#similarly i have yet to been handed the world on a platter for being a man. maybe one day.

[vamptastic]

ngl the only part of the barbie movie i enjoyed was weird barbie. if they made a whole movie about kate mckinnon playing the visual representation of my childhood feelings on femininity i probably would have enjoyed it. i always loved my fucked up buzzcut leg missing barbies the most.

[lyrebirdswrites]

Shrödinger’s Nobara

So we got an update on how Nobara is doing. It was not the update I wanted to see.

My first impulse was to consider this a point blank confirmation of her death. I still think there’s a high chance she will not be recovering, and I would advise all Nobara stans to prepare emotionally for the possibility that she really is dead if you have not done so already. However, I also think it’s possible to make a case for her survival based on the information in this scene and the context from previous chapters, and I’m going to do my best to do so. Hopefully I can provide some comfort to anyone who might be freaking out over the implications here like I was at first.

Megumi doesn’t say she’s breathing or we don’t know or even it doesn’t look good - he says nothing at all. That does not fill me with confidence. But he doesn’t directly say she is gone either. This is a good time to remember the cardinal rule of character death; it’s not confirmed until we see the body. I think until we actually have indisputable proof of her death, we should continue operating under the assessment Nitta gave when he halted the damage caused by her wounds - don’t get your hopes up, but it’s not a zero percent chance.

I don’t consider Megumi’s pessimism to be indisputable proof. It’s damning, yes. But he is also highly subjective, inclined to assume the worst, and not an omnipotent force in the narrative. This isn’t me saying that the only reason there’s ambiguity is because she’s definitely still alive—that would be a wrong assumption to make. But if Akutami is still in two minds about what to do about her, or if he knows but doesn’t want to tell us, this scene is a neat way of sidestepping the need for a definitive answer right now. There’s enough plausible deniability in the framing of this exchange for Megumi’s answer to be read as she’s 100% dead, OR as she’s alive but in super fucking bad shape and it doesn’t look good. Whichever result it turns out to be, the scene can work in retrospect either way.

Which brings me to my not-retroactive interpretation of Yuuji’s immediate reaction. I think he would have been way more distressed if he perceived megumi’s silence as confirmation that she was without a doubt dead. He pulls himself together remarkably quickly for someone who full on had a mental breakdown mid fight at the sight of her injury. In the comments section over on readjujutsukaisen (credit where credit is due, not my analysis) commenter Asinine said “I think Megumi's non-response indicated the severity of her condition. I think Yuji's reaction revealed his pain followed by hope (clenched fist) she'll pull through.” That makes more sense to me than Yuuji thinking she’s actually dead and only having I get it!! to say about it before we rush on with the plot.

I’d really like to read the original raw version of this chapter, because it’s worth noting that the unofficial fan translation phrased Yuuji’s question like this: how is Kugisaki’s condition? It matters whether his question is past tense or present tense, because that positions Megumi’s answer as either past tense or present tense too. Megumi could be looking sad because, past tense, what happened to her was bad. Or he could be looking sad because, present tense, her condition is bad. I think the nuance there definitely affects how we as the audience should interpret this exchange and consequently Nobara’s chances. If anyone knows where I can read the raw scans please tell me.

Speaking of Nobara’s chances—structurally and narratively there is still more than enough room for her in the plot. When she was first taken out by Mahito, I figured she’d be fine because I thought her frequent references to people ‘messing up her beautiful face’ and her argument with Momo about scars on female jujutsu sorcerers/sexism in the jujutsu world were foreshadowing her having to live with that massive scar and a missing eye. If Akutami wants to continue exploring themes of feminism and sexism, as he has indicated through his characterisation of the broader zenin clan, Nobara now has a unique role to play in that aspect of the story: being treated differently after getting scarred.

Similarly, there are some interesting implications when it comes to her cursed technique and the current arc. Theoretically, she could use resonance on any of the newly awakened sorcerers/vessels and do some serious damage to The Brain, because they’re all strongly linked to him through the powers he gave them. She might provide an avenue to attack him later via that method—or Akutami might be deliberately sidelining her for the duration of this arc with the intent to have her recover later, because he saw this massive plot hole coming and he needs to thin out (cull) the crowd of awakened sorcerers first so she doesn’t have such easy access to a really powerful weakness in a major antagonist.

It’s also possible that he saw the plot hole coming and is killing her to fix it. But if that was the case, he wouldn’t have said in one of his interviews that he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether she was dead or not (?? That’s the translation I saw iirc, but I can’t vouch for its accuracy because I didn’t personally translate or cross check it myself).

Every other character’s death has been clear in a very gut punch kind of way, but ever since Nitta showed up this one has been SO ambiguous the whole way through. In my opinion, this scene does far more to increase the ambiguous tension than release it. It’s too vague. Akutami has been pretty good about giving his characters a fitting send off up to this point. I would be genuinely surprised if he broke the news about one of the main trio officially dying via one page in one chapter which doesn’t even give a status update though words, let alone through an actual drawing of her corpse/grave/ashes/funeral. Which loops me back to the cardinal rule of character death: it’s not confirmed until we see the body.

And let’s face it—if Akutami plans to keep Nobara alive, I am 100% sure he would drag the reveal out as long as possible and make it look as unlikely as possible in order to inflict Pain™ on his audience. Of course, if he plans to kill her off, the situation would look equally grim. But you know he wouldn’t hand us her recovery on a silver platter. Things seem bad (and like I said nobara stans this is your wake up call to start preparing for the worst case scenario now) but that doesn’t automatically mean that they are as bad as they seem.

In summary:

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 129 Thoughts

This month: More people screaming and dying.

Next month: Probably more people screaming and dying.

Eventually: Just a whole heck of a lot of screaming.

(Not dying because there will be no more people.

They will be dead.)

Sooooooooooooooo.

Uh.

This chapter has people screaming and dying in it.

As well as the continuing strangeness of actively rooting for Reiner and Annie.

Ayep.

Ding-dong, Magath is dead?

Yet again, we land on the problem of a chapter that is largely self-explanatory, and the perhaps deeper problem of people committing themselves to doing a thing once a month, even if they’re not sure they’re able to do said thing. There’s good stuff here, I’m just hesitant to start talking about it lest it comes out like a random spew of instantly forgettable bullet points.

Since I don’t care, I guess we’ll start with Magath dying.

I don’t care. Moving on!

Theo Magath is a man who has always cared for the children under his command. Even though they’re Eldian, he has routinely gone above the expected amount of effort in securing their safety. He is the one who worries and waits for Reiner, Annie, Bertolt, and Marcel to come home. He is the one who destroys the worst of the military he’s a part of so they can stop depending on titans. He cares.

What a fucking bastard.

Keith Shadis dies with him. After a life of trying to make himself special, putting lives at risk every step of the way, he finds an appropriate time to make his exit. He’s the one who raises every fighter out in the port. He’s the one who has watched as the other instructors kill them so that they can find the ones strong enough to make the cut.

He’s the one who picks Eren up and brings him back to his bed after he inherits his father’s burden.

One thing I do think is important to note, whenever I’m inspired to say, ‘Fuck Marley,’ is that Paradis is not great.

Paradis has child soldiers too. They’re just slightly older.

Paradis fully expects their soldiers to go out and die too. Their consent just skates through needing air quotes.

Paradis has a corrupt government run by self-interest -- until they have a coup.

Magath’s job, his entire career, has been to make the most of the enslaved Eldian lives he’s been handed on a platter. It is his job to train children up to murder people. If they are not good enough at murder, they will be fed to other children.

Shadis feels more comfortable. He’s been a reasonable authority figure for most of the manga, with his worst crimes being in his past, and even that reveal coming with a greater show of humanity than any other displayed that night. He tries to run Eren out of the military before he destroys himself. He worries for the boy, and gives a voice to the struggle of trying to be special when you’re most gifted at fucking up.

Paradis’ military, at the start of the main plot, gets its recruits via shaming teenagers into being willing to die, or starving teenagers into being willing to die.

The primary difference between it and Marley’s system is that in that section of the totem pole, the oppression level is relatively neutral. The wall systems are kind of fucked, the nobility is kind of awful -- but like. Their last genocide was what, two years ago? And it was killing poor people, not people people.

Everyone in Paradis’ military has to deal with the fact that they’re in a shrinking safe space and they’re either going to starve, or monsters are going to eat them. That is the great equalizing force. If their commanding officer fucks up, he is going to get eaten. If the person next to them fucks up, they are going to get eaten.

They are not crouching down, approaching tiny children, and explaining that it is for the good of humanity that they are the ones eaten because their blood is dirty. Anymore.

Fuck Marley. Fuck its internment camps, fuck its slavery, fuck its brainwashing, fuck how it turned Good Eldians and Bad Eldians into war rhetoric. Fuck just about everything it has to offer.

Paradis is fucked up in the spirit of everyone there being equally fucked (unless you’re rich) (or nobility). Marley is fucked up because it’s made being fascist, warmongering assholes a national policy.

So you have two men on a boat waiting to die. They’ve both sent children to their deaths. They’ve both pushed over the lines trying to let their uniqueness carry change instead of doing the difficult legwork it actually takes.

One of them is not an active agent of genocide.

One of them is.

They both have sad feelings.

It is sad.

The important part is however badly they fucked up, the traumatized children they’re leaving behind are about to be more traumatized, and they’ve realized what a bad thing this is.

Only not really because Keith did his job, did his first job badly enough to find a new job, did that new job, and has continued doing that new job up to the point where he’s blowing himself up, and has no particular qualms about any of that since he’s pretty much been acting his conscience the whole time.

I’m lingering on this because you have both people who trained up our primary cast making a choice for the good of humanity, and dying the same way. It is a clear and obvious parallel, and it is being milked.

But it’s one of those parallels that makes me twitchy the longer I look at it. Probably because of that conscience part. These men play the same role, but besides their stages having massive differences, their choices do as well.

Magath’s conscience doesn’t stop him from shouting racist rhetoric at a preteen on a battlefield. In his introductory scene.

Shadis’ conscience, however warped some of the intent is, leads to him quitting and passing his job up to someone more qualified.

...Essentially, Shadis is kind of a bastard for a lot of things, but Magath is a fascist bastard, and continues to be a fascist bastard even when he takes steps to overthrow a fascist regime, and I know and appreciate that Magath realizes this and feels bad about it, but it’s hard not to resent the manga comparing Shadis and Magath so strongly.

Magath’s fucked up a lot. It’s good he admits it.

Shadis feels like one more person who sees death as all he has to offer the world.

In a series that actively opposes that line of thought whenever it comes up, it’s really difficult not to find the whole dynamic frustrating. Yes, the manga doesn’t say these two people are the same. They’re just in the exact same boat making the exact same decision.

Like that other group over in their boat.

Shadis is looking to die. Magath is looking to make a last stand.

I don’t think I’m doing a great job of putting into words why it’s so aggravating for me, except, you know. Fuck Marley. Also Magath helped cause all of this. Keith’s sort of sat around feeling various forms of guilt for years over things he screwed up because he was trying so hard.

Shadis forfeits his life.

Every other time someone with that mindset is ready to die, it’s met with no, you’re not done yet.

Shadis doesn’t get that. He’s done. Magath is the only one there to tell him otherwise, and Magath has his own problems.

There’s a vibe here that these two old teachers have outlived their purpose. Their kids are grown, for better and worse, and they’re the ones who will control the turn of the future. I don’t oppose them making that decision, but in Shadis’ case, it really comes off as him being cool with whatever, now that he’s made his stand.

Ugh. I don’t like it, but articulating why is probably best represented by me sulking and crossing my arms. Artistically, I get it. They’re the same piece on opposite ends of a chessboard.

But they’re different people and aaaargh.

Anyway, we continue the proud tradition of making Gabi cry.

Sorry about your life, Gabi.

In other news, we continue to not have any way to stop Eren.

Like.

At all.

We have an estimate of four days before Eren succeeds in wiping out a continent.

Their only chance of stopping that is powering up an airship, using some of that good ol’ talk-no-jutsu, or killing Eren.

If they take the route of killing Eren, all of the Colossals he’s been ordering on their walk will stop being under his command. Because he will be dead. Meaning that the continent, as well as our heroes, will now have to contend with a wild hoard of Colossal Titans out for a stroll.

Which is bad.

It’s basically where Paradis started out, but worse in every possible way.

Even if they manage to have someone on their team eat Eren, there’s a good chance that OG Ymir might not react well to her savior being axed. There’s a similarly good chance that the ability to use the Founder’s power just won’t be functional.

So if they kill Eren, they will stop having intentional destruction.

Instead, we will have unintentional destruction, of which there will be a lot.

Leaving us with talk-no-jutsu.

When the last attempt at talk-no-jutsu led to Armin punching Eren and being bad at it. And Eren punching Armin and being less bad at it.

Basically, everyone’s really hoping that by communicating with Eren, they can somehow make this all go away. There is no evidence that this will work, and no evidence that any of the added backup plans will do anything but cause different problems, but by golly, they’ve completed step .5 of their 3-step plan to maybe changing their circumstances.

(Step 1: Get Air Boat Step 2: Fly Air Boat To Eren Step 3: Talk Eren Out Of Genocide)

BOY I SURE AM HAPPY FOR YOU GUYS PUTTERING ALONG WITH THAT FORWARD PROGRESS. WHAT CHAMPS. GOOD FOR YOU.

YOU’RE STILL FUCKED.

I AM SO HAPPY THAT WE ARE SPENDING ALL THIS TIME ON A PLAN THAT DOES NOT SOLVE THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF HOW COMPLETELY FUCKED YOU ALL ARE.

IT IS NICE THAT YOU ALL FEEL LIKE YOU ARE CONTRIBUTING USEFUL THINGS TO YOUR SOCIETY. YOU DO YOU.

YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY HELPING.

BUT MORE OF YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD FOR A GOOD CAUSE.

I’m not upset, I would just really like all of this to feel meaningful. Right now there’s a ridiculous amount of stress and dead bodies going into a goal that could easily end up pointless.

There’s merit to that as a story, but none of that stress lands properly, because the tension of “will they save the day or won’t they” isn’t dependent on what they’re doing here. The ticking clock might be making the characters stressed, but it’s not where the consequences lie.

I will continue to complain about this every month because I can.

In more positive news, Connie is best boi and no one appreciates him they way that they should.

Once upon a time, Reiner bullied Annie into taking a more active role in murdering Marco.

One of the arguments he used to provoke her was that she saved Connie’s life.

Not long after that, Reiner and some other recruits find themselves stranded in Utgard Castle, where a titan gets in and goes after Connie. Reiner charges in, gets his arm chomped on, and through everyone’s combined efforts, the titan gets shoved out a window.

Annie and Reiner both make the choice to save Connie’s life, even though it does nothing to benefit them.

In this chapter, beheaded and missing their arms, Connie swoops in and saves both of them.

The first taste of this technically goes to Mikasa, because she can’t help being a hero. She doesn’t like Annie. Annie is about the only human being whose existence can make her lose her temper. When a soldier gets behind Annie, Mikasa is there to back her up. It’s done casually and smoothly, because Mikasa’s just that good.

We’re still left with multiple shots of Annie staring at Mikasa.

Later followed with her staring at Reiner.

Annie and Reiner are used to being the traitors. They’re the ones their friends have every reason to hate. They’re the ones who spend years living with the victims of a war they brought to their shores. They’ve never expected forgiveness. They’re condemned, and almost welcome it.

Their trio interplay is never great. Reiner is trying too hard, and shielding Bertolt. Annie gets stuck with the grunt work, and knows they’re the bad guys. They don’t get along. They’re comrades, and allies, but their friendship is never portrayed as anything but their last lifeline.

Reiner and Bertolt are friends.

Annie’s the only one who has her fight with the Survey Corps alone.

This time, Reiner’s there, and he’s protecting her.

If you dig into any combination of these relationships, there’s not exactly a shortage of rot. They’ve all hurt each other, and they all know it.

But at the end of the day, they’re all just a bunch of damaged kids looking to be found.

None of the surviving cast is without a shoulder to lean on. They’ve made the decision to be there for each other, and as bleak as circumstances are, Annie’s face spends so much time this chapter shouting that she’s never been able to have that.

Even Magath, who goes off with the intent of dying alone, doesn’t.

There’s still some human warmth left in the world, and that’s what they’re trying to protect.

Please just do it with an actual plan, I’m begging you guys.

Also, Floch gets shot! So that’s nice.

I do not see a corpse.

That is less nice.

Isayama also gave Falco a fucking birdsona titan.

We’re not without things to cheer.

Tune in next month for more screaming and dead bodies.

[knives-out20]

City Of Stars - Erik Lehnsherr x Male!Reader

Fandom: X-Men

Pairing: Karmel Rosenstein (OC) x Erik Lehnsherr

Warnings: Swearing, Gay, Erik being genuinely happy,

Notes: Sorry I disappeared for a few weeks. Had a lower back injury thing that I won’t get into, and it led to me to not being able to go to school, sit down, etc, so I thought it best to take a break from writing until I got better. But now I’m back!! The song used is City Of Stars from La La Land- specifically the Hollywood Mix. No spellcheck, we die like men. Enjoy!

Karmel offered his hand to Erik, sunlight shining through the nearby window and into his dirty-blond hair. “May I have this dance?”

Erik scoffed, looking him up and down. “You may...but with what music?”

“You act like we’ve never danced in silence before, Ricky. If you’re that pissy about it, I could sing.” Karmel teased.

Erik took Karmel’s hand, pulling him a step closer. “That’d be lovely, actually.”

Karmel rolled his eyes, making the first move in their dance. “I call this one ‘City Of Stars’” he introduced. “City of stars, are you shining just for me? City of stars, there’s so much that I can’t see.” Karmel started, looking Erik in the eyes.

Erik quickly caught on. “By ‘city of stars’, you mean my eyes, don’t you, dear?”

“You’re no fun,” Karmel pouted, pushing Erik away with one hand, only to quickly pull him back in. “Who knows? I felt it from the first embrace that I shared with you,” he carried on, quickly pulling Erik in too close for comfort.

But close enough for Erik to place a gentle kiss on his neck.

Karmel closed his eyes, praising the moment for what it was before pulling away. “That now our dreams may finally come true,” he hummed, glancing out the window and over the direct view he had of Genosha. Karmel smiled softly, knowing that that lyric was more than true. Would he have liked his current status to have just a few altercations? Yes, definitely, no doubt about it- and Erik knows this, obviously. But Karmel’s the happiest he’s been in ages, and he feels that’s good enough for him.

“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?”

“About what?”

“You know what I mean, dove.”

Karmel’s lips formed a line in response. “I mean...yea, but- but it has nothing to do with you, so don’t even try to start on that shit.” He pointed at Erik, other hand cupping his lover’s cheek. Karmel’s thumb stroked the side of Erik’s face, in comfort. “I love where we’re at, right now, I really fuckin’ do. But you just...gotta give me a bit of time to adjust. I went from living like- like- like, you know how I lived, I don’t need t’explain again. To living on a remote, forest-y island. I went from Gatsby to General Zaroff, kinda, uh, basically. That’s a huge shift, compared to the multiple shifts I’ve gone through for the past few decades. You can’t really expect me to not be homesick of an old home, can you?”

Erik leaned into Karmel’s touch; he understood. “I suppose not.”

“E-Exactly, I’m a- I’m a bitchy kid, a privileged, rich, white guy who’s been handed everything and everything good on a silver platter since birth. I even had my shoes shined when I was a baby. I sound hella spoiled for missing that, so, like...I’m sorry.” Karmel shrugged.

