#jackson state band

[codedsoul]

Part 1

I was all over the place with the recording, but it is what it is.

JSU Performs for the HBCU Legacy Game

[raging-violets]

Around The World And Back // Kiley // Big Time Rush

A/N: Inspired by State Champs’ song “Around The World and Back”. (Btw, @partiallypearl that and State Champs' song 'Half Empty' are totally Kiley songs. I'm also doing a ficlet/one-shot based on 'Half Empty' and I'm thinking of re-writing Give Your Heart A Break ).

Set between S2's Big Time Move and S3's Big Time Returns. Specifically, it’s where BTR and Jax have just finished their Hawaii trip where BTR shoot their music video for ‘Windows Down’ and BTR and Jax are about to split up at the airport where BTR are going on their “All Over The World tour” (just before BTMovie) and Jax are starting their 6-month break in home in Australia before eventually going back to LA and reuniting in BTReturns.

For anyone wondering, I am also working on Patie stuff.

Pairs: Kiley friendship with tinge of romance

-

A/N: Inspired by State Champs’ song “Around The World and Back”. Set between Big Time Move and Big Time Returns. Specifically, it’s where BTR and Jax have just finished their Hawaii trip where BTR shoot their music video for ‘Windows Down’ and BTR and Jax are about to split up at the airport where BTR are going on their “All Over The World tour” and Jax are starting their 6-month break in home in Australia before eventually going to LA.

So this is Kiley romance and friendship for where it’s set, with a sprinkling of Patie and Rhogan.

-

Leaving Hawaii was easy.

Easier than anyone would think leaving paradise would be. Because there were too many exciting things on the horizon. The start of the All Over the World Tour, the first big tour that Big Time Rush were going on.

They were the headliners; they were the ones people were going to see. They were the ones that the fans would be chanting, screaming, shouting for, enough to blow the speakers of their sound production and blow the roof off their tour arenas.

It was exciting.

It was so hard.

Because the other side of the coin was Jax, formerly known as the DarkElements were going on their six-month hiatus. Going underground. Going into hiding. Or, if one wanted to see it a different way, stepping out into the light. It was all over the world now, the news of the big secret they’d been hiding for years. The secret of the abuse and neglect they’d endured for years from their manager as they worked their way up in the music industry. It was out there and they needed to wait for the reactions to subside before coming out the other side like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

A not so missed metaphor in all the articles and online postings as their albums were released under Phoenix Records. The irony was never lost to them once one publication made the oh so clever connection and the others piled on.

Even Ronan rolled his eyes at that, and it was his damn company.

The night before they left, Big Time Rush, Jax, Gustavo, Kelly, Mrs. Knight, and Ronan had dinner together. They were excited. They were sad. They shared pictures and memories of their trip and promised the tour dates they were going to watch live.

The hours ticked by and, eventually, everyone started to go to sleep. Kendall, though, found himself trying to stay awake as long as he could. Riley, ever the night owl, stayed up with him as they talked about everything but the flights they were about to take the next morning, taking them in separate directions.

Two full years of being by each other’s side at every step of the musical journey of making it big and one flight was going to change that.

So they continued to talk about everything that’d happened over their time in Hawaii, some of their memories of Minnesota and Australia, shared heart-to-hearts of their fears of what would happen on their tour and their time off.

Would BTR succeed?

“You guys are going to do awesome,” Riley reassured him, gently shaking her head once his worries were expressed. He’d asked it quietly, arms wrapped around his knees, as if afraid of putting it out there was going to jinx them, “What if the tour doesn’t do well?”

Did Jax’s admission ruin their career?

Kendall had reached out and grabbed Riley’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “You guys told the world something you’ve been holding onto for a long time. If anyone can get through that, it’s you. And if anyone says anything bad about it, they’ve got to answer to me.”

Finally, sleep became too much to ignore and they went to their separate rooms. Though Kendall was sure Riley was going to stay up nevertheless, unable to turn off the protective big sister mode to ensure her siblings, her family was safe.

He knew the feeling well.

Still, they went to sleep, and the next morning Mrs. Knight and Kelly got everyone organized and together to head off to the airport. With Logan’s insistence on following a schedule for optimizing their lead in time for connecting flights (even factoring in times for the moaning and groaning that came with it) they arrived at the airport.

Going through security was an event in itself (which Logan had also factored into their timetable) with James repeatedly having to pack and unpack his Cuda products to determine which ones would be left behind with TSA (that included a lot of shrieking and screaming as the group worked to determine which of his he needed to part with), Carlos’s shrieking laughter of being tickled as he and his helmet was patted down by TSA, Gustavo and Katie both being stopped with making loud (Gustavo) and snarky (Katie) comments on ‘blowing up the plane’ as they were pulled aside for extra screening, Kelly waving paper checks around to make it all go away, Ronan’s frustrations for everyone to ‘sit down and shut up’, Logan’s smug remarks of ‘check’ every time he marked something off the time table when they were stopped, Noah’s flat comment that if any of them were going to be detained he was surprised it wasn’t himself and his siblings, and Mrs. Knight’s screaming of ‘enough!’ to get everyone to fall back in line.

Finally, the bags were checked and sorted, and they got to the portion of the airport that would have them split up. Big Time Rush and co. going left to get on a plane to London and Jax and Ronan going right to get on a plane to Sydney.

They all started to hug each other goodbye, Kendall positioning himself so that he’d get to Riley last. (Also so that he could keep an eye on Katie as Patrick wrapped his arms around her, tucking her face into his shoulder as they said goodbye. There was going to be no ‘goodbye kiss’ between them on his watch.)  He said goodbye to each of the Jacksons in turn, going from Sydney, to Noah, to Rhuben, to Patrick, gave his mom space for her and Ronan to say their goodbyes, then moved to Riley.

She turned her attention to him, brushing her black/red strands out of her blue eyes as they trained onto him. Her lips turned up into her smirk-smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Sadness forming there. He was sure his own eyes showed the same.

With a sigh, he hiked his pink backpack up his shoulder, fingers tapping on the straps as he tried to figure out what to say.

For that long moment, neither of them said anything, their silence filled with unspoken words and shared memories. After two years he wasn’t going to be going on tour with his best friend and that was…weird.

Riley, unable to deal with the silence much longer, spoke first. “So, you decided to go with the pink one, huh?” Her eyes shifted from his face to his backpack.

“A fan gave it to me,” he replied, a little defensively. But mostly relieved that she spoke first. If she hadn’t…he wasn’t sure what would’ve come out of his mouth. So many options but…nothing seemed right.

“And you like your pink drinks, too,” she replied. “I’m starting to sense there’s a theme here, yeah?”

“I agree.” He puffed out his chest. “Pink is a manly color.”

Riley laughed. She brushed a pigtail over her shoulder. “I reckon I should’ve styled you guys in pink for this tour, then.” She shrugged modestly. “Though I have to admit, I really out did myself this time.”

“I like what you came up with, Riles. It’s really good,” Kendall said, thinking of the outfits she’d designed and had gotten okayed by Gustavo for the tour. (After multiple rejections of previous designs and threats on his life). “And I like the black and red. It’ll be like you’re onstage with us. Like you should be.” He let out a long sigh. “I wish you were.” I wish you were going. I wish you’d be there the whole time. I wish you were… So many things he wished, he was sure it was flashing over his face as he looked at her from beneath his eyelashes.

“I know,” she said softly. “I wish I was, too. But we’ll go to a show, we’ll be there in LA when you lot get back…” she ran a hand through her hair, hiding her face for a moment. “We can still talk.”

Kendall smiled.

Talking is what they did best.

Hours could go by in what felt like minutes when they were talking, he could get everything he’d ever felt out when they were talking, he could get advice without realizing he was asking for it or wanting it when they were talking. He could be…him when they were talking.

And he always looked forward to it.

“Well, you have to tell us everything that’s going on with your music,” Kendall said. “Even if you take a break.”

“So long as you tell us everything about what’s going on, on tour.” She held up a hand. “We’ve got a bet going that you’ll be arrested at least once in every country you go to.”

Kendall made a sound of offense. “We’re not that bad.”

“I don’t know, boofhead, international laws aren’t very forgiving.” She gestured with her head. “You just saw what happened with Gustavo and Katie. And that was them barely getting past causing a international disaster.” She laughed to herself. “And I don’t know if Logan’s made time on your guys’ itinerary for jail tours.”

“You have a real active imagination.”

Her face screwed up knowingly. “Do I?”

At that, he laughed. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m hysterical.”

He laughed again, a weaker chuckle. He reached out his hand, forming it into a fist. Riley smiled and did the same. When their fists touched, they twisted their wrists, fingers and knuckles still pressed together, and gave each other a thumbs up.

Kendall couldn’t help but joke, "I guess this is the part where we have a dramatic airport goodbye scene.”

“Looks like it,” she replied.

He stepped forward and embraced her in a tight hug. “I'm going to miss you so much, Riles," he murmured.

Riley hesitated for a moment, surprised by his movement, then hugged him back, grabbing fistfuls of the back of his shirt. “I'll miss you too, Kendall,” she replied. Of every nickname she’d ever given him coming off her lips with ease, his actual name only being said in serious moments.

She lifted a warning eyebrow when they stepped back. “I’m not giving you a bloody goodbye kiss,” she replied. Kendall rolled his eyes, both at the irony of wanting to keep it from happening to his baby sister and at the memory of his entailing Riley to help him get to the airport to say goodbye to Jo. This time around, no one was chasing anyone. They were desperately trying to stay where they were. “Because it’s not ‘goodbye’.”

Kendall zoned back in at her statement.

He smiled when she leaned in and stood on her toes, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek.

“We’ll see you when we get back,” Kendall agreed.

He looked towards the ceiling when their plane departures were called, only seconds before Logan loudly called for the group’s attention to march off in the correct direction of their gate.

A whole world away.

He gestured over his shoulder. “I’ve got to go.”

“So do I.”

They stood there for a moment, reality of their separation hitting them. Their eyes met, a silent understanding of their new experiences waiting for them.

“Don’t be scared,” Riley said suddenly after searching his eyes. “Or, rather, be scared and do it anyway. Don’t let fear hold you back.”

He blinked at her, always stunned at how easily she could read his mind, see things unspoken. (He wondered if she could see everything). "How do you do that?"

She merely smiled.

Kendall took a deep breath through his nose. Continued to look her in the eye, a sudden wave of trepidation hitting him. Not just for the tour, for the unknown of what was to come of the band, but for everything that he suddenly wanted to tell her.

“What are you going to do without me, Hockey-Head?” Riley asked with a shake of her head.

Kendall smiled back. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

They were called to board once more.

Riley waved and backed away to be with her family. Kendall brought his hands up to his mouth and quickly blew a kiss toward her, the same way he would’ve to Katie. Riley’s face screwed up as she laughed and turned away to join in on the excitement of her and her siblings finally going home.

Kendall turned his back and joined his friends, sister, and mom to head to London.

As they walked toward their respective gates, they carried the weight of their emotions with them, the echoes of their shared laughter and friendship lingering in the air.

There were a lot of things he’d wanted to say to her.

He’d tell her when they saw each other again.

@partiallypearl @ceruleanmusings @mystic-scripture @myloveforhergoeson

[bastillejes]

TKAK discord going well!

[ohraicodoll]

I want more smut of joel and red🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵

For all the people requesting a jealous!Joel fic companion to Territorial 💥

Dominant Joel Miller x Feral Reader The Last of Us 3.6k Words/ 3rd POV Feral Reader Masterlist Summary: Jealous and rational don't mix. Warning: Explicit sexual content. 18+ Minors DNI

Joel knew Red was trying hard to be a part of the community. And he was proud of her, proud of all the progress she had made, excluding a few setbacks but some of them weren’t her fault.

