that moment, but I wasn't in pain; all I felt was complete contentment. 

Processing the reality of giving birth 

The first couple of nights after Matilda was born I couldn't close my eyes without getting forcep flashbacks. To be honest, I felt haunted by the whole labour experience, but gradually the horror moments started to fade. 

Over the next few days I began to fully process MJ’s birth, and realised that while it had been far from the holistic experience I had imagined, it had taught me some important lessons:

- Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to make life even harder and have a natural birth? Real empowerment comes from making the best decision for you personally, and if we ever decide to go through it again, I will confidently ask for an epidural and feel no sense of shame

- Any woman who delivers a baby is a fucking superhero. Whether you deliver naturally in water or have an elective caesarean, you birthed a baby. That deserves a massive amount of respect 

- Nothing that hurts that much can ever be empowering at the time, but you can definitely give yourself a massive pat on the back afterwards for getting through it. You are a female warrior! 

- Never underestimate the power of a good birthing partner. I crushed every bone in Jim's hands during my contractions, and yelled at him every time our birthing soundtrack came to an end and needed rebooting, but he will never fully realise how just being there with that support in those moments got me through

- It's OK to come away from hospital with the opinion that labour sucks, and lament the gruelling process your body has been through, and continues to go though afterwards. Because when you're having a 'woe is me' moment you can pick up your perfect, tiny little baby and give her a tight cuddle, and realise all that pain and fear was completely and totally worth it

[adambstingus]

Every Halloween, I Have A Story I Like To Tell

I liked Ben, I really did. I mean, he was a nice guy. We had some fun times together in college, messing around the dorm, going to parties, all the dumb shit that college guys do. He was cool and all, but he was a little pretentious. Well, I guess the word he used was artistic. He thought he was real smart, spent a lot of time trying to prove it to everyone. He had his own blog developed to film critiques not the big ones, though. Just little indie productions because nothing else was worth his time. When he got like that, he could be pretty insufferable.

Perhaps the most annoying thing that he did was performance art.

Now, I dont wanna be the guy who says that all performance art is dumb. But yeah, no, all performance art is dumb. Oh, look, youre on display painting a picture of Jesus from your own urine, how original and edgy! Maybe Im a little jaded, but it always seemed so contrived to me. Unfortunately, Ben really loved it. He thought there was something beautiful in art that was physically living and he devoted an embarrassing amount of time to it.

Anyway, I hung out with Ben a few times after college, but we mostly just met up to do some heavy drinking and maybe hit a strip club or two. He considered THAT performance art as well, which was just fine with me, it gave me an excuse to waste some ones. Since we didnt hang out very often, I had a bad feeling when he contacted me about a month before last Halloween.

He called me up at about seven in the morning on a Saturday, which is too early to even consider waking up, in my opinion. I answered in a daze and he started running his mouth like crazy, as though afraid that, if he didnt get it all out at once, he never would.

Mike, hey, Mikey, listen, buddy, I need your help, okay? Okay, okay, Ive got this idea for a performance and, well, its going to be , you know? So good! Its going down on Halloween. Can you come help? Look, Ill even pay you, man. Fifty dollars. So how bout it?

Now, Ive never cared much about Halloween one way or the other, and Im a pretty easy guy. Fifty dollars to probably just sit there and run a fog machine or some bullshit? For the right price, I could even pretend that I wanted to be there. Besides, what else are friends for?

A few days later, he gave me the details. To be honest, I was a little shocked when he sent the email. I know that performance art is intended to be edgy and can sometimes get a little dangerous, but this seemed downright negligent.

Mike:

Thanks for agreeing to do this for me! Ive talked to a few other people, but they werent really comfortable with it, for reasons youll probably be able to figure out. Of course, I understand if you want to back out, but I think you are probably the most reliable person I know. Its really not that big of a deal, Im sure youll agree.

As Im sure youve noticed, vampires have become very prominent in the media as of late. I say vampires because they are beginning to deviate so wildly from the traditional myths that they resemble forest fairies more than anything else. Altruistic? Sparkly? Whiny? Give me a break. We need more Dracula! We need more Carmilla! We need more death, destruction, and blood!

