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angelhummel · 4 years

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So I saw a post about the eras of the Glee fandom and I am in the Resurgence Era. I began watching the show back in May 2020. I know people like to make fun of the show a lot, and I totally understand, but I unironically enjoy this show. Well maybe not a majority of S4-S6, but I like the music, the comedy, the heartfelt moments, the zany characters. But I can also see how even in the early seasons, which people hail as Glee's Peak, how it could have been better. (1/?)

With the exception of a few song changes and polishing clunky dialogue, there isn't much I would change in S1 or S2 (although I would cut down on the cheating plotlines in S2). S3 should have been about the club finally being unified with almost no infighting, and they shouldn't have tried to cram so many PSAs into one season AND Santana's coming out story should have had more focus than it got (and it should have been handled more sensitively period) But the music in S3 still rocked.

In S4-S6 I can see almost exactly when people began dropping from the fandom and I understand why. S4 through S5 (especially S5) seemed to be flailing for some sense of direction with the characters and juggled too many nonsensical (and often tone deaf) storylines for it to be coherent. S6 saved it from ending disastrously, but by then it was too late to truly save the show. Not to mention Ryan Murphy's unprofessionalism leading to actor drama and just butchered story lines.

But I can see how the show could progressed coherently and satisfyingly. In S3-S4 the New Directions should have become the champions for the underdogs. In S4 with most of them graduating, they should have had the theme of branching out into the big world beyond their small, closeminded town in Ohio. S5 could have been them getting too big for their britches and then failing because of arrogance. Then S6, they go back to Lima as a humbling reminder of where they started.

In S6, with the allotted 22 episodes they should have had, they could have started up the Glee club again, and be reminded why they joined in the first place. It makes me sad that bad writing and Ryan Murphy's unprofessionalism tanked a show that had all the groundwork for being absolutely amazing. Glee is many things: wacky, musical, bizarre, heartfelt, frustrating, insensitive, sometimes all those things in the same episode, but when it was good, there was nothing else like it.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I mean that last plot is basically what they tried to do but just with Rachel while everyone puttered around for ten episodes before they wrapped all the pointless crap up. I mean I was never a fan of them having to go back to Ohio in the final season just bc they’d already done it multiple times by then and it’s like can we please see something new?? All I wanted for the last two seasons was all my faves and a few guest stars in NY lmao. It’s still an ensemble show with like 7-10 characters and some good guest stars, right??

Also like I’ve sort of said this before lately but. S2 is a hot damn mess. If you didn’t have Kurt or Klaine and you didn’t have Santana or Brittana?? That season would be nothing lol. Maybe it’s just me but idk all the het nonsense that season really drags it down for me. And s3 is fucking awful but that’s what so many people cite as their favorite. Which to me it just proves that people talking about “it was really good at first then sharply declined when everyone graduated” is complete bullshit and it’s just people looking at the seasons they actually watched through rose colored glasses and just saying it got 100% when they stopped being interested in it.

And I swear I’m not trying to just shit on everything you’re saying lmao but again people saying s3 had the best music of all but like. I dunno I think DWS had the best music and was the best actual tribute ep. Michael also had really good performances. Then there’s maybe five other performances I’d put in the iconic tier lol. Idk I think it’s overrated all around and I just hate s3 so damn much (: But yes it does have some good music

But anyway your last paragraph. If I could rewrite Glee with 20/20 hindsight I would have the s4 and s6 newbies switch. So the new and interesting characters for s6 are introduced earlier and actually bring something new to the table. And then in s6 we get the wannabe copies of the oldies so that when all the alums are there, they pick out the person that reminds them most of their high school selves to mentor them. So like Thanksgiving but for like half the season or whatever lol. And it’s like sweet and nostalgic for them to sort of see themselves at the start of their friendship again and to give everyone the advice they wished they knew back in the day. Stuff like that. Could’ve been cute

And idk I don’t agree with everyone else saying s5 sucked lol. I mean obviously one of the contributing factors to the strangeness and sloppiness was one of their main characters dying and having to write around that. And poor Sam having to fill Finn’s crap shoes and become Finn 2.0 and I think you can see that best with the nurse Penny stuff. But idk I mean there’s twerking and puppets which are nonsensical and only one of those things comes off as tone deaf to me. I don’t think it’s as bad as people wanna say. But after the boringness of them coming back to Ohio for the glee club in the middle of the season?? And then my favorite characters are in NY after that?? Those are some of my absolute favorite episodes. I mean I’m in my top 40 glee ranking episodes and I’ve got 5 eps just from the back half of season five to go. I love it. It’s some of my favorite Glee

Although I still agree that s1 is the best. And that’s with the show focusing mainly on Mr. Schue, Finchel, and Quick. And I still adore it as much as I do. Season one really is something special. I mean just about every season is like watching a different show. And no one is going to agree on what they like best or why. But idk I’m just glad everyone in the fandom has something to hold onto.

#glee #asks #answered #long post #my thoughts #oh and rm letting cast drama fuel his writing choices #fuck him for that #i didnt need a pezberry feud just bc nr was sick of lm's bullshit #seasons-of-stories

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langdxn · 4 years

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dance macabre part ii: recognition | sojourn!michael x reader

SUMMARY: Michael meets another Cortez resident... someone familiar.

WARNINGS: Nothing but angst and tension here, chief.

WORDS: 1400 - I’m getting better!

A/N: I’m so sorry this took so long! I had to make sure I did this interaction properly and make all my usual cross-references, I really hope it’s okay! (again I’ve lost the gif credit, sorry!)

read part i here

Michael’s feet dragged wearily across the burgundy honeycomb carpet of the Hotel Cortez, his legs limp and his knees trembling beneath him. He’d walked so far to reach this 1920s sanctuary, he could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Every corridor looked identical to the last, but the monotony didn’t cross the mind of the aimless wanderer. Michael slumped along each hallway unfazed, swinging recklessly from the walls around every corner as if the merry-go-round were a source of entertainment.

It wasn’t that he was drunk, in fact he hadn’t had chance to touch a drop of whiskey in the Blue Parrot thanks to the intrusion of one James Patrick March, but the dehydration and sheer exhaustion left him in a state of quasi-hallucinogenic stupor, dizzying himself as each doorframe buzzed out of his periphery.

“You need help finding your room?”

The low female voice calling from behind him suddenly startled Michael out of his daze, but not because of her intrusion on his quiet meandering — her tone sounded familiar.

“I’m fi—I’m fine,” he dismissed with a wave, weakly spinning on his heels to face her. As her stout form came into his kaleidoscopic, exhausted view, Michael’s breath hitched sharply.

“You don’t look fine, kid.”

Iris trudged toward him, her arms swinging dutifully by her side and her dowdy white blouse floating with her.

“Ms… Ms Mead?” Michael squinted harshly, propping himself up against the nearest wall and leaning in to get a closer look at his company.

Could it be? Surely not. He’d seen her body, touched her scorched flesh, watched her death in a vision — every last agonising breath snuffed out before him. Cordelia swore he could never find her again.

“Not quite, young man, the name’s Iris,” she corrected, sauntering toward him with a reassuring grin. “Let me help—”

“No—no,” Michael hissed sharply, firing his palms in the space between them, eyes darting frantically around him. “D—don’t come any closer.”

“Look kid, I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m the least of your worries in this place.”

“You’re... you’re not real!” His fragile voice broke as his jaw trembled, processing the sight before him as a repetition of his earlier traumas. “You’re lying, I’ve seen you before... out in the woods!”

“Believe me, I haven’t been in any woods for a long time, sir,” Iris chuckled to herself, stepping tentatively toward him as he shrunk into a doorframe and slumped against the wood beyond. “This hotel really takes all the tree-hugging and bird-spotting right out of you.”

Michael swooped a despairing hand through his hair, congealed with patches of dried mud and dust from his sojourn.

“You’re trying to distract… distract me from my purpose,” he cried out, searing hot tears welling and clouding his vision of the short woman as she approached his side. “You’re not here to help me.”

Michael slipped down the door and crumbled into a heap on the carpet, his face buried in his knees to avoid looking at Iris, who instinctively dropped to her knees in front of him.

“I’ve been here long enough to recognise a lost soul when I see one.” Her sarcastic tone faded, replaced by one of maternal concern. “What’s a beautiful blonde boy like you doing here, kid?”

“I’m… looking for my father?” His tone raised as he trailed off, questioning himself as the words tumbled from his tongue. “I think I am, anyway. I don’t know anymore.”

Iris let out an understanding sigh, a pout curling her thin lips as she steadied herself on her knees before Michael.

“I lost my son too.”

Michael’s head lifted slightly, straining to see Iris at his level.

“Y—you did?”

Iris nodded softly. “He lost his way in the world, his purpose. I didn’t do the best job of bringing him up, admittedly. So he left, he left this hotel and I won’t ever get to see him again. But I still see him when I’m walking the halls sometimes, or at least I think I do. I hear footsteps and for a split second, my head goes, ‘Is that Donovan?’”

“Donovan?” Michael’s eyes widened, realisation washing over his face. “So you’re not my Ms Mead?”

“I told you, kid, I’m someone else’s devil momma,” Iris joked, hauling herself to her feet and outstretching a hand to Michael. “Now are you gonna get up and let me show you to your room? Or are you gonna sit here all night hoping your room will come to you?”

With a distinct rebellious pout, Michael accepted, pulling himself up and standing straight, before wobbling weakly and stumbling against the wood again.

“Easy there,” Iris lunged forward, looping an arm around his waist. “You look exhausted. Which room are you in?”

“I--I think,” Michael stuttered, falling into her arms and tipping his head onto her shoulder. “I think it’s room 64.”

“Well today’s your lucky day, young man,” Iris smirked, cocking an eyebrow toward the number on the door Michael had fallen against.

64.

“C’mon, l’ll get you cleaned up.” Iris reached into Michael’s top pocket, retrieving the clunky keychain and unlocking the door.

“Iris is a pretty name,” Michael sniffled softly as he slipped through the door on her arm.

“It is? Huh, I’ve never thought about it like that,” Iris scoffed, helping Michael across the room and tumbling his limp body onto the bed. “What’s yours?”

“Mi... Michael,” he murmured, just loud enough for Iris to hear as she skittered off to the bathroom.

“Michael’s a nice name too,” she called out from the en suite, her echo booming through the empty room. “Very Biblical.”

“I don’t think my mom was going for Biblical,” Michael chuckled softly to himself.

“So you said you were looking for your father? I haven’t seen a Mr Mead in the guest book but—“

“My father doesn’t sign guest books,” Michael interjected, the clattering of shaving products in the bathroom suggesting Iris was on a mission.

“So what makes you think you’ll find him here?”

“I...” Michael rattled through his scrambled mind for a sensible explanation, trying not to scare Iris with the truth but at the same time comforted that she was trying her best to help him. “I felt something bad when I walked past this place.”

“Yeah, this place does that to a lot of people. You go looking for trouble all the time or...”

Michael rinsed his face in his hands, prizing his exhausted eyes open to stare at the dingy wallpaper beyond the bed. Aged, worn, decaying; synonymous with his own life — once splendid and perhaps even celebrated, now torn recklessly at the edges, splaying into paths it never should have taken in the first place.

The silence between the curt clanking of toiletries ripped apart with the sound of carpet-muffled footsteps in the corridor, accompanied by a harsh female voice closing in on the room.

“Iris, which room is the new gir—“ the cackling voice halted mid-sentence, footsteps halted as they reached the room. “Jackpot!”

Michael swung around to find a woman leaning in the doorway, her predatory eyes boring into him as she consumed his figure slumped on the bed. Her jagged blonde hair sparked from her head like a bolt of electricity, a leopard print coat draped over her lithe figure as she leaned against the frame, a cigarette idly burning away in her fingers.

“Shit,” Iris cursed from the bathroom, rushing out amidst a crash of shampoo bottles. “Sally, don’t—“

Michael jolted back as the woman sauntered towards him, a devilish grin plastered beneath her lipstick, a deep red smudge smeared over her lips as she licked them hungrily.

“If you’d told me you’d found something far more tasty in here, I wouldn’t be looking for that new girl that arrived yesterday!”

“What did—what did you do to her?” Michael stammered nervously, almost curling into a protective foetal position as the woman neared his side. Her heels nudging his scuffed shoes as she stopped to tower over him.

“Oh nothing, yet,” Sally sneered, a predatory smirk distorting her words as she leaned down to observe Michael.

“Sally, please, leave him alone—“

“Shut it, Iris,” Sally barked, waving a dismissive hand behind her. “Go and find someone to check in or... dust your pigeonholes. You’ve meddled in my affairs for far too long.”

She lifted a curious finger to press under Michael’s quivering chin, lifting him up to face her as she hovered her lips over his.

“This one is mine.”

#sojourn!michael #sojourn!michael x reader #sojourn!michael fanfiction #sojourn!michael angst #ahs apocalypse #ahs hotel

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zmediaoutlet · 4 years

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in support of wildfire relief, @candybarrnerd donated $20 and requested Dean/Crowley. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

Crowley comes back to the hotel room early, or early at least for his new companion. When he opens the door it's eleven in the morning and it's dark, inside, the curtains heavy and mostly-drawn, and the reek—

"Good heavens," he says, and there's a masculine groan from the bed. "Could you at least have them washed, first?"

He flicks the switch and the lamp by the television comes on. The television which is—smashed, the First Blade thrown through the screen and sticking absurdly out of the shattered glass. Excellent. In the bed there's a tangle of sheets and bodies, and he comes and stands at the foot with his hands in his suit pockets, mild interest on his face. His new Knight sits up, yawning. "I was sleeping, you know," Deanna says, and Crowley can very much see that.

The boys she's picked up look worn out. One redhead with ridiculous muscles, one tall brunet—oh, that's obvious, dear—both clearly trying to sleep through interruption, like they're hungover and fuck-exhausted. Probably both true. Crowley looks over both of them. Decently attractive, decent cocks, but neither of them quite a match for her. She sinks back onto her elbows, giving Crowley a considering look. "What have you been up to, anyway? You bailed on me at the bar."

Crowley pushes one bare male foot out of the way and sits on the end of the bed. "I do apologize, darling. Hell had some business that needed doing."

Deanna rolls her eyes. "Business," she says, and drops fully back to the pillows, stretching. "Boring. This is why I have to make my own fun."

"So I see," he says, smiling at her, and then he whacks the redhead on the thigh. "Up. You've done your duty. Get out."

Another groan, but they do wake up, and don't seem surprised to see him. They roll painfully to their feet, dredge up jeans and shoes, smile awkwardly but a little fearfully at Deanna before they go. She tucks a hand behind her head, waves at them, and they scuttle out like they're making an escape.

"What do you do to the poor things," Crowley says.

Deanna smiles at him slow, dangerous. "Oh, like you don't know," she says, and Crowley's very old, and very bad, and he's fucked nastier, crueler things than her, and even so that smile makes something warm swirl, in the corroded pits of him.