“It’s alright, Karmel,” Erik whispered, taking Karmel’s hand in his own. “I’m just glad you’ve been enjoying this life so far.”

“I’m all over it.” Karmel agreed, that typical yet excited puppy-dog look on his face. “Anyway-” he cleared his throat, returning to the moment at hand. Slowly he began to dance with Erik once more. “City of stars, just one thing everybody wants,” Karmel chirped, pointing two fingers at Erik’s celestial eyes. “There in the bars, and through the smokescreen of the crowded restaurants. It’s love, yes, all we’re looking for is love from someone else,” he and Erik spun around the room, features softening down when they were in each others’ gaze.

Erik’s heart beat pitter-pattered down to a calm pace, being as he had the one thing that calmed him down, right here in his arms.

“A rush,” Karmel raised his eyebrows, “a glance,” he shyly glanced down, still not being able to handle Erik’s gaze for too long. Similarly to when he first met the man. “A touch,” Karmel’s fingers grazed Erik’s shoulder, followed by spinning Erik as he sang “a dance.”

“A look in somebody’s eyes, to light up the skies” Karmel looked up at the roof, which the sky hid, just above. He was sure that when Erik was born, a piece of the sky was taken, broken in half, and stored in his lovely eyes. Karmel wouldn’t take anything else for an answer; nothing else was a logical enough of an explanation to explain why Erik’s eyes were as ethereal as they were.

Deep, moody sometimes, clouded with the darkest of storm clouds when he was upset. But on the off-chance of Erik being in a good mood, his eyes showed it more than any feature on his body, Karmel knew this. They’d shine like the finest rhinestones, set perfectly into their sockets. One glance from Erik alone could tell a thousand stories that even the most articulate of authors could go out of business- in the same vein, Karmel feels that if he was to write about Erik’s eyes, it’d be a book series’ worth of run-on sentences. Erik’s eyes are one of his, if not than just his, most striking features. So very blue, that even the seas surrounding Genosha couldn’t compare, not in a million years or a billion universes. Erik’s eyes are more easy to get lost in than any maze or labyrinth imaginable, no matter how far and wide it could be. Erik’s eyes are the seventh wonder of the world, something to get prominently lost in the pages of history books. His eyes are something that should be seen by everyone, but Karmel rightfully wants the gift of seeing them all to himself. They give him such a high that weed has never given him, they’re his light, his map, his compass, he could make an altar for them and praise at it everyday, begging for salvation. 

Karmel clearly had a lot to say about Erik’s eyes. But to Erik’s face, he’d never say it. “To open the world and send it reeling. A voice that says ‘I’ll be here, and you’ll be alright’.”

“You’re the voice? Don’t deny it.” Erik muttered, shaking his head.

Karmel nodded proudly. ”I don’t care if I know, just where I will go, ‘cause all that I need’s this crazy feeling. A rat-tat-tat on my heart,” he crooned, tapping his finger on the left side of Erik’s chest, where his heart lay underneath. Karmel took Erik’s hand and dipped him smoothly, repeating his earlier chorus of this ballad about his beauty: Erik. “A glance,” he glanced away, “a dance.”

Erik pulled Karmel closely in his grip, never ever wanting to let go whenever he did. He’s had many opportunities in the past to be greedy about whatever he’s ever wanted, but he’s never been more greedy about anything except Karmel. This was something proven to be quite hard to do. 

Karmel’s from a long line of aristrocrats, the Rosenstein name being spoken of almost as much as any famous Tinseltown celebrity. Someone as rich and famous as a Rosenstein heir- especially one like Karmel- is hard to keep all to yourself. It’s like guarding a museum artifact, basically: sure, you have it protected in a glass case. But it’s a museum artifact, people are obviously going to look at it, talk about it, read about it, and know it exists. Erik is Karmel’s protective glass case, and the museum visitors are anybody in the world who know of the Rosenstein name.

In recent years, Erik know’s its been easier to be greedy over Karmel. Safe on their remote island filled with mutants, Grimm kicking it in the Rosenstein estate back on America’s mainland.

Karmel repeated the earlier verse following the first chorus, tapping Erik’s heart when that line came to once more. He sighed silently, exploring Erik’s facial features as if it’d be his last time to do so. “City of stars, are you shining just for me?” Karmel smiled expectantly. “City of stars...you never shined so brightly.”

Erik giggled, looking down for a moment.

Karmel’s and Erik’s dance slowed to a stop, their synchronized breaths filling the silence in the air. “Well?”

“Well...” Erik met Karmel’s eyes. “You really did waste your talent away in that library, Karmel.”

“Oh, come on!” Karmel exclaimed, playfully rolling his eyes. “Fuck off.”

“Karmel-” Erik laughed, kissing his nose. “The song was wonderful, Karmel.”

“Oh, so fuck the dance, huh?” Karmel joked.

“Karmel-”

“I’m joking” Karmel grinned. “I’m glad you like it...I love you.”

“I love you too, Karmel. ‘Til the end of time, remember?”

Karmel nodded obediently, spinning the ring on his left hand. “Even then, Erik, you’ll still be mine.”

[chain-unchained]

October 3

The sound of a gong rang out over the din of the Fair, as Alex smashed the strength tester yet again; with a grin, he held out his hand to the game operator, who forked over his winnings for ringing the bell. To his dismay, Haley—who he thought had been watching—had long since lost interest and was currently over at the fishing tent with Pam. His disappointment was all but forgotten as Gus walked by, carrying a platter of burger patties waiting to be cooked up for, of course, the all you can eat buffet.

Yes, it was that most wonderful time of year again: the Stardew Valley Fair. Countless visitors from far and wide traveled to Pelican Town, which seemingly overnight had transformed into a grand county fairgrounds. Game booths were set up throughout the town center, offering star tokens as prizes for winning, while a little kiddie coaster had been put up smack dab in the center. Up to the north was the buffet, where Gus was now grilling away not just burgers, but hot dogs, barbeque chicken and ribs as well, filling the air with a mouthwatering smell.

“Thank you, Mr. Gus~” Jas was all smiles as she accepted the bag of fresh spun cotton candy from Gus, wasting no time in tearing a piece off and popping it into her mouth. “Thank you Shane~” She added, as her godfather slipped Gus a fiver for giving Jas some extra.

“You’re welcome, squirt.” Shane ruffled her hair with a grin; he had been worried that the lure of the alcohol on offer would be too much for him to ignore, but it wasn’t so hard since he was focusing on Jas. “So, what do you think? Is this year’s fair better than last year’s?”

“Hmm…” Jas gave the question serious contemplation, tearing off another chunk of spun sugar while she mulled it over in her head. “… Yeah, it’s better.” She answered with a sage nod of her head. “I wish that there were other rides besides that dumb kiddie coaster, though.”

“Whaaaat? You love that coaster, though.”

“Not anymore. It’s for little kids, and I’m not a little kid anymore.” Jas paused, still looking thoughtful as she ate another clump of cotton candy. “… Vincent still likes it though. He’s too scared to ride by himself, so I guess I’d be okay with riding it to make him happy.”

Trying not to laugh at how obvious it was that she still enjoyed the ride, Shane ruffled her hair with a grin. “That’s pretty big of you. Might as well enjoy it while you can still fit in the cars.” He checked his wristwatch and saw that it was already nearing noon. “Well kiddo, I better go and switch places with Marnie so she can work on her grange display. You got enough pocket change to get what you wanna get?”  

Jas held up the small purple purse hanging at her side with an affirmative nod of her head. She had been saving and saving all year just for this fair, so she was quite set for the day. Still, that didn’t stop Shane from digging into his wallet and handing her another fiver for good measure.

“You remember the rules, right?” He asked, kneeling down to her level with no small amount of effort. Pelican Town was safe pretty much every day of the year, but the influx of visitors meant that the Fair was perhaps the most dangerous—everyone could still remember the disaster that was known as the ‘Jockstrap Incident’, loathe though they were to recall it.

“Yes, I remember.” There was more than a slight hint of exasperation in Jas’ voice. If there was one thing in the world she didn’t care for, it was being treated like a little kid. “Hurry up and go help Aunt Marnie alreadyyyy.”

She moved behind her godfather and gave him a good push towards the petting zoo to really get her point across, drawing a half-laugh from Shane as he followed the momentum granted to him. For some reason, he got the impression that Jas didn’t want to be babysat very much. ‘Damn, do kids grow up fast these days.’ He thought with a grin, winding his way through the somewhat oblivious crowds to relieve Marnie of her duties at the petting zoo.

 With hands that trembled from the sheer amount of nervous energy flowing through them, Ashe painstakingly placed his selections for his grange display into the bin, silently fretting to himself as to their layout and orientation; to his right, Marnie too was hard at work making her ranch display look its best, with a massive and admittedly impressive cheese wheel as the centerpiece. To her right was Willy, who was piling high the freshest of fresh fish caught at dawn that morning, and to Ashe’s left was Percy, surrounded by an air of confidence while his own was put together. There were other grange displays, too, being set up by various visitors from throughout the valley—all of whom had similarly intimidating offerings.

Up until last night, Ashe had nothing but the utmost confidence in himself; he had been toiling endlessly ever since he’d learned about the competition, secure in his belief that he was going to win. Yet now that he was surrounded by his competition, beholding their entries with his own eyes, that confidence was evaporating faster than ice beneath the blistering summer sun. Compared to Marnie’s animal product focused display, and to Percy’s all encompassing one featuring the very best finds from the mines alongside pristine farm and ranch products, Ashe’s crops, eggs, milk and gems looked like amateur hour.

‘Maybe I tried to do too much…’He found himself thinking, anxiously fussing with the arrangement in the faint hopes that somehow changing the layout would make it seem more impressive. Would he have done better if he’d narrowed his focus to just one or two areas?

He was so caught up in fretting over his chances that he didn’t notice Marnie had finished preparing her display and was now taking a good gander at his. For a first timer, she thought he had done a fantastic job. “Looking pretty good there, kiddo.” She spoke up, making him nearly jump out of his skin from fright. “Nerves getting to you?”

“M-Maybe just a little.” Pressing his hand against his chest, Ashe took a deep breath to calm himself; hearing her voice helped to bring him back down to Earth for the moment. “Thank you. But I’m pretty sure that cheese wheel of yours is going to win.”

They both took a moment to gaze upon the magnificent artisanal creation taking up most of Marnie’s display, and Marnie couldn’t help but grin at the sight of it. “I’m pretty proud of it, if I do say so myself. Those eggs you brought are sure gonna give me and everyone else a run for our money, though.” She gave the young farmer a reassuring smile. Though it had been close to ten years since her first entry into the fair, she could still recall that almost strangling fear that she had felt, and she felt more than a little pity for the kid. A little confidence boost went a long way in situations like that.

Truth be told, he didn’t really believe what she said, but he didn’t want to let it show just how much he was doubting himself at this point. So he pushed a smile onto his face. “Haha, you really think so? If anything, it’s thanks to you and Shane. Honestly…” The smile began to slip away; perhaps because of his anxiety, perhaps it was something else, but… it felt like there was an icy cold tendril winding its way around his heart. “I owe a lot to you guys. All of you. I want to be able to say that I could have made it this far on my own. But that’d be a lie.”

Turning away from Marnie, whose expression had fallen a little at the oddly somber, melancholic words coming from him, he looked to the display that seemed so paltry to him now. Even still, he relied so much on others—to farm, to learn, to just exist. How long… how long would he have to depend on them? When would he be strong enough to stand on his own two feet? “…. I really do owe everything to you, and Shane, and Jas.” He murmured, turning to look at Marnie with another smile. “Thank you for putting up with me for all this time~”

“Kiddo…” Marnie didn’t like the feeling that she got as she listened to him speak. It reminded her far, far too much of the way Shane used to be, the same sort of language, the same undertones of loathing, anxiety, doubt, hopelessness. “C’mon now, you should know by now that there’s nothing to put up with. You’ve been an angel of a neighbor to us. Heck, you’ve been a literal angel for Shane.” She wrapped her arm around Ashe’s shoulders and gave him a friendly squeeze. “Besides, you’re what? 19 years old? You can’t just expect yourself to have everything figured out right out of the gate.”

The sensation of being drawn close brought a measure of comfort to Ashe. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to stop and breathe; the scent of lavender and lilac filled his nostrils, and suddenly he found himself in a clinical white room, heard the beeping of machines, felt his mother’s cold hand in his own as the scent of her perfume overwhelmed him. It was only for the briefest of moments, with the sound of the gong going off as Alex smashed the strength tester again pulling him back into the present. But that moment, to him, felt like an eternity…

“Ashe?” Marnie snapped her fingers in front of his face, more than a little concerned with the way the color had drained from his face; she practically felt him come back to reality, his entire body giving a shudder. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Seeing how concerned she was, Ashe really tried to pull himself together. “I…. Y-Yeah, I’m alright.” He assured with the best, most sincere smile he could muster. He didn’t want to worry her. “Honestly.”

“You sure don’t look alright.” Wholly unconvinced, Marnie gave his shoulders another squeeze. “… Why don’t you go and talk a walk, get away from the crowds for a bit? The competition’s not gonna start for awhile yet.”

“That’s….” Ashe’s voice trailed off; after a few moments’ contemplation, he nodded. “You know what, I think I will actually.” He glanced longingly over to the petting zoo; what he really wanted to do was go over there and play with the cute animals on display, but there were so many people and children crowded around it that there was just no way it was going to happen. Especially not when he was a mess like this.

Marnie smiled and patted him on the shoulder as he headed off down towards the beach. It had been half a year since Ashe moved to the valley, and she had never seen him like that before. As much as she wanted him to open up to her and be able to let out whatever it was he was bottling up, she knew it wouldn’t happen. The only person that he would do that with was Shane. Deciding that this was more important than her display, she squeezed her way in and around the oblivious tourists piling into the town square, gradually making her way to the petting zoo while marvelling at how rude people were these days.

“Hey hey—HEY! The animals have to stay in the pen!” Shane’s voice cut sharply over the din of the crowds as he pried a poor little lamb from the hands of a kid who thought they were free to take. “This isn’t an adoption pen.” Yoba, he didn’t know if this was better or worse than his time working Black Friday back when he was a floor associate at Macy’s in college… At least there wasn’t a Karen demanding to see his manager for daring to tell her little darling to keep his hands off the merchandise.

…Maybe things weren’t so bad, though. Aside from the kid with the sticky fingers, most of the folks were just enjoying the petting zoo, lavishing affections on the baby farm animals. Shane was never fond of children, if he was honest. He didn’t know how to handle them, and deep down there was a part of him that was afraid of somehow breaking them. It was only when Jas came along that he finally got why people had children—to marvel in their achievements, to laugh at the silly things they said, to watch as they learned about the world around them and grew up… So, yeah, maybe he didn’t completely hate kids like he used to anymore. Still wasn’t super keen on them, though.

A finger lightly tapped him on the shoulder, making him realize he’d been completely lost in his thoughts for the past few minutes; turning around, he relaxed a little when he saw Marnie standing behind him. “That didn’t take long. Got the display set up how you want it?”

“Yes, the display’s all set to go.” There was something in Marnie’s tone that worried him. “Ashe could really use your company right now, I think.”

“Did something happen?”

“I have no idea. To be honest….” She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment before opening them to look back up at her nephew. “Well, to be honest I think you should get your butt down to the beach and talk to him.”

“Yeah, yeah I’m going.” Shane stepped around her briskly, practically pushing his way through the crowds in his haste towards the south. He had no idea what was going on, but that wasn’t going to stop him from finding out.

 The roar and din of the fair quieted to a low hum, nearly drowned out by the ocean waves as they gently lapped against the shore and the cries of the seagulls who soared overhead. It was calm, and peaceful; despite the cold air blowing in off of the ocean, Ashe stood silently at the water’s edge, gazing out at the endless blue. Lost in a world of his own.

He didn’t hear the sound of footsteps behind him. It was only when Shane came to stand beside him that he came back down to earth. “Shane…?” He asked, his voice soft enough to nearly be drowned out  by the waves.

“I’m right here, bud.” Shane tucked his hands into his pockets as he briefly glanced to him. “What’s on your mind?”

For a long minute, Ashe didn’t say a word. “I don’t know.” He simply admitted. “I just… I don’t know. When I was setting up my display, and I saw what everyone else had brought, I…. guess I realized that I’m not some wonder farmer who’s gonna sweep the competition. I talked so much bullshit to Percy about beating him, but everything he put out there looks better than anything I could hope to produce. And not just him. The stuff that Marnie had from your guys’ ranch looked so high quality. Everything on display from everyone looked wonderful.”

There was a long pause. “… What have I been doing all this time?” He whispered. “If I can’t win a stupid competition, what hope do I have to save Grandpa’s farm?”

“Bugaboo.” Shane reached out and took hold of his hand. “It’s just a fair competition. This isn’t some be all end all judgement of your farming skills.”

He knew what Ashe was feeling. Back before they met, that was how he used to drive himself into the ground with anxiety—the constant questioning of his worth, wondering why he was even trying, comparing himself to everyone else around him. He got that feeling. “You’re still a kid. Sure, you don’t act like it most of the time—hell, sometimes I forget that you can’t even rent a car yet—but you’re still young. Everyone overestimates themselves when they’re young. That’s just a part of growing up. You fall, you pick yourself back up, and you move on. Well, you’re supposed to anyway. You and I both know it’s not so easy… you get what I’m trying to say though, right?”

“… Not really.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’m trying to say either.” Shane sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair. “… Whatever the outcome of the fair is, there’s always next year. And I know for a fact that next year you’ll crush the competition no matter what.” He looked to Ashe and gave his hand a squeeze. “And besides, they haven’t even judged the displays yet. You’ve still got a shot.”

Ashe managed to smile. “Shane, you haven’t even seen my display. I really don’t think I’m going to win.” He took a breath and looked back out to the ocean stretched out before them. “… But you’re right. It’s just a competition. I went and talked myself into a panic over something that doesn’t even matter again. But at least I know how much farther I have to go to save the farm.”

“Uh huh.” Shane shifted closer and loosely wrapped his arm around Ashe’s waist. “And what about how far you’ve come? I ain’t gonna let you just overlook all that work you’ve put in so far. You have every right to be damn proud of that farm.”

“Hehe…  it does look pretty good these days, doesn’t it?”

“Better than what I could do.” Shane gave him a gentle squeeze. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah… Can we stay here for a little longer? I don’t feel like dealing with the crowds right now.”

He didn’t need to ask. Shane didn’t mind staying at the beach for the time being. They couldn’t stay for much longer, though; the bite of the chilly wind soon drove them back towards the town center, back towards the throngs of people and the noise they brought with them. The crowds had migrated towards the buffet area by then, drawn in by a pie eating competition with a nice fat 5k G first place prize. Thanks to that, the petting zoo was far less crowded; Ashe was able to finally get all those anxieties out by petting the baby animals like he’d wanted to.

 Before long, Lewis announced over megaphone that the grange competition judgements had been made, asking all the contestants to return to their displays so the awards could be handed out. The butterflies made a comeback in Ashe’s stomach at the announcement, but they weren’t as bad this time around.

It came as both a surprise and a letdown when Lewis called his name for third place. There was still a part of him that had been hoping for first place, even though he knew it wasn’t going to happen. And there was a part of him that didn’t think he’d even place at all, so he couldn’t help the tiny bit of pride as Lewis handed him the third place ribbon and congratulated him.