My performance will center on the theme of rebirthing the vampire. For the vampire to be reborn, he must first be buried. To turn peoples attentions back to the myths of old, I will be doing just that: I will be burying the vampire.

I have a group of viewers signed up already to participate in the performance, so you dont need to worry about that. Im going to plant a series of vampire-themed clues around town for them to follow. The clues should be pretty simple, and it will probably take no more than an hour to an hour-and-a-half for them to find me.

Here comes the somewhat controversial part. Essentially, for this performance to have any semblance of meaning, I need to be buried alive. Dont worry, its perfectly safe: I have a buddy from back home who is building me a coffin with a hole in the top. Ill be fixing it with a pipe that will stick an inch or two above the ground. That way, I wont run out of air. Ill also have a few necessities in the coffin in case something happens: food, water, and a flashlight.

Once they arrive at my grave which will be completely vampirized they will be provided with an array of shovels and will bring me back to life, a reincarnation of the true mythological history of vampires.

Here is where you come in. I need you to bury me. In addition, I need you to be my safety net: if they cant find me, if something goes wrong, if I become sick, I need you to be the one to get me out or call the police, if necessary. Ill also need you to decorate my grave, make it really creepy dont worry, Ill send you some blueprints.

I know this is a little stressful and it may take some time for you to decide, but, rest assured, this is a completely safe project. Theres no danger of suffocation and the coffin is sturdy, so its very unlikely that it will collapse. I really just need you there for support and the actual hard work of burying me.

What do you say? Id even be willing to up your pay to a hundred dollars, if thats what you need.

Let me know!

RIP,

Ben

I stared at my screen for a few minutes, completely dumbfounded.

Once I cut through all the bullshit about art and vampires and rebirth, what it came down to was death.

This guy actually wanted me to almost kill him.

I mean, sure, it probably WAS safe. But my mind went over the plan slowly. What if I couldnt get him out in time? One shovel and a pit of dirt wouldnt be a fast job. Furthermore, what if something happened to me?

Before making a decision, I sent him another email asking if he was really sure he was up for this. Of course he knew, he said. And then he said something that would always stick with me.

Art must be a little dangerous, my friend, for it to be real.

A month later, I found myself standing at the foot of a grave. It was six feet deep and perfectly rectangular. Sitting at the bottom was a tapered coffin covered with black lacquer, a white skull painted on the top. In the eye of the skull was a hole just big enough for the PVC pipe. Stenciled underneath was a line from Dracula: Denn die Todten reiten schnell.

I stood there like an idiot, waiting for Ben to show up.

In the end, Id decided to go along with his stupid gig. Ben was a stubborn bastard, and if I didnt help him, someone else would. At least, thats the justification I gave myself. But the real reason was that, deep inside my heart, his words were still echoing.

Id ended up doing a little more work than I had intended. For one, I had to place his stupid clues around the city. It wasnt hard work, but it took some time to get them all in the proper places. Luckily for Ben, they were pretty obvious clues. There was no need to worry that his participants would be unable to find him.

Ben had set up the grave and the coffin a few days prior to Halloween. It was out in the woods just on the outskirts of town, no chance of it being disturbed. Id tried to talk him out of burying it the whole six feet down.

If something happens and I need to get you out fast, what will I do? Cant you put it closer to the surface?

Ben had just shaken his head in exasperation. You just dont get it, do you? It has to be done right. Remember what I told you.

So I shrugged and let him mess around with whatever dumbassery would get him off.

I was just beginning to wonder if I should have brought more beer this promised to be a long night when Ben showed up.

I had to restrain my laughter when I saw his getup. A cheap Dracula costume from Wal-mart had never looked so pathetic, especially when topped off with those cheap plastic fangs. Hed greased his hair back and painted on a widows peak.

I couldnt resist. Wow, seriously, dude?

He gave me a stern look. Its a comment on the commercialization of vampires and horror as we know it today. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a walkie talkie. Here, take one. The range isnt very far, but my cell phone wont work that far underground. Youll have to stay nearby. Let me know if youre going out of range.

