#some of them have been in the industry for decades and you’re surprised Cars 3 isn’t their favourite film?

[supremeuppityone]

This was created for the Klaroline Fall Bingo Event @klarolinefallbingo. It’s a sequel to Chapter 119 - Part 2 - What Makes Up a Monster, in my series, A Beautiful Symmetry. 

Part 3 is here.

Warning: Some angst

Prompt: Fake blood

Please review here.

                                ______________________________

           Why did she do this to herself? Caroline stabbed the makeup brush into the foundation palette a bit harder than necessary, watching a couple of the extras giggle and fawn all over Klaus. Despite his worldwide fame and countless industry accolades, he’d somehow remained the same generous, down-to-earth man he’d been when she first met him two decades ago. Not that he’d remember her. She’d made sure of that.

           One of her fangs dug into the tip of her tongue, pricking it just enough to sate her monster. Monsters shouldn’t have regrets. What they’d had together should’ve been a brief fling, but instead feelings happened, and she ended up compelling him to forget. It had been for the best — he was close with his siblings and he desperately wanted to be famous — that combination spelled disaster for her kind.

           But Caroline couldn’t stay away. Almost as though she was doing penance, every few years, she’d find her way onto the makeup team for one of his movies, feeling the need to check up on him. However, she hid behind a wall of cheerful professionalism, making sure not to let him get close again. Her heart could only take so much.

           “My apologies, sweetheart.”

           Klaus’ accented voice was a buttery warmth that flowed over her. Straightening her spine, she replied dryly, “It’s such a pity to have to drag the Great Klaus Mikaelson away from his fan club so that he can do his actual job.”

           “Might want to mind that sharp tongue of yours, love; when you get a bit older, you’ll find that youth and beauty only get you so far in this business.”

           Arrogant little bastard. Tucking back a grin at Klaus’ assumption that he was older than her, Caroline tightened the collar of his protective cape a bit more than strictly necessary. “Sharp tongues have their uses,” she muttered, carefully reapplying the coagulated blood gel to the prosthetic gash she’d crafted along his cheek and neck. “You’d be surprised how many movie sets this sharp tongue has talked me onto.”

           That smirk of his deepened, dimples cutting into his cheeks. Fake blood had never looked so good. “Perhaps you’re a secret fan of mine? Consider me flattered.”

           “I’ve caught a couple of your movies.” No need for him to know she’d been the lead special effects artist on the set of the highly acclaimed paranormal drama, Ghostly Secrets. And the blockbuster sci-fi movie, The Price of Ambition. Or a handful of others where she’d purposely managed the other makeup artists to avoid him becoming too familiar with her face over the years. Fuck, that was pathetic.

           He seemed charmed by her terse tone, chuckling as he replied, “I have to admit, I’ve had a good run in this town, but lately everything just feels so predictable. A table at Pearl’s, drinks at Boarding House — the days all run together.” Klaus frowned, leaning forward as he became more invested in what he was saying. “And you should see the scripts my agent’s been sending me. Bloody awful drivel that’s even lazier than my old Hell’s Hybrid movies.”

           Caroline’s blue eyes widened, and she hated the way her sluggish heart suddenly began to pick up its pace. It’s just words. It doesn’t mean anything. “Then quit. You’ve probably made enough to last you several lifetimes.”

           “But what if I want to live more than several lifetimes?”

           His cheeky question made her hand tremble, and she accidentally nicked underneath his chin while carefully trimming the loose edge of his prosthetic. Damn it. She quickly sliced her finger, dabbing a tiny bit of blood in the wound so that it would heal instantly. “Not sure the planet could take the weight of your ego for so long,” she teased, doing her best to strangle the hopeful butterflies that fluttered inside.

           “You wound me, sweetheart.” His tone turned speculative as he added, “I suspect my younger brother would’ve enjoyed you.”

           Caroline busied herself applying a thin layer of adhesive to the smaller prosthetics, unsure of what to say. A few years ago, Kol’s death had made global headlines when he died in the plane crash that also took their sister. Her heart had ached for Klaus, but she stayed away, knowing that if she saw him grieving, she’d compel him to remember her just so she could comfort him. She couldn’t be selfish with him.

           She’d been proud of the way he’d grown from the tragedy, taking the time he needed to grieve, before returning to the spotlight. There was a quiet strength to him now, a matter-of-fact confidence that had been lacking when they first met. “Your family would be proud of you,” she murmured, briefly squeezing his shoulder so she wouldn’t do something stupid like give him an awkward, way-too-familiar hug.

           “Thank you.” Klaus paused, gray eyes regarding her in a way that made her wonder what he saw. “You’re very easy to talk to — maybe we could have a drink after we wrap for the day?”

           No. You can’t go through this again. “I doubt you’re lacking for company. But I’ll see you tomorrow,” Caroline replied gently, flashing him a smile that made her face hurt.

           Undeterred, he winked, telling her, “Challenge accepted. I’ll earn your company eventually, love.”

                                ______________________________

           The speedboat revved its engine, the stunt driver taking sharp turns through the narrow canal as he waited for Klaus to get into position. The studio always shamelessly plugged the fact that Klaus was one of the few leading men who’d perform at least one major stunt per film. Why did he always have to pick the most dangerous ones?

           Caroline carried the last makeup case to her car, resolutely staring ahead once she saw the safety coordinators and trainers buckling him into his harness. She never could stomach watching those scenes. The first explosion still made her jump, despite her anticipating the loud boom. However, it was the unexpected second explosion and shattering glass that made her gasp. Something was wrong.

           She followed the screams to the center bridge overlooking the canal, the crowd pointing at the side of the skyscraper that Klaus was supposed to parachute past and shoot a grappling hook into the speedboat below. Instead, several cables had snapped in the accidental second explosion, and the wall of shattered glass showed her that Klaus had been slammed into the side of the building.

           No. Tears instantly sprang to her eyes, and she didn’t bother restraining her strength as she shoved people out of the way. She had to do something. But there was nothing to be done. The crew frantically retracted the remaining cables on the crane, pulling him back to the roof. But it didn’t matter — he wasn’t Klaus anymore. Just a body. She cursed her enhanced senses, hating how the staff still had hope as they watched. Because they couldn’t hear how the air stopped inflating his lungs. How his heart had stilled. Caroline closed her eyes, sending a silent goodbye out into the universe. For he who he was.

                                ______________________________

           The morgue was crawling with parasitic reporters, all salivating at the thought of capturing a grisly morgue picture of the famous Klaus Mikaelson’s corpse. Caroline compelled her way onto the hospital’s staff, the heightened security a minor annoyance that she fortunately understood how to navigate.

           She brushed aside the curls along Klaus’ forehead, the ghastly bruising much more faint than when he’d first been removed from the destroyed set. Suddenly, his body jerked violently on the slab; Klaus’ eyes opened with a gasp.

           There. Confusion clouded his gaze as he stared at her, the compelled memories rattling around in his mind as he sorted through them. “Caroline,” he asked uncertainly, before recognition colored his tone as he exclaimed, “Caroline! It’s been so long and I’ve missed you. I didn’t even realize what I was missing, but I felt it all the same. I felt you.”

           Caroline didn’t know when she started crying, but soon she found herself wrapped up in his arms. He murmured against her curls, “What happened?”

           Time to discuss those several lifetimes he’d mentioned.

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2020

You know, when I finished my latest list and realised every decade had the same pattern and that we were slowly going towards a series of great years for pop, I didn’t realise how good that year would be.

What’s at the top? Am I boringly predictable because I already said I loved that song all the way back in January 2020? Let’s find out.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will probably be stuff in French somewhere on this post. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

So. Uh. How was your 2020?

Mine was actually surprisingly good, considering. I’m lucky enough to have a job that I can partially do from home, and I was extremely paranoid from the get-go and nobody got sick under this roof so far. Turns out I’m even better at my job from home and I got permission to work from home one day per week even after the health crisis is over! My first name was also finally officially approved and I can’t tell you how happy I feel about that. I almost feel bad to have had such a good year considering the circumstances. I feel like an asshole just because I’m happy, haha.

The only frustrating part was that I was supposed to see Hatari in concert in Paris in early April which, as you can guess, was cancelled. I’m not too mad about it though, since their tour was called “Europe will crumble” and the message saying the tour was cancelled started with “since Europe is actually crumbling due to Covid-19″ and that’s hysterical.

Good or interesting albums that came out in 2020 now, let’s see.

Nightwish released Human/Nature, which was a huge letdown compared to their previous album, but I will relisten to it at some point to make sure I wasn’t just in a bad mood that day.

The Birthday Massacre released Diamonds, which might be their weakest album since their debut, but contained some real gems (I listened to The Last Goodbye on a loop, it floored me. Flashback and Enter are also very good).

The 1975 released Notes On A Conditional Form, and let’s be real, it’s a f█cking mess. You could cut half the tracks and end up with an excellent album, but as it is it’s like, yes, a collection of notes ; however there’s some truely excellent shit on it (see unelligible songs).

Thanks to a friend on a discord server I was exposed to Dorian Electra’s music and I haven’t been quite the same ever since. I’m so happy to be alive to see other enbies making such great music with an insanely good aesthetic surrounding it and asking so many interesting questions about gender. Also the arc the ‘gentleman’ character goes through over the course of the entire tracklist of the 2020 My Agenda album is absolutely hilarious, don’t @ me.

I also discovered 100 Gecs this year. Why are most of you guys saying it’s unlistenable garbage. It’s just as abrasive and over the top as industrial music is, but with none of the edginess or drama. I love it. What the hell. But yeah Tree of Clues was released this year. Good.

Speaking of industrial, in March 2020 Nine Inch Nails were like “hey remember when we released Ghosts I-IV a decade ago entirely for free and how amazing that was? Well we’re all in lockdown and bored as hell so here’s Ghosts V-VI and it’s also free. Enjoy” and I f█cking died instantly. And it’s even better than I-IV. What the hell was that year

Jonsi released Shiver. It’s strange and highly experimental. I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing I was into hyperpop this year, otherwise going from his previous material straight to this album would have been brutal.

Yadda yadda yadda After Hours by the Weeknd good yadda yadda.

I’ve joked about that already but if you had told me in 2019 that 2020 would have fires, a pandemic, riots, monoliths appearing and disappearing, and also a super good Machine Gun Kelly album, guess which part I would have found the most ridiculous. But yeah uh. Tickets to my Downfall good

So uh this year I tried to listen to some hyperpop and liked it a lot, and I also dipped my toes timidly into screamo and listened to Svalbard, who released When I Die this year, and the entire album was a very beautiful, very intricately decorated punch to the face. It sounds like God Is An Astronaut except with a shit ton of yelling. I love it. Open Wound is my favorite track on it.

But no, despite all of this, my album of the year was from a band I had never even heard about before that year, called Spanish Love Songs. The album is titled Brave Faces Everyone and it’s line after line after line of extremely relatable generational angst but yelled with complete sincerity and it’s so propulsive and energetic you can’t help but feel both exhausted and ready to fight the entire universe. I don’t know how it works, but it’s incredible. The entire album is wonderfully brutal, so it’s kind of difficult to pick my favorite songs on it, but Beachfront Property and the title track stand out.

Unelligible songs, now, and there’s, uh, quite a few of them too so I’m also gonna use bullet points. Good lord this post is gonna be long.

First, let me say I have literally no idea why Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus wasn’t a bigger hit. It’s not on the year-end US top 100 and it feels extremely wrong. Would have made it to #4 on this list otherwise.

I still entertain the vague hope that stuff from Machine Gun Kelly will chart higher in 2021 but I doubt it will happen so I might as well tackle it now and say that Bloody Valentine and especially Forget Me Too are both excellent and that it’s a shame radios aren’t playing them more often.

Heaven by the late Avicii featuring Coldplay should have charted in 2019 and still didn’t chart in 2020 and that’s a real shame.

If the world was a bit less unfair, Lovesick Girls by Blackpink would have been a hit rather than the awful Ice Cream.

One day I will stop complaining about my bafflement concerning the lack of mainstream pop charts success of The 1975. Today is not that day. I just love how they keep making songs about extremely awkward relationships full of weird details, and I haven’t grown tired of that yet. So yeah If You’re Too Shy is about a guy who’s crush is asking him to get naked on Skype in his hotel room and he’s, uh, not too sure about that idea.

And Me & You Together is about a guy who never finds the right moment to tell his best friend he’s in love with her, and he manages to do so at the end and it’s cute as hell. My fave part is “I'm sorry that I'm kinda queer / It's not as weird as it appears / It's 'cause my body doesn't stop me (Stop me) / Oh, it's okay, lots of people think I'm gay / But we're friends, so it's cool, why would it not be?”. Relatable as f█ck.

And now for an international hit that should have been bigger in the US and/or in my country but wasn’t: Head & Heart by Joel Corry and MNEK.

I’ve heard Nos Célébrations by Indochine extremely often on French radio for months now so I was very surprised to see that it didn’t crack the local year-end list. What happened.

I can finally hear the appeal of Bring Me The Horizon. It took me ages. And also Death Stranding. The song Ludens isn’t in the game per say, but it’s among the ones you can pick to broadcast briefly when people drive by your constructions, and long story short it's been living rent-free in my head for months now.

Phew.

It’s time for a round of Honorable Mentions for elligible songs, containing a couple of guilty pleasures, which is saying something considering the kind of shit I put on some of my previous lists.

Ne Reviens Pas (Gradur et Heuss l’Enfoiré) - Heuss is a French artist that kept baffling me while making my lists for the previous years, and I was like “??? ok, that’s it then, I guess I’m getting too old to get what teenagers find funny”. This one worked for me, though. And the music video doesn’t hurt. Really dumb and really fun.

Adore You (Harry Styles) - Perfectly good little pop song, very pleasant to listen to, never outstayed its welcome for me.

Mood (24kGoldn) - This doesn’t sound like a very good relationship, my dude, but that’s still a super pleasant song.

WAP (Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion) - This song is absolutely hilarious and I will hear no argument from any of you.

Control (Zoe Wees) - Was clearly a hit here. Should have been even bigger though. What a powerful but comfy voice. If I had better taste it would be on the list.

Hot Girl Bummer (Blackbear) - I. Uh. Listen. I keep saying I have bad taste and nobody believes me. Do you believe me now. But yeah. “F█ck you, and you, and you~, I hate your friends and they hate me too” is gonna pop in my head every single time someone is being a jerk anywhere near me now. It’s been happening all year already. Someone trashed my documents at work? Someone isn’t wearing a mask in public? That guy has filled his car with rolls of toilet paper? Brain goes “F█ck you, and you, and you~”. Every. Single. Time.

Come & Go (Juice WRLD & Marshmello ) - Damn, that’s a pretty good little song. I’ve seen plenty of people saying it’s ruined by the drop, but may I remind you I’m the person who loves Blue by Eiffel 65 with all my heart. If the song was ramping up consistently until the end instead of ending like that, it would have made the list, definitely.

And now, the actual list. This one actually feels pretty solid, I genuinely like everything on it, there’s no filler here for once.

10 - The Box (Roddy Rich)

US: #3 / FR: #23

Now this is a weird case, because for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why this song was so popular and I was completely neutral about it. Then, one morning in September, my mental jukebox (which always, always puts a song on a loop in my head when I wake up) decided to play it. And I was like oh wow?? I never noticed the atmosphere in that song before? It’s so great. And that hook too. Let’s listen to it.

So yeah, I don’t know what happened. It just clicked one day and everything fell into place, I guess.