She's naked and doesn't care, because she doesn't care about much, anymore. It's thrilling, after all those years of her trussed up in that ridiculous flannel, her hair tied practically back in a ponytail or a plait, clunky boots and a bitchy expression. Now—she arches her back, turns onto her side, and it's all that clear golden skin, unmarked by anything but unexpected spatters of freckles, here and there—on the small of her back, where her body arrows down to that perfect fat arse—and, of course, her mark. The thing that makes her dangerous. Crowley smiles to himself, looking her over. Like she wasn't dangerous already.

"You want to take a picture?" Deanna says, propping her head on her hand. As though Crowley hasn't already. "It might last longer."

"Now, darling," he says, and dares to set his hand on the delicate bone of her ankle. "You'll last forever, you know that perfectly well."

She sweeps her eyes down to evaluate his hand, but apparently the flattery was just enough and she smiles, too. "Hm," she says, and sits up, and shakes her hair back over her shoulders. "Well, immortal or not, I want breakfast."

"Anything," Crowley says.

She rolls her eyes. "I know," she says, and pulls her foot out of his reach, but she leans forward, hands planted on the bed so her shoulders curve in, her tits pushed forward, tempting. "Because you're spoiling me, aren't you? Kinda obvious."

He shrugs one shoulder. "So I'm obvious. You're the most precious thing in my kingdom. You get what you want."

Deanna clucks her tongue, eyes going sarcastically wide. "Lucky me," she says, but Crowley's had enough experience with her over the last month to know that she enjoys it, vile hedonist that she is.

She gives him her breakfast order and he calls it down to room service, watching her go over to the window, pull open the curtain to look at the morning. "As quick as though your life depended on it," he says, to the hapless operator, and she smiles over her shoulder at him. In the light she's haloed, delightfully ironic. When he hangs up he says, "What would you like to do today, my dear?" and she says, sweeping the curtains wider, "That's for me to know," and, predictably, "for you to find out."

Not as clever as she thinks she is, but her power's such that it doesn't quite matter. Crowley's stuck here with her until he can work out a way to manipulate her into something more useful. She draws a bath, bubbles and all, and when the room service arrives he carries it in and she eats, rather disgustingly, there in the water—bacon, a burger, chips with enough salt on them that it must sting, but she groans at how good it all tastes, so he supposes it doesn't matter. When she's done with the bath she stands up, dripping everywhere, and puts her hands on her hips, and screws up her mouth. "Wash my hair," she says, thoughtlessly demanding, and Crowley says, "Of course," and strips down, and turns on the shower, and when it's hot enough to blister living skin he holds out his hand and she walks across the tile and steps under the stream, and sighs blissfully as the suds still clinging to her skin wash away, and he stands behind her and goes to work, massaging her scalp, letting the heavy weight of her hair turn to wet silk under his hands, servile as a maid, doing what his Knight desires.

Like this, Deanna's a contradiction. Infuriating, a little stupid, satisfied by dumb physical pleasure. Not, in those ways, so different from her human self. What he hadn't expected was this strange descent into—girlishness. When the soul corroded, what was left tended to be cruelty, inventive meanness, power-hunger, but then that was after a good, long bit of endurance on the rack as the humanity was carved away, slice by slice. Deanna's change was instant. Human one moment, demon the next. What's left is certainly cruel when it suits her, but what intrigues Crowley, what's keeping him indulging her whims beyond his need for her power, is how she has utterly rejected the constraints she put herself under, when she was simply Deanna Winchester, daughter of John, big sister to Sam, hunter who put the fear of god into monsters and demons alike. He'd expected fucking and drugs, random murder and a lack of empathy, and he'd gotten all of those—he hadn't expected her to demand a trip to a fancy salon for a two thousand dollar haircut, or shopping for lingerie that made his unbeating heart throb to see her in it, or wanting to be—pampered. Treated like a precious jewel. Something she couldn't accept, from her brother's hands. Something she hadn't known, before, how to ask for.

He works the conditioner through, carefully. It's the one the terrified stylist had recommended, and so Crowley had bought it for her, of course. "That'll have to sit," he says, and Deanna sighs, arching into him like a pleased cat. He smiles, kisses her wet shoulder. "I suppose I'll entertain you, shall I?"

"I suppose you shall," Deanna says, so he twines her hair up into a sloppy knot at the base of her neck, and turns her around under the water, and she smiles at him indulgently when he goes to his knees on the cold tile. "Mm. I like you from this angle."

He lifts one of her thighs over his shoulder, kisses the soft inside. "I do live to please," he says, and she cups the back of his head, and when he licks into her cunt it's a soft, sweet heaven, just enough salted tang to make his lips burn. She balances easily, her body perfectly under control, and he cups her arse and settles in, licking deep, nosing her clit, spreading her. Slight taste of spunk from the boys who had her during the night and he imagines what it must have been like—her egging them on, vicious and cute by turns. They might've had her mouth, her cunt, her arse—both at once, perhaps, while she gripped their hair and told them that if she didn't come, they'd be sorry. She killed one man for that, early on, and Crowley had ordered the body removed and soothed her pout and said, darling, if you'd like to come, all you need to do is tell me. It was the first time he'd licked into her when there was blood on her hands but not the last, but it felt right, like that. Centering her in the things that mattered: death and pleasure, what her existence would be, free from conscience and second-guessing.

She comes beautifully, pushing into his mouth and pulling at the back of his hair hard enough that it hurts. "Oh, good," she sighs, and he suckles at her clit a little longer, until it must be oversensitive and throbbing, but she just humps against his face and laughs, pleased. "Overachiever."

He tips his head back, smiles up the expanse of her belly. "Always, my dear," he says, and she rolls her eyes and pushes his face away, and so he stands up, uncoils her hair, rinses it to softness under the water. When they're done she yawns, and he says, "Nap?", and she nods and walks naked and wet back to the bed and flops down, luxuriating.

"Get me off again," she says, and so he sits beside her and slots two fingers inside her cunt, and massages her to a second orgasm while she does absolutely nothing to help, and she drifts off with him still inside her, her damp hair a river of golden-brown on the white pillow, her lips softly parted, utter confidence in every line of her.

He rolls his thumb over her swollen clit, idly, just enjoying the slickness on his fingers, the easy response of her body. This girl. It had been a mistake, he'd thought, when he heard that Michael's vessel had been born female. The apocalypse thwarted, all those centuries of careful planning all ruined. Still, Lilith and Azazel did their parts, and when Sam was born it was thought that it would all work out—a victory for Hell, when Lucifer broke free and took what was his. Crowley watched, waiting, working his way up the ranks. When Deanna came to hell Alastair worked her hard, vicious, and Crowley had come and watched, of course—they all had, all of them with rank high enough—and she screamed, and broke, and when she stood under Alastair's proud hands and picked up the razor for the first time, Crowley didn't think he'd ever seen anything so perfect. He'd looked at her eyes, though, rather than what her hands were doing, and he'd seen something—a flicker. A hope. Alastair hadn't paid attention, glorying in his victory, and Lilith was focused on the work of the seals, now that the first had been broken. It was only Crowley, there, looking into Deanna's eyes, who saw what could be.

He makes calls, while she sleeps. His majordomo frets at him, tediously. He arranges for a clue to be dropped, to have some lackeys of Abaddon's find the hotel. She'll kill them, like she's killed all the others, and that'll be one more problem solved—two, in that it'll entertain her. He hadn't expected, when he retook his throne, how much of his time would be spent on entertaining someone who was, technically, his subject.

Deanna wakes up slowly, in the early evening. Crowley's sitting at the side of the bed, waiting for her. "Mm," is the noise she makes, and he raises his eyebrows, indulgent and curious. "We should have fun, tonight."

"What sort of fun?" he says. He slips his hand over her belly, where it's slightly soft. Too many years of burgers.

"I want—" she starts, and hums, thinking. "Music. Beer."

"Done," he says, and she grins at him, and then snakes a dangerously strong hand around his wrist, squeezes. He looks down at that, and back up at her face, and says, dry, "Unless you'd like something else, first."

"Ooh, see, I knew you were smart," she says, and he sighs but shifts around, on the bed, and settles between her open thighs, and she's still soft and a little wet and he pushes his fingers in and applies his tongue to her clit and gets her off twice, that way, insistent and hard. Easy, when one doesn't require breathing.

After the second she's loose, happy. Her thighs sprawl wide, her cunt open and dripping-wet. He drags his fingers down and plays with her asshole, and she allows that, and when he pushes his fingers in past the tightness she arches her hips into it, and so he fingerfucks her idly that way for a while, flicking his tongue against her clit and ignoring her relentless cunt.

"You'd just do anything, wouldn't you?" she says, dreamy. "Always taking care of me, Crowley."

"Of course, darling," he says, lifting his head, and she's looking down at him, from her place in the pillows. She's pinching one nipple, the skin red and hurt-looking; her other hand's tucked behind her head, and it shows off the mark on her arm. His eyes are drawn to it, always.

It's beautiful, on the pale soft skin. Viciously red, as red as her hurt nipple or her used cuntlips, swollen and sore. All the corruption in her stemming from that point. "My eyes are up here," she says, amused, and he looks up to find her smiling oddly soft, her teeth set gently in her lower lip.

He slips his thumb up through her slick to sink into her cunt, squeezing her inner wall between his fingers. She shifts her hips, spreads her thighs a little wider. She says, idly stroking the underside of her tit, "I want your dick," and that's—a rarer pleasure. He hadn't much indulged, before her. She says, "I want you to come in me," and that certainly won't be a problem. She says, "I want it slow," and that's—

He moves up between her legs. She's still sprawled, watching him, eyes a little sleepy. His vessel has a cock big enough to please, he made sure of that when he chose the poor bastard, and he's certainly hard now, after this long of playing with her body. He teases the tip over her clit and watches her eyes flutter, and drags it through her split wet and teases at her entrance, threateningly thick. "Don't fuck around," she says, and he laughs and says, "Sorry, darling," and pushes inside, and she's as deliciously wet and hot as she is on his fingers or tongue, just the right amount of tight, and he gathers her thighs up around his waist and tips her into the angle that'll be best for her, and rogers her slowly, deep, crushing his cock all the way to her cervix and watching her face flinch with it before he pulls back, does it again, and again.

"Good," she sighs, and he dips his head, kisses her collarbone, dips lower and kisses the top of one full sweet breast. She settles her hands on his shoulders, oddly light, and he doesn't change his pace but pushes in harder, and she makes this little gulping sound and so he knows to keep that strength. She's stronger, but he's not weak, and he can please her, tweaking her body to do his bidding at least with this, if with little else.

It's not just her body he knows how to work, though. "Do you want more, darling," he says, softly, and she groans and says, "Fuck, Crowley—god, yeah, yeah—" and he says, dragging his lips up to the tender skin by her ear, "Do you want it to hurt, darling," and she fucks her hips back against him and he goes a little faster, rougher, sawing in, knowing his dick's thick enough that it does hurt, enough for her to feel it the next day, to make her soiled soul reach in and heal it for her, and he slips a hand down between them and rubs her clit, slippery but rough, and her hips buck and she wraps her legs around his back, demanding, and he lifts on one hand enough to see her eyes closed, chasing her pleasure, and he says, looking at that pretty face, "You want me to fuck you like Sammy would, don't you," and she practically growls and says yes, deep in her chest, and he gathers up her hips and nails her hard, and she arches and moans and says like that, like that, which of course he knows because he watched them, together, over and over, Sam's big body braced over hers, their heads close together, their hands twined, their stupid, connected souls trying to get closer, any way they could. He finds her hand, laces their fingers together and pushes them down into the bed, and she starts to come then, her breath quick and high, and he fucks her through it, her body seizing around him, wanting—not him. Wanting something else.

When he comes, as he's been required to do, he pushes it deep inside her. It gushes up, spilling against her womb, filling. He's used to orgasm but still, with her quivering all around him, it feels good—better, almost, than the human blood had—and he groans and holds and then bends his head and applies his mouth to her mark, where her forearm's pinned to the bed—gets the swollen heat of it under his tongue, the skin bitter, there. Bitter.

She breathes under him, allowing it until she doesn't. "Get off," she says, and he lifts his head, licks his lips. Shifts his hips and drags his cock out of her tightness, and sits back on his knees between her legs. She drips, and slides her fingers down to tuck them inside, pushing his semen back inside herself, her eyes distant. This, too. Familiar. When Sam pulled away, that last time, distressed and disgusted and not forgiving her—he went to clean up, and she watched him go and tucked her hand down, like if she kept the warmth inside it was like keeping him, too.

Deanna's eyes refocus, after a moment. "I want steak for dinner," she says.

Crowley laughs, and climbs off the bed. A snap of his fingers and he's clean, and he redresses while Deanna's still holding onto the strange echo of a lived life. He wonders if she even realizes what she's doing. He nods at her, naked on the bed. "I love you exactly as you are, darling, but you might need to put on at least a scrap of fabric so as not to alarm the waitstaff."

"Lame," she says, but rolls up to her feet, and goes to the pile of random clothes she's accumulated from his indulgences. She selects a black bra, and drops a dark blue dress over her head that she snaps her fingers for Crowley to zip for her, and no panties. She will almost certainly fuck the bartender in the bathroom, before the night's over. She tosses her hair back and doesn't bother with makeup, not that she needs it, and rips the First Blade out of the television and tucks it into the thigh sheath she adores. Easy access. "Okay," she says, impatient, like it's wasn't her who wasted half the day with fucking. "Are we going, or what?"

The Impala reeks as much as the room did, but less of spunk and more of cigarettes, spilled beer, grease. He sits in the passenger seat—Sam's seat—and watches her drive. The Rolling Stones, loud, on the tapedeck. She cranks it louder when Paint It Black comes on and grins, and says, "God, this rocks, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does," he says, and gets her grin aimed his way, and thinks, there'll be the murders tonight, of Abaddon's boys, and there'll be music, and there'll be steak, and she'll fuck and kill and have fun, and really, the longer they go, the farther from Sam, the more she's his. One day, he thinks. She'll kneel for him. His Knight. For now—he texts a lackey and gets them a table, at the restaurant she's aiming for, and he relaxes back into the filthy vinyl seat, and thinks about diamonds.

#fffr #candybarrnerd #dean/crowley #wincest #genderswap #my writing #always-a-girl-dean #conduit sex #...sorta #either way crowley's catching feeeeels

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villainousshakespeare · 5 years

Note

Just one bed fluff with a character of your choosing, if it isn't taken yet?! I'm partial to Loki and Tom, but whoever floats your boat in the moment! Congratulations on 200 followers! You deserve them and more, sweetheart!

Sorry this took so long my dear! Hope it was worth the wait. I decided to do Tom for this. :-)

Kicked Out

Rated T - alcohol use, kissing, implied smut

Lots of fluff!

Tom Hiddleston/Reader

The music pulsed around you too loud for the small space. Mechanically you sipped your watered down margarita, trying to push down the depression that threatened to overcome you. If your friends back home could see you now they would be laughing at how excited you had been. Here you were, sitting alone at a hotel bar. This was not how you had envisioned things at all.

It had not all been bad of course. You loved the play you were acting in. Well, of course you did! It was Shakespeare! Even though you had only a bit role you were understudying Desdemona. And the cast was all first rate. You had already learned so much in just a few weeks! The upgrade in quality from your scrappy theater company where it was a struggle to get male performers who came anywhere near the talent level of the women such as yourself to an internationally renowned ensemble boasting genuine stars more than made up for going from playing the lead to a glorified extra.