She was a different person when other people were around or when she was outside the walls of their house. She’d always been quick to argue with him, could easily chat with Ellie, and late at night they’d talk about whatever came to mind in hushed whispers between cooling sheets. Outside though, it was hard for her to speak a full sentence easily, much less a whole conversation. She growled more often than not, glared constantly, most of the time wouldn’t even respond at all. She talked clearest when she was angry. He never thought he’d be the more talkative person in a relationship, but here they were. So he was surprised to see her talking to someone else. Was even more surprised when he saw her talking to them multiple times. Noah worked at the wood mill some times and on the construction crew when they needed him. Joel had worked with him a few times, the most recent being the second water tower they were building, but he was more focused on the job than making friends. The guy was younger than him, brighter, sometimes a little cocky. Eager to please and overconfident. Which is why he was confused Red of all people was talking to him. She was quick to push people away that tried to approach her. It was something they were working on, but she had only a small, small circle of people that she was mildly comfortable with and only them. Noah was not in that circle. Noah didn’t work in the kennels or do patrol consistently, the two places Red would be around other people most. She didn’t go to the food halls, she didn’t go to the monthly Jackson get-togethers, and she wasn’t a part of the welcoming committee. But there she was, arms crossed, nodding to whatever Noah was saying outside one of the community scrap heaps. Joel chewed on his lip, brow furrowed, watching intently and trying to decipher what their lips were saying from a distance. The younger guy was talking a bit rapidly, head bobbing, with his eyes focused on her with a small smile. And she nodded back, twisting the rubber band around her wrist, before replying. 

There was no stutter. He watched her mouth and the way they formed words. Joel had watched that mouth more times than he would care to admit and knew her patterns. No stutter.

Something in his gut tightened and his frown deepened.

When their conversation ended, Noah laughed at something and waved goodbye. Red turned and started to walk away, her eyes on the ground and lip between her teeth when she caught sight of him across the way. They always could feel when the other was around, a sense developed over the months traveling. Like two magnets.

Joel was leaning against one of the walls and didn’t look away as she headed over, his arms crossed tight across his chest. The weather was in that state where it didn’t know if it wanted to be cold or warm and the flannel shirt he had on was rolled up to the elbows, her own unbuttoned and hanging loose over an undershirt. He was sure that was his shirt as well.

“Hey,” she greeted him and he wanted to drink in the softness in her voice that was only for him and Ellie.

He nodded back and instantly the words were out of his mouth before he could process them, “What were you up to?” It didn’t sound accusatory, thankfully, it was luckily more curious in tone but for some reason it filled him with anxiety seeing her talking to another man easily. One that was younger and attractive.

Red’s eyes met his briefly then averted as she shrugged, “Just kennel stuff.” No further explanation. He knew when she was lying and the anxiety tightened.

But pushing Red was like moving an immovable wall sometimes and he wasn’t going to keep at it when there was no reason to push. It would piss her off and the last thing he needed was a faceoff after the long morning he had dealing with Tommy and the construction crew.

So he let it go, walking with her back home, his hand in her back pocket.

That night the thoughts surged back to life.

The anxiety and tiny hints of fear were on his tongue and he tried to bury them in her skin. Hands fisting in her hair as he pulled her head to the side and left a trail of bruises along her neck, sucking and licking his way to the stars tattooed on her collarbone. He remembered the first time he got to kiss that very spot, how he had been picturing it even when they snapped at each other. The memory twisted and turned into a need to show her exactly what he could do to her, how he could make her feel.

It wasn’t quite worshiping. He wasn’t a beggar at her altar. No, that wasn’t them.

She was his and it was a reminder, a hand on her neck to show her where she belonged. That they were blood and death and teeth and needed each other and the other men were too soft skinned for her. They’d try to tame her and he wanted her as she was.

His hands were large on her and he gripped her tightly, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs and pulling her wet core to his mouth. Joel devoted all his focus to making the rise of her breath hitch, to pulling a symphony of moans from her mouth as she squirmed against his tongue. He licked and sucked every ounce of fight from her, having her panting and thrusting into his mouth. She came hard and even then, he didn’t let up, growling at her when her hands tried to bat him away and only shoving his palm against her stomach to hold her down and in place. 

The second orgasm exploded out of her and he watched as her back arched off the bed, memorizing the way the moon glistened on her sweat soaked body. He fucked her hard, his name spilling from her mouth in a chorus, urging him on. He relished in the sound of it. And when he came and spilled into her, both of them heaving and warm bodies clinging together, he hoped he was branded into her skin the way she was burned into him. It was a hiccup, a small moment of jealousy over nothing, and he drowned it out. She was his. It flared back to life after seeing Noah talking to her at the kennels. Maggie the mama dog was loose and trotting around at their feet happily, free from her needy pups, while Red talked to him. His hand would come down and pat the dog as he nodded along to whatever she was telling him. She seemed confident, focused, and it twisted something to see her interacting with someone else like that. Part of him argued that he should be proud of her, that this was what they wanted. The other part wanted to rip the guy’s eyes out for even looking at her. Something hot and tight flared in his chest, pressing against his lungs, and he couldn’t keep himself from heading over, footsteps heavy and brow pinched together. Her words faltered as she caught sight of him and that coil in his chest tightened a bit more. Maggie wagged her tail and hopped around him, excited to see someone she interacted with often. Joel wanted to seem casual, wanted to not seem like the jealous asshole boyfriend-partner-whatever he was. But seeing her next to Noah again with her hair up, neck a long naked slope, worn jeans clinging to her thighs, made him all too aware how good she looked. And he was sure others had noticed that as well. The soft, “Hey” she greeted him with was muffled in his head as he walked up to her and instead of greeting her normally, he pulled her into a hard kiss. His hand was on her cheek, tilting her head up, while his other found its spot in her back pocket, squeezing her backside through the jeans. He was never into PDA, had never kissed her in public, but this was less about them and more about the clear message he was sending to Noah. She was his. She bit down on his lower lip, not too hard, but clear in its own message. A warning. Joel pulled away and didn’t meet her eyes, could feel the suspicion burning into his face from her gaze as he turned and looked at Noah. “What’s going on here?” He tried to keep his voice calm and level, more interested than prying, but he knew he was scowling. Noah was hardly ever intimidated by him when they worked but knew what to avoid to keep from getting glared at. Now he looked nervous and Red’s gaze had swiveled back to look at him, trying to communicate something Joel wasn’t sure about. Lips pressed together tightly, the younger guy shook his head, hands slightly raised, “Nothin’ much! Just going over some uh…stuff here. Uh, I’ll catch you later, Red.” When he went to scurry off, Maggie tried to follow a bit as if curious as to where one of her friends was going. Red only let out a sharp whistle and the dog came back immediately to her feet. She had the dogs trained to a tee. Her brow was lowered and she pulled away from him, heading back inside the kennels without a word. Joel sighed, knowing he was heading into a fight and that tightness in his chest growing, and followed after while closing the large doors behind him. “You wanna tell me what that was about?” he asked roughly and watched as she let Maggie back into her pen, picking up the puppies that were trying to escape and gently pushing them back in. 

“You first,” she grunted and headed to the back area where the supplies were kept, “That was new.” The statement was accusatory, questioning, almost mocking. The dogs hopped and whined as she passed, vying for her or Joel’s attention, and potentially sensing the growing tension in the room. Joel grit his teeth and shook his head, “I didn’t like how he was looking at you-” “So you shoved your tongue down my throat?” she scoffed and turned around to face him, lips twisted down in a frown. “You haven’t complained before,” he dryly commented as if to brush it off, closing in on her until they stood close together. She quirked a brow and let out an unamused laugh, “Miller, people are intimidated by you enough without you throwing your dick around. He’s just doing a job for me.” He wanted to believe her, but the tiny signs were still there that she wasn’t being completely truthful. And it burned deep into him because she hardly ever lied to him before. She was direct in what she would and wouldn’t talk about, would dodge around what she couldn’t answer truthfully. But lying wasn’t done often and it didn’t quell the tightening in his chest. He continued to walk forward, her own position unyielding and refusing to step back, until he was chest to chest with her, “Just a job, huh? One you haven’t mentioned before and won’t talk about? You hidin’ something, Starshine?” Her smile had an edge, teeth bared, and she raised her head chin to face him head on, “What do you want me to say? That I’m sucking his dick behind the back of the building in my spare time? That I let him fuck me when you aren’t looking? What, Tex?” Joel’s hand came up and gripped her chin tightly, the other finding its spot on her hip and squeezing the flesh bruisingly. It was so easy to slip back into being rough with each other, for their touches to turn hard and painful, but they never shied away from it. Her eyes had darkened, lust and fury in them, and he could feel it echoed back, “I know you’re not. But it doesn’t mean he’s not imagining it. He needed to know to keep his eyes to himself. Understand?” “Yes, sir,” she hissed out sarcastically. Memories of a darkened store out there in the wild, of those very words, hit him from months before and then his mouth was on hers again. She didn’t fight him, only kissed him back hard enough their teeth clacked and her tongue was instantly in his mouth. In a way, this was a different form of fight. Both of them trying to get the upper hand, dominating one another.  He backed her up until she met the edge of the work table, items clattering all over the tabletop as her ass hit the wood. Breaking from her mouth, he spun her around and bent her over roughly, his hand spread out over the base of her spine and taking in the curve her body splayed out before him. Fingers moved her hair out of the way so he could press open mouth kisses along the back of her neck, pulling her shirt collar down to continue their exploration. His hips were firmly against her ass and she shifted, pressed back into him and his clothed erection. Joel groaned into her skin and bit off a curse, hands quickly moving around to find the buttons of her jeans.

It was all a rush, her jeans yanked down her thighs while he went to unbuckle his own. Sometimes he missed the dangerous hectic pace of being out beyond Jackson’s walls. The quick moments they’d find together in the dark, harsh and fast and so aware of the peril that could find them. It had been exciting and even if he liked the safety of Jackson, a part of him would always crave that danger. It was partially what drew him to her.

Her nails gripped the table and he grunted, freeing his cock from the confines of his pants and hand finding the soft folds between her legs. Fuck, she was already wet and he enjoyed the moans in her chest as his fingers slid around her clit, covering her in her own arousal. He was already so hard, rubbing his dick along her core and letting her coat him.

“Fuck,” she whispered into the tabletop, forehead pressing into it. 