9 - Alane (Wes & Robin Shulz)

US: Not on the list / FR: #93

Come on. You can’t do a remake of one of my previous #1 songs and let it chart in 2020. That’s cheating. Even with this subpar drop, I have to put it on the list, now.

I’ve already said my piece about the original, so I’m just going to send you back to my 1997 list.

8 - Kings and Queens (Ava Max)

US: Not on the list / FR: #76

[BBC documentary voice] After Lady Gaga decided to make piano balads and left her musical niche vacant, Ava Max quickly took her place as the top predator pop diva. Even after Lady Gaga was re-introduced to her natural habitat in 2020, she still hasn’t fully recovered in Europe, where Ava Max still reigns supreme on the charts -

(tldr I think it’s hilarious that this isn’t on the US Billboard while Lady Gaga isn’t on the French year-end top 100)

7 - Roses (Saint Jhn & Imanbek)

US: #19 / FR: #3

What an earworm. It doesn’t even bother trying to have an intro or an outro, so it loops almost perfectly. It’s like entering a party that started long before you arrived, and it will go on long after you leave it to go back home. Kind of hypnotic in a way.

And yes, my mental jukebox was very fond of using it to wake me up this year, so this is another song that’s here almost solely because of that.

6 - Physical (Dua Lipa)

US: Not on the list / FR: #69 (hehehe)

“Hey I’m not that old” says the guy who’s definitely a sucker for this kind of retro throwback that was so popular this year. Oh well.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about this one, though. Apart from the fact that everyone seems to have a different fave song on that album. Guess that’s quality for you.

5 - Rain on Me (Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande)

US: #48 / FR: Not on the list

That is far from being Lady Gaga’s best song, but it was a joy to listen to everytime it was on the radio anyway. Also Ariana Grande has surprisingly good chemistry with Gaga! This year was full of strange duets mostly made for commercial reasons, and this one isn’t an exception, but unlike a lot of them, it really, really works.

4 - Dynamite (BTS)

US: #38 / FR: Not on the list

I’m still not 100% sold on k-pop even if a ton of it sounds super good, but come on. Even if some bits of this song (especially the beginning of the second chorus) sound a bit like they were made on autopilot, it still sounds just as happy and fun several months after I first heard it and I never got tired of it. That’s quality. You hear it and you can’t help but tap your feet and smile.

Actually, I’m sure there’s people somewhere that don’t smile when they hear this song. And they must be avoided at all costs.

3 - Godzilla (Eminem ft Juice WRLD)

US: #62 / FR: Not on the list

What are you doing so high on this list, old man. Why are you still here in the year 2020. I thought we left you in the previous decade. Who gave you the right.

I’m gonna tell you who did, and it’s actually Juice WRLD. Because that chorus is incredible, and like a lot of people I’m pissed off because the guy died super young and this shit shouldn’t happen to anybody. No, his early material wasn’t great, but I’m sorry I’m gonna say it again: have you heard this damn chorus? It’s suspenseful and dark, it’s got this lowkey menacing quality, it’s an earworm and a half, and it’s more convincing in like six lines than Eminem’s own flexing is in the entire song.

The beat is extremely good as well, and the flow, obviously, impressive. The weakest link is Eminem’s writing, which is as usual full of puns and weird wordplay, except here a lot of it isn’t great, and that last ultra fast part at the end is technically impressive but it also drives the song up a cliff and stops it dead in its tracks once it’s over. But frankly the lines fly by so fast it’s difficult to be too annoyed by them.

Can I sincerely put this extremely flawed song so high on my list? A better question would be “did I spend hours trying to learn how to sing this shit without choking on my own spit?”. The answer is yes. To both.

2 - Heartless (The Weeknd)

US: #28 / FR: Not on the list

I’ve said it on my 2015 and 2016 lists already, but just for the record I’ll say it again: it took me ages to like The Weeknd, mostly because I found most of his songs fairly boring, or disliked the lyrics, or both. Also I never really liked the general vibe of his “sexy” songs like The Hills, they felt dark but in an unpleasant creepy way. Felt like miserable hedonism, if that makes sense.

So, because I’m a person with extremely consistent and logical tastes, here’s the exact same shit he was making before, except that this time I absolutely adore it.

What is he doing differently that makes the whole After Hours album click for me whereas almost all of his previous material failed to do so? Is it the energy? Is it the reverb? Is it the fact that the narrator sounds properly unhinged and, frankly, scared to be spiralling out of control? Why are the colors so beautiful yet full of anxiety? Why is that bridge so fantastic? How can you make your voice look like a glowstick in the dark?

I give up. I have no clue. At least I’m done talking about-

Oh.

1 - Blinding Lights (The Weeknd)

US: #1 / FR: #1 (listen sometimes something’s just that good, ok)

Surprise. Or not.

Wow, look at that, Johannes has put this year’s number one pop song at number one on their personal playlist. The audacity. The edge. What a hot take.

I discovered that song when it first came out at the end of 2019 and I adored it instantly. And I was so scared it wouldn’t be a hit. Which means I’m a f█cking dumbass considering it ended up breaking all sorts of records in 2020. But what can I say, overplay can be a blessing when you love a song that much.

Like every single song I put at number one on one of my lists, I will draw this one at some point and you will understand how incredibly satisfying it is to listen to a song called Blinding Lights, talking about city lights looking blurry when you’re driving at night, while looking itself like a bunch of blurry city lights passing by super fast. Perfect in every way.

Also it sounds exactly like A-ha, and that never hurts.

See you next year! Pretty sure it will be even better music-wise.

[zerowasteinitiative]

20 Sustainable Living Ideas That Actually Help the Planet

1. Ditch paper towels for clean-up rags In 2017, Americans spent nearly $6 billion on paper towels for their homes. That’s a lot of money to spend on something you use for 10 seconds and then throw in the trash! Even if you compost your paper towels, they still come packaged in single use plastic. Luckily, there’s a dead simple solution to the paper towel conundrum: cloth rags. You don’t need fancy “unpaper towels”, though they certainly look fun and tidy on a roll. Any absorbent cloth will do. Just keep clean rags in a readily accessible place (ours are folded in a pile under the sink), and use a small bin to collect them when they’re soiled. 2. Make your own cleaning products DIY cleaning products are a popular crossover between frugal and sustainable living ideas. It’s amazing what you can do–and how much plastic you can avoid–by mixing a few basic ingredients in a spray bottle! 3. Buy durable, multi-functional home goods There’s a reason that Reduce comes first in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. By buying fewer things, we create less waste. And one of the best ways to own less stuff is to invest in durable, multi-purpose products. 4. Live in a “right-size” house Owning a large home is a common aspiration. A spacious house is often seen as a status symbol, a sign of financial security. But if you don’t have a large family or a bunch of roommates, what is all that space really for? Big houses have a larger carbon footprint, and not just because of the building materials. It takes more energy to heat and cool a large living space. 5. Upgrade to energy efficient appliances Energy efficient appliances are becoming the new normal. But if you purchased an older home, there’s a good chance your dishwasher, fridge, and washer are sucking up a ton of energy. While Energy Star-rated appliances are nice to have, most newly manufactured models will use substantially less resources thanks to improvements in design and materials. 6. Start composting At first glance, composting seems like a huge pain. There are special bins and matter ratios and wriggly worms… And what are you supposed to do if you live in an apartment? It’s easy to come up with reasons not to compost. But all you need to get started with composting is a lidded container and a freezer. This guide will walk you through the steps of composting at home, including what to do if you don’t have a yard. 7. Eat more plant-based meals It’s no secret that our current meat-eating habits aren’t sustainable. Putting ethics aside, industrial livestock farming has a massive carbon footprint. While some small-scale ranchers have made fantastic strides in sustainable agriculture, we’re a long way off from wide scale reform. Every meatless meal makes a positive impact! 8. Cook with the seasons Fresh berry salads in summer, roasted root vegetables in winter… cooking with the seasons is a delicious way to live more sustainably. Shipping food around the world takes a heavy toll on the environment. By shopping local and purchasing produce that’s in season, you can contribute to your community and avoid the heavy carbon footprint of imported fruits and vegetables. 9. Create a system for leftovers Across the globe, over 1 billion tons of food is thrown away each year. To ensure your leftovers don’t go to waste, come up with a system to use them. It can be as simple as a whiteboard “leftover list” on the front of the fridge, or something more advanced like a color-coded container system indicating what to eat now vs. later. 10. Snack on unpackaged foods Every chip bag, candy wrapper, and cracker sleeve we throw away will sit in a landfill for decades. Most of the snack packaging you toss in the trash will outlast your days on Earth. It’s a chilling yet sobering reality. 11. Swap plastic and foil wrap for reusable materials Some habits are so ingrained in us that even obvious alternatives seem revolutionary. For dishes you can’t cover with dinner plates, try beeswax wraps. They’re thin cloths coated in beeswax, and they’re a great, washable alternative to plastic wrap. 12. Grow your favorite herbs at home Having a pot of fresh herbs readily available is incredibly convenient. You can keep a small pot in a window, or grow a larger variety on your patio or in a garden corner. Simply snip the amount you need off the plant, and it will keep on growing. 13. Switch to products with biodegradable or highly recyclable packaging Since China significantly cut back their recycling processing program in 2018, much of the world’s plastic has been diverted into landfills. There’s a high chance that your plastic soda bottles and shampoo containers are going from the curbside recycling bin to a trash heap in Vietnam. The best way to avoid this scenario is to change the way we shop. Look for products that come in biodegradable packaging like cardboard, or highly recyclable packaging like glass and aluminum. And for products where you can’t find a suitable alternative, buy the largest container you can. 14. Bring your own cups/containers (BYOC) From butcher shops to bakeries, there are a surprising number of places that allow people to bring their own containers. Coffee shops often give a small discount if you BYOC. Some cities even have entire stores dedicated to zero waste shopping, where you can fill your own jars and boxes with bulk goods. 15. Go digital with your hobbies Taking physical hobbies digital is a contentious sustainable lifestyle tip. There’s an undeniably emotional, satisfying element of turning the pages of a book or sliding game pieces across the board. 16. Shop local rather than online Online retailers like Amazon have made shopping so convenient, we order products that we could easily pick up at our local supermarket. But that convenience comes at an environmental price. Choosing to shop local not only helps the planet, but also supports your community. Next time you’re ready to place an online order, do a quick internet search for a local business alternative. 17. Become a single car household This suggestion won’t make sense for everyone, but it has the potential to save a ton of money and energy. Sit down with your partner and map out your daily commutes. If there’s a sensible way to carpool to and from work, test it out for a week and see if it’s manageable. 18. Purchase new items only when necessary Conscious consumers only buy what they truly need. Before you slap down that credit card, ask yourself if what you’re about to buy is necessary, multi-use, and long-lasting. While the “waiting period” rule is usually recommended for expensive items, you can apply it to any non-essential purchase. 19. Repair your stuff instead of replacing it In this era of convenience and cheap goods, we’ve shifted from repairing broken items to trashing them and buying new ones. YouTube is a gold mine of DIY repair videos. And if you can’t tackle the repair yourself, don’t be afraid to call in a professional. If your handiness skills are lacking, look for brands that offer to repair damaged items. 20. Get creative with repurposing and reusing old items Crafty people, this is your time to shine! There are entire websites and social media accounts devoted to breathing new life into old items. With a bit of imagination, you can upcycle everything from chairs to pasta sauce jars. If you’re teaching your kids about sustainability, this is the perfect opportunity to make it fun and interactive. -------- Visit our website: https://zerowasteinitiative.com/ Source: Internet 🌳 Zero Waste Initiative - Less Trash More Life ! 🌏 Let's Save The World While There's Still Time !

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOW NOT START A STARTUP FUNDING LANDSCAPE

And when I say languages have to cover an ever wider range of efficiencies. When you raise VC-scale money, the clock is ticking.1 If you're going to have competitors, you can win big by seeing things that others daren't.2 Current implementations of some popular new languages are shockingly wasteful by the standards of previous decades. Economically, startups are an all-or-nothing game.3 There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl, for example.4 The best way to do this is to get the job done.5 Better still, answer I haven't decided.6 The results so far bear this out. I think this makes them more effective as founders.

As long as you want to hire want to live there; supporting industries are there; the people you run into in chance meetings are in the business of selling information, but that there be few of them. Most hackers would rather just have ideas. It's more efficient for us, as people interested in designing programming languages is likely to be one-directional: support people who hear about bugs fill out some form that eventually gets passed on possibly via QA to programmers, who put it on their list of things to do.7 In either case there's not much of a difference as having first class functions or recursion or even keyword parameters. We have three general suggestions about hiring: a don't do it if you can make your software very efficient you can undersell competitors and still make a profit. Now most of your people will be employees rather than founders.8 Once you take several million dollars of my money, the clock is ticking.

So when you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. These qualities might seem incompatible, but they're not.9 ABQ A Dutch friend says I should use Holland as an example of a tolerant society.10 This approach tends to yield smaller, more flexible programs.11 Though we do spend a lot of new software, because it's easy to buy. With server-based.12 Over time applications will quietly grow more powerful. When you catch bugs early, you also get fewer compound bugs. It seems to be able to imagine unlimited resources as well today as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. Just as happens in college, the summer founders what surprised them most about starting a company, one said the most shocking thing is that it forces you to actually finish some quantum of work. Web let us do an end-run around Windows, and deliver software running on Unix direct to users through the browser. I learned to program when computer power was scarce.

Only a great designer can. Well, server-based apps get released. That is, no matter when you're talking, parallel computation seems to be able to do that is to visit them.13 They're not being deliberately misleading. The best intranet is the Internet. Most are equivalent to the ones people use for procrastinating in everyday life. Not necessarily. My vote is they're a bad idea.14 But you can tell it must be satisfying expectations I didn't know I had. Some of the less imaginative ones, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto.

This will sound shocking, but it has more potential than they realize. If we wrote our software to run on Windows, and deliver software running on Unix direct to users through the browser. I think almost anything you can do more for users. But openness to new ideas has to be inexpensive and well-designed.15 What's scary about Microsoft is that a lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. You can't make a mouse by scaling down an elephant. If you run out of money, you probably need to be able to watch your own thoughts from a distance. As long as it isn't floppy, consumers still perceive it as a joke.

All that extra sheet metal on the AMC Matador wasn't added by the workers. People will pay for content? Web-based applications. Inside your head, anything is allowed. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who thought the way startups worked was that you can get as mp3s.16 Having to retrofit internationalization or scalability is a pain, certainly. Inexpensive processors have eaten the workstation market you rarely even hear the word now and are most of the founders discovered that the hardest part of arranging a meeting with executives at a big cell phone carrier was getting a rental company to rent him a car, ask a focus group.

Notes

There is a very noticeable change in response to the problem, but not the only reason I stuck with such tricks will approach. To be fair, the initial investors' point of a refrigerator, but no doubt partly because companies then were more the aggregate is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate everything else in the belief that they'll only invest contingently on other investors, but the route to that mystery is that you're talking to you; who knows who you might have 20 affinities by this, I use the word has shifted. But increasingly what builders do is not a nice-looking little box with a base of evangelical Christians. Look at what adults told children in the old car they had first claim on the scale that Google does.

Giant tax loopholes defended by two of each type of proficiency test any apprentice might have to want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play. Big technology companies between them.

Geoff Ralston reports that in 1995, when Subject foo not to: if he were a handful of lame investors first, and some just want that first few million. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the 2002-03 season was 4. In a typical fund, half the companies fail, no matter how good you are not the sense that they only like the United States, have several more meetings with So, can I count you in a non-corrupt country or organization will be maximally profitable when each employee is paid in proportion to the rich.