Second place rightfully belonged to Marnie and her awe-inspiring cheese wheel, and she graciously accepted the silver ribbon placed into her hands by the mayor. And no surprise to anyone present, the gold first place ribbon was awarded to Percy, who had never doubted that he come out victorious in the end.

“Well, at least he’s not rubbing it in your face.” Sebastian commented, having made his way over to Ashe with Sam and Abigail as the competition wound down and the displays were being packed up. “Easy to be gracious when you’re the winner, though.”

“Hey, third place is still pretty good though!” Abigail elbowed Ashe with a reassuring grin.

“Yeah, especially considering how long you’ve been doing this whole farming thing.” Sam draped his arm around Ashe’s shoulders and gave him a grin of his own. All three of them had seen their friend disappear onto the beach earlier; they could tell that he was stressing out and wanted to support him the best they could.

To their surprise, Ashe nodded with a smile, turning the bronze ribbon over and over in his hands. “Yup. Percy earned the win, and Marnie deserved second place, so I’m happy with third.” Seeing the way they were all trying to lift his spirits up, he realized how much he must have worried the people that cared about him. He didn’t like knowing that he’d done that to them, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel just a little bit happy that they cared so much. “Congratulations on second, Marnie!” He called, as Marnie pulled the cart carrying her entered goods off.

“Hey, how much for that cheese wheel?!” Sam inquired enthusiastically; he loved cheese more than was healthy, and there was something novel about the thought of owning a cheese wheel that weighed more than his kid brother.

Marnie laughed and stopped to look at the teens. “Not for sale, kiddo!” She rebuked with a grin of her own. “She’s going into the cellar to age for a few years. You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.”

“What would you even do with a cheese wheel that big?” Sebastian asked his friend as the portly woman resumed walking.

“Brag about it, duh!”

Ashe fell quiet as he and Seb and Abigail all began to debate the ethics of owning that much solid cheese. After several minutes, he slipped away from his display, walking slowly over to where Percy was packing up his. “Congratulations on winning, Percy.” He praised with a slightly forced smile, making the posh farmer pause and look to him in genuine surprise. “You knocked the competition out of the park.”

“… Well, thank you.” It took Percy a few moments to regain his composure. He certainly hadn’t been expecting his rival of all people to come and congratulate him. “I have to admit, yours was quite impressive as well. Not that there was ever any doubt that I’d win,” he resumed packing up his display, “but I wasn’t expecting you to pull something that refined together.”

It was Ashe’s turn to be surprised. He… was talking to the same Percy that lived next door to him, right? Because it didn’t seem like it right now. “… Thank you. Next year, I’m going to win for sure.”

He expected Percy to point out how he’d made that claim this year; to his surprise, Percy just chuckled and smirked to him. “I expect you to give me a run for my money. Victory tastes much sweeter when you’ve worked to earn it.”

It had to be something in the water. Ever since he’d come to this backwater place, Percy had changed. Seeing these hicks and hillbillies live their lives, work and toil for the little they had and be happy for it, really had gotten him to thinking. Not that he’d ever say anything to them, of course; after all, he was there on a job of his own, and in the end, he had to emerge victorious just like he had today. But damn if he didn’t feel a little bad about what was going to happen when he won…

[bottomofthemeniscus]

Wedding Day Dreams from 2016

Wedding Day Dreams

Since I was nine years old I have been fantasizing about my wedding. It was my favorite daydream topic, and I spent way too much time thinking about it for someone of such a young age. By the time I was eleven I had drawn sketches of what my cake and dress were going to look like, and by the time I was thirteen I had started imagining and drawing out my venue. Both my parents found it amusing, and my mom even started helping me plan out other details by explaining which dress shapes she thought I would look best in and what color flowers would be appropriate for the different seasons.

But when I turned sixteen, I realized that my dream wedding was going to change dramatically. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plans for a beautiful dress and a delicious cake, but it’s who I’m marrying that has changed. I will not be saying “I do” to a groom, but to another bride. And because of this, my parents want nothing to do with my wedding...or me.

I continued to plan my wedding throughout my teenage years though, eventually getting focused on food. What food would I have at my wedding? What meal would be special enough for my wife-to-be and me to share on this special night? In order to answer these questions, I became obsessed with food. I began to cook and experiment with different flavors and ingredients. After a few years, I took a chance and I started a small restaurant, and then I started to cater weddings.

That’s where I am now, 28-years-old and already an entrepreneurial business woman. If only that was what my parents saw in me.

“Well, that’s all the food,” Paige says to me. She’s my partner in crime when it comes to running this business. She’s also my fiancée.

We’re currently working a wedding for some friend of a friend of Paige’s who heard about us. Dinner was over now, all the guests full and happy. It went well if I do say so myself.

“Yeah, but we still have all the cleaning up to do,” I say.

“Well, maybe you should take a break.”

“No, no it’s okay.”

“Come on, Sam. It’s okay, I can take care of it. I know you like to watch.”

It sounds creepy when she puts it that way, but I do like to watch the weddings. I like looking at whatever marvel the wedding cake is, and taking notes about the choice of flowers and centerpieces. I also like watching the happy bride and groom, and their parents, even if it always makes me sad. I suppose it’s a way for me to imagine how my parents would act if they ever came to my wedding, for me to have that experience vicariously.

“All right,” I say with a shrug and guilty smile. I step out of the kitchen and into the heart of the celebration. Right out in front of the doors to the kitchen, I see the banquet table I had set up earlier in the night being taken down, platters with varying amounts of food being cleared away by my employees. Nearby is another table with a five-tiered mountain of fondant-covered cake, waiting to be cut later in the night. I walk over to it and see the bouquet of red and yellow sugar flowers adorning the top of the cake and cascading down the tiers on one side. It is gorgeous and I love the decorations, but I can’t imagine having a cake that size and I wonder what it must have cost. I take my eyes away from it and step further out into the room.

The wedding venue is inside an old firehouse, I believe as homage to either the bride or groom, as one of them works as a firefighter. The walls are all made of brick, giving the place its own charm and character. The only decorations hung from the walls are strings of white Christmas lights that are strung around the building, lighting the place in a homey and magical way.

Within the walls of the firehouse, the layout of the wedding is set up fairly traditionally, and similarly to how I would set up my wedding. There is a DJ up on a makeshift stage to my left, with a long head table for the wedding party directly below it. In the center, two ornate chairs, that appear more like thrones, are set for the bride and groom. In front of the head table are a cluster of about 20 other round tables for the wedding guests. Each table is adorned with a decorative candle in the center that casts beautiful, spiraling shadows on to the place settings. The tables are setup to allow an empty space in the middle, where it seems everyone in the wedding is currently gathered. It is most likely the dance floor. I don’t know for sure until a few people in the crowd shift and I peek through the heads of the crowd and see a wisp of white float by. I realize that the crowd must be watching the bride and groom dance their first dance.

That was my favorite topic of my fantasies as I got older, the first dance song. My parents danced to “Color My World” by Chicago at their wedding. It is a beautiful song and I always said that I would love to find a song just as sweet. However, my non-traditional fiancé wants to rock out to Smash Mouth’s version of “I’m a Believer” instead. But, I am still not convinced I want that to be our first dance.

I don’t know the song that this couple is dancing to, but it is slow and calming. As the song starts to wind down, people begin to disperse and head back to their seats, giving me a better view of the dance. It is just as sweet as the song they are dancing to. The bride and groom are standing arm in arm, gently swaying back and forth. As the final chord of the song is played, the groom dips his bride and plants a kiss on her. I feel a dopey smile spread across my face at the cheesy romanticism.

“Let’s give a round of applause to the bride and groom!” I hear the DJ announced. The crowd, including myself, obliges his request and begins to applaud. “Ok folks, if the bride would be so kind as to find her father, we will begin the father-daughter dance.”

I see a man make his way out onto the dance floor and hug the bride. Another song I don’t recognize starts to play, and the bride and her father begin to dance. The sight is beautiful, but as I watch the two of them dance, a pang of sorrow hits me and begins to well up inside of me, until it feels like I am drowning in it.

I am hit with memories of my dad. Old memories, from when I was a kid; we were really close. He was the one who raised me as a baby, and my mom the one who was always working. He would take me to the park all the time as a kid, and every Friday after school we would go get ice cream from the ice cream truck that was always parked around the corner from my house. He was always there for me with a hug when I needed it, and he was always there to support me.

I had always loved the idea of my dad and me sharing a dance together on my wedding day. I imagined us swaying back and forth to music; tears forming in both of our eyes, sharing a father-daughter moment unlike any other that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. But, of course, that dream would have to stay a dream, because my father no longer loved or supported me.

He was the one who told me I was an abomination when I was sixteen years old.

He’s the one who kicked me out the day that I turned eighteen, without saying a word other than “get out.”

He is the one who never answers my calls on Christmas, or birthdays.

And he will never dance with me at my wedding.

Thinking about my dad feels like taking a gunshot wound to the heart. Emotions swell up inside me, and soon I feel the tears bubbling up in my eyes and I see the lights on the dance floor start to go blurry. It does not take long for the tears spill over and run down my cheeks. I cover my eyes to hide the fact that I’m crying.

Every time I come to a wedding, I remember that my parents, and much of the rest of my family, no longer want me to be a part of their lives. I have given up all hope in them, yet I still cry when I think about it. All my childhood wedding fantasies involved my family. My dad walking me down the aisle, and me looking over at my mom, blotting tears from her eyes as I stand at the altar. Having my aunts and uncles party into the night at my reception and making memories that we could share during future family holidays. Thinking about it makes the tears fall from my eyes faster.

I feel an arm wrap around me while my eyes are still buried in my hands. “Sam?” the voice says.

I look up and see Paige staring at me, concern and compassion written on her face.

“Oh, Sam,” she says as she wraps me into a hug.

“I just wish…” I start to choke out

“I know, I know. I do too,” she responds, not even needing me to complete my thought. She pulls me out of the hug for a second and wipes away the tears on my cheeks.

Paige has been with me through all of this. She was my first girlfriend; I met her when I was 15, and she has stuck with me ever since. I don't know what she saw in me back then. She was cool and looked like a badass to me with her short, blonde hair that always dyed funky colors. I was just a shy, book nerd who spent most of her free time in the library.

I remember the day she first talked to me. It was raining outside, and I think that was why she had come in. I was sitting in a bean bag chair that was in the school’s library, reading a fantasy novel during our lunch break. I didn’t notice her right away, as my book was holding my attention, but eventually I looked up and she was standing right in front of me, watching me. I was actually a little scared of Paige at first, worried she was going to try to sell me drugs or ask me to go vandalize the school. I had never talked to her before, but she had a certain vibe that made me think she was a bad influence. That changed though once we started talking.

She asked me what I was reading, which prompted her to sit next to me and start a small conversation about the book. She later told me that she actually had no interest in the book at all; she just wanted an excuse to talk to me because she thought I was cute.

I didn’t know I was gay until I met her, but it did not take me long to realize that that I could never leave her again. With her, all my worries floated away. She helped me in high school when some stupid kid decided to tell the whole school that we were going out. She was standing by my side when I told my parents the truth, even as they threw books and water glasses at us. When I was officially kicked out of my house at eighteen, she invited me to move in with her family, who has always been more supportive.

“You can always dance with my dad at our wedding,” she says, keeping her arms wrapped around me.

“If he’s not passed out drunk by that time,” I reply back through tears. Paige’s dad had a reputation for getting plastered at parties. Paige’s 21st birthday was the worst; they were both out cold before midnight.

“Well, that’s why I keep telling you that we can’t have an open bar,” she says smiling.

“Now is not the time for wedding planning,” I say, pouting, although part of me realizes this is a lame comeback considering that I have been thinking about our wedding throughout the night.

“Oh contraire, look around you. This is the perfect place to plan a wedding! We’re literally at a wedding! ”

I look up again and see the bride and her father continuing their dance. I can see the father tearing up. I feel the tears coming back to my eyes again.

“Okay, never mind,” Paige says, grabbing my chin and turning it back towards her. “I was only kidding anyway. Jeez. It’s a wonder I let you out to watch. Every time you end up a weeping mess!”

As if on cue, I start sobbing again. Paige pulls me closer and I hold her for support, staining her shirt with tears and streaked mascara.

“It’s okay. I still love you,” she says stroking my hair affectionately as I cry into her shoulder. After a minute she props me up so I’m standing up straight, wipes the tears off my cheeks once more, and kisses me.

Her kiss brings me out of my crying spell and I try to compose myself. I take a few deep breaths to calm down, “Alright. I’ll be alright.”

“There’s my Sammy-Wammy,” she says. I lightly punch her in response. I hate the nick-name. “Fine, sorry, Sam.”

“Come on,” I say “Let’s get back to work.”

“Hey!”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” I say, and we walk hand in hand back to the kitchen, a small smile beginning to grow on my face, the kind of smile only someone you love can bring to you.

[spamzineglasgow]

(HOT TAKE) Notes on a Conditional Form by The 1975, part 1

In the first instalment of a two part dialogic HOT TAKE of The 1975′s latest album, Notes on a Conditional Form (Dirty Hit, 2020), Maria Sledmere writes to musician and critic Scott Morrison with meditations on the controversial motormouth and prince of sincerity that is Matty Healy, the poetics of wrongness, millennial digression and what it means to play and compose from the middle.

Dear Scott,

> So we have agreed to write something on The 1975’s fourth studio album, Notes on a Conditional Form (Dirty Hit/Polydor). I have been traipsing around the various necropoli of Glasgow on my state-sanctioned walks this week, listening to the long meandering 80-minute world of it, disentangling my headphones from the overgrown ferns, caught between the living and dead. Can you have a long world, a sprawling fantasia, when ‘the world’ feels increasingly shortened, small, boiled down to its ‘essentials’? Let’s go around the world in 80 minutes, the band seem to say, take this short-circuit to the infinite with me. I like that; I don’t even need a boat, just a half-arsed WiFi connection and a will to download. I’m really excited to be talking with you, writing you both about this; it’s an honour to connect our thoughts. I want writing right now to feel a bit like listening, so I write this listening. When my friend Katy slid into my DMs on a Monday morning with ‘omg the 1975 album starts with greta?????????’ and then ‘what on earth is the genre of this album ?!’ I just knew it had to happen, this writing-listening, because I was equally alarmed and charmed by the cognitive dissonance of that fall from Greta’s soft, yet urgent call to rebel (‘The 1975’), into ‘People’ with its parodic refrain of post-punk hedonism that would eat Fat White Family on a Dadaesque meal-deal platter ‘WELL, GIRLS, FOOD, GEAR [...] Yeah, woo, yeah, that’s right’. Scott, you and I went to see The 1975 play at the Hydro on the 1st of March, my last gig before lockdown. I’d been up all night drinking straight gin and doing cartwheels and crying on my friend’s carpet, and the sleeplessness made everything all the more lush and intense. Those slogans, the theatrical backdrops, the dancers, the lights, the travellator! Everything so EXTRA, what a JOURNEY. And well, it would be rude of me not to invite you to contribute to this conversation, as a thank you for the ticket but also because of your fortunate (and probably unusual) positioning as both a classically trained musician (with a fine-tuned listening ear) and fervent fan of the band (readers, Scott messaged me with pictures of pre-ordered vinyl to prove it).

> It seems impossible to begin this dialogue without first addressing the FRAUGHT and oft~problematic question of Matty Healy, the band’s frontman, variously described as ‘the enfant terrible of pop-rock’ and ‘outspoken avatar’ (Sam Sodomsky, Pitchfork), ‘enigmatic deity’ (Douglas Greenwood for i-D), ‘a charismatic thirty-one-year-old’ and ‘scrawny’, rock star ‘archetype’, not to mention ‘avatar of modern authenticity, wit, and flamboyance’ (Carrie Battan, The New Yorker). ‘Divisive motormouth or voice of a generation?’ asks Dorian Lynskey with (fair enough) somewhat tired provocation in The Guardian, as if you could have one without the other, these days. ‘There are’, writes Dan Stubbs for The NME, ‘as many Matty Healys here as there are musical styles’. So far, so postmodern, so elliptical, so everything/yeah/woo/whatever/that’s right. Come to think of it, it makes sense for The 1975 to draft in Greta Thunberg to read her climate speech over the opening eponymous track. Both Matty and Greta, for divergent yet somehow intersecting reasons, suffer the troublesome, universalising label of voice of a generation. Why not join forces to exploit this label, to put out a message? I’ve always thought of pop music as a kind of potential broadcast, a hypnotic, smooth space for desire’s traversal and recalibration. More on that later, maybe. What do you think?

> You can imagine Matty leaping out of a cryptic, post-internet Cocteau novelette (if not then straight onto James Cordon’s studio desk), emoji streaming from his fingertips like the lightning that Justine wields in Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia (2011); but the terrifying candour of the enfant terrible is also his propensity to wax lyrical on another (bear with my clickhole) YouTube interview about his thoughts on Situationism and the Snapchat generation. It feels relevant to mention cinema right now, if only in passing, because this album is full of cinematic moments: strings and swells worthy of Weyes Blood’s latest paean to the movies, but also a Disneyfication of sentiment clotted and packed between house tracks, ballads and rarefied indie hits. Nobody does the interlude quite like The 1975. Maybe more on that later, also.

> Where do I start though, how to really write about this, how to attain something like necessary distance in the space of a writing-listening? Matty Healy, I suppose, like SPAM’s celebrated authorial mascot, Tom McCarthy, poses the same problem of response: how to write about an artist whose own critical commentary is like an eloquent, overzealous and self-devouring, carnivorous vine of opinion?  

> Now, let’s not turn this into a discussion about who wears pinstripes better (we can leave that to readers - these are total Notes from the Watercooler levels of quiche). There seems to be this obsession with pinning (excuse the pun) Matty down to a flat surface of multiples: a moodboard, avatar, placeholder for automatic cancellation. He’s the soft cork you wanna prod your anxieties through and call it identity, you wanna provoke into saying something bizarrely, painfully true about life ‘as it is now’. Healy himself quips self-referentially, ‘a millennial that babyboomers like’. I don’t really know where to start really, not even on Matty; my brain is all over the place and I can’t find a critical place to settle. I’m lost in the fog and the stripes, some stars also; I haven’t even washed my hair for a week. Funnily enough, in 2018 for SPAM’s #7 Prom Date issue I wrote a poem called ‘Just Messing Around’ where the speaker mentions ‘pinning my eye to the right side / of matt healy’s hair all shaved / & serene’ and you don’t really know if it’s the eye that’s shaved or the hair, but both I guess offer different kinds of vision. Every time I google the man, IRL Matty I mean, I am offered a candied proliferation of alluring headlines: ‘The 1975’s Matty Healy opens up on his beef with Imagine Dragons’, ‘The 1975’s Matty Healy savagely destroys Maroon 5 over plagiarism claims’. Perhaps the whole point is to define (or slay?) by negation. Hey, I’ll write another poem. The opening sentence comes from Matty’s recent Guardian interview.