If only you didn't find yourself feeling so cursedly shy. You had always had a bit of social anxiety, but until this tour it had never been an issue with castmates before. The theater was the one place you had always felt in your element, confident in yourself and able to mingle with everyone. You wished that were the case now.

Being assigned to room with Tisha had seemed like a wonderful stroke of luck at first. Like you she was on her first international tour, and was therefore playing several smaller parts in the ensemble. She was bubbly, outgoing, and talented, immediately drawing the attention of everyone around her. Unfortunately for you, that everyone included Michael, the actor playing Othello. He had become visibly smitten with her during the first read through, ignoring everyone else to shamelessly flirt with her whenever the opportunity presented itself. You would have been happy for her if he wasn't married with a child. The situation didn't seem to bother Tisha, who carelessly told you that she saw the whole thing more as a career move than a real relationship. What happened on the road, she breezily said, didn't effect real life, except for possibly leading to bigger roles down the line when he recommended her for future shows.

It was none of your concern, you had told yourself. They were grown adults and for all you knew he had an understanding with his wife. The problem had begun tonight, when they decided to take their relationship to the next, inevitable level. You had assumed that when this occurred, as you had guessed from the start it would, they would avail themselves of his room. After all, as one of the stars of the production he had a large room all to himself. Unfortunately for you, this did not turn out to be the case. As a married celebrity, Tisha had explained to you in hushed tones, Michael's meant had to be careful in situations such as this. He could never be seen having a woman enter his room, much less stay over night! Of course you wouldn't mind vacating your room for a while, would you? She had pleaded with big puppy eyes in a tone that clearly said she did not expect you to say no, and had somehow ushered you out the door, blithely commenting that you should be able to come back in a few hours, just knock before entering to be sure. The door shutting in your face had been cruel and final.

So here you were, sitting by yourself at the hotel bar with a bartender who looked like he would dearly love to cash you out and head home. You could have found one of the other actors to let you crash wish them, but you didn't really know anyone that well yet. The insecurity that flooded you when you thought of knocking on a virtual stranger's door and asking to sleep on their floor was too overwhelming.

"Trouble sleeping?" a voice like melted caramel asked from just over your shoulder.

You choked on your drink, splashing a bit of it onto your lap and the bar in front of you. You would have recognized that voice anywhere. You heard it often enough in your fantasies. But though it had been three weeks since you had begun working with him you still could not believe that you were now hearing it in person as well. Never in your wildest dreams had you believed that you would actually book a show with Tom Hiddleston.

Turning on your stool you saw the man himself standing behind you. He was so attractive it made you want to cry sometimes. You had come into contact with other celebrities over the years, and in almost every case seeing them up close and personal had somehow ruined the fantasy of them. In real life they had each just seemed... ordinary. With Tom, it was the exact opposite. He was handsome on screen or in pictures, in real life he was literally breathtaking. From the top of his burnished gold curls to the soles of his well worn grey boots and everywhere in between he was perfect.

"You could say that," you laughed uneasily, face turning crimson. You had never spoken to him alone before, and never anything other than vague platitudes at the end of rehearsals or addressed to a group at large.

"Me too," he said, giving you a half grin. "Would you mind if I joined you?"

What could you do but shake your head and gesture to the seat next to you. Pulling out the bar stool he folded his long, lean frame onto it, stretching his legs out. Your feet dangled like a child's from the stool, but his reached the floor with ease you noticed. Damn, but his legs were long!

"I'm always nervous before opening in a new city," he admitted, signaling for the bartender to come over. He ordered a single malt scotch and another daiquiri for you, requesting that the waiter make it with top shelf tequila.

"Still?" you asked, surprised that he would get nervous given his lengthy resume.

"Of course," he shrugged. "Never trust an actor that tells you he's not nervous. He's either lying or not pushing himself hard enough. The day my nerves go is the day I pack it in. The challenge is everything."

"Well, it's good to know it's not just me," you said quietly with a soft smile. You were nervous of course, even if that wasn't why you were there now.

"This is your first professional show, isn't it?" he asked.

You nodded, surprised that he knew. Was your acting that clunky that your lack of experience showed in just your few scenes?

"I watched your audition tape," he told you, grabbing a handful of bar nuts and arranging them on a napkin. "I wanted to come to the auditions, but Ken thought it might make people nervous. I made sure to watch all the tapes though. You were very good. The passion you put into Lady Anne was remarkable."

You blinked at him, all words deserting you. He had seen that? You were quite proud of your Lady Anne, but he was right. It was hard enough to have Kenneth Branagh watching you audition. If Tom had been in the room, you doubt you would have been able to do it.

"Thank you," you said at last after a long pause while he snacked on peanuts. "I had no idea."

"I like having a say in things like that," he shrugged. "When you're doing a show that's this intense, who you're on stage with is a big deal. Also, both Ken and I are firm believers in giving new talent an oppertunity. After all, him taking a chance on me is how I ended up with my career. What kind of person would I be if I didn't pass on the favor. I was the one who pushed for you to be Desdemona's understudy, by the way."

"Really?" you wished the word didn't come out like a squeak.

"Mhm. In fact, I thought you could have played the part. Producers wanted a name though, and I guess you can't blame them. Have to make their money back. Still, you were quite impressive."

You were saved the trouble of responding by the arrival of your drinks. Tom thanked the bartender and asked to have the drinks, including the one you had had before, charged to his room before leaving a large tip on the bar.

"Thank you again," you said, sipping on your new and much stronger drink.

"No need," he waved it off. "Othello was my big break, you know. I played Cassio in a production with Chewitel Eijifor and Ewan McGregor. It was fantastic, but I always wanted to do Iago. I try not to make dream part lists, I'm a bit superstitious that way, but now that I'm actually doing it I can admit it."

"I would think it would be on any actor's list!" you said, trying to hide the fact that of course you knew about his previous Othello, along with every other part on his lengthy cv. "I would like to tackle it myself some day."

"I would love to see that," he smiled, looking sincere. "You have a great facility with the language. And there is no reason why Iago should have to be male. I must say that I greatly appreciate that we live in a time where the gender barriers for such superb parts are beginning to break down. What other roles do you dream of tackling? I promise I won't tell a soul!"

You weren't sure whether it was the alcohol warming you or the way he smiled and listened to you like you were the only person in the world, but you soon found yourself engaged in a long discussion of Shakespeare that ranged from contentious - you would never agree on who the ultimate Richard III was, with you preferring Ian McKellan and Tom being loyal to his good friend Benedict - to the ridiculous. He had you in stitches when he recounted the story of an actor (he refused to name them) who had so completely missed an entrance on press night for Much Ado that Tom and his scene partner had to improve in verse for three minutes. When the poor man had made it onto stage, he had not had time to put his shoes back on. The review in Time Out the next day had gone on for two paragraphs about the social commentary of having a barefooted Don Pedro. By that point you were on your third drink and laughing like old friends, hunched over and shaking with mirth.

"Oh! Yes!" Tom said suddenly, pulling himself up to standing and holding out his hand to you. "Come on!"

"What?" you asked, totally confused.

"This song!" he replied, enthusiasm shining from his face.

"It's a good song," you agreed, listening to Michael Jackson's Beat It blaring out from the speakers.

"Well then?"

"What?"

"Dance with me!"

"Tom..."

"I refuse to take no for an answer," he insisted, dragging you to your feet and onto the dance floor.

Tom's energy was infectious, there was no avoiding it. Abandoning the last shreds of your dignity you surrendered to the music and the exuberance of the man spinning you around the floor. He was good of course, you had seen it on videos often enough, but he made you actually feel like you could dance as well. Michael Jackson turned into Prince and then Tina Turner as the two of you made idiots of yourselves in the empty bar.

"Last call," the beleaguered bar tender called, ruining the vibe.

Looking around you realized that he had put up all of the chairs and wiped down the bar. As tempting as it was to order another drink and prolong the fun, you knew that it was not fair to the poor server. Still, you didn't know what to do with yourself now. Would Tisha and Michael be finished with whatever they were doing? Had it been long enough to go up?

As Tom helped put up the remaining bar stools and finished off his scotch you collected your purse. You stared at your phone, trying to decide whether or not to text Trisha.

"Okay, out with it," Tom said, looking at you with an unwavering stare.

"With what?" you evaded.

"The truth. Why were you down in the bar by yourself? And don't say nerves. I've talked to you enough now to know that you are not the sort to drown your anxiety in alcohol."

"You did," you said, not believing your audacity.

"I came down for tea," he said.

"Tea?" you parroted.

"There was no earl grey in my room. I like to have a cup in the morning while I get ready."

"But you had a scotch! Two of them!"

"Well, I would hardly be a gentleman if I let a lovely lady drink alone," he shrugged. "So. Spill it. What brought you down here all by yourself?"

"Um... it was just... a little crowded in my room," you tried to sound as noncommittal as possible.

"Ah, I see," his quick brain filled in the pieces. "You're rooming with Tisha, aren't you?"

"Yes," you answered slowly.

"So Michael has made his move has he?"

"You know?" you asked, somewhere between mortified and relieved.

"Well, they haven't exactly been subtle," he said with a wry laugh. "Also, he has a bit of a reputation. I had hoped it was just rumor, God knows there are enough of those about me, but it appears in this case there was some truth behind it. Don't tell me they kicked you out?"

"They told me I could come back later," you said quickly, trying for some reason to make them look not quite as selfish and failing miserably.

"Why couldn't they just have gone to his room? No, never mind. Foolish question. You poor thing. I am so sorry you have to deal with this. Would you like me to check with the front desk and get you another room?"

"Oh, no, that's really not necessary!" you said. You could only imagine the talk if that were to happen, trying to explain to the tour manager why there was an additional expense on the invoice. True, it was Tisha and Michael who should be made uncomfortable by it, but you just knew you would be the one to squirm from the scrutiny.

"Well, there is only one thing for it," he said, placing his large hand on the small of your back and ushering you out of the bar. "You shall stay with me."

"What?" for the second time your voice, pride of your acting arsenal, was rendered little more than a dog whistle.

"It's no problem," he shrugged, walking towards the elevator and taking you with him. "I have a large single room all to myself. I'm sure it will be much more comfortable than breaking up whatever your roommate and Michael have going on."

You looked away and bit your lip, trying to decide what to do. It was such a tempting offer. Not that you would ever get any sleep in the same room with this man, but at least you wouldn't have to face the love birds.

"Darling," Tom said, gently turning your face to look you in the eye, "you have no reason to worry. I am not Michael. I would never take advantage of a costar. I just want you to have a comfortable place to get a good night's rest before your performance."

"I never thought... Of course you wouldn't take advantage!" you said with a laugh. As if someone like Tom would try to take advantage of you, you thought. It would be hilarious if he wasn't standing there looking like an overly attentive angel.

"Good, then it's settled," Tom's smile beamed at you. "Come on."

And just like that you found yourself in the unbelievable position of movie star Tom Hiddleston showing you into a large corner hotel room on the top floor. The comparison to your small shared double was insane. You were fairly sure your whole room would fit into his en suite.

"Oh," you gasped, not intending it to be audible.

"What's wrong?" he asked, turning to you all solicitous.

"Nothing," you said miserably, trying not to stare at the giant king size bed. You didn't know why you had expected there to be two beds. He had told you it was a single room. As it was there was not even a couch for you to sleep on. Two large over stuffed chairs took up space on the other side of the room, and hard backed ones surrounded the table near floor to ceiling the windows.

"Ah," he said, perceptively following your thoughts. "Yes. One bed. If you like I can sleep in the chair."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous!" you blurted out.

"I assure you, I have suffered much worse," he smiled. "If you feel uncomfortable sharing, I will gladly curl up in the armchair."

"No, that's just silly," you said, swallowing around the lump in your throat. "After all, the bed is so big you could fit five people in it. As long as you don't mind, that is."

"Not a bit," he said rubbing the back of his neck. "Now, let me find you something to sleep in."

To no surprise you soon found yourself in a pair of long running shorts and a Legend t-shirt. You surreptitiously pinched yourself to make sure this was real. To be dressed in one of the patented Hiddleston outfits was surreal to say the least.

You walked out of the bathroom to find Tom sitting on the edge of the bed in his own pair of jogging shorts, glorious broad chest bare. Trying desperately not to stare, you shyly walked around to the other side of the bed.

"Left side alright for you?" he asked, always the gentleman.

You nodded and quickly got yourself under the covers, pulling the blankets up to your chin. Tom turned off the light and got himself situated, leaving the bedding down at his waist. In the dim light you could just make out the whirl of hair on his chest as he curled onto his side facing you. Your fingers itched to reach out and feel it, but you managed to keep them to yourself. You could feel the heat radiating from him, like a live fire warming your body. He reached out gently and touched your face with the backs of his fingers, still staying to his side of the wide mattress.

"It was lovely getting to know you, darling," he said quietly. "Rest well."

You smothered the whimper threatening to erupt and rolled onto your side, facing the window as far away from him as you could get without hanging off the edge. Attempting to ignore the pooling desire in your center you settled in for what was sure to be a long, sleepless night.

When the alarm went off you almost jumped out of your skin. Blearily you tried to sit up, but a strong arm around you kept you anchored to the bed. A murmured curse sounded behind you and the beeping stopped. A face buried itself in your hair as you were pulled closer to the wall of chest at your back.

Oh sweet lord! you thought, as awareness of your location flooded into your brain. Gingerly you opened one eye just enough to confirm that you were half way across the bed in the center of the mattress. You must have rolled over in your sleep, you realized. Which of course meant that Tom had also drifted to the middle of the bed to meet you in what could only be described as he the most comfortable and simultaneously uncomfortable embrace of your life.

He felt divine. He body was all pliant skin over hard muscle, Warm and soft and deliciously scented. His obscenely large hand splayed across your waist, just below your breasts, to rest against the stripe of bare flesh where your borrowed t-shirt had ridden up in your sleep. His legs, those impossibly long limbs you had admired in the bar last night, were pressed against you, one rising up to hook over your own. It was heaven. If only it was intentional. Silently as you lay in his embrace your mind cringed awaiting the moment he woke the rest of the way and realized that the woman in his arms was only you, a pathetic cast mate he had taken pity on when she was cast out of her own room.

When you could bear it no longer, you tried to gently pull away from him. Once again his arm tightened around you, holding you close to him. You closed your eyes and tried to think of a way to delicately extricate yourself. That was when you heard your name, mumbled in his honey warm voice made rough by sleep into your hair.

"Stay," he said, snuggling further into you. "Please."

Well, when he asked so nicely! Really, you decided, when would you ever have such a chance again. Surrendering to the bliss, you allowed yourself to sink back against him. You would soak up these moments, you decided. Save them for when you were feeling lonely, or needed a happy memory to see you through a hard time. After all, what could be better than being held in Tom Hiddleston's strong arms?

It was too short a time before the alarm went off again. Tom swore, lifting his arm from around your body to turn it off. You felt him, more fully awake this time, realize the situation you found yourselves in. His body stiffened and his leg quickly slid off of yours.

"I am so sorry," he said, pulling his head from where it had lain in the top of your hair. "Please, darling, forgive me. I didn't mean to take advantage."