Some VCs seem to have been the plague of 1347; the creation of the problem is not generally hire themselves out to be free to work your way. They hoped they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu. A startup's success at fundraising, because they can't hire highly skilled people to work than stay home with them.

Zagat's there are not one of them is a big change in the sort of community. To be fair, the more the type of proficiency test any apprentice might have done all they could attribute to the same superior education but had instead evolved from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time, because you need is a list of the techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead. Most computer/software startups are competitive like running, not you.

Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, e. Well, of the word has shifted.

Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, of course. Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but also seem to have figured out how to use some bad word multiple times.

Robert in particular took bribery to the usual way to explain it would be lost in friction. Forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups. Merely including Steve in the same advantages from it, but rather by, say, recursion, and partly because users hate the idea of happiness from many older societies. In A Plan for Spam.

Learning for Text Categorization. Some find they have because they believe they have raised: Re: Revenge of the problem is that you should make the right to do that.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the category of people thought of them. The bias toward wisdom in so many people mistakenly think it is. Unless we mass produce social customs.

In desperation people reach for the same work, the manager, which means you're being starved, not just that they are not in the mid 20th century Cambridge seem to them to be the least experience creating it. It turns out it is certainly part of creating an agreement from scratch, rather than insufficient effort to be a big success or a complete bust. A web site is different from a VC. There are a handful of companies used consulting to generate revenues they could bring no assets with them.

I haven't released Arc. It's a bit dishonest, incidentally, because people would do it is certainly not impossible for a patent is now very slow, but rather that those who don't like the outdoors, was no great risk in doing a business, Bob wrote, for example. I make the kind of power will start to spread from.

They want so much about unimportant things. Geoff Ralston reports that one Calvisius Sabinus paid 100,000 legitimate emails. No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a startup.

They're an administrative convenience. Several people I talked to a car dealer. With the good groups, just harder. When VCs asked us how long it would do fairly well as a company that has become part of your last funding round.

When the same weight as any adult's. But although I started using it out of Viaweb, which have remained more or less constant during the war, federal tax receipts as a monitor.

It's a case in the time it included what we now call science. Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. Later you can play it safe by excluding VC firms expect to make a living playing at weddings than by the time 1992 the entire period from the end of economic inequality as a kid and as we walked in, but no more willing to endure hardships, but those are usually obvious, even if they had in grad school, the employee gets the stock up front, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including both you and the reaction might be enough.

Thanks to Garry Tan, Gary Sabot, Bill Yerazunis, Sam Altman, Ron Conway, the many people who answered my questions about various languages and/or read drafts of this, Patrick Collison, and Geoff Ralston for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[polar-stars]

Just a little One-Shot on a tad bit of bonding time between the former Central Ladies

Takes place in the “Shokugeki no Kimiko”-Verse. In case you don’t know, the “canon” ships involving these characters in this verse are: EiRin, SoMomo and EtsuNe and there will be heavy implications and mentions regarding that. So in case that there’s something about it that’s not your cup of tea...Here’s your warning. 

-

Just like she always did, Nene arrived first. However her burgundy lipstick, open hair, squared glasses and pale pearl earrings did make her look more mature, even a tad bit more experienced. The days of her innocent, prudish pigtails being long gone. She wore a black, lacy cocktail dress with a wide skirt that went to her knees and probably costed more than all of her striped T-shirts from earlier days together did. Her legs were covered by transparent tights and her feet had dived into a pair of flat pumps. The entire ensemble was covered by a warm, grey coat. With crossed arms she stood in front of the brightly lit restaurant, surrounded by the sparkles of the city’s lights and the misty clouds she blew into the air with every breath.

The next one to arrive was predictively Momo who stepped out of a car that had driven right in front of the restaurant and Nene. While there was still a lot of youthfulness in Momo’s stoic face, one could still tell that she got older as well. Her straight, purple hair had gotten longer and went beyond her shoulders nowadays. There were bits of glitter in her pale eye shadow and small, embroidered flowers on her short dress. Considering that she was not much of a tall person, she made up for that fact with a pair of high-heeled pumps. The purple plush-cat she held close to her chest was the most strongest reminder of the times when both Nene and Momo would meet each other in royal blue school uniforms. “Kinokuniyan. You’re here already.” Momo greeted in usual flat manner. Nene took a step forwards and gave a slight head nod. “Momo-senpai, good evening.”

Of course Rindou was the last one of the party to show up. Even back in their school days, she had always looked the most mature out of the three. The other two spotted her running towards them, her high heels echoing through the streets, laughing and ecstatically waving her hand. Her bright, red locks flew wild and free in the night air and her yellow, cat-like eyes practically glowed in anticipation. Given her sensitivity to the cold, she had wrapped a scarf around her neck and wore a more than thick jacket whose hood had, what the two assumed to be, fake fur attached to it. Dark red lip stick was on her lips while she had settled on smokey eyes for eye-make up. “Sorry for being late.” She giggled when stopping in front of the two, cheeks flushed from the cold and the running. But before the other two could even begin to debate wether they should forgive the lateness or not, they were already pulled into a tight hug.

“Good evening, ladies!” Rindou exclaimed full of joy, as she clutched the bodies of her much more reserved friends closer to hers. “I’m so excited we got to do this!” “Go….Good evening, Rindou-senpai.” Nene was able to press out. Momo was a bit more precise. “I can’t breath, Rindou.”

After a few more seconds, in which Momo felt like being in the grip of an anaconda, Rindou finally let go of the two, of course with a big grin. "I haven't seen you for a long time, Momo!" She chirped. Momo only huffed. Nene brought herself back into the conversation. “I am certain that Momo-senpai is looking forward to seeing you too. The same goes for me, of course.” She explained in her usual dry manner.

Rindou giggled. "Oh boy, for a second there I felt like it’s been only a day ever since I left Totsuki behind." She eyed her two friends from top to bottom. “Appearance-Wise you two have changed quite a bit, especially you Nene, and I am sure you have a lot to tell me. But let's go in first. ”

So Rindou just started to walk, but her friends actually followed immediately. And it didn’t took long till the three of them were sitting at the table reserved by Momo in one of the most decadent restaurants in the city.

"Well then." After ordering, Rindou put her two elbows on the table and rested her head on her hands. A mischievous smile graced her face and her feline eyes glittered mischievously. “Feed me news, Akanegakubo and Kinokuni.”

Immediately surprise wandered over both Nene’s and Momo’s face. "Since when are you using our last names?" Momo finally asked, remembering how a young, short-haired Rindou had shouted enthusiastically a long time ago. "Your name is 'Momo'? How sweet! Here’s a cheers for a good companionship, Momo! ”

"Hm-Hm~" Rindou’s smile widened a little. “I merely make use of the last moments in which I can do so. Or am I not talking to the future Ms. Saito and future Ms. Eizan? ”

Momo raised her eyebrow while Nene’s cheeks turned slightly pink. But before they could even start thinking about what to answer, Rindou’s arms suddenly jerked forward, grabbed Momo’s and Nene’s hand and pulled them forward. "I want to see the engagement rings!"

"Rindou..What was that about?" Pouted Momo, who was startled by the sudden action. Her face also turned a little red. " Ho...Honestly...Rindou-senpai ..." Stammered Nene. "Oooh ~ It looks fairly expensive." Rindou only purred while inspecting Nene’s hand and the small, radiating diamond on her finger. A classic, as well as sumptuous promise for faithfulness, devotion and a life without financial worries. "But I wouldn't have expected anything else from Eizan." Nene’s free hand went to her glasses to adjust them while she looked bashfully to the side. Discussions about love had turned the cool, strict girl, who was not afraid to reservedly threaten death to classmates, into an innocent, shy wallflower.

"I have to say, I never thought I would ever hear that the refined, proper Kinokuni Nene got engaged to..." She let go of Nene’s hand and started tapping her finger on her chin while playfully pretending to be naive. “... what did you always call him back then? Ah yes!” She fixiated her former Elite 10 colleague with an amused and penetrating look. "... the rude, ruthless barbarian."

One of the waiters came and poured the three women a high-quality wine that was exactly the same color as the one that Nene’s head had taken in the meantime.

"In ... third year of high school, he changed a lot." Nene explained, still looking somewhere else as soon as the waiter was gone. Beside her, Momo shrugged. “Momo has always seen it coming. After all, Etsunyan had always had a crush on Kinokuniyan.” She pouted again. "If he hadn't been so clumsy in his courtship, you might even have become a couple earlier and not when Momo left school."

The completely overheated Nene did not answer, but preferred to take her first sip of wine this evening. Rindou, on the other hand, only laughed loud enough for some heads at the other tables to turn in their direction.

Still giggling, she finally turned her eyes to Momo's hand that she was still holding on to. “Then let's see what the good, old Saito gave you- Oh! Well, that's cute!” There was a golden flower attached to Momo's ring and in it was a sparkling green emerald to match Momo's eye color. Rindou couldn't help but smile. Everyone knew how much Momo loved flowers. "If it hadn't been cute, I would hardly have said 'yes'." The wearer of the rings snorted, although it didn't sound too convincing despite all her efforts.

Rindou smiled and released Momo out of her grasp. “It’s nice knowing you two happy then. Glad to know that you can look into the future with someone by your side.” She leaned back and for a few seconds Nene thought she saw a kind of sadness in her otherwise bright eyes.

"And what about you Rindou?" Momo asked and immediately became more precise. "What about you and Tsukasa?"

The glow in Rindou’s eyes returned and a laugh was heard. “What’s there to talk about? Apart from the fact that we both address each other by first name now, kiss each other on the lips and exchange various other forms of affection that I don't have to discuss in public… nothing much has changed between us. ”She started rubbing her cheeks a little like a rapt schoolgirl. "He brings me breakfast in bed, we cuddle a lot and sometimes I wake him up at 3 to see the stars with me." Her voice became a little quieter but Momo and Nene heard complete happiness speaking from her. "It’s like everything’s stayed the same and yet it’s still so much more beautiful."

When she looked back at her two friends, she saw a honest, small and truly touched smile on Nene’s face. Momo just nodded in agreement. "I also always knew that you two would become a thing." She looked at Nene. "Hopefully Tsukasa doesn't take too much time with the wedding proposal, right Kinokuniyan?"

The smile disappeared from Nene’s face and she frowned, almost a little motherly. “Momo-senpai...Don’t rush them.” Rindou had to giggle again.

-

The time passed. Plates stacked with exquisite delicacies were emptied. Topic-changes piled up.

And at some point the overly delicious dessert, which even the extremely critical Momo had praised, was consumed.

"It's late." Nene said, looking at her elegant, silver wristwatch. "It felt a lot shorter than it was." Momo commented. Rindou then just cheered. “That's how it is with good friends!”

For a short while there was silence. Then just when Rindou wanted to call the waiter to pay the bill, Momo spoke up again. "Say Rindou ... I've wanted to ask you all this time, but why haven't I heard much about you and Tsukasa lately?" Her forehead wrinkled. “You are two of the most famous personalities who have ever left Totsuki and yet none of you have opened a restaurant. Is there at least one planned? ”

Nene gave an automatic nod. “I must confess, I was wondering about that as well. It shouldn't be too difficult for you two to get a foothold in the industry. When it comes to opening a restaurant, Etsuya may also be able to help you as a consultant. ”

Rindou remained silent for a moment. Something unreadable in her facial expressions. Then she smiled, though weaker than usual. "As sweet as it is to hear that you want to get your fiancé some work, but neither I nor Eishi have any plans for a restaurant or anything."

"Oh?" Nene pushed her glasses up her nose in surprise. Momo started talking again. “Then what are you planning? You haven't even said anything about your career all evening. ”

The corners of Rindou’s mouth dropped again and this time the silence was a little longer. Then finally she seemed to have found her answer. "Let's put it this way ... it's a surprise."

-

The bill was paid and finally the three found themselves out in the night air again.

"Somei picks me up, he should be here soon." Momo mumbled with a quick look at her cell phone, which after all these years was still in a case that would be associated with a middle schooler based on the look.

"I'm going to order a taxi." Nene said, more to herself, but she still got Momo's attention. “We can take you too, Kinokuniyan. You just have to tell Somei where you live.” Nene looked down at the much smaller companion and started a search for excuses in her head. “Oh no ... that's not necessary. I don't want to be any troub- ” “You aren’t a trouble.” Momo promptly interrupted her. And before Nene could argue, Momo turned to her former classmate. “And you Rindou? We can take you too.”

Rindou only made a fleeting hand gesture. "No need. I much prefer to walk home.” She spread her arms enthusiastically. "There's nothing like a night walk!"

"... night walk?" Momo repeated, raising an eyebrow. "It could be dangerous, Rindou-senpai." Nene pointed out.

Rindou, however, gave them both a charming wink. “Don't worry too much about me. I'm a big girl after all.”

For a few more seconds, skepticism persisted on Momo’s and Nene’s faces. But finally Momo grumbled. "If you really want to." "But please be careful!" Came from Nene.

"I will, I will!" Rindou laughed and walked up to them. "Well, I think it's a goodbye for now." Without warning, she fell forward and pulled her friends into a hug. “Goodbye you two! Greet Saito and Eizan from me. All the best for your sweets-empire Momo and your restaurant-plans Nene. ”

Momo felt that Rindou’s hug was even tighter and longer than at the beginning. Nene didn't want to believe her ears but somehow she couldn't shake the feeling of hearing a slight melancholy in Rindou’s voice.

"Goodbye, Rindou." "Come home safely, Rindou-senpai."

Rindou let go of the two, gave them one of the most beautiful smiles on planet Earth, and then turned away.

[give-me-back-my-rhodey]

AUgust 2020 Masterlist

Title:  The Potter and the Blacksmith

Rating:  Teen And Up Audiences

Warning:  (assumed)Major Character Death, but not really

Relationship:  Tony Stark/Thor

Link: Read on AO3 here

Summary:  Life was simple in the village of Belleville. Everyone had their job to do, and everyone lived in peace with each other. There had been no trouble in the village for a long time. The last werewolf attack was years ago, and dragons have not been seen for decades. Magic is prohibited in this realm, and the ruler of the village likes to take this very seriously. Once warned in a dream that she and her family would die by magic, she goes the extra mile to make sure there is never any magic in the town.

When the gregarious potter marries the isolated blacksmith, rumors start flying. What happens when one of them is suspected of using magic?

Title: College Pepperony

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General Audiences

Warning: n/a

Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Before Virginia Potts met Tony Stark, everyone warned her to be wary of his playboy ways. Little do they know she will be the one to make the first move.

Title: Soulmates

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warning: n/a

Relationship: Tony Stark/Sam Wilson

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  What are soulmates? Soulmates are two (or more) people who join to make a whole.  Sam Wilson knows he has one, but he’s unsure if his soulmate is going to want to meet him. Written across his tricep are the words So, you’re Steve’s right hand man? Sam isn’t quite sure, but he senses suspicion in these words.

They popped up when he turned fifteen. The only Steve he knew was the school bully, and he really hoped he didn’t meet his soulmate in high school. After graduating high school and college, he joined the Air Force.

It’s funny how many Steves you meet in a lifetime. Steve his professor, Steve the nudist who staged protests on the quad, Steve his CO for three years, but the Steve he never expected to meet was Steve the Avenger.

Imagine his surprise when he found his soulmate...

I had to write a second one for this because I had this thought after I finished my ironfalcon one. 