Superstar

I’m not an avocado, not everyone thinks I’m amazing. That’s why they call me the avocado, baby was a song released by Los Campesinos! in 2013, same year as the 1975’s debut. In the am I have been wanting to listen and Andy puts up a meme like ‘The 1975 names their albums stuff like “A Treatise on Epistemological Suffering” and then spends 2 hours singing about how hard it is to be 26’ and I reply being 26 IS epistemological suffering (isn’t that the affirmative dismissal contained in the title, ‘Yeah I Know’) I mean only yesterday I had to ask myself if it’s true you can wish on 11:11 or take zinc to improve your immune system or use an expired provisional license to buy alcohol like why are they even still asking I thought indie had died after that excruciating Hadouken! song called ‘Superstar’ which was all like You don’t like my scene / You don’t like my song / Well, if you Somewhere I’ve done something wrong it seems a delirious, 3-minute scold of the retro infinitude of scarf-wearing cunts with haircuts, and yeah sure kids dressed as emos rapping to rave is not the end of the world, per se, similarly I had to ask myself is there a life in academia is there a wage here or there, like the Talking Heads song And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here? Good thing I turn 27 next month Timothy Morton often uses the refrain, this is not my beautiful house this is not my beautiful wife to refer to those moments you find yourself caught in the irony loop and that’s dark ecology the closer you are the stranger it feels like slice me in half I’ll fall out with more questions you can plant in the soil like a stone or stoner, just one more drag of does it offend you, yeah? will I live and die in a band Matty sings the sweet green meat of my much-too-old -and-such-youthful experience of adding healthy fat to conference dialogue, like ‘Avocado, Baby’ was released on a record called No Blues I believe a large automobile is hurtling towards me now in negative space and the driver is crooning Elvis and reciting my funding conditions and everything feels like there aren’t not still people who believe the new culture of content is a space ‘over there’ and you can still have earnest power ballads about love if you want them =/ to cancel (too many tabs don’t make a tableau but in the future facebook has a paywall) and fame is a drag the pressure we put on the atmosphere, like somewhere you’re alive and still amazing asking wtf I’m reading this novel by Roberto Bolaño set partly in 1975 before we had internet it seems poets got laid a lot that year in Mexico City before I was born to pick up video calls with a spliff in one hand in the splendid, essential heat like a difficult knife in my side you can put me on toast, grind the pepper over me gently and say fucking hell this has taken forever.

> I guess I want or wanted to begin with this question of difficulty that rises when responding to Notes on a Conditional Form. How do you approach an album whose delayed release places it in a position of considerable hype, an album whose world tour and promotion is again delayed by global pandemic, an album shrouded in the ever-shifting controversy of Matty’s persona, an album whose length and sonic variety risks collapse into litanies of zany superlative and necrophilic attempts to revive musical category as vaguely relevant here? As beautiful as it is to catalogue the offbeat Pinegrove vibes of ‘Roadkill’, the shoegaze croons of ‘Then Because She Goes’ and the pop-punk, chord-bright euphoria of ‘Me & You Together Song’, I could keep going and going with this. I could just list and just list this. The album is a generous offering: a tribute to the album as form in an age where attention tapers away on high-streaming playlists set to conditioned, circadian moods curated by the likes of Spotify or Apple Music. The album is a Borgesian plenitude of multiple pathways, multiple timelines, infinite feed, choose your own adventure; a hypertext of cultural reference almost worthy of Manic Street Preachers at their Richey Edwards era of paranoid, intellectual peak; a metamodernist feat of oscillation between irony and sincerity, an extended tract, a drunk millennial ramble, a journey that loops from house party to club basement to the streams of sexuality repressed and expressed encounter...and yet. It is both more and less than these things. In trying to capture Notes on a Conditional Form with some pithy, journalist’s statement, I’m doing it all wrong.

> Sidenote: I recently listened to Rachel Zucker give a 2016 lecture on ‘The Poetics of Wrongness’ as part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. She makes a case for wrongness in poetry and critique, rejects the poem of pithy essence, the short, pretty and to the point lyric whose meaning is easily digested in a greetings card, or A Level exam paper, say. ‘Instead of the Fabergé egg of the short lyric, I prefer the aesthetics of intractability and exhausted exhaustedness’, the mistakes, lags or aporia made along the way in one of these long and winding poems. Notes on a Conditional Form is full of what some might deem mistakes, digression, exhaustion; but it is also peppered with the gloss of almost perfect pop ‘hits’ such as ‘Me & You Together Song’ and ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’. A wrong poem should be, ‘ashamed and irreverent’, which feels like a decent description of The 1975’s general orientation towards artistic conception. There is cringe and incongruity, there is by all intents and purposes ‘too much of it’, whatever we mean by ‘it’. And yet, that is its beautiful poetics of wrongness, the sound of wrongness, which ‘prefers the stairs’ to the easy elevator pitch (as Zucker puts it), that ‘prefers a half-finishing crumbling stairwell to nowhere’. I like to think about this 1975 album as a kind of exhausting Escherian scene of shifting, crumbling stairwells, shuffling and reassembling against the glistering backdrop of the internet’s inverse void, where everything, literally everything is translated to a starry excess of 1s and 0s, our collective binary data, the white hot, unreadable howl of our noise. What do you think Scott, would Matty find this image agreeable? Does that matter?

> Pushing dear Matty aside, say what you like, let’s start (again) with the title: Notes on a Conditional Form. Following 2018’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, it’s fair to position these records as gestures towards philosophical statements ‘of the times’. Important to recognise the resistance to total or dominating knowledge built into the titles: these are not complete tracts or theses, but rather ‘a brief inquiry’ and ‘notes’. It’s obviously the ancient yet *hip* thing to do in capital-P Philosophy, to put out your statement on aesthetics and ethics, and I think The 1975 are playing with that tradition and its failure. You can imagine if his attention span were different, Matty Healy would’ve already written a PhD thesis on this stuff and published it as drunken bulletins on LiveJournal in 2007. As it stands, we have the smorgasbord sprawl of this eclectic record to get through in this cursèd year of 2020 — it’s not like we have much of anything better to do right now, when everything feels so futile, beyond reason and even the greatest human endeavour. Haha, woo, Yeah :’(((.

> Let’s stay in that conditional space between crying and laughter. Conditional form is interesting as a term, often used in grammar to refer to the ‘unreal past’ because it uses a past tense but does not actually refer to something that literally happened in the past: If I had texted him back, we would probably have gone to the gig that night. There’s something about the conditional as the ur-condition of the internet, the proliferating possibilities it offers and the hauntological strains of what could have been had we chosen x option over y, z, a, b, c, infinity...As millennials, we often make decisions by hedging, always caught in the conditional state of what it is to be. Hovering in the emotional shortcuts provided by dumb yellow icons, the poetics of abstraction. A verb form’s dalliance with uncertain reverb; and so we live our conditional lives.

> To push this further, we can say the internet is, as ever, Matty Healy’s natural habitat. In a recent podcast interview with Conor Oberst for The Face, Healy tells his favourite emo-country hero that ‘my natural environment by the time I started The 1975 was the fucking internet’. So how does that ecosystem play into the music? In a damning review for The Line of Best Fit, Claire Biddles concludes:

The 1975’s first three albums are ideal and distinct worlds to inhabit, each individually cohesive but situated in specific contexts — the anticipation of the small town, profundity in the face of vacuous fame, and the horror and isolation of late capitalism. Perhaps because of its broken genesis, Notes has no such common context, and ends up feeling flat, directionless and inessential, where its forebears felt vital, worthy of devoting a life to. For a band with proven dexterity in deftly capturing the nuances and quick changes of contemporary conversation, it is disheartening to witness them with nearly nothing of note to say.

That description — ‘flat, directionless and inessential’ — is kind of how I experience the internet right now, in the paradox of Web 2.0 becoming utterly essential, somehow, to how I live my life, how I love, how I am with friends. The internet as my ecosystem, my utility, my complete environment, my Imaginary — beyond the mere utility of a WiFi connection. Broken genesis might well describe the childhoods of those of us who grew up online, whose platforms collapsed around them, whose adolescent data was lost in the great ~accidental annihilation of the MySpace servers, whose identities were always already fractured, performed, anonymised or exquisitely personalised, deferred into only the (im)possible keystroke of utterance and trace, the fort-da play of MSN sign-ins. ‘My life is defined by a desire to be outward followed by a fear of being seen’, Matty says in a new short film for Apple Music, released in tandem with the album. The internet requires this chiaroscuro destiny: not to burn always with Baudelaire’s hard and gem-like flame (O to be an IRL flaneur beyond times of lockdown) but to endlessly flicker between the bright green light of presence and the shade of what once was called afk, away from keyboard. To live and burn in the gap between extroversion and introversion, to live in this conditional state of tendency. To express with emoji, send pics, is to both reveal and withhold something else, essential.

> I like albums to feel like worlds; I appreciate Biddles’ evocation of the cohesion experienced in the first three 1975 records. But perhaps it is a kind of violence to assume a world must have cohesion to exist. What is even meant by ‘common context’? What pressure are we putting on a singer, a band, a cultural moment to produce something familiar and harmonious, and to whom, at what scale? What does it mean to be the biggest band in the world...for a bit? How does that work when everything is dissonance, transience, noise, interference; both this and not-this; when life itself is lived as the flat traversal of a millioning existential terrains that seem to collapse into this nowness in which I feel myself sliding forever? Can anyone weigh-in on what it means to make music, art or writing that’s ‘worthy of devoting a life to’, because the gravity and force of that condition for good art, good pop, seduces me so.

> Maybe the point is to always be in the middle, to never quite start to write about The 1975, to find yourself always already writing about this album because this album was always already writing about your life. I have said nobody does the interlude quite like The 1975, but I was being coy, because the hottest twentieth-century philosophical double act, Deleuze and Guattari (haters gonna hate), do the interlude rather nicely. The point of a rhizome being ‘no beginning or end [...] always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’ as they write in A Thousand Plateaus (1980). I see the musical interlude of a pop record, the instrumental moment without lyric, as a kind of middling gesture that places the listener in that conditional state of presence and absence, a hinge between songs, times and narrative moments. Maybe my favourite moment in A Thousand Plateaus is the statement: ‘RHIZOMATICS = POP ANALYSIS, even if the people have other things to do besides read it, even if the blocks of academic culture or pseudoscien-tificity in it are still too painful or ponderous’. Painful or ponderous might be a fair critique levelled at the enfant terrible vibes of Matty’s lyrics and generic pick’n’mix, but isn’t this tactic a kind of swerving punch at the categorical violence that keeps people out of academia, that keeps academic discourse so often stale in the first place? Unlike most journal articles, let’s face it, pop reaches ‘“the people”’. Perhaps Notes on a Conditional Form is the rhizomatic sprawl of the myriad we need as an alternative to institutional hierarchy, ring-fencing and the language games of academia. Surely the title is a reference to the very ‘pseudoscient-tificity’ D&G mention? I’m gonna quote Richard Scott’s blurb to Colin Herd’s 2019 poetry collection, You Name It here (not least because the indie publishers, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, come straight out of Manchester, home to The 1975, and because Herd’s poetic spirit is pure pop generosity with a platter of theory on the side), because I want to say similar things of this album: ‘Colin Herd’s poems are masterpieces of variousness. They are talismans against Macho demons. They are snatches of theory operating under lavish spills of language’. The good thing about Herd’s poetry and Matty Healy’s lyrics is that the impulse towards romantic or florid expression is always tapered by an interest in the mundane and everyday. Healy is always singing about pissing or buying clothes online or, as on ‘The Birthday Party’, singing about ‘a place I’ve been going’ that seems to consist of the lonely, infinite regress of conversations about seeing friends and watching someone drink kombucha while buying, in the convenient life of rhyme, Ed Ruscha prints.

Ed Ruscher, Cold Beer, Beautiful Girls (2009)

> So what kind of listening does this rhizomatic sprawl demand — does it expand beyond the banal or find a holding space there, a heaven of affect chilled to late-modernity’s crisp perfection? ‘The End (Music For Cars)’ is a luxurious, Hollywood ‘soaring’ moment, all strings and swells, fucking woodwind, and comes as the third track on the album, where normally you’d place it as some kind of penultimate climax, the album’s landscape pan-out or big swelling screen kiss in three-dimensional rotation. The band’s ‘Music For Cars’ era comprises their two most recent records, and you have to take it as a nod to Brian Eno’s 1978 ambient classic Ambient 1: Music for Airports (Matty recently interviewed Eno again for The Face, cool). The thing about cars is you drive around in them, you follow rules but also whims and desires, convictions; you choose to join others or you pursue the selfish acceleration (‘People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles’ goes the laconic teenage refrain in Bret Easton Ellis’ 1985 debut novel Less Than Zero). You only listen to music half-attentively; you don’t listen close enough to trade in souls. Are we being invited to experience this album as an ambient disruption of figure and ground, presence and absence, here and there, space and place, intimacy and despondency? Driving feels increasingly ‘directionless and inessential’ when the scale effects and obscenities of the anthropocene, of covid and other late-capitalist crises loom in our vision, when the sign systems we used to navigate our lives by seem to shimmer out of focus, or pixelate and deteriorate through endless memetic replication... You can’t help feel like Biddles review kind of misses the point.

Sylvano Bussoti, Five Pieces for Piano for David Tudor (1959)

> What point would that be though, in a world of rhizomatic overlap and intersecting, middling lines, a direction without seeming end? I love the approximation at work when Biddles writes, ‘with nearly nothing of note to say’, because that seems to be a possibility condition for writing in the age of the internet. To write in a way that is almost less than zero and loop back upon some kind of infinity, yet keep it in 2-step. I think back to Rachel Zucker’s image of the half-finished crumbling stairwell, and feel an amiable sense of approval towards this band who always work between the registers of diary, confession, advertising, provocative sloganeering and faux-didactics, never quite settling in to specifically tell you this particular story. It’s all mess, and it’s awful and delicious, I’m sorry. ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied’ is the title of track 13 on the album: that movement between nothing and everything feels like the absolutist, absurdist conditions of ‘truth’ possibility in the Trumpocene/age of so-called ‘post-truth’. ‘Life feels like a lie, I need something to be true’, Healy sings with strained conviction in the song’s opening. But what is at stake in this truth? ‘I never fucked in a car, I was lying’, goes the line, referring back to the dramatic in medias res opening to ‘Love It If We Made It’, notable banger from A Brief Inquiry…: ‘We’re fucking in a car, shooting heroin / Saying controversial things just for the hell of it’. If lying is a pun on telling a mistruth or laying back, practically sexless in a passive state, there’s a deliberate play on apathy, agency and distortion here. It’s something Matty seems snagged on. On ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’ he collapses aesthetic superficiality, capital’s lyric abstraction (‘Oh, what’s a fiver?’) and generalised crisis into this (un)conscious desire for shutdown, expressed in fragmentary bullets of needing-to-know-and-not-know: ‘Is that designer? Is that on fire? Am I a liar? Oh, will this help me lay down?’ And then that impassioned refrain, processed through vocal distortion as if to enact the difficulty in clarity as overcome somehow by the sheer making of noise: ‘Belief and saying something / And saying something / And saying something’. It’s the endless, driving recursion of our lives online, online.

> Back to ‘The End (Music for Cars)’ which really is the middle of the beginning. It’s weird to listen to songs about driving and lying down in the middle of lockdown, drowning in the bloat of social media, on top of our ongoing climate emergency (yeah, remember that, it’s still happening), where high-carbon travel feels like an exhausted, almost impossible concept. A musician complaining about travelling is an age-old subject for a song, but this feels just as much about living in the in-between times of the internet (remember the sweet naivety of the information superhighway) as much as the great Road, for which Kerouac longed as much as Springsteen, Dylan, or Lana Del Rey. Is Matty Healy homesick though? ‘Get somewhere, change my mind, eh / Get somewhere but don’t find it / I don’t find what I’m looking for’. It’s all ‘(out there)’ as the parenthetical refrain goes, but maybe ‘out there’, outside, is the maddening supplement, as Derrida would say, to our lives online, thus revealing their mutual, entwined dependency. Imagine the M6 but tangled up crazily, zanily, like one of those Sylvano Bussoti scores. It’s not like you’re trying to get home, get back, exactly. It’s not like you can just click back on your browser and erase that trace of the touch that enacts it. That’s the weird-ass sensation of being an ecological being: ‘Wherever you go, there you are’, writes Tim Morton in Being Ecological (2018). We’re all pretty alien, even to ourselves.

> If life feels like a lie, as Matty sings, does it matter anymore whether it is or not? Or, to pose the question differently, how do we feel into, attune to something like ‘truth’, a shared reality or feeling? ‘Out there’ is only a state of ellipsis [...] a vine extended, something for the listener, user, consumer and/or human to cling to — or be strangled by. In the aforementioned Apple Music video, Matty takes away the canvas and presents the frame beneath, in a gesture that is comically overwrought with Duchampian pretention around the state and context of the artwork itself. ‘Sometimes I think what is the point of...it’s not my atheism coming out, it’s just my being human coming out’, he muses. The phrase ‘coming out’, with its connotations of closeting, shame and cocoon-like emergence is intriguing here. In a dehumanising, post-internet world of neoliberalism and its attendant microfascisms, its commodification of all kinds of art, its easythink translation of poetry-to-advertising, what would it mean to come out as human after, or better still, in the middle of all this? It’s significant that he trails off after ‘the point of…’, for surely the point itself (of the art?) would be to find yourself here, there, right in the middle of it all. And then in ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied’, it’s like Matty is calling us back from that epistemological and ontological boiling point of knowing and being, like in singing we could go along, we could feel present and ‘true’ again, even with friction and difference. We gotta take hold, cool ourselves down from the rhetoric and into warm emotion, the smell of paint, erotic vibration of bass, in a manner of speaking.

> What if the mode of inquiry were not to investigate but rather to follow the lines of flight, to riff on this world where narrative arcs and chains are replaced by the multiple possibilities of hallucinatory experience, what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end’? To just desire and trace it. This, Scott, is where you come in (and I finally shut up to listen). There is so much more to write about this album, echo for echo, and I feel like I’ve only begun the tracing which was already beginning: I want to know your thoughts on The 1975 and America, on gender and genre, on bodies and football and friendship, on political engagement, those house beats, on the beautiful, sultry appearance of Phoebe (fucking) Bridgers, on sincerity, on the question of ‘What Should I Say’...It’s been playing on my mind that I will never say what I want to, or should, or would say of this album, but this perhaps is what I would otherwise have said. I give you my notes in conditional form.

Read part 2 of our review in Scott Morrison’s response here.

Notes on a Conditional Form is out now and available to order. 

~

Text: Maria Sledmere

Published: 23/6/20

[oumakokichi]

I think you've already answered a question like this, but idk. What are some examples showing that Ouma is an empathic person?

Thank you so much for asking this question, because this isright up my alley, honestly.

I always love talking about Ouma’s empathy, because I feelit’s part of what really sets him apart as a character. Of course, I love the “cold,strategic, chessmaster” aspect of his personality, too—but we’ve had manycharacters in DR who are cold and ruthless and terrifying. Junko, Kamukura,Komaeda, and many others all have those traits in common, or at least verysimilar ones.

What’s less common, however, is to have a character who hasall of those traits, and who is also so very human at their core. One of the most fascinating things about Oumain my opinion isn’t the fact that he’s a genius (although he certainly is) orthe fact that he can be absolutely morally grey and downright cutthroat when hewants to be. It’s the fact that he’s all of those things and yet never onceloses his humanity, that aspect of himself which can relate to and understandhis classmates’ thoughts even if he can’t excuse their actions.

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and shareanother person’s thoughts and feelings. That’s all. It doesn’t necessarily meanforgiving the other person, or even completely agreeing with them—only that it’spossible to understand them and how they must be feeling. Looking at thisdefinition, I don’t think anyone can deny that Ouma is an extremely empatheticcharacter, given all the evidence.

Regardless of his mistakes, and regardless of his villain façade,throughout the entire game we’re provided with plenty of proof that he does understand his classmates, and thathe cares about them deeply in his own way. Unlike characters like Junko,Kamukura, or Komaeda, who were all marked by their inability to truly care orconnect with others, Ouma is someone who cares very deeply, and who inevitablylets it show despite his best efforts to put up a flawless routine.