I shrugged and took it. Okay, but you brought your cell just in case, right?

Nah, what good will it do if it doesnt work?

This guys batshit insane, I thought. But he handed me the hundred dollars and, suddenly, it didnt seem to matter anymore.

I helped him into the coffin and shut the lid. He seemed pretty calm if it were me, I knew Id be having a panic attack. I fit the PVC pipe into the hole. It slid in perfectly snug. I climbed out of the coffin and grabbed my shovel, taking one last look at the shiny black peeking out from the dirt.

With a resigned shrug, I started to shovel in the dirt. Okay, well, he asked for this, I thought.

It took almost a full hour to get all the dirt piled in. The PVC pipe was just barely visible over the grave. I piled the earth around it to hide it as well as I could. Then, I set up the rest of the grave: a hideously gothic headstone made of Styrofoam, and cheap Wal-mart flowers. Once it was finally finished, I sat back against a tree and waited.

There was an awful lot of waiting to be done.

Three hours later, his participants still hadnt come.

Hed buzzed in on the walkie talkie a few times, asking if theyd shown up. I continually answered in the negative, wondering how long hed be willing to keep up this charade. He must be getting worried, I thought, staring at my watch. It was already 10 pm and not a soul to be seen.

Hey, Mike? Something must have happened, I dont think theyre coming. Can you get me out of here? Bens voice crackled and faded in and out of the static fuzz. I took another swig of my beer and heaved a sigh.

Of course they werent coming. They were frantically searching for the last clue. My hand crept into my pocket as I felt it folded there, the creases poking at the soft flesh of my palm.

Mike? Are you there? Did you go out of range?

I turned the walkie talkie off. I didnt need it anymore, anyway. Carefully, I picked up a handful of disturbed earth from the top of the makeshift grave. I poured it down the pipe and listened.

I heard the muffled exclamation, the series of expletives. I thought I could hear a thumping sound he must be hitting the top of the coffin. I smiled a little to myself as I poured some more dirt in through the pipe.

Bens struggles got louder and I felt a certain heat rising up in me. Oh, I knew it could be good, but I didnt know it could be good. This was incredible. This was perfect. This was .

Eventually, I grew bored of shoving the earth down into the coffin. I could hear Bens screaming and sobbing reverberating up the pipe. I yanked a handkerchief out of my back pocket and stuffed it inside. I made sure to plug it up good and tight.

It would only be a matter of time, now. Assuming he could regulate his breathing, he could possibly have a few hours. But I knew he was panicking. And that would simply serve to shorten his time.

The pounding grew weaker as I finished my beer. Once I was certain there was no saving him, I went to finish my work.

Ben was right everything really did go off without a hitch. I dont know what I was so worried about.

Id gone to find his lost sheep, the wayward participants who were scrambling in frustration for the last clue. I scolded them for making us wait so long, acted the part of the reluctant friend indulging his lunatic companion. I took them out to the grave. It was now past midnight.

They sat hushed as I gave the stupid speech that Ben had prepared for me. Everything seemed normal Id made sure to stow the rag before anyone could see it.

Friends, foes, and everyone in between. Tonight we gather to resurrect the ancient horror that has plagued mankind for centuries. Its tale, once a gruesome epic of blood and seduction, has become nothing more than commercialized fodder as society has aged. Now, the time has come for the phoenix to burn and rise again. So, too, shall the blood-soaked visage of the vampire! My voice resonated throughout the woods, and the morons in attendance clapped as they all reached for their shovels.

We dug him up in about half an hour. It was much faster work with his host of suckers. It was good that we reached the coffin quickly, because I could barely contain my excitement.

Two of the men opened the coffin and screamed. The women leaned in over the grave to peek as well, full of expectancy. There was something dreadful about the scene, to be sure.

Bens face had gone gray, sprayed over with a few specs of dirt. His hands were bloody, his fingernails pried off. Deep scratches decorated the top of the lid. The men who had opened his tomb dragged him out in a panic, unsure if this was part of the performance or not. A few moments of silent listening at his chest produced no heartbeat. The proclamation was definitive: he was dead.

