#my Big Sister Instincts go OFF THE FUCKING CHARTS FOR THEM

[kennyswurvegurl]

*desperately clutching murderous little girls from horror games* I COULD HAVE PARENTED THEM

[bluberryfields]

"What the hell did you just do?"

Part 2 of whatever. Continuing on with Tadfield Manor scenes, we get to the infamous "Wall" scene. I know it has been analyzed by many so far, but that's never stopped people in the world of literary analysis from spewing their own thoughts on well-reviewed texts. Also, I just want to.

Okay, so once they enter the manor building and see the management training branding, Crowley decides to "help out" and make all of the paintball guns into real machine guns. He snaps his fingers and points double finger guns at the passing "soldier".

Aziraphale is dumbfounded. "What the hell did you just do?

Such language, Angel! And no physical reaction to it like Crowley did when he said "Heaven's sake" in E6. Huh.

Crowley, meanwhile, is thoroughly pleased with himself. They want to battle? He's happy to oblige.

This plus the scare in the courtyard lets us see Crowley enjoying the few perks of being a demon. It's fucking adorable.

Aziraphale cannot comprehend how Crowley - who just miracled a stain away on his coat because it bothered him - could do something so thoroughly evil. And with a jaunty step!

If Aziraphale had pearls, he'd be clutching them so hard.

To which Crowley takes the opportunity to once again point out the flawed binary system of morality. We the audience will see this argument again in the Body Snatcher minisode, so it's fun to see how these two keep having the same old debates throughout time just with different causes with which to start from.

Pointing out hypocrisy while slinking down a hall? Crowley, you delicious tramp.

Aziraphale is still thoroughly horrified, but Crowley concedes with a sigh that everyone will, in fact, be fine. To me, his tone is a mix of disappointment at him not being quite as much of a bastard as he paints himself. He can't really hide his true self from Aziraphale.

I love how he can't stop moving his body. Snakes gonna slither.

Then here is it. The big moment. Smug little Aziraphale feels the need to mention how nice Crowley is underneath his demonic persona.

We now know that this is a reoccurring exchange, where Crowley must defend his title of Big Bad Demon in front of Azi's kind compliments. There's serious consequences to Crowley being labeled "nice" and Azi knows this by now. So why does he keep bringing it up? To provoke Crowley? To finally break him into admitting Azi is right? It's not like Azi can protect Crowley from Hell's wrath, but he pushes anyway.

I thought Crowley was the shit-stirrer in this relationship.

And now my favorite part. Sister Mary shows up and rightly implies these two are about to nail each other through the drywall. But when she recognizes Crowley, he stops her in her tracks.

The sass! It's off the fucking chart! Only an Angel could withstand such a display!

Aziraphale just straightens his clothes and lets the sass go unchallenged because he's still has a bit of self-preservation instincts left.

So I already talked about the "Luck of the devil" line from Aziraphale here, but it truly is a fun moment in the context of the whole scene. Crowley is worked up from the "nice" comment and Aziraphale's seeming refusal to stop analyzing him.

Horny Aziraphale is sassy and Crowley looks like he wants to bite through a door frame.

So, obviously, I've spent way too much time rewatching these scenes, but I do find it so interesting how we see so much of their relationship on display within just a few minutes. The different personality traits to draw them together while also pushing them apart.

The way Aziraphale knows how to work Crowley, who in turns knows how to indulge appropriately. (*cough* bullet catch *cough*)

The way Crowley happily taps into his demonic toolbox to spread a bit of chaos without actually causing serious harm. (*cough* Job *cough*)

The way Aziraphale reflexively tows the party line of Heaven even in the face of Crowley's demonstrations of humanity's instincts. (*cough* all of time *cough*)

And basically the way they bring out the best (and sometimes worst) of each other. Some might say they're a team. Or a group. A group of the two of them.

[luukeskywalker]

i see so many arguments about whether or not it's okay to like jiang cheng; whether or not he's abusive, whether or not he's deserving of a "redemption" or reconciliation with wei wuxian, whether or not his actions and pain are justified, etc. and because he's such a complicated person, and because we all interpret his actions differently, we are never ever going to come to a general consensus on him.

but i'll give my take on him, because i love him, and i really don't see a lot of, uh, more lenient takes on Why He’s Like That. also i’m putting this under a readmore bc this is literally just for me i don’t think anybody else in the world wants to read this rambling hahaha

anyways!~

the man has problems. lots of them. he doesn't know how to truthfully voice his emotions outside of a frame of anger. he was not raised to be a wife like jiang yanli, he was not taught to perform emotional labor for the sake of his future spouse. he was taught that he is the next sect leader, and that emotions are both his weakness (from his mother) and his strength (from his father). he was brought up from a young age under the belief that there was always an unattainable goal placed right in front of him.

of course that's not all officially "canon", but you can easily see it if you read between the lines. you really can't take anything jiang cheng says seriously. not when he was a kid, and not when he’s an adult, either. and i don’t say this to excuse his actions, or to say that he’s necessarily justified because he had a tough childhood. everyone in mo dao zu shi had a tough childhood, he’s not special for that! but the way he was raised, in my opinion, explains a lot about who he is as a person, and how he interacts with the world around him. again: it doesn’t justify his actions. it merely explains them.

i think he’s terribly interesting. every character reacts to their traumas in different ways - lan xichen covers everything up with a gentle smile, wei wuxian cracks jokes about his own mortality, lan wangji searched out evil as often as he could to make the world a little safer - hell, even nie huaisang adapted to trauma by creating an entirely different persona so that he could gather information and plot in peace. jiang cheng’s reaction to trauma was to take that anger he grew up with, all his frustration at never being good enough, all his worry about his family, all his rage at the people who have betrayed and left him - and he turned it into armor. 

he doesn’t know how to take the armor off. after years and years (thirteen or sixteen, it’s really up to the reader, i suppose), he’s worn it so tightly that he thinks that anger is all he is. everyone else thinks so, anyways, and when have the greater masses ever been wrong in mo dao zu shi?

oh, that’s right, literally every single time. 

call me an apologist if you must but i highly doubt jiang cheng ever actually tortured and killed demonic cultivators that reminded him of wei wuxian. the only time we have ever heard that was through idle gossip, and if mo dao zu shi has taught us anything, it’s that idle gossip is never to be trusted. he tells jin ling to kill wei wuxian in the beginning, but instead he decides he wants to take wei wuxian back to lotus pier. His first instinct is to feel anger, is to lash out. and he was still angry, but can you really blame him? he’s spent so many years with the weight of his family’s death weighing on him - practically all alone - and the man he considers responsible for it shows up out of the blue one night. 

and yes, wei wuxian’s isn’t solely responsible for jiang cheng’s loss. duh. but he had a pretty big part to play in all of it, and trauma can do weird things to someone’s memories. jiang cheng may know on some logical level that his brother isn’t responsible for all of it, but years pass and pain doesn’t really fade as much as it should, and feelings and memories warp into something more easily digestible - it gives jiang cheng something to feel besides conflicting mourning. anger is where he feels safest.

and that brings me to another point - his relationship with jin ling. now, this one is a bit of a hot topic (lol). there’s, afaik, a lot of discourse around whether or not jiang cheng is abusive towards jin ling. and i do understand and see why people would think he is abusive - for all the reasons i mentioned above. he’s a traumatized man who finds comfort in anger. he’s particularly strict with jin ling when it comes to night hunts, especially during that hunt in dafan mountain. he makes threats of physical harm and is pretty much always yelling. i can see why people see these actions and label him abusive.

but i really don’t agree. he is strict with jin ling on night hunts - he’s terrified something will happen to his sister’s child, at the same time he wants jin ling to succeed. who set up all those nets for him during that hunt? clearly jiang cheng. the whole “if you can’t catch something, don’t bother coming home” line dripped with “i have said this exact phrase a million times before and i’ve never meant it” energy, as does every “i’ll break your legs” comment. jin ling himself admits it - jiang cheng has never, ever laid a hand on him! the only uncle to ever smack him around is wei wuxian. 

of course abuse is more than physical harm. but i don’t really think he abuses jin ling at all. jiang cheng really loves jin ling, he cares for that boy more than literally anything else in the world. a scene that really sticks out to me is “who made you cry?!” - he does not admonish jin ling for crying. he wants to know who made his boy upset so he can go beat them up. jin ling clearly knows he’s not in any real danger from his uncle - if he was, why the hell would be continuously disobey him and do shit that directly pisses him off? the ONE time he was truly afraid of going back to jiang cheng was because he’d lied and disobeyed jiang cheng’s direct order. sure he wouldn’t be like, beaten for that, but he’d been nervous as all hell at koi tower, and i’d personally attribute that behavior to guilt. he knew he’d done a bad thing, but he’d done it anyways. 

this post is really insanely long so i’m just gonna try and wrap it up here: jiang cheng is a really complicated and fucked up dude. i get why people don’t like him but i don’t really agree with the sentiment. he’s fucked up and crazy and so is everyone else in mdzs, he’s just the most vocal about it. call all of this fanon if you want, idc, it’s just how i’ve perceived his character after experiencing mo dao zu shi like five times in different formats. his anger is his protection, because nobody else is gonna protect him. he tries to use it to protect jin ling, but to anyone who isn’t jin ling, it comes off as overtly harsh. love languages are hard to understand sometimes. jiang cheng’s love language is more complicated than the entirety of the fucking homestuck shipping chart.

if anyone has even read all of this, why, why did you decide to do that, also thank you? please don’t fight with me on this my mind will not be changed lol

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 22 - XuanXian friendship AU & Meng Yao can’t believe one of his boyfriends is this dumb.

Hello hello! First of all, it looks like I will have to slow down these posts to every Sunday at most, I might be able to get a few episodes per day but if you’re interested in reading you’re gonna have to wait the whole week. I started the intensive course preparing me for an exam and I have to put in 12h daily six days a week. On the upside my Sundays are completely free and I just spent the whole morning reading in my garden.

We have a romantic rooftop date and WuJi on the piano, this is gonna be good.

My bb LWJ is looking for literally the smallest sign that WWX is not going to melt his brain with his new brand of magic. He’s so worried.

They’re being so soft and vulnerable and I’m so glad WWX agreed to let LWJ help him. (Hhhhhmmmmmmgggggg the possibilities if these two idiots communicated oh my gooooooood)

That’s it, that’s the whole episode. Nothing else happens.

Ok clearly it wasn’t. But I just have to spiral down and scream about their fucking lack of armour. Maybe I’m too used to western high fantasy but they’re not even wearing leather or chainmail what the fuck.

NHS YOU CUPCAKE I ADORE YOU!

That whole battle scene with the Peacock. What the fuck

So... JC sword fighting and covered in blood. Hhhmmm... interesting visual.

(Listen I said I wasn’t gonna creep until SunShot, this is SunShot)

Something I’ve never understood: aren’t puppets mind-and-body controlled people at best, walking corpses at worst? Why would they stop if you chop off an arm? It’s not like they feel pain or have survival instincts, and if they’re corpses, or you can keep them in control after they die, delivering a mortal blow would do fuck all wouldn’t it? Solution: get a flamethrower.

... a well known man in a position of power, built like a brick shithouse and with a big-ass sword just decided he was the best for the task of infiltration and assassination. What the fuck Da-ge, was it LXC’s turn with the braincell or what? And these two just let him! I want to think if NHS had gone with them he’d smacked all three over the head with his fan.

Listen listen listen. I find my sister crying “unchaperoned” and in the company of the asshole son of a known can’t-keep-it-in-his-pants dude, IN HIS ROOM, and I’m murdering first and asking question second. And I don’t even have siblings. Hell, I find any girl crying in those circumstances and I’m getting stabby.

Ok, here’s another scene I’m taking to create a parallel btw “stable” and “unstable” WWX. You remember that when he got into a fight with the Peacock at Cloud Recesses the second Shijie appeared with a bit of manpower he backed the fuck off. Now she’s here physically holding onto him and begging him to go (remember she’s the one who’s crying and probably wants to leave and not have this turned into a public spectacle) and he’s so angry he isn’t even budging. Like, I’d understand if the fight wasn’t triggered by her being upset and she was just asking him to not fight, but she is super upset, and instead of comforting her like I’m sure he’s done a bunch of times he wants to stay and throw hands. Conclusion: get this boy to therapy.

Do NOT scream at MianMian.

Ok now I want to throw hands with the Peacock myself. (Once again I beg of you, someone re-write canon but with an actual responsible adult for these people to go to when this shit happens. Women need more female friendships and everyone needs an actual good adult role-model)

As always, any Jin disciple not MianMian is an asshole (I’m willing to forgive the one who went to fetch WWX just now).

Bless LWJ’s wrist grabs.

OH MY GOD GALAXY BRAIN MOMENT: So we remember when JC got his core melted and shoved WWX and he barely felt it. WHAT IF the Peacock already knowing WWX packs a mean punch, realises that being sent flying into a table is way too mild a response, and why would WWX hold back when he’d just made his Shijie cry you know? What is wrong with WWX, we can’t have him sick/dying this is a war and we need manpower, plus it’d make her cry and he refuses to see that ever again. So he confides in MianMian and they decide to keep an eye out for WWX, give him a hand AND try and guess tf is wrong with him. I’m not gonna say they guess it, because it’d be impossible but book MianMian was already good with herbs and medicine so maybe she gets to research? Regardless WWX suddenly has two very determined Jin puppies following him around and being nice to him? Like, genuinely? Like they seem to be pleased just by him chilling and taking a rest? I’ve always said I’d love for him and the Peacock to become friends (bc oh my god the bitchiness if those two joined forces) and LWJ going fucking insane because suddenly MIANMIAN is glued to his Wei Ying’s side would be hilarious.

In this AU she offhandedly comes out as bi, WWX either realises then and there or goes “oooohhh same” and WangJi.exe stops working for a sec while he rearranges his whole world view. Bonus if Peacock goes something like “we figured with you dating LWJ” and that’s how WangXian gets together. JC will never forgive his brother in law because fucking hell the PDA is OFF THE FUCKING CHARTS WHY. (It would be, they’re barely out of hormone hurricane hell and fighting battles all day, emotions run really high)

And that’s how, when WQ goes to ask WWX help with her brother MianMian (and probably LWJ? Idk, I don’t want to deprive myself of that “my body is ready” face he makes when WWX drinks his wine for him) is with her WN doesn’t die, WQ gets a girlfriend AND EVERYTHING IS SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS.

Aw look at 2zun talking about their boyfriend.

Have I ever mentioned that LXC’s headpiece reminds me of a (western) dragon skull? Because it does and I think it’s super cool.

NMJ just said “that asshole Wen” according to the Netflix subtitles and idk if it is accurate, but holy shit I love it.

Well, that’s not an ominous place to go and try to break into or anything.

Oh he got caught. What a surprise. Who would’ve thought.

(Sneaky Meng Yao gives me life tho)

Meng Yao is enjoying this and I’m living for it, that’s such a pleased smile. Insert here a joke about him enjoying seeing his bf all bloody and on his knees.

Also his face when NMJ goes for the kill pretty much screams “this dumbass is gonna get obliterated, why am I with him again?”

LWJ’s Wei Ying senses were tingling. Also, assume I’m screaming about these yahoos not putting their hair up, that’s a scalping wanting to happen and those shits ain’t pretty.

BATTLE COUPLE! BATTLE COUPLE! BATTLE COUPLE!

Btw I really like the fade to black cut style of the battle, helps not make me dizzy.

Nvm I’m dizzy now.

Holy shit I love how creepy YLLZ can get.

And that’s all for this episode my friends. Read you soon!