"No need to apologize," you assured him, trying to sound as though this sort of thing happened to you every day. "After all, we were both asleep."

"It's just been so long since I've had a beautiful woman in my bed," he sighed, arm rising to cover his eyes. "My body just reacted instinctually."

"Beautiful?" you heard yourself say, a note of disbelief in your voice.

"Can you doubt it?" he asked, sounding surprised himself.

"Generally speaking," you laughed, thinking that this man calling anyone beautiful was like the sun calling a lightning bug bright.

"My darling, you are stunning," he said, rising up on his elbow to look at you. "You are also intelligent, funny, and delightful. I thought I had a crush on you before I got to know you last night, but now..."

"You have - a crush?"

"Damn," he said quietly. "Forgive me. I should not have said that."

Slowly, not daring to believe what you had just heard, you rolled over so that you were facing him. Hair mussed and eyes slightly unfocused Tom looked even more devastating than usual. A light growth of stubble shadowed his jaw, and in the dawn light his freckles stood out against his pale skin.

"Did you mean it?" you asked, stunned.

"There are few things as attractive... as sexy as talent," he said quietly, not meeting your eye. "When I saw you act, well, I could scarce keep my eyes off of you."

"You do realize that you are the most talented person I have ever seen," you told him, shock bringing out your candid side.

"You are very kind," he blushed.

"I am very honest," you answered. "You really think of me like that?"

"I think of you all the time," he replied, looking at you at last. "Often like that. I have spent the last three weeks trying to work up the courage to speak with you. When I saw you sitting alone in the bar last night, I thought someone must have heard my prayers."

"I am in a dream," you said. "I am in a dream and any moment now I will wake up and be back in the small black box theater performing for ten people."

"If you are in a dream than I am too," he smiled. "Darling, I understand if you want to leave. Things with me are never simple. It is an unfortunate side effect of the career I have chosen. But if you are willing to try, I would love to court you."

"Court me?" you grinned at his archaic turn of phrase. "Like with flowers and poems and such?"

"If you would like," he said, surprising you once more. "I have written a poem or two in my day, though I am more adept at songs. They are more forgiving. For now, we could perhaps start with breakfast?"

"Breakfast sound wonderful," you said, realizing suddenly that you were in fact hungry.

"I will order room service then," he nodded. "But first, sweetheart, would it be too forward of me... may I kiss you?"

Unable to speak you nodded your head once. Tom smiled, and reached down to grasp your chin gently between his thumb and finger. With an aching tenderness he brought his lips to yours. The kiss was soft and sweet and full of promise. You felt it all the way down to your toes in ways that far more invasive kisses had never moved you. Your back arched and you molded yourself to him, his free arm encircling you to hold you close. Emboldened by the embrace, you let your own hands find their way around him and to his back where they slid down the naked skin in a caress. With a quiet moan he pulled away, and you briefly felt his arousal brush against your let as he let you go.

"The things you do to me," he sighed, fingers lightly tracing your face.

"I know what you mean," you breathed, feeling light headed from the kiss.

"I started this leg of the tour irritated at Michael," he confided. "Now I am tempted to send him a thank you gift. What do you thing? Champagne? Chocolates?"

"If we give them all that, won't it just encourage them the next night?" you giggled.

"Ah, now you see my clever plan," he teased. "How else can I hope to get you back in my bed?"

"Tom," you spoke seriously, "clever plans are not needed. All you need do is ask."

"Hmm," he grinned, pulling you close once again. "I am suddenly more happy than I can say that they forgot my tea."

"So am I," you smiled, nestling in against him. "You have no idea."

"Well then," he said. "You will just have to show me. Fortunately, we have months to go, and I for one have never been so happy to start a tour."

As you burrowed back together under the covers you could not help but agree.

@yespolkadotkitty @hopelessromanticspoonie @nonsensicalobsessions @hiddlesholic

#fic #fanfic #milestone challenge #tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston x reader

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puroresu-musings · 4 years

Photo

NJPW G1 CLIMAX 30 Day 5 Review (Sept 27th, 2020, Kobe World Memorial Hall)

Yota Tsuji vs. Gabriel Kidd ***

A Block

Taichi vs. Yujiro Takahashi **1/2

Jeff Cobb vs. Minoru Suzuki ***1/4+

Kota Ibushi vs. Tomohiro Ishii ****1/4

Will Ospreay vs. Shingo Takagi ****1/2+

Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White ***3/4

photos.

This was one of the strongest cards of the tour on paper, and whilst it didn’t exactly reach its lofty anticipation, it was still a great show which was a breeze to sit through. Gabriel Kidd defeated Yota Tsuji in the prerequisite good Young Lion opener with his impressive Butterfly Suplex, which then gave us a match I was dreading in Taichi vs. Yujiro. However, I’m pleased to say that whilst this wasn’t especially good, it certainly wasn’t bad, so thats a definite plus. The crowd were into this late in the game, before Taichi hit a low blow, then scored the win in 11 minutes with the Gedo Clutch. The win makes Taichi undefeated thus far, but I can’t believe that will last much longer. Especially seeing who he’s got coming up in the rest of this thing. Hey, does anyone remember when Shelton Benjamin went on that inexplicable undefeated streak in 2014?

Minoru Suzuki defeated Jeff Cobb next in a match up that, whilst very good, was something of a disappointment (a theme will occur). It was very short for starters (9:24), and Cobb, who really hasn’t looked all that great in this tournament so far, sold for pretty much the whole match. Which is something he does entirely too much for my liking. I mean, he’s a big, athletic guy, who was a legitimate Olympian, and could probably shoot kill most guys in most locker rooms, but spends most of these matches getting his arse handed to him. I mean, fine when you’re talking about Suzuki, but would Dr Death have bumped all over and sold 80% of a match for Taichi? Would the Steiners? Or Kurt Angle? Anyway, you get what I’m saying. I just think he needs to come across more as a badass shooter rather than... whatever he is now. Which is literally “just a guy”. Regardless of my gripes, this was a good match (even if there were a few ‘clunky’ aspects), which Suzuki won after locking in a choke then transitioning to the Gotch Piledriver.

After a brief intermission it was time to go to war as Ibushi took on Ishii. These guys have had three matches previous to this, all of which were absolutely fab, so expectations were high. This was an excellent, heated, hard-hitting battle, but for various reasons, it couldn’t hit the heights of their previous bouts, and the most obvious reason being that it’s incredibly hard to have an absolute blow-away classic in the current environment. Literally, there’s only been one in my book; the Naito/Tanahashi match from last week, and that’s it. Regardless, they still had a great match, beating the hell out of each other for 15:41 with hard chops, kicks, forearms headbutts and Lariats. Just as we’d all hoped they would. Ishii started chopping Ibushi in the throat, so Kota hit those scary throat punches in retaliation, then landed on his feet on a German attempt and scored a near fall with Boma Ye on the originators bestie. Ishii counters Kamigoye with headbutts, then a Lariat. They exchange hard strikes, Ibushi hits a high kick, then Kamigoye to take the 2 points and render Ishii winless in this G1. They continued beating each other up in the post match.

Next up was a rematch from the best match of 2019, when Shingo Takagi sought to avenge his BOSJ Finals loss to Will Ospreay. This really was a fantastic bout, but obviously couldn’t reach the heights of their match last year, but was easily MOTN, in the top 3 of this tournament so far, and amongst the best in the pandemic era. These guys work amazingly well together and it produces fairly amazing results. Their counter sequences alone are a thing of beauty. Ospreay got a near fall after a Corner to Corner dropkick and Shooting Star Press, before Shingo battled back with a Pumping Bomber and Made In Japan for near falls of his own. The Rampage Dragon hit his old Stay Dream middle rope Death Valley Bomb, but Ospreay kicks at 1. Shingo obliterates him with a Pumping Bomber which garners a near fall, and Last Of The Dragon follows, allowing Takagi to get his win back at the 22:03 mark. This was a really great match, and, look, people were tying themselves in knots trying to explain how Ospreay’s match with Ishii last week wasn’t very good (it was excellent), and I fear that these sort of views are because of how these people feel towards Ospreay personally. I’ve always tried to remove the person from the matches (I’ve often loved a Michael Elgin match, despite him being fundamentally loathsome in many regards), and thats my philosophy here. I get he’s a very divisive character, but he has great matches consistently. Anyway, thats all I have to say about that.

And in the main event, Jay White once again pinned Okada in a really good, though ultimately disappointing, encounter that couldn’t hope to follow its predecessor. Honestly, this Okada Cobra Clutch storyline is doing nothing for me. It’s even more alienating to me then the red-headed balloon bandit nonsense he had going on 2018. I understand the story they’re trying to tell; that Okada has ‘retired’ the Rainmaker in order to make this Cobra Clutch/Anaconda Vice thing his primary finish, and its all building to him using the Rainmaker again later down the road, but I just honestly don’t care. It just ruins the flow of his matches. You could work dramatic sequences around avoiding or getting out of a Rainmaker, or even trying to hit it, but this submission just isn’t hitting the same notes as far as I’m concerned. I’ve said since January that Okada just seems lost at sea when he’s not champion, and this is as glaringly obvious now as its ever been. White however has looked great since his COVID induced hiatus, and he looked really good in this one. This was marred slightly by too much Gedo involvement, who kept distracting Okada throughout. After Okada hit a Rolling Rainmaker, he locks the Clutch on for maybe the 7th time in the match, which prompted Gedo to distract Red Shoes whilst Jay hits a low blow (we’ve seen a ton of these in this G1 already, by the way, and we’re only five days in!), then tries for Blade Runner, but again gets caught in the Clutch. Dear Lord. White counters into a Sleeper Suplex, then hit Blade Runner to take the decisive win at 18:48. I mean, in terms of wins over Okada, this is almost as decisive as it gets. Switch Blade cut a promo in the post match, taunting the crowd and proclaiming the G1 to actually be the “Jay1″.

NDT

#njpw #g1 climax 30 #review #g130 #kazuchika okada #jay white #shingo takagi #will ospreay #kota ibushi #tomohiro ishii #minoru suzuki #jeff cobb #taichi #yujiro takahashi #new japan pro wrestling #puroresu #wrestling review

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drsilverfish · 5 years

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15x02 Raising Hell - a map, a script, and another stage on the alchemical road..

Hey everyone, catching up British time as ever, so I haven’t jumped into your posts yet. Did you survive Bucklemming?

Honestly, with only twenty precious episodes to the final season, this was a “classic” horribly clunky offering from them (after their better episodes in S14).

Still, there are some key take-aways.

Firstly, we have a key part of the psychological road-map of the final journey, aka Dean is back on his father’s bullshit - a revenge mission - this time, against God. And he’s so focussed on anger (a cover for his grief about Mary, and Jack, and about the meaning, or lack of meaning, of their lives thanks to Chuck) that he is unnable to let love in - to hear Cas’ plea that what has been real in their lives is “us”.

This dude:

Jack the Ripper (ugh - rapey Bucklemming bingo card check) functions as a kind of God-mirror/ John-mirror - symbolising the old, white, murderous patriarch still wrestling to inhabit the bodies of the living (i.e. the wills of his creations/ the psyches of his sons) so it’s perhaps not an accident that Dean thinks his appearance is “cool”. Because Dean is in a regressive state of mind.

Despite all Dean’s progress in S14, in wrestling with, and expelling, the Ghost of John Winchester (represented by AU!Michael in his head), now, in the midst of apocalyptical stress and the recent re-loss of his mother, he is reverting back to the John Winchester script - emotionally harsh and closed off, a soldier. That is underlined by Belphegor’s deliberate appeal to that version of Dean. Notice Belphegor describes himself as “a good solider” (who just wants Hell back to the way it was) - a deliberate mirror for Goodsoldier!Dean from the past.

Yes, Dean is still looking out for Sammy (injured by the God-gun) and still trying to hunt things and save people (i.e. stop the Hellmouth from blowing wide open) - both of these were always core parts of the Goodsoldier!Dean script his father drilled into him - but he’s barely able to function emotionally, most evident in his unreasonable behaviour towards Cas.

Ketch and Rowena’s flirting just felt like the most ridiculous shoe-horned in bit of unnecessary hetero-icing, although both actors played it for all it was worth.

It was left, as so often, to the set-dressing narrative, to signal that Dean is bi and likes “meat packing”. You don’t say. And, with Ketch in shot, there’s a subtextual reference to Dean’s own earlier history of hate-flirting with Ketch (before Ketch banged his Mom). The show, like Dean, is following an old (subtextual) script. I don’t know if that’s deliberately “meta” and we can look forward to a new script or not. But as you know, I’m a sceptic on full, unambiguous, textualisation.

Wow Chuck, what an extra douch-bag, sending Kevin to Hell.

That’s a fascinating little detail, because the entire God-machine - Anubis weighing the deeds of the dead with his abacus - seemed at least to have a promise of Heaven for a life (on balance) of virtue, even if we know Heaven itself is a place where cruel torture can happen (Cas’ torture by Naomi). But, now, we learn Chuck breaks his own rules simply for apparently vengeful and petty reasons. He really is the villain of the piece.

I’m not sold on Chuck being genuinely de-powered by the Hammurabi (revenge/ equaliser) gun. He made that thing, surely he calculated handing it to the Winchesters could get himself shot and he included a fix-it?

However, I’m delighted to see Amara, the feminine God-principle, back in the narrative, here to call Chuck out for being “petulant” and “narcissistic”.

Look at that detail of the Taj Mahal in the background - a monument to love lost. Which is significant because of the cosmic mirror Chuck/ Amara provide for the earthly one in the form or our heroes.

Some US folks clued me in at the end of last season to the significance of Reno as US “divorce capital”.

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184580452909/chuck-and-reno

So here, we see Chuck and Amara getting “divorced” in Reno - a heavenly mirror for the TFW (Dean/ Cas) “divorce” already foreshadowed by the girls in 15x01 Back and to the Future discussing their parents’ divorce as they were attacked by Bloody Mary, but also earlier, by the break-up couple mirrors in 14x20 Moriah.

Amara’s appearance also links to all the alchemical symbolism of S14.

If you followed my Jungian-themed S14 meta series, you’ll know the show has been borrowing Jung’s re-working of medieval alchemical texts. Those texts used the mystical chemistry of trying to turn lead into gold as a metaphor for the soul’s journey to God. Jung suggested that journey could also be understood as a metaphor for the psyche’s journey towards self-integration.

That fits perfectly with the Winchesters’ journey, which has always, in part, been about their struggle to emerge from the psychic trauma of their childhoods and the roles (Parent!Dean / Child!Sam - Good Soldier/ Rebel) which that trauma imprinted on them - mirrored on a cosmic scale by their supposed “fate” as the Michael and Lucifer vessels respectively.

The narrative in S14 focussed a lot, in terms of Jungian and alchemical symbolism, on the encounter with The Shadow, which corresponds to the nigredo (blackening) stage in alchemy, and which means, in psychic terms, the confrontation with that which one has repressed (both positive and negative).

I’m sure @occamshipper will join me in being excited by Amara’s bright yellow suit.