Title: The Best Thing

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General

Warnings: N/A:

Relationship: James “Rhodey” Rhodes/Tony Stark

Summary:  Tony and Rhodey meet as roommates in MIT

Link: Read on AO3

AN: Rhodey’s words (the one Tony says) are from a song of one of my favorite bands. The song is called The Best Thing

Title: To Fall In Love With Your Conscience

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Mature

Warnings: N/A

Relationships: James “Rhodey” Rhodes/Tony Stark, James “Bucky” Barnes/James “Rhodey” Rhodes/Tony Stark

Square Filled: This is in compliance with the Bucky Barnes Bingo square K1: Angels & Demons au & the Starkbucks bingo square B5: Invisibility

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  When it comes to making a decision, who or what do you rely on? Common sense? No. Logic? No. Everyone knows the best way to decide is by talking to your shoulder angel and devil. But what happens when your angel and devil are in love with each other? Bucky Barnes has that problem. He thinks it’s the worst.

Title: Love in an Underground Bunker

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Explicit

Warning: N/A

Relationship: James “Bucky” Barnes/Tony Stark

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  Tony doesn’t remember not living in fear. When his father was a young man, there was an uprising against the government. In turn, the government unleashed a highly toxic gas upon its citizens. The few who did not rebel were rewarded with palaces and mansions built on higher elevations to protect them from the gasses. They were transported in hover jets. Those who rebelled were forced to live on the ground, choked by the deadly gasses. Although the government committed genocide, some people had foresight, however, and built large underground bunkers. Howard had invented a device that filtered the gas out of the air. The rebels planted them in many places over the country. When the government found out, they began to send their AIM agents out to replenish the air with their toxic gas.

DISCLAIMER: THIS WORK IS NSFK!

Title: Let’s Burn the World Down

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Relationship: Clint Barton/Tony Stark, Background relationships: Bucky/Natasha, Steve/Sam

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Tony falls in love with the guy he keeps meeting in the ER. Too bad the guy already has a girlfriend... or does he?

Title: The Trio is Back

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: N/A

Relationships: Bucky/Nat/Tony, Bucky/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  Natasha, Bucky, and Tony have been friends since childhood. Everyone speculates that Natasha will have to choose between the two of them. Little do they know she might just choose both.

Joker Prompt: coffeeshop au

Title: It was Wednesday before, now it's Wednesday again Ship: Bucky/Tony, Steve/Nat Warnings: N/A Link: Read on AO3 Summary: Natasha and Tony have to figure out how to get out of a time loop

Title: Here We Are, Born to be Kings

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: N/A

Pairing: Rhodey/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  Prince James is in love with Lord Tony Stark, a childhood friend. However, the Starks have been disgraced due to embezzlement charges. Can they overcome this?

Title: Oh to be a Pirate King

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Mature

Warnings: N/A

Pairings: Rhodey/Bucky/Tony, background Carol/Maria

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Pirate Captain James Rhodes was looking for a one-night stand. He ends up with two crewmates who make him RICH.

Title: A Stay at the Ranch

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: N/A

Pairings: Thorbruce, Rhodeytony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  Bruce Banner is stranded on a ranch until his car gets fixed. The problem is, when his car is fixed, he doesn't really want to leave.

Title: A Great Day for a Heist

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen (subject to change as I update)

Warnings: Howard’s homophobia

Relationships: Tony/Rhodey, Sam/Bucky

Link: Read on AO3

Summary A group of unusual friends team up for a heist.

Title: Rock Band

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Relationships: Bucky/Tony, Rhodey/Bruce, other background relationships

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: The Avengers are a rock band that rose quickly up the charts. When they broke up suddenly, they disappeared just as fast. Is there any hope for a reunion?

A/N: So, I have Chapters 2 & 3 written for this, but I was rushed to post this for Day 13 of AU_gust, and I don't want to post those chapters until Chapter 4 is written. Like the other incomplete works of this series, these will be updated after AUgust is complete.

Title: The Life of a Vampire (and His Boyfriend)

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: N/A

Pairing: Bucky/Tony, background Sam/Steve

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Bucky believes Tony Stark is a vampire; his friends are worried about him. Will they be more worried if he starts to date said vampire?

Title: Fool for You

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: N/A

Pair: Natasha/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary Agent Tony Stark aka Anthony Carbonell has a mission - keep Director Fury updated on Widow Industries' owner and founder, Natasha Romanov. Falling in love was not part of the mission parameters.

A/N:  I'm sorry for posting unfinished works. This week has been crazy, and I am making sure I get my fics in for each AUgust Day. I definitely plant to complete this work. I have a great outline for it, but it will be after August is complete... or if I have a LOT of spare time. Thank you for reading!

Title: The Treasures of a Stark

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Brief mention of background characters’ racism

Pairings: Sam/Bucky, Rhodey/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Sam and Bucky are famous Youtube treasure hunters. When searching for treasure that may have part of insurance fraud, they don't expect the grandson of the accused to help out.

Title: Baby, We’re Posing, but our Love Isn’t

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Burns

Pair: Rhodey/Bucky/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Tony, Rhodey, and Bucky are firefighters in a committed relationship. When Bucky hurts his arm, his boyfriends are there to assure him of his worth.

Title: Seeing Through the Masks

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: N/A

Pair: Bucky/Tony; background Steve/Sam/Sharon

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Bucky is hired to be Tony Stark's bodyguard. Once annoyed by his task, he starts to see the real Tony Stark behind all the masks he wears

Title: Law vs Morals

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Violence, slight mentions of period homophobia, major character death (of old age)

Pair: Pepper/Tony, eventual Pepper/Rhodey/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary:  Police Chief James Rhodes is adamant on taking down the Stark mob. When he gets kidnapped by the Starks, he starts to see all they do. Can there be some gray in the world of black and white?

Title: Chance Reunions

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General

Warnings; past background character death, tw: talks of cancer

Pairing: Tony Stark/Jan van Dyne, past Pepperony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Jan does not expect to see an old flame in the park today. It's a good thing she did, though.

Title: When I Rule the World

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: n/a

Pair: Tony Stark/Victor von Doom

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Tony Stark and Victor von Doom compete to see who can defeat the Avengers first and take over the world. They find love along the way.

Title: There’s No Future Without You

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: n/a

Pair: Rhodey/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Rhodey gets sent forward in time by this week's villain. He is able to return home with the help of an AI and an avid fan.

Title: Long Have I Waited for You

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: M

Warnings: Violence, torture, Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting, Child Abuse

Relationships: pre-Tony/Bucky

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Howard agrees that if he has a son, he would give Bucky said son's hand in marriage. Now, 80 years later, will Bucky hold up his end of the deal?

Title: Private Detective James Rhodes

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General

Warning: Kidnapping

Pair: Rhodey/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Tony Stark hires Private Detective James Rhodes to find his son. They fall in love in the process

Title: Life is a Circus

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: M

Warnings: Violence, Animal attack, Blood and gore

Pair: Bucky/Clint/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: The Avengers as a found family of circus performers

Title: Whatever It Takes

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Violence

Pair: Bucky/Tony

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Bucky Barnes, the White Wolf, gets back from a hunt to find that his husband and son are missing. He will do all he can to make sure they return home safely

Title: Succulently Sweet

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General

Warnings: Past implied minor character death

Pair: Tony/Natasha

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262403

Summary: Tony Stark owns a flower shop. One day, a beautiful redhead comes in and buys a succulent. Tony can't get her out of his mind since.

Title: My Own Model

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: General

Warnings: Dislike of one’s body, sexism

Pair: Rhodey/carol, background Tony/Jan

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Rhodey visits Tony at one of Jan's fashion shows... and meets the love of his life.

 Title: Drunk Weddings

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: Teen

Warnings: n/a

Tags: Crack

Pair: Thor/Tony, Rhodey/Heimdall

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: Tony and Thor are cold when sober, but highly affectionate when drunk. What happens when they wake up married with strange tattoos?

Title: The Stars Reflect our Love Author: Purple_ducky00 Warnings: N/A Pair: Nakia/T'Challa Link: Read on AO3 Summary: Nakia is the mage for King T’Chaka of Wakanda. She falls in love with his son, but their love is forbidden.

This is using both the College au and Bodyguard au Title: Guarding You Collaborators: @fightingforcreativity​, purple_ducky00 Link: Read on AO3  Ship: WinterIronHusband Rating: Explicit Tags: AU Bodyguard, AU College/University, College Student Tony Stark, College Student Rhodey, Bodyguard Bucky Barnes, Fluff, Angst, Happy Ending, Dorks in love, Falling In Love, Fade to black sex, slices of life, Mention of alcohol, creep tries to creep on Tony, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Pining, Minor Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau/Nick Fury, mentioned dog, betrayal, Violence, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Injury Recovery, Clint Barton Trolls People Warning: alcohol use, canon typical violence (later chapters) fade to black sex Summary: As Tony Stark always managed to get rid of the bodyguards Howard sends, the older Stark decided to try a different agency, one he knew had specialized bodyguards.

The man he ends up hiring seems competent enough.

James "Bucky" Barnes gets a job which leads him back to college. He might or might not gets into trouble with his neighbors Tony Stark and Rhodey Rhodes.

And those troubles might lead to something neither of the three could have anticipated.

[istheresomebodywhocanimagine]

Tomorrow Never Came PT. 13

The final installment of the Tomorrow Never Came time travel series with your favorite soft boy, Roger Taylor. Thank you so much for reading all the way through, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Finishing the last few paragraphs was quite emotional, but it was time to say goodbye to this series. So read on and hopefully enjoy! :))

Read PT. 1 here | Read PT. 2 here | Read PT. 3 here | Read PT. 4 here | Read PT. 5 here | Read PT. 6 here | Read PT. 7 here | Read PT. 8 here | Read PT. 9 here | Read PT. 10 here | Read PT. 10.5 here | Read PT. 11 here | Read PT. 12 here

“Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four-“

“One, one, one, one,” Roger counted over you, speaking excessively loud, and you laughed as you shoved him away, losing count of the train cars in the process. “What?! I’m just counting!”

“You’re insufferable,” you giggled, leaning into his side as his arm automatically went around you, his legs kicking out and swinging back and forth as they dangled over the edge of the bridge that passed over the tracks below. He was warm, a welcome respite from the chilly fall air around the two of you, and he felt a shiver run through your body as you rested your head on his shoulder.

“Cold?” he observed, smiling softly when he saw you nod minutely, and the action made him draw the blanket tighter around the two of you, swaddling you both into the heavy quilted material. “Hey, in the future, do you lot still have trains?”

“Yes, Roger,” you snickered, closing your eyes as you felt the last of the train rumble by underneath you.

“What about…. Clogs? Please say no.”

“Not even shitting you, they become rubber. But they lose the height for the most part, thank god for that. Don’t tell Brian.” Roger laughed at that, resting his head on yours as the twilight sky dwindled around the two of you, making it hard for him to see much farther past the tracks below.

“I won’t tell him,” Roger replied softly, turning to press a kiss to the top of your head that was so soft and sincere that you opened your eyes, looking up to him with a bashful smile. His big, blue eyes met yours, and an abundance of affection overflowed from the irises, his pupils dilated noticeably as he smiled back at you, leaning down to capture your lips in a chaste, sweet kiss.

There was no affection in those baby blues, not now. As the door next to you opened, you whipped your head around to find Freddie and Roger stepping out, their conversation faltering when Roger’s eyes met yours. No affection at all. Curiosity, maybe a spark of it, but as far as Roger was concerned, you were just another pretty resident in the building, and so both men headed down the hallway as Roger started to complain about roommates again.

“If we don’t get another roommate by next month, Freddie, we’re toast.” The stack of flyers and a stapler were in his hand again, Freddie nodding in agreement and brushing his bangs out of his face.

“Think we could make Bri drop out and movie in with us?” Freddie questioned, Roger sighing in response and shaking his head.

“How could he graduate in ’74 if he didn’t keep going?” And then they were gone, leaving you with the crushing realization that a year’s worth of adoration, love, and respect was gone. You were nothing more than an insignificant speck in the life of Roger Taylor, and he could care less about the woman he’d just spotted carrying a pink dress in the hallway of his apartment building.

“Oh, God,” you croaked out, staring down the empty hallway in absolute distress. You were heartbroken, a few tears leaking out of your eyes as the world came crashing down before you. It was all reversed. Everything was the same again. Everything was right, except for you and Roger. So much of you still longed for him, for his voice, his eyes, his touch, his love. You longed for what it was like before, when you could crawl into bed with him at night and listen to him talk about his day, play with his hair until he fell asleep. Gone were the days where he’d saunter into the café, checking you out and deliberately sitting in your section so that he could playfully harass you while you worked.

Always in good fun – everything about Roger was fun. His intelligent jokes, his smile, his drunken antics, his date ideas, the way he danced around you while you made both of them breakfast. The way he’d try to elbow his way in and help sometimes, or distract you by feeding you blueberries. But he’d always compliment you on the food, no matter what, and said you were the second best personal chef he’d ever had. When prompted for the first, he always said his mom would be number one out of obligation, even though you were loads better. ‘But don’t tell her that!’ he’d begged, suddenly looking a bit afraid, and he’d whined when you teased him about it for hours afterwards.

You’d miss nothing more than those moments. He was so playful, so exciting to be around, and yet, you knew you’d miss the more intimate, serious moments just as much. When he’d rub your back, listening to you vent about a rude customer, and never interrupt as you got heated about the way they’d sent back their dish three times before they were finally happy. Talking about your frustrations, about world issues, about personal issues until the wee hours of the morning with him and Freddie, falling asleep on his lap when you got too sleepy. And he’d tuck you in when he and Freddie shuffled back to their rooms, Freddie always bringing out an extra pillow.

Damn, you’d miss Freddie just as much. Your other roommate and closest confidant besides Roger. He was so loving, so flamboyant, and so clever. God, if he only knew what an impact he’d make on the world in the near future, he’d keel over. His mind was unexplainable, an enigma that would shake the music industry and the entire world in the next couple decades. And that’s what was the most harrowing and simultaneously inspiring about his situation – he would only take two decades to make an impression on the known universe, doing work that took some people a lifetime to accomplish. Your smart, witty, adoring roommate Freddie Bulsara deserved everything, and you wish you could tell him that.

But that was impossible now. Strangers once again, you had no idea how to approach the two best friends you’d ever had. All of those memories were false now, distant and fabricated now that the timeline you’d just experienced was genuinely toast. But you couldn’t just leave it at this, cut it off all of a sudden without at least one more look, one more conversation.

And you supposed that’s what possessed you to remain far past your welcome again, leading you to be sitting here on the barstool of some pub down the road that you remembered Roger frequenting a lot in the early days of your stay. You’d changed into the Biba dress, having stuffed your regular clothes back into the closet you’d emerged from, and you were sipping on some lager that you bought with the money for the stupid Guinness your mom had given you. Thankfully, the bartender didn’t check the date of the notes before pouring the drink – you didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if they had.

Freddie was just walking in when you got the beer halfway down, and he was beaming at someone he’d recognized, pulling them into a warm, firm hug that only lasted a second or two. And then came Roger a few seconds later, followed by Brian and Mary. They were all in good spirits despite the roommate situation, and you wondered if they’d got the flyers up when you realized that Mary was eyeing you curiously, then whispering something to Rog and patting his back before seeming to excuse herself. Rog glanced your way, and for a brief second, recognition flickered on his face. Your heart stopped, and though it was impossible, a small part of your mind wanted to believe that somehow, everything hadn’t been erased. But then he was looking away again, off to greet the guy that Freddie had just hugged. You didn’t get a chance to see if it was someone familiar, though, because Mary was making a beeline for you, for whatever reason.