When his classmates die, he mourns. When they’re in pain, hedoesn’t enjoy it. While I know quite a few people will disagree, I think manyof Ouma’s reactions to his classmates’ death, even the seemingly exaggeratedcrocodile tears, can be taken a lot more at face value than one might think. Often,even the crocodile tear reactions are, I think, his way of trying to mask thepain he feels. After all, his classmates expect that his reactions are a lieanyway. When no one is expecting those reactions to be genuine in the firstplace, it gives him a perfect opening to show how he really feels whilecovering his vulnerability with the usual “that was a lie, though!” routine.

I feel it’s worth noting just how quick he is to express hisemotions whenever they watch someone die, or discover a body. On pretty muchevery occasion, he’s generally either: 1.) extremely loud, shocked, anddistressed (usually with his more exaggerated, crocodile tears sprites), or 2.)very quiet and subdued, often looking either blank or depressed.

It’s clear to see how he sympathizes with the victims ineach trial—in Chapter 2, for example, he even goes as far as to demand the restof the group “apologize to Hoshi,” for letting the killing game continue againeven though they all acted like it was over. He acts really, truly angry, and calls the rest of them “abunch of liars,” though quickly reverts back to pretending to be fine whenKorekiyo turns the question around and asks if those are crocodile tears.

And in Chapter 4, it’s very clear on a reread to see howdeeply Miu’s death shook him, even though he was responsible for it. He looksextremely shaken up by her body discovery, even sweating and looking down as heremarks that “this is a killing game, and these kinds of things happen.”Clearly, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that her death was “necessary”in order to avoid either getting himself killed or the whole group gettingkilled, he couldn’t actually bring himself to justify it deep down.

This sympathy isn’t limited to just the victims, however. IfOuma truly had difficulty empathizing with others, then I think he would behavea lot more like Saionji, whose black-or-white mindset meant she empathizedpretty easily with people who she saw as “good,” but felt that those who were “bad”(usually the culprits) deserved no empathy or grief whatsoever. This mindset isdefinitely a child’s way of looking at things: the idea that sometimes goodpeople do bad things because of circumstances or factors beyond their controldoesn’t occur to someone like Saionji, and she has no interest in exploringthat train of thought.

However, Ouma has no trouble in empathizing with theculprits in ndrv3, either. While he can’t condone murder personally, he can atleast understand why the others do it, even if their inability to stopfrustrates him to no end, particularly when the killing game keeps snowballingbeyond his control. Nonetheless, he stops all his façade and gives Kaede a veryblank, forthright farewell, telling her that she “wasn’t boring.” Similarly,after Kirumi’s execution, he remarks that seeing her will to live on might have“changed his way of thinking about things a little,” and that the will to runaway and live on isn’t a bad thing in and of itself.

And, of course, there’s his reaction to Gonta’s execution, whichis the most notable out of all of them because of just how deeply Ouma was hurtby then. While Ouma’s actions are definitely inexcusable in Chapter 4, there’sno denying that his pained reactions at Gonta’s death were true. Everything,from his tears to his pleas to be executed with Gonta, was a reflection of justhow much it hurt him to throw Gonta under the bus as a sacrificial pawn.Although it was a plan of his own choosing, he very nearly couldn’t stick withit in the end—only Gonta’s request that he live on and “become friends witheveryone” was enough to make Ouma reluctantly agree to keep going.

Had he truly been lying about those tears or that pain,there was no need to keep up the façade in front of Gonta. He had nothing togain by crying in front of him, or by asking to be executed with him. In fact,if he had been even half the villain he pretended to be in the Chapter 4post-trial, he would’ve revealed his “evil villain act” a lot sooner, probablywhile Gonta was still alive to see it. After all, what could’ve hurt moredeeply as a betrayal and rubbed more salt in the wound than telling Gonta allthose things to his face, knowing that there was nothing he could do about it?

His attempt to send Gonta off instead with a “gentle lie”(as in, not telling him that their whole plan in the VR world to “save everyone”had been a ruse from the start) was done out of mercy, not malice. Many of hisactions in Chapter 4 make no sense unless looked at from the perspective thathe was faking his villain routine, and showing his honest reactions insteadwhen he broke down at Gonta’s death. His attempts to take on all the blame, thefact that he asked the others not to blame Gonta in the slightest, and, ofcourse, his dismayed, horrified silence following Gonta’s execution, all showthat he knew he was doing something horrible and awful to Gonta, and that heregretted it and hated himself for it.

This doesn’t only apply to Chapter 4, though. Many of Ouma’sactions in Chapter 5 also make no sense at all unless viewed through theperspective that he was actively trying to help the group, not hurt them.Unlike Komaeda, who made it clear as early as Chapter 1 that he would helpeither the rest of the group or the culprit at any given opportunity, dependingon which one “embodied hope the best,” Ouma exclusively helps the group fromthe shadows, providing hints, clues, and a trail of breadcrumbs, all withouttrying to make it look like he’s helping at all.

He says it himself, quite often: that he does what he does “foreveryone’s sake.” In Chapter 2, he even cheekily tacks on that even if he sayshe’s doing things for everyone’s sake, the others “probably won’tbelieve him, and will just take it as a lie, though.”

Where Komaeda wanted recognition and praise for being “thestepping stone for hope,” Ouma asks for virtually nothing in exchange for his assistance,despite being one of, if not the key reason why the survivors make it outalive. If anything, he often resorted to his villain routine in order to tryand mask his good intentions—such as in Chapter 5, when he handed the electrichammers out to the group, practically on a silver platter, then later hit themall with “the truth of the outside world” in order to try and get rid of theirdesire to go outside and stop the killing game completely.

Had Ouma lacked the ability to empathize with hisclassmates, he also would never have left the clues that he did for his ownmurder in Chapter 5. Absolutely all of those clues were things he verycarefully, deliberately planted, in order to help Saihara and the others reachthe truth. There was no need at all for him to leave Momota’s jacket stickingout from under the press, or tell Momota to flush his own shirt down thetoilet, or to hand the group the camcorder video which became the singlebiggest piece of evidence that a culprit-victim swap had occurred.

All of these clues were left to make sure that the otherswouldn’t actually be executed by Monokuma, if it came down to such a decisionin the trial. Ouma was a master at bluffing, but that’s all it ultimately was:just a bluff. He knew that although it was likely Monokuma wouldn’t be able toexecute anyone if he didn’t know who the culprit was, there was also apossibility that he’d go through with it anyway. And as someone who hated theidea of getting others killed, and who wanted to avoid repeating the samemistakes he made in Chapter 4, he absolutely refused to risk everyone’s liveson that chance, despite his and Momota’s expert bluff. Hence, the clues whichwere otherwise entirely unnecessary to making a real “catbox murder.”

Not least of all, there’s his speech during Momota’sflashback in the Chapter 5 post-trial, in which he reveals that he actuallyhated every single minute of the killing game and resented the people who putthem through it. Had his feelings of distress been limited to the frustrationof losing a game he really, really wanted to win, that would’ve been one thing—butthat’s not the case. Instead, Ouma explicitly says that he wanted to strikeback at the ringleader and the audience in order to “make them all taste truedespair,” and that it would be “perfect revenge for all the people who died.”This line stands out to me, because there was absolutely no reason for him tomention their deceased classmates here unless he really, truly did care aboutall of them.

Again, Ouma’s speech in Chapter 5 is just as genuine as hisbreakdown at Gonta’s death. There’s no real arguing this fact: his motivevideo, found in Chapter 6 almost immediately after, directly supports thisfact. Ouma and DICE were morally against killing; their most important mottowas “don’t kill people,” (just like any good phantom thief) and they wentaround pulling harmless pranks and crimes for fun. Ouma’s motive video isclearly intended as a clue to help not only Saihara, but also the playerthemselves realize that there was a lot more truth hidden in the midst of Ouma’slies than he initially let on.

All of these things truly set him apart as a character forme. He has so many similarities and parallels to a number of other DRcharacters—as I mentioned, Junko and Kamukura are also geniuses, experts atstrategizing and manipulating those around them. When it comes to these two inparticular, I feel Ouma has the added parallel of being highly implied to havesome kind of SHSL Analysis as his talent.

But unlike Junko and Kamukura both, who cannot trulyempathize with those around them, and who turn to inflicting despair on othersin order to seek out an escape from their boredom, what sets Ouma apart themost is the fact that he never actually does this.

Despite how much the word “boredom” is associated with hischaracter, despite the fact that he very likely has a variation of SHSLAnalysis, and despite the fact that Tsumugi wanted to deliberately set him upas an evil, “Junko 2.0” figure during the killing game, Ouma never once wantedto see others suffer or die. In fact, he’s the first character in the entirefranchise to take the idea of “despair” and try to turn it back on the peoplewho made him and his classmates suffer in the first place—the people who wantedto see that “despair” happen the most, in other words.

Ouma is strategic, brilliant, and absolutely cold at times,it’s true. But he’s also incredibly warm at his core, I think. He has achildish quality that the other characters similar to him generally lack (aquality which his official Famitsu profile and Kaede both note makes him “hardto hate”). His idea of seeking an escape from boredom isn’t by hurting others,or making them despair, but by seeking out fun, “interesting” things. Anythingthat surprises him, anything that surpasses his expectations, is automaticallyable to catch his interest. And that’s such a refreshing, interesting trait ina character who tries so hard to convince the characters, the players, and evenhimself that he’s actually ruthless and emotionless.

I’ve talked for long enough probably, so I’ll stop this now,but this was incredibly enjoyable to write. I hope I was able to answer yourquestion! There are so many little hints and clues that Ouma is actually an incrediblycaring and empathetic person; I’ve only just touched on the main points,really. None of this changes the fact that he can be an asshole, to be sure, orthat some of the things he does are inexcusable, but I feel that it’s importantto remember why he does what he does.

One of the key phrases in Umineko (yes, I’m bringing Uminekointo this again, sorry) is “without love, it cannot be seen.” All it means isthat your perspective on absolutely anything is bound to change drasticallydepending on whether you look at it “with” or “without love.”

If you want to view Ouma through the viewpoint of a villainand a horrible person, someone who toyed with everyone and felt nothing aboutit, it’s incredibly easy to do so—especially on a first playthrough. All youhave to do is dismiss all the evidence suggesting he’s a good person, andbelieve everything he or the other characters say about being horrible. But ifyou try looking at it from the other perspective, that he might not be sohorrible after all, your interpretation of the exact same scene can flip aroundalmost entirely, showing new insight into what he might have been thinking orfeeling.

Thank you for stopping by anon, and I’m glad I had a chanceto write about this particular topic!

[weatherfish]

Vinyl Surfin’ In The 70s

ENDLESS SUMMERS & SIDEWALKS

It was all Bruce Brown’s fault. 

On an uneventful Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1976 I happened to catch the better part of Bruce Brown’s seminal surf documentary “The Endless Summer” on our family’s 20” Sony television. And my life was changed. Like many others I was charmed by the film’s simple, idyllic look at the surfing lifestyle; traveling from beach to beach, searching for a ‘perfect wave’. But it was chiefly the film’s soundtrack that solidified my interest, especially the lilting theme song by The Sandals. “The Endless Summer” movie was originally released in 1966, riding at the last crest of the 60’s surfing fad, and soon after the sport of surfing began its’ bottom-turn back into the underground. By the early seventies surfing was a bit of an outlaw sport, but thanks to the swell of popularity in the sixties meant it was ripe for revival. So smack in the middle of the seventies that same elusive California myth of the early-sixties would be reborn just in time for my adolescent mind to get sucked right into it.

While I first saw “The Endless Summer” film in ’76, director Bruce Brown was retried in Santa Barbara, while I was a landlocked 14-year-old, living in a miserable logging town in the Pacific Northwest. In the mid-seventies the ominous specter of gas shortages, inflation/recession, Watergate, the cold war and other bullshit crisis hung heavy over life, even for a witless young lad like myself. The whole California surfing lifestyle was an enticing illusion, and its agent was music. And such is why I fell so utterly in love with that silly surfing myth, which consumed much of my tiny mind throughout my high-school years. Even though I was only several hours away from the Pacific Ocean, it might as well have been a thousand miles, as Washington’s surf was rather frigid and breaks in the main were unaccessible.

After being so perfectly charmed by the Bruce Brown film, I was subsequently engulfed by the California myth due to two major factors:

The first was the Beach Boys revival. Capitol Records had recently packaged all of the Beach Boys early hit singles into a two-LP set called, coincidentally enough – “The Endless Summer”. That compilation shored up the sagging fortunes of the band back up considerably in the mid-seventies. So it was not uncommon to hear Beach Boys tracks on popular radio stations back then, even mixed in with the disco throb of the top-40. 

The second factor, and even more influential to me, was an article that appeared in a 1976 issue of Rolling Stone magazine called “The Endless Sidewalk”. Tim Cahill’s account painted a similarly idyllic view of a parallel revival coming from California in the seventies - skateboarding. Before that story appeared, what few skateboarders there were tended to be surfers too, and most of the land-board’s ‘tricks’ were derivative of surfing maneuvers, keeping a strong connection between the two board sports. But the wonderful thing about skateboarding to me (and most of the initiates of the mid-seventies) was that you didn’t need a temperate ocean break to ride. Even in a dismal backwater of rural Washington you could get your stoke on by rolling down any available paved street, sidewalk or parking lot.

Soon after I’d caught Brown’s surf epic on the television I visited our local five-and-dime and the only Beach Boys record they had in stock was a low-rent double-album called “High Water”. The first LP was an acceptable, if too-brief, compilation of Beach Boy hits. The second platter was an edited version of the band’s “Concert” LP from 1964. But combined with my purchase of a skateboard from the local toy shop, I was happily kick-turning around my parent’s driveway to Beach Boys’ music. The blissful combination of Beach Boys and the magic rolling board inspired me to actively seek out as much surf music as I could find. In those days albums of surf music were rare and rough, but this humble remembrance contains the records that I recall most vividly, as I began living the life of a ‘pseudo’ surfer.

NOTE - this is not meant to be any kind of definitive guide to surf music or even surf compilations of the 70s, these were simply the records I was able to acquire back in the late seventies, so a great deal of surf music of the early sixties is not represented here.

Surfin’ Safari - The Beach Boys (Capitol) 1962

Surfin’ USA - The Beach Boys (Capitol) 1963

Surfer Girl - The Beach Boys (Capitol) 1963

After starting with that marginal Pickwick compilation “High Water”, I decided to eschew the standard route of buying more Beach Boys compilations (which were plentiful and redundant) and instead got their original surf-era LPs. Thankfully Capitol had not yet gutted these early albums (back in the 70s Capitol reissued many of the early 60s Beach Boys LPs with fewer tracks than their original release, in some attempt to minimize manufacturing costs and maximize profits I suppose? It made the original complete Beach Boys LPs heavily sought-after back then. It wasn’t until advent of the CD that Capitol finally reissued the complete Beach Boys albums again with all of the original songs included.)

The first proper Beach Boys album I purchased was called Concert, again because the pickings were so slim at the local department store. I don’t own that album anymore and never bothered to repurchase it as it’s basically the sound of the Beach Boys being drowned out by a legion of screaming little girls. But soon after I acquired their 1963 album Surfin’ USA. I can honestly say I probably wore that album out from literally hundreds of plays. And it was soon joined by the other surf-era Beach Boys records of Surfer Girl and their debut record Surfin’ Safari. For the most part I just wanted the surfing stuff - but over time i began to appreciate the other songs and slowly but surely acquired the whole Beach Boys catalog up through their LA Light Album that closed out the 70s.

Surprisingly, the songs I liked the most were the instrumentals, which is not what the Beach Boys are typically noted for. It’s easy to look back on them now and see that they were probably just filler, but they still have an evocative quality to me. They covered Dick Dale’s “Let’s Go Trippin’” and his revved up “Misirlou” - and to this day I still prefer the Beach Boys’ version over Dick’s. They also covered the Gambler’s spacey “Moon Dawg” and the old barroom chestnut “Honky Tonk”. Their attempts at original surf instrumentals are mixed, “Surf Jam” is tuneless but energetic, “Stoked” is a little more developed. Their last attempt at a surf instrumental (from the record Surfer Girl) is a throwaway called “The Rockin’ Surfer” which is notable only for its use of a cheesy organ instead of a jangling guitar.

Soon after the Beach Boys dumped the surf-sham and developed into a formidable pop-group, with Brian Wilson’s genius given full reign until his collapse after the legendary Smile album was aborted.

The Big Surfing Sounds Are On Capitol - Various Artists (Capitol) 1963

My Son The Surf Nut - Jack Marshall (Capitol) 1963

I found these two albums in terrible condition while scouring the bins of the many used record shops in Seattle’s university district. They were both heavily scratched and skipped more than they played, but they were a bit like archeological finds for me. Both were released by Capitol to capitalize (sorry) on the surf craze. The compilation featured four artists; the Beach Boys, Dick Dale, John Severson and Jack Marshall. The BB tracks and Dick Dale were pretty well known in the surfing world. John Severson was surfing’s renaissance man, a film-maker, publisher, artist and musician. As far as I know only a small handful of Severson tracks were ever released, and the two on the this record are pleasant enough but not terribly memorable. Jack Marshall’s two tracks come from the album “My Son The Surf Nut”, discussed thus...

Considering who Jack Marshall was, his record “My Son The Surf Nut” is still a conundrum. Marshall was a well-respected jazz guitarist who’s best known for composing the theme song for The Munster’s television program. The first side of “My Son The Surf Nut” is a selection of mildly funny interview skits performed before a live audience. The second, and weaker, side is comprised of a comical surfing songs. I think that his “Monster Surfer” track would certainly be a strong contender for the worst surf song ever waxed. In fact most of the second side sounds like an alcohol-soaked studio session with nobody taking things seriously, but it’s all quite harmless fun. Side one’s interviews are better, and even jokes this old hold up OK after a half a century, and that’s saying something.

Big Surfing Sounds Are On Capitol was re-released in 1995 as “Surfing’s Greatest Hits”

Surfing - The Ventures 1965

I wasn’t overly keen on this LP, mostly because the Ventures seemed to be more of a covers band, just doing instrumentals of other pop hits. Certainly they’d had a big hit with “Walk, Don’t Run” but since this record’s theme of surf music was so pervasive, I decided to get it. They scored a hit by covering the Chantay’s “Pipeline”. I was also hoping the track “The Lonely Sea” was a cover of that lovely Beach Boys tune from Surfin’ USA. It wasn’t, but it was still a nice track. The other highlight was the ballad “Changing Tides”. The rest were more typical surf tunes, some covers, some original, with “The Ninth Wave” and “Diamonds” being better than the rest. This album was rereleased in expanded form in the CD-era, featuring other Ventures songs of the era as well as some newer material.

Endless Summer Soundtrack - The Sandals 1966

This album was nearly impossible to find in the mid-seventies, and so when I secured a dusty copy I was so delighted to finally hear the soundtrack that had turned me into a surf music fan. The vinyl was in pretty wretched shape, but it was still listenable. The album’s highlight was the title track, a lovely ballad that was the glue that held the film together. There are higher-energy tracks like “Route 1” and “Out Front” which are more traditional surf instrumentals in style, but have better melodic development. The soundtracks other high point is the evocative samba-like “Lonely Road”. “Wild As The Sea” and the silly “Good Greeves”, which is like surf music meeting Mancini’s “Elephant Walk”, are also quite good.