“Come on, darlin’, haven’t even gotten to that part yet,” he chuckled. His hands dug into the bare skin of her hips, feeling the small marks and scars there, savoring the texture. Sometimes in the mornings he’d skim his fingers over the bruises he would leave there, evidence of him left behind on her skin. He slid into her so easily, like she was welcoming him home. Warm and tight and Joel almost groaned at the feeling. She pushed her hips into him until he was fully seated in her, demanding, and he shook his head at her need to still be in control even when he had her bent over a table at his mercy. She felt like heaven every single time. Soft and hot on the inside, all teeth and armor on the outside. Fuck, if she wasn’t gorgeous. A well crafted blade, sharp but enticing. Something everyone wanted and couldn’t have for fear they’d be cut. But everyday he slid his finger along her edge and welcomed the blood she brought to the surface with a bare touch. He’d let her cut him a thousand times over just to have her. Joel gave her what she wanted- demanded in that silent way of hers. Fingers gripping, he slid in and out of her slowly before driving into her hard and rough. He branded her skin with his scent, his touch. She wouldn’t choose someone else, he knew that, but it was hard to see that clearly when so many things had been taken away. He’d let so many things slip away out of his fingers because he didn’t hold on tight enough. He wouldn’t do that with her. He would shackle himself to her and hold on with all his might because he wouldn’t lose her. All of his fears and desperations drove into her with each thrust and he was lost in the feeling. Bending down over her, he clasped one hand around hers as it gripped the table's edge, able to tell from the hitch in her breathing and the way she was tightening around him that she was close to her breaking point. “Come on, baby, let yourself go,” he hummed into her ear and felt her fall apart in answer, defiance gone. He pumped into her through her orgasm, coaxing her through its end and feeling the pressure build inside himself as she tightened around his cock. Release came soon after and he groaned into the space between her shoulders, their hair mingling together as his body draped over her. They were both panting, boneless and sweaty on top of the table as the world came back into focus. The smell of the hay and stables, the dirt on the floor, the whines of the dogs. The fact this was still a public spot. She cursed softly and with a more pained groan this time, he pulled out of her. It was hard to walk, but he managed to find a clean cloth and water not far away and cleaned her up carefully, listening to her hitch in breath when he slid the fabric along her sensitive center. He was the one to pull up her pants for her after tucking himself away and buckling his own. She stood up and leaned against the table, watching him as he set about silently fixing her jeans and righting her clothes. There was a nervousness in him that he wasn’t sure about. As if exposing that he’d been jealous was exposing a raw nerve. She wasn’t extremely younger than him, but he was aware of all his faults. His hearing, the way he was slowing down, his age. She’d never blinked an eye at any of it but there were other options now in Jackson. And as much as he tried to tell himself that she wasn’t the type to go looking, he still knew there was a 1% chance that she would.

“Feel better?” she asked huskily, hands resting on the edge of the table. “Not really,” Joel sighed, hip cocked out with his fingers in his belt loops, staring down at the dirt floor. They didn’t say anything for a second before she sighed and crossed her arms, “He’s building a craft table for you.” Well that certainly shocked him back into awareness, “What?” She scowled, obviously miffed about having to reveal it to him, and raised a brow, “Surprise.” “What do you mean he’s building a craft table for me?” Joel repeated with a heavy set brow. That feeling in his chest tightened, released as if letting out a deep sigh, before tightening back up. But she only shrugged, “Exactly what I said. That’s the job I asked him to do. He’s trading for one of the puppies when they’re big enough, but he’s collecting any spare tools he can find along with some books on woodworking and guitar building for you. I figured we could try and fix that broken guitar that we had come across a few miles south. Ta-da.” Joel could only stare as the words sank in, face frozen in a hard frown as he struggled to process her words. It was all said so monotone and he could tell she had wanted to wait to tell him about it. She was annoyed. All he could get out was, “You know those puppies technically aren’t yours?” She shrugged again with a roll of her eyes, “Community puppies. I’m trading with the community. Same thing. And please don’t scowl and run him off when he delivers the damn table to the house. I really don’t want to have to try and approach another new person anytime soon and start this whole process over again. Tommy had to help introduce me the first time and I’ve had to listen to Noah talk constantly. It’s honestly awful.” He almost laughed at the uncomfortable look that crossed her face and mentally noted that Tommy had known about this project and never told him. He’d have to have a word with his little brother about next time maybe finding her help that was a lot older and not good looking. Joel chewed on his lip, sighing, feeling the guilt start to take hold. She was watching him expectantly and he shook his head, avoiding her eye contact, “I guess I should say sorry.” “You guess?” “I am sorry,” he grunted, hands on his hips and kicking the dirt underneath his foot, “I might have overreacted.” She raised a brow at that again but said nothing, only looking skyward in silent prayer, “And just for your information, not that it matters, but Noah has a partner he won’t shut up about. He definitely likes to bark up a different kind of tree.” When the information sunk in, she finally did laugh at the look on his face and pushed herself off the table, looping her arm through his. He didn’t reply and only let himself sink deeper in the hole he had made. She seemed okay with letting that be his punishment. The table was delivered a week later and Joel forced a smile on his face and tried not to appear too guilty as Noah left, hearing Red laughing from behind the screen door as he did so.

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[fandomsandfeminism]

Reading about how sonic the hedgehog was designed. Some highlights-

Ohshima felt that people selected it [the original sonic design) because it "transcends race and gender and things like that".

The detailed design of Sonic was aimed to be something that could be easily drawn by children and be familiar, as well as exhibit a "cool" attitude, representative of the United States at the time.

Sonic's blue shoes evolved from a design inspired by Michael Jackson's boots with the addition of the color red, which was inspired by the contrast of those colors on Jackson's 1987 album Bad;

his personality was based on then-presidential candidate and later President of the United States Bill Clinton's "Get it done" attitude during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Sonic was created without the ability to swim because of a mistaken assumption by Yuji Naka that all hedgehogs could not do so.

The original concepts gave Sonic fangs and put him in a band with a human girlfriend named Madonna.

[franklyimissparis]

who’s who in “let ‘em in” by wings (1976)

and some other thoughts on the song

prefacing this by saying that paul himself has changed his own interpretations and offered many explanations up for each name mentioned in the song! i don't necessarily think there's one right answer about what's about who - paul is known for writing about multiple things at once and having many layers of inspiration behind his lyrics. i will mostly be focusing on the names paul lists off within the song, in the order they appear, starting with:

- sister suzy: suzy was linda mccartney's alter ego within her own band, suzy and the red stripes which was active at the time this song was written. paul has stated on many occasions, including in “the lyrics”, that sister suzy is a reference to linda.

- brother john: a lot of articles reference brother john as being john eastman, linda's brother, while others reference john lennon. paul himself said it could be either. but if we're being honest, the first person paul's gonna think of when someone says “john” is lennon, hands down.

it's worth noting the use of sister when describing linda, paul's wife. while it could make sense in the context of the line brother john being john eastman (john and linda being actual brother and sister to one another), i think it's valid to examine the other potential meanings as well, particularly if we think of brother john as john lennon. it places paul's relation to them both as, firstly, familial and implies an equality in the roles they've served within paul's life. starting the list of people with linda (placing her as the most important as the lot) and then john second is interesting as well. we've seen countless examples of paul and john both comparing their relationships with their wives to their relationships with each other and i think it's striking that paul does this here, whether consciously or not.

(nowadays, paul's brother and sister in law via his wife nancy are actually named jon and susie, coincidentally enough.)

- martin luther: paul writes in "the lyrics" that this is about MLK which i'm sure it partially is but also there is an account of the other three beatles jokingly calling john "john martin luther lennon" in the early days though i couldn't find a solid source for this. there is the infamous 1985 hunter davies quote from paul's off the record phone call with him where he called john “martin luther lennon" but that was obviously years after let 'em in and in a massively different context (though potentially this could suggest that it’s a comparison he’s mentally made before but that’s a bit of a stretch, evidence wise lol). i’ve also heard people say martin luther could potentially be a reference to george martin as well, which is possible. others have speculated that this is a reference specifically to martin luther and the 95 theses (“knocking on the door" i.e. nailing the theses to the door) which paul says may have been true on an unconscious level but wasn't purposeful.

- phil and don: the everly brothers, one of paul and john's earliest and biggest influences as young lads. they were heavily inspired by the everly brothers when they performed as their duo, the nerk twins. they also referred to themselves as the foreverly brothers on other occasions.

- brother michael: paul's brother mike, unsurprisingly. though paul also states in “the lyrics” that this might have been a reference to michael jackson as the timing works with paul and linda meeting the jackson 5 around the same time as well but i think realistically he probably mostly had mike mccartney in mind with this one.

- auntie jin: paul’s real and favourite auntie from liverpool. saw one very rogue take that it’s meant to sound like ‘antigen’ but, quite frankly, i think that’s a bit horseshite.

- uncle ernie: in “the lyrics”, paul mentions that he has a cousin called ian who was sometimes referred to as "ern". but also states that at this point he was just playing with words and sounds and this probably wasn't his intention. previously, paul has attributed the line as a reference to keith moon, who was close to the mccartneys in the 70s prior to his death and played the character of uncle ernie in the film tommy (1975). it also could refer to ringo starr as well, as he voiced uncle ernie in the LSO's recording of tommy. ringo himself referenced let 'em in ("someone's knocking on the door/someone's ringing my bell") in 2003 in the song "english garden" which suggests that, at the very least, he felt as though there was some connection to him there.

- uncle ian: like previously stated, paul has mentioned his cousin ian as potentially inspiring this line but personally i think uncle ian could be a reference to paul himself. "ian iachimoe" (meant to phonetically sound out "paul mccartney" backwards) is one of paul's many pseudonyms, thought to have been created around 1966. he signed the lyrics of paperback writer with "yours sincerely, ian iachimoe" and it is also said that in order to distinguish themselves from the rest of his mail, paul would tell his close friends and family to address letters to ian iachimoe so he would know to read them.

paul referred to "let 'em in" as the musical equivalent of a "stocking stuffer" in “the lyrics” which i'm sure it was in his mind but me and my tin hat will be reading deeper into it as usual! this song reminds me quite a lot of “call me back again" in the sense that i think (subconsciously) it may be a bit of a poke at john to get in contact with him.

it's important to note that the album was written/recorded/released around the time of the infamous “it isn't 1956 anymore” incident where, according to john, paul kept showing up at the dakota with his guitar after sean was born without calling ahead. john would let him in but would be a bit put off about it until one day he gave paul a bit of shite for it and paul took it quite personally. while the actual incident is noted as happening in april of 1976 (according to the beatles bible) if it's true that, as john says, this happened a few times there could have also been some tension with paul appearing at john's in the prior months before paul recorded the song in february of 1976.

paul has spoken of the song as reminiscent of a typical party in liverpool where there's sort of a constant stream of family and friends coming through the door - this could be something paul is nudging john to remember (especially with the references to their teenage musical influences and acquaintances and paul's family members that john himself once knew personally.) something along the lines of "oh come on, john, you've gotta just let people into your life, you can't shut out the people who love and miss you. this is how it used to be with us, don't you remember those days?" ... but that's just my interpretation. anyway sorry this was so long but i just thought i'd share in case some of you hadn't heard all the possible interpretations of the lines :))

[bvnnyluvvs]

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[elderberries-and-honey]

Jackson had tried his best to keep up with the farm while The Baudelaire's had been away. However, it had proved to be harder than he realized, especially in his old age, and after all, he still had a pub to manage. All the same, by the end of the summer, it became overgrown and unruly. Truthfully, he was a little ashamed and while it wasn't his fault, he felt mortified about the state of the farm.

He stood out in the thick of things, attempting to put even the smallest band-aid over the mess by trimming some of the weeds before their arrival, while Valerie stood over his shoulder trying to instruct him on the 'proper' way to do things.

Beth, who at one time would have loved to challenge Valerie or call her bossy, ignored their bickering. Instead, her and Ozzy stayed nearby, enjoying the warm Autumn air and sunshine on their faces.

Aside from their crops, the farm remained mostly unbothered. All of their animals, both pets and frequent visitors alike, were well taken care of and if nothing else, at least there was that.

Neither Winifred or Lawrence brought up their encounter with the Cooper kid, walking along aside each other in silence the remainder of the way. Both of them put it out of their mind's eye, for the moment anyway, when at long last, they were home.

Valerie was the first to notice them, grabbing Lawrence into a tight hug while she playfully scolded him for being gone so long the way only a maternal figure can.

Ozzy and Beth neared the open gate, all the excitement making the tot giggle near uncontrollably. Winifred squatted down to his level, opening her arms wide. "My baby!" She cooed, grinning from ear to ear.

Little Ozzy blinked in confusion, looking up to his Auntie Beth for help as he hid behind her skirt. "Go on, Ozzy, go say hello to your Mum! It's okay, I promise." She encouraged.