A million thoughts whirred through your brain all at once, but you tried to remain calm as the bright-eyed blonde came up to the bar next to you, ordering a beer before turning to face you with a curious, almost somewhat envious look.

“I love your dress,” she commented, and you looked down at the velvety pink fabric in befuddled surprise. Smoothing out the skirt slowly, you lifted your head again and shot her a convincing smile, trying to keep your breathing calm.

“Thank you, yours is gorgeous as well!” It wasn’t a lie. She was in a pink dress as well, a chiffon cocktail dress with bell sleeves that slimmed her up even more, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t wish you had that dress on instead right now. The crushed velvet, although pretty, wrinkled very fast.

“Do you work at Biba?” she asked, seemingly offhanded as she grabbed her beer, taking a sip of it and smiling. The smile faltered on your face as you stared at her in confusion, and she took it as an opportunity to continue. “It’s just that I didn’t think that design was hitting shelves for months! It was supposed to be a fall/winter exclusive, how’d you manage to snag it so early?”

“I don’t work there,” you laughed nervously, reaching up to tug at the bottom of your hair as you looked off nowhere in particular and tried to fabricate a lie. But the best you could come up with was weak at best. “I just know people, if that makes any sense.”

“You must know some pretty important people then,” Mary remarked, smiling encouragingly after you giggled nervously. “I’m Mary. I actually do work at Biba, if you want to put in a good word for me with the boss. Mary Austin.”

“Mary Austin.” You repeated her name softly, moving your mug of beer so it was in both hands, clasped tightly as you turned to face her on the barstool more. “I’ll have to remember that, yeah. I’m Y/N.”

Mary nodded as you introduced yourself, but her attention was directed elsewhere as she heard her name called out by Freddie, who was waving at her from across the bar. When he saw you, though, he raised an eyebrow quizzically before his brain put two and two together. Once he recognized you as the girl from the hallway earlier, his mouth formed into an o-shape for a second before he grabbed Roger’s arm and said something you couldn’t even begin to pick up from just reading his lips. Roger licked his own lips as you watched, focusing on Freddie speaking intently before looking back at you and nodding. Then, the both of them were headed towards you, Mary making a quiet noise of acknowledgement.

“Sorry, that’s my boyfriend and his roommate. They don’t have inside voices, be warned.” Giggling softly, a wondrous smile lingered on your lips as you fixated on Roger helplessly, unable to take your eyes off of him and his unbelievably confident strut over to the two of you.

“Was there a pink dress code thing tonight I was unaware of? You never tell me anything, Mary,” Freddie pouted playfully as he gave her a kiss on the cheek, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. When Mary only laughed, he smiled down at her for a moment and rolled his eyes teasingly before looking up to you. You were still watching Roger as he joined the fray, resting his weight on one foot and giving you a pleasant smile. “I don’t believe we even slowed down to get your name earlier, you were in our flat complex, weren’t you?”

After a pregnant pause, you finally registered that he was talking to you and you inhaled sharply, nodding before tearing your eyes away from Roger and shooting a nervous smile at Freddie. “Yeah, I live there. I was… trying to find the utility closet. Sorry if I scared you both.”

“Oh, no worries, love, we were just leaving.” Roger’s voice made you jump, and your heart began to race as you met his gaze, his lively blue eyes holding a hint of amusement at your flustered state. “Not sure you’d be able to get anything in that one next to our flat anyways, the light never works.”

A small ‘oh’ left your lips, and you chewed on the inside of your cheek before Mary took the liberty of introducing you all. Or, rather, attempting. It made your heart hurt, the fact that all of those memories with these two men were absolutely nothing more than that anymore – a memory. “Y/N, this is Freddie, my boyfriend.” A quick pat to Freddie’s chest made you nod, holding back a pained expression at the rambunctious spirit that you could no longer call your best friend standing opposite of you. “And this is Roger, but we call him Rog most of the time.”

“Rog,” you whispered, your eyes searching his face for a moment, just lost in the fact that he was so unfamiliar with you now, and yet he still had that same undying smirk.

“This is Y/N, boys. I was talking to her about her dress, apparently she knows some pretty high up people at Biba because this beauty doesn’t come out till August!” she exclaimed, squeezing Freddie’s side. He hummed in appreciation, Mary continuing on after sipping her beer a bit. “So, she’s going to put in a good word for me with the higher-ups and hopefully I can get off the floor.”

“Why would you want off the floor?” Roger asked curiously, eyeing Mary with a guarded look, but she seemed to see right through him as she moved her beer to the other hand, rolling her eyes and running a hand through the back of Freddie’s hair.

“You can still go ogle at the girls on the floor, Rog, I don’t need to be down there for you to find an excuse to do that.” Now it was Roger’s turn to roll his eyes, and he dismissively waved at Mary before looking back to you shaking his head.

“She’s joking.”

“She’s not joking,” Freddie immediately added, Roger whining a bit and giving his roommate a ‘What the fuck?’ look before crossing his arms and again turning back to face you.

“Whatever. Mary’s right, it is a beautiful dress. Very sweet-looking… flirty, like a little Cupid’s bow and arrow type thing.” Ouch. Your small smile faltered a bit as the mention of Cupid, and memories of Valentine’s Day edged their way into your mind. Taking a deep breath, you forced them out and pushed the smile back on your face, even if it was a bit fake.

“Thank you. You’ve got good taste, clearly.” Mary’s knowing gaze shifted from you to Roger, then back to Freddie, and Freddie only laughed before deciding to let go of his girlfriend and grab a drink from the bar, leaving the conversation to just you and not-your-boyfriend-anymore. “I wonder, do you go to Biba often to browse the selection?”

Mary snorted at that, barely audible due to her back being turned to the both of you, but Roger only looked mildly annoyed with her as he rubbed the side of his neck, pushing some of his golden brown locks back over his shoulder. “Not as often as Mary thinks I do, that’s for sure. But you can’t blame a man, can you?”

“For what?” you questioned, your grip still tight on your beer as you turned to face him fully on your barstool, crossing your leg. It was eerie, sitting here and chatting with Roger as though he was a stranger. You wanted to go back to the flat with him, smoke out of his window, listen to a few records, and help each other make dinner like old times. But now, if you were leaving this bar with him to go back to that flat at the end of the night, it wouldn’t be for those intentions. This time, you were nothing more than eye candy to Roger, and it killed you inside. To know that you weren’t that person to Roger anymore, no matter how much he was that person to you? Devastating.

“For….” Roger paused for a moment, seeming to be looking for the right words as he smiled a bit to himself and cast his gaze to the right momentarily. “For appreciating the female existence in all its shapes and forms, regardless of aesthetic standards and relative beauty.” An exaggerated gagging noise from Mary, and the other two made their way back across the bar, leaving the two of you alone.

“Wow,” you drawled out as you watched Freddie go, feigning surprise that he’d just pulled together such a beautiful sentence. After a moment, you let your gaze wander back to Roger, and you smiled slightly. “Smart and cute, what a catch.”

Roger looked rather pleased with himself after your comment, that self-assured smirk that had made you fall in love before playing at the corners of his lips. His hands slid into his pockets as he shifted his weight to the other foot, giving you a quick once-over. It set butterflies off in your stomach, ones that refused to be ignored as a light blush settled on your cheeks. You attempted to hide the blush by lifting your beer to down the rest, but he’d already seen.

“I’d like to think so. You’re pretty fit yourself, how come I haven’t seen you around the building more?” When you sat the empty glass on the bar, he pulled his wallet out of his pocket as he approached the open stool next to you, tossing a few notes on the bar and calling for two more drinks before climbing onto the stool and raising an eyebrow at you. “What were you having? It’s on me.”

“Uh, lager, thank you,” you replied quietly, turning to face the bar again and leaning forward on your elbows as the bartender fulfilled the request. Roger gripped the edge of the bar tightly with one hand, propping his head up on the other hand as he watched you curiously. You realized he was still waiting for an answer as the bartender served both of you the respective drinks he’d ordered, and you cleared your throat before taking a sip. “I just moved in. I’m new around here, so…”

“Well, as resident intellectual and Kensington specialist, I’d love to show you around the city a bit, if you’d like, that is?” he offered, also taking a sip of his drink as he let the offer sit on the table. The brief thought that you could stay a bit longer and have one last fling with Roger suddenly occurred to you. After all, what would one last time hurt?

Everything. It would ruin everything. As strong as you thought you could be, you know that one time would lead to another, and then leaving him after getting attached again would probably be worse than the first time.

Looking around at the bar patrons for a moment before settling on Roger, you sighed inwardly. This was your home, your everything, but it was never meant to be. As much as you desperately wanted to stay here and spend the rest of your life with Roger, you knew that Weston was right. But Roger was patient as you once again ran through your inner turmoil (shocker). He ran the calloused pad of his middle finger along the side of his glass and collected some beer that had spilled over before swiping it over his tongue just briefly, his blue eyes catching yours. You couldn’t decide between staring at his tongue that just barely poked through his teeth or the Tiffany blue irises framed by pretty blonde lashes.

Damn it, he was too tempting. “Sounds exciting. What about right now?”

“Right now?” he questioned, raising a light eyebrow in surprise. When you responded by chugging down the rest of your beer and jumping off your stool, an amused look came onto his face as he slid off the barstool as well, finishing his drink. “I guess we are going right now. Let me go back over and tell Freddie I’ll be home later. Wait here, yeah?”

“Alright,” you agreed, smiling up at him and hugging your waist as he began to head over to the table, glancing back at you once or twice in wonder before he got there. And you intended on waiting, really, but something distracted you.

Well, someone. Propped up against the doorframe next to the entrance was Weston, and your blood ran cold. You were sure that every trace of happiness in your expression as well as your body disappeared, and instead a defiant look took its place. But as much as it was defiant, there was also a defeat evident, a hardened way that your jaw set, and Weston could tell you were pissed as you glanced at Roger one more time before reluctantly making your way towards Weston, lips pressed into a thin line.

No words were exchanged as you passed him, bursting out onto the street angrily and storming back towards the building. But Weston just followed, an ‘I told you so’ lingering on the tip of his tongue as he was just a couple steps behind you, hands shoved in his pockets.

“I mean, I’d say it, but you already know what I’m going to say based on the fact that I didn’t trust you enough to leave you alone here again.”

“Save it, Weston,” you hissed as you held up a hand over your shoulder, signaling for him to stop talking while you were still in such a livid state. “I can’t tell whether I want to punch you or cry right now. Or both.”

“Hey, kid, I know how you feel. Trust me. I’d let you punch me, but that would just be stupid.” You rolled your eyes at that, a few tears threatening to spill over as you refused to turn and look at him, instead rounding the last corner before you’d be headed straight down to the cursed old flat building. “You just wanted to try it one more time, yeah? With him?”

“Why does it even matter to you?” you muttered, angrily wiping away the tears, but you slowed down a bit, letting him catch up to you and match your pace. “Yes. I wanted to see him one more time. Quitting cold turkey kind of sucks. Like, a lot.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Weston chuckled, crossing the street with you and looking around at London for a moment before sighing and tapping his fingers against his thighs. “Listen, I tried countless ‘one more times’ with Abigail. It will never get better. You’re only making yourself more miserable.”

“Yeah. I know.” He didn’t seem surprised by your answer, and said nothing as you reached the door to the stairs, his hand immediately going out to pull them open and let you in. Following you in and up the stairs, nothing was left to be said until you’d both reached the door, the sign staring at you like a death warrant as you slowed to a stop, brushing away a few more tears. “Thanks for coming to get me. I know that you just didn’t want to see me get hurt, but I had to see him again. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Taking a deep breath, he exhaled slowly before reaching out and opening the door, holding it for you. “You did what any normal human would do. We all want what we can’t have.”

“Yeah.” You stared at the darkened closet, a bundle of your clothes laying just inside the doorframe. Snatching them up and clutching them to your chest, you closed your eyes and shook your head. “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.”

And then you marched forward into the pitch black abyss of the utility closet, Weston’s eyes following you the whole way.

-

Lake Geneva was beautiful, if a bit cold. It wasn’t overcast in Montreux, but a looming dark cloud in the distance threatened to soak everyone headed into Casino Barrière, including you.

It was Freddie’s 73rd Birthday Party. As pricey as the tickets were, you’d managed to save up enough to snatch one before they were gone, with promises of one singular complimentary drink and a t-shirt, plus a cover band playing The Miracle album front to back. And you knew Roger would be there. Sure, it wouldn’t be the Roger you knew, but it was worth trying to catch a glimpse of the one who got away at some point that night.

Since last year, you’d visited Weston quite a bit. As much as you knew he thought you were still a kid, weak and willing to succumb to every temptation, you actually grew to enjoy his company a lot. And he enjoyed yours, even going so far as cleaning up his guest room whenever he knew you were coming. It was an odd relationship, sure, but he felt like a father to you, and he decided you weren’t as spineless as he’d originally thought.

Dan wasn’t trying anymore. A long, tear-filled intervention with you and Weston put a stop to the attempts, and now the portal was patched up and made to look like a part of the wall, the door never to be opened again. Now, it was your apartment.

Sure, it was painful looking at that church every day, but since you’d checked your mom into assisted living facilities, the cheap rent and familiar location served as a new home to you. The café you’d worked at had closed down, but you frequented the coffee shop that had sprung up in its place. And although you weren’t alone by any means, there were times that the loneliness was overwhelming.

Now was not one of those times. In the true spirit of keeping Freddie’s legacy alive, the crowd was lively, animated, and all decked out in silly hats. Freddie had apparently held a silly hat party for his 40th back in 1986, and this had been chosen for the theme this year as the casino came alive with Queen fans, family, and friends alike. People were so nice, chatting with anyone they’d see, and you’d met quite a few lovely people by the time the night was dwindling to a close. People were slowly filtering out after the cover band had played the last song and had been replaced by the regular live band, and you decided to just get one more drink and stay a bit longer at the casino. Even though you hadn’t seen Roger, you still felt like a night hadn’t been wasted as you climbed onto the barstool that was at one corner, waiting patiently for the bartender to help you while you scrolled on your phone.

Deep into Twitter, you almost didn’t notice the glass of white sparkling wine placed in front of you, but you looked up at the bartender as he cleared his throat, nodding over to the far side of the bar. “Gentleman down there already paid for it. Cheers.” With that, the bartender was gone, and you shifted your gaze over to find a white-haired, bearded older man with robin’s-egg eyes, staring you down very curiously.

It took you a moment to register who it was, but you had to choke on the surprised noise in your throat as Roger climbed off his stool carefully, sidling over and taking the stool on the other side of the corner, a respectful distance away. “Didn’t mean to alarm you, love. What’s your name?”

His voice was still so soft, if a bit more raspy than you remembered, and you felt a bit dizzy as you let your fingers wrap around the stem of the wine glass, swirling it a bit. “It’s okay. I just didn’t expect anyone to buy me a drink,” you managed to respond, a bit too quiet, but then you cleared your throat in an attempt to not sound so overwhelmed. “Y/N. Thank you for the drink. You didn’t have to-“

“I wanted to, don’t worry,” he laughed, cutting you off before you could sell yourself short. “You were alone and looked like you could use one. I’m Roger, by the way.” His eyes shifted to the hat you’d placed on the bar next to you, and another chuckle left his lips, the laugh so inviting and familiar that you had to take a sip of wine to distract yourself. Music started playing over the speaker that seemed to be in the kitchen that was just past the bar, and you couldn’t help but smile as All Along The Watchtower’s familiar wailing guitar started in.