The Sandals re-recorded the entire album back in the early 90s, coinciding with the Bruce Brown sequel “Endless Summer II” (which the band contributed new material to as well). The remake of the original was quite faithful to the original, and sounds better overall, but I’m glad that Capitol reissued the original soundtrack recently as well.

Gotta Take That One Last Ride - Jan & Dean (2 LPs on United Artists) 1974

Ride The Wild Surf (United Artists) 1964

I’m unsure if this 1974 compilation came out before the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer set, but they both had a similar focus on surf’n’drag music and obviously were released to cash in on the surf revival. Featuring an eye-catching cover design by Dean (Torrence) this double LP focuses strictly on the duo’s surf/drag music, skipping over the team’s many other hits. This record’s standout track is “Gonna Hustle You”, which is curious as it’s one of the few that don’t fit into the surf/drag theme. Most of the record contains Beach Boys covers, rewrites and collaborations. Brian Wilson worked with the duo on several songs, and Jan Berry was adept at matching Brian’s production style and to a lesser extent, his songwriting ability.

Not surprisingly this set was reissued on CD, but only nominally, and now fetches triple-digits in the collectors market. But given the fearful plethora of J&D surf/drag compilations, paying such a premium probably isn’t necessary.

Another find in the dustbins of used record shops was a moldy copy of the duo’s ‘songtrack’ to the film Ride The Wild Surf. Actually that’s not even true, save for the title tune, nothing on the LP is from the movie, but it’s certainly packaged to appear like a movie soundtrack. Originally Jan and Dean were slated to appear in the film, but were not able to due to reasons you can scrounge up in Wikiland. Alas save for the signature song and “Sidewalk Surfin’” - their hit rewrite of “Catch A Wave”, the rest of the album is pretty underwhelming. About the kindest thing you can say about the album’s other songs is that they’re not as bad as the awful Bruce & Terry surf ripoffs of the same period (which featured future-Beach Boy Bruce Johnston).

Dick Dale & His Deltones (GNP Crescendo) 1975

I had amassed so many surf compilations by the late seventies that the last thing I needed were more Dick Dale songs. I only bought this album because of a single track, “Those Memories Of You”. I loved the spartan demo version that Jim Pewter included as part of the Surfin’ Roots compilation (q.v.). Pewter had written it for Dale, but Dale’s version didn’t surface until the mid-seventies. Alas Dale’s version comes off like a bit of fifties cornball, rather ruining the foggy allure of Pewter’s low-tech original. The rest of the record is the basics, “Let’s Go Trippin’”, “Misirlou”, “Surf Beat”, but is marred by some curious vocal tracks “Peppermint Man”, “Sloop John B” and Dick’s little ego-trip “King of the Surf Guitar”. But Dick was way ahead of his time and he actually was a surfer, all too rare a thing for surf music makers back then.

Golden Summer (2 LPs on United Artists) 1976

Probably the best overview of popular surf music available at that time. Compiled by Joe Saraceno and Jim Pewter it covers the basics from vocal hits from the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and even some of the insipid Frankie & Annette beach movie tunes. But the best part is the surfing instrumentals from the Frogmen, Ventures and Dick Dale. Some tracks were faux-surfin’ cash-in hits, like the Markettes’ instrumentals and the Tradewinds’ “New York’s A Lonely Town”. The Venture’s cover of “Pipeline” is included instead of the Chantay’s original version. 

Surfin’ Roots (2LPs on Festival) 1977

This follow-on compilation to Golden Summer attempts a little more serious look at surf music, chiefly the instrumentals. But it’s marred by the mysterious inclusion of two irrelevant Annette Funicello tunes. It also has several of the same songs as Golden Summer, but has better coverage of instrument tracks from the Pyramids, Frogmen, Rumblers, Denels, Sentinals and Dave Meyer and the Surftones. The Chantays original of “Pipeline” But the real gem is the understated demo tune “Those Memories Of You” by Jim Pewter, which is might be low-fi but has a wonderful ambience.

Five Summer Stories Soundtrack - Honk 1973

I had read some vague allusions to this classic surf film, but finally caught it on afternoon television sometime in 1981. Unlike most surf-o-philes, I didn’t think it was that great a movie (and still don’t). Sure, there were great moments in some of the surf segments, especially of the Banzai Pipeline, and a fascinating segment on skateboarding, but nothing to compete with Bruce Brown’s stuff. The film’s original soundtrack was a mixture of forgettable country-rock crap and some great seventies-era Beach Boys music (“Trader”, “Feel Flows”, etc). But the highlight was the wonderful theme used in the sequence at the Pipeline in Hawaii. The good news is that this soundtrack includes that ‘Pipeline’ instrumental, the bad news is the rest of the soundtrack is that forgettable country-rock crap I referred to. Honk’s music probably relished by the same kind of bong-heads that idolize jam-band-dung like the Grateful Dead. So, aside from their “Pipeline Sequence” tune the rest of Honk record is sonic garbage. And to make matters worse, they removed the Beach Boys songs from the DVD version of the movie, making it even less important. Honk sometimes reforms, alas, and you can bring your hookahs so you’ll actually enjoy their aural rubbish at venues along the Pacific Ocean. Legendary surfer Corky Carroll likes ‘em a lot.

My Beach - Surf Punks (Epic) 1980

Surf Beat 1980 - Jon & The Nightriders 1980

Now the 1970s are perfectly kaput and them 1980s hath arrived matey, therefore it’s not surprising that surf music was prepping for yet another revival. These two albums represent two directions that the second revival (or third-wave, if you prefer) of surf music took. Surf Punks were a combo of surfers that blended fierce localism, Ramones-energy and synthetic-weirdness whipped together with plenty of Zappa-esque silliness. Jon & the Nightriders were carriers of the Dick-Dale flame, retro-to-the-core surf instrumentalists.

I found Surf Punks “My Beach” while visiting a small shopping center in Florida and bought it on the spot as surf music was a pretty rare thing back then, not to mention obviously new surf music and not another repackaged compilation. The Surf Punks, unlike most surf music artists throughout the previous two decades, were actually surfers and were heavily territorial about it. The album’s title track sets the mood for the album with the beautifully crystalized sentiment of;

My Beach,

My Chicks,

My Waves,

Go Home!

Musically the band eschews any olde surf music conventions of reverb-soaked guitars and lush harmonies for a low-tech, low-brow approach. Drew Steele’s Gibson Moderne sounds like it’s amplified through a can of bug spray, Hunt’s bass sounds like suspension-bridge cables and producer Dennis Dragon’s drums sound like they’re buried under dozens of throw pillows. But the group has a surprisingly tactile sound which is well-suited to their torqued takes on the surfing life. The songs are peppered with beer-belches, beach-jargon, dorky asides under a relentless surfeit of goofy synthesizer spikes. Yet buried deep beneath the kooky anthems to the life on the shore, it’s pretty clear these chaps are not the saltwater-addled musicians they pretend to be.

Lyrically Dennis ‘n Drew spin tales of Malibu surf-men with simple wants; waves, tits, beer and waves. They have dreams of Hawaii and nightmares of being drafted into the army, they despise Valleys, weekenders and anyone who doesn’t live within ten minutes of the water.  But even the album’s most sophomoric moment, “Big Top”, is relentlessly catchy and all in good fun. YouTube has kept their flame alive and most of their promotional music videos are still there to be experienced.

On the other side of the revival with have the loyalist sounds of Jon & The Nightriders. Centered around guitarist Jon Blair, who had published the first surf music discography just before this record was first released. Though most of Surf Beat 1980’s tunes were new, they sound as though they were recorded back in 1965.  There are a few surf chestnuts thrown into the bargain, like “Latin’ia” and Dick Dale’s “Surf Beat” In fact, Dale himself provided the album’s liner notes. Blair plays with a Dick-Dale-like fervor, soaking his Fender Jaguar in plenty of spring-reverb. The best tracks are the Pipeline-esque “Banzai Washout” and “Baja”. Probably the most novel track is his surfed-up version of “Over The Rainbow”. Fun stuff! The following year Blair’s combo released a very good live album recorded a the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.

History Of Surf Music Volumes 1-3 (Rhino) 1982

Thanks to the musical stoke from the Surf Punks and John Blair, suddenly surf music became hip again. A few record companies were keen to cash in and the venerable Rhino issued three volumes, two retro volumes (covering the instrumental and then vocal songs) 

The best of the three volumes is the first, featuring a good overview of the instrumental stuff tunes

The second volume is a spotty affair that features the stock vocal hits from the early sixties intermixed with a few oddities like “Surfer Dan” by the Turtles a couple of surprising female surf tunes from Dee D. Hope and The Beach Girls. The collection bottoms out with Bruce Johnston’s awful “Do The Surfer Stomp”, but it’s just one of the many surf’n’drag cash-ins that Johnston made during that era and eventually got him a lifetime gig with Mike Love, which they insist on calling The Beach Boys.

The last volume covers the revival and features a curious mixture of tunes, some excellent, other only tenuously connected with surfing. The Malibooz were a surf band during the original surf craze and then reformed for the revival, but the included track “Hot Summer Nights” has nothing to do with surfing. The same can be said of Steve Goodman’s “Sand In It” and

Summer Means Fun (2LPs on CBS) 1982

Featuring a rather weird, fantasy-esque cover, this equally-weird double-LP was primarily a compilation of Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher’s collaborations in the early-60s. The songs fall into two categories; Beach Boys covers and Beach Boys rewrites (well, ripoffs.) The backing tracks for “Summer Means Fun” and “Surf City” sound the exactly the same as the ones from Jan & Dean’s singles, so it’s hard to know who waxed them first? The only gem in this derivative compost heap is “Like Summer Rain” from Jan & Dean’s undervalued “Save For A Rainy Day” album. Thrown into the bargain were a rendering of “Pipeline” by Flash Cadillac and Johnny River’s “Help Me Rhonda”. The impact would have been much greater if it was whittled down to a single LP.

OUTRO - CATCH A NEO-WAVE

Thanks to Surf Punks and Jon & The Nightriders, a full-blown revival of new surf music was under way. At first many of the bands were more inclined to follow the retro path, like The Surf Raiders. Even the original Surfaris reformed and issued the tongue in cheek “Punkline”, which owed just as much to the Surf Punks as the originators, The Chantays. 

By the time the 80s were in full flood, a new surf-skew had emerged from center of suburban blight in Fullerton, California – Agent Orange. This young power trio took olde surf classics and transformed them into buzzsaw skate-punk rave-ups. But Agent Orange was wise enough not to let their skate-punk vibe be owned by surf nostalgia, and though they occasionally trickled out a surf music chestnut, they left that to the dozens of other surf bands that vied for public attention throughout the 80s.

As far as the new wave of surf were concerned, the Surf Punks' output was sporadic and by the time the 80s fizzed into the 90s, Drew and Dennis went along to their own separate breaks and never worked together since. They ended with a live album (recorded sans audience) in 1988. Some 30 years onward, Dennis Dragon passed away  and it doesn’t seem likely Drew will pick up the torch again.

I spent most of the eighties avoiding the ravages of adulthood, generally wasting the whole decade in and out of colleges. And my fascination with synthesizer-based music flowered - ambient, industrial, synth-pop, etc - so I lost almost any interest in surf music and began to loath and despise the golden state. Some fifteen years later I actually tried surfing for the first time in my life. I spent two summers attempting to getting to grips with bellyboarding in the shore break on a few Washington state beaches. I was also interested in the revival of interest in 60s era longboarding, as shortboard surfing was nothing more than a derivative of skateboarding style. Rhino had released surfing mega-set called “Cowabunga” and surf music was actually being used in film soundtracks and suddenly people were diggin’ Dick Dale again.

In the first decade of the new millennium I relocated to SoCal - yep I’d become a despised ‘Val’, living a few short miles from the surf breaks that inspired so much of the music I adored in the seventies. So in a weird way, at the ripe age of forty-five, I started living that California myth. I don’t surf, don’t even want to, but still love the music.

[mysweetkittae]

There has been a sudden influx of negativity in international armys lately and it really needs to stop.

To start with, there seems to be this bizarre notion that Jimin hates international armys??? Like what twisted convoluted path did you stumble across to even get anywhere near that conclusion? Listen, Park Jimin is quite possibly the sweetest, kindest, more caring human being to have ever graced the face of this planet - there is no way that he, or bangtan as a whole for that matter, hates anyone, most definitely not i-armys. And you say that he hates us because he talks to Korean fans? Are you hearing yourself? They are KOREAN boys born and brought up in KOREA who’s first language is KOREAN and are working in KOREA and who’s main audience is KOREAN PEOPLE. 

OF COURSE THEY’RE GOING TO SPEAK IN KOREAN WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!?!?!?!!?

So because they don’t always directly address you personally you just assume that they hate you and don’t care about you? If they never addressed Korean armys wouldn’t they feel sad and left out? People seem to forget that bangtan always thank armys whenever they win something, whether it’s a music award or a daesang - armys are the first people they thank and they always thank international fans. Or have you decided to block that fact out of your brain just so you can feel important for a few seconds and complain?

Learning another language isn’t simple, some people have a knack for it and some people don’t, and that’s okay. They try their hardest to communicate with us however they can yet you still say that they don’t care. How hurt must Jimin have been after he heard people saying that he didn’t care enough about international fans? So much so that on the CH+ chat he told people to translate what he was saying because he couldn’t. It hurts my heart thinking about how bad he must have felt even though he has no reason to.

Similarly, every single video there are so many comments complaining that there are no English subtitles and demanding bighit to put them up and claiming that bangtan/bighit obviously don’t care about their international audience if they can’t be bothered to subtitle everything. Now this honestly just baffles me. First of all, the fact that they subtitle their MVs is amazing because not many groups do that, so we should be grateful that they even do that. Don’t forget there are so many wonderful people that take the time to translate literally everything bangtan do/post and it’s often done within a few hours so you don’t even have to wait that long. Do you have any idea how blessed we are that people are willing to dedicate so much time and do that for us? If you’re so pressed about not being able to understand what they’re saying as soon as they say it then why do you try learning Korean yourself? Oh wait, because you don’t want to put in any effort and want everything to be handed to you on a silver platter. 

Another thing that bothers me is that it’s always people complaining about things not having English subtitles. Do you really think that the only international fans they have are English speaking? NEWS FLASH: You’re wrong. Believe it or not, English isn’t the only language in the world! *gasp* I know, shocking right? But my dear friends, it’s true. You don’t see other people demanding for subtitles in their language do you? Yes it would be nice if everything was immediately subtitled in every language, but bighit have no obligation to do so, nor is such a task realistic or feasible. So please, stop being so entitled and elitist and thinking that everything revolves around you because it doesn’t.

This brings me on to my next point - the wings tour in Europe. Look, I’m a European army myself and am upset that they aren’t coming to the UK or anywhere else in Europe, but you need to stop hating. First of all, there’s still a possibility for more tour dates so we still have a chance. Secondly, at least they’ve been here before. There are places like Africa or South Asia that they’ve never been to, and unfortunately the chances of them going are very slim. Please stop screaming at them and try to understand that maybe they want to come here, but can’t because of logistics. Organising a concert in another country isn’t easy - there’s visas and travel and accommodation and concert venues and organisers and just so many things that are involved for not just the members but the staff as well. It’s so much more complicated than you might think and sometimes things just don’t work out. Couldn’t there also be the possibility that although there were organisers willing to work with them they weren’t good or trustworthy? We all know the wreck that happened in the highlight tour so I doubt they’d want something similar to happen. Please, just believe in bighit and bangtan. They’d never intentionally exclude people, the circumstances might just make it so.

Lately I’ve also heard a lot of people saying that bangtan and bighit are greedy and letting the fame get to their head. First off, you seem to forget that bighit is a business and this is literally bangtan’s job, of course they’re expecting to get paid. Do you go to work and do everything for free? Obviously not, so why should they? Yes it can be frustrating not being able to buy all the merchandise that they put out, but never at any point have they ever put a gun to your head and forced you to buy something. That’s all on you, so you have absolutely no right to complain. Instead of being pessimistic why don’t you see this as a good thing? They’re giving you the opportunity to support them and get all this wonderful content (which even if you don’t buy it is always uploaded thank you kind souls you da real mvp). There are fans out there that have to wait years for a comeback from their idol and hardly get any content or interactions from them. Armys seem to forget just how spoiled we are as a fandom - bangtan regularly have comebacks, they upload videos for us on their youtube channel, and they talk to us almost everyday whether it’s through twitter, v app or the fancafe. They do so much and care so much for us, yet you still have the audacity to say that they’re greedy and only care about the money? People like you honestly make me sick. 

Speaking of not caring, the number of people I’ve seen saying that Taehyung doesn’t care about bangtan anymore and that he’s found better friends it’s actually ridiculous. Listen, bangtan are far beyond the stage of friendship, they are a true family and if you doubt that for even one second then you really don’t know them at all. There’s no law stating that he’s not allowed to have friends that aren’t the members, and I’m sure they trust each other enough to know that even if they hang out with other people sometimes they still love and care about each other so much. And people saying that he’s always distant now need to just stop. The poor boy lost his grandmother, the woman he loved so much and that practically raised him, 6 months ago. Give him time to grieve, please. Things like this aren’t something you can just get over like that, this is going to stay with him and affect him for the rest of his life. He’s a human being just like the rest of us, he’s going to have days where he can’t stop crying and is in pain, and that’s okay. What he needs, now more than ever, is us supporting him, being there for him every step of the way, and just giving him time. He’s an incredibly strong person and I know that he’ll be okay, just please give him time.

Bangtan get so much hate from everyone everywhere, please don’t give them hate from within the fandom too. All they want to do is make music and perform, so please please just be a decent human being and treat them with the love and respect that we all know they deserve.

[elizabethrobertajones]

2x20 & 12x11

Don’t think we’re done by a LONG shot digging out references to past episodes in season 12 stuff but I have a new favourite comparison and it’s not just because of all the El Sol signs, or the passing reference to djinn :D 

I was thinking about how 12x11 emphasised several times the idea of Dean drinking as something being wrong with him as mirroring that little thread in 2x20 about his depressing alcoholic tendencies in that world. Especially with the woman at the start who pays Dean to go away assuming he is a drunk. Obviously in 2x20 Dean has “no memories” of his world because it’s all been made up - he has to discover for himself what his life is there. In both cases the people around him assume that his behaviour is the result of drunkenness, when he just does not know what it going on.

There’s also the dark turn the episodes take when it comes to - well, I’d have said Dean and his endlessly tragic priorities to be flippant if I hadn’t just watched Regarding Dean, but his core operating system of being a hunter and having to save people above everything else. 

In 2x20 Dean remembers that he is a hunter the entire time, but has a ~respite~ from it, thinking that the world has been re-written around his wish and that finally he is free of the job. His life seems a bit crap compared to what Sam has achieved, true, but his family is alive and well, and SAFE, and he feels he can rebuild with Sam and fix the loser!Dean he replaced’s life with lawn mowing and probably an aggressive re-friending campaign with Sam. As for his love life, he’s been handed respectable Carmen on a silver platter. 

But then his ghostly visions of the girl in white begin to intrude and Dean is faced with the discovery that all the things they ever hunted are still out there, but because they were’t hunting them, people died. This leads him to his most heartbreaking monologue on the show in my opinion, which I am guilty of quoting at least once a month for some reason or another but you can’t blame me when Jensen kills it every time with these things (as we know he is 10 years later):

All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They're all dead. And there's this woman, that's haunting me. I don't know why. I don't know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It's like my old life is, is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn't want me to be happy. Course I know what you'd say. Well, not the you that played softball but... "So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people's lives, no contest. Right?" But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? What about us, huh? What, Mom's not supposed to live her life, Sammy's not supposed to get married? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? It's... Yeah...