Of all the things Winifred had tried to prepare herself for upon their return, her son not recognizing her hadn't been one of them. With every second that tiptoed by she could feel her chest getting heavy as she was finally faced with the reality of what being away for so long had done to her boy. She stared the little one, trying to keep her face from falling into an expression of despair.

It seemed like everyone was holding their breath in wait; Beth in particular fearing a tantrum. 'Please, not now...please, Ozzy.' Beth pleaded wordlessly, and by the grace of God, her private prayers were answered.

Ozzy looked back up at Winifred, some instinct recognizing a distant sense of familiarity within her face, and he soon raced towards her. "Oh, my sweet boy, I've missed you so." Winifred murmured once he reached her, wrapping her arms around him to hold him against her tightly.

Lawrence approached them once he was sure it was safe and wrapped an arm around Winifred. "Hello Oscar," he said softly, "I'm your daddy, and that there is your Mum. And you, little one, are going to be a big brother!" He tutted, placing a gentle hand against Winifred's belly.

Last time they were here, motherhood felt so heavy, like a burden more than a blessing. As she held Ozzy now, she promised herself she would never leave him again. Standing there together, Winifred realized it was the first time she truly felt like they were a family.

next / previous / first

[crmsnmth]

Hello

So, since I'm never satisfied, and it's been quite some time since I did this, here's

Version 5

(I apologize for the length. I kind of just got caught up writing it.)

Introductions Are stupid

Hey. How goes it? Here's a little bit about me, and why I do what I do. We all in? If not, too bad. It's time to move.

I'm a 36 with no pronouns. Just call me whatever you want, I don't give a damn. Pansexual, if you must know my private business. I live in a small town of 2000 people right in the center of the drunken state of Wisconsin. It is not even close to as fun as that sounds, and it doesn't sound all that fun to begin with. It's a place where alcoholism is worn like a goddamn badge of honor. Try being sober when getting alcohol poisoning makes you a legend, and wearing DUI's like peacock feathers. I've lived in many other places though, jumping around the Midwest as if it were playground hopscotch. I guess it's true what some people say though, and we always end up right back at home. I keep coming back here at least.

I work two jobs, both in the same field. For one, I am the kitchen manager/Head Whatever for a Bar/restaurant/bowling alley. I told you, it's a small town. And I also work as a plain old line cook at another bar/restaurant/event center. I've been working the kitchen life since I was sixteen and started working at a Rocky Rococo's Pizza. That sucked and this sucks too. I'm not a fancy chef, and I didn't go to school for shit, but I've been in this industry a long time, and I still love the basics of my job. It's one of the few things that I can actually say I'm good at and take a lot of pride in what I do for work.

I spend most of my time listening to music (it's always playing around me). I listen to all music, and I'm not just saying that. I actually do. You can go through my main playlist and you'll find everything from Slayer to Britney Spears to Alan Jackson to The Casualties to Katy Perry etc… My favorite band of all time is the Descendents (I'm just a square going nowhere). But standing tall in second place is Amigo The Devil (As long as I wake up, I'm already stronger than dead) and Frank Turner (If you're all about the destination, then take a fucking flight) rounding out my top 3. Honorable Mention goes out to Lana Del Rey, Blitzkis, Murderdolls, Poor Man's Poison, Pat "the Bunny"(And all of his projects) and I'm going to stop now or this will just turn into bands I like. I am always on the lookout for new songs to memorize, so tell me the songs that mean the most to you. I seriously want to know.

I am a massive film fan. Mostly old horror, but I love the weirdest movies out there. Art films? Hell yes. Although, I'm still a sucker for the classic 80's slasher, or the 30's Universal horror. I've seen every Friday the 13th (official films, including the remake) enough times that I can quote almost every line from each film (those damn enchiladas). My favorite movie of all time, and I say this without any irony at all, is a little indie number called "The Room." I fucking love Tommy Wiseau's The Room. It is the greatest peice of cinema this world has ever seen. If you have not seen this fucking beautiful trainwreck, please rectify that. Like now. Stop reading this and find a way to watch it. Watch it. Go on, get. Come back to me when you've learned some film culture ettiquette.

I'm mentally screwed and quite medicated. I have come to peace with this fact. I've been as stable as I can get for a good four years now. So that's neat.

I am a raging cynic. I'm not sure if it's by choice or by enviroment. Either way, it's easier this way.

I'm a political nihilist. The system has failed, will continue to fail, and always will fail. It's inevitable and it doesn't matter who you put in charge. It will always fail. So please, shove your political opinions up your ass. I don't care.

I am a recovering addict, long-term. 8 Years. I am sober a little over two.

I started writing young. As soon as I could basically. Stashed somewhere in a box of my dad's thing is a few pieces of paper with a short little story in it. It's awful, but it's the earliest fossil of my work. Writing became a form of therapy and how to cope with my parent's divorce, my extreme depression in my teens, my anger and even lonliness. Words were comfort. Words are easy. Words are what I have to really express myself and I couldn't be happier that I've found other writers who aren't in it for fame or glory, but just for the simple fact that they love to write. I write more than any sane and healthy person should right, but I'm far from sane and I'm far from healthy. I write this much because if I don't, my head will explode into a shower of blood, brain and skull. Take that as a metaphor if you want, but I'm telling you the truth.

I do not write for anyone's actual approval. Not even my own really. I do this because it's the only addiction I have that isn't actively trying to kill me, and is actually trying to better me as a person and get in touch with unresolved feelings and places that will never have closure. Plus, the idea of my skull exploding sounds ok, but I can't leave behind that mess for anyone else to clean up.

I will always love constructive criticism. But please, for the love of all the love in the world, don't just tell me I suck. I get that. It's a massive part of my whole act. Please, give me a reason why I suck, what I'm doing wrong in your eyes. Help me to better this craft I play with. Seriously, I love it. But if you can't give me a reason, maybe it's best you keep that food-hole shut, and stop trying to be a dick, dick.

So what do I write? What do I put here on my tiny molecule of the internet? Bad poetry, and way too much of that. You'll find random crappy drops of stores or fiction (September Sky is still being worked on, I didn't forget about it). You'll find song lyrics for songs never written, scripts for films never shot, speeches given to people who aren't alive anymore, letters that never get sent. I try to write something at least once a day, but If I get on a roll, I'll post up to 15 or 20 new posts a day. Call it obsession if you want. I guess by definition, you wouldn't be wrong.

So since, I write some much, what topics to a tap dance to the grave with? I'm pretty predictable. So this stuff:

The Girl with the Ocean Blue Eyes*, Kid*, The Broken Mirror Girl*, My Junkie Angel*, My April Fool's Riddle*, The Cynic's Best Friend*, love, lost lovers, hopelessness, isolation, drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, forgotten acquaintances, mental illnesses, rage, hate, rejection, joy, insignificant moments, slices of life, laughter, beauty, self and self-reflection, self-hate, art, other writers, panic, infatuations, obsession, therapy, group homes, rehab, jail, grace, nature, loss, hope, fear, grief, anguish, philosophy, anarchism, nihilism, religion, god, the devil, ugliness, politics, serial killers, cults, suicide, death, destruction, chaos, music, validation, closure, memory, enemies, friends, rock bottom, sex, violence, rock and roll, sin, self-exploration, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, pain, self-destruction much more. I'm a firm believer that tragedy equals beauty, and take the tragic parts of my life, the shit that really bothers me, to this day, and I write it out. Maybe someone will see those words and realize they aren't alone. Wow, that's not very cynical of me, is it? Ok, fuck those people. Is that better?

Consider this little spot your trigger warning. Seriously, if just read the paragraph above you and think I play it all that safe, your definitely in the wrong place. I will talk of horrible things. They will bring horrible feelings. They could set you off. I'm stating it once, here and now, under a blanket term. Read what you want, but read with caution.

I make music as well as the writing gig. I don't bust out music as much as I do words, but I still have fun doing what I do, and if you'd like to tell me how much I suck at it, please do exactly that. At either of these chosen sites (Reverb has everything. I'm too cheap to pay for Soundcloud's stuff):

Look, if I came off has Nr. Doom, the misery poet archetype, the aged out punk rocker, the reclusive loner, I'm really…I was about to lie and say I wasn't those things, but that's is what I am. I am also a lover of art, a lover of food, a lover of love, an artist, a weirdo, a very scared individual, paranoid, insecure about everything, socially awkward kid who never grew out of black Misfits t-shirts and chain wallets. I am not an animal. I'm a goddamn human being.

Oh, because I get asked about them or why I just seem to ignore them. I am the goddamn king of typos. Missing letters, misspelled words, horrible grammar, broken sentences, sometimes even missing words. I'm really good at them, and I'm almost positive there is always something I could go back and fix. But I'm not gonna do that. I don't want to. If you can get the meaning of what I'm saying, the message is more important to me than the medium. I type way faster than my skill, and my brain works way to fucking fast for my hands to keep up, so it becomes a race to get words on page. And then my fingers tap dance and trip over themselves. I knew I should've sprung for lessons.

There. There's bare bones about me and what I'm about and where I stand. If there is anything else you'd want to know for some godforsaken reason, go ahead and message me. I may not be real good at it, I do enjoy having fifteen second conversations. I always finish early.

*NOT REAL NAMES

[codedsoul]

Part 2

JSU Performs at HBCU Legacy Bowl

[oftenderweapons]

Natural Connection | KNJ | Ch.5

A Small Town Swoons story

Pairing: Namjoon x reader (nicknamed Plum)

Wordcount: 3.6k

Genre: stragers to lovers, fluff, mild angst; ranger/trainer!Namjoon, Chef!reader

Rating: 18+

Synopsis: Plum wakes up needy, too bad Namjoon has already left her room. Their confrontation doesn't go where expected.

Trigger warnings: swearing, semi-public sex. Making out, grinding, dry humping, mutual masturbation, peaches and cream (i guess???). Musings on unprotected sex. Just a pinch of postcoital misunderstandings. Feral, possessive kissing and light biting.

A/N: Holy moly it's been two years???, but I guess it's better late than never, right? 😅💖 I decided to post this only now since I've already written the final 2 chapters. It's been tought, but I've decided it's time to return to this story and finally complete it (even though Ranger!Joon will be oh so dearly missed. I really didn't want to let go of him LOL, esp since it's time to drop this sunshine baby's full back story 😞🥺🥺🥺)

Here is my Masterlist, enjoy!

Navi: Part 1 – Part 2 — Part 3 – Part 4 - Part 5

When you saw Namjoon the next morning, you only remembered waking up to an empty bed. 

It wasn't a pleasant feeling and you weren't ready to acknowledge it like a mature, emotionally stable adult. 

“Good morning, Plum,” he murmured, standing very close beside you as he waited for his band of jocks to join you. 

“Morning,” you replied, a bit grumpy, but hiding it behind the pretense of courtness. 

“Did you sleep alright?” he asked, gentle and apprehensive. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Not very wordy, mh?” He nodded to himself. “Okay.” And just like that, conversation was over. 

You hated having him right beside you and wasting time in silence when all you wanted to do was hear him talk, but apparently you had to make do with what you had. 

The guys arrived all together maybe two minutes after he stopped talking to you. 

“Okay, let's stop by the equipment office so you can all get your climbing gear.” 

Cruelty didn't even begin to cover the ugly feeling coursing through your every limb. It was a sour kind of betrayal, both from your own body and from the person who has so perfectly won you over in nothing but four days of half smiles and hard work and competent guidance. 

It felt like your stomach was being played tennis with, slammed from one side to the other. 

Namjoon seemed entirely oblivious to the wretched state you were in, especially once he knelt in front of you and tugged at the straps around your thighs, slipping two fingers in between the harness and your skin to make sure there was enough space for your muscles to flex comfortably. “All set?” he asked, but his voice was dark and once his eyes shot up to your face he couldn't hide a flicker of lust lighting up his guts.