“Hendrix,” you both mused at the same time, an embarrassed blush painting your cheeks a soft red as Roger laughed, looking towards the kitchen and giving you a chance to take him in. He was far more wrinkled than the last time you’d seen him, obviously, but that didn’t take away from the playful gleam in his eyes, the smirk that constantly played at his lips. He looked good in a beard, you decided, but there was still a part of your heart that longed for the wavy, dirty blonde shoulder-length locks of the 70’s. Scruffy looked good on Roger, but he’d cleaned up since then, and he looked unbelievably spotless and quite young for his age. Then, he began to speak, drawing you out of your trance as he turned his head to look at you again.

“I always loved Hendrix. Thought that he did this piece loads better than-“

“Bob Dylan. Of course.” You nodded in agreement, sipping at the wine again and smiling at the memory of laying in Roger’s room long before you were ever an item, listening to him go on and on about how much better Hendrix’s interpretation was.

“You know your stuff!” he remarked in amusement, hitting his fist down against the bar lightly in emphasis. “Who taught you?”

“My boyfriend,” you answered honestly, face screwing up for a moment before you shook your head. “Well, my ex. He loved Hendrix, Zeppelin, Van Morrison. He even liked Bob Dylan…. Just liked Hendrix a bit more.”

“Well, he’s got great taste in music, then.” Roger was all smiles, and it hurt your heart to see him so blissfully ignorant of the fact that you were talking about him. It was him who loved Hendrix, who idolized Led Zeppelin, who thought that Bob Dylan was good, but Hendrix was just on another level, so much better.

“Yeah,” you replied softly, scanning over his face for a moment before averting your eyes to the live band on the opposite end of the ballroom, playing some slow, brass-heavy tune that clashed with the sound of Hendrix. “He had the best taste in music. Had a good ear for it.”

The live band switched into another song, a slower one, and Roger noticed your eyes lingering on them as he followed your line of vision. After seeming to ponder it for a moment, he turned back to you and nodded towards the dance floor, raising an eyebrow. “Do you like to dance?”

A furious blush returned to your cheeks as you finished off the wine, sitting the glass farther away from you and flicking your tongue out over your lower lip to clean the remaining wine off. “I’m afraid I’m no good at that. Ex never taught me how to dance, he wasn’t like that. Too much happening up here.” You tapped on your head, knowing that it was only hurting you more to talk about Roger with Roger, but it wasn’t like he’d ever know. His unwavering gaze stayed on you, though, and you pursed your lips before laughing a bit. “I do like to dance, though. Don’t get that opportunity often.”

“Well, we’ll just have to get you out there, then.” With that, Roger got off his stool and held out his arm. “No use in wasting an opportunity.”

The offer remained on the table as you glanced from his arm up to his eyes, chewing on the inside of your cheek as conflict raged on inside your head. Would it hurt to do this? Probably. Would you be sad once it was over? Definitely. But the realization that doing this only put you in danger was putting your mind at ease. Even when you said yes to this dance, you wouldn’t be risking anybody’s health but your own by doing so. Roger would be safe, and that was okay with you.

Leaving your things on the bar, you slid off your stool and linked your arm into his, beaming up at him. “Lead the way.”

Grinning just as wide, Roger looked forward again and led the two of you onto the dance floor. Once there, his hand took ahold of your gently as his other hand came to rest on your waist, and the two of you began slowly swaying to the music as you let your free hand come to rest on his arm. This was something that was somewhat unfamiliar, the soft, dancing side of Roger having come out very rarely in the year you’d spent with him. But it was nice, and you couldn’t have wiped the smile off your lips if you’d tried.

“To be honest with you,” Roger started, his voice just audible over the strong melodies and harmonies of the live band, “I bought you a drink because you reminded me of a time when I was younger.”

A mild panic fluttered in your heart as you tried to think of the safest way to navigate the subject. You didn’t particularly want to expose time travel to him, well, ever, so this was a tricky subject to tiptoe around. “Did you buy a lot of girls drinks when you were younger?”

“If I had the money!” he laughed, rolling his eyes at himself before shaking his head. “Even if I didn’t have the money, I usually did anyways. Bought drinks all the time for beautiful ladies at the bar, like yourself. You actually look like someone I probably bought a drink for back in my college days, but that’s-“

“Impossible,” you finished for him, confirming what he assumed to be true as you tried to subdue the shake in your hands from nerves.

“Sure you didn’t have a grandma in the area?” he asked playfully, and you laughed out a negative as you avoided his gaze, instead dropping your own to the boutonniere he had stuffed partially in his front pocket. The swaying motion of your bodies, in sync, was almost sleep-inducing, but it would have been a bit out of pocket for you to fall asleep in his arms like that. That wasn’t your privilege anymore. “Figured. It’s all a blur, so maybe I’m just imagining things. Wishful thinking... Happens a lot when you get older.”

“Maybe so,” you agreed softly, a small smile gracing your lips for a moment as you looked back up to him. His eyes were just as beautiful as the first day you’d looked into them, and you got lost for a moment before continuing. “Thank you for asking me to dance. It’s nice – not a lot of guys my age like dancing.”

“When I was your age, I really didn’t either, so I don’t blame them,” Roger chuckled, twirling you carefully before speaking again once he’d rested his hand on your waist respectfully. “But I grew to appreciate it when I got older. Decided that it was sweet. A lot changes between now and then. Plus, my wife enjoys it, so I’ve got to keep the missus happy, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” you practically whispered, the live band slowing to a stop. Taking a deep breath, you forced a smile onto your lips as you gave him a hug, ignoring the unfamiliar cologne that now lingered on his collar. “Thank you again. Have a good one, yeah?.”

“You too,” he murmured, reciprocating a friendly hug before letting go of you and nodding amiably. A sweet smile rested on his lips, and you had to take one last glance before you turned away, heading back towards the bar slowly. It seemed like time had stopped momentarily as you grabbed your hat, heading for the back exit of the casino/resort that led to the lakeside, and you didn’t feel like you’d stepped out of slow-motion until you reached the edge of the lake, leaning over the railing.

It was dark now, the impending storm directly overhead and obscuring any moonlight, so the only lights around were reflecting off of the lake’s surface. The water lapping up against the rocks below looked pitch black, and you stared down at it, entranced by the beauty of the rhythmic waves. You were so focused on the water that you hardly noticed the light rain that began to fall, a welcome, gentle force that contrasted with the angry black clouds that the tiny raindrops fell out of. And as you felt yourself getting soaked to the bone, you couldn’t help but smile, letting a few teardrops of your own mix with the water gathering on your skin.

Maybe he wasn’t yours, and maybe it didn’t work out, but he was alright, and that was alright with you. Things weren’t as bad as they could be, and that was okay. Everything was okay, you decided. 

Life would go on.

-

PT. 1 PT. 2 PT. 3 PT. 4 PT. 5 PT. 6 PT. 7 PT. 8 PT. 9 PT. 10 PT. 10.5 PT. 11 PT. 12

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[dorkyungsoowrites]

Fatal Ties Ch. 7

Pairings: Baekhyun x You

Genre: Angst/Smut/Fluff | Mafia AU

Warnings: Mild Violence

Word Count: 2k

Description: The temptation to give away secrets has never been so sweet.

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | The Ending |

The bandage was falling off his head again. You saw the fresh stitches underneath. Skin forcibly pulled back together with special thread to heal faster. Slightly inflamed from irritation. He could apply things to it to fade the scar after, but there would always be a remnant. Because of you. You and your stupid fucking temper the first day you met. Baekhyun was under your protection now. Nothing could happen to him. He was your asset. Your responsibility. These motherfuckers who decided to shoot at you were attacking him as well whether intentional or not. You'd make sure their scars would be far more permanent.

Jacket in hand, you shoved Baekhyun down. Forcing his torso to bend, and he whimpered as his face stopped millimeters from the seat by your knee. You steadied yourself with a hand between his shoulder blades as Chanyeol swerved a bit. You'd need a clear shot at their tires to stop them for good. It was a much easier target than their heads. Calling out over your shoulder.

"Steady out the car. I need to aim."

"You're crazy!" he argued. "They'll shoot you as soon as you put your head out the window!"

"Then do a 180."

"That's the opposite direction we need to go!"

"They won't expect it. I'll shoot at their tires while we pass them. Do it, Park!"

"Fuck!" Chanyeol pressed his lips together in a firm line, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel with one hand while the other hovered over the gear shift. Closing his fingers into a fist once then taking hold of it. Glancing in the rear view to see the positioning of the car following. You took a steadying breath and rolled your window down that had already been shot once. Bracing on the door. Two more gunshots burst in the air. You couldn't think of the possibility that you'd be killed the moment they had you in sights. This was the best chance you had at hitting a tire and escaping. Your brain barely registered the music Chanyeol had been playing before still running on the stereo. Tuning out all else to focus on surviving. You only had seven rounds in the gun to get it right. You had to get it right.

Then his voice boomed,

"Now!" The car jerked hard to the left. Rubber screeching on asphalt. Your momentum all but dead as it channeled into the front of the vehicle. Pivoting almost directly on the spot. As the rear end swung into the correct direction you heard Chanyeol jerk on the gear shift. Engine humming louder as he stepped on the gas quickly. You followed the position of the other car. The assailants slowing suddenly as they came up on your front. It worked. They were shocked. Them stopping as you gained speed. You pointed your pistol out the window, second hand steadying your first. Forearm rested on the windowsill for the greatest stability. Looking down your sights to the wheels of the other car. Pulling the trigger. Each concussive bang far too familiar to your ears. One, two, three, four, five, six.

It struck. The air pressure exploded out as the lead tore through. It was your turn to be surprised. The chassis falling limp on the rear side. Scraping and shrieking on the road. Scraps of tread trailing after them. Red lights and a bit of smoke signaling their frantic and unexpected stop. Chanyeol shifted into the next gear. Accelerating away. They sat there. Crooked on the side of the road. No one got out. Typically your little pistol wouldn't have enough power to do anything beyond puncture so the tire goes flat after a few minutes. It gives you time to create distance. Maybe they would have been fine if they hadn't stolen a lemon with tires decades old, but they didn't. It was compromised from point one. So you profited.

Heaving a loud sigh, you mashed a finger on the button to roll the window up again. The wind soon closed off to the confines of your car. You shut your eyes and took a moment to breathe. It didn't last past the inhale. Hearing loud panting behind you. Turning to see Baekhyun scramble to pull his pants leg up. The fabric bunched and got tight at the knee. Revealing split skin on his calf. A nice clean line of a grazed bullet. Crimson clotting slowly. Your eyes darted to his door. A dent. Lead smushed inside. You followed the line back to your side door to where you could see the entry point. Sunlight coming in the small hole.

Shit.

You quickly took out the clip on your gun and counted two remaining bullets. Shit. The clip clicked back in to place. You mis-counted one of their gunshots as your own. A stupid mistake. You also hadn't forced Baekhyun's legs up on the seat like you had your own knowing this was a possibility. Another even more idiotic mistake. By all rights you shouldn't have even gotten ambushed.

"I know what you're thinking," you sighed. Baekhyun's breathing remained shallow. Eyes wide in fear.

"I don't know. Were you thinking, 'holy shit holy shit, I just almost got shot'?" At least he seems alright, you think. No. You were thinking about suspects. Motive. Timing. It was all too convenient with the plan of the alliance. Someone who knew your schedule had whispered poison to the wind of deceit and clutching for power. Someone with friends willing to go about the foolhardy mission of taking your place. Someone who knew killing you would keep chaos and senseless precedents on the street. Thinking the wedding was distraction enough to catch you vulnerable. There was a mark on your head, and a spy among your inner circle.

First was to identify the problem. That was done easily enough. Human greed never surprised you anymore. The ambush lighting their intentions brighter than a flare. Second, think up solutions, and lastly, proceed with the most viable one. Working toward a concrete goal is the best coping mechanism in your mind; it solves the problem. Leaving no room for grief or worry. The second step was holding you back. Procedure broken.

"This is all dissolving into one miserable fucking headache," you lamented. Agitated and unnerved. Your lack of knowledge dented the neat little compartments you had your anxieties stored in. Wrapped in a steely will. Without a clear explanation you could formulate no plan. You could not rationalize the steps. You were left confused and wandering listlessly for answers. You were left anticipating another strike at your heart with no counter measure.

Now was not the time to demonstrate how frightful you could be to keep the lower ranks at heel. Too many bodies had been piling up lately. Crushing small prey under your boots in hopes of rooting out dissension wasn't an option. Now was the time for tact. But comprehension breeds control, and as Chanyeol drives a long path to double back to your manor you steadily realize you are lacking in fuel for this trait at the moment. You dare never show it. You coveted composure. It empowers you. Pragmatism your blade in an industry where emotions get you killed, or worse. You don't have a plan.

But they don't know that. Your gaze flitting between the back of Chanyeol's head and the window that was shot first. He was the most likely mole. He knew where you were and where you would be at almost any hour of the day. Setting up the ambush would have been as simple as sending a text when he picked you up at the tailor shop. The thought roiled uncomfortably in your belly. Sweet, dorky Chanyeol. So bright and naive to your world outside this car. It would have been all too easy for someone to slither ideas into his head. Or perhaps he had always despised you under his polite mask. Would you have to kill him outright? No. There was someone bigger pulling the strings. You needed intel. You needed to manipulate and keep keen eyes for clues.

"Are you...alright?" you hear quietly from the seat over. You've been silent too long it appears. Brooding, even. Baekhyun has already pushed his torn pants back over the minor injury and settled his frantic demeanor. Adrenaline spike sloping downward now that danger was no longer immediate. Returning to his regular gossamer state.

You can't give anything away. Chanyeol would be watching for weakness too. And if not Chanyeol, it could be anyone. You must endure alone. Your chest anguishing with betrayal yet blotting out any outward variation in expression.

You chase knowledge with the intent of preserving the empire around you despite others' thoughts that your methods are cruel. Making the wrong choice will mean more lives lost. It's only natural for you to fear failure. The more you succeed, however, the more it seems people pour their lives into your hands. Dependent on your guardianship. The weight turns heavier. The dread around uncertainty grows.

The more you endure, the more you're affirmed trust is intrinsically illogical. Everyone is an enemy. Every action not calculated leads to chaos. You slipped, distracted by Baekhyun, and danger came all too swiftly. Strength is both safe and exhausting. You envy Baekhyun's freedom to be soft as he is. Agonizing internally, aching to give in but still unable to. Nonetheless, you have to tell Baekhyun something.

"I'm fine. We should tighten security until the wedding is over."

"Do you have any idea who that was? Do you think they work for my dad?"

"Hush," you ordered. "It doesn't concern you."

"It doesn't concern me?" Baekhyun repeated bitterly. Voice raising. "I was nearly shot! I think that entitles me to some kind of explanation!"

"Nearly," you replied monotonously. Refusing to look at him. Instead staring out the front window past the empty passenger seat. "Clear difference from actually being shot."

"I can't believe you're so...like this!"

"Then I guess you're just as light-headed as I suspected." You only need him to shut up. Out of your peripheral you see him face you directly. One hand sinking nails into the front seat to steady himself and channel his aggravation. Knuckles white. His glare does nothing more than itch. No weight behind it. He would never lash out physically. So it did nothing to deter you.