[tiesandtea]

The London Suede Come To America (1995)

"Some days I wake up and I feel absolutely bullet proof," says Suede mainman Brett Anderson. "When I wrote 'So Young' I wanted a song that was like that... pure raging excitement."

By Michael Goldberg, Addicted To Noise (ATN), San Francisco. Archived here.

ATN was founded by Goldberg, who previously worked as an associate editor and senior writer for Rolling Stone, in 1994. It was one of the first online music magazine that offered audio samples and video interview clips with its editorial content. The first issue came out in December 1994. (x, x)

In the midst of a February/March club tour of America, ATN caught up with Anderson in Detroit for a frank chat about naked men in dog collars, the New British Invasion, the Sex Pistols, and his drug(s) of choice.

Suede leader Brett Anderson is a wisp of a man, who claims not to court controversy despite provocative album cover art and such lyrics as "I want the style of a woman, the kiss of a man." Yet he's caused plenty of controvery. Consider his comment to Details that he's "a bisexual man who's never had a homosexual experience." Sexual ambiguity sells, as has been clear since Elvis appeared on the scene some 40-plus years ago.

Suede bring Bowie's Ziggy Stardust sound (and androgyny) into the '90s. These Brits know how to make hits. "So Young," "The Drowners," "Metal Mickey," and "Animal Nitrate" were brash, infectious pop confections that begged to blast from car radios. They flew up the charts in Britain upon release.

Dog Man Star, the group's second album, is a song suite, an hour of metallic bang-a-gong rockers and ethereal ballads. Anderson can sing as trashy as the late Marc Bolan, but he can also hold his own crooning with the likes of George Michael or, going back some decades, Bing Crosby. And he's not afraid to go against convention­­in fact, he seems to relish it­­ freely admitting that he liked Kriss Kross records and just can't understand the popularity of grunge rockers Pearl Jam and neo-punks Green Day and the Offspring.

Anderson and bassist Mat Osman grew up in Haywards Heath, a bland suburb located 40 miles south of London ("Quite a horrible little place," Anderson told one reporter). His father took odd jobs; in recent years he's driven a taxi. His mother died of cancer in 1989. His father was a fan of Liszt, going so far as to name Anderson's sister Blandine, after the composer's daughter. He first heard both the Beatles and the Sex Pistols playing on his sister's phonograph.

Anderson felt like an outsider from as early as he can remember. And he always wanted to be a rock star. In fact, he says he assumed everyone wanted to be rock stars, and was flabbergasted the first time he met someone who didn't.

Away from the raucous punk and post punk scene of the late '70s and early '80s (he was 7 years old in 1977, the year of the Sex Pistols), Anderson romanticised being in a band, and dreamed. Ask him his influences and he doesn't hesitate: the Beatles, the Stones, Bowie, the Sex Pistols, the Smiths, "and punk bands like Crass."

In 1985, at age 15, Anderson strummed an acoustic guitar and sang on the street for spare change. He says he played in "hundreds" of bands [clearly an overstatement] but eventually landed in London with Osman. They placed an ad in the New Musical Express which brought them guitarist/songwriter Bernard Butler, and some time later replaced their drum machine with Simon Gilbert.

By April of 1992, before they'd even had a record released, Melody Maker put them on the cover, declaring, "The Best New Band In Britain." Funny thing is, they lived up to the hype.

And they've managed to survive their 15 minutes of fame. Anderson expects the group to record another album following spring and summer tours of Asia and Europe, then return to tour America in the winter. The album won't be released until next year.

In the midst of a February/March club tour of America, ATN caught up with Anderson in Detroit for a frank chat about naked men in dog collars, the New British Invasion, the Sex Pistols, and his drug(s) of choice.

Addicted To Noise: I found it interesting that "So Young," off your first album, was about that feeling of invincibilty experienced when one is "so young," a sentiment more recently expressed in the Oasis' hit "Live Forever."

Brett Anderson: "So Young" came from our first flush of success and the desire of everyone around you to kind of settle you down. The desire of people to almost build a rock star career, and to actually take all the joy out of it, the pure joy you get out of being in a band that people love. It was one of those songs that I wrote with an audience in mind. There's certain songs that you have to hear sung back at you. One of the things that I loved about "The Drowners" [their first UK hit], it was written as a quite personal thing but the way the song works best is when you've got 2000 people singing, "You're taking me over." I did have in my head the vision of 5000 people singing back to me with "So Young." I love that. It was supposed to be quite anthemic, it was supposed to be quite stupid. I didn't want to be turned into some kind of intelligent, literate pop star, you know what I mean?

ATN: Why not?

Anderson: I don't think there's any place for intelligence in music. I can't see the point. Music's instinctive and it's natural and it's dumb. It's real dumb.

ATN: What were you trying to communicate in that song?

Anderson: There's just a feeling of absolute invincibility that you get sometimes, especially if you've been in bands a long time and it's taking you a while to actually convince people. Some days I wake up and I feel absolutely bullet proof. I wanted a song that was like that. That was actually almost pure raging excitement.

ATN: The cover of your latest album, Dog Man Star, depicts a young man lying naked on a bed. Who is that?

Anderson: The picture is from a book of photographs I've had for a long time. It's actually the husband of the photographer who took it and it was taken the day after they split up. It's a beautiful picture. It's something I've had for a long time and we've never made a record that really fit it, and then we did. It was one of those things where I took it into the band and everyone went "Ah, that's the one."

ATN: Both album covers are controversial in their own way.

Anderson: They're not meant to be in the slightest. You should see the original of the Suede album. The picture we used is actually cropped. The original full picture, the woman on the right is naked in a wheelchair and the other one is kneeling to kiss her. It's a beautiful picture. And we got the right to use it. But one of the things we did was to phone up the two models in the picture to check if they were all right with it because it's an image that's going to be seen all over the world and one of them didn't want it used. Which is fair enough. It's a twenty year old picture, or whatever. But I just liked the mood of it so we cropped it. But it wasn't intended to be controversial. I mean one of the things people always say is it's so androgynous. Which is really weird, cause in the original you can tell it's two women. But anyone who is shocked by two women kissing in 1995 is a fucking half-wit.

"If we wanted to be controversial we'd have called the album I fucked dogs," says Anderson. "It's fucking easy to be controversial and difficult to be good."

ATN: Yeah, but that's what's so interesting particularly about America. I've lived in San Francisco all my life and in San Francisco, as you know, is a very sexually liberated city. But you go to Kansas, or some of these places you go through when you tour, and it's like the Stone Age.

Anderson: I know. America is definitely like three or four different countries. No, there was no intention to be controversial. I'm not really interested in being controversial. If we wanted to be controversial we'd have called the album I fucked dogs. It's fucking easy to be controversial and difficult to be good.

ATN: In putting two women kissing on the cover of that album, what did you want to say?

Anderson: Nothing. It's a beautiful image. I don't give a fuck about things like that, what people will think. One of the funny things about that is you had all these people phoning me up going, "Yeah, we think we're offended by your album cover but we're not sure. Cause we don't know what it is." Oh, well it's a man kissing a woman. "Oh." Only kidding, it's two women. "Oh, we're offended then." No, no I was joking. It's actually a man and a woman. "Oh we're not offended then." It's the same fucking picture. It's not for me to think about. I'm not going to think about it.

ATN: But you got that kind of reaction to the first one and then you put out Dog Man Star. You're saying you weren't courting controversy with that cover?

Anderson: Not in the slightest. It's because we come from Britain where no one gives a shit. Really. And to think that a semi-naked man is in any way controversial is one of the great horrors of this century. You should have seen the original fucking cover for Dog Man Star, man.

ATN: What was that like?

Anderson: It's from One Hundred and Twenty Days In Sodom . You know that film? Passolini?

ATN: I haven't seen that.

Anderson: It's fantastic. It was the naked man in a dog collar snarling at the camera. That was a fucking brilliant picture but we couldn't get the rights to that. So perhaps we should have gone with that and then I could be discussing controversy with you. I don't think it's a big deal. There are people who are professionally outraged nowadays . That's their job. But no one's actually outraged. They just think they ought to be.

ATN: It's a position they take.

Anderson: Right. It's my job to be outraged by a naked man. And it's the woman over there whose job it is to be outraged by a naked woman.

ATN: Do you think there's a New British Invasion really going on right now? Can it be compared to what happened with the original "British Invasion" in the '60s? And do you think that that's what's going to happen?

Anderson: No I don't think so. It's all very well for a bunch of people in the media to get excited about it, but a British invasion is when British bands start selling a lot of records in the States, and at the moment British bands aren't selling any records.

ATN: It seems to me that some of the bands haven't been getting the kind of shot that they should get over here.

Anderson: We've certainly felt like that. It's always been quite strange for us 'cause the records have kind of leapt out everywhere else, all over Europe and Japan. The records just sell more and more each time. But we've found that American radio is pretty hard going. And radio and MTV are pretty much what make you over here.

ATN: You're over here, you're touring. Are you feeling like there's any kind of change yet in the reception?

Anderson: Absolutely. It's probably different for us because we've got pretty much a hardcore cult following over here. So we've never had a problem in the US. It's always been very comfortable for us. We've always had a very good time here. Whether or not that translates into anything kind of mainstream, we'll have to see. There's definitely a different musical climate in England and a different musical climate in America. I don't think the bands have ever been less connected. And I think that's a real shame. I think all the great music in the world has been universal music. I'm not really interested in flying the flag for Britain. I don't give a shit, really. I'd like to make records that turn the world on. That everyone wanted. I think the whole thing is a bit of a red herring.

ATN: What are you saying?

Anderson: The whole idea of British Invasions and American renaissances. It does away with the concept of people just making good records.

ATN: There are some really great English bands right now. Suede, Oasis, Bush, Elastica...

Anderson: I think definitely the British music scene has fucking woken up a little bit and realized that you can't just sit around and make cool records for your mates. But I think there's a long ways to go. And things are still pretty divided between Britain and the US. There's no way you could hear a record and say, "I'm not sure which country that comes from." That's quite a shame, I think.

ATN: One problem is that people in America aren't really getting exposed to the new British rock & roll.

Anderson: That's the frustrating thing. I don't mind being hated. There's loads of places we go where people have heard us and they despise us. Yeah, it's really frustrating to know that people just haven't heard of you. And the real divisions in American radio. For a while I spent 24 hours a day listening to alternative radio. I think it's horrifying [the way bands are pigeonholed]. I think it's completely un-American. And I think it's a real problem for a lot of British bands, 'cause a lot of British bands fall between the genres. I mean I don't think of us as an alternative band and we'd sound pretty exotic on alternative radio. But then if you try to get us on Top 40 radio, they say we're too alternative. The problem is if you don't immediately fit into something quite comfortable. American radio has become more and more compartmentalized, which is a shame because it's a totally un-American attitude. One of the things that Americans have always been respected for is the breadth of what they're into. America has been the place where people like Black Sabbath and they like Portishead. I think it's quite sad that it's actually being carved up, kind of like demographic radio.

ATN: Dog Man Star seems more introspective, with a lot more ballads and slower material than the first album.

Anderson: A lot of changes between this album and the first one are just to do with having the time and the money to make the record that we always wanted to make. The first record is filled up with live tracks and things we've been playing for a couple of years. And when you're starting out you write big storming rockers that actually grab people's attention. You're desperate to be heard. Whereas this one we knew people were actually going to listen to it. It's a bit more subtle. We wanted to do something that you could really just lose yourself in, that you could dive into. And we wanted to actually make an album rather than a collection of singles. We sat and wrote it as an album. You know, we wrote the songs in one batch and all of the songs are like little cousins of each other. And it's supposed to be a whole album that you can actually live in and from the minute it turns on you just get swept away by it. There are a lot of changes of mood in it and a lot of changes of pace. Like one long song with an introduction, verses and choruses and even an outro.

Anderson: But I don't think it's more introspective. I think it's less introspective.

ATN: Really?

Anderson: Yeah, I think it takes on the world a bit more. I think the record takes the world on, whereas the first one was probably what was happening in our heads. This one lives in the real world.

ATN: Give me an example of that.

Anderson: Something like "We Are the Pigs" or "The Asphalt World." They're not about just what's going on in my head. They're about the people around me and the world about me and the city around me and the country around me.

ATN: Did you go somewhere to write the album?

Anderson: I did. I was living in a place called Highgate. It's a very strange place. It's a beautiful little bit of London. It's like the 14th century or something. It's got like a village green and people have rabbit hutches in their gardens and it's between two of the fucking roughest bits of London. I basically just shut myself in a bare white room for about three months and I didn't do anything but just sit and write. It's quite an inspiring place because it's very quiet and very calm but you're seconds away from real degradation and squalor. I find it quite inspiring. I need a bit of calm to write. I don't need calm in any other part of my life. But to write, I like to just sit back and let it wash over me.

ATN: Talk a bit about the lyrics on this album, and the songs.

Anderson: I think a lot of it is very blank. A lot blanker than the first one. For the first one, I used to sit down and actually slave over them and change words and did like 50 drafts. But a song like "The Asphalt World" is really simply written and it's written about kind of what I did during the day. I wanted to write something that was quite simple, that was just about me and the people around me. Things like that and "The 2 of Us" are almost like reflections on the day before. Whereas something like "Daddy's Speeding," that pretty much came to me in a dream. I had a dream that I was sent back in time to save James Dean from the car crash. We ended up getting loaded together and I didn't bother. I could have saved him.

"Still Life" came from living in that kind of place, being surrounded by housewives and incredibly bored people. It's one of the strange things that people think our lifestyle is always quite frenetic but it's actually pretty much like a housewife's a lot of the time. You know, 23 hours a day it's pure boredom. And I was trying to write a song that was about me and about them. I pottered down to the shops in the middle of the day and would see these incredibly bored people actually become almost completely disconnected from life.

Kind of like fading alcoholic housewives. And "We Are The Pigs" is probably about the division between those people and fucking two minutes down the road, people living in Archways and the way there's no connection between the two.

ATN: I want to get your opinion on some of the other English bands. What do you think of Oasis?

Anderson: I think they're all right. Yeah. I don't know their music very well but I think they're quite exciting, which is good for a English band. I think they sound pretty natural.

ATN: You've heard "Live Forever"?

Anderson: Yeah, I think it's all right. A lot of the bands that people always ask me about I'm not particularly interested in.

ATN: What do you listen to?

Anderson: I like Beatles and the Stones. I like a lot of modern stuff, dance music, soul, rap. I like people who can actually sing. That turns me on. I like Prince. I like a lot of rappers because they've got kind of a hypnotic quality to them. There's too many people who are kind of singing essay writers. I'm quite turned on by people who have the power in their voice, whether I agree with what they say or not. Perhaps Jim Morrison or Nick Cave, who have a bit of authority, who have a bit of power to them. It doesn't matter what they say, it's the way they say it that's quite important to me.

ATN: Any particular rappers.

Anderson: Oh, Snoop Doggy Dogg.

ATN: Yeah, he's great.

Anderson: The thing is I don't agree with anything he says but you have to listen to him. I like Kris Kross as well. And people like Coolio. And who does that "Regulate"?

ATN: Warren G.

Anderson: I like a really smooth sound, I like people who can really sing, you know? That's almost disappeared. A lot of modern singing, a lot of rock singing and soul singing, it's all technique, all showing off. It's wailing and howling and hitting the high notes. I like people who can whisper in your ear instead of shouting at you.

ATN: Initially there was a lot of talk about Suede in terms of sort of reviving the glam thing and the Bowie thing? What did you think about that?

Anderson: I never, never understood it. I have no idea what was going on. I've always hated glam rock. I thought it was appalling. I'm not really interested in fake music and it was very fake music. I was a bit horrified by it all.