While it’s on the surface far less tragic, both episodes come down to the fact that Dean is a hunter and has to save people - has to fight for the greater good. Even when he has no idea who he is, this instinct is hard-wired in him. Like with 12x11 and the emphatic note that Dean hadn’t been hexed yet when he rode Larry (sorry, need a light moment in here :P) it’s important to remember that Dean still doesn’t know it’s not a universe-altering wish, but only a dream. And yet despite that, he sneaks off to Mary’s house to get a weapon to fight the djinn and try to restore the universe to its “natural” state, where he is a hunter, always has been, hard-wired into his system, and everyone is alive. Similarly, Dean makes the trip from the car and its Alice In Wonderland notes about witch killing bullets to the house, with no idea what he’s doing, no idea what he’ll find there, but the same drive to hunt and save people that has always been his line motivating him to go. 

Both times, hugely telling moments about Dean’s true motivations and core character, and both times, utterly tragic as he has to “give up” a world he thought was safe and happy, or reject the idea that he’d have been any better happy and clueless about what he was. (And even when he was clueless, Rowena was happy to remind him he was a killer, and she or Sam pointed him at that house as the back up plan - something which has been haunting me since I watched the new episode about his use as an attack dog.)

[eidolon-zephyr]

A Flight of Fancy Ch 3

Fandom: Twilight Pairing: Aro/Bella Rating: M

Intro: Here Previous: Here

Chapter Summary: In which the majority of the players take their places or In which Aro’s magpie tendencies flare up with a vengeance.

Bella wasn’t sure what about her had snagged the Cullens’ attention, but she couldn’t help but feel a little flattered. And scared. She bit down on a slice of apple, chewing thoughtfully. There were high expectations when it came to people that were as pretty as the family she was being introduced to, no matter how friendly a few of them seemed. She wasn’t sure she could meet those expectations. They drove nice cars, they wore nice clothes, they had nice…everything. Meanwhile, she was decidedly not nice, at least not in comparison. It wasn’t like she was going to change for them any time soon, either.

She liked her beat up truck, she liked her comfortable worn-out jeans, and she liked being able to blend in the background, which was very much not possible with the kind of friends she was likely going to be spending more time with. Bella nearly bit her tongue at the tail end of her thought. It was a little presumptuous to call them friends already, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter what Alice thought they would be – the fact of the matter was that they weren’t yet. But she wasn’t exactly going to become friends with them if she spent all her time worrying about how they were different, now was she?

As she spent her time mentally spinning in circles, the Cullens sat at their table, sending her surreptitious glances. Jasper chuckled softly to himself, and Alice nudged him slightly to get his attention.

“What’s so funny?”

“She’s spinnin’ herself in a tizzy. Most prominent is anxiety in that emotional cocktail of hers.”

Rosalie snorted. “Good. Maybe the silly little human has some self-preservation instinct after all.”

“Rose!” Alice hissed quietly.

“You’re making a mistake, Alice,” Rosalie hissed back. “We’ve never gotten close with one of them before. Why are we doing it now?”

Emmett wrapped an arm around her shoulder, rubbing gently in an attempt to soothe.

“Rosie, there shouldn’t be any harm as long as we’re careful, right? It’ll be great! We can think of it like…intense practice.”

“This isn’t a risk we should be taking,” Rosalie insisted with a fierce scowl. “We’re already pushing it just by caging ourselves in here like sardines with what amounts to a buffet served on a silver platter.”

Jasper’s face screwed up in discomfort and Alice patted his hand gently before frowning at Rosalie with disapproval.

“We know what the risk is, but we’re better than that, and you don’t need to remind us. This is worth it!”

“Why?” came the quiet question to Alice’s left. She looked over at Edward, taking in his unhappy expression.

Emmett looked confused.

“Shouldn’t you know? I mean you can see, can’t you?”

The look Edward shot Alice was pointed. “No.”

Alice shrugged sheepishly. Okay, so she’d been a little evasive ever since Bella had become a focal point of her visions. But she knew that if Edward saw her visions, he wouldn’t understand. He’d try to protect what didn’t need protecting, and that was the last thing she wanted, because if he did, there would only be a lot more grief that no one needed.

“Some things should remain surprises,” she murmured with a soft smile. Jasper squeezed her hand and she flipped it over to lace their fingers together. He leaned toward her and whispered, too low for even the other vampires to hear.

“She’s goin’ to change everything, isn’t she?”

A small nod was his only answer and he squeezed again, ghosting a kiss on the crown of her head. He wasn’t comfortable with having a human so close, but he had to trust Alice to keep him, and everyone else – especially Edward – in check. The boy felt as uncomfortable as he did, and Jasper could tell he didn’t appreciate being left in the dark with Alice on top of his inability to read his singer’s mind. But underneath the frustration, he could detect a growing sense of curiosity. He wasn’t sure how good that curiosity would be. Curiosity did, after all, kill the cat – but the cat would be the human in this scenario.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he mumbled.

Aro and Demetri stood in front of the door to the Cullens’ home, Jane sent back to Italy for a rest. Forks was an acceptable place to be – dark, safe for beings such as himself and those he intended to visit. He silently applauded Carlisle’s choice. It afforded him and his coven the freedom to move as they pleased, and for a moment, Aro wished he possessed that freedom. But what need had he of freedom, what need had he of the outside world, when all the world’s power lay in his grasp within the confines of Volterra’s castle? He dismissed the feeling like an errant fly.

Barely a moment had passed before the door opened, a woman with golden eyes and hair the color of caramel standing in the doorway. A quick glance told him that this vampire was married, and she carried the scent of Carlisle on her clothes. His mate, then.

“Hello, how may I help you?”

Her tone was friendly, but her body language was cautious. A good mate, being wary of strange males. Of course, she likely knew who he was, but instinct was a difficult thing to ignore in vampires.

“Yes, my dear, I was hoping that Carlisle would be home. You are his lovely mate, I presume?”

She smiled and bowed her head in a way that Aro thought was abashed.

“I am. My name is Esme.” She lifted her head, her posture relaxing minutely. “May I similarly presume that you are Aro?”

“Quite correct. Would it be alright if I came in, along with my companion Demetri?”

“Oh of course! Make yourselves at home. I called Carlisle as soon as I knew you were here; he should be home soon, as should the rest of my children.”

Aro blinked.

“Children?”

Esme held a hand up to her mouth, hiding a smile at the curious look on Aro’s face.

“Yes, our coven functions a little…differently. Carlisle and I have assumed the role of protectors, or parents. Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, Jasper, and Edward are our ‘children’.”

“I see. How curious!” he exclaimed, his hands clasping together. His eyes narrowed in thought, then he took a step toward her, holding out a hand. “May I?”

The request was innocent enough, but Esme couldn’t help but feel that it was less of a request and more of an order. Perhaps it was just the way he carried himself. He had the air of a man that always got what he wanted, and knowing his position in their world, he probably did.

She knew he had tactile telepathy. There was nothing she had that she wanted to hide, but still…it made her feel oddly vulnerable to know that he’d see everything she had seen. At least Edward’s ability was only surface level. Gulping silently, she acquiesced, and he reached forward, engulfing her small hand within his larger ones. His eyes bored into hers, but it didn’t seem that he was actually looking at her; rather, he was looking through her. After a couple of seconds, he pulled away, his eyes glinting strangely.

“Fascinating…”

Her freed hand curled up near her chest, her earlier wariness creeping back. Call it mother’s intuition. Aro seemed to notice, but said nothing, simply smiling peacefully.

“I was actually in the middle of designing a new home when you arrived, so I’d very much like to return to that - I hope you don’t mind.”

Aro’s smile widened. She wasn’t lying, of course – she knew better than to lie. But what a lovely concept, to design one’s own homes. She put an astounding amount of thought into her creations, even for a vampire.

“Not at all, dear Esme. In fact, I hope you do not mind if I join you? I’m afraid I do not have much to do in the time that I will be waiting for Carlisle.”

“Oh…yes, of course,” she said cordially. “Please, follow me.”

Esme had long ago become numb to things such as cold or heat, but in that moment, as Aro smiled at her, she couldn’t help but feel ice crawling down her spine.

Carlisle sat behind the desk in his study, Aro lounging in the chair before him. The elder vampire’s eyes roved around the walls of the room, gleaming with what he could only assume was approval.

“It’s not often that I get to see you outside of Volterra’s walls, Aro. May I ask what the occasion is?”

“Ah, so even you suspect me of ill intent, dear friend. I’m saddened, but not entirely surprised. It has, after all, been many years.”

Carlisle looked both ashamed and concerned.

“No, friend, nothing like that. I’m simply surprised. You’ve never made it a point to be too far from home.”

Aro barely lifted his shoulders in a shrug, one leg crossing over the other.

“I have a member of the Guard that passed through this area and reported that you were here,” he said off-handedly. “I was rather overtaken with excitement and could not control the impulse to see for myself.”

His cloudy red eyes drifted toward his lap, his fingers lacing together over his knee and his voice dropping to a murmur.

“You are one of my dearest friends, so I’ll have to ask that you forgive me for not being able to contain my joy.”

“Aro…” Carlisle said softly, not quite sure what to say.

Those red eyes shot back up to the younger vampire, and the moment of weakness was gone, a bright smile morphing his features. Carlisle almost felt whiplash from how quickly it had happened and wondered how his friend could change disposition so quickly.

“Worry not, Carlisle. Demetri and I will not trouble you for very long. I simply wished to catch up and meet this wonderful…family…of yours.”

“Aro, don’t think that you are on a time limit. You are more than welcome to spend time with us – I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

“We both know that isn’t necessarily true, now don’t we?” came the quick response, smooth as silk. Carlisle had to resist raising his hackles.

“I’m sorry?”

“I have made contact with both you and your lovely mate, Esme. My arrival was hardly unexpected, dear friend. You had forewarning from one of your coven mates.” He paused. “Family members, I beg your pardon,” he corrected with a faint twist of his lips, as if the phrase sat strangely in his mouth.

“Not only that,” he continued, feeling excitement grow beneath his breast, “but this young woman wished that your resident telepath not know of my presence until there were no other potential paths to take. Why is that?”

Carlisle looked perturbed, his mouth pinched into a fine line.

“We don’t know. Alice has been very cagey in letting us know what she saw. The only thing she informed us about was that you were going to be visiting.”

Just then, his cell phone began to ring and he answered it without looking, his voice becoming cool and professional.

“This is Carlisle Cullen speaking.”

Aro briefly considered if that was what he would sound like all the time if he had embraced his nature instead of fighting it. But then he would no longer be Carlisle, would he? He had become so fond of Carlisle because he was different from the rest of his kind – he had retained his humanity while the rest of them, including himself, had abandoned it and embraced the monster inside.

“Carlisle, it’s Alice,” said the voice on the phone. “I’m bringing a friend home from school. Her name is Bella Swan, Chief Swan’s daughter from Arizona.”

For a moment, Carlisle was uncharacteristically struck dumb, his mouth opening and closing twice before recovering.

“Alice, you know we have company already…”

“I know, I’m the one that told you. It will be fine, I promise. I’ve seen it. Oh, here she comes now. I’ll be bringing her by around seven for dinner. We can all hunt before then to prevent any mishaps,” came the speedy reply before the line abruptly cut off.

Carlisle stared at the phone, then at Aro, and the excitement blooming in Aro’s chest exploded. She was going to be at the house tonight. What fortune! He kept his expression placid and raised a brow in question. His friend was silent for another moment, seemingly at a loss.

“I…suppose we’re having a guest.”

Aro smiled.

“Please, tell me more about this…guest,” he purred, leaning back in his chair.

“Aro,” Carlisle immediately started, half caution, half plead, “she’s not for…for eating.”

The elder vampire’s snort was derisive.

“Judging by the still-unusual color of your eyes, I had assumed as much. Please do not think so little of me.”

“I was actually thinking about you when I said that. I don’t want you or Demetri to think that she can be picked off at the earliest convenience. It’s not just her, either. We have a treaty with the Quileute tribe that no vampires will hunt humans in Forks and the surrounding forests, so for our sakes, please hunt outside of the area.” Aro graciously accepted that, and Carlisle continued. “She knows nothing about us, I can promise you that, and it will stay that way.”

‘For now’, Aro thought to himself rather smugly, then paused again. There he was again, thinking of her being a vampire as he was. She was yet young, barely entering the tender age of seventeen. Older than Jane, but younger than him when he was changed at twenty-four. He hoped to have her join his Guard after her turning, should she agree to be turned. At that, he mentally scoffed. Agree? She didn’t need to agree to be turned. And she didn’t need to agree to join, either. She would be a vampire serving in Volterra. He had to see it for himself, to see if her human gift grew stronger with the venom in her system. His venom. He had taken a rather personal interest in this little human. When she was to be turned, it would be by him, and the thought had a surge of possessiveness coursing through his body, causing his fingers to curl. He nodded slowly, letting Carlisle know he’d heard.

“This is acceptable. Tell me more.”

Carlisle opened his mouth to say he knew nothing else, but was interrupted when his phone buzzed 3 times in quick succession in his pocket. Frowning softly, he pulled it out and saw 3 texts from Alice, all using the max character limit, with information on Bella. So telling Aro was important? Why? She was just…he sighed to himself and shook his head, accepting it for what it was and arranged the information in his brain in a way that sounded more articulate than a bunch of abbreviated words and chopped sentences.

“Alright, well…”

Aro and Demetri stood in the living room as the rest of Carlisle’s coven entered the house. Such talent, he thought to himself, and the solitary male, Edward, swiveled his head toward him, his brows furrowing.

“Relax, brother. His emotional climate is content,” Jasper reassured. Aro fixated on him.

“Ah, yes, you are the legendary Major of the Southern Wars, are you not?”

Jasper strode forward, power in his long strides, and he held out a hand for Aro to shake. Jasper towered over him, and his expression was perfectly neutral, which would have intimidated lesser vampires, but Aro felt only excitement. Grinning delightedly, Aro grasped the offered hand firmly, then trapped it with his other hand, his eyes fluttering closed.

“Spectacular,” he breathed. “You are every bit as incredible as the stories say, dear Major.” His eyes opened and locked with the veteran vampire, open admiration shining in his milky red orbs. “Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to say,” he said lowly, glancing pointedly at Jasper’s covered arms, “but you should have no shame in what you are and where you came from. We all have our stories, some darker than others. It is who we are.”

Jasper shifted uncomfortably, pulling out of Aro’s grip with little resistance.

“I’ll…think about it.”

“Of course.”

Oh, how powerful an asset the famed Major would be! He could intimidate lesser vampires and newborns just with a glance at his scar-covered body, and incapacitate any other vampire by filling them with raw terror, drive out all reason in skilled vampires by pumping them full of mindless rage, overwhelm them with desolation so powerful they would beg for death…the possibilities were many, and all highly favorable.

He glanced at the other two gifted vampires in the room and felt his fingertips itch. The ability to hear thoughts of multiple individuals at once without touch…the famed ability of premonition…both abilities would enable these vampires to know the moves of their target before they even made them. Together, they would be an incredible force to be reckoned with, granting near invincibility, and a pulse of want flew through him. Such wonderful treasures…

Edward cleared his throat, obviously becoming upset at Aro’s line of thinking, and the man forced himself to relax. He had all the time in the world to ask them to join him, and even if they refused, they belonged to Carlisle, and by extension – in his mind – him. Calling in favors surely wouldn’t be a bad thing?

“Don’t count on it,” he heard a low mutter, almost too low for him to hear. Edward refused to look at him, and Aro smiled at the petulant look on the other vampire’s face. Sullen like Marcus, snappish like Caius, with a spark of something else in-between. How quaint.

“Alright, everyone,” Carlisle called, holding up his hands. “Alice is going to bring Bella around seven. That gives us three hours to hunt and return – and to shower and change, if necessary,” he added with a look toward Emmett who shrugged innocently. “If you feel you must take any extra precautions, please do so.”

He turned to Aro.

“Did you bring any contacts, in case you wanted to be here when Bella arrives?”

“I can always buy some. I did not exactly have any intention of meeting humans during my stay.” Lie. He had two pairs of sky blue contacts to make his eyes a murky purple, but to the Cullens he had no reason to possess such things.

“Alice,” came the soft voice of Esme, “do you perhaps know what it is that Bella likes to eat? I’d like for her to enjoy her meal.”

Medium-rare steak, mashed potatoes with skins and sour cream, and sautéed green beans, came the immediate answer in Aro’s mind. It was an uncommon meal in Bella’s repertoire, admittedly, but Jane had reported that the girl took special care cooking the dish and took her time consuming it, always looking a little happier afterward. Alice’s eyes flicked over to him as if in warning, and she suggested a simple chicken carbonara. If Alice thought he was foolish enough to forget that Edward could hear him, she had not observed him well enough in her visions. In a vampire his age, it was rather easy to divide his thoughts into conscious layers to hide what he was really thinking. On the surface, he was considering matters in Volterra, and what his next meal would be, and he saw the resulting cringe in the bronze-haired vampire, which made him smirk.

I am what I am, dear boy. I will not spare you that reality. And then his thoughts were filled with all of the humans he’d fed from before, taking a sort of vindictive pleasure in hearing the boy’s jaw clench hard as he attempted to control his rising bloodlust.

A harsh exhale came from Edward’s direction, and then he was gone. Motion made Aro turn and he saw that Jasper was hunched over, shaking, his arms wrapped around himself. Then he, too, was gone. So he felt bloodlust as if it were an emotion, as well. Interesting, he thought mildly. Esme and Carlisle ran after Edward, and Rosalie and Emmett ran after Jasper. Alice stayed behind, scowling fiercely.

“That was uncalled for,” she hissed, striding forward. She poked him in the chest, and Demetri took a step forward, a growl building in his throat. Aro held up a hand, commanding Demetri to stop and he stared down at the offending appendage. “I’m doing you a favor here, the least you could do is not torture my brother and my husband!”

“My apologies,” he said with a smile, completely unapologetic. “I was not aware it would be so…potent.”

“Edward hasn’t always been so supportive of our diet, and Jasper is still struggling. The least you could do is keep that in mind, especially since you’ve seen it from touching our hands. You have no excuse!”

“It would not be such an issue if they simply embraced their true natures.”

“That’s not the point! They have their reasons for drinking from animals. It’s called respecting their lifestyle. You do it for Carlisle. Try to do it for the rest of us.”

Feisty little thing, he thought happily.

“I will take it under consideration,” he promised with a smile. “Now why are you doing this for me, little Alice?”

“She’s my sister, and she deserves to be happy.”

Well, there was an odd string of words.

“Care to elucidate?”

Alice began walking toward the rear entrance of the house, pausing in front of the door.

“All you need to know is that I care about her and that she will find happiness with us, in the path she’s going down. She was meant for this.”

She was meant for immortality.

A slow smile curved Aro’s lips.

“I see.”

She pointed at Demetri.

“And send him to feed. If he doesn’t, he runs the risk of killing her.”

Unacceptable. He glanced at Demetri and gestured carelessly.

“Go.”

A whisper of air told him his companion was gone. He glanced back at where Alice was standing and saw that she was gone, too. Feisty and quick, he amended. What a curious little family, he thought as he reclined in a cushioned wooden chair that was bordering a chess table. He glanced at the set, then reached down and picked up the white queen, twirling the piece between his fingers.