This angle, he thought, was just the same as when he'd lifted your leg and placed the back of your knee over his shoulder, his nose diving in the metallic, earthy scent of you. 

He was getting hard. He could tell. 

But you took a step back. “Yes.” Your reply was glacial, and it seemed as if you couldn't remove your harness fast enough. 

“I'll be right back,” you told him over your shoulder as you headed for the closest restroom in the sports hall. 

Namjoon just nodded and watched you go.

“What did you do to her?” Jackson asked him, an unwelcome afterthought, like his personal little devil perched on his shoulder. 

“I have no idea,” Namjoon replied, sincere and confused. 

“Did you tell her something rude? With your typical lone wolf harshness?” Jaebeom pitched in. 

“Who made her mad?” Asked Wooyoung, staring at your figure as you dashed across the hall. 

“Namjoon,” said Jackson, not even bothering with stating that maybe you weren't mad at all, and that Namjoon had done absolutely nothing to upset you. 

Yet, it was his interaction with you that had made you dash. Or so he thought. 

“Go check on the girl, you fool! Didn't mother teach you anything?” 

All the guys turned in Bangchan's direction and he seemed to quote, “Broke your heart I'll put it back together, I would wait forever and ever, and that's how it works, that's how you get the girl.” 

Jackson and Jaebeom just stared at him, as if they couldn't recognise their friend at all. 

“She literally said what every girl wants and we still act like girls are a mystery. Just listen to them, for goodness’ sake.” 

Namjoon nodded for a couple seconds, then started in the direction you went. 

He entered the corridor to the restroom, and hesitated by the shared washing room that gave access both to the men's toilets and the women's ones. He walked through the women's door. Three other doors in front of him. 

He really, wholeheartedly hoped there weren't other women around. 

“Plum, are you okay?” 

Silence followed. 

“I know you're here, Plum. I just need to know you're alright. I don't know what I said or did to upset you, but—” 

A door opened and for a second he thought he would die of mortification, then he registered your face. 

Relief, at first. 

Then something else. 

Your cheeks were aflame, and your chest too seemed to be on fire. 

Your lips were as red as he'd ever seen them, and it wasn't makeup because he hadn't noticed any bright colour on your face earlier. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. 

You nodded, still speechless. 

“You don't seem okay. What is it? Did I—?” 

“I am fine, Namjoon. Don't worry. I'm alright. Perfectly okay.”

“But you—” 

“Wonderfully fantastic, Namjoon.” Your tone was clipped 

You made your way to the door when he stepped in front of it. “Are you?”

You rolled your eyes. “I just told you so!” 

He pinched a lock of your hair in between his thumb and forefinger, straightened it, then released it. “You were grumpy this morning.”

“Just stressed about climbing.” 

“Nothing to do with me, so?” 

You rolled your eyes. Why would he be so perceptive? “Absolutely not.” 

“Am I frustrating you?” he asked, and stepped closer. 

“Yes, immensely, with all your questions and— The guys will be suspicious. Do they know you—” 

“That I came after you? Yes, they saw you dash and suggested I check in on you, which I wanted to do myself, but I wasn't sure it was a good idea, and their validation sort of helped. I know you're mad at me, I don't know why, though!” 

You narrowed your eyes at him. “You don't know why?!” 

You tried to sidestep him, but he was like a wall in front of you. “I don't.” 

“I woke up! Alone! I was…!” You gesticulated as if to complete your accusation, but the words wouldn't come out. 

“I see,” Namjoon replied, and he immediately noticed it was patronising, which made you seethe at him, pointing a finger against his chest.

“Do not use that tone with me, mister. You could at least have left a note.” 

He looked at you like you were nothing but a tiny little mouse he was about to thwart with his big bearish paws. “I'm sorry, Plum. You're right, I should have left a note.”

It was true, he'd dashed earlier that morning, but it was only because a deer had been found not far from the main road, his hind legs severely damaged, and he'd been called to help the local wildlife ranger to pick the animal up for rescue. “It was an emergency and I dashed out and—” 

“I woke up and you were gone.” Your eyes were wide, perfectly showing the disbelief you'd felt. “I woke up—” you said, and the pause that followed was like you were looking for words and only the wrong ones were coming up. “I woke up,” you repeated, “wanting you,” you added, cheeks aflame again, eyes aimed at him like guns, like saying ‘you know what I mean’, “And you weren't there,” you concluded. 

He stared at you for one or two blinks. “Wanting me?” He asked, and you shoved him back with both your hands, even more fed up. 

He, however, caught your wrists and brought them down to your sides, jutting his chin forward in a cocky expression. “You wanted me.” 

Your cheeks were boiling and your eyes couldn't bear his face any longer, so you turned them down, to the floor. “Yes.” 

“Plum,” he called, his hands trailing up your forearms, all the way to your shoulders. 

You shivered, but he proceeded still, headed for the sides of your neck, then your cheeks. 

“You want me still, sweets?” His thumbs forced your face up, but your eyes were glued to the floor. “Come on, Plum. Look at me, darling.” 

Reluctantly, you did. 

“Oh, sweets,” he spoke, ever so gently, so tender. “I was called on an emergency by the rangers of the local park. We were rescuing a deer.” 

Your pout was still glued to your face, and you weren't sure why. You're used to commandeering around ten men at a time, but this one, this specific man is not a force you can reckon with. 

“I wanted to stay, Plum. I truly did.” He kissed your temple when your initial frustration seemed to subside. “Let me make it up to you, sweets.” 

He touched the curve of your neck with his forefinger. “Was it when I asked about your day this morning?” He asked, his finger roaming across your collarbones. “When I asked how you slept?” His finger aimed even lower, just a few millimetres beneath the neckline of your top. He lowered his mouth to your ear, and when he spoke “Or was the sight of me kneeling in front of you, like when you came all over my mouth?”

Your insides clenched like you hadn't just given them the sort of satisfaction they were looking for.

“How can I make it up to you?” He asked, as if he needed to be in your good graces. “Anything you want, sweets.” While one hand drew the line of your side, coming to rest on your waist, the other rested on your jaw, the pad of his thumb tracing your lower lip, and his brow knit as if he were in physical pain from the longing. And goodness, if he knew how to pine…

You let your lips disclose for him and he inhaled sharply as the warmth of your exhale slithered past his fingertip. 

His right hand slid from your waist to the small of your back, pulling you closer. “Can I kiss you?”

You nodded. 

“Do you want me to?”

You nodded again, and he smiled, so softly it killed you. 

“Use your words, Plum.”

Your heartbeat skipped, your temper now entirely dissolved into warm honey. “Please, kiss me.”

He nodded, his smile so blindingly happy. And he lowered himself to you. 

His lips were soft against your own, so delicate and tentative. No tongue, just tiny pecks. 

He seemed ready to let go of you, but you had other thoughts in mind. He was already rising, and all you could do was grip the nape of his hair, and keep him still, kissing the line of his jaw now that his mouth was out of reach. 

He pulled back, fighting you a little as you kept delivering open mouthed kisses to his throat, by now reaching his collarbone. 

He tipped his head back to make eye contact with you and you stopped. 

“You wannit?” He said, the words coming out like a dark purr, smooth and vaguely threatening. 

You nodded, exasperated, then remembered his correction from before and whispered, “Will you fuck me, please?”

His grin was devilish and helpless at the same time. He shook his head and tried to angle himself away from you, running his hands through his hair. 

He had only as much restraint as a well-disciplined, civilised, mannered man, no more no less. 

Even a saint would break for you. 

You thought he was about to head for the door and leave when he stood before it, locked it shut and turned back to you, with two great strides before slamming his mouth to yours and grabbing your ass, picking you up like you were nothing compared to what he usually lifts in the gym. 

You found yourself with your back to the wall and him pressed up against your front, squeezing you in a way that could have been suffocating, except you loved the way he was so explicit in wanting you, and how easy you could read the restraint he was imposing on himself. 

You ground against his navel and he lowered you just a little, so that your core was square against his pelvis. 

“Woke up late,” you told him in between kisses and gasps. “I stretched over to your side—“

He tried to focus on your words but all he could do was stare at your mouth and register the bits he needed.

“I wanted you,” you said, and it came out like a cry. 

“I know,” he said, soft, understanding, soothing. 

“You weren’t there, and I was late, and I couldn’t—” You gasped as he dove for your throat, biting gently, making you arch into him, against him, your bodies flush against each other. “I was so mad. So frustrated.”

“Let it all out, sweets,” he said, reliable, steady, strong. “Lay it all on me.”

“I didn’t even have time to pull myself together ‘cause I was late,” you whine, and it came out so weak, so silly. 

“I can fix that for you, if you want me to. Just say the words.” He didn’t even need anything done to himself, he just wanted to please you. So many years of well-spent solitude and self-control had taught him everything about patience, everything about himself. It was not his own pleasure he’d learnt to desire, but the pleasure he could give to someone else. 

“Want you inside,” you mumbled, chasing his mouth, needing his lips sucking your own, tongues tangled together. Feeling him through his shorts, through your own shorts too was torture when he could be skin to skin against you, inside you, even.

“We’d need to stretch you first, it’s gonna take a bit, baby,” he reminded you, worried. 

You bit your lip and looked away. “What if I’d already handled that?”

His eyes went wide, then he bit your chin fondly with a curious enthusiasm. “Just cause I looked at you while kneeling?”

You felt your cheeks flush with fire. “You were— It was like when, the other day you—”

“Hold tight,” he said, then freed an arm by using his forearm to hold you up from beneath both your thighs. With his spare hand, he shoved his shorts down before stopping. “Condom. Damn!”

You squeezed your eyes shut, then let your forehead fall to his shoulder. “Please…”

“Plum, I—”

You weren’t on birth control, and you couldn’t risk going bare. You possibly never could. Not with your period being the most irregular thing ever, and knowing that you could be ovulating any day now. 

He helped you slide down his body. “You don’t happen to—”

“Left them in my bedside drawer.”

He let his forehead fall against the wall. 

“I cannot go bare—” you offered weakly.

He kissed your temple. “I wouldn’t ask you that. Not even if we were both one hundred percent sure.”

You bit your lip again, thinking, a frown forming on your forehead. And then— 

You took his hand in yours, dragged him to the washbasin, with its mirror right in front of you, and as you stood against the counter, his body pressed up behind you, you lowered your shorts, exposing your naked behind to him. 

“Plum, I don't think this is a good idea,” he said, biting his tongue. 

“You can just grind and I'll—” You brought your hand to your labia and traced a circle against your core that almost made you shiver. 

“This could get messy,” he said. 

You turned to look at him from over your shoulder and with a flirty smile you added, “I don’t remember it being a problem last time.”

He shook his head and grinned, wolfish and sexy. 

You couldn’t quite align the sight of him now with the person he had been out in public about thirty minutes ago; and it got worse when he grabbed the left side of your face with his right hand and brought his mouth to your cheek, biting it gently, his lips giving it a slight suction, as if he were half between nibbling and kissing. 

Your head was playing some hard rock soundtrack while it all happened, and it was feral, and you were almost disconnected from yourself but it was heavenly. 

It was all heavenly until they knocked at the door. 

You stared at each other in the mirror and he cursed under his breath. 

“Keep going,” you whispered. “Let them eat cake.”

It took maybe a millisecond to win him over, and it got even rougher, his hand was at your neck, grabbing at the base of your jaw, and he gave a little jerk as your eyes rolled shut. He called for your attention and as soon as you mustered the strength to open your eyes, he brought his other hand to the hill of your pelvis, his hand dwarfing you as he cupped you. “Eyes on me, Plum.”