“Citrinitas” (or “yellowing”) is one of the stages in alchemy. It comes after the encounter with the Shadow (there’s a purification stage in between) and it represents the transitional stage before the final completion of the alchemical “Great Work” (lead to gold/ soul to God, achievement of psychic self-integration).

There is also, in alchemy, and in Jung, the related concept of The Sacred Marriage. This means, variously, the integration of the soul with Christ/ God, the conjoining of masculine and feminine principles in the psyche (we all have both, according to Jung) and from earlier paganism (and some forms of esoteric Christianity, particularly Gnosticism) the union of the God-principle and the Goddess-principle. The culmination of the Great Work.

For now, of course, we have the opposite - the divorce of the God-principle, Chuck, and the Goddess principle, Amara, which foreshadows divorce amongst Team Free Will. But, as we wind round the final loop of the spiral narrative, we will return, I trust, to their union, externally and internally (which we’ve already witnessed on a Heavenly level in 11x23 Alpha and Omega).

We can understand Chuck and Amara as mirrors for the masculine (John Winchester) and feminine (Mary Winchester) imagos (images in the mind - not exact copies, but internal projections) within the psyches of their children, especially Dean (because he always had conscious memories of his mother, whereas baby-Sam was too little). Mary and Amara were of course, fundamentally linked in S11, as her return from the dead was Amara’s gift to Dean.

With Mary (apparently) violently killed again by a yellow-eyed supernatural being (Jack) Dean is “unbalanced” and the progress of his self-integration has been set back, hence his regression to the old John-script of Goodsoldier!Dean, mirrored on a cosmic level by the Chuck/ Amara “divorce”.

Amara is essential to the end of the road, because as The Darkness (the destructive principle) she understands endings, unlike Chuck, for whom (as the creative principle) endings are “hard” (5x22 Swan Song). And because only by re-integrating the feminine principle (Mary Winchester, symbolising the softer “not performing” side of Dean) into the psyche can the Winchesters’ “Great (psychic) Work” be completed. Which is why I think we’ll see Mary Winchester herself again, before the end (you all know my spec by now that she was blasted into an AU by Jack, unbeknownst to him, rather than killed).

So, despite Bucklemming’s clunky writing, we have a psychic road map (a regression and an old script to overcome) and another stage on the alchemical road towards FIN.

#Supernatural #15x02 #Raising Hell #SPN meta #Meta #Jungian meta #Amara #alchemical symbolism #Jung in S15

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chiseler · 4 years

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The Second Most Dangerous Anarchist in America

{NOTE: September 16th, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the Wall Street bombing, an event which the city, for some reason, refuses to commemorate.}

A little after two on the afternoon of April 15th, 1920, the paymaster of one of the two shoe factories in Braintree, MA, together with a security guard, decided in a change of pace to simply walk that week’s payroll the few blocks from the office to the factory. The payroll, a little over $15,000 in cash, was divided between two strongboxes, each carried by one of the men. Along the way, and in front of over fifty eyewitnesses, a gang of five men, strangers to the small town, gunned down the paymaster and the guard, grabbed the strongboxes, hopped into an idling blue Buick, and sped away. The Buick, later determined to have been stolen a few weeks earlier, was a fancy model with curtained windows, plenty of chrome, and fat tires.

Two days later, on April 17th, two men on horseback discovered the car abandoned in the woods along the western edges of Bridgewater, just a couple miles south of Braintree. Much thinner tire tracks leading away from the scene were assumed to belong to the car into which the killers piled after ditching the Buick.

Bridgwater’s police chief, Michael Stewart, was a cigar-chomping, two-fisted type who’d been raised in Boston. Despite being the son of Irish immigrants, Stewart harbored a deep distrust of more recent immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Italy, especially the political types, suspecting them of being responsible for most of the crime in the region. He was proud to have been able to turn over six bona-fide Reds living in Bridgewater during the Palmer raids of the previous year.

Upon hearing about the Braintree killing, Stewart was reminded of a similar attempted heist in Bridgewater four months earlier on Christmas Eve. Again a shoe factory payroll had been targeted by a group of armed men in a getaway car. That time, however, they were thwarted when the truck containing the payroll crashed, and the would-be thieves were blocked by a passing trolley. Frustrated, they hopped back into the getaway car, another fancy, recently stolen model, and fled empty-handed.

During his abortive investigation into the failed heist, Stewart had been pointed to a ramshackle two-story house in the woods. Locals referred to it as Puffer’s Place, and believed it was home to a group of Italian anarchists. Those who’d heard of Puffer’s Place had no idea what went on there, but if it was full of anarchists, you knew it couldn’t be good. It sounded like a promising lead—Stewart was convinced Italian anarchists were responsible for the job—but he wasn’t able to find the shack, and gave up on the investigation.

All that changed a day after the Braintree attack, when Stewart received a call from the immigration bureau asking after one Feruccio Coacci, a known anarchist who lived in the area and was scheduled for deportation.

Coacci, who’d been living with his wife and a housemate at Puffer’s Place, was quickly tracked down and deported on the 19th. In fact, after weeks of delays and excuses, he insisted on being deported on the 19th. Upon learning Coacci had coincidentally worked at both targeted shoe factories, and just as coincidentally failed to show up for work the day of both heists, Stewart became suspicious. On Tuesday the 20th, he headed back out to Puffer’s Place with another investigator.

They were met at the door by a small, funny-looking man who introduced himself as Mike Boda. Bona invited them in, showed them around, and answered their questions. He even showed them his revolver. Coacci, he said, had some friends who were anarchists and very bad men, but he had nothing to do with them himself.

When they were done looking around the cluttered house, Bona led them to the dilapidated car barn out back, explaining his car, a clunky 1914 Overland, was in the shop to get its magneto repaired. Although Overlands had very thin tires, there were also fatter tire tracks on the garage’s dirt floor. Buda explained this away by telling the officers he sometimes pulled in at a funny angle.

Satisfied, Stewart thanked Mr. Voda for his time and cooperation, and left.

Realizing later what a horrible mistake he’d made, that the tire tracks were just the clue he needed, Stewart rushed back to Puffer’s Place the next morning, arriving on the front stoop about twenty seconds after Bona slipped out the back door and vanished. By the next day, when Stewart stopped by again hoping to find Buda, Puffer’s Place had been cleaned out.

A few people at the time described him as resembling a clown without makeup. He was short and balding, with a great bulbous nose poised above a black mustache. But Mario Buda was not a man known for his rollicking sense of humor. Those who knew him said he was quiet, serious, enigmatic and a little arrogant. Still, there was something of the clown about him. At least he took his slapstick very, very seriously. Instead of cream pies or seltzer bottles, however, he leaned more toward dynamite. Now, a century after his most famous performance, he’s become the stuff of myth, both in anarchist and law enforcement circles.

Buda was born on October 13th, 1884 in Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy, a region known at the time as a hotbed of anarchist thinking.

In 1907, after a few minor scrapes with the law and an increasing sense he’d never be able to make a go of it in Savignano, a then-23-year-old Buda sailed to America. Although already an avowed anarchist, Buda had also apprenticed as a shoemaker, a skill he hoped might come in handy in the land of plenty. It didn’t, and after working a series of menial jobs, starving and getting nowhere for two years, he returned to Italy in 1911. In 1913, he decided to give America another shot, this time settling in Boston and finding work at (depending on the account) a shoe factory, a hat factory or, together with his brother, a shop that sold cleaning supplies. That same year he became friends with another shoemaker named Nicola Sacco, whom he met when both took part in a protest at a nearby textile factory. Along with being a shoemaker, Sacco was also an anarchist, a follower of Luigi Galleani. In the pages of his magazine, Cronaca Sovversiva, Galleani advocated what he called The Propaganda of the Deed, which called for the violent annihilation of all government institutions through a relentless program of bombings and assassinations. Although the magazine never had more than 5,000 subscribers, it was considered the most influential anarchist periodical in America, while Justice Department insiders had labeled Galleani himself, who lived in Barre, Vermont, the country’s most dangerous anarchist.

Buda began attending local Galleanisti meetings where, sometime around 1916, he also met a fish peddler named Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He would later cite Sacco and Vanzetti as two of his best friends in the world.

The image of the swarthy, bomb-tossing anarchist in a long dark coat and low-slung hat solidly entered the American popular consciousness in 1919 (see below), but anarchist bombings across the country were not that uncommon prior to 1919, and in fact can be traced back to at least the Haymarket Square bombing of 1886. Still, there’s something so simple, even comforting and Romantic, in attributing all these incidents to a single figure, a lone super villain with a taste for black powder. Apart from a few scattered basic facts, precious little is known about Buda. He gave no speeches, left no writings, never married, played things very close to the chest, yet still seemed to be everywhere in the country at once. Over the past century this mysterious little man with the big nose has become as prime a candidate as anyone for supervillain status.

So this is where the speculation begins, most of it based on hindsight which itself is based on speculation.

On New Years Day, 1916, a security guard at the Massachusetts State house discovered a wicker suitcase packed with dynamite in the building’s basement, but was able to dispose of it before it went off. The following day another bomb planted in nearby Woburn was a bit more successful, detonating inside a factory belonging to The New England Manufacturing Company. No one was hurt, but the building suffered extensive damage. Was Buda involved in either incident? It’s unknown, and in fact it’s fairly unlikely, but in recent years armchair radical historians have been including them as possible early examples of Buda’s handiwork.

Seven months later on July 22nd, as America began prepping to dive into World War I, cities across the country staged what were called Preparedness Day parades to express public support for the military. Radical and labor groups assailed the idea, not only because they saw it merely as a cheap excuse for large businesses to angle their way into fat government contracts, but also because part of what was termed preparedness was the institution of a new military draft which would mostly, if not exclusively, affect the working class.

The parade in San Francisco, which attracted an estimated 50,000 marchers, was thrown into chaos when a suitcase packed with dynamite and left on the sidewalk exploded. Ten people were killed, and another forty were sent to the hospital with serious injuries. Suspicion immediately focused on socialists, labor groups, subversives and other radicals. The local chamber of commerce and business leaders, happy to cooperate with the police, compiled a list of known labor agitators who’d been involved in recent strikes. They passed the list over to the cops, who started rounding up Reds. In the end Warren Billings and Tom Mooney, both of them low-level labor activists, were charged with the bombing. Both men had solid alibis, both had been out of town that day, but thanks to the testimony of one well-coached prosecution witness, Billings got life, and Mooney was sentenced to death.

In the uproar that followed, Billings and Mooney became poster boys, early martyrs for the labor movement, but, twenty years later, received full pardons. That still left the question, who built and planted the crude bomb? Assuming it was the work of anarchists and not German saboteurs, every notable anarchist in the country—beginning with Emma Goldman—fell under suspicion, with the smart money leaning toward Boda. There exists no evidence linking him to the explosion, but there was no evidence linking anyone to the explosion, so whose to say it wasn’t a Buda job? The case remains unsolved to this day.

Later in 1916—and this we do know—Buda was arrested at a Boston anti-militarism protest that turned violent. At his hearing, like so many anarchists at the time, he refused to take the oath on a Bible, and was sentenced to five months in jail for contempt. Upon his release in early 1917, and hoping to avoid that newly-instituted draft, he reconnected with Sacco and Vanzetti and the trio spirited away to join a growing collective of Italian anarchists living in Monterey, Mexico.

There, Buda worked in a laundry and—here we’re back to speculation—may have spent his free time honing his bomb-making skills. What evidence there is to support this idea came later in 1917.

On November 9th, a Milwaukee, WI-based Italian evangelical minister, fed up with these slacker anarchists giving speeches badmouthing America when the country was at war, held a loyalty rally in front of the city’s anarchist headquarters. A fight broke out, the police were called, and in the end two anarchists were shot and killed. In retaliation, a group of ten anarchists, Buda among them, left Mexico and returned to the States with a mission. On the night of November 23rd, they left a bag containing a bomb in the basement of the offending evangelical church. Before it detonated, however, it was discovered by a janitor, who brought it to the local police station.

That’s where it exploded, killing nine cops and one civilian. Although several anarchists, including Buda, were rounded up and questioned, there was no solid evidence against any of them, and they were all released. No charges were ever filed. Today the Milwaukee blast is generally accepted without question as a Buda operation.

Buda, who upon his return from Mexico adopted the pseudonym Mike Boda, moved back to Massachusetts in early 1918. His precise whereabouts and doings over the course of the next two years remain foggy, though a few people think they know what he might’ve been up to.

On the afternoon of April 29th, 1919, a small package wrapped in brown paper arrived in the mail at the home of Georgia senator Thomas W. Hardwick. Hardwick wasn’t home, so his housekeeper brought the box inside and, together with Hardwick’s wife, set about opening it at the kitchen table.

The package turned out to be a novelty sampler from Gimbel’s. Or so the box claimed, anyway. When the housekeeper tore open the flap marked “OPEN,” she unwittingly released a spring that allowed a small vial of acid to spill on three blasting caps, which detonated the stick of dynamite packed in the wooden box. The explosion blew off the housekeeper’s hands and left Hardwick’s wife badly burned and lacerated.

That same day, an identical package arrived at the home of Rayme Weston Finch, a Bureau of Investigation agent with the Justice Department. One of Finch’s staffers took the initiative and opened the curious package, but ignoring the clearly-marked instructions, opened it from the wrong end. The acid vial merely tumbled out onto the table, and the bomb didn’t detonate.

After these two incidents, law enforcement departments, the post office and the media all began posting nationwide warnings about any similar packages. Even before word started to spread, a sharp-eyed postal clerk in New York had already set aside over a dozen identical packages for lack of postage. A total of thirty-six bombs had been mailed around the end of April, apparently in the hope they would be received and opened on May Day. Scanning the list of those politicians, judges, law enforcement officials, wealthy businessmen and newspaper editors who’d been targeted—including J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer—gave investigators a reasonably clear insight into the motivations of the Mad Bomber.

In a paranoid frenzy following the Bolshevik Revolution, city, state, and federal governments passed a series of sweeping anti-immigrant and anti-sedition laws, making it all but illegal to be an outspoken socialist, communist or anarchist, especially if you also happened to be Italian. All those people slated to receive mail bombs had either supported or enforced the legislation. Fisk, for instance, lead a raid on the offices of Cronaca Sovversiva in 1918, arresting three Galleanisti. Hardwick, meanwhile, had sponsored legislation aimed at crushing the labor movement and driving Left-leaning immigrants (mostly Italians) out of the country.

Two thoughts at this point. First, if Boda built the bombs in question, and if it was his idea to disguise an exploding box as a “Gimbel’s Novelty Sampler,” then he clearly had a much wackier sense of humor than most people realize. And second, again if Boda was responsible for the bombs used in the April campaign, they represented a marked leap forward in design. The earlier bombs attributed to him had been crude devices, just bundles of dynamite with primitive timing mechanisms, while these mail bombs were sophisticated and intricate. So who knows? Maybe he really had honed his skills during those months in Mexico.

On June 2nd, as federal investigators were still trying to narrow down their list of suspects for April’s mail bombs, eight much more powerful bombs, once again targeting judges, politicians and Attorney General Palmer, were detonated simultaneously in cities across the country. Bombs went off in Pittsburgh, Washington, New York and Chicago. Along with being packed with metallic shrapnel, each of the devices also contained a leaflet which read:

War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.