They screamed. They called the police. They alternatively looked at his body and shielded themselves from its horror, enraptured yet struggling.

They ignored me.

But that was fine. It was fine because they were admiring my work, the work of the artist. Finally, I had been given this opportunity to prove my worth. Finally, I had found my sacrificial lamb. And it had been a rousing success. The heat raging in my body affirmed that much. I didnt even care if I was caught, so long as I could have this moment to hold for the rest of my life.

Ben was right. I should have known a man of principle never lies. And I owe him a debt of gratitude, for realizing the artist within me.

Art must be a little dangerous for it to be real.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/every-halloween-i-have-a-story-i-like-to-tell/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/172357360662

[samanthasroberts]

Every Halloween, I Have A Story I Like To Tell

I liked Ben, I really did. I mean, he was a nice guy. We had some fun times together in college, messing around the dorm, going to parties, all the dumb shit that college guys do. He was cool and all, but he was a little pretentious. Well, I guess the word he used was artistic. He thought he was real smart, spent a lot of time trying to prove it to everyone. He had his own blog developed to film critiques not the big ones, though. Just little indie productions because nothing else was worth his time. When he got like that, he could be pretty insufferable.

Perhaps the most annoying thing that he did was performance art.

Now, I dont wanna be the guy who says that all performance art is dumb. But yeah, no, all performance art is dumb. Oh, look, youre on display painting a picture of Jesus from your own urine, how original and edgy! Maybe Im a little jaded, but it always seemed so contrived to me. Unfortunately, Ben really loved it. He thought there was something beautiful in art that was physically living and he devoted an embarrassing amount of time to it.

Anyway, I hung out with Ben a few times after college, but we mostly just met up to do some heavy drinking and maybe hit a strip club or two. He considered THAT performance art as well, which was just fine with me, it gave me an excuse to waste some ones. Since we didnt hang out very often, I had a bad feeling when he contacted me about a month before last Halloween.

He called me up at about seven in the morning on a Saturday, which is too early to even consider waking up, in my opinion. I answered in a daze and he started running his mouth like crazy, as though afraid that, if he didnt get it all out at once, he never would.

Mike, hey, Mikey, listen, buddy, I need your help, okay? Okay, okay, Ive got this idea for a performance and, well, its going to be , you know? So good! Its going down on Halloween. Can you come help? Look, Ill even pay you, man. Fifty dollars. So how bout it?

Now, Ive never cared much about Halloween one way or the other, and Im a pretty easy guy. Fifty dollars to probably just sit there and run a fog machine or some bullshit? For the right price, I could even pretend that I wanted to be there. Besides, what else are friends for?

A few days later, he gave me the details. To be honest, I was a little shocked when he sent the email. I know that performance art is intended to be edgy and can sometimes get a little dangerous, but this seemed downright negligent.

Mike:

Thanks for agreeing to do this for me! Ive talked to a few other people, but they werent really comfortable with it, for reasons youll probably be able to figure out. Of course, I understand if you want to back out, but I think you are probably the most reliable person I know. Its really not that big of a deal, Im sure youll agree.

As Im sure youve noticed, vampires have become very prominent in the media as of late. I say vampires because they are beginning to deviate so wildly from the traditional myths that they resemble forest fairies more than anything else. Altruistic? Sparkly? Whiny? Give me a break. We need more Dracula! We need more Carmilla! We need more death, destruction, and blood!

My performance will center on the theme of rebirthing the vampire. For the vampire to be reborn, he must first be buried. To turn peoples attentions back to the myths of old, I will be doing just that: I will be burying the vampire.

I have a group of viewers signed up already to participate in the performance, so you dont need to worry about that. Im going to plant a series of vampire-themed clues around town for them to follow. The clues should be pretty simple, and it will probably take no more than an hour to an hour-and-a-half for them to find me.

Here comes the somewhat controversial part. Essentially, for this performance to have any semblance of meaning, I need to be buried alive. Dont worry, its perfectly safe: I have a buddy from back home who is building me a coffin with a hole in the top. Ill be fixing it with a pipe that will stick an inch or two above the ground. That way, I wont run out of air. Ill also have a few necessities in the coffin in case something happens: food, water, and a flashlight.