And you kept your pupils glued to his as he stuck two of his beautifully long, perfectly thick fingers inside you. 

Your jaw went slack and he grinned, your hand reaching behind you to grab his ass, pushing him even closer up against you, clawing at his glute. 

This time it was his jaw that was left hanging. 

You were moving just right against each other, and the knocking stopped, and the last thing you knew was that he groaned, head thrown back before you felt it, hot and wet against you. His head snapped forward next, teeth sinking at the spot between your neck and shoulder as he tried to muffle a moan. 

Similarly, you pressed the ball of your hand to your lips as your left one assisted his own between your legs, his fingers inside you while your digits worked on the outside.

He murmured sweet nothings in your ear as he focused on you, kissing, sucking, nibbling at the sensitive skin near your neck and jaw and collarbone. “Come on, Plum,” he whispered. “Come on my fingers, sweet thing. I promise I’ll be so good to you.” His mouth was everywhere on you, and his hand — the one not inside you — was so sweet on your face and your hair. 

“I’ll give you anything tonight, I swear, Plum. Anything you want, you’ll have it. It’s all yours,” he said, back to his chivalrous, servicing self. “You’re so beautiful, so precious, so lovely.” His nose was deep in your hair, inhaling you, the osmanthus and elderflower of your shampoo. “I never thought I would find something like you. You’re unbelievable.”

And there was so much pining, so much longing in his dark and shimmering eyes, that when you looked at him again, you crumbled, your legs giving out, and you were lucky his arms had you locked in his embrace: his left one holding your torso and head upright while his hand cradled your face; his right arm instead ran across your waist and navel, his fingers still deep inside you, and it was only thanks to his forearm that you didn’t melt to the floor. His hips were pinning you to the hard edge of the counter, and you knew it would feel tender later, maybe bruise even, but in the haze of your ecstasy you almost found it sexy. 

“There you go, Plum,” he cooed at you, his smile all gentle and apprehensive. “That’s my good girl.”

Your head fell back on his shoulder and he kissed you on your lips, a polite little peck that made your stomach flutter. 

He was strong, he was dependable and steady, responsible, and it came so easy to you to give up control and just let him take over. 

You’d always been neurotic — is that the right word? — about sex. About letting yourself be vulnerable and weak and passive, but with him you just let yourself float to his current, and that was probably one of the best choices you’d ever made. 

Your eyes opened and when you finally put him on focus, he gave you this dreamy little smile, and just then you realised how rare it is to see his face like that, up close, but also so serene. So… happy?

“Hello?” you said and he shook his head slowly, as if amused. 

“Hello,” he answered. 

And you both giggled. “Are we in trouble?” You asked.

“Not sure. But I’m sure you’re nothing but trouble to me.” He gave you a squeeze as you were still in his arms and you were about to frown, not sure how to interpret his sentence. “Despicable, unresistable trouble.” His hand was still inside you and you clenched a little, ready to take more. He inhaled sharply. “Sweet, lovely trouble.” His thumb skimmed your hipbone fondly. 

You breathed out slowly, trying to steady yourself. “I guess we should go before we get into any more trouble than this.”

He froze for a second, then nodded and let go of you. “Sure. I’ll just clean you up.”

Your eyebrows shot up. “Oh, I’ll take care of that.” 

“I don’t mind,” he said, but he was staring at the floor, and he was covering himself, and you could tell you’d made a mistake somewhere. 

“You sure you don’t mind?” you ask, and he stopped and looked at your reflection. 

You were dishevelled and half naked, but he stared at your face like that was the only thing that mattered. 

“Of course I don’t?” He said, but it came out almost as a question. He grabbed a towel and soaked it under the tap. “I don’t know the etiquette about this kind of situation,” he murmured while rubbing the towel gently against your glutes. “I’d like to think this would be the polite thing to do. Fix the mess I make.”

Is it just a matter of politeness? you asked yourself, eyes averted. “Sure,” you said and smiled, like it’s no big deal. 

Navi: Part 1 – Part 2 — Part 3 – Part 4 - Part 5

Taglist: @blushingatyou @ladykadyrova @sweetjellyfishland @starxclouds @ayanyamnyam (taglist is open!)

[twinkthrasher]

! ! INTRODUCTION POST ! !

✩ I'm fine with any nickname deriving from my username, Twinkthrasher!!(Twinkie, Twinkle, etc)

✩ I'm Genderfluid and Omniromantic. My preferred pronouns are They/Them, but I don't mind He/Him, She/Her, or even Xey/Xem being used for me.

✩ I'm from the southern part of the United States. I'm also fully Mexican!!

✩ I AM A MINOR!! I do my best to stay away from 18+ accounts and content because I know better + i'm not interested in that stuff. However i'm a stupid highschooler pls don't kill me for cracking the occasional sex joke..😭💔

✩ I have Autism and ADHD, please be patient with me as I have trouble with social cues and often ask for clarification about simple/obvious things.

✩ I'm an artist who draws things sometimes!! I've also been known to write a bit!

✩ My main interests are currently RedactedAudio, Yuurivoice, and JJBA!!

^^ My fav characters consist of Asher(RA), Lasko Moore(RA), Charlie(YV), Leone Abbacchio(JJBA), and Vinegar Doppio(JJBA).

✩ Media I also like but don't talk about as much are— One Piece, FNF, Pico's School, Madness Combat, CRK, Super Mario characters, Mystreet, Octonauts, and MLP(gen4).

✩ I'm also big fan of sea creatures, anteaters, birds, monkeys, ancient mythology, historical fashion from different eras and cultures, and cryptids/the supernatural.

✩ My favorite bands/artists include Depeche Mode, The Sisters of Mercy, London After Mindnight, Christian Death, KMFDM, Rammstein, Strawberry Switchblade, Nirvana, Michael Jackson, Mother Mother, Twice, Your Favorite Martian, and Kendrick Lamar.

✩ If you like dsmp, helluva/hazbin, any hoyoverse game, please keep in mind that i'm not a fan and i'd rather not talk about/be exposed to these!!

DNI if you are racist, homophobic, transphobic, a proshipper, or apart of controversial fandoms like TCC.

PLSSSSS INTERACT IF WE HAVE SHARED INTERESTS!! I enjoy receiving things in my inbox, along with dms don't be afraid to interact with me!!!<333

[dandelion-blues]

Alright these are just my thoughts really early in the morning, but here me out.

#6 What if...

Chronos from Hades 2 (the video game) met Percy Jackson's Kronos...?

...

Kronos' divine light seeps through his form. The insolent son of Hermes fought back. How dare he?!

At least he wasn't going to live, but the son of Poseidon, on the other hand...

Kronos cursed his blasted grandson to never know peace again in his final moments.

But then, as the Titan was falling back into pieces in Tartaras to be without consciousness, he instead glitches through time.

Kronos heaves, and he glares up his molten golden eyes, and freezes when he meets seering white eyes.

"How interesting," the being states, their voice echoing around through time. The being has dark skin with golden cracks as if he's been cut into pieces.... along with sandy colored hair and golden bracers and roman numbers marked on a golden band resting on his shoulders. This being seeps with divinity. The being glides over, with wings spreading forth from his back, to Kronos, who is still spawned upon the ground.

Kronos tries to wet his lips and get up and get away, but it's as if he's frozen in time. He hardly even can process that he is somehow still alive and in his true form. But his mind is slow, but not as unmoving as his body. Time slipping through his fingers like the sands of an hourglass, even as the being effortlessly glides to him - his 6 wings like mechanical things detached from him, yet melded to the color of his dark and golden body.

It should be impossible to be stopped in time, for he is the Titan of time, and yet he is powerless to this beings' power.

Kronos would have let out a bitter laugh if he could. Perhaps this is how his foolish grandson felt when facing him. Except even then, Percy did not falter and he fought on.

Then, perhaps in mere moments or even in the span of years - it's so hard to tell when frozen in time. The being is upon him, his hand tilting Kronos' head up.

Golden eyes meet white, and the being gasps releasing Kronos, a whisper in his words like the hiss of sand, "Impossible... you're me?"

Then, the being - the other Kronos apparantly - harshly yanks up the Titan by his long black hair, "Tell me what wickedness brought you here."

It's not a question, and all of sudden, Kronos is released from time's hold, and he gasps for breath.

Kronos once again meets the eyes. He just lost against mere demigods because of his arrogance, so he isn't about to test his luck, and he tells the being everything.

Notes:

Okay, so I kind of just thought of this as a crack fic at first, but then it turned into this. I don't know, I think it's pretty cool.

Also, I just thought of this. Percy should totally be at the crossroads with Melenoë.

He's like, I have to beat my grandpa again?!!!

First - Previous - Next "What if...?"

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

July 19th, 1985 - Queen Story!

The Sun - I AM THE CHAMPION

Why Fantastic Freddie Stole Live Aid Show

(Boogie time for winners) by Nick Ferrari

Rock fans have been saying for years that Freddie Mercury is the world’s greatest.

Now the world knows how right they are–because Freddie and his band, Queen, stole the honours at the star-studded Live Aid concert.

His blistering show, with its haunting finale, left all the other pop greats standing.

Freddie, a very energetic 38, cannot resist giving it all he’s got once he is on stage.

He says: “I have to win people over, otherwise it’s not a successful gig. It’s my job to make sure people have a good time. That’s part of my duty. It’s all to do with feeling in control. That song We Are The Champions has been taken up by football fans because it’s a winners’ song.

“I can’t believe that somebody hasn’t written a new song to overtake it.”

In a revealing interview Freddie talks freely and frankly about his superstar friends, his astonishing song writing output and his sad love life.

_Shock_

His composing has brought him into constant with Elton John, Rod Stewart — and the reclusive Michael Jackson.

He says: “I recorded about two or three tracks with Michael, but none of them are out at the moment.”

It was Freddie who started recording State of Shock with Jackson, but he did not have time to finish it. Mick Jagger stepped in–and they had a hit.

A Mercury-Jackson duo was also planned for the smash-hit Thriller album, but that did not come off, either.

Not that Freddie worries over such set-backs. His recording career did very nicely, thank you, when he released his solo album _Mr Bad Guy_

“I was pleased with it,” he says. “I was also pleased with my voice. I like it husky. It’s all the smoking. That’s why I smoke — to get that husky voice.”

So how did he reach the high notes? “I used the Demis Roussos method,” he says. “You get a pair of pliers under the frock and go crunch!”

One of the tracks on Freddie’s new album is entitled Love Is Dangerous. Is that his view? He says: “I can be a good lover, but I think after all these years I’m not a very good partner for anybody. Maybe my love is dangerous, but who wants their love to be safe?”

_Tragic_

“I’m possessed by love–but isn’t everybody? Most of my songs are love ballads and things to do with sadness and torture and pain.

“In terms of love, you’re not in control and I hate that feeling. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I’m a very tragic person. But there’s always an element of humour at the end.”

But for all his fame and adulation, Freddie remains a lonely man.

He says: “The album track Living on My Own is very me. I have to go round the world living in hotels. You can have a whole shoal of people you know looking after you. But in the end they all go away. But I’m not complaining. I’m living on my own and having a boogie time.”

And this man, with millions of fans all over the world admits he has few friends.

Freddie says: “When you’re a celebrity, it’s hard to approach somebody and say: ‘Look, I’m normal underneath.’ Then what happens is the tread all over me because by trying to be normal to somebody, suddenly I’ve come out of my shell and become far more vulnerable than most people.”

_Fun_

“Because I’m successful and have a lot of money, a lot of greedy people prey on me. But that’s something I’ve learned to deal with.

“I’m riddled with scars and I just don’t want any more.”