The flyers had been signed “The American Anarchist Fighters.”

This time there were two casualties. One was a night watchman, the other the former editor of Cronaca Sovversiva, who was in the process of depositing a 25-pound bomb on Palmer’s front steps when it prematurely exploded. The bomb demolished the front of the house, but Palmer, who was at home with his family at the time, was in a back room and remained unharmed. The bomber, meanwhile, was scattered in small pieces all over the genteel Washington, D.C. neighborhood.

Combined with the flyers, when the bomber was eventually identified as a Galleanista the feds had all the evidence they needed to deport Luigi Galleani back to Italy. But that was only the beginning of Attorney General Palmer’s revenge.

Although no one was ever arrested or charged for the bombing campaign, toward the end of 1919, the Attorney General, a long-time hardliner when it came to immigration, Sedition, labor unions an radicalism, launched what came to be known as The Palmer Raids. Cops across the country (including Police Chief Stewart in Bridgwater) rounded up roughly 10,000 suspected anarchists, communists and socialists, most of them Italian. In the end over 500 were deported. Meanwhile, American intellectuals whose own political views edged into the pink found themselves subject to federal and local suspicion and persecution. While the Palmer raids only lasted a few months, the first Red Scare would linger much longer.

Sacco and Vanzetti

On the evening of May 5th, 1920, two weeks after Mike Boda slipped away from Police Chief Michael Stewart, word began to spread the cops were going to start rounding up local radicals in their as yet fruitless search for the men responsible for the Braintree and Bridgwater crimes. Members of the local Galleanisti cell, including Sacco, Vanzetti, and Boda, decided it might be wise to quickly dispose of any stray dynamite and anarchist literature anyone might have laying around their homes. It was also decided the best and most efficient way to do this would be by car. Boda had the only available car, and though it was still in the shop, it was ready to be picked up. Boda, Sacco, Vanzetti and another friend made their way to the mechanic’s house about nine, but when the mechanic and his wife made a hamfisted attempt to stall them, it became clear something was afoot. Boda correctly smelled a set-up, and told the mechanic he’d come to pick up his car the next morning instead. The four men quickly left, splitting up as they did so.

Boda went into hiding in East Boston, but on their way home on the trolley that night, Sacco and Vanzetti were picked up by a cop who considered them suspicious characters. The pistols they were carrying and all the anarchist pamphlets in their respective homes only strengthened Stewart’s belief he had two of the killers in custody.

While keeping a very low profile in Boston, Boda closely followed the growing case against his two friends in the local papers. On September 11th, 1920, Sacco and Vanzetti were officially indicted on first-degree murder charges.

Five days later, a little before noon on September 16th, as the sidewalk began to fill with the lunch hour crowds, a man drove his old horse and cart down Wall Street, coming to a stop outside the corporate headquarters of the J.P. Morgan bank, just down the street from the Stock Exchange. The man, whom nobody would later recall seeing, climbed down, tied up the horse, and strolled away, one would like to imagine with his hands in his pockets and whistling a casual tune. Nobody paid much attention to the horse and cart, a common sight around New York at the time. Besides, everyone was too focused on lunch and that afternoon’s business meetings.

At a minute after twelve, the hundred pounds of dynamite packed in the cart exploded, sending nails and 500 pounds of iron sash weights ripping into the junior executives, bank tellers, secretaries, stock brokers and office boys who filled the streets. Cars were tossed around like cheap toys, trolleys a block away were blown off the tracks and windows throughout the financial district were shattered, as a fiery mushroom cloud arose above the gaping hole where the horse and cart once sat.

The streets and sidewalks were littered with broken glass, bleeding bodies, and parts of bodies as an eerie silence fell over the area. Then the screaming began.. In the end, thirty-eight people were killed, with another 300 hospitalized.

William Flynn, director of the Bureau of Investigation, insisted on handling the case himself, ordering the immediate arrest of any known anarchists and, for good measure, the IWW’s Big Bill Haywood, who was in Chicago at the time of the bombing. Along with Haywood, eleven anarchists from the New York area were arrested, but all were soon released for lack of evidence.

Although a $100,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest, Flynn only had two clues to work with.

One was a handful of flyers discovered by a mailman in the minutes before the bomb went off. In prude red letters on yellow paper, the flyers read:

“Remember we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you.”

It was signed by “American Anarchist Fighters,” the same group behind the 1919 bombings.

The other was a blacksmith from Little Italy who told police that a day before the bombing, a short, balding Sicilian came into his shop to either (depending on the telling):

1. Rent an old horse and cart.

2. Rent a horse to pull a cart,

Or 3. Have his old horse, who was already pulling a cart, fitted with new shoes.

Flynn didn’t have much to go on, and his investigation went nowhere. In retrospect, he would later insist he knew from the start his primary suspect was Mario Buda, but Buda was never brought in, never questioned, and no charges were ever filed against him.

Buda, meanwhile, still going under the name Mike Boda, slipped off to Providence, and by the end of the month was on his way back to Savignano where, despite ongoing political activity and occasional trouble with the police (including a five-year exile), he would spend the rest of his days as a quiet and serious shoemaker. He died on June 1st, 1963.

According to Buda’s nephew, in 1955 his uncle confessed to him that he had indeed built and delivered the Wall Street bomb, though it’s unclear if he confessed to any of the other bombings attributed to him. It’s also unclear if Buda, eight years before his death, clarified to his nephew whether the Wall Street bombing was done in reaction to the indictment of his friends, as a final Puck You to Attorney General Palmer—or, hell, merely as a kick in the balls to the whole damn capitalist system. We’ll likely never know. To this day, the shrapnel pockmarks from the bomb can still be seen on the facades of several financial district buildings, and the case remains open.

Buda was, without question, a shadowy and slippery character. Over the years he’s taken on the aura of a Dr. Mabuse or Professor Moriarity. And who knows? Maybe he really was a mad anarchist genius. After all, no clues were ever left behind at the scenes of the bombings attributed to him, so there’s no saying he wasn’t responsible for all of them and more. Maybe he really was that good. I’d like to believe so.

by Jim Knipfel

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beardycarrot · 5 years

Text

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is an... interesting, game. As the name implies, it’s a reboot, and has nothing to do with the original game. In the original Shaq Fu, Shaq is in Tokyo, for some reason, and finds an old Chinese kung fu master, for some reason, and is transported to another world... for some reason. I mean, it’s a SNES fighting game starring an NBA star and sponsored by Pepsi, so there’s really no point in criticizing the story.

Anyway, Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn takes a different approach. Rather than the Shaquille O’Neal we know, this game features a Shaq who washes up in China as a baby with a lotus flower birthmark on his neck, and is trained by a kung fu master because he’s the chosen one or something. Instead of a fighting game, this one is a brawler, with you doing the typical “walk the streets, beat guys up, pick up objects to use as improvised weapons” thing. It does still have product placement, though. What could be more fitting than...

...No, actually, I guess Shaq’s soda line was already dead and gone by the time this game was made. The product placement in this game is A LOT more stupid:

Yyyyep, you occasionally come across containers of Icy Hot, which fully restore your health. There’s also a joke about Gold Bond at one point, but they didn’t license its likeness for the game, so I’m not sure whether it’s actually product placement or just one of the game’s many smirk-but-no-laugh jokes.

Most of the humor just falls flat completely, and I don’t even get a lot of the jokes. Like, the second level features a whole lot of grape soda, and the boss is a character called Baby Face... who I *think* is supposed to be Justin Bieber (the bosses are all parodies of celebrities), but his method of attack is a gun that shoots chickens. What, uh... what’s the joke, here?

Anyway, the gameplay is... eh? You mash the Y button to attack, which after a few hits lets you press A to unleash a giant foot attack (the game constantly reminding you that Shaq wears a size 22 shoe). You have an AOE ground-punching move that you have to fill a meter to use, and there’s some kind of dash attack that you can use if you’ve collected enough blue balls... though I’m not sure if that attack actually does anything, as it’s only ever gotten me hurt. The game is pretty bad at conveying things, and doesn’t really give you invulnerability frames when using moves like that. There are also potions that transform you, though are only used in scripted segments in the game. Still, it’s a nice change of pace, and the only part I would describe as actually kinda fun. Well, aside from the end of the Shaqtus section in the fifth level, where untelegraphed mines are falling from the sky and getting hit by them twice in a row took out my entire health bar.

Unfortunately, the control overall feels pretty clunky, and you’re just fighting through waves and waves and ambush after ambush of bad guys, almost none of which pose any kind of threat... and even when they do, you just start over from the last checkpoint with full health, full meters, and no consequences other than losing any money you collected when you die. Not a huge loss, considering the money doesn’t count towards your end-of-level score, and there isn’t anything to spend it on. At first I was sure there would be a shop, or maybe a Luigi’s Mansion-style reward at the end of the game depending on how much you collected... but nope, when viewing the coins in the game’s encyclopedia thing, it’s revealed that they do literally nothing. This would probably be funny in some contexts... but this game has so many stupid pointless things already.

The game is pretty short, especially considering it got a physical release. I mean, it’s a budget release at twenty USD... but it absolutely should’ve been a five dollar digital download. I paid five dollars for it, knowing it would be bad and getting it just to point and laugh, and even I feel like I should’ve gotten a better deal on it. There are only six fairly short levels, with the last one being an invaded-by-demons reskin of the first (even shorter) tutorial level.

At some point, I think at the end of the fourth level, the plot point of Shaq’s real mother is introduced... by which I mean, he says “I wonder who my real mother is” out of nowhere, for no reason, before Miley Cyrus crashes her jetpack into the wall he’s sitting on. Yeah man I dunno the game is weird. As you might expect, at the end of the game it’s revealed that Yen-Lo-Wang, the evil demon overlord, is actually Shaq’s mother... and uh, is also Madonna. I mean, her name in the game is Destiny, but it’s supposed to be Madonna. Oh, and she’s also not his real mother because she adopted him... look, the game is dumb.

In the end, Shaq defeats his Momdonna and... I guess destroys an obelisk that can be used to summon demons from hell (he destroys one at the end of every stage, but it’s never explained what they are or why he’s doing it before this point), and then he and his mentor decide to go kill Kanye West. Roll credits.

There’s a lot of stuff in this game that falls into the category of "random pop culture reference”, and a lot of jokes that don’t connect at all. Like, Shaq says that he knew Diamond (a parody of Paris Hilton) was a demon because of the way her eyes glowed in a “low-budget film”, referring to the night vision in the Paris Hilton sex tape. At the end of the game, Shaq befriends a whale named Seymour Prophet, who I’m pretty sure is designed to look like Michael Moore.

The fifth level, Fiji, has you fighting against... militaristic nazi Scotsmen. Why? Brexit, apparently. The boss of that area is Benedict Fender, a Mel Gibson parody in his Braveheart costume, because... anti-semitic Scotsman, I guess. Now that I think about it, they must’ve decided to use Mel Gibson first, then went with a costume people would recognize him in, and then based the rest of the enemies in the area on that. Why they went with Fiji for the setting, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe they just wanted variety after two levels based on Los Angeles.

edit: I looked it up, and apparently Mel Gibson owns a fifteen million dollar private island in Fiji. So uh, guess that’s why. Like I said, this game’s references are a lot of deeps cuts that very few people will get.

There are a lot of other weird minor things. Halfway through the game, Shaq goes from pronouncing his master’s name as “Yee-Yee” to “Yay-Yay”. Aside from bosses, most of the male enemies are just normal location-appropriate guys (nazi Scotsmen in Fiji aside), but every single female enemy in the game is a brightly-colored demon with big horns... I’m guessing Shaq didn’t want to be depicted hitting women. At one point Shaq complains about the endless waves of enemies to the game’s programmer, who agrees to give him something fresh... but then it’s just another Shaqtus section, followed immediately by another wave of enemies identical to the one he’d been complaining about.

The weirdest inconsistency is regarding the Kanye West joke at the end. In that, despite his name being Matisse, it couldn’t be more clear that it’s meant to be Kanye... but then, when you start Barack Fu, they’ve completely changed him. Oh, did I not mention Barack Fu?

Yeah, it’s a short two-level epilogue in which you play as Barack Obama. In it, Matisse is now referring to as Con-Ye, and while he’s still recognizable as Kanye West, he doesn’t resemble the version from the ending at all. This little bonus game is... okay. It feels a bit less responsive than the normal game, since Barack still controls just like Shaq, but isn’t a huge lumbering guy so he comes across as a lot more sluggish. The game starts in France (so, naturally, the standard enemies are guys in black and white striped shirts wearing red berets and using baguettes as weapons), and ends on a space station in which every enemy is some kind of a Con-Ye clone. It’s a bit less of a mess than the normal game... but only because the cutscenes have a guy doing a pretty good Obama impression and delivering cool lines. It’s a shame they decided to end it on a Michelle Obama anal sex joke.

#shaq fu

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5-secondsofcolor · 6 years

Text

The New Year

Note: This is one of the first fics I’ve ever written and the first one I’ve ever published anywhere. I’m far from an amazing writing but part of my new years resolution is practicing and gaining confidence in writing. It’s a little clunky so, please, feel free to leave me feedback! K, thank you for reading.

Warnings: Some swearing? None really.

-----

Calum’s family decide to stay through New Years; David’s freshly retired, Joy is more than happy to spend more time with Cal, and Mali’s just along for the ride this year. They tell Calum not to fret, to enjoy his new year as he planned but he can't leave them.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, he realizes what he's got to do. Introduce Laura to his family. It's not like they weren't friends before, he's known her more than a year, and she's not a secret to anyone. The issue is that they still find themselves in an in-between. What've they got? Monogamy? Yep. Sleepovers? Yeah. Weekends away? A few here and there with a final one planned to close off the year. A New Year's cabin trip just for two. Well they had to reschedule that one.

Joy quickly throws together a dinner, inviting Ashton, Luke, and Michael and his parents, of course. She’s happy to get them together for dinner again, anytime with the boys together is special for her. Knowing they’ll be there has also brought some relief to Laura; she’s still getting to know Luke and Ash but Michael and her get along like a house on fire. Rapidly pairing together at parties and clubs they're dragged out to, there’s a comfortable understanding that they’ve got one another’s back.

Nervousness grips Laura on December 30th, a full day before it needs to. She tries on outfit after outfit trying to find something good enough to meet his family in. Suddenly there's an issue with every item in her closet, it's either too small or too large, too formal or too frumpy, long story short it's all fucking wrong. Then she finds it, a maroon wrap dress buried in the back of her closet. It’s not perfect but it'll work. Now, what in the world does she bring to this thing?

“Laura, this is Mali. Mali this is Laura, we've..umm been dating.” Calum says quickly introducing them.

From the corner of her eye, Laura sees a shit eating grin break out on Ashton's face; he's rooting for them, she knows it, but he also finds it extraordinarily amusing that Calum's found someone so similar to himself. both of them said “fuck love” until they found one another. Ashton can see the change in Calum, the way he's stopped saying it in interviews, so now he's just waiting for the day they announce its official.

“It's great to finally meet you.” Mali says ignoring Laura's extended hand and going in for a hug. “I love this dress. The color looks amazing on your skin.” She notes.