ATN: Did the Bowie references make sense?

Anderson: Oh yeah. I'm a massive fan. It frustrates me when people go over the top about it, but I think he's great.

ATN: What music influenced you when you were young?

Anderson: I suppose the punk stuff. If we're talking about what turned me on to music, what made me pick up a guitar. It was kind of like Crass and people like that. I like Sex Pistols and stuff, but I come a bit late to it.

"Anyone who is shocked by two women kissing in 1995 is a fucking half-wit," says Anderson.

ATN: And who else?

Anderson: A lot of tough punk. Real annoying your parents music, mixed with that, stuff my sister listened to: Beatles and Stones and Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd. And then after that, I suppose when I was old enough to buy records, it was the music of the day: The Jam and the Specials and Japan and people like that, just stuff you heard on the radio, basically. My musical education is not a list of cool, cult artists I spent years trudging around record shops to find. It's stuff you hear on the radio when you're having a tea on a Sunday night. That's where my love of music comes from, big pop music.

ATN: When things first broke for Suede, how old were you?

Anderson: About 23.

ATN: How did you handle it?

Anderson: It was easy, it wasn't that much of a problem. It really isn't. You can imagine what it's like being incredibly famous. [laughs] You can! It's like any other life, but you get recognized more often. You just have to wash your hair a bit more often, you can't buy as much pornography.

ATN: Look at the Kurt Cobain situation.

Anderson: That's a very different thing. He was a lot more famous than I was, and to his credit, one of the things that really saddens me about that is he spent a lot of time saying he was deeply unhappy with success. And everyone thought it was an image. That's one of the things that's sad about fakes in music. They actually ruin it for anyone who is telling the truth. Because if it wasn't for the fact that here's generations of people who have thought it's cool to be tortured, perhaps people would have taken him a bit more seriously when he said he hated himself and that he hated what he was doing. I look at like Sinead O'Connor now. I read something she said and I feel horrified for her, really sorry for her, because she's saying that she can't handle it and she's having a terrible time. And everyone thinks it's a joke, everyone thinks it's her image. And that really saddens me and that's why I've always tried to be blatantly honest in interviews.

ATN: Why did you call this album Dog Man Star?

Anderson: Its just three of my favorite words, really. It's just something that a lot of the songs are about. Almost like the three stages of man, the three things you can be. I feel very dog-like at the moment.

ATN: Sort of like the animal state to whatever state we are in at the moment to a spiritually enlightened state?

Anderson: Perhaps not a spiritually enlightened state, but I've always been attracted to people who actually think of themselves as stars, people who actually treat life like a film or a book. I don't mean in the sense of people who are actually in the public eye. There's a lot of people who have sold 60 million records who you see 50 times a day who don't have the faintest star quality to them, and then there's a lot of people working gas stations, they just have that aura around them? They just make things happen out of everyday life.

ATN: In the first song on the album, you make reference to Winterland, you make reference to introducing the band, which I took you to be talking about the Band, you know, Robbie Robertson's The Band.

Anderson: [Laughs] No.

ATN: That's where they played when they played their first performance.

Anderson: I was thinking the Sex Pistols' final gig.

ATN: But that's pretty wild. I was at that show at Winterland, actually.

Anderson: You're kidding.

ATN: It was probably the greatest show that I ever saw.

Anderson: I was watching it just recently. I've got bits of it on video. It's something I've seen about a million times. That bit at the end. [Starts to deliver lyrics in a monotonal Johnny Rotten voice] "This is no fun/ No fun/ At all."

ATN: People were throwing money and all kinds of stuff onto the stage. Rotten was just picking the stuff up. And the audience was just the most bizarre audience. It was a mixture of people that were totally into the band and people who had come to see the freak show.

Anderson: Yeah totally. I've always been fascinated by them and by that gig and just the way they managed to compress everything into a year. Or in the case of that show, anything you could ever ask for a gig in three-quarters of an hour. I just love the idea of a final moment. Of a band just being in the present.

ATN: The thing was, though, when you were there, the music sounded so great and so powerful. Some people tended to say, oh, the Sex Pistols couldn't play that good...

Anderson: Oh they fucking rule! We were listening to the album last night on the bus. If you listen to it now, it just sounds like the greatest rock album in the world.

ATN: Never Mind the Bollocks . . .

Anderson: Yeah. It's so completely almost like year zero it's ridiculous. It's like listening to Chuck Berry.

ATN: Exactly.

Anderson: Or the Rolling Stones. It's just a fucking absolutely great melodic rock album. All the things that people say about them are absolutely untrue. There's only one criteria for musicianship, as far as I'm concerned, and that's whether you can get across what you're saying with your instrument and with your voice. I'm not interested in any kind of technique or anything like that. To me, a great musician is someone that you understand what they feel when they pick up a guitar and there's people who can do that with three chords and there's people who can play entire symphonies and have never moved a human soul.

ATN: All these guitar players who can play scales up the wazzoo, but so what?

Anderson: The real problem is, you've got someone like Sex Pistols, they come along and people mistake it. People think that the way they played was what was important, people actually think that if they can replicate the sound as raw or amateurish as that, that they'll somehow be as great as them. And it has nothing to do with that, it has nothing to do with the level of musicianship. It has to do with the fact that they actually send an electric shock through you. And there's people who do that with incredibly complicated music and there's people who do that with incredibly simple music.

ATN: How old were you when you were exposed to "God Save the Queen" and "Anarchy . . . ?"

Anderson: That's the strange thing. I was just really too young. It was '76 when that happened, which is 20 years ago now. I was about 9 or 10, so I wasn't a punk. I couldn't get to any punk gigs or anything. So we just got these ripples in the suburbs, this incredibly frustrating feeling 'cause you knew you were getting everything like second or third hand and you knew you were missing out. Luckily they were one of the few bands where the records were so fucking powerful that it didn't make any difference, you could actually plug into it. Half of my life I've kind of lived the pop dream, wanting to be in a band, and it comes from that, it comes from being cut off from it and just having these little bits of vinyl which were my only connection to it. It's not like nowadays where any kind of fucking two-bit thing makes it, you see it everywhere. It was in the news. I can remember for a few weeks where that was the news. You know what I mean, the Sex Pistols.

ATN: Was it the Sex Pistols or what was it that actually made you make the decision, OK, I want to do this?

Anderson: It's one of those things that's always seemed completely natural to me. It's almost the other way around. I can remember the first time I met someone who didn't want to be in a band. And I can remember thinking it was the most bizarre thing. I thought they were making it up. I just assumed that everyone wanted to be in a band and a lot of people settled for something else.

I guess that punk was really important just because the first time you pick up a guitar, you're not going to be able to play "Brown Sugar," but you are going to be able to play stuff like "Bodies" and "Submission." I used to be in a punk band called The Pigs. We played these kind of like bastardized Sex Pistols and Fall songs about the countryside. I mean they actually connected you to music.

One of the big problems of coming from the kind of place I come from is there's no history, there's no music, you can't imagine yourself as a pop star. You couldn't say, "I want to be in a band." There weren't any bands. There wasn't a local scene or anything. The nearest big town is Brighton and that's never produced anything. One of the things about the Smiths I loved when I was growing up was just the kind of obvious ordinariness of them and the fact that they were making beautiful, important music and they were just obviously kind of like the square kid in the back of the class.

ATN: Haywards Heath is where you grew up, right?

Anderson: Yes.

ATN: But that's 40 miles from London. That doesn't seem that far to me, but it sounds like it felt like it was a million miles away from anything cool.

Anderson: Oh yeah, completely. It's near enough, I used to go up to London when I was 15, 16, but kind of as a complete tourist. I used to wander around the streets with my mouth open. I didn't get to do anything. I just went to wander around and soak it all in. I think that's quite important to be cut off from it, because you keep your romantic view of it intact.

ATN: You romanticize it.

Anderson: People actually from London, they're a bunch of fucking, cynical old farts, they really are. They've all seen it all before, they've all been backstage. They've already seen the downside of it and we never really had that. We still kind of actually believed in the band. And I think a lot of big city people just don't. They don't believe in the power of music.

ATN: About how old were you when you had The Pigs?

Anderson: The Pigs. I guess I must have been about 15.

ATN: Was that your first band?

Anderson: I've had hundreds. Bedroom bands. I was in a band called Suave and the Elegant. They did kind of Beatles covers. None of us could play. Just farting around. And then, when I met Mat [Osman], it was the same thing, we couldn't play. We had a drum machine in the bedroom and we'd do these dreadful fucking songs.

ATN: How come you parted ways with guitarist/songwriter Bernard Butler?

Anderson: He just didn't really enjoy being in the band anymore. There was just no point having anyone in the band who doesn't think it's the greatest thing on earth, you know what I mean?

ATN: So basically he got bored with it or frustrated with it?

Anderson: I think he wanted to do everything himself. He's very musical and he just wanted to sit and play guitar and write songs. And if you want to be in a big band, you actually have to work at it. You have to be singer and musician and businessman and politician and interviewee and all these things at the same time.

ATN: Do you worry at all that not having his musical input is going to affect things like coming up with material?

Anderson: Not in the slightest. We're working a lot faster that we ever have done.

ATN: And you like the material as much?

Anderson: Yeah, certainly. I'm really excited about it. The thing is, I'm writing stuff on my own and I'm writing stuff with [new guitarist] Richard Oakes and I'm writing stuff with the band. Richard is vomiting stuff out.

ATN: What makes you mad?

Anderson: I guess absolute waste. Just the realms of crappy fucking records. Piles of dogshit. You could get rid of 95% of the records that were ever released and no one would be any the worse off. I'd like to see MTV close down for an hour and go, I'm sorry there's nothing good to put on. Or a music magazine saying, we're not coming next week because nothing happened.

ATN: It seems like there's always been this classic tension between the creative side­­someone trying to make great rock & roll­­and the record company's side, where it's a business trying to make money. And it's like they don't care whether it's the Sex Pistols or whether it's Journey.

Anderson: At the same time, it's very easy to just be purely musical and just sit at home all day and make beautiful records that no one hears. I can't get away from the fact that if we make a record now, because of record companies, 90% of the world's population can get a hold of it in a week and that's a fucking fantastic thing. That's technology being used in an incredible way. You can't knock it. If you're going to make a record to communicate to people, then you should make sure people fucking hear it. I think that's really important. I don't want to just sit home and say, we just write music for ourselves and if anyone else likes it, it's a bonus.

ATN: One of the reasons that there's so many crappy records is because the record companies don't know. They're trying to find something...

Anderson: They're doing a job. I'm very aware of that. Every single person you meet in the entire fucking rock-and-roll industry is doing their job and they're looking out for number one. It is a fucking industry and you've just to be completely aware of that. That's why you have to be quite a tight unit as a band because it's the four of you against the rest of the world. However much there's people around us who have our best interests at heart, at the end of the day we're the band and we know what's best. We have pretty much absolute control over Suede. We have more control than pretty much any band out there today.

ATN: Do you make the business decisions?

Anderson: Yeah. Everything follows from the records. Basically, when it comes to selling, we leave the record company to it. That's what they're there for. They're the salesmen. But we're one of the few bands where no one hears our record until we've finished it. And then we come out with a finished record, finished artwork. And we hand it over, we say these are going to be the singles, and we let them to the bits that I have no fucking interest in. Like marketing it.

ATN: When you handed a record over to them, have they ever come back to you and said, "Oh, we think you should do this or we think you should get that song remixed?"

Anderson: [laughs] They wouldn't fucking dare. I mean we listen to them. Every now and then the American record company will say, "I think this would make a great single in America." And we have listened to them in the past. But pretty much anything we actually care about, we do ourselves. No, no one's ever suggested that to us. No one's ever suggested remixing or anything like that. I think they know that it would be a terrible, terrible mistake.

ATN: You've toured America now, this is the third time?

Anderson: Yeah.

ATN: What do you think about this place, given that you've been here enough times that you have some sense of it?

Anderson: I love the place. I do love the place. There's a real openness to it that you don't get in lot in other countries.

ATN: What are some of the specific things that you like?

Anderson: I've had some of the best nights of my life kind of lost in strange American cities. Just being swept along. People are completely receptive to, I don't know, letting loose. Getting loaded and getting loose. Just because there's a kind of dumbness to the place. There is! Which I really like. Let's just see what happens, that kind of thing. England can be a very claustrophobic place, especially if you're vaguely well-known and I don't get that in America at all. I find the opportunities for getting yourself in trouble are vast here.

ATN: Can you be more specific?

Anderson: Not without perjuring myself at a later date. [laughs] I like the people here. I like the fact that people will actually try anything. And I like the way it's very fast moving. It really suits a band on tour. In Britain and Europe it takes kind of six months to get to know people so there's no point in meeting people. Whereas in America you meet people and they're like, "Hi, I'm Cindy, I was abused as a child and I'm a Gemini." And you're off, you know what I mean?

ATN: What's your goal for Suede?

Anderson: Just to make a string of absolutely great records. That was my goal for Suede when I was 12 years old. Doesn't change. One of the only things that doesn't change. To make just an absolute realm of fantastic records that people love.

ATN: Do you have aspirations of having the biggest band in the world?

Anderson: No. I want to be the best band in the world.

ATN: How did you come up with the name?

Anderson: It's just a beautiful, sensual word. It sounds really nice and looks really good. It's a sensual thing rather than intellectual. I've probably gone on many times about how Suede is the animal skin around a human body. But that all came later, when I was getting fucking [laughs] pretentious in interviews. It was just a sensuous, sensual word.

ATN: How did you feel about having to be the London Suede?

Anderson: It stank. I think it's shit.

ATN: What do you think of some of the American bands that have made it in recent years ranging from Pearl Jam to more recently, the Offspring and Green Day?

Anderson: I don't get it. I wish I did. I wish I could at least have understood it but didn't like it. But I just don't get it at all. I'm completely amused by it.

ATN: Are there any American bands that you do like?

Anderson: I like that Sheryl Crow record a lot. I like Perry Farrell, I think he's pretty cool. I like R.E.M.

ATN: You do?

Anderson: Yeah, I do like R.E.M. a lot.

ATN: What do you think of Monster?

Anderson: I think they got away with fucking murder.

ATN: Oh really?

Anderson: I understand it, though. I really understand it. It would be really easy to make another record like the last one and it's quite brave to make a record that you know is going to sell less. I don't think it's a particularly great album at all. I'd love to have been in the business long enough where people actually give you the benefit of the doubt whereas we're in the situation where people always assume the worst. We're always fighting for people to like our records. Whereas I think there are a few fucking statesmen in the world, like Paul fucking Weller in Britain, just because he's been around so long, if he makes a quarter of the way decent record, it's kind of like the second coming. Back to R.E.M., I just like the way they can be that big and that simple. I can't think of another band who've got that big and have actually used it to get simpler and more direct instead of turning into something enormous.

ATN: Speaking of the second coming, do you have anything to say about the Stone Roses' return after so many years of fucking 'round or whatever they were doing?

Anderson: Musically, it's great. They're probably some of the best musicians in Britain and they can actually fucking play. But one of the reasons I really liked the first album is I thought they actually had some songs. And I don't think they have on this one. But that's my personal taste. I like songs. And I don't think this is a very songy album.

ATN: How do drugs affect what you do?

Anderson: Apart from making me get up late for interviews, not very much. It's just something I do. It's not kind of a building brick in Suede, it's something I do personally.

ATN: Do you find it creatively stimulating?