Once they arrive at my grave which will be completely vampirized they will be provided with an array of shovels and will bring me back to life, a reincarnation of the true mythological history of vampires.

Here is where you come in. I need you to bury me. In addition, I need you to be my safety net: if they cant find me, if something goes wrong, if I become sick, I need you to be the one to get me out or call the police, if necessary. Ill also need you to decorate my grave, make it really creepy dont worry, Ill send you some blueprints.

I know this is a little stressful and it may take some time for you to decide, but, rest assured, this is a completely safe project. Theres no danger of suffocation and the coffin is sturdy, so its very unlikely that it will collapse. I really just need you there for support and the actual hard work of burying me.

What do you say? Id even be willing to up your pay to a hundred dollars, if thats what you need.

Let me know!

RIP,

Ben

I stared at my screen for a few minutes, completely dumbfounded.

Once I cut through all the bullshit about art and vampires and rebirth, what it came down to was death.

This guy actually wanted me to almost kill him.

I mean, sure, it probably WAS safe. But my mind went over the plan slowly. What if I couldnt get him out in time? One shovel and a pit of dirt wouldnt be a fast job. Furthermore, what if something happened to me?

Before making a decision, I sent him another email asking if he was really sure he was up for this. Of course he knew, he said. And then he said something that would always stick with me.

Art must be a little dangerous, my friend, for it to be real.

A month later, I found myself standing at the foot of a grave. It was six feet deep and perfectly rectangular. Sitting at the bottom was a tapered coffin covered with black lacquer, a white skull painted on the top. In the eye of the skull was a hole just big enough for the PVC pipe. Stenciled underneath was a line from Dracula: Denn die Todten reiten schnell.

I stood there like an idiot, waiting for Ben to show up.

In the end, Id decided to go along with his stupid gig. Ben was a stubborn bastard, and if I didnt help him, someone else would. At least, thats the justification I gave myself. But the real reason was that, deep inside my heart, his words were still echoing.

Id ended up doing a little more work than I had intended. For one, I had to place his stupid clues around the city. It wasnt hard work, but it took some time to get them all in the proper places. Luckily for Ben, they were pretty obvious clues. There was no need to worry that his participants would be unable to find him.

Ben had set up the grave and the coffin a few days prior to Halloween. It was out in the woods just on the outskirts of town, no chance of it being disturbed. Id tried to talk him out of burying it the whole six feet down.

If something happens and I need to get you out fast, what will I do? Cant you put it closer to the surface?

Ben had just shaken his head in exasperation. You just dont get it, do you? It has to be done right. Remember what I told you.

So I shrugged and let him mess around with whatever dumbassery would get him off.

I was just beginning to wonder if I should have brought more beer this promised to be a long night when Ben showed up.

I had to restrain my laughter when I saw his getup. A cheap Dracula costume from Wal-mart had never looked so pathetic, especially when topped off with those cheap plastic fangs. Hed greased his hair back and painted on a widows peak.

I couldnt resist. Wow, seriously, dude?

He gave me a stern look. Its a comment on the commercialization of vampires and horror as we know it today. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a walkie talkie. Here, take one. The range isnt very far, but my cell phone wont work that far underground. Youll have to stay nearby. Let me know if youre going out of range.

I shrugged and took it. Okay, but you brought your cell just in case, right?

Nah, what good will it do if it doesnt work?

This guys batshit insane, I thought. But he handed me the hundred dollars and, suddenly, it didnt seem to matter anymore.

I helped him into the coffin and shut the lid. He seemed pretty calm if it were me, I knew Id be having a panic attack. I fit the PVC pipe into the hole. It slid in perfectly snug. I climbed out of the coffin and grabbed my shovel, taking one last look at the shiny black peeking out from the dirt.

With a resigned shrug, I started to shovel in the dirt. Okay, well, he asked for this, I thought.