“It's great to meet you, too. Calum talks about you so much, it's great to put a face to the name.”

Dinner starts without a hitch. Laura can see why Calum told her to bring drinks; Joy has covered the table in food, cooking every dish she could. After a quick speech from Calum and Joy, everyone digs in. The boys dominate the conversation, Ashton and Luke fighting to give Joy updates of their lives in-between bites.

Luke’s also met a girl this year, he tells Joy all about her, unfortunately, she’s away for the New Year but soon they’ll go to Australia to meet his mom. Ashton goes off about his new project, something about photography or was it film? He’s got so many it’s hard for everyone to keep up from time to time.

“Laura, what do you do for a living?” Joy asks trying to bring her into the conversation.

“Ma, I'm sure she doesn't want to talk about work.”

“It's ok, Cal. I work part-time conducting demographic research at a marketing firm and I work freelance for a few local companies, setting up their online marketing and consulting. I like to write a lot on the side but it'll be a while before that's making me any money.”

“If you keep writing the way you have with Calum, you’re gonna be a songwriter soon enough,” Michael adds hardly lifting his face from his plate.

“Are you a singer?” Mali asks.

“Oh no," She shakes her head. Laura's tone-deaf at best but editing runs in her veins. "I write more poetry than anything but I give feedback to Cal’s writing sometimes.”

Joy gives her a soft smile before Luke grabs back the attention. For once, Laura's grateful for his and Ashton's larger personalities. They feed off one another as they continue telling stories of their last tour and their new album. They miss Joy almost as much as they miss their own mothers. Laura can see why, Joy’s genuine pride at all they've got going on is infectious.

Laura feels herself relax as dinner goes on. All the dialogues slowly bleed into one, allowing her to sit and observe for a moment. Her favorite pastime, watching how enthusiastically people speak about things they’re passionate about. There’s always a glimmer in Luke’s eyes when he speaks about love. Ashton’s smile never breaks from his lips and his gestures get even larger. Mali, much like Calum, smiles wide when she’s happy making her eyes small as happiness takes over her face.

“So how'd you meet?” Mali asks as she finishes a story.

The table falls silent as everyone pauses. Joy and David look inquisitively as Michael snickers. He swears his phone call set their entire relationship in motion.

“I lost my phone outside a coffee shop and this one found it,” Calum explains briefly. Laura nods in agreement but everyone turns to her, waiting for her side.

“Honestly, that's it. I found his phone, held onto it until he came to pick it up, and we kinda just started having coffee together. It had to have been almost a year ago? Right after your birthday. I didn't let him buy me a coffee the day I found it so he came back a week later, and he bought me a coffee then. Let's be honest, he just wanted an excuse to grab the best coffee in this area.” Laura teases rolling her eyes in Calum's direction. “He started joining me while I worked once or twice a week and we unintentionally started a little writing club.”

The entire time Laura speaks, Joy’s eyes are trained on Calum. He holds her hand under the table while he listens attentively, his eyes never leaving her. For years she's been worried, they haven't heard a peep out of Calum about anyone until Laura. There's hardly a peep about her but the few times she's come up there's been excitement in his voice. A little peace comes to her seeing him try in love again.

Ashton and Luke are off after dinner, heading out to some parties. Laura and Calum are up first to volunteer go do the dishes. Laura starts a quiet playlist before taking her usual spot of scrubber beside Calum. Joy runs in occasionally, finding random dishes to hand them. They work slowly on purpose. Calum sings to her and places gentle kisses on her temple as they bask in the silence, enjoying the small amount of time stolen away in the kitchen. The dishes hardly feel like a chore as they playfully lean into one another, a gentle reminder that the other is there.

There's no questioning the feeling they have; it's love but logic says it’s too soon. Neither of them can fully wrap their head around it. There's something different about their love. There's no madness, no crazy proclamations are needed, nobody will be shouting it from rooftops. Much like them, their love is silent, it's found only by those who'll take the time to observe.

“Want to break open that Christmas whiskey and have a quick drink in the backyard?” Laura dries off her hand on a kitchen towel.

“I'd love to,” Calum says grabbing two glasses and a bottle Laura's gifted him as they sneak into the backyard.

Calum hands Laura a drink and watches her in the soft light. She's got a way about her; from the day they met it's kept her coming up in his mind. The girl in the coffee shop with her work scattered about, a simple way of romanticising everyday, and her smile? It's out of this word. The only reason why he left that day was a phone call. Had Michael not called him, where would the conversation have gone? Two, three, four times she came to mind the weekend after they met and Calum knew he had to befriend her. He wasn't sure what she'd be but it wasn't a “What if?” he was going to live with. With nothing but hope, he showed up to the same coffee shop a week later, sat at the same table, and for once let fate take the reigns.

“Happy almost New Years, guy I’m dating,” Laura says taking the glass.

“Happy almost New Year, phone sitter.”

They clink their glasses together. Does she make everyone feel that way? Like they're the center of the universe. She says something but all he can focus on is the need to hold her in his arms, to run his fingertips over her beautiful brown skin. He takes her drink and places it down before pulling her into him. She'll bring up the lack of attention later but, right now, he just wants her close. She wraps her arms around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder, as they sway to the music pouring into the backyard. Unbeknownst to them, Mali and Joy are peaking into the backyard from a window.

“Dad, look. They're absolutely precious.”

“Window’s open, Mal.” Calum says. Laura hides her face in his chest, her face warming quickly.

“Shit. Sorry, guys!”

“Y'all want some whiskey? It's fancy stuff I got Cal for Christmas.” Laura calls into the house.

With that, David’s off the couch and joining them in the backyard. They all settle outside together. Laura dipping her feet into the heated pool and Mali joins her after a moment. They talk about living in London for a while. Laura recalls the winter she spent abroad in London and Mali adds her own humid summer horror stories. Soon Joy joins them too. She takes the cake telling them of the Australian summers of her youth. Summers hot enough that the pavement would melt the soles of her shoes. Her children call her a liar but Joy presses on. David and Karen corroborating her stories until the kids concede.

The stories continue, everyone sitting around listening to David, Joy, and Karen reminisce on years passed. Memories of the kid's childhoods are traded back and forth until they intersect and begin to overlap. Karen and Joy meeting for the first time, the boys starting the band, having their sons follow insane dreams, and the bouts of sadness that can be found in all the joys of their success. Karen and Joy give Laura the whole story or at least they give it a shot as midnight approaches.

Midnight comes and brings with it hugs and kisses, the sounds of clanking of crystal, and explosions off in the distance as they ring in new opportunities. All of them stay outside watching the fireworks go off and chatting for a little longer.

The whole world’s alight but Calum can only see Laura, the world doesn’t matter. This is the New Year but the only thing that makes him feel any different is standing beside him, staring up at the night sky. The whole year came down to a few points and it’s taken him until now to realize the fateful day he dropped his phone was a one. Fate making sure he took pause long enough to see her and, now, he knows he’ll keep an eye out.

“Ok. Ashton had told me you two were cute but she's amazing. Please tell me you're taking her seriously.” Mali says the second Calum returns from walking Laura to her car.

“Mal… please no.”

“Calum, are you serious? You're in love, she's in love, there's basically turtle doves hovering around you.”

“Mali, that's enough.”

Giving her a stern look, he takes the last of the leftovers into the kitchen. He settles onto the kitchen island, helping his mother tidy the kitchen. She sworn by the superstition for years: a tidy house at New Years means a tidy house all year.

Calum knows Mali’s right but fear is louder. Laura terrifies him. Even when they were simply friends, there was so much that began to lead back to her. Writing, happiness, home -- all began to lead back to her and he doesn't want to fight it. He wants to share them with her and it's a feeling that's only gotten stronger in the last few months. But it all boils down to a game of risk. What if he gets too comfortable and she leaves? What if this leads to nothing but new heartbreak? Will this become another reminder to not fall in love?

“Baby, what’s on your mind?” Joy asks, seeing Calums face twist as he runs through all his thoughts.

“How’d you know dad was the one?” Calum asks, settling on the kitchen island as she packs away the last of the leftovers.

“Dad is the one. I know because, in the harder moments, he always stays. It’s easy to love someone through the good but when things get hard and people pull away, when life wedges in all the reasons to leave, and he chooses to stay, that’s when I know he's the right one.”

Calum nods and stays silent for a moment.

“Laura’s something special isn’t she?”

“She is. It just all came so suddenly, I wasn’t expecting it, mum.”

“Sometimes it’s not about what you’re expecting but about what life knows you’re ready for.” Joy says packing away the last of the leftovers. “Goodnight, baby. Happy New Years.”

“Goodnight, mum. I love you.”

---

The next morning Calum’s hardly slept, his mind a jumble of thoughts. He grabs Duke before going out for a cigarette. He's surprised to find Mali already in the backyard with her writing journal.

“Good morning.” She coos down at Duke.

“Good morning." He settles beside her and thinks for a moment, "I'm sorry I was short with you last night.”

“It's fine, Calum.” She tries to wave him off, figuring the issue wasn't her.

“No, it wasn't. I'm sorry. It's just… I just don't know how to speak about Laura.” He shrugs unable to find the words even hours later. “Mali, I don’t want to get ahead of myself but I feel stupid not rushing in. It's like when we started the band, my gut’s just saying it's right.”

“Then what's holding you back?”

“I can't… I don't think I could make it if this…isn't real.” Calum says slowly. Unsure of how to voice his fear.

“Cal, I know it's scary to take a leap but if the feelings that strong, listen to it. Just from what I saw yesterday, I think she's on the same page as you Remember, you'll always have Ash and I, too.”

It's the final push he needs, the most important women in his life have his back. With a sigh, he finds the resolve to see her. He doesn't have a plan but he can't hold all the emotions in any longer. Calum pulls up her contact and dials her number. Knowing full well she's not a morning person, he hopes she's already awake.

“Bueno?”

“Morning, beautiful.” Calum says, rolling his eyes as Mali holds her heart and gives him a silent ‘awwwww’.

“Hola, cariño.”

“What're you doing?”

“Umm writing.” Laura admits, her cheeks burning. She's been caught in that act. In a mad attempt to capture even the smallest part of the way he's making her feel, she's spent the morning writing about him. She's hoping to silence the ruckus in her mind, so much so that she's up early. She's unsuccessful, truthfully, it seems that the only thing that truly silences her thoughts doubles as their source.

“Mind if I come over? Just for a little.”

“Yeah, I have something for you.” Laura admits, rolling her lips between her teeth.

“Do you? Well then I can't show up empty handed, how does some Nautical Bean sound?” He can't help the smile breaking across his face.

Laura laughs lightly, “That sounds freaking amazing and that way I'll hopefully get this done before you get here.”

“Mm, I can't wait to read it. I'll see you soon. Bye.” Calum says as he hangs up.

“Mal, tell-”

“Tell mum and dad you'll be back soon. Yeah, yeah. Go on now!” She shoos.

Before he knows it, Calum's got their coffees and he's running up the steps two at a time. He knocks softly before letting himself in.

“Hi.” Hey says breathlessly.

Every bit of nervousness leaves his body as he sees her sitting on her couch. A large blanket drapes around her shoulders while she works on her laptop. These are his favorite moments to share with her. When both of them quietly working on something, happy not to go at it alone. He settles in beside her, waiting for a moment while she finishes her work.

"G'morning, bub." She says with a smile, placing her laptop down on the coffee table. “Thank you for the coffee”

“Ok now I gotta hold up my end of this deal,” Laura says opening to a page in the small journal before handing it over to him. “I know I said you aren't allowed to read my personal journals but today's an exception,” He wants to say something but the words stick together, creating a lump in his throat. They share a knowing look, her journal is everything to her. It's her best friend holding the pieces she's afraid to share. He's holding a piece of her heart. She gives him a nervous smile as he starts to read an entry from the night previous.

“These hands have held me in another lifetime.

I can't explain it. Not fully, not even in parts.

I don't understand it, yet it is.

The same way birds fly, it looks impossible, improbable, yet they take flight every day so it must be.

I see it just the same with us.

Neruda’s poems make sense, they're clear in a way I've never known.

Paths are simpler as the future comes with one piece set.

I am not afraid to get my heart broken by you.

Maybe it's foolish, stupid, reckless but something in these hollow bones of mine tells me to take flight.

Tell me, do I sound insane?”

Calum reads the paper twice over; his heart feels ready to burst. He clears his throat, finally finding words to say.

"Well, that makes things a lot easier,” Calum says quickly closing the distance between them and placing a gentle kiss on her lips. He feels a smile grow on her lips as she pulls away. He shakes his head, knowing he can't possibly top her writing, "Last year, your friendship alone meant the world to me. You were there patiently through the worst parts of it and I don't think I could've asked for anything else from you. I hope I returned the favor through your rougher moments. Through the good and the bad we fell into something more that has been an absolute gift to me. I know it won't always be this smooth. I know there'll be days where things are off, when I'm gone and we both feel alone, where we'll both struggle but that's ok. Even in the bad days, I'll still hope it's you I get to love. I don't want any of this, the bad or the good, with anyone else but you. Te quiero mucho. Did I say that right?”

“Yeah.” She whispers, eyes brimming with tears. Without a second thought, she takes back her journal, and careful tears out the page and hands it to him.

"How does the first of the month sound to you?" Calum asks folding the paper carefully before placing it into his wallet.

"For what?"

"To start celebrating anniversaries?"

"Sounds good." She says pulling him in for another kiss.

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cleverbroadwayurl · 5 years

Text

Hey #3/Perfect for You (Reprise) (Jeremy Heere x Reader Pt 21)

Song: Hey #3/Perfect for You (Reprise) from Next to Normal

Word Count: 3442

Need to Catch Up? Yet again, I can’t post the links! The other parts are in my masterlist!

A/N: Here we are!! Part 21!! Can you believe that this is kind of winding down as a whole piece?? That’s crazy to me! It feels like I just started it still! Thank you for the support!!

Taglist: @retrogarden @be-more-heidi-hansen @scarsonthecuffsofyourjeans @bluhimaweirdo @catatonic-kuragin @stargirl-murphy

Trigger Warnings: mentions of hospitals, mentions of an abusive boyfriend, mentions of victim blaming, mentions of the SQUIP, mentions of alcohol, mentions of trauma, IF I MISSED ANYTHING LET ME KNOW

And then everything stops. Jeremy’s brain stopped functioning, worse than it had in months. His mouth hung open, drink dropped and now spilling onto the dirt. If it was seeping onto his shoes, Jeremy sure as hell didn’t notice. He wasn’t even sure if he was breathing as Michael stepped out of his line of sight. Jeremy can feel his mouth dry, his hands get sweaty, mind running fast enough that every motion that he’d done felt like a million years long. He wanted to say something, he prayed for something coherent and at least kind of smart to say, something that would be perfect, new, and beautiful. Something that captured everything that had been happening, but it didn’t matter. The silence was filled soon enough.

“Hey.”

It was you.