Anderson: Very, very rarely. Not normally. When I wrote this album, I wasn't even drinking. I just locked myself in a white room for 14 hours a day. Pepped myself up with ginseng. Very occasionally I feel inspired by drugs, but not very often. And when we play live, it's funny, when we play live, none of us even have a beer before we go on. We played before 70,000 last year at a festival and we were the only people straight there.

ATN: So is it more a way of getting outside of yourself?

Anderson: I do it for exactly the same reasons that everyone else does. It's a good laugh. It makes me feel in different ways but that's no different from the reasons why millions of people who take drugs. I'd like to say it's some kind of creative elixir but to be honest, most drugs are incredibly uncreative. Cocaine is the least creative drug I can think of. Dope is fucking pointless. It's not a musical thing at all.

ATN: What's your drug of choice?

Anderson: What's the drug of choice? [laughs] I'll take anything, man. I don't really like slow drugs. I don't like drugs that slow you down. I don't like downers. I don't like anything that makes you fucking buzz off to a dream world. I like things that heighten....

ATN: In other words you don't like heroin.

Anderson: No, not particularly. I'm not really interested in dream drugs. I like things that light up your life, pep you up. Ginseng is my drug of choice. And Guinness. [laughs] Any drug that begins with "g," basically.

ATN: At certain points, do you sit back and say, this is amazing that I've been able to achieve what we have achieved?

Anderson: Regularly. Regularly I look in the mirror and say, I'm the luckiest man alive. Yeah, it hasn't lost its wonder for me at all. You can get worn away sometimes, but there's always the moment when you listen back to a track or the moment you play a great gig where you feel like Superman, actually feel like 500 feet tall.

ATN: In terms of the state of rock & roll right now, what's going on from your point of view?

Anderson: I think it's quite inspiring. I think it's quite inspiring in Britain and I think Americans seem quite inspired about the whole thing. I think Britain's producing some halfway decent records for once and I think people are actually astounded that Britain has risen and is beginning to get off its fucking ass. I think the American scene has totally been shook up by cheap bands and the fact that record companies are running around like headless chickens because money doesn't equal success anymore. I think that's great.

What I don't like at the moment is the kind of cult, alternative elements of it, the way everyone is playing to these tiny little demographic audiences and there's no kind of connection across any kind of cultures or even across a fucking big lake like the Atlantic.

ATN: When Elvis Presley died, Lester Banks wrote about Elvis and he said that Elvis was the last rock star that connected everybody.

Anderson: The really big problem is every band in the entire world is living in the shadows of the Beatles and there ain't going to be no more Beatles unfortunately because everyone knows too much and everyone has more access. So people can have music that completely fits them, and you end up with these bizarre musical sub-cultures that are just aimed at one percent of the population. And you never can have another Beatles and I find that incredibly sad. Because that is the blueprint, I think, for every band, for every decent band, to try and make records that turn the whole world on, records that anyone can connect with.

ATN: You really believe in the positive effect that a great rock-and-roll record can have on people.

Anderson: Certainly. Even if it's the most stupid record and it does nothing more for you than brighten up your day for four minutes when it comes on the car radio, it's still more powerful than the other art forms.

ATN: At its best, what do you think it can do?

Anderson: At its absolute best, I think it can totally empower people and totally make people feel like they're wearing a suit of armor and strengthen people and make people feel above the shit of the world. Even at its worst, it can be fucking great. I think a dumb-assed pop song, the dumbest of the dumb-assed pop song is probably more important than any fucking painting done since the war or any sculpture or anything like that.

ATN: Why do you feel that way?

Anderson: It affects people in a way that those things don't. It affects people in a totally natural, physical, emotional way. Not in an intellectual way. It's democratic. It's the only fucking democratic art form left. You can get it anywhere. One of the great things about music is it does belong to everyone and that great songs just come to live in the air. That's why I like the radio so much. That was my first introduction to music. Every now and then I turn it on and think, what a fantastic thing it is. Just that you can have these things all the time. You don't have to go to a fucking gallery, you don't have to pay anything. There just isn't any equivalent for any other art form and it's fucking cheap, music. It must be said. You can get yourself an original Suede for what, about $15?

ATN: Now, it seems like, in terms of a CD, it lasts for quite a long time.

Anderson: Oh, that's a typical fucking American attitude. They always want to know how long it lasts. It is. It's the only place I've ever been in the world where they come first and ask you at a gig, how long are you going to play? Who gives you a shit, you know what I mean?

ATN: I know what you mean. Like a shitty band could play for 3 hours, who cares and like 10 minutes of greatness....

Anderson: I saw The Jesus and Mary Chain when they played for 20 minutes and they were fucking incredible!

ATN: The first time they came to America they played at a little club called the I-Beam in San Francisco and it was amazing.

Anderson: I can just imagine in America someone going, "That was incredible, why don't you play longer?" People always want a fucking encore.

[my-love-peterp]

Mistaken Chapter Three

Word Count: 2807 THERE ARE NO ENDGAME SPOILERS, THIS IS A DELAYED UPLOAD FROM AO3

Fic Summary: Peter Parker has been given the responsibility of bringing in a new recruit. Now, as an adult, he realizes that none of the trashy YA novels he read in high school could have prepared him for this. There was a storm on the horizon, and all they could do from the Tower is watch.

Chapter Summary: So we’ve got a little of Peter’s point of view to start the chapter off, might be a little OOC but I figure he’s probably changed a lot, post-Infinity War. Also more smut, but not the healthy or fluffy kind, just two broken people being broken. ALSO after this chapter, it’s going to start diverging from my AO3 fic because now I can introduce Carol Danvers. 

Warnings: language, underage (barely) drinking, smutty smut, mentions of the snappening, again NO ENDGAME SPOILERS

Chapter One  Chapter Two

Peter had never seen anything like her.

Over the past week, he’d been in the room for every moment of Kaida’s introduction to the team and her new life.

On that first day, after seeing her all but naked and needing to quickly run for a quick shower before training started, he’d gotten to see her in action.

There was no taking it easy or soft starts for new Avengers. They started with a brisk 10k, after which it didn’t even look like she had broken a sweat.

Then she’d been pushed in his direction. This was a routine Peter had become accustomed to by now, with a few new recruits filling up the roster, primarily temporary placements by SHIELD as they recruited enhanced individuals. Peter was the first line of hand to hand combat examination because while he wasn’t overly skilled, he was obviously extremely agile and very strong.

Kaida cocked her head at him and cracked her knuckles. “Give it all you’ve got Bug Boy, I’m not holding back.”

She and Peter had circled each other for a few seconds before she lunged, aiming a blow at his face that, unfortunately for him, was a ruse to get him to block upward, leaving his sides unprotected. With a quick jab to his kidneys, he grunted and instinctively bent over, nearly face planting with a strangled screech as Kaida then swept his legs out from under him.

He rolled over and she was immediately on top of him, pinning him down. “Easy as pie,” she crowed in his face, taunting him with a wink. Angry that he’d been made a fool of so easily by this girl, he channeled all his strength into flipping over her over and pinning her down on the mat. She grunted and struggled, but Peter’s hands were like iron, easily encircling both wrists and caging her hips in with his knees. His grasp was inescapable. But Peter, it seemed, could only make mistakes around this girl.

Fire flaring in his eyes, he bent his head to whisper in her ear, “It doesn’t pay to be cocky Kai, now who’s big and bad?”

Her breath caught for a second as she tensed below him, and a moment later Peter was tossed into the air, screaming as Kai had managed to open her palm and blast him up and away from her.

“Not cool, Kai. You know that powers are off limits,” Peter croaked indignantly. The other, observing Avengers cackled at Pete’s distress, even Natasha looked slightly impressed.

“Still me, it would seem,” she said, answering his goaded remarks and popping right to her feet and turning on her heel and walking towards the rest of the team that had decided to come in and spectate that morning.

Perhaps not so strangely, Peter noted, only Mr. Stark was missing.

It was then unanimously decided that her next test would be facing Natasha in hand to hand combat. He thought he couldn’t be more impressed or dumbfounded by this woman, but as the day progressed, Peter almost had to pinch himself. She matched Natasha jab for jab, move for move like it was as easy as breathing to her. “Holy shit,” he heard Clint mutter next to him.

“Wait, you mean we didn’t know she could… well, do that?” Peter gestured helplessly towards the Master Assassin and the twenty-year-old runaway who was proving to be her match in every way.

“No kid, we had no idea. We don’t know shit about her. Not even Fury does, despite our digging and searching. She’s essentially a ghost. But we figured… Well, after she stopped that school building from collapsing a few weeks ago until all the kids got out, we figured she couldn’t really be a threat. After all, it put her on our radar in a big way. An enemy operative would have known better, acted differently…”

Clint’s explanation petered off into silent awe as he saw Natasha, the Black Widow tap out, calling a cease-fire, if not surrender. No one had ever seen that. No one had ever done that without extensive training over the years. But this spitfire who ran away with a suitcase full of books and apparently sleeps with billionaires… She could.

“If you all are done staring,” Nat snapped them all out of their shocked stupor, “I believe we all have the training to do. Kaida, Banner wants you in the lab next. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will show you the way.

“Actually, Nat, I’m supposed to head up to the lab anyway, we’re working on testing the exact trigger to my Spidey senses, so I can just show her the way.” Natasha just inclined her head in an obvious dismissal so he took off jogging after the rapidly disappearing figure.

He skidded to a halt next to her. “Who are you?” He asked without hesitation.

“That seems to be the question of the day, isn’t it Peter. But I came here under the agreement that my past didn’t matter and I don’t intend to hash that out with anyone, least of all you,” she huffed and just kept walking.

“But, how did you get your abilities? Like, I was bitten by a radioactive spider. Wanda was experimented on with the Mind Stone and well… everyone knows Captain’s story…” Peter again trailed off after he realized, belatedly, that she had frozen and begun panting and trembling like a leaf.

Peter recognized this, understood what the clenched jaw and wildly roaming eyes meant. Something he said had triggered a panic attack, but he just wasn’t sure what. But then, as though it wasn’t a big deal, her mask of calm indifference slipped back over her features and she resumed walking.

“Just shut up Buggy. And if you mentioned what just happened to anyone, I will not hesitate to relentlessly humiliate you with all the weird shit you keep in your room and write in your diaries.”

“Ex-excuse me?!” Peter cried out. “Who the fuck let you into my rooms?”

“No one, Peter. Unless you count me. Good luck getting your friend Ned laid though, it sounds like it’s been an exhaustive search so far. You’re a good friend. When you’re not being a huge idiot.”

Peter didn’t know what to say to that so he just kept leading her to the lab.

A few hours later in the lab with Bruce and Tony. 

“How did you say you came to have powers again?” Dr. Bruce Banner spluttered as he reread the data from his most recent blood and DNA tests.

“Uh… I didn’t but, I’ve always had them, at least for as long as I can remember. My parents never mentioned anything. My sister wasn’t gifted either. Which would make one think we weren’t really sisters, but we’re identical twins so it’s hard to miss the relation, but you know how it is these days-.”

“Excuse me, what did you just say?” I jerked in surprise as I heard none other than Tony Stark speak from the doorway which was directly behind me.

“Uh, I was just going to comment on the state of truth and relevance in modern-day America… something tells me that’s not what you’re talking about though. My twin sister, Nadia, she never had any gifts. At least, none that were overtly obvious. But we did have this strange connection, mentally. We could feel each other.

Thoughts and emotions, even pain sometimes.”

“And where is she now, your sister,” Bruce asked after a moment of stunned silence. My expression must have told them everything they needed to know because no one pressed it further.

“Let me see the charts, Banner. What do you see in there?” Wordlessly Banner handed Tony the papers he held in his hand, which Tony grudgingly accepted, despite his disgust at being handed literally anything.

“Well kid,” he said after a moment, “It doesn’t appear that you’re entirely… human. I’m not sure what you are but it’s absolutely not solely human.

Instead of the spluttering and probably generally overexcited reactions that he had anticipated from me, I just looked up and into his eyes before smirking and remarking that “you certainly weren’t calling me ‘kid’ last night.”

Bruce choked on his coffee, again, receiving what I could only imagine to be a terrifying death glare from Tony. He then shortly excused himself.

“So Stark, how’s it feel to know you’ve fucked an alien?” My eyes raked up and down his form, decidedly provocative.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s not a good idea to poke the bear in the room,” he asked, hardly looking up from her chart. He was treating her flippantly, almost distantly. And that simply wouldn’t stand.

“You know, Mr. Stark, I could think of some other… ‘endurance tests’, if you will, that we could perform right here. In the name of science, of course,” I purred as I slipped down on to my knees in front of him.

He certainly didn’t stop me as I peeled down the waistband of his sweatpants and boxers, half-hard cock coming back to life.

I could tell when he was getting close, but instead of letting me finish him off and cumming down my throat, he pulled me up and bent me over the cold, metal work table and set to work taking off my leggings before slipping up and inside of me without any resistance.

“God Kaida, so tight and wet. And all for me.” It wasn’t but I wasn’t about to correct him as he pounded into me from behind, grabbing me by the hair and yanking my head back so he could lean forward and kiss along my neck. The tiny sensation of pain sent bolts of pleasure through my core and seconds later I was coming undone. But Tony, it seemed, was far from finished with me. He picked me up and pressed my back into one of the support pillars in the lab.

Unfortunately for him, the lab door was still open, which we both had been too oblivious to rectify. A slight shriek and a clatter had Tony looking up and over my shoulder as I twisted around to see the commotion. Rhodey, Steve and Peter were standing in the doorway, holding five coffees between the three of them. Six if you counted the one now spilled all over the floor.

Rhodey looked exasperated but not surprised, Peter looked like a nun who had mistakenly found herself in an adult toy store. Steve, well, Steve was unreadable to me. The stoic faced super soldier never dropped his gaze and gave nothing away.

Instead of pulling away or, I don’t know, stopping anything that he was doing, Tony continued to shallowly thrust into me and circle my clit with his thumb as he winked before glancing back towards the doorway.

“Boys, if you could give us a moment, we have a bit of an… well a test of endurance of sorts and we’d hate for the evidence to be skewed by outside forces,” he jested before commanding F.R.I.D.A.Y. to close the door to the lab and tint all windows to shutter us in privacy again.

“I can’t believe Steve-fucking-Rogers just saw me getting fucked,” I muttered as Tony repositioned himself and began to languidly stroke in and out of me.

“I can’t believe he looked like he wanted to join.”

My heart stuttered and was heard on the monitor. Tony simply took that as a cue to blow my back out.

As I came around him for the third time in the lab, he simply leaned down and whispered something along the lines of him being the only one who could fuck me like I needed to be fucked.

I was too tired and limp from pleasure to argue with him.

“So, uh, not to sound ungrateful but what exactly am I even doing here?” I asked Tony as he fastened his belt buckle as I reclined on the hospital-esque bed the doctor had used when drawing my blood and taking tissue samples.

“Recalibrating after being worked over by an expert, I’d imagine,” came Stark’s snarky reply. I, honestly, don’t know why I expected a serious answer.

“You sure like to stroke your own ego, old man,” I fired right back, bringing my arms behind my head to lounge while he typed away and entered various data points onto his monitor. “No, seriously, why am I here doing all this,” I gestured to the room and testing sites but really meaning my entire presence amongst internationally-known superheroes. “How’d you even find me in the first place? It’s not like I was stopping buses or crashing planes like Bug Boy. I just…”

“You and me both, kid. But as for finding you, social media is a terrible curse and a blessing in disguise. You’ve gained quite a reputation just from your small deeds, but really what set it off was the sch-.“

“The school,” I finished with a groan, letting my head bounce back as I covered my face with my hands, massaging my temple. “You try to do one good thing and then all of a sudden, you’re expected to continually prevent everyday tragedies. All I wanted to do was go home after my shift at work.”