It took almost a full hour to get all the dirt piled in. The PVC pipe was just barely visible over the grave. I piled the earth around it to hide it as well as I could. Then, I set up the rest of the grave: a hideously gothic headstone made of Styrofoam, and cheap Wal-mart flowers. Once it was finally finished, I sat back against a tree and waited.

There was an awful lot of waiting to be done.

Three hours later, his participants still hadnt come.

Hed buzzed in on the walkie talkie a few times, asking if theyd shown up. I continually answered in the negative, wondering how long hed be willing to keep up this charade. He must be getting worried, I thought, staring at my watch. It was already 10 pm and not a soul to be seen.

Hey, Mike? Something must have happened, I dont think theyre coming. Can you get me out of here? Bens voice crackled and faded in and out of the static fuzz. I took another swig of my beer and heaved a sigh.

Of course they werent coming. They were frantically searching for the last clue. My hand crept into my pocket as I felt it folded there, the creases poking at the soft flesh of my palm.

Mike? Are you there? Did you go out of range?

I turned the walkie talkie off. I didnt need it anymore, anyway. Carefully, I picked up a handful of disturbed earth from the top of the makeshift grave. I poured it down the pipe and listened.

I heard the muffled exclamation, the series of expletives. I thought I could hear a thumping sound he must be hitting the top of the coffin. I smiled a little to myself as I poured some more dirt in through the pipe.

Bens struggles got louder and I felt a certain heat rising up in me. Oh, I knew it could be good, but I didnt know it could be good. This was incredible. This was perfect. This was .

Eventually, I grew bored of shoving the earth down into the coffin. I could hear Bens screaming and sobbing reverberating up the pipe. I yanked a handkerchief out of my back pocket and stuffed it inside. I made sure to plug it up good and tight.

It would only be a matter of time, now. Assuming he could regulate his breathing, he could possibly have a few hours. But I knew he was panicking. And that would simply serve to shorten his time.

The pounding grew weaker as I finished my beer. Once I was certain there was no saving him, I went to finish my work.

Ben was right everything really did go off without a hitch. I dont know what I was so worried about.

Id gone to find his lost sheep, the wayward participants who were scrambling in frustration for the last clue. I scolded them for making us wait so long, acted the part of the reluctant friend indulging his lunatic companion. I took them out to the grave. It was now past midnight.

They sat hushed as I gave the stupid speech that Ben had prepared for me. Everything seemed normal Id made sure to stow the rag before anyone could see it.

Friends, foes, and everyone in between. Tonight we gather to resurrect the ancient horror that has plagued mankind for centuries. Its tale, once a gruesome epic of blood and seduction, has become nothing more than commercialized fodder as society has aged. Now, the time has come for the phoenix to burn and rise again. So, too, shall the blood-soaked visage of the vampire! My voice resonated throughout the woods, and the morons in attendance clapped as they all reached for their shovels.

We dug him up in about half an hour. It was much faster work with his host of suckers. It was good that we reached the coffin quickly, because I could barely contain my excitement.

Two of the men opened the coffin and screamed. The women leaned in over the grave to peek as well, full of expectancy. There was something dreadful about the scene, to be sure.

Bens face had gone gray, sprayed over with a few specs of dirt. His hands were bloody, his fingernails pried off. Deep scratches decorated the top of the lid. The men who had opened his tomb dragged him out in a panic, unsure if this was part of the performance or not. A few moments of silent listening at his chest produced no heartbeat. The proclamation was definitive: he was dead.

They screamed. They called the police. They alternatively looked at his body and shielded themselves from its horror, enraptured yet struggling.

They ignored me.

But that was fine. It was fine because they were admiring my work, the work of the artist. Finally, I had been given this opportunity to prove my worth. Finally, I had found my sacrificial lamb. And it had been a rousing success. The heat raging in my body affirmed that much. I didnt even care if I was caught, so long as I could have this moment to hold for the rest of my life.

Ben was right. I should have known a man of principle never lies. And I owe him a debt of gratitude, for realizing the artist within me.

Art must be a little dangerous for it to be real.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/every-halloween-i-have-a-story-i-like-to-tell/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/every-halloween-i-have-a-story-i-like-to-tell/