Instead Freddie turns to his fans to feel wanted again. He said: “I find even when people have let you down, you just want to go on stage. It’s very gratifying to know that all sorts of people want you.”

Freddie has also learned how to enjoy his fame. He says: “I was caught up in being a star and I thought “This is the way a star behaves. Now I don’t give a damn. I want to do things my way and have fun.”

“If all my money ended tomorrow, I’d still go about like I had lots of money because that’s what I used to do before. I’ll always walk round like a Persian Poppinjay and no one’s gonna stop me.”

“I love living life to the full — that’s my nature. Nobody tells me what to do.”

TEARS TURN ME ON

Freddie is a great admirer of modern band and current music in spite of his years in the business. He says: “I like Tears For Fears, Wham!, and Culture Club– they’re all very good. But Tears For Fears are among my favourites because they’re writing music I cam really relate to.”

_Dream_

“They’ve got a lot of rhythm and at the same time they’ve got a lot of aggression. They also have very good songs. But I love the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, above all other singers. She must have one of the best voices ever. She sings like a dream. I wish I could sing half as well as she does. It’s so natural.

“She puts her whole emotion into it. Each word she sings is full of meaning and expression. I could listen to it forever.”

Freddie also reveals his deep love of opera. He says: “Montserrat Cabelle is sensational. She has that same kind of emotion as Aretha Franklin. The way she delivers a song is so very natural. It’s a very different gift.”

But Freddie’s favourite band remains Queen who have been toether now for 13 years.

And he strongly denies making a solo album has threatened the future of one of the world’s greatest rock bands. Freddie says: “It’s probably brought us closer together and will enhance our careers.”

_Closer_

“It’s like painting a picture. You have to step away from it to see what it’s like. I’m stepping away from Queen and I think it’s going to give everybody a shot in the arm.

“But I’ll be working with Queen again. No doubt about that. Queen are gonna come back even bigger.”

(➡️ source: http://queenarchives.com/qa/07-19-1985-the-sun/)

📸 Pic: July 13, 1985, Wembley Stadium, London, UK

'Live Aid'

[the-vampire-queer]

The Vampires Digital Media Poll: Round 1, Bracket 3

Please reblog for a bigger sample size.

Results get posted on December 10th. at 5PM CST.

<- Previous poll | Next poll ->

If you wish to learn more about your options, either as a refresher or an introduction, press the "Keep reading" button.

What is The Twilight Saga about?

Summary (first movie only): "High-school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), always a bit of a misfit, doesn't expect life to change much when she moves from sunny Arizona to rainy Washington state. Then she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a handsome but mysterious teen whose eyes seem to peer directly into her soul. Edward is a vampire whose family does not drink blood, and Bella, far from being frightened, enters into a dangerous romance with her immortal soulmate." Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Source: Twilight (2008)

Cast:

Kristen Stewart - Bella Swan

Robert Pattinson - Edward Cullen

Taylor Lautner - Jacob Black

Ashley Greene - Alice Cullen

Jackson Rathborne - Jasper Hale

Note: Cast lists provided here are not complete lists of people and characters featured in the media being listed. These are partial lists that include some of the main characters and their actors.

Additional information: The Twilight Saga are based off of the books of the same name by Stephenie Meyer.

Meyer attributes one of her desires to create her books to 2000s band My Chemical Romance (other bands and media also inspired her, but MCR is much more well-known for being one) and even attempted to get them to make a song for the movies. The band's response was that they wouldn't and would later they would create a song in response/as a reaction to this offer (Vampire Money from Danger Days).

What is Being Human (US + UK) about?

Summary:

US version: ""Being Human," based on a BBC series of the same name, features three 20-something roommates who each try to keep a secret from the rest of the world -- one is a ghost, another is a vampire and the third is a werewolf. The three roomies try to help one another navigate the complexities of living double lives." Source: Rotten Tomatoes

UK version: "Deciding to turn over a new leaf, a group of friends who also happen to be vampires and werewolves move into a house together, only to find that it is haunted by ghosts of people who have been killed under mysterious circumstances. As they deal with the challenges of being supernatural creatures, their desire to be human bonds them." Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Source: Being Human UK

Cast:

Russell Tovey - George Sands

Guy Flanagan (pilot) + Aidan Turner - John Mitchell (UK)

Andrea Riseborough (pilot) + Lenora Crichlow - Annie Sawyer (UK)

Sam Huntington - Josh Levison (US)

Sam Witwer - Aidan Waite (US)

Meaghan Rath - Sally Malik (US)

Mark Pellegrino - Bishop (US)

Note: Cast lists provided here are not complete lists of people and characters featured in the media being listed. These are partial lists that include some of the main characters and their actors.

Additional information: The UK version of the show came out first, airing on the BBC, dubbed Being Human (UK). Later, a new show of the same title would come out, dubbed Being Human (US).

In the UK version, two of the original three cast from the pilot would be replaced. These two would be Guy Flanagan and Andrea Riseborough, replaced by Aidan Turner and Lenora Crichlow respectively.

[aeolianblues]

Jarvis Cocker: At the end of 1996, I had “a nervous breakdown”

Kate Mossman of The New Statesman talks to Jarvis Cocker, September 2021

The singer on nostalgia, hating David Cameron, and how crashing a Michael Jackson performance had “a toxic effect” on him.

Jarvis Cocker leans on a table in the courtyard of the House of St Barnabas, a members’ club and homeless charity, and one of the only bits of London’s Soho that does not bear the marks of the interminable Crossrail project. Cocker says he’s not one for conspiracy theories, “but there’s a lot of dark mutterings about what has happened while everybody’s been locked away. You can see it in Soho, where loads of building work’s gone on. They took an opportunity. Cement’s gone up in price because there’s none left.”

He’s not as tall as he is in your mind’s eye – a solid 6ft 1 – but he cuts a stately figure in green cords and a high-quality lilac shirt. Here, in a moccasin-style shoe, is the foot that was broken, along with his pelvis and ankle, when he fell out of a window in Sheffield pretending to be Spiderman. (He spent months as a young man gigging from a wheelchair.) Here is the rear that was waved at Michael Jackson, in a life-changing moment it still upsets him to talk about. Here are the long legs that bent like those of a freshly born foal on stage, and here are the glasses that were held on his face with an elastic band so he could execute his moves. These long, smooth fingers would frame his face, or flick his “V” signs. As sombre as he is, seating himself on a bench alongside the New Statesman, he is the only pop star that most people under 80, regardless of their artistic ability, could have a crack at drawing.

You feel wary of going straight in on “the Nineties” – it must be such a bore – yet Cocker brings them up right away, talking about a song called “Cocaine Socialism” which he wrote for his band Pulp in 1996, at their commercial and critical height. It was all about New Labour’s courtship of pop stars. The title was ironic he explains, because “cocaine will make you not give a fuck about any other member of the human race”. Cocker shelved the song because he thought it might actually stop the people of Britain voting Labour – a sign, he says, of his overweening ego at the time.

When I was 14, a friend gave me a perfectly executed cartoon of Cocker, drawn on squared paper in a maths lesson and titled “My future husband”. It is often a source of frustration for musicians when their biggest audience proves to be teenage girls, but this is to overlook the power of teenage girls – and teenagers in general – to work up an intensity of feeling that all but creates a career. Cocker should know, because he conceived of his future – conceived of Pulp, “planned my whole life out” – at the age of 14 in an economics lesson, writing it all down in exercise books which he recently unearthed in an attic. 

He had a written manifesto, “very earnest, about how we’re going to get famous, have our own record label and radio station, and help other bands, and break the tyranny of the major labels”. And he’d drawn pictures, too, of an arm, with “major record company” tattooed on it and a meat cleaver saying “Pulp Incorporated”, ready to chop off the hand.

“It was supposed to be some socialist empowerment of the people. It wasn’t just: ‘I’m going to buy a big house in Barbados and have a jet ski’.”

Cocker’s proudest moment in a 30-year career was when Martin Amis agreed with something he’d said, when they appeared together on a TV talkshow approaching the millennium. Jarvis had stated that, in the 20th century, fame had replaced heaven as our ultimate goal, our way of cheating death. His own moment of fame, when it came, was sizeable, but it took him 15 years to get there: Pulp formed in 1981 – they should have been a post-punk band rather than a Britpop one.

In 1996 Melody Maker judged Cocker the fifth most famous man in Britain – after John Major, Frank Bruno, Will Carling and Michael Barrymore. Two years later, the novelist Nick Hornby reflected, “Jarvis Cocker is an acute and amusing chronicler of our life and times… but sometimes… you wish he’d communicate via chat show or letter rather than song.” This he has done, and often. Jarvis has been Jarvis for the last 25 years, in radio, TV, the written word – and perhaps less so in music, in the popular imagination. When you have lingered so long outside fame’s door, fully formed and ready to go, you must be loath to make an exit. Only in the garden of a private members’ club can he go about peacefully; he cycles in London, without a helmet, so you suspect he is recognised often, moving at speed.

Cocker shows me photos of his new bike on an old iPhone – a Moulton small-wheeled cycle, described by Norman Foster as the greatest work of 20th century British design. There are racks back and front, “to put yer bag on”. “I have spent a lot of time on quite random, trivial things,” he tells me. When his beloved 1970 Hillman Imp car finally gave up the ghost, he had it crushed into a cube and gave it away to a fan.

Cocker was in the Paramount Hotel on West 46th Street, New York, in December 1996 when a girl called Imogen called from the New Labour office and asked for his endorsement. 

“I’d been to some event down Whitehall,” he recalls. “A kind of wooing event, and I’d felt really weird about that. It’s hard to imagine now. I was 16-17 when Thatcher got in, and a Labour government seemed like a fantasy. I felt very conflicted, because I really wanted it to happen but something just seemed wrong. Even at that time – a quarter of a century ago – I thought, ‘You should be doing politics, not trying to get some endorsements from some people in bands’. There was a desire for it to happen, and then this disease. It felt like getting chatted up.”

Imogen had tracked Cocker down during what he calls, perhaps surprisingly, a “severely traumatic part of my life”. At the end of 1996 he was having what he refers to today as a nervous breakdown. When the telephone rang in his hotel room, he assumed the suite was bugged. He’d gone to New York around Christmas time and, alone and anxious, found himself unable to face the crowds. But he also struggled to stay indoors, tormented by the aesthetics of his hotel room – “super designed, with a giant picture of a Vermeer painting, a woman pouring some milk out of a blue jug. You walked in to an art installation, and I was in a fragile state of mind.” 

Cocker’s descent – which seems to merge with the ascent of New Labour in a lurid kind of fever dream – began with his trespassing the Brit Awards stage in February 1996 during Michael Jackson’s performance of “Earth Song”. “I don’t really like talking about that particular incident,” he says, looking down at his knees. “People said at the time that it was a publicity stunt but it wasn’t really like that. It had a toxic effect on my life.”

There is a considerable mismatch between the folk memory of the moment, and the memory held by the perpetrator himself. To most, Cocker’s actions look more heroic as the years go by: the last cry of a bloated Eighties megastar defeated by British indie, or something to that effect. Jackson’s pageantry seems worse now than it did at the time: the white messiah robes and outstretched arms; the children lining up to embrace him; the rabbi bowing his head for a kiss. The pipe cleaner figure of Cocker floats on stage looking puzzled, wafts an imaginary fart at the audience (with his bottom clothed) and briefly raises his T-shirt. Hardly something to be arrested for (as he was, before being released without charge) but the 1990s are a draconian place, when you travel back in time.