“Yeah explain that one to me, bucko. You’re just heading to fuck off when you hear sirens and kids screaming and decide for the first time, to actually really use your powers. Why?”

The answer was simple, actually. The kids I could hear were the same age as my nephew would be wherever he was now. So I’d tossed up my hood and prevented a burning building from collapsing on top of a bunch of innocent kids. And of course, the press had a field day with that.

But I wasn’t about to tell Tony any of that. Ever.

“Fine, don’t say anything. But that’s why. You showed you had the capacity for good in a big way. And to be honest, we wanted to snatch you up before SHIELD or worse could come creeping in and saddle you up with them.”

More silence. Then, a timid knock on the door. F.R.I.D.A.Y. announced that it was Captain Rogers who waited on the other side of the door and Tony muttered his command to open the doors up.

He didn’t even lower his gaze or blush as he took both Tony and I in. Instead, he stared me down, eyes boring into mine until I was forced to look down and examine his thin, gray cotton tee that hugged his pecs so tight it left nothing to the imagination. I felt blood rush to my face and the tips of my ears burn.

So much for the prim, proper and prude Captain the media marketed him as. I suppose recent events forced everyone to change. There was no such thing as innocence anymore. Not really.

Cap’s burning gaze finally left mine, turning on Tony instead. Walking to my side, he handed me a cup full of the richest Americano I’d ever smelled. It was exactly what I needed at that moment.

Without turning to glance back at me as he handed Tony his own cup, he murmured, “mind giving us some time alone, Kaida? There are a few things we’ve been needing to discuss.

I just nodded and slid off the bed, sweatpants bunching up around my waist. I had no intention of actually leaving though.

As I walked through the door and a few steps down the hall, I waited two seconds before becoming a shadowy puddle and gliding along the side of the hallway that held the still open door to the lab. Moments later, Steve poked his head out and around, checking to make sure the floor was clear before pulling the door closed behind him. Like doors had ever stopped me before.

“So Cap, what’s got your Star Spangled panties in a twist this time?” Tony jabbed without hesitation.

Steve tensed his shoulders, letting out a rough, almost anxious sigh. “When are you going to own up to your grief and stop being such a slut, Tony? It’s been almost a year now since Pepper died. You’re compromising yourself, you know this. You know, it is so like you to start banging the first new female recruit we’ve had in years. Is that why you pushed so hard to bring her in? Just to chase some new tail?!”

Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the answer was ‘yes’. Seemed like a Stark thing to do. And in a weird, twisted way, I got it. Sort of.

“You know what, this conversation is over. Just because you haven’t been laid in over 70 years doesn’t mean you get to pull the morality card. No, Capsicle, I think we’re done here. F.R.I.D.A.Y. lock up the lab after Rogers and I. I’m going out.”

[psychospeak-blog]

Won’t Go Slowly // 11

One // Two  // Three // Four // Five // Six // Seven // Eight // Nine // Ten

A/N:   SO much love to everyone who has been reading this series, liking it, reblogging it, or sending me messages about it.  You all rock!

You just couldn't help it. Every single time you stood in front of a mirror, you found yourself turning to the side, smoothing your t-shirt or dress over you belly, imaging what you'd look like pregnant.

You'd also be lying if you said you'd hadn't found yourself scrolling through pages of nursery furniture on your phone, when you were trying to watch T.V. or after you crawled into bed at night.  You knew, logically, that you weren't at that point yet, but you couldn't stop yourself from imagining.

"This is crazy," Danielle said, looking over your shoulder where you were signing and initialing  the contract that was laid across your kitchen table.  For some reason, you'd expected it to be a simple page but, no, it was a whole freaking booklet, pages and pages of legalese that basically said just the same thing over and over.   You looked up at her, and she was smiling, and you knew instantly that she wasn't talking about just the paperwork.

"I know," you said, finally completely the last page and then stacking all of the papers on top of each other, and then going to look through your purse for a paper clip before you put it back in the envelope because you had a vision of Tyler opening it only to send the papers scattering all over the place, and then having to try and put them back in order.

"I totally knew he was serious," she said.

"What?" you flipped your head back around, "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because," she laughed, "I didn't know how you felt about it.  And it wasn't my place to say how I felt."

You sighed just out of instinct now.  It wasn't that your Mom and sister weren't being supportive, but you knew they were hesitant.  You knew they were holding back, that this was what you wanted, but that this wasn't how they expected it to go for you, and the thought of you doing it alone seemed overwhelming.  They weren't downright telling you not to do it, but they weren't as excited as you wanted them to be.  What's worse was that your sister had accidentally let it slip to your Dad, and he didn't even bother trying to hide how he felt.

"Hey," Danielle said, putting her arm around your shoulder, "don't worry about that.  We've got you."

You didn't even have to ask who 'we' was.

"Seriously," she continued, "This kid is going to be so loved, it isn't even funny."

And you knew that was true.  And you knew that you Mom and sister would get excited eventually, but you kind of felt like you just needed a bit of distance for now, to surround yourself with positivity.

So, after Danielle left, you scrolled through 'Babies R Us' on your phone for a few minutes, and then headed over to Tyler's house, that envelope securely on the passenger seat.  Once you got there, you opened the door, immediately to be swarmed with dogs, tails wagging and tongues panting excitedly  and you crouched down saying your hellos.  Yeah, you definately had no shortage of love.

"At least let her get in the door, guys," Tyler laughed, rounding the corner.  

You laughed, standing up, aware of the legal documents in your hand, which should probably not be crushed by paw prints.

"Is that the thing?" Tyler said, gesturing towards the envelope, his eyebrows raised.  

"Yeah," you said, handing it over to him, "So, if you want to look it over with your lawyer and then just get it back to me when you're done."

"Mmmk," he said easily, taking it from you.  You bent over again and thoroughly petted the dogs this time, who were still trailing around your feet. Once they seemed to calm down a little bit, you went where Tyler had gone, discovering him leaning over the kitchen counter, his tongue pulled between his lips as he flipped through the papers.

"What's this about gifts?" he asked, reading something and then looking over at you, "Because, I swear to god, I am buying your kid gifts, I really don't give a fuck what you say."

You laughed, and then frowned because that didn't make any sense at all, taking a look at the portion he was pointing to.  "No, that says I'm not supposed to compensate you with gifts."

"Wait," he pouted at you, "Does that mean you're not going to buy me a birthday gift?"

"No," you laughed again, "just, like, you're agreeing that you understand that you're not going to be compensated in any way."

"Mmmk," he said easily, and then he picked up the pen that you didn't see on the counter and scrawled his name quickly across the bottom of the page.

"What are you doing?" you cried, because you couldn't even move fast enough to stop him.

He blinked, looking at you in confusion, "I thought you wanted me to sign it."

"After you got your lawyer to look at it," you said, running your hand through your hair, trying to troubleshoot, "Do you think we can just, like, rip it up?"

"What is the big deal?" he asked, "I thought you said this was, like, standard.  You didn't get a lawyer."

Yeah, but he had money.  And you assumed that there might be, like, some PR stuff that you'd need to be held to or something.  "You should make sure that I, like, can't sue you or something."

He laughed like he couldn't even believe you were saying that, "You're not going to sue me."

You weren't, of course, but these papers were supposed to protect him just as much as it was supposed to protect you.  

"It's not that complicated," he said, "I'm just giving up my parental - parental, is that a word?"

"Yes," you said.

"I'm giving up my parental rights, and you're not compensating me for anything."

"And you're not required to pay me child support," you added.

"See? It's all in there, you don't need to worry so much," he said, putting his arm around you, "By the way, Danielle said I need to tell you that you've, and I quote, 'got your shit together'."

You laughed, burying your head in his shoulder.

"She's totally right though," he said, and you could feel him looking down at you, just waiting for you to explain.

"My sister accidentally told my Dad I'm going to try and have a baby.  On my own," you said, "And he didn't, I don't know, didn't get why I would want to do that."

"Fuck your dad," Tyler said suddenly, and then seemed to regain himself, "Sorry, but fuck your dad."

You laughed, because it was no secret that you didn't have the closest relationship with your dad, especially since your parents had split when you were young, so you'd been raised pretty much just by your mom.  Now that you thought about it, you supposed that was why your mom was likely hesitant about this whole thing, because she had been a single mother.  But you were also going into this with the knowledge that you would be, and you were prepared for it.  And you also had a great job, with benefits and a childcare centre, so you wouldn't need to try and work multiple jobs like your mom had to try and make ends meet.

"He's probably just jealous," Tyler added, "I'm sure he knows for sure that you're going to be a better Dad AND Mom that he ever was."

"Tyler..."

"I'm serious," he said firmly, "And you know that if you need an actual man to help teach your kid....man stuff, I'm here."

"Man stuff?" you laughed, "what man stuff?"

"Like, fishing and...." he said, "well, that's not really a man thing, really.  I don't know actually.  But I'll buy a book or something."

You laughed again, because you were pretty sure no such book existed, but it really was the thought that counted.  "I just wanted to wait to tell him until after I got pregnant, though," you told him.

"Yeah, don't worry babe, you're going to be pregnant super quick," he said, wiggling his eyebrows, "I have really excellent sperm."

"No, you don't," you laughed, pushing him away and you could see him frowning, "I've seen your test results."

"They said it was good," he said, his arm crossed over his chest, and you suspected that this was something that he wanted to brag about to probably everyone, only then he'd have to explain why he actually knew about that, and you knew he wouldn't do that to you.  

"Yeah, it's great," you agreed, "just not off-the-charts spectacular like you seem to think."

"Whatever," he complained, even though he was laughing so you knew he wasn't actually offended, "I'm still going to get you pregnant.  It's my new summer project."

So, at first his summer project was to find you a boyfriend and now it was to get you pregnant?  "Why do your summer projects always have to include me?" you asked, wondering why he couldn't do something normal for a summer project like build a shed or something. It wasn't that you were complaining, of course, but calling it a summer project was just a little too much.

"Because, I don't get to see you much during the season," he said, placing a kiss on the top of your head, "Duh."

**

48 hours.

As you got in your car, ready to drive to work, you couldn't help noticing that in 48 hours time, you'd be at your appointment.

As you pulled out of the driveway, you used your voice to command your bluetooth to call Tyler.

"Hey," he answered, "what's up?"

"So, you know you can't masturbate or have sex for the next two days, right?" you asked.

He laughed, "Well, you could have at least says 'hi' back to me first."

"Sorry, hi," you said sincerely, "but you know, right?"

"Yes, I'm aware."

"Well, make sure you don't forget," you said, "Maybe you should...." you trailed off, looking over your shoulder as you changed lanes, trying to think what he could do.  Maybe put a post-it note on his pillow or something?

"You want to come supervise me?" he asked gruffly.

"Sorry," you cringed, "I just want to make sure everything goes right."

"It will," he reassured you, "But I got my part covered, okay?  Trust me.  You just have to worry about your part."

You took a deep inhale and exhale, knowing that he was right.  "Okay."

"Good," he said decidedly, and then added in a softer voice, "You alright?"

And you told him that you were because you were, for the most part, going about your next two days focused on your work, and being secure in knowing that everything that needed to be done was going to be done.  The night before though, you were restless, and you didn't think you'd ever be able to sleep.  

You picked up your phone, and then set it down, remembering that Tyler had to be at the clinic two hours before you did.  But then you picked it up again, texting him 'Are you still awake?"

Tyler: Yeah

Tyler: Can't sleep?

You: No :(

Tyler: Come over

Tyler: Bring your PJ's

You smiled, gathering up your pyjamas, a toiletry bag, as well as what you'd need for tomorrow, driving over to his place, you body pumping with adrenaline.  It wasn't really nerves, though, not really, more just really a state of anxiousness, of just wanting it to be tomorrow already so you could just do it.

Tyler suggested you take the dogs for a walk, and you assumed this suggestion was due to the fact that you were pretty much pacing in his kitchen or raising yourself up on your heels, pretty much unable to stand still.

So you did, enjoying the cool, night air, the quiet sidewalk illuminated by streetlights, so it felt like you were pretty much the only ones who existed.  

"At least give me one," you sighed, Tyler slowed down to untangle the leashes yet again.  This time you stopped, extending your hand.  

"I got it," he protested, and then you followed the line of his eyesight to a quick glance at your belly and....oh.

" Tyler, I'm not pregnant yet," you laughed, " And even if I was, I can still walk a dog."

He gave you a sheepish look, handing over one of the leashes.  You walked in silence for a moment, your mind wandering.  "Tyler?"

"Hmmm?"

"Do you think it's weird we're still friends?"

"Weird? No, why would it be weird?"

You stopped, because apparently there was an extremely interesting tree.  "I just mean, do you even still talk to anyone we went to high school with?"

"Other than you, no."

"Exactly," you said, " and, like, did you even think that we would be the ones who would still be friends? We didn't even really like each other when we first met, like, if it wasn't for Kirsten--"

"Why are you getting all philosophical and shit?" Tyler interrupted. "Obviously we were meant to be friends, it doesnt really matter why, does it? Seriously, youre so weird sometimes."

"No," you reasoned, "I was just thinking about it though."

"Sometimes life works in weird ways," he said.  He was quiet for a moment, and all you could hear was the sound of your shoes on the pavement.  "Y'know, you've actually been my friend longer than anyone.  Which means that you've got a headstart on being my best friend of all time."

"And do I get a prize if I stick around?"

"The prize is getting to be my friend," he scoffed, "Obviously."

When you got back to Tyler's place, you both got ready for bed, and he insisted that you watch a movie, despite the fact that you thought he looked rather tired.

"I feel like it's a good idea for you to stay here tonight," Tyler said, as you climbed into his bed, a wall of dogs practically separating the two of you, "it'll align our chakras."

"Align our chakras?" You laughed, "you're so weird."

He stuck his tongue out at you, and you adjusted the pillows behind your back, so you were sitting up.  Although, with the way the dogs moved into the now vacated space, you weren't sure you'd be able to lay down again.  He really needed a bigger bed, honestly.  "Moana?" You questioned, taking a look at the television screen.  

" Yeah, it's a happy movie," he said, "plus, I also wanted to see what all the hype was about."

You laughed softly, but settled in.  However, as you suspected, he didn't even make it 15 minutes in.  You still weren't ready to fall asleep, but you really did feel a sense of heaviness and calm take over your body, cuddling up and watching the movie in its entirety.

You heard Tyler get up in the morning, but he took care to keep quiet, so you were able to squeeze in a little extra rest.  Once you got up and got ready though, he still hadn't come back home, like you'd thought he would.  A small part of you worried that something hadn't gone quite right, but there were no calls on your phone, so you assumed he must have gone to work out or something, even though you also thought he would have told you.

As you drove, you focused on keeping your breathing steady and deep, stretching your neck out when you were stopped at an intersection, trying to keep your grip relaxed on the steering wheel.  

Once you got there, though, you were on a mission.  So much so, that you barely noticed the familiar figure sitting in a chair along the wall, legs extended and ankles crossed.  He looked over the magazine and gave you a small smile.  

" What are you doing here?" You asked quietly, keeping your voice low like you were in a library because it somehow seemed appropriate for the situation.  

"Waiting for you," he said simply.  But, even though you were here now, he made no effort to move, looking like he was comfortable for the long haul.  

You looked over at the receptionist and then back at him, "It's going to be awhile."

"I know, I'll wait."

Sure enough, when you came out, he was still there, setting down the magazine and standing up, slowly loitering off in the back of the waiting room as you made an appointment with the receptionist to have your blood taken in two weeks, meeting you at the door when you were done, holding it open so you could pass under his arm. "Thank you."