The words slip from your mouth almost casually, almost like this was just a normal day. But Jeremy couldn’t be as relaxed around you. It was like you’d just appeared, like his brain was glitching out and this was some kind of sick hallucination. But for some reason, he knew it was real. After all of those nights, all of those worries, all of those daydreams, here you were, standing in front of him and okay. After months of you not being active on social media, being unsure of what had actually happened, it was like something actually went right for once; you were standing in front of him, a cute, lazy, but ever so genuine smile painted across your features. With every second that you radiated that smile, something he’d never seen before, his mind flashed back to all of the moments you two had shared, every second that you’d been safe, every passing breath of calmness you two had shared. He could remember making jokes in his basement, the texting conversation, dinner at Red Robin, and yet, it was almost fuzzy, almost gone. That used to feel like clarity, but now this, you were clarity.

He inhales, a moment, passes as his hands stop clenching for one second: “Hey.”

There’s pause, and suddenly Jeremy feels like that was the wrong thing to say. Your smile fades for a second, and Jeremy’s heart drops, his mind already preparing the insults that he’d been basically waiting to throw at himself all night, but instead of everything dropping, a giggle erupts from you. It covers up everything, the faint music in the background, the darkening sky, the eyes watching ever so closely at the interaction you two were sharing. Your giggle continues, and Jeremy can’t help but blush at you; cheeks turning bright red as he keeps observing you, noticing the little things like he’d been craving to do just weeks ago. Your skin was a normal color, pigment returning as it should, no more overly dull complexion; you looked healthy, better, like something had happened. Something genuine, something special—something new. And Jeremy ate up every second he with it, with you.

The laughter from you stops, and you blush back at Jeremy, eyes shining as brightly as they did when Jeremy first saw you. Your head tilts slightly, and Jeremy can feel his heart pause before leaping back to life. “Do you maybe wanna sit down and catch up?”

The words are caught in throat before he can spit them out; awkward and clunky as they usually are around you. “Sure.” Normally, Jeremy would worry about how that sounded, about every breath he’d taken, but for some reason, everything seemed to melt into the moment. The usual panic disappeared from his life as you two walk to the bench at the end of the yard. There isn’t any time for him to reflect on what just happened any further as you twirl and sit down, making Jeremy’s heart mimic the movement.

As soon as you sit down, Rich seems to appear from nowhere, in his hand, a typical red cup, but instead of sipping it himself, he gives it to you before stepping back, leaving you and Jeremy alone. Of course, he doesn’t leave without a wink to Jeremy, denoting that there was something going on still. The surprise of you even being here was one, but there was definitely something else in the air. And Jeremy drank it in like he hadn’t had water in over 2 days. As the thought passes, you take a sip of the drink, clearly not sure of what it is, but having the same opinion as Jeremy: it isn’t bad, but rather tart and sweet, like it has its own version of perfection swirled into a cup. It isn’t bad. Your eyes flick to the rest of the party as people begin to gather where they used to, talking and dancing as they had before. Darkness falls over the entire sky now, the only lights really only being the industrial-esque lights that Brooke had insisted on decorating with. Daisy runs past, but for the first time in his life, Jeremy isn’t really focused on that. Instead, he sneaks glances at you, how your eyes shine as you see Daisy bark and run. He watches the simplicity of your lips curling around the cup’s rim, how your eyes flutter closed as you take a sip. You open your eyes, wider this time, and Jeremy swears he can see the stars in them.

They sway towards him, and your face turns quizzical as you begin to speak again, Jeremy still shocked that this is real, that you’re actually talking to him after everything. “How are you, Jeremy? How were your classes?” You blink a few times, waiting for his answer, as Jeremy feels his throat tighten for a second, and then loosen, like something had been lifted on the moment.

“Good! They were good.” Jeremy nearly cringes at himself; that was too frantic and too chaotic for the moment. His palms begin to sweat, and he mumbles out a “Sorry.”

“Jeremy, you’re fine. I know I was kind of a surprise. It’s still a surprise to me that I decided to come. Like I made the choice to come a few hours ago.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I was just at home and honestly kind of worried about like…I don’t know…showing up.”

Jeremy nods as he continues the conversation: “That’s understandable, I mean, it’s a big group you haven’t seen in a while.”

“No,” you start, setting your cup on your knee, but still holding onto it, “Sorry, I just…haven’t seen any of my friends from high school. Like you’re the first.”

He nods again, assuming that you probably did that with good reason, isolating yourself isn’t good, but honestly, sometimes it’s a relief to be alone. Hell, even Jeremy had been kind of isolating himself for a little bit. Of course, that was almost because of the circumstance. Scheduling so many people to hang out is a hard feat, especially if everyone has conflicting schedules. But your reasoning, even though he wasn’t sure what it was yet, felt like it was a personal thing rather than a typical timing thing. It felt more…serious. There’s a second before you laugh a little bit before speaking up.

“I actually haven’t seen them since I last saw you. I kinda kept my whole, like, visit to the hospital a secret to everyone who didn’t need to know about it.”

“Oh,” was the only thing that Jeremy could come up with.

“Yeah,” you inhale and look at your drink again, almost debating on what to do or say next. There’s a decision, Jeremy can see it in your demeanor, to take a drink, and you do so. The cup goes back and rests back onto your knee. You don’t make eye contact, your eyes glazing over as you stare out at the rest of the party, almost numb to the words that you’re thinking about saying. “I just don’t think they’d believe he did it.”

Jeremy can’t breathe for a second, but nods. He understands, but at least he had Rich and Christine and at least Michael, who had made an effort to kind of get the aftereffects of the SQUIP. But you…didn’t have very many people. Even he probably didn’t know everything. He hadn’t pushed you to elaborate, pushed you to make a decision to break up with your boyfriend, pushed you to do anything you didn’t want to do. At the very least, he believed you, and knew that if you stayed with him, that could be death. But leaving could also mean death. He got that. He did research on that. Your friends didn’t. Your life choices were yours, and Jeremy couldn’t try to change them as much as he might want to. Pushing you in one way or another wasn’t something that Jeremy was about, and he wasn’t going to start doing it now, not to you. There’s a breathe in the night air, a breeze, before you finally look at him again, four words dripping out of your mouth, words that Jeremy was incredibly grateful to hear. “But I trust you.”

He finally meets your gaze, and after a second, you smile at him, even though you’re talking about a difficult topic, that something he’d noticed before was still there. It was new and exciting, and try as he might, Jeremy couldn’t place it, but it felt oddly different yet familiar. You chuckle before continuing the conversation.

“And I left him the week before I went to college. Thank god I went out of state because oh my god what a golden bullshit excuse.” You giggle this time, quieter than before, but just as joyous.

Jeremy’s entire body burst with so much golden light he could’ve battled the sun with it. All of those moments that had been filled with worry, so many times he’d woken up from a nightmare about you, almost seeing you like Mary Kelley—in pieces and in the paper, the pieces sometimes metaphorical, sometimes literal. Everything that seemed dark at the edges faded away, now replaced with the light of happiness around you two. Jeremy matched your giggle, finally relieved, finally getting the joke, finally finding your true self in real time. Your giggle got louder, harder, and Jeremy’s did too. It was almost like a competition: who can laugh harder at absolutely nothing? Both of you were winning, that’s for sure. The drinks were spilled into the dirt, cups long forgotten as the two of you threw your heads back in laughter and relief.

You shook as you continued the conversation into the next few minutes. “It’s not even that funny! But it just feels good to let go, you know?”

“Yeah, I totally get what you mean,” Jeremy calmed down with you, feeling his heart beat against his chest.

Finally, everything calms down for a bit, and Jeremy feels his breath even along with yours. Smiles haven’t faded this entire time, one sneaking glances at the other, blushes fading and returning. Jeremy hears you gasp and look up and he does the latter, noticing for the first time just how bright the stars are. It was like everything had come full circle, like everything that was lost was now gained, like things expired and were yet starting a new. It was a contradiction that would displease the masses, but neither of you cared.

For a second, everything was calm, relaxed, almost like you two had been doing this forever.

“I’m sorry I’ve been absent, but I needed some time to myself for a bit. Like I wanted to just forget this town and everyone in it,” your voice floats with the breeze that passes through.

“I get it. I took a hiatus the summer after junior year. I just didn’t really want to be around a lot of people for a bit.” And that was true. Jeremy had even tried to get in touch with his mom to work something out, where he could just leave town for a little bit. She was too busy pretty much the entire summer, and while that bothered Jeremy, right now, it felt like she had been doing what the two teens had been: taking time for herself. It was in this moment that he forgave her; almost like if he had gone there, he wouldn’t have had this experience with you.

“Exactly!” you pull Jeremy out of his thoughts. You glance at him, but it turns into a study of him. Every curve of his face, every line, every freckle, every color caught inside of his eyes was becoming something you were studying, like you’d have an exam on him later. You seemed to observe every eyelash, every curl, every little acne scar, like you’d have to give some kind of presentation on what the dorky boy who you’d been talking to for a while looked like. It was like you were taking everything in like you’d missed him, like you’d had the same thoughts he’d had about you. “Anyways” you break from the task for a second, “how was your year at college? Was Michael a good roommate?”

“He was great, actually.” Jeremy could remember all the times that he and Michael had stayed up playing video games, somehow smoking without the fire alarm going off and putting the towel underneath the crack of the door so that they could get away with what they were sure the other half of the floor was also doing. He remembered the 2 AM delivery orders, discussing the latest drama that surrounded the floor with Michael, talking about what happened at floor meetings, and kept each other updated about nearly everything the neighbors were doing behind the paper thin walls. He remembered the classes, the way that everything now made sense, and that there were reliable ways to get help in difficult subjects for once. There was the less than thrilling dining hall, much more exciting late night adventures, taking the car out for a drive at midnight for one reason or another.

“That’s good! My roommate was nice too. It felt good to just… start new, you know?”

“Totally,” Jeremy smiled at you. And he totally did know what it was like to just…start new and love every second of it. Within the pause, there’s a quick movement from you, eyes searching in his, and words tumbling from your mouth.

“Favorite class, go.”

“British literature,” Jeremy said with the same speed, not thinking about the answer. As soon as his brain registered it, he couldn’t help but agree with the statement.

“That’s a little surprising, Jeremy,” you giggled, “I’d think it’d be like calculus or something.”

Jeremy put up his hands in defense, guard falling down further and further. Things between you had really only changed for the better, hadn’t they? “Don’t get me wrong, I like calculus, but I learned so much in British literature. The professor was cool, too.”

“That’s so valid Jeremy.”

He can feel pink paint his cheeks for a few seconds. “Thank you.”

With the flash of your phone, Jeremy takes note of the time. It’s a little bit after 11, the sun set long ago. His eyes graze over the crowd—or rather now two or three people that remain. He hadn’t even noticed people leaving at such a steady rate until this moment, every other spare moment given to you. There’s only Brooke, Michael, and Rich in the yard, all of them just talking before Rich walks over to the sound system. He walks away—must have been just adjusting the volume. He notices the house he’d been looking at before was now lit from the inside, people walking around as they get ready for bed. It was weird to see something he’d tried to focus on while definitely thinking about you, now calm as ever. He exhales, and another breeze washes over him. This night had basically been a dream come true—

The song changes, and Jeremy can feel his hands begin to sweat as Rich makes eye contact with him. It’s a slow song, and Jeremy can remember Rich’s wink from what must’ve been hours before. This had been planned. There had been something in the air all night, but Jeremy didn’t think it would actually lead anywhere, and it wasn’t like he wasn’t already nervous enough around you—

“Oh! I love this song!!” you break Jeremy from his thoughts before looking at him, already beginning to stand. “Do you want to dance?”

“Oh, I don’t—”

You grab his hands and whisk him up, a sweet change from the last time he’d seen you. “Neither do I, but it’ll be fun!”

Before he can actually decipher what’s going on, he’s up on his feet with you, both of you laughing as you get central to the yard, completely under the lights above, covered in golden light. Everything is clumsy as you two find a good place to stand and awkwardly figure things out. It’s here in the night air that Jeremy realizes how strong you’ve become. The last time he’d seen you, you needed help standing up and moving across a short distance. Now, you were standing on your own, gracefully, and without pain of any kind. It was a stark contrast, and Jeremy wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. He had finally placed that new emotion, new lifestyle on you—it was happiness. It was something he didn’t want to ever see you let go, or let go of watching, something that suited you so much more than anything he’d seen previously, and for so long.

“Can I wrap my arms around you?” you ask, smiling at him. He nods, but you do nothing, still looking at him expectantly. He isn’t sure what you’re waiting for at first, but then it hits him. Verbal consent.

“Yeah,” he clarifies, but it comes out shaky, nervous, unsure of what’s coming next. You smile at him, wrapping your arms around him so your hands link together behind his neck. Still unsure, Jeremy panics, hands trying to figure out how to maneuver this.

“Here, let me show you,” you smile up at him. Your hands move and take his, putting them around your waist and pulling yourself in a little closer. Hands moving away from his, and he holds steady, almost like he’d been waiting for this moment for forever. They take the original spot they had before, loosely placed around his neck and draping down.

“Is this okay?” he asks this time, and you mimic his actions from before, nodding and smiling.

“Absolutely” you add, just in case he also desired verbal consent, which Jeremy definitely did.

There isn’t any movement from either of you, both of you almost too starstruck to even break eye contact. Usually, with other people, he’d expect them to rest their head on his chest, but with you, it was different. It was like this by itself lit his body aflame, so much so that he was sure he’d overheat if you did rest your head against him. There’s brief moment, a wide smile, before finally, clumsily, you two sway softly to the music around. The world drips away into nothing as the movement gets a little brisker, a little more trusting. It’s a little awkward until the rhythm is set, but once it is, Jeremy swears that dancing with you is pure bliss. The weather is warm now, but neither of you were sweating—well, besides the palms of Jeremy’s hands. He can feel your breath almost even as both of you smile at each other upon eye contact.

Almost as soon as it began, the song ends, the world glitches back into existence, and you start to pull away. It has a sinister sensation to it, just like that day you’d left Jeremy for almost a year with no contact and no words. The light in your eyes didn’t fade, and for a second, Jeremy remembered just looking at the lights, not thinking anything of them, not thinking about how romantic or sweet they’d be if he danced with you under them. But now he had that memory, a lifeline in case he never saw you again, which he didn’t blame you for. It was probably painful to be back home. It must be like when Jeremy walks into the mall. Some days, it’s fine. Others, he can barely get out of bed, thoughts keeping him there for hours. So yeah, you just coming home was a brave act and something that Jeremy would never discount.

“I should…uhh…probably get going, Jeremy.” A blush found it’s way onto your cheeks as you slipped from his grip. “But it was great to see you. Text me, okay? Or I’ll text you. Or something. Yeah. I’ll be in touch, don’t worry.”

Jeremy nods, and stutters out a quick “okay” before you practically vanish before his eyes. Everything and everyone around him was almost static, as if you hadn’t been there at all. But the tingly feeling in Jeremy’s heart and hands said different. It was something different within him. It was the first time he’d left and had some kind of security when thinking about you. Everything almost worked out, was almost perfect, and it was like….god he didn’t even know. You trusted him. You were okay. And in a solid night, he had gotten everything he’d wished so hard for—and he wouldn’t trade that for the entire world.

#Jeremy Heere x reader #jeremy heere imagine #be more chill x reader #be more chill imagine #bmc x reader #bmc imagine

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