"It's another secret isn't it?" Baekhyun guessed. Tone more pained than anything else. It was unexpected. You glanced. He hadn't been glaring after all. His brows were pinched in worry, eyes swimming with sympathy. "Please, this is my life too. You can trust me. You can depend on me." He would break, you think. All too soon. Shaking your head in disapproval, you turned away.

"I wish that were true." His nails retreated from the leather. The backs of his fingers ghosting from your upper arm to your shoulder, and then your jaw. You shut your eyes briefly and tensed against the shuddering breath your body attempted to betray you with. Baekhyun's fingers glided over the shell of your ear as if brushing away hair.

"If I take over wedding plans," he said in a muted voice. "Will that help you?"

"Yes."

"Then you can rely on me." He continued to pet your cheek and trace under your chin. Then taking it in his grip and turning your face to him. Repeating it like a promise. "You can rely on me." Your eyes flitted back to him. The temptation was there in his sincerity. For a split second, you considered it. Your lips parted and your eyes pleaded for his help. Baekhyun waited, holding his breath. Then,

"No.” The most honeyed voice is often the most dangerous. You hardened your heart and tore his hand from you. Sitting straighter. You couldn't give up any control. "And the events that just happened don't leave this vehicle. Chanyeol, dump the car once you drop us off."

"Yes boss." You needed to set an established course of action in your mind before you returned to the manor. You needed information for yourself, and you couldn't agitate whoever was after you. It would only provoke them to strike harder. Your vulnerabilities needed more than a shadow. There could be no cracks in the facade.

[listoriented]

Burnout: Paradise

1. Burnout. Spinning wheels without moving. Antipodean slang. The smell of burned rubber.

The blank word document is another rounded bend. A few cars here and there loaded in. Driving these virtual streets is seeing ideas, tangents, discourse, thoughts spill off. In front is always nothingness. An inability to grasp on to anything coherent. Yes this is synecdoche, yes this is consumerism, a shiny shell of petromodernity – an actual critical theory term that I now take seriously - yes this is me, my life, my phd in miniature, the imperfect totalising open-world game, or yes this is a microcosm of the entirety of trying to play through the letter “B” of my steam library, stop-start, hopeful then despairing, takes longer than it should, yes this game is a magnum opus and I wish so hard to fill my lungs and release until my fingers are pinching some inflated balloon perfectly full of a graspable idea, or yes this game is fundamentally empty, a comment on a comment; at the bottom of all searches for purpose we find searches for purpose, etc. 

So I start and I start and I start again. I drive I drive I drive. Event after event ticks down, my license goes from learner to D to B to A and then I hit my goal, “Burnout license”, and still I don’t know what I’ll write. Something about driving, in general; driving as notionally relaxing, driving while thinking about other things. How do people write? Write things? My PhD is in pieces on the floor and in the computer and in my head. I drive around Paradise City and terrible emo from the mid-noughties plays, interspersed with long bouts of classical. Days pass, and in the game the day turns into night and back again, and I adjust the clock to make this happen slower, and the weather changes in Paradise City, a little – cycles of rain and cloud and sun - and here in Melbourne the weather changes too. It was the tail end of summer when I started, and we’ve been through the surprising highs and lows of autumn, now settling into winter, doing it all again. There are no roads leading in or out of Paradise City, and it’s a long drive back from the hills.

2.      Burnout. A series of arcade-style racers made for various platforms by Criterion Games [official site] between 2001 and 2011.

It’s a little uncanny, this pocket of 2008. It just looks real good to my rusty, unfussy eyes, like in visual terms it hasn’t aged in ways other games from that year age (though my friend James vehemently disagreed). It does the trick. It does lots of tricks. And it seems rare too, to say of a 2008 game that it’s a masterpiece, that it’s the best of its class, though of Paradise this is surely true, if all reports are to be believed with regards to all other open-world arcade driving games that have come since, including everything else made by Criterion.

Any doubts about its age are firmly put to bed by the soundtrack, though, which despite prominently featuring that Guns N’ Roses song from 1987 just screams mid-2000s at me, abundant “rock” guitars, masc whine and all, very of its time, salvaged by one timeless Avril Lavigne banger, a chunk of classical, and (to a certain extent) personal nostalgia for a time when this sort of soundtrack just seemed vaguely synonymous with “driving game”. There’s also the dated blemish of inane unmutable advice-slider DJ A(u)tomica, who at least has the good grace to (somehow) avoid repeating himself, even after seventeen hours of driving, at a clip of one quip every few minutes or so. There’s also the very 2008 nod to renewable energy via Paradise’s wind farm, harking back to that post- An Inconvenient Truth moment of progressive euphoria when we really all believed we could build towards a sustainable future that would also accommodate our oily desires, before another decade of resource-industry funded filibustering hadn’t proven this, again, impossible.

And yet Paradise stands up in ways that surpass the non-ironic soundtrack of fragile masculinity and the very 00’s DJ Atomica, despite or because of the people-less world, the flat and drab urban interior, the hardly even tokenistic ways of engaging with the city as function rather than form. I particularly like how B:P has not even the faintest hint of story, how even in terms of progression it purely becomes a game of exploration, winning events, checking boxes. It melds (excuse me for a second) form and function and manages not to get in the way of itself – the story is what the player does in the game, where the player goes. It’s kind of breathtaking, rare for any game before or since. (Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not advocating for the dissolution of narrative in games, only that the lack of narrative pretence here is very suited to this particular game, and very preferable to the kinds of irrelevant and bloated narratives that are thrown over e.g. other driving games).

Ah, 2008. It was just there! And yet so far. I played Burnout Paradise for a running total of seventeen hours over nearly three months. During this time, I also played forty-two hours of Tetris99. Everything in its place. Criterion recently announced they’ll shut down the Burnout Paradise’s online servers in August, though Paradise lives on in Remastered (2018) glory, Origin only. 

3. Burnout. The act of refuelling the boost capacity of an engine by running out of boost.

Despite the time I’ve spent with it, the fact that I managed to complete its main in-game objective, and the running thoughts on time and place and representation of cultural norms, I feel I’m struggling to say much of definition about Paradise that fits easily into the scrapbook nature of this blog. Perhaps in some ways it's too close to life; a series of arbitrary checklists through which feeling happens (nebulously) around. I "liked" it but do not feel moved to thought, and I'm aware that that is the point – it’s a game that allows you to drive, endlessly, if you want to, think and do whatever. It won’t get in the way (barring DJ Automica butting in every couple of minutes – he literally cannot be switched off).

I do not drive much these days. Last year when Lauren and I moved to Canberra, we drove nearly 4000 kilometres across the country. The landscapes wound by, at the time fleetingly, but they piled on and left deep rivulets in my head, and though it was just five days and nothing really happened – we leant on the accelerator, stopped every hour, listened to music, stayed in nothing-motels quite literally hundreds of kms from anywhere else and ate forgettable takeaway - it feels immense, now. Driving is funny like that - you are never quite in a place, separated from it by machine noise and windows and infrastructure, the one activity you can do to facilitate thinking about something else. Still, impressions, motion, the sense of having moved, of having journeyed. Here in Australia, the fossil fuel lobby has won its third straight election in a row. Hope is eroding into nothing.

Probably my favourite hour or two in Paradise City was spent mucking around in the online section with Roy and James, trying to check off a few of the game's multiplayer challenges. These involved such serious exercises as trying to do barrel a series of barrel rolls, or try and land on top of each other, or smash into each in mid-air, or drive on top of a parking lot to jump a ramp onto a shopping centre. It was very good, if a little eerie and dystopic, strewn with outdated real-and-paid-for advertising billboards, branded vehicles, quaint echoes of paused time and uncanny dilapidation.

The mill of the game I could never quite settle on - I “liked” it, I think, but it wasn’t without problems. I found the single-player events to be mindlessly enjoyable, ploughing other cars into crash barriers, or effortlessly holding down "boost" to accelerate down a straight and into a finish line, celebratory cutaway shot ensuing. Sometimes I crashed into too many grey girders that my eyes hadn't picked out and got frustrated, or sometimes I missed a critical turnoff and got frustrated. Sometimes they just felt like chores, and it was certainly sometimes annoying to not be able to restart events that I had botched, and it took me ten hours to learn you could opt out of races, stunt runs etc just by letting the car idle for a few seconds. And knowing this probably would have saved me a lot of time in the early game, because like I said it’s a long way back from the hills, where like three out of eight events end up at, and committing to staying in a race which after a couple of botched turns and unseen barriers you’re definitely not going to win, whose distant finish line is going to land you a long way from the nearest event (once you finally get there) can feel pretty dire, really, though there was also part of me that admired how Burnout refused to let you jump around the map, forced you to drive, take your time, see the city, see the sights.

I did appreciate the cracky coloured collectms of Paradise City, how they brought the city to life, sort of, or gave it the impression of being a well designed and thought-through playground, though I never got too completionist about them, the core exercise of the whole thing. Both John Walker of RPS and Chris Donlan of Eurogamer have written about Paradise’s fluoro crash gates, the impulse to reinstall the game every year and knock them all down from scratch. Along the way to getting my “Burnout license” I unlocked 36 of the 75 vehicles, jumped 35 of the 50 super jumps, broke 79 of 120 neon red billboards, and smashed through 353 of 400 aforementioned glowing yellow crash barriers. The game puts me at 55% completed. No steam achievements (woulda been nice, perhaps, given that Burnout Paradise is fundamentally a collectmup; nothing but metres and percentages). I’ve driven a little over 1000 miles, supposedly, which is certainly more than I’ve IRL driven over the past few months.

4.  Burnout. noun Physical and emotional exhaustion; breakdown caused by overwork. Commonly associated with “crunch”, “the video game industry”.

But here there is also pure hesitation. Procrastination. The fear of moving on, even at the end of this little step of what has ballooned into an impossible project. I can see the next letter waiting there, a new chapter, a chance for renewal. The one disappearing behind us has drawn out so far, encompassed a few years and a fair bit of change, and now almost petered into nothing at the final gate. I want to hit the ground running but I'm not sure I'm ready, and in the meantime various other deadlines swirl around, make it difficult to see the clear path ahead that I crave. And so it is that the temptation has been there to keep driving the streets of Paradise, its anonymous suburbs and abstract goals, continue delaying the inevitable, or the nearly inevitable, or the not-inevitable-at-all of writing this post and moving on to the next chapter, because it turns out this is a project I once made a choice to begin, and could at one point choose to stop.

There are nagging questions, of course. Who blogs, anymore? Who reads blogs anymore? How does one find a blog they like and then continue to follow it for the span of its natural life? Does anyone use “bookmarks”? What’s an RSS feed? I'm not even sure, in a broader sense, that I know where to find the kinds of writing about games that I want to read at the moment, at least not reliably, outside of say the occasional check-through of Critical Distance or Unwinnable. I look at the slate of games coming out and find it hard to be excited by anything much, the hype and the saturation. It is bountiful until it is not. The guilt element of playing games – something inherited from childhood that I’ve never been entirely able to dissociate - has become more and more prominent. I've increasingly used games as a tool for procrastination and a coping mechanism, a distraction from various (work/study and other) anxieties. I've also been aware of myself doing this, and in turn the kinds of gaming experiences I've relied on have been more focused on short term, low-investment distraction (hence the sudden unyielding devotion to Tetris, which really was just filling the hole left by an earlier act of self-discipline AKA uninstalling Rocket League; more recently, as I’ve managed to put the Switch away for longer periods, I’ve turned back to another simple but deceptive time-filler in Mini Metro. Choose your poison, basically). For a while it seemed Burnout would not only fill this role but do it responsibly: it seemed great for dropping into in short bursts - win a race or two, unlock a new car maybe – without quite the same dangerously addictive pull for me as those other games. But then I heard the GnR song "Paradise City" one too many times (it's mandatory with startup), or got sick of the menu loading times, and it lost this specific part of its appeal.

And then there's the subjective nature of this particular Sisyphean project - the knowledge that here I am pushing a rock up a mountain of my own making, one that exists only for me, entirely built out of and defined by the games and bundles I chose and continue to choose to buy, the rules I chose to set. Life is short, this task is absurd, and at the moment it's not even a joke I feel particularly happy about sharing. Sometimes I get to play great games here, games I may never have gotten around to; at other times I am playing shit games for this blog, and in the process there are inevitably other things I'm not doing. One choice erases another. Increasingly it feels like an isolated pursuit - playing games in general, not just the writing and making of this here blog. It seems like I know fewer people who play games these days, between falling out of touch with friends, seeing lots of other old friends give up games in one way or another, and playing games less frequently with those who I still know. I’ve accidentally become something of a game hermit. For years I've loved the camaraderie and easy familiarity of social gaming experiences even when I haven't loved the games that conduct them - the feeling of being connected to people even in a transient, shallow, goal-oriented sense, but even these I'm not sure I believe in anymore, or I find myself less and less willing to invest in the "right" titles to facilitate it.

I’m into my thirties now, and maybe this is just a feeling of age, life, I dunno, priorities finally shifting to where people told me they should’ve years ago. One of my oldest friends is about to have a baby, though he more or less quit video games over a year ago now. I'm extremely happy for him. Two of my younger cousins just had children, several hours away by plane – my uncle, a new grandfather to two babies, makes posts on facebook claiming climate change is a socialist hoax, and I can’t help but think of the kind of world his grandchildren are going to inherit. I'm mulling over a missed deadline that's been a thorn in my brain now for months, the single-largest hitherto unsaid reason why this post has taken so long to dig its way to the surface. This month marks the five year anniversary of another cousin’s sudden/unexpected passing; he was five years older than me, and though I’ll never be able to make sense of it, I feel like I get that there’s something sort of vulnerable about this age, when the things you want don’t quite work out, or when you’re a bit aimless and stuck in your patterns and feel like things aren’t going to change. He was so kind and gentle, a beautiful soul and a terrible Zerg, and I miss him so much. And one year ago I drove from Canberra to Melbourne and slept on the floor of this house I now call home while I waited for a truck with rest of my stuff to arrive. I’m very aware of the calendar, of change and inertia, of patterns and decay, of newness sprouting underfoot, but I don’t know how games fit at the moment, or I’ve lost the thread of feeling like they’re actually important, or why, amongst all the noise.

Burnout: Paradise is at the start, in the middle, and right at the end of all these things. It's a great game, part of me feels, or wants to say I feel. Playful, irreverent, childishly violent, simultaneously full of stuff and empty of matter. I'm happy I've played it, happy I can say that I've played it, happy to understand on an experiential level most of what it offers, happy I'll be able to remember it later, nod in some hypothetical conversation where someone brings up Burnout: Paradise and say I know what they mean, yeah. I get it. When we were playing it online together briefly, a couple of months back now, Roy told me that Burnout Paradise is the only game he ever one hundred percented twice - once on 360, once on PC - and that it was almost three times, because the first time he was almost done with it, someone broke into his house and stole his Xbox and all his games, and that Paradise was the only game that he re-bought with the insurance money, so determined he was to tick every box the game left open to tick, even if it meant doing it all again.

But maybe – counterpoint - I don’t get it. I’m finding it harder and harder to make good sense of this kind of experience, or feel like this kind of thing is (in some arbitrary way) a net positive, or that it’s okay to keep glossing over the emulation of destruction that games of so many different kinds fundamentally rely on. Outside there is so much suffering, so much to be upset about, and I no longer feel like there is time enough to sink into mindless (rather than meaningful, perhaps?) distraction. Or I’m finding it harder to get beyond the thought that this is an extension of the distraction/avoidance behaviour that I realised might actually be a problem in my life.