"Mhmm," he responded, as you stepped into the quiet holiday.  "how was your thing?"

"It was..." you paused, not knowing how to quite explain it, "fine.  Kind of weird, but fine."

He reacted lightly, with a quick glance to make sure you really were okay.  "Mine was great, thanks for asking," he said, "they gave me lube AND porn."

"Oh my god, Tyler...shhh..." you said, your face flaming red even though he was the one who was speaking incredibly loud in the otherwise pretty quiet medical building, and you could only assume everyone in the waiting room of the podiatrist's office you just past by had heard him.

Instinctively, you started walking faster, but he caught up to you, "I mean, the porn kind of sucked, but it was still porn," he said, just as an older lady stepped out of the optometrist's office looking at the two of your sternly, your eyes widening, and your gaze shooting nervously towards her, but Tyler just made a snorting noise as he tried not to laugh, finally bursting out laughing once she disappeared around the corner.

"You're going to get us kicked out of here," you said in a harsh whisper, grabbing his wrist and tugging it once to get him to move.

"Sorry, sorry," he said quickly, neither of you talking until you reached the bottom of the stairs, heading towards the doors, "So can I take you out for lunch?  Or do you have to, like, lay down or something?"

"I already did," you said, "that's what took so long."

"Oh," he said, his hand going up to scratch the back of his neck, "you don't have to, like, lay down with your legs up in the air now or something?"

"No, that's not how it works," you said, an amused tone to your voice, "we can get lunch."

"'K," he replied lightly. He offered to take his car and then come back later to grab your car so you agreed, although you noticed once he pulled out of the parking lot he looked at you just once with a sly grin on his face and then pushed a button on the console, directing his attention back to the road.

Music filled the car and you were trying to identify the song, until you heard the opening "Baby, ohhh..." from the Backstreet Boy's "Quit Playing Games with My Heart" and could see Tyler grinning widely at you and you started laughing, "Oh my god, seriously?"

"It made you laugh," he said, "I feel like that's a good thing."

He turned it up louder and, while you knew the lyrics off by heart, you couldn't help but laugh, thinking that this song was so inappropriate in that it had nothing to do with babies at all, and wasn't even a happy song, for god's sake, but Tyler kept doing some weird car dancing thing move, except for when he had to stop to sing all the "Oh Baby Baby"'s very loudly and very poorly, but also very enthusiastically, looking at you each time the word 'baby' was mentioned.  

You couldn't help but dissolve into giggles in the passenger seat, partially concerned someone was going to drive by and recognize him.  "You are such a dork."

[feyrhycien]

A Change in the Game - 8

Fic Masterlist

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“Another glass?” Rhys asked, wiggling the bottle of fancy Pinot Noir they had been drinking.

“Sure,” Feyre smiled and held out her glass for him.

Rhys refilled both of their glasses and then settled back onto the couch with her, one arm propped up on the back of the couch, his fingers dangerously close to her shoulder. He could easily touch her, if he wanted.

After they had decided to put the topic of Lucien aside for a moment, they’d hit it off pretty well. So well actually, they didn't want their date to end when it had only really begun at dessert. So Rhys had proposed they come back to his place and talk some more. To her own surprise, Feyre had agreed.

Now they were sitting on his couch, sharing a bottle of wine and insights to their lives, and Feyre felt comfortably drowsy, a bit tipsy, and alarmingly attracted to Lucien’s boyfriend.

With every minute longer they spent sitting next to each other, he was inching closer towards her. Or maybe she imagined it, because she wished he would. At some point, Feyre had simply abandoned trying to think about their messed up situation or the norms society dictated - after all, if she were going by these standards, she shouldn't be on a date like this in the first place. So instead, Feyre just decided to throw all the can'ts and shouldn'ts out of the window and just go with the flow, reacting to his shameless flirting and advances by instinct.

And those, she certainly wasn't imagining. Rhys was flirting with her.

“Are you planning to get me drunk?” Feyre asked coyly, eyeing her wine and then Rhys from under her lashes.

Rhys smirked, inching a bit closer, his fingers lightly brushing over her shoulder. So she hadn’t imagined it, he really had been creeping closer. The light touch of his fingers sent a spark of excitement rushing through her. Her arousal stirred it's head, waking from its slumber.

“Do I need to get you drunk?” he purred.

“Depends on what your planning to do with me,” she said with a challenging smile.

Rhys’ eyes darkened, his pupils dilating. He ran his knuckles up and down her bare upper arm and leaned in.

“I can imagine a great many things I could do to you, Feyre darling. All entirely inappropriate for a first date,” he whispered into her ear.

His voice felt as much of a caress as his fingers on her shoulder, making her nipples pinch. Fuck!

“You and Lucien, you are dangerous,” she whispered, brushing her fingers over Rhys’ shapely lips, pressing the pad of her pointer finger against his Cupid’s bow and then into the dimple on his cheek, that formed as he smirked down at her.

“How so, Feyre darling?” Rhys asked bemused.

“Every sane person would stay away, yet here I am, on a date with the the boyfriend of my office crush whom I had sex with.”

Saying it aloud, it sounded even more bizarre. Rhys angled his head questiongly. It gave him a slightly predatory look. So dangerous.

He and Lucien, they were both like wild animals - deadly, but gorgeous. And if Lucien was a fox - sly and feral - Rhys was a panther: elegant, feline, breathtaking, even while he pounced and sunk his teeth into you, snapping your neck.

Rhys’ broad hand slid around her waist and he tugged her closer. Feyre’s heart pounded so hard in her chest, if you looked closely, you could see the fabric of her dress vibrating with each frantic heartbeat. She was high on arousal and adrenaline. She was a junkie, and Rhys was her next fix.

“Does it scare you?” he purred.

“No. But it should.”

His eyes danced with feline amusement and he leaned in, brushing his lips over her cheek. Feyre inhaled sharply, a familiar dull ache pounding hard in her belly.

“Rhys! What are you doing?” she whispered shocked.

“What does it look like?” he purred into her ear.

“Like you’re kissing me.”

Rhys let out a low chuckle. “Darling, if I was kissing you, you’d know.”

Feyre didn’t know what made her do it: her wish to find out, what Lucien saw in him? Why he loved him? Her petty urge to get back at Lucien somehow; to get even? Or maybe simply the desire to be kissed and to give in to the attraction she most certainly felt for Rhys. Maybe all of it mixed together.

Whatever it was, it made her close her eyes and present her face to him. And then she felt Rhys’ lips on hers.

It was a slow, deliberate kiss, but no less intense than the bruising kisses she’d shared with Lucien. When he exhaled softly into her mouth, it felt like he breathed fire right into her. The kiss was soul-scorching, it made her burn alive from the inside out. Feyre wrapped her arms around his neck - only then remembering the wine glass she was still holding. She hastily broke away, afraid she’d spilled wine on him.

“Sorry, did I go too far?” Rhys asked with quiet concern.

“No. The wine glass,” Feyre explained, putting it on the coffee table. “I forgot I was holding it.”

She turned her face back to Rhys, taking him in. They stared at each other, trying to make out what the other was thinking.

They were undoubtedly attracted to one another, their chemistry was off the charts. It had been, ever since they decided to focus on themselves instead on Lucien. The kiss had been fantastic, leaving Feyre to want more. But they were both also in love with Lucien. And Rhys was his boyfriend and she was… whatever it was that Lucien wanted from her. Or Rhys, it seemed.

“What a dodgy little mess we’re in,” she deadpanned.

One corner of his mouth curled upwards into a crooked smile. “Indeed.”

And then he pulled her towards him and Feyre let go of all thoughts and readily succumbed to his searing kisses.

“Would you believe me, if I say, that, despite how complicated this all is, I greatly enjoyed myself tonight?”

Out of the corner of her eyes, Feyre noticed him shifting towards her in the driver seat, looking at her. They were sitting in his car in front of Feyre’s apartment complex, unwilling to let the evening end. After they had spent a good long hour making out, doing nothing more than sharing slow, blistering kisses that stole her breath and that had her melt her down to the point of being unable to even move a limb of her own, Rhys had driven her home. Now she sat in the passenger seat of his car, slowly trying to come back to planet earth.

“Yes,” Feyre breathed, meeting his violet eyes with hers. “I did enjoy myself, too.”

Rhys held her gaze as he leaned in, hesitating a moment to see whether Feyre would pull away. But when she wouldn’t, he slid one hand into her hair, cradling the back of her head, and frenched her, very slowly and very intensely. Feyre went pliant and gave herself over to the sensation completely. His mouth was addictive. The way he kissed should be forbidden.

When he broke the kiss, Feyre made a little sound of protest and Rhys chuckled softly, pressing an apologetic kiss to her forehead. The message was clear: this was all she was getting from him tonight.

“I’d like to see you again like this, Feyre darling,” he murmured. “Do you?”

“Maybe. Yes. I don’t know.” Feyre stared up into the violet depths of his eyes. They were flecked with silver. She hadn’t noticed before. They were beautiful. He was.

Rhys studied her face for a moment longer and then gave her a faint smile. “It’s confusing, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Feyre confirmed.

He kissed her eyebrow again and Feyre closed her eyes, letting his scent and warmth wash over her. She wished it were easier. That he wasn’t Lucien’s and that she wasn’t attracted to the both of them.

“Call me, when you feel ready,” he said softly and released her. “I’ll wait.”

Feyre gave him a nod and got out of the car. She didn’t turn around until she had unlocked the front door to her building and waved him goodbye. He took off with screeching tires.

Feyre barely noticed her surroundings while she made her way up to her apartment, her mind still with Rhys. Would she want to meet with him again? Then what of Lucien? She didn’t want to be the reason they fought or broke up. But she also couldn’t stay away from them. They were like the light, and she was a moth. Or maybe the other way round, seeing that both of them were chasing after her? Rhys had gotten his date with her in apology for her sleeping with Lucien. And now he wanted another. What would Lucien say about that?

All these thoughts swirled in her head, while she climbed the stairs and walked down the hallways. Feyre was so lost in them, she walked right past her door. Cursing softly, she walked back - and stopped dead.

Two flowers lay on her doormat: a yellow hyacinth and some pink flower she didn’t know, bound together with a ribbon, card attached. Feyre picked them up and went straight for the card.

Do I get to be pissed about this date?

Feyre flushed, boiling with indignation and looked around, half-expecting Lucien to step out of a doorway somewhere. But of course, he wasn’t here anymore. Feyre eyed the flowers again. So he was pissed about her going on a date with Rhys. She laughed a bit helplessly and felt tears welling up. Feyre didn’t know how she was supposed to feel, it was honestly all too much.

Sniffling, she unlocked her door and unceremoniously dropped her purse right by the entry, before heading into the kitchen and looking for some container to use as a vase. She opted for a big beer mug. And then she stared at the flowers, trying to make sense of it all.

Was Lucien actually pissed at Rhys for taking her out, or at Feyre, for taking out Rhys?

She groaned and buried her face in her arms. She was so confused, her head was about to burst and tears prickling in her eyes. Staring at the flowers, one of them a flower she couldn’t even name, wasn’t helping.  At least, she knew how to settle this problem. Feyre snapped a picture of the flowers and sent the picture to her sister Elain, who happened to be a florist.

Feyre: Hey sis, can you tell me, what this pink flower is?

Her sister’s response came promptly.

Elain: It’s a camellia. You have a guy I don’t know about?

Guess what Elain, seems like I have two, Feyre thought grimmly.

Feyre: No, but why do you ask? Because I got flowers?

Elain: More like, because you got those flowers.

Feyre frowned at the message. She didn’t get it.

Feyre: What do you mean?

Elain: Pink camellia in the language of flowers mean “longing for you” <3

Feyre felt her cheeks heat. Damn you, Lucien. She eyed the flowers again, the pink and yellow looking pretty together. Unconventional, but pretty. Lucien knew her so well.

Feyre grinded her teeth, annoyed with herself.

Feyre: And what do hyacinths mean?

Elain: Depending on the color, they all have different meanings. But yellow hyacinths only have one.

Somehow, Feyre got the distinct impression, that her sister was enjoying herself way too much.

Feyre: Care to share?

She stared intently at the little dots as Elain typed, not daring to breathe.

Elain: Jealousy ;)

Feyre 3 - Lucien 3 - Rhys 3

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early update, cause I got places to be later. guys, I’m attempting this thing called social life. wish me luck!

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[onestowatch]

Zella Day Has Arrived, Renewed [Q&A]

Photos: Neil Krug 

Zella Day’s 2015 debut album ​Kicker​ presented to the world an unapologetic, charismatic woman raised in the mountains of Pinetop, Arizona. The album garnered over 200 million streams and propelled the young songstress to national acclaim. Coming off of appearances at Coachella and Lollapalooza and a tour with Fitz and the Tantrums, Day seemed poised to take the charts by storm.

However, the next four years saw virtual radio silence from the indie pop savant. Following her departure from Hollywood Records, the Los Angeles-based artist took the following years to recoup. While listeners waited patiently for a follow-up to ​Kicker​, Day continued making occasional appearances in music, releasing a few singles and appearing on Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! Tour.

Now, Zella Day is back with her first original material in nearly half a decade and a five-song EP slated for August of 2020. I had the pleasure of catching up with her over the phone to chat about quarantine, old photos, and her upcoming EP, ​Where Does The Devil Hide​.

Ones To Watch: What are you doing in quarantine?

Zella Day: The first month of quarantine, me, my friends, and family seemed to have a similar energy level, where you just were tired and weren’t motivated to do much, because all the information coming out was so scary, and it felt like it was time to hide. I’m not really inspired by hiding and fear and hiding because of fear. The past couple weeks, I’ve started to take deep breaths, clear out my space, open up the windows, walk my dog, come home, pour myself a glass of wine, and sit with my guitar. I’m getting back to myself, but that was a curveball. I gave myself a pass to relax for a second.

You’ve said before that you’re a homebody, but it’s different when it’s imposed on you.

Yeah, where you feel like you’re restricted. I wanna ​choose​ to be a homebody. 

I personally am such a huge fan of ​Kicker​, I listened to it when I was 15.

That’s something that’s been such an interesting realization, that people that were listening to ​Kicker​ four years ago have grown up, and they’re in college, or turning 30. We’ve all grown up together, it’s profound.

What’s it like for you to see your update accounts and fan accounts on social media?

I don’t like to call my audience “fans.” To me, people who listen to my music have similar tastes to me, and I’d probably like to be friends with a lot of them (laughter). Fan accounts are funny, though. Sometimes, I’ll look up the fan account @zelladaykicker, and I will go back in time to find photos that I’ve lost, that I don’t have on my camera roll or my Instagram, but I really wanna look at the memories. @zelladaykicker has got me covered.

It’s like your personal Google Photos.

(laughter) It’s like, thank you so much for documenting it and being my library.

Speaking of old photos, tell me about the cover photo for your “z as she is” playlist.

I was about nine. That photo was taken of me in my kitchen in Pinetop, Arizona. I was apparently very ahead of my time. Born in ‘95, I didn’t quite get to live out the fantasy of being a ‘90s kid. I was an infant. That’s me trying to bring it back around with my metallic jacket, my little sunglasses, and my little hot pink bandana tied around my head. My mom took one look at me and said, “Wow, Zella, you’re really feeling yourself.” It’s one of my favorite photos, because my mom was making fun of me a little bit, but I was unapologetically wearing that outfit.

Was there ever a point when music wasn’t the endgame?