[see also: Bridget Jones and the Blair years]

Cocker was represented, in his assault charge, by the comedian Bob Mortimer, a former solicitor. David Bowie’s personal film crew were able to provide tapes shot from a certain angle to prove that he had not, in fact, knocked into any children when taking the stage. But there was condemnation from Damon Albarn (“he’s got some very odd ideas about reality”) and Jackson (“sickened, saddened, shocked, upset, cheated and angry”).

The tabloids subjected him to feverish attention. Cocker had always talked about drugs – the liner notes of Pulp’s single “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” showed you how to make a drugs wrap (“Ban This Sick Stunt” said the Daily Mirror). And he’d always talked about sex – he watched a lot of porn in hotel rooms on tour. Now, there were kiss and tells, and an attempt by the Sun to engineer a meeting between Cocker and his estranged father in Australia.

What thoughts were passing through his mind when he stood up and walked towards Jackson’s stage? He won’t say. “One thing I will say is that people are still convinced that I pulled my trousers down and showed my bottom. And it’s really not true. That’s when I realised what a c*** David Cameron was.”

In November 2011, he explains, the Observer put celebrities’ questions to the new prime minister of the coalition. Cocker asked Cameron whether he really understood the phrases “futures” and “derivatives”. Cameron gave a long answer to prove that he did and added: “I was there that night, at the Brit Awards. I saw him led away. I saw his bum.”

Cocker stirs his Americano.

“I just thought, ‘OK, you are a liar. You’ve just shown yourself to be a liar and a complete twat’.”

In the New Statesman that year, Cocker wrote a reflection on hangovers, inspired by the one he had the day after Tony Blair was elected. The hangover lingered, as he criticised New Labour’s treatment of single mothers, students and the disabled. It lasted 13 years, he said. It ended when Cameron got in – not because things were better, but because that’s when he started drinking again.

There is a photograph of Cocker as a long-legged child pictured with his mother, granny, sister and aunties outside their terraced house in Intake, a suburb of Sheffield. With her red pixie haircut and large specs, his mother, an art student, looks just like an indie girl from the 1990s – or a member of Pulp – in a strange cultural collision of the original hippies and the Sixties revival decades later.

Cocker lived on the dole in the Eighties trying to get his band off the ground. During the Britpop era, Labour’s Welfare To Work scheme made such a life much trickier, inspiring a campaign by Oasis’ manager Alan McGee. The dole must have had a huge impact on people’s ability to pursue creative work?

“Probably for six months, and then you get lazy,” Cocker says. “Not wanting to sound like Norman Tebbit, but you do, and that’s what drove me away from Sheffield – people were dropping like flies, having drug overdoses or losing it, and I thought, ‘It’s only a matter of time before I end up there’. So that’s when I started hatching my escape plan.”

His ticket out – a place to study film at Central Saint Martins in London – produced “Common People”, one of the most famous songs of the 20th century. Pulp were more refined, classy, slippery and sardonic than other Britpop bands. The image of working-class life as seen through the eyes of the song’s Greek art student gets to the heart of Cocker’s use of irony: he was interested in perceptions of class difference, perceptions of the north-south divide, as much as the real thing.

Having lived in the south for 35 years, he tells me the BBC’s insistence on using regional accents for announcers is a patronising attempt to keep people in their place. His mother became a Tory parish councillor for the village of Carlton in Lindrick, Nottinghamshire. In 1998 she told the Mirror, in an embarrassing interview, that she admired Thatcher – until the third term, when the prime minister became a megalomaniac. “I raised Jarvis on Tory values that if you’ve worked hard all your life, you want to keep what you’ve earned,” she said. Her son tells me he doesn’t agree with his mother’s support of Brexit – “but you won’t find many people who are going to say that everything’s going to plan. We’re on the downhill, and everybody’s got their own theories of why that is.”

Unlike his mother, Cocker has voted Labour since he was old enough to vote. “I can’t imagine voting for any other party,” he says, but that doesn’t mean he’s excited by the current one. “Corbyn I was excited about. But having spent a lot of time moving between France and here, his inability to come to any position on Brexit finished it for me.” Keir Starmer’s Labour, he says, “feels like the politics of opposition. It’s happening to the left all over the world, isn’t it? People have started wondering what level of dictatorship would be OK.”

A few years ago he visited the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham which recreates the world of the steel mills. Watching the installation of a “big melt” – when molten steel was poured into giant electric arc furnaces – made him strangely emotional. “It must be some kind of folk memory,” he says. “It was awful work, and loads of people got f***ed by the time they were 40. But there was some result and that’s what people miss – that there isn’t anything to glue people together in that way. Imagine working in a shipyard. After six months, suddenly there’s this big, massive f***-off ship and you’ve been part of that.

“There is a nostalgia, not for vibration white finger or lung disease, but for times when people worked together and there would be a result. I’m not an authority. It’s not for me to tell the Labour Party what to do, but I think – well, I thought I stumbled on something.”

He still praises the Sheffield city council, once nicknamed the “Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire”, which allowed children to travel for 2p on buses. He once said that when things took off for Britpop, he thought he was going to be part of something that changed society, like punk did, but it just turned out to be showbusiness.

Of all the extra-curricular jobs Cocker has done, the one the public took to most, which really seemed to fit him, was his gig as a DJ on BBC Radio 6 Music, running his Sunday Service show. His voice was as much a part of his sex appeal for teenage girls as his looks had been. The show explored a mundane but deeply nostalgic aspect of British culture: that time on a Sunday afternoon when everyone felt flat because it was nearly time for the week to start again, and you hadn’t done your homework. 

He’d resisted radio for a long time because of his father. Mac Cocker walked out in 1970, when Jarvis was seven, leaving Sheffield for Sydney, where he began a 33-year career with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His gentle Yorkshire accent was appreciated on the airwaves. He had a show called The Night Train on Saturdays (Jarvis has a Radio 4 show for insomniacs called Wireless Nights); and a show called The Globetrotter on Sunday afternoons, and another called Vinyl Museum. High of forehead with long hair and large National Health-style specs, Mac wore a tank top not unlike those his son wore in Pulp. He sang with a band called Life On Mars.

Traditionally, Cocker doesn’t talk much about his father. As we begin to do so, a very tiny and very hairy caterpillar makes its way along the edge of the table in front of him. It is barely a centimetre long, with legs so fine they move in little ripples of dark and light. Cocker does what all humans do when faced with a caterpillar and tries to persuade it to clamber aboard the nail on his index finger. After two or three refusals, it does so.

Mac Cocker left his son with small bits of information about himself, like a copy of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party on the shelf. When Jarvis was 12, he came to visit, bringing records with him.

“That’s when I found out he was a DJ. He’d obviously just gone into some record label and picked up some records and gave me them. I ascribed a real meaning to them, but it was just promos. They were wank. They were just these really shit records! Anyway…”

Cocker wonders if he was propelled into music because of his father, but explains that any biological imperative, if it comes from an absent parent, remains a mysterious thing. “I know it must come from him, because my mother is so tone-deaf. But if you don’t know him, it’s like it’s come from somewhere supernatural.”

His family would say, you’re just like your father – “but usually as a negative thing. It was strange to be brought up with this cloudy non-presence.” Cocker and his father struck up a form of relationship eventually, whenever Pulp toured in Australia.

“You’re telling yourself that you sprang from the loins of this person, but if you don’t know the person, that disconnect is really uncomfortable. What used to drive me mad was having really inconsequential conversations. When you tried and go on to the deeper stuff, it was just words… I could tell he was always very uncomfortable, and I’m not exactly the world’s best person for talking about emotions, so I was always terrified that an awkward silence was going to descend.”

Did they at least share music? What kind was Mac into? “Jazz,” he says, in disbelief. His father left a record behind in the Sheffield house – an EP by the Sixties French singer Gilbert Bécaud. “You know when singles have those big centres? He’d made a centre for it by cutting a bit out of a Player’s cigarette packet. That had always been in the house. I knew it was his, because his name was written on the back of it.”

When Mac was dying, Cocker visited him in Australia and took the Bécaud EP with him.

“I just Blu-Tacked it on his wall. It was the only thing I had of his. I just thought, because he went a bit away with the fairies before he died, I thought, that’s something from his past. I just stuck it on there.”

And left it?

“Yeah.”

In October this year, Cocker will release his own album of French music – songs originally sung by Françoise Hardy, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc – to accompany the forthcoming Wes Anderson film The French Dispatch, which is set in the 1960s. It features a fictional pop star called Tip Top who is modelled partly on Cocker. Anderson directed his intonation, his delivery, in the studio. Cocker’s French, he says, is “something I should be ashamed and embarrassed about”, despite the fact he got to A-level standard, was married for six years to the French stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington, lived in Paris, and has a French son. He regularly travels to France to visit Albert, now 18, and stays in an apartment backing on to the Hotel Amour. Albert looks just like him. During the pandemic he got around the social distancing rules by hugging him through a bed sheet.

In 1998 Cocker told the Sydney Morning Herald “I just want to find a way of being an adult without it being boring.” Does he feel he’s achieved this? “I know I’m still slightly immature,” he says. “I mistrusted adults as a child. But there’s something really grotesque about people who refuse to grow up. When I became a father, people were always saying [he whines] ‘You’re going to change’. But actually it doesn’t change you, it just opens up a new bit of you. It was a real revelation to me, to realise I had that instinct. I found it liberating. As you move through life, these little doors open. The other ones are still open as well.”

He thinks all human beings believe they just missed a golden age. For him it was the Sixties, the decade in which he was born, “when the Beatles were still a group. They came to an end as the Seventies came, and I was six or seven. That’s the same year that me dad left. It felt like, OK, you’ve had your fun.

“When you’re a kid and you’re looking at the adult world,” he ponders, “you’re only looking at what’s current at that time. Like me wanting to be a pop star. By the time it happened, pop stars were on their way out. By the time you’re old enough to be part of it, it’s gone. So in a funny way, kids live in the past.

“I think that’s the fatal flaw in the whole Britpop thing. I don’t like to say that word, because it was an invented label – but that was the fatal flaw, and it takes us back to the fatal flaw of electing a Labour government and believing it would be the same as it used to be. Let’s make the Beatles again… Oasis really tried to do that, but you can’t make a period in history happen again.”

As a songwriter, Cocker telescoped himself into the future with “Disco 2000” and “Help The Aged”. The former felt open-hearted but the latter, intended as a kiss-off to youth-obsessed politics, sounded sour at the time.

“It always used to drive me mad, people going on about, ‘Oh, you’re so ironic’,” he says. “It would be rubbish to devote your life to doing something that was insincere. I guess I’ll often undercut what I’m singing about as I’m doing it – and that’s just because of the way my mind works. As I think one thing, I’ll think the opposite as well. Later in life, you discover that you are allowed to have two thoughts: it’s a natural function of the way your mind works.”

Some would say that, as you progress through life, you get better at trusting your instincts?

“I think if you just follow your instincts your whole life, you’ll be a monster.”

Cocker brightens, perhaps because our interview is ending. When he talks about his hobbies, he gives a big leonine flash, raising his silvery eyebrows above the frames of his glasses.

I phoned him a few weeks later, after the summer, to see what he’d been up to. He was at a secret location in Spain, making a movie he wasn’t allowed to talk about. A pandemic spent going through his loft, and noticing priceless keepsakes among the rubbish, has inspired him to write a book about pop and nostalgia – Good Pop, Bad Pop – to be published next year.

He is dying to be back on stage after two years off it. “I’m touching a wooden table now. We’ve already had to postpone this tour twice.” And he talks about Labour again – he really seems to care! You think back to his manifesto, his teenage sketch of a meat cleaver chopping off a hand. Then you look at a life lived gently, moving between projects, ponderings and “random trivial things” – and you wonder what his revolution would look like.

Jarvis Cocker’s new album “Tip Top: Chansons d’Ennui” is released on 22 October.