It wouldn’t be long now.

[flauntpage]

Fourth Dumb and 8

Tim McManus today took us inside the Eagles’ analytics game and the decision to go for it on 4th and 8 on Sunday:

Said Reich: “After [Pederson has] made the third-down call the phones can be silent for a few seconds, and one of the guys might chime in and say, ‘Hey coach, if this ends up short fourth-and-2,’ — I’m using fake terminology — ‘it’s green, go for it. The charts say go for it.’ Or, ‘Hey, if it’s anything less than fourth-and-3, we’re good. Other than that, it’s your call, Coach.’ Or, ‘Anything more than fourth-and-10, no.’

“The analogy I think of is kind of like a stoplight. There’s green, there’s yellow and there’s red, and then there’s shades of green, there’s shades of yellow and then there’s shades of red. So some of them are, ‘Hey, it’s green’; ‘yellow, proceed with caution,’ — and that’s how it operates.”

The fourth-and-8 from the Giants’ 43-yard line fell into the yellow section.

Based on this assessment, Doug Pederson’s very ineloquent explanation in his Monday press conference, and several articles yesterday attempting to defend the decision, including one by Jimmy Kempski, it was basically a coin-flip as to whether the Eagles should’ve gone for it… statistically speaking.

I’ll be the first to admit that perhaps I overstated things on Monday when I wrote “GTFO” in response to Doug’s explanation that analytics factored into his decision. Obviously, he was presented with a case to go for it. But the rest of the criticism still stands: it was dumb.

But Kyle, the numbers said it was, like, 50-50!

The way they arrive at this conclusion is by using a complex equation that not only factors in the basic guidance used by tools like the New York Times’ 4th down bot (which said not to go for it), but also the risk-reward in maintaining possession and potentially getting points on the drive vs. a ~30-yard field position swing. Generally speaking, the numbers say coaches should be much more aggressive than they typically are. It’s all quite fascinating, to be honest.

But, as best as I can tell from reading a lot about it over the past few days, these metrics are based on normal-flow-of-game situations and don’t factor in time and circumstance. And also, at best, they only consider Vegas lines when accounting for teams’ strengths. Needless to say, there are many other variables for which no metric can account. A sport like baseball, where each matchup can be broken down to a 1 vs. 1 event, is easier to predict using hard data. Hockey, in my opinion, is the hardest, given the countless variables going on at any given moment. Football likely falls somewhere in the middle.

You can see where analytical recommendations break down when you take them out to their extreme.

Though it’s likely more surface-level than what the Eagles are probably using, the 4th down bot recommends the following:

Now, should you punt on fourth and 12 down 10 with two minutes to go? No. Conversely, if you’re up 2 with 40 seconds remaining, does it really make sense to go for it on fourth and 2 from your own 28? Probably not, seeing as though a turnover on downs would likely lose you the game.

The midfield scenario in which the Eagles found themselves on Sunday wasn’t as cut and dry, but it was also unique for a number of reasons that analytics simply can not factor in. Among them:

There was 2:36 remaining in the half with the Eagles up 7-0.

They have an above-average punter who nearly pinned the Giants at the 1 earlier in the game. They likely would’ve come away with something better than a touchback.

The Giants hadn’t scored a touchdown in 10 quarters to that point. They were struggling earlier in the game. And the Eagles were playing a conservative sag approach allowing the Giants to complete short underneath routes for 5 yards or so. All of those factors would have made a scoring drive – at least a touchdown – unlikely, given the relatively short amount of time the Giants had to work with.

A turnover on downs, even on an incomplete pass rather than the moronic sack Carson Wentz took, would’ve put the Giants within 1-2 passes of field goal range.

There’s long been a debate between analytics folks and the “WATCH THE DAMN GAME!” crowd. Generally, the analytics folks have won out. But one area of debate has focused on the undeniable element of momentum. In this case, you had a team that had yet to score a touchdown on the season, which was struggling to get anything going on the road, and potentially facing almost the entire length of the field with only a short amount of time with which to work. Getting a turnover at midfield was a gift that injected life into the walking corpse of an offense. Never mind the fact that it put them in a 2-for-1 scenario, since they were due to get the ball after halftime. They could’ve potentially taken a 14-7 lead before the Eagles touched the ball again.

Kempski presented the following hypothetical to prove his point that going for it wasn’t a terrible idea:

Q: 1st/10, own 12 yd line. Would you call a play that 1/3 of the time will be INT at your 35, 2/3 of the time will be completed at your 43?

— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) September 26, 2017

You can give yourself a headache trying to understand that, but the gist of it is that it’s more or less the scenario from the Giants’ perspective. If you screamed “No!” you wouldn’t go for it, congratulations, you’re sane. That answer also works to “prove” Kempski’s point that the Giants actually would’ve preferred that the Eagles punt there.

Two problems with this:

The hypothetical of throwing a pass that has a 33% chance of being intercepted on first down presents a much different risk-reward platter than the reality of getting a momentum-swinging stop on fourth down– essentially a gift.

I’m not so sure the Giants would have preferred the Eagles punt there, for all the aforementioned reasons. Even if they did, it doesn’t prove anything, because it relies on the very same subjective decision-making process that the analytics in question seek to disprove.

This isn’t to slam Kempski– his piece was the best I’ve seen in making the case for the Eagles to go for it. It was certainly better than Pederson’s.

But no matter how much you contort yourself into thinking it was the right decision, the best one can come up with is a 50-50 chance without factoring in the unique circumstance, which undeniably screamed “PUNT, YOU IDIOT!”

Keep hearing complaints about Eagles’ “analytics.” Fine to disagree w/ decision, but isn’t it irresponsible to NOT consider available data?

— Zach Berman (@ZBerm) September 27, 2017

Likewise for Berman– the data doesn’t explicitly say to go for it. It leaves the decision in the hands of the coach. Which brings us back to square one: the best use of data, in almost any circumstance, is to understand what it says and, more importantly, what it doesn’t say. It’s a fool’s errand to blindly trust a statistic. Any researcher will tell you this. Similarly, the best coaches will use the data on-hand to make an informed decision. Pederson, from my view, based on the rapidly accumulating sample size of his thought process, seems just stupid enough to screw things up.

Worse, he’s inconsistent.

Last year, he opted to punt with 6:34 remaining up 23-16 in Dallas, rather than kick a 53-yard field goal. Here’s the context-agnostic math on that one: field goals from that distance have around a 53% chance of being made. Here’s the context: Caleb Sturgis had already made one from 55 yards in that game, was kicking in essentially a dome, and a field goal would have all but guaranteed a win. My guess is that whatever complex equation the Eagles used would’ve told them to try the field goal. Doug punted, the Cowboys drove down the field and scored, and the Eagles lost in overtime.

Perhaps he was trying to make up for his field position play last year with his decision to go for it on Sunday. But each of those situations were unique, and Doug, incredibly, made the wrong decision both times– being conservative when he should’ve been aggressive (if you can even call a makable 53-yard field goal attempt to ice the game “aggressive”) and aggressive when all circumstances indicated that he should have been conservative.

This is my concern with Pederson, and the Eagles in general. You can have all the data in the world, but ultimately it’s what you do with that data that matters. Do you trust Doug Pederson as the person to handle it? I don’t.

Fourth Dumb and 8 published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[capnseafeather]

Artemis squealed as she ran down the street as quickly as her five-year-old legs would let her. She had to get away from the most terrifying thing in the world: the tickle bugs. A few of the people around–all the old people, atleast as old as Poppa–were laughing at her, and she giggled as she ran looking for a place to hide. It wasn’t long before, within all of the townsfolk of the Fire-Ninja village, she spotted a familiar face. Picking up speed, the young child ran to the tall, casually dressed man. Once she had accomplished her short race, Artemis bent over and gasped for breath, putting her hands on her knees and her back against the same wall as the friend she had run to as she did so.

The man chuckled as he leaned over and ruffled her long, silver hair. “Now, what have we here?” he inquired in a cool, flowing voice that made more than one head turn in their direction. Artemis, after noticing the effect of the adult’s voice almost immediately, squirmed and ran and hid behind his jean leg. The man followed her actions with an amused expression, and grinned down at her as he continued. “Another run away, perhaps?”

Artemis, frustrated at the amused tone the man had taken with her, gave him a stern look–past his dark hair that had fallen into his face and straight into his ruby-colored eyes. She put one hand on her hip and, while she dusted the…well, dust off of her black-and-red skirt, she took a deep breath. “Mister Dredmir!” she scolded, “Poppa’s gonna get me! You need to stay so I can hide, okay?” The child finished her self-cleansing, and looked up into the man’s eyes, an quick answer expected in her mind.

Dred flashed the girl a smile, perfectly pointed fangs gleaming in the sunlight, and gave her a small bow. “As you wish, m'lady.” Artemis wrinkled her nose at him in distaste, then decided otherwise, giggled, and ran into the building behind him, peeking out of the window. Dred chuckled, and turned his attention to the not-so-deserted street in front of him, waiting for the child’s pursuer to come running down the street in a panic, looking for his lost daughter.

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

As if the mere thought summoned him, a man came huffing up the street, waving back to the people around him and searching with his golden-colored eyes. He spots Dred and makes his way over, sweeping his dark hair out of his face and leaned against Dred, commenthing to the vampire, “Nice day to be out, isn’t it?” He grins as he hears a giggle from the building behind them and sees the swish of silver hair in the window.

Dred smiles. “Well, my pale-skinned friend, I think it sure is. I’ve heard some really scary news though!” He watches as Artemis peeks out from the window and chuckles. Taking his voice level down (but still loud enough for the five year old to hear), he continues. “I hear there are…TICKLE BUGS…out and about…” Artemis squeals from inside, and Dred laughs as he pulls close to his heavy-breathing friend. “Looking for someone, James?” he asks, offering a hand to his fallen comrade.

James takes the hand pulls himself up, smiling. “Yeah, she got away from me. Who knew five year olds could be so fast?” He laughs, looking back at the small child as her head peeks out from the window again. “Thanks for being here to make sure no one else got to her,” he sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Katara would have my head on a platter if I were to lose her ‘darling little angel.’” The man walked into the home, and a roar followed by lots of laughing and “poppa, stop it!” ’s is heard throughout the area. Eventually, when both had become exhausted from such large amounts of play, the two walked out, James throwing Artemis into the air and catching the giggling child. As he threw her in the air, he grinned and finished, “But, no matter what mamma says, you’ll always bepoppa’s baby angel, right?” Artemis giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck, snuggling into his chest. It was then the father and daughter walked away, James calling out to Dred behind his shoulder, “Hey, let Seth know you both are invited to dinner!”

The vampire chuckled as he watched the two leave. “Such a nice family…” he sighs, kicking a rock. Dred grinned darkly, looked back at the happy twosome leaving, and laughed similarly. “…it’s a pity their meager, happy go lucky lives must soon come to an unpleasant end.”

Dred finished chuckling darkly to himself right as another young man strode up, putting a hand on his comrade’s shoulder and taking a deep breath. He was roughly the same height as the vampire and every bit as muscular–though a bit paler in comparison, and as he spoke to Dred, he has his usual easy-going yet watchful expression about him. “So Dred–”

The man began to speak, but was cut off before he could finish by the vampire. “Yes, Seth,” Dred sighed. “I have seen James–I was just talking to him.”

Seth grinned a little bit wider. “How’d you know that’s what I was going to ask? Use some of your bloodsucker powers or something?” he asked, and he laughed as Dred rolled his eyes. “Nah, I saw you guys a little while back. Was that his pride and joy with him?”

Dred sighed. “You mean the pain that he’s finally letting out into the normal world? Yes, that was Artemis. She seems to be enjoying her time outdoors quite a bit–as a child her age should. Yet I tend to wonder why they kept her indoors and away from all of the village folk for so long.” He raised an eyebrow at the man, who had just leaned against the wall and was polishing an apple with his shirt. “Any ideas?” he inquired.

Seth frowned slightly, and he looked around cautiously. “Well,” he began carefully, “there have been rumors…about the prophecy coming true. And their family is the only in which it would even be possible…” He shook his head. “It’s all just rumors, though.”

The vampire raised his eyebrows in mock curiosity. “Prophecy?” he inquired.

The man looked around carefully once again. “You know the prophecy. We had it drilled into us–all four of us did–while we were training at the Ninja Academy.” At Dred’s still confused look, he sighed. “Fine,” Seth replied as he got up, “If you need to be refreshed on the most vital of lessons, let’s at least go somewhere where we won’t be overheard, shall we?” Dred nodded, and after going into the nearby building and checking every corner and window for eavesdroppers, Seth sat across from his vampiric friend. “Alright. So the prophecy of the one creature that is going to one day be the demonic demise of us all. Where to begin…”

[caredogstips]

Ben Carson: could he be the answer to Republicans’ youth problem?

The retired neurosurgeons stimulating life history and non-politician status are key glean for millennials, facilitating see him Facebooks most followed candidate

The younger generation is tired of the typical politician, suggests 17 -year-old Megan Cox, explaining why she came to see Ben Carson with her mom, aunt and cousin in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

We interpret the stereotypical politician as more of exactly a figurehead, kind of bogus and so the fact that he is not a busines politician is a reaping point.

Like many who have come to see Carson speak at Wofford College, she says she was aware of, and motivated by, the mentality surgeons life story long before he embarked ranging for president. So far the seeming divergences in that story havent dissuaded them.

Millennials approximately defined as being born between the early 1980 s and early 2000 s make up its significant voting bloc. Its reckoned they will constitute a third of the vote in the 2016 election. Its the working group Republican ought to have struggling to allure. In 2012, 67% of 18- to 29 -year-olds voted for Barack Obama, compared with simply 30% for Mitt Romney.

Carson has so far proved to be something of a hit with this group, however. In May he topped a poll of those aged 18 -2 9, to be organized by Harvard Universitys Institute of Politics, as the most wonderful GOP candidate. In a September survey by Chegg, Carson was preceding his Republican competitives among college students.

Seeing Carson speak in person, at Woffords Benjamin Johnson arena in Spartanburg, it is not immediately obvious why he has such petition. Observers of the Republican dialogues will be accustomed to his toned-down accomplishments eyes half shut, spokesperson soft, pate bent but on theatre, talking to a gang of about 1,000 beings, he seems even lower-energy.

Ive been spending a lot of era boning up on material, Carson tells the audience, having only returned from a trip to Jordan. Carson toured refugee camps and met aid workers on site visits, in an attempt to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

Hes organized a move demonstrate for the students.

Syria, reads a entitle at the top of the first slither. There is a map of Syria and the countries encircling it. Syria is in red.

Population: 17 m, suggests a missile point.

There are pictures of Carson meeting dislodged Syrians. There is more room in the refugee camps, he responds. The US neednt accept anyone just yet.

Carson segues into something more like a stump communication, speeding slowly across the stage. He talks of the need to return to Judeo-Christian values. He talks about beings expecting him why he would enter politics after such a wonderful busines in medication. He utilises two handwriting gestures: embraced together, as if in devotion, and harboured apart, palms facing one another, like a serviceman describing the dimensions of the a fish he formerly caught.

More Facebook partisans than Bernie Sanders

A 2 December Quinnipiac ballot showed that Carson has fallen behind Trump, the two having been neck-and-neck since early November, and is tied with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz for second place. Before he travelled to the Middle East he compared Syrian refugees to rabid hounds, which may not have helped.

But there are other indications of his notoriety. Carson has 4. 9 million adherents on Facebook. Thats more than Hillary Clinton and Trump. It is even more than Bernie Sanders, supposedly the millennial sweetheart.

Wofford hosted a GOP presidential conversation in 2011, and hosts the Hipp lecture series established by a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican party on national insurance. This is not a liberal campus, but still caters an interesting barometer of boy supporting. Talking to students it becomes clear that a big part of Carsons success is his life story. It was particularly helpful that many of them have contemplated this life story in school.

When I took anatomy last year we watched the Gifted Hands movie, does Cox.

I had no clue that he was interested in politics at all but the facts of the case that his life story, becoming a surgeon, and that he did inadequately in grade school and defeat that and went to Yale overcoming that is very important to me because it shows you a hard worker and he wasnt simply sided everything on a silver platter.

Isaiah Addison, a 21 -year-old Wofford student who is originally from Killeen, Texas, has an virtually identical fib.

Before he even was guiding Id looked at him as a role model, Addison says.

Hes actually one of the reasons why Im a neuroscience major right now here at Wofford. When I was in high school I actually watched the movie Gifted Hands and it genuinely transformed me on to wanting to know more about how the brain works.

Abbey Bedenbaugh is the chief representative for Ben Carsons campaign at Wofford. She didnt examine the movie Gifted Hands which stars Cuba Gooding Jr as Carson, and has a 7.8 -star rating on IMDB but read the book on which it was based.

Thats when I started to follow him and his employment, Bedenbaugh says.

His story, how he grew up. What he did to overcome obstacles in his childhood. How he merely continued to pursue what he adored no matter what obstacles he faced.

Bedenbaugh is 18 years old and is studying chemistry. She has only been campaigning for Carson for two weeks but has ever been signing up abundance of students. Like Cox, Addison, and many others, the tale of Carsons success is a big draw.

His popularity with boys is not lost on Carsons campaign. They have set up a Students for Carson program and are present on 3,900 college campuses.

As for reaching out to this demographic, our campaign believes it is incredibly important, enunciates Ying Ma, Carsons deputy communications director.

They aim to increase the number of sections to captivate more young people and get them campaigning on Carsons behalf.

As for his appeal: They visualize an authentic, accomplished individual who is willing to speak the truth and offering real solutions, Ma says.

Unconditional support

But Carsons back story the wayward boy who may or may not “ve been trying to” jabbed a sidekick before noting God and becoming a world-renowned intelligence surgeon has already become something of a millstone over the past weeks. Correspondents have been unable to find anyone to corroborate Carsons account of has become a teenage tearaway.

No one who knew a youthful Carson seems to remember him as a brutal child, let alone one who would attempt to attack his own mother with a hammer or stab a sidekick. Similarly, Carsons claims that he was offered a award to West Point armed establishment, and that he was deemed the most honest student in his class at Yale, have proved to be inaccurate.

You might expect that this would alienate those who were attracted by Carsons story and franknes. But the people I speak to seem prepared to give him a pass.

It does “i m feeling” heartbreaking but every person is a human, everyone moves missteps, Bedenbaugh tells. Not everyone is perfect all the time. Even Ben Carson.

In the Benjamin Johnson arena, Carson moves on to a question-and-answer discussion. His foreign policy boning up is evident, although he seems a bit over-eager to indicate it. At periods he sounds like a student hoping for additional points.

Asked about King Abdullah of Jordan, Carson describes him as a very honorable humanity. He pauses for a second before adding: he was a fighter captain. He talks about Russia and mentions the Baltic basin. And Im not talking about the Balkans, he illuminates, for no self-evident conclude other than to emphasize that he knows the difference between the two.

The event is brought to a shut. The predominantly young gathering have enjoyed the evening. Carson gets a standing ovation. Students snap photos as he ripples from the stage. “Theres” voluntaries outside, waiting to sign up new boosters. Evaluating by the response, they will probably do quite well.

The Carson campaign will be pleased. But as people begin to file out, there is a reminder that the electorate is also possible fickle.

At the extremely top of one of the realm sitting banks groupings of students are locked in exchange. I climb up and ask them why they substantiate Ben Carson.

Oh we dont, one says. We get extra ascribes for coming.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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