Music has always been an extension of who I am. Sometimes it feels like a gift, other times it feels like a burden. It’s my sole purpose. There’s been moments in the past three years where my career got a little rock, and a little unclear. I really had to come to terms with the fact that music is what I’m gonna continue to do, whether it’s smooth sailing or not. Letting go of music completely has never been an option, just more of a navigation of life and figuring out how to stay as close to music as possible.

Going into the music industry and moving to California, were there any expectations that you had to reevaluate once you were in the thick of it?

I was so young when I moved to California, I was two months shy of my 17th birthday. I signed a record deal when I was 18, and that was my first introduction into the industry. I didn’t have a chance to connect with my peers as much, as I was thrown into this machine. Not in a derogatory sense, more so with the record-making process being much more formal than just falling into a community of kids my age making music because it’s fun. It was still fun for me, but it was a very different experience. I don’t think I necessarily had an expectation. I learned what I needed and wanted the longer I was in the industry and the more I was learning about myself and my process.

I feel like people don’t think about the whole process of putting out an album, it’s a lot.

You have to be everything these days. You have to be a photographer, music video director, good at public speaking, fantastic at putting together an outfit.

Your cover of “You Sexy Thing” is so anthemic and fun to listen to. What prompted you to choose that as your big comeback single?

It was a lot of different conversations being had at the time of what the appropriate first release for me was gonna be. The head of marketing at my label suggested a cover, and at first I rejected the idea, because I hadn’t released original music in so long, that it felt important to me to share what I had been working on and share original material. I then realized that I haven’t engaged with my audience for a long time with music, and as much as I have been on my journey, nobody is a part of that with me. So, I was sitting on my mom’s couch in Long Beach with my friend Ellie May, and I was practicing a Roy Orbison cover. If you’ve ever tried to sing a Roy Orbison cover, it’s the most challenging thing. It just wasn’t working. 

Me and Ellie started talking about some of our favorite disco songs, and we were talking about songs that have been resurrected and recycled because they are just that good, and “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate was brought up. I laughed and thought how funny it would be if she and I did an acoustic, serious folk cover of it. It didn’t end up being the style we did it in, but it was born there.  

“You Sexy Thing” just felt like a celebration of sorts, reopening myself to the world with a song I could be expressive with and not think too heavily about what I was saying, so I could just re-engage with everyone in an upbeat and charismatic way.

I know Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys produced ​Where Does The Devil Hide​. How did you guys end up working together and what is that creative process like?

Speaking of expectations, I had no expectation of getting a response back from Dan Auerbach when I put out a request to work with him. My manager at the time had a relationship with people in Nashville that knew Dan and they passed along the message that it was a dream of mine to work with him. He and I met three years ago. I took a trip to Nashville, went by his studio and met him, took a tour of Easy Eye, and we liked each other enough to pursue a collaboration. We scheduled four days in the studio, and our goal was to write, complete, and record five songs in four days, which is exactly what we did. Everything was made in under a week, with the exception of some overdubs that were added at a later time. 

There really is a spirit of spontaneity of the EP that is so exciting. Working with Dan was eye-opening, watching him move swiftly, really lean into his instincts and ride the wave of inspiration. There’s just a level of talent in that studio with him and the musicians he chose to play on the record. They all know exactly what to do. So for me, walking in, it was definitely a challenge, a good push for me to step outside my comfort zone as somebody who came from the pop world, a more micromanaged state. I was really grateful for all those years that I’ve spent writing, recording, and playing shows, because any time before the time that I met Dan would have been too premature.

What about ​Where Does The Devil Hide​ are you most excited for your audience to see?

Each song is so different from the next, that’s what I’m most excited for people to see and hear. My songwriting style and vocal range, there’s so much put into the EP. It’s an emergence of my evolution and my arrival as an artist.

Last question: who are your Ones To Watch?

Does it have to be music? What do you think?

Anything you want. The world is your oyster.

(laughter) Right now during this heavy political time, I’ve been watching my friend Nahko And Medicine For The People doing great talks with everybody from holistic healers to gardeners to authors. It’s been really great to watch his conversations. And my sister, Mia Kerr, is one to watch. She is training to become a writer for film and television. It’s been amazing to watch her process, and when this is all over, she’s gonna be someone who is coming up.

[coffee-and-kpop]

1-100

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?more cereal than milk. i hate when my cereal is soggy

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?omg yes so much

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?the edges of notebook paper i’ve torn off, pokemon cards

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?tea: if it’s black, a little cream and sugar. if it’s green, with a little lemon juice. if it’s flavored, with some honeycoffee: anyone, honestly. sometimes black with a little sugar, sometimes heavy on the flavored creamer. i’ll drink coffee anyway

5: are you self-conscious of your smile?not of my smile, no

6: do you keep plants?i do indeed have a plant. i planted one with my great-grandmother thirteen years ago and i’ve still got it now

7: do you name your plants?i’ve just recently named her, yes. her name is Joan after my great-gma

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?hmmm, i just really love painting. i’ll paint with anything!

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?for sure

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?side

11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends?so my friends and i used to say ‘take off the visor’ when you should just go for it and talk to your crush because there was this twin i had a crush on and his brother wore HIDEOUS visors everyday and it was just really funny

12: what's your favorite planet?mars

13: what's something that made you smile today?my nine year old sister started singing bad and boujee today at dinner

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?an actual mess, lol. it would be super cheap, all brick. we’d have a fuck chart of the gossip girl cast hanging in our living room where the tv should be, a totally stocked kitchen, lots of christian paraphernalia, tons of art pieces, and weird sayings we’d heard that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but us

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!all of space is completely silent

16: what's your favorite pasta dish?tortellini in marinara cream sauce

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?blonde, but i would never

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.hmmm probs all my tinder escapades....

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?not really, but i carry around a notebook that i write down all my thoughts/things i need to remember in!

20: what's your favorite eye color?blue/grey/green

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.lol, this is probably my bookbag. it’s not necessarily my fav, but it’s been with me for six/seven years. it’s a green north face (jester) and it’s got a huge hole in the bottom where some things fall through but it’s tough as nails

22: are you a morning person?hell no

23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?watch netflix, blog, write, eat, read

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?not anymore, nope

25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into?i really didn’t break into this place, but i used to work at a pool as a lifeguard and we would swim A LOT after hours there

26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit?my chacos

27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor?spearmint

28: sunrise or sunset?sunset

29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?my roommate is an landscape architect major and she’s so tiny and cute but every time we say something shocking to her she makes this scoffing noise that we only associate with her

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?yes

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.i HATE sleeping in socks, i try to wear funky socks as much as possible. i don’t own a single pair of white socks

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.my friends and i like to go see the rocky horror picture show, which starts at midnight, so we just get up to all kinds of shit in ATL late at night

33: what's your fave pastry?coffee cake

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?OMG so fun story i had this best friend when i was in kindergarten-3rd grade and then he moved away and i was so sad but anyway for my 5th birthday he got me two stuffed horses and their names are Brownie and Blackie and i still sleep with them every night and he and i just recently got back in touch last semester omg

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?oh yes, i love them. i’m a huge study porn girl, although i don’t use them that much

36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now?death cab for cutie

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?hella messy

38: tell us about your pet peeves!MY ROOMMATE SMACKS AND I HATE IT SM

39: what color do you wear the most?black

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you?i have a gold cross necklace that was my great-grandfather’s and my nana passed it down to me the morning before i left for a trip to europe and it was super emotional

41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving?i really, truly adored redeeming love

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!it’s called Two Story and it’s literally two stories and none of the couches match, it’s always packed and the rooms are a tight squeeze, the roof is slanted so you have to bend down, but the coffee is very unique

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?i don’t know if this is the last person, but i remember vividly gazing at the stars with my cousin while we were in our bras outside

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?have i ever? 

45: do you trust your instincts a lot?yes

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.don’t trust atoms, they make up everything

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?twinkies god

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?clowns and escalators; no it’s not

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?yes, although i have no where to play them. the last CD i bought was the weeknd’s beauty behind the madness

50: what's an odd thing you collect?candles, and i keep the empty jars after i’m finished burning them

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?hmmm i associate any john meyer song with my mom

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?honestly dark kermit will always be my favorite

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?I LOVE ROCKY HORROR; never watched heathers; hated beetlejuice; loved pulp fiction

54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?i don’t know; maybe my boss at work??

55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point?idk i think i just yell A LOT

56: what are some things you find endearing in people?i love people who smile at their phones, athletes, girls who always look so cute and wear make up to class

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?nostalgic; of course i dramatically sang the lyrics

58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?my roommate, Syd, is the wine mom. she’s always so judgmental omg; i think i’m the vodka aunt like let’s be real; vodka is life and i’m the only one that parties

59: what's your favorite myth?i like any sort of sea monster myth

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?yes, annabel lee will always be my favorite

61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received?one time i gave my cousin the end of her charger my cat chewed up; my little sister gave me my own necklace for christmas that she got out of my jewelry box

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?no

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?oh, they’re all so organized that’s the only thing i can keep together in my life

64: what color is the sky where you are right now?v dark; keep of a deep blackish indigo

65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with?my best friend from high school; she’s been in peru for seven months

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?lots of peonies and snap dragons; it would probs be pink and purple

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?i really love days like these; they make me feel alive and awake - like i can breathe deeply

68: what's winter like where you live?weird; it’ll snow a tiny bit one week and be 70 the next week; although it only snows once here. they’re not very cold at all

69: what are your favorite board games?clue, life

70: have you ever used a ouija board?no

71: what's your favorite kind of tea?earl gray, chai tea

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it?omfg yes i forget EVERYTHING

73: what are some of your worst habits?i forget everything, i lose everything, i wait until the last minute to do anything

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.traditional Christianity, ballet pink, hip hop, zico, natural curls

75: tell us about your pets!ohhh ramsey; she’s currently laying in between my legs purring while i type this. she’s black and white; a tuxedo kitten. she’s been pretty hellish right now; getting into so much trouble but she makes me feel like i’ve always got someone there with me

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't?my korean hw, or sleeping

77: pink or yellow lemonade?yellow

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?fanclub

79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?@sarangkaeyon put me in her fan fic today and i cried, @lightly-ardently made me think about jungkook sending me anons, @omgbigbangtanboys in everything (esp. the jungkook anon ship:))

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?they’re white; i rent so no i didn’t choose them

81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.they’re cloudy, mystic; they look like raindrops caught on the sidewalk, right after they fall from thunderclouds

82: are/were you good in school?i’m above average, i would say

83: what's some of your favorite album art?all time low’s don’t panic

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?yes, so far i’m getting flowers for my great-grandmother and a quote from her book, and a tattoo of the world marked with the countries i’ve been to

85: do you read comics? what are your faves?lol no i didn’t

86: do you like concept albums? which ones?YES ; the beatles - sgt. pepper’s lonely hearts club band

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?cloud atlas, the notebook, courageous

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?i love hip hop dances, i love when singer use their hands while they’re singing

89: are you close to your parents?yes

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.it was messy, but the air of beauty surrounds you; it’s all hardlines and classic gold - a huge mixture of old and new; sleek and dull, as the clock watches you like an eye; 

91: where do you plan on traveling this year?i’m not sure that i have any travel plans this year

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?i’m a sprinkle person

93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most?a ponytail

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?a member of my sorority who’s one of my close friends

95: what are your plans for this weekend?NOTHING OMG

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?i procrastinate them a lot

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?intj-t, aries, gryffindor

98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?a couple years ago; we woke up at 4 and hiked a mountain at sunrise - it was one of the best times of my life

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.therapy - all time low, oh well - maybe parade, drops of jupiter - train

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?probably in the future, because i’d love to see who i am 5 years from now. and, 5 years ago i was in a completely different place than rn and i def don’t want to go back to sophomore year of high school

[stormears]

Sefikura Opening Snippet

This is the opening scene to a oneshot I’m working on. I’m sneaking this in the tag even though Sephiroth isn’t in most of it and Cloud is only hinted at, because I’m wondering if someone will critique it or tell me if they’d read the full thing. I don’t love some parts of the writing, wrote some while sleepy, but I’m excited to get it out there anyway.  

Title (tbd but might be, or idk, use the word): Kraken

Summary: Cloud Strife has disappeared off the face of the earth. For half the year he’s been gone and rogue Shinra experiment Sephiroth has torn friend, foe and country apart to look for him. For a month, he has been missing, too, while Gaia citizens recover from his rage. For one week, the unassuming cargo ship Monstrum has been sitting still at sea hundreds of miles from land with a secret kept belowdecks. One night, a monster boards the ship in search of its prey. 

Snippet length: 2.2k.

The oneshot features my self-indulgent and brilliant plot of Sephiroth finding weak, tortured Cloud on a ship in the middle of nowhere. Cloud has fled(??)/been stolen from him(??)/both(??) and Sephiroth finds him, wrecks the crew for stealing Cloud from him. Briefly nurses Cloud back to health and lies in bed with him in a ship officer’s appropriated quarters so he can rest. Followed by waking him up later to fuck him and punish him for daring to leave him. Because I want my fluff, possessiveness, power dynamic and dubcon cakes and I want to eat them too. 

Features a couple FF creatures called a “coeurl” which is a giant cat with two big tentacles for whiskers and looks a bit different in each game. (I pronounce it koh-EARL”?) The one in this opening scene is the FFX coeurl. 

Including these coeurls in the story because I’m going to write some horseshit later on about how Sephiroth acts like a big cat in a few ways, acting territorial towards Cloud, licking and biting him to teasingly “groom” him, reclining in a bed, calls Cloud a kitten once, knocks something off a shelf lol AND IF THERE’S CATS IN THE STORY BEFORE ALL THAT, THEN IT’S CALLED NARRATIVE THEMING I SWEAR 

Snippet is just a suspenseful scene of the ship as some ship residents realize a cat-eyed ~invader~ is near, and then that he has arrived.

- CLICK BELOW FOR SNIPPET - 

Midnight on the sea and at the end of the world. Another night without sighting of land or ship. A night of a new moon and oppressive clouds. It was darker out there than ever before. Workmen patrolled the deck with lazy flashlights and flicked them overboard every once in a while, shining a yellow beacon into the perfect black just beyond the railing. There was nothing out there.

There might be nothing anywhere. They drifted in circles in uncharted water as far from the west side of the great continent as the east. Sometimes lone little islands were discovered here, sometimes undiscovered beasts in the deep water. Creatures and shades of things with no names.

Only in these far-flung wilds would they be safe. Only the privileged captain and his favored men knew this. Land wasn’t safe, hiding in plain sight wasn’t safe, but the unknown was. Here they were cut off from all things, they and their cargo both. The captain and his favored ones knew theirs was the most dangerous job on the planet.

The Monstrum had dozens of other crewmen, and they knew their secret cargo was sparkling treasure to be sold in Wutai when a contact signaled them, somehow, to set off for land again. It was all for money and nothing else. For intangible numbers they drifted to uncharted water, prepared to linger for months, and stared out at the empty, dark ocean. They watched the railings and their wild, unknown coordinates with unsettled spirits.

The captain had a litter of coeurls aboard which did not improve everyone’s spirits. They were cats larger than bears with twin whiskers just as long. They spat magic spells and could tear steel barrels in half with one lashing claw, and they stalked any men who walked out of line on the ship. There were three of them: one striped and two spotted. The watchmen on the bow today couldn’t tell which one was watching them from the top of the shipping containers.

“Don’t look,” said Olson, the elder of the two by far. It was the closest he could offer to comfort while his own body was chilled by its stare.

“How much longer till we move somewhere already?” said Goen, or Golen. They never bothered to learn each other’s names. He was almost too young to be here. “I’ve seen some things in the water, that I…I just hate it out here.”

“It’s nothing but boring,” Olson tried again, and even clapped his back this time. “We sit and we fish and wait for a phone call and we rack up salary. There’s no sea monsters or portals to evil worlds coming to get you. Just fuckin’ ugly fish. That’s what you saw. The kitties like to eat ‘em, even.”

Golen scowled at the reminder and kept his eyes downward. Far below there was darkness too, a soft almost-black of the surf pushing up against the prow and little waves breaking. Olson went on to bemoan how the coeurls would sometimes dive off the boat to land atop one of the aforementioned ugly fish when they came too near the surface, and men would have to lift them out with nets, them and the bleeding slice of fish flesh they’d torn easily free like fat sliding off bone. Last night one of the spotted ones had dived and come up with a sleek tailfin that crew members fancied was the back end of a mermaid.

“I bet it’s not even treasure they keep down there. It’s some special materia, or like, a bomb,” Golenn said and interrupted the story. Olson stopped and listened. “For Wutai to use on Midgar. Stupid to come somewhere like this, just for some funds.”

“It’s your second voyage, kid, you don’t know that at all.”

“I know nobody’s been to this spot before us, ever. I seen the captain’s charts.”

“…Oh?”

“And I think it’s why he has the coeurls. They’re good guards, right?”

“They are.”

They were.

The striped coeurl knew no human tongue, but it knew human behavior and voices, and it knew some humans had coeurl hearts. The wild, ferocious ones who were exceptionally watchful, like its master and captain, but not like these men below.

It knew they feared its gaze. It knew to guard them, and to guard against them. They might wander belowdecks if they became too curious. The coeurl was trained to discipline them like an unruly adolescent kitten if they did. Unruly kittens were lashed with claws, pinned and trapped to the floor, and licked with unforgiving tongues so that they knew how close they were to being eaten.

No men could be permitted to breach that secret hall below, for it was the captain’s territory and so the coeurl’s. Something more precious than a coeurl’s newborn kitten lay below. At least one of the cats prowled near it at all times. One of the spotted sisters did right now, on watch since this afternoon. In turn, the striped brother knew to stay here.

All of them had felt a prickling at their whiskers, at their defensive instincts, at their drive for self-preservation. They had felt a sting.  

Both the big cat and the lone men watched the water, seeing little through the pitch-black. Olson could never soothe his companion’s sourness and dread and eventually stopped speaking to him. When midnight came, they slinked away with hunched shoulders, saying nothing. They did not look at the predator laying on the steel containers above. They disappeared into the innards of the ship and melded with the other men; they did not matter.

It was past midnight. The three cats were awake in and upon the ship, listening.

Monstrum stood alone as far from land and prying eye as could be, and it was watched.

It was present in the air, down in the water, above them in the heavy black clouds. It was felt along the coeurl’s long whiskers like living electricity. It was pressure. It was silence. It was not man or beast—not natural and not manmade. Alien. And so the coeurl felt a touch of fear, and sat up on the shipping container.

It was seeking. It was pushing into the coeurl’s territory. It was full of killing intent so intense that the cat instinctively bared its teeth and hissed into the quiet air. Its hiss was the only sound.

It made no sound. It smothered the predator with killing intent, an instinctive desire creatures like coeurls knew well. It meant to claim its territory.  

It—it’s arrived, thought the coeurl, in the closest approximation to thought that it had. The unknown pressure had all coalesced into one point, in one second: just behind the coeurl’s back, standing on the shipping container with it.

The coeurl screamed in a mind-melting mix of rage and horror as it whirled around. It swung its huge left paw through the air, expecting to feel the impact of flesh. But it was dumbstuck to find nothing at all. The pay swung at empty air. Now it was off-kilter and unnerved. It was a feeling for prey. The coeurl hissed at the strangling sensation, at itself, at the sea spraying up near the bow.

Now it faced the bridge of the boat where the steering and offices looked out over all the containers. But there was nothing in that direction but dead steel and lit windows where men were working. It looked in all other directions to find the invader.

When there was a too-loud splash just below the prow, the cat screeched and whipped its long whiskers in the air. They glowed white-gold and buzzed as it cast a lightning spell over the railing and into the water. Briefly, sparks and light shone upwards and were just visible over the edge of the deck.

When there was a second splash, it cast a second lightning spell to destroy whatever was making the noise. The water was quiet then.

The coeurl turned around to face the bridge again and pace the top of the container. When it had nearly turned, the invader stood on the container in dead silence, facing the bridge with it.

The gut reaction was faster than the cat could process: it leaped straight forward with all claws out and whiskers buzzing with electric power. The whiskers swung to lash around the invader before even the claws could land. For a moment the strange being was circled by electric white light. For a moment it was in danger. Then it turned away from the bridge.

Two pairs of cat’s eyes met in the magic-made light. Then the invader forced them both into darkness; with a swing of its forearm it severed both whiskers halfway from the coeurl’s face. They began to fall away from the container, down to the deck, still sparking.

No time had passed for the great cat to scream or wail. Its paws were still aimed down to crush the attacker. The invader removed one of them, too, and then it wailed.

The sensations of the next second were swift and brutal brands in its unthinking head. The shrieking pain greater than its body. The flying rivulets of blood. The pulse of fear in its body, making it wish to run. The visual impact of a human sized invader, inhuman in sight and smell and strength. All these passed in a blink, all an instantaneous shock. The coeurl faltered in mid-air. The remaining front leg left became limp. It finally struck its target.

The coeurl crashed into the invader as the invader’s sword speared the cat’s chest, lung, spine. It fell upon the weapon and stayed there. The invader was half the big cat’s size, but held up its limp body with one arm and while still standing.

It was only prey now, no challenger and no guard of anything. Its territory lost. The invader touched its fur, pressed on it, in order to shove its body back off the sword. The coeurl fell backwards, nearly off the container entirely.

With one eye, it could see the thing that had killed it: human-shaped, black and white. There was a man’s body with a warrior’s clothes and a warrior’s weapon. There was a long silver mane and the eyes of a catlike beast. There was a supernatural power emanating from him like the stench of disease.

The cat’s only instinct left was to recoil. It curled its lip at the man who had killed it. It died that way. It never saw the swing of the weapon that cut its head from its body.

The quiet surf deadened the sound of the removed head slipping messily off the spine. It mattered not to the invader, who was the greater predator.

With the immediate threat removed, the territory was open. The cargo ship was an impressive size, impressively filled with worthless cargo atop, and worthlessly staffed. There were no men or women of import, only a few animals. The only strength of the place was its location. It was undetected here in the middle of nowhere. It was undetectable. It had tried to make his own territory undetectable, so that he could not find it and reclaim it. They had dared to steal and hide what belonged to him. But it was absolutely here and at last so was he.

His eyes were drawn to the bridge, where stairways would let one into the bowels of the ship. Cabins and halls and unknown secret rooms were below. The path to his only desire. Thousands of miles from him before. Now none at all. It made him shiver with joy.

‘I’m coming,’ he projected, and a keen mind in the ship might have heard his call and felt him coming near. The closeness was nigh unbearable now.

He grabbed at a section of the coeurl’s striped fur, spattered red on the shimmering grey, and pulled. He dragged the body with one hand and walked with it trailing behind. He walked across the surface of the next two shipping containers dragging the headless cat’s body. Not far ahead was the bridge, where half a dozen windows were lit bright gold from within. Men were still working night shifts throughout the ship, unsuspecting. They were nothing to him. Nothing he would forgive.

Sephiroth announced his arrival and his judgment. He lifted the beast’s body in one arm and hurled it ahead and upward. The headless coeurl body crashed into two windows on the second uppermost floor, cracking one and shattering the other.

The men inside shouted and cursed. Objects within the room dropped to the floor. Light spilled out into the blackness outside, some shut off entirely. He could hear them fleeing the room and running into the halls within. They knew the threat immediately. Their attempts to elude him were over.

Their attempts to hide him were over. He was here. He was here. Finally. He was somewhere below.

Below his only desire was waiting.

Below, men were fleeing.

Below, two coeurls slunk silently to their posts, panting with fear.

Below many layers of steel, Sephiroth’s call was heard. 

-

[thetagsale]

Kid Fears

I can remember as young as three-years-old, Opal would get overwhelmed by her feelings and just scream. Nerve-racking, soul-shattering yells, high in pitch and sharp-edged enough to bring the house down. I thought it was a tantrum. I thought it was her big emotionality. I wrote my ass off about parenting methods I’d tried based on all the books. So many books. I wanted to share the wisdom of experience, but frankly, I didn’t feel any sort of extra intelligence from my experience of navigating the world of Opal’s emotions. Just heartache and exhaustion. 

She got older, but the bouts of screaming stayed with her like an invisible illness. When her feelings grew even the slightest bit beyond tepid, or plans changed abruptly (which is something I avoid as much as possible, but then, life.), or homework was challenging, or Ruth was too annoying, or what-have-you, I’d find myself reaching to steady the breakable vases as they did in Mary Poppins when the neighbor blew his cannon every hour on the hour. Batten down the hatches. 

Having a sibling certainly complicated things. I always feared the screaming was somehow damaging to the baby in the house. Our first foster daughter, Ericha, came to us because she had birth parents whose main mode of communication was to scream and hit. The last thing I wanted was for her new and safe home to be filled to the edges with the intermittent shriek-fests of her sister.

I can see myself putting the baby in her crib—Ericha, our first, who we had for a year, then Ruthy, who we adopted—and coming upstairs to calm Opal by just holding her. She’d push me away at first but then flop into my lap with a defeated sigh, weeping into my shoulder so much I’d feel like she’d need an IV drip to recover. I saw it in a movie about working in a child psychiatric unit. (I find I am always looking for glimmers of understanding and hope to apply to our situation, like panning for gold from thin air.) In the movie, the staff people would just hold these kids, as if they were squirming puppies in a blanket, firm but loving, to keep the child from hurting herself or anyone else. When I saw that, I cried. The rage and violence of these children eventually dissipated and they were left boneless and vulnerable in the lap of the staff member. 

God, so many years of it. Taking the time now to reflect, I feel a new sense of fatigued humility. It was never constant, her outbursts. There have been enough gaps in the weave not to put her in real therapy. (We’d consider it, reach out, even find someone to talk to, but then we’d have a collection of angst-free days and put that particular approach on the shelf.) 

Also, I had so much therapy as a kid (an older kid, but still) for my big emotions, my staggering ups and downs, that I always felt like I was a broken thing to be fixed. I have zero recollection of anyone trying to give me tools to work my particular disposition. I would have given anything for my parents to sit with me and say, How are things going for you? What’s it like for you in there? I love you just as you are AND we will work through this together. That’s what we’ve been trying to provide for Opal. I never ever in a million years want her to feel like she is a fucked-up thing. The concern of that has certainly guided our choices.

Here we are. Now. She just turned nine. The current method of working with the screaming was most recently to suggest that she go to her room to cool down and regroup. We moved her beloved guinea pig, Lightning, in there. We discussed it at our family meeting—she chose this as the best course of action when she loses control. But when it came down to it, when the emotions kicked in the door, all she wanted to do was talk about it. Her need to examine those emotional parasites piece by piece was all-consuming. She was unable to see how that method unfailingly exports her—almost instantly—to a very deep and dark place. She feels she is being negligent by taking her mind off of it, when in fact, her focus is like voluntarily gripping the anchor as it pulls her to the bottom.

God, I know about that approach all too well. Before children, I used to think journaling about my feelings was what needed to happen to work through my feelings. Perhaps that’s true, but only partly. Once written down, pen-to-paper, I missed the step of what’s next? How can I rise out of this? What can I do for others? And thus, I wound up cultivating a more engaged and deluxe mode of communicating about how fucked up I was. I got really really good at chasing my emotional tail. Having kids was the ultimate teaching in you just ain't got time to dwell in the muck.

It was then that I finally experienced what happens when emotions occur, acknowledged but uncoddled for lack of time. (I’m talking about the everyday emotions, here, not the heavy-hitters that DO need tending.) They PASS. Eureka. 

Even now, my instinct when I’m feeling shitty is to sit down and write about the shitty feeling. Pretty much across the board, that DOES. NOT. HELP. What does help? Connecting with a friend. Walking in the fresh air. Finding some art to linger over. Essentially, raising my gaze so that I can once again view beyond my own, personal, self-serving, survival-based bubble. 

This is all just to say that I have decade-upon-decade of experience with this for myself. 

So now, Opal is no longer given the choice. And as much as I’m not a fan of this is for your own good thinking, Opal’s emotions simply cannot be in charge of steering the ship of our entire household. How did that saying from my time in a twelve-step program go? You can’t fix your thinker with a broken thinker? Something like that.

Now, when the cannonball sounds and the screaming begins, I am quick and clean, tethered and steady in my predetermined course of action.

Honey, when you scream you lose the privilege of being in the same space as we are. Your feelings are welcome. Screaming is not. So it’s time to head up to your room and I will check on you in five minutes and be the one who decides when you are ready to calmly join us again. 

It used to be that she would go to her room to cool off and come back out when she was ready. NOPE. That only prolonged the painful process. She’d think she had calmed down, then come out and start the whole thing right up again and the back-and-forth to and from her room was a grueling and painful dance, leaving us all feeling defeated and assaulted.

So no, now I am in charge of saying when she can come out. And as pissed off as she was, initially, she seemed to see that she can regroup much quicker when she’s not also in charge of gaging if she has re-grouped enough yet. If that makes sense.

As I said, the wailing fits have been an occurrence in our home for at least six years. I remember blogging about them in my second parenting blog which was when Opal was two and three years old. There have been eras where a certain thing we are doing really seems to help quell her inner turmoil (and we go on a kick of feeling like badass parents), but inevitably the humbling and confusing time will come when what we are doing no longer seems to have any effect and the volume-dial on her outbursts is once again off the charts.

But, familiar as her episodes are in our family and our household, and such a major part of her childhood, they have never really had one obvious cause.

Except for the Fluid.

The Fluid is what Opal used to call the stomach Flu when she was younger, Kindergarten. That’s when she got it for the first time. Our entire house, including baby Ericha, got the stomach flu. It was nasty and took weeks before I felt confident that our house was no longer being tormented by the demon-virus. The next year, First Grade, Opal was out sick for a total of 40 days! She had the Fluid for exactly five of those days, the rest were generic viruses. Regardless, a phobia was born.

However, Opal’s Fluid-phobia always had a very different texture than her screaming. On the one hand, she had her regular outbursts which were completely unconcerned with volume and level of destruction. On the other hand was her fear of sickness: it was quiet, helpless, lots of tears, as if she wanted to hide from it all. 

Only now do I realize that they are each a side of the same coin.

It’s all fear. It’s all feeling a lack of control. It’s all having emotions that feel bigger than what her little body can process. The same story told in two very different ways.

Recently, during the last few weeks, Opal’s Flu Phobia (she no longer calls it the Fluid) has grown to a massive, suffocating beast. Most mornings, she will be going along fine and then say something like, “Here comes the fear again.” It’s heart-wrenching. Like the twinge in the back of my neck that tells me I’m about to have a headache; it’s so hard not to brace yourself against it, gritted teeth, white knuckles. Or to simply give up before it even starts, which is often the case with Opal. She sees the beast approaching and she lies down at its feet. Tears, paralysis, panic. 

Jesse and I agreed that something more has to be done. Something bigger than us from someone who is trained to guide us all along this rocky, unpredictable path. I suppose I always thought that since Opal was working with the same things I have worked with —and still occasionally work with—that I could help her through. But no. My experience does not translate. And I say with all the heart I can muster. 

Nov. 13, 2018