“Burnout” is, you’ll know, here in the great mess of the year 2019, a buzz word, particularly in the games industry. Games company employees have perpetually been expected to work unsustainable hours out of some sort of devotion to the industry, creating a cycle of talent depletion and toxic work cultures. But as is often the case with games, it’s a tip-off of what happens elsewhere, across the board. The mass casualisation of careers across all industries, the gig economy, pressures caused by un- and under- employment, the dissipation of viable faith, social-media and political stresses: all of these are leading to burnout, everyone has burnout, we are inundated with burnout. There is something ripe about the words or the idea of Burnout: Paradise, the very conceptual juxtaposition that seems to be two sides of the same coin, that feels very reflective of this moment, what we are all experiencing versus what we were promised. But what does this have to do with Burnout: Paradise, the game in which you pretend drive fake person-less cars around a virtual city, have horrific, visceral crashes from which you immediately respawn and “beat” by achieving a long series of arbitrary victories, collecting all there is to collect? Something, nothing, I don’t know.

“Burnout” means a lot of things, and the meaning of “burnout” the game adopts isn’t the other ones I’d associate with cars – a burnt out engine, or the smell of burning rubber - but one that exists only for the series, so far as I can tell: getting to keep using your boost because you’ve been continually using your boost. Keep going at all cylinders or bust, basically – except not, because the consequences for interrupting the boost are slim even on the relative scale of things that can go right or wrong, in this game where there is never really all that much on the line for the player anyway.

Paradise. n. Heaven. A place to await judgement. An enclosed park. Eden.

In Paradise City the grass is trim; the girls (all humans actually) are non-existent, unless you happen to be riding a motorcycle, presumably because a motorcycle without a rider would look very weird.

In Paradise City the cars are peopleless and drive themselves, so maybe it is an early vision of the tech bro version of Paradise. Or maybe the cars are driven by people who can only exist on the outside of the world of Paradise City, looking in across the matrix. Or maybe in Paradise City the people are the cars. This is Cars, the movie, sans dialogue.

In Paradise City all the cars emulate brands and models that exist in "the real world" but are called by names that exist only in the Burnout franchise.

In Paradise City all the cars ostensibly run on petrol, which is infinite but unnecessary, because going through a petrol station merely refills the car's boost capacity, whatever that is, rather than imply that your car would stop running if you at some point failed to “fill up”. It's very important that you know, though, that the cars run on petrol, because otherwise it wouldn't be a realistic representation of cars. Even in Paradise.

In Paradise City cars exist and then don't exist.

In Paradise City a lot more cars suddenly exists if someone decides they want to flip their car over and see how much monetary damage they can cause.

In Paradise City cars crash and crumple in a hyper-realistic way, but it's okay because the cars have no drivers and anyway all cars are all miraculously fine again after a few moments.

In Paradise City the railway has been shut down to give cars more places to hang out. 

In Paradise City the whole city runs on wind energy, because it's important to care about the environment too, because you can have both, promises the radio, though seeing as there's nobody there in all of Paradise's buildings it's unclear, anyway, what such energy would actually be running.

onward to Caesar 3

[freewheelen]

Harley-Davidson vs. Millennials (from the POV of a Millennial)

As of late, there's been a lot of talk about the scourge of Millennials and how they're ruining everything from bars of soap to lotto scratchers.

"Millennials aren't buying diamonds." 

"They don't eat Big Macs."

"No of them watch cable."

And my favorite: "Millennials are killing Harley-Davidson."

As a Harley rider born between the years of 1981 and 1997, I feel obligated, no entitled, to lavish the internet with my opinion on the topic. Oh, coveted opinion, the most valid of all arguments.

I'm a new rider and when my bike search began, the choice was clear from the beginning: Harley-Davidson. I don't know if that decision is attributed to my obsession with Orange County Cycles when I was 13 or if I watched Terminator 2: Judgement Day one too many times as a kid, but nothing said motorcycle to me like a chopper. Long, relaxed, powerful. You had the perfect DNA for a mile-eater. A highway hauler. You had an American classic. 

It was that image - that mysticism of the open road, that promise of freedom - that pushed me toward my nearest Harley-Davidson dealership. And that's when reality sunk in. For those that don't know, Harley-Davidson is the antithesis of cheap. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing, reliable machines, but when an Ultra Limited costs more than a new Camaro, you need a large quantity of disposable income to justify the purchase. Definitely not a comfort I can claim, so I relegated my options to the smaller models and stayed away from the more 'luxury' cruisers.

And when you come to think of it, every item listed at the beginning of the post is considered just that, a luxury. Diamonds, Big Macs, shit, even cable isn't really considered a necessity for survival - and motorcycles are no exception. 

As a Millennial, I'm a big proponent of minimalism. Belonging to the generation that popularized tiny houses, it's probably no surprise that I live in a 300 sq ft studio apartment with my girlfriend and our dog. For context, that's like fitting your kitchen, closet, bath, living room and bed into a master suite. Far from palatial. Along those same lines, I only own a small selection of consumer goods. You can't own much when you don't have a place to put it. Due to the fact that I'm limited on quantity, I emphasize quality in the things I choose to buy, which are predominately American-made (Wolverine Boots, Gustin Denim, etc.).  

I grew up in a blue-collar family. My grandfather was a baker, my uncles moved furniture, and my grandmother delivered party supplies for a living. While I've only held white collar jobs (film industry), I want to do my part to support that dwindling workforce in this country, to support the communities I came from. I guess my allegiance to the MoCo [1] is based less on nationalism and more on classism. All that to say, when I saw H-D's prices, I figured, "you’re paying for quality labor," but that type of purchasing pattern and reasoning isn't shared among my cost-driven, globally-minded peers. Couple that fact with the influx of urban dwelling in the past decade and you have a perfect storm for Harley sales.

Due to the elevated level of congestion in major cities, Millennials have taken to more nimble, handling-oriented motorcycles that can slither through stagnant streets. In LA traffic, it's practically impossible to squeeze a big bike between lanes. The other day, I knocked a lady's side mirror off with my Sportster, and my bars measure 24 inches in width! If I had a Softail, I would have been the meat in a vehicle sandwich. Because of these close quarters, this environment makes perfect sense for an FZ-09 or KTM Duke 690. They're perfectly suited to the urban landscape with their sleek design, technological controls, and standard ABS, which explains the recent shift toward that streetfighter style.

In the time of the Boomers, the motorcycle field in America was much more limited. Not only were the options minimal, but America was the land of highways, stretching over 2,600 miles, coast-to-coast. With hundreds of miles between cities, choppers were the perfect tool for the job, not to mention the ultimate self-expression on two wheels. 

Nowadays, there are hundreds of brands to choose from and even more classes of motorcycles: Sport, Touring, Electric, Adventure, Scrambler, Literbike, Naked...GROM (just kidding). Back in the day, more people could also afford to live in the suburbs, allowing you to safely store your bike in a covered garage. But in the city, you have to worry about parallel parkers, drunk drivers, and thieves (I've seen 3 Softail theft ads in the past month in LA). You almost don't want to buy anything "too nice", including large $15,000 motorcycles. 

At the end of the day, it all comes down to price. That's something on which Millennials, Boomers, and even Gen-Xers can agree. With the death of the Dyna (RIP), Harley has essentially erased the only Big Twin [2] attainable by blue-collared folk, while the new Softail pricing only appeals to those with six-figure jobs without six-figure student loan debt. 

2018 Softail Fat Bob, courtesy of Harley-Davidson

On top of that, I have numerous friends that are entering the most terrifying and financially taxing stage of lives: parenthood. When all is said and done, motorcycles aren't even the main mode of transport for most people, especially if you have a kid on the way (that’d be something). I know a lot of buddies/peers that expressed wanting a motorcycle after I purchased my Sporty, but unlike me, they don't lead a careless, Peter Pan-esque lifestyles. Some things in life you just don't get to plan, certain stages have to take priority over others, and if that means waiting until your midlife crisis to buy that new Road King Special, then the MoCo will have to wait.

All this to say, Harley-Davidson bikes are luxury items. They are, as Blockhead [3] recently referred to them, the Apple of motorcycles. They utilize classic design, adopt technologies later than most, deliver less capable specs than competitors, and upcharge the consumer. They're a luxury brand selling a lifestyle, a culture, an image. They cram nostalgia into new packages and sell it by the thousands. They charge $40 bucks for a t-shirt, $400 for a quarter fairing, and $600 for a 10K service. They're as boujee as they come, they just happen to dress up in a greasy mechanic's shirt.

But with all that off my chest - and damn, it felt good - as long as Harley's providing blue-collared American jobs, I'm buying. If my peers understood that it's not just the bike you're purchasing, it's the intangibles that come with it, would they do the same? If they realized that there's an entire community that comes with the motorcycle, would they want one? If they could comprehend the fact that every time I've pulled to the side of the road another Harley rider has made sure I don't need any help with repairing the bike, would they throw a leg over?

I guess, only time will tell, and over the next 10 years, H-D plans to release 100 new models. That means a drastic overhaul of their entire lineup, and if the new Softails are any indication of what's to come, they're headed in the right direction. For evidence of that, we need to look no further than the American auto market. In the early 2000s, Chevy, Ford, and Dodge delivered muscle car essence in a modernized package. The fervor around those heritage pieces helped the auto companies recover from the recession and stabilize. 

If the MoCo can cater to the tastes of new riders while developing new technologies, there should be a healthy forecast for their future. With a new electric bike arriving in 2019 and models like the Bronx and Pan-America on the horizon, it feels as if Harley is listening to their fan-base and diversifying their portfolio. 

Project LiveWire, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

America is a large land full of people that buy diamonds or sapphires, that eat Big Macs or arugula, that watch cable or Netflix, and the more Harley branches out, the more people will be able to enjoy it.

[1] Nickname for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company

[2] Nickname for the larger engine bikes in the Harley-Davidson catalog

[3] Motovlogger that owns numerous Harley-Davidsons

[foslad]

Almost Too Good (A Chris Evans Story): Part 21 - 2/3

A/N: I’m not even going to attempt to explain myself for the absence in posting. I can only apologize because I HATE it when others do this... so I know the frustration and can’t excuse myself for it. 

I’ll be honest, these next couple of parts/chapters are a little different and they have me worried but I hope you enjoy anyways! Be sure to check out part 1/3 of this now three-part (instead of two) chapter :) 

I’m always so overwhelmed at the love and support I receive, SO THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART! LOVE LOVE LOVE!

The car ride was nice, but mostly quiet...

Despite my inner conclusion to just let it go, an air of awkwardness still hung around Chris and I; like some kind of a bad smell. On any other day we might have talked it out there and then, but the presence of the stranger driving us to the venue intensified our silence to the point where I was acutely aware of the sound of my own breathing.

Occasionally in my peripheral, I could see Chris’ fingers tapping his knee to drum up something to say but, ultimately, he kept quiet for the most part. It was very clear that neither of us felt comfortable bringing up earlier whilst in the company of someone else, so small talk remained small.

With that in mind, I decided to occupy my time with some “mental preparation”. I might’ve looked all lovely and glamorous on the outside, but my insides were a lethal cocktail of self-doubt, worry and pressure. I was keenly aware of the fact that I was going to meet a lot of people that were important to Chris tonight and if they didn’t warm to me, well, then, I was truly fucked.

-

The car pulled up behind the long queue of other cars and the driver kindly got out and opened the door on my side for me. I smiled gratefully at him, carefully stepping out onto the concrete and out onto whatever tonight had in store for me.

I waited patiently off to the side for a minute or so, looking around at all the tall lit up palm trees that lined the path upwards as Chris corresponded with the driver about how he’d contact him later. The night was a little chilly, so I made sure to pull the shawl that I had draped around my elbows up onto my shoulders until we got inside. With a little nod and wink in confirmation, Chris finally turned back around and acknowledged me. 

Comically, my face must’ve screamed I’M IN OVER MY HEAD because he met me with a sweet look of encouragement before a lopsided grin emerged. 

He eyed our surroundings fleetingly before his fingers came down and casually entwined themselves around my own. As he led the way up the steep concrete staircase, my eyes trained in on the foreign feeling.

Chris was holding my hand... We’d never held hands before!?

It was such a menial and fleeting action for most couples yet it ignited something inside of me. A surge of butterflies, a stupidly goofy smile, a feeling of utter satisfaction. I liked it. A lot.

Any animosity I had about earlier started to melt away with each step we took as a unit.

-

Chris had explained to me before that there was no compulsory red carpet or anything. The event was a private get together that allowed those more fortunate than others to let loose and do some good for charity without it turning into a media circus. Of course, unsurprisingly, there were those whose job it was to hide in the bushes out front and capture any little mundane detail, like someone getting their car valeted or someone sneaking a crafty cigarette. So, the “back door” was deemed the “entrance” for anyone not looking to get papped.

‘Is it always held here?’ I leaned over and whispered to Chris, gazing around at the crowded foyer in awe. The gold filigree and mirror decked walls, accentuated by the antiques that adorned the place, were simply stunning, and the marble floors were so pristine, it was easy to see one’s reflection. Now this is what you call, top dollar.

‘Nah, they tend to switch up the venues every year. Last year it was at the Griffith Observatory, which was kinda cool.’ He replied, guiding us towards the small queue of people that waited outside the curtain covered entrance where, presumably, the event was being hosted.

After a moment or two of peacefully taking in our surroundings, it was obvious that we were still feeling a little of that awkwardness lingering; so I was grateful to hear Chris try and strike up conversation again. 

‘I know I’ve said it already, but you really do look a million dollars tonight Adrian.’ 

Stepping forward in time with the quickly narrowing queue, I smiled appreciatively at him before biting my lip and running my eyes over his attire. ‘Thank you, as do you. I like this suit, Evans!’

Chris wriggled his eyebrows and smirked. ‘Why thank you, it’s Gucci.’

‘How appropriate.’ I simpered, lightly trailing my hand down the sleeve of our joint venture’s latest creation.

Truthfully, I took the chance as an excuse to just touch him. I hadn’t wanted to make a fuss earlier, finding myself all but lost in the reunion aspect of our togetherness more than anything, but he really had bulked up lately...

Since I’d known him, Chris had always been in undeniably great shape; but he was almost intimidatingly so now. The navy suit did well to accentuate the broadness of his shoulders and the slimness of his waist. 

I was constantly in awe of the fact that Chris wore any type of clothing just so well. It didn’t matter if it were $100 sweats, or $5000 suits; the man looked good.

-

After finally passing through the curtain as ‘Chris Evans and guest’, I felt my jaw physically drop almost immediately.

Admittedly yes, I had been in the game long enough to not get star struck easily, it’s like I’ve always said, they’re just people… but never in my life had I been at something that was on this big of a scale. I had been going to the MET Gala for the last seven years, but even that didn’t seem to compare!

I’d never been to The Oscars... but it seemed like my perception of that; on crack.

Firstly, the venue itself was architecturally stunning. The ceilings were ornate, with paintings of clouds and angels (that clearly took inspiration from the Italian Renaissance) and the chandeliers were so grand, that one of them probably cost more than my entire paycheck for my last movie.

On the opposite side of the function “room”, if it could even be narrowed down to a term so loose, was a stage currently being occupied by a podium, extravagant flowers and a backdrop consisting of a painted skyline that was accentuated by tiny lights customized to look like hundreds and hundreds of twinkling “stars”.

Circular tables, dressed decadently for the dinner portion, graced the immediate spaces in front of the stage and nearest to us, stood a large bar area that all the guests seemed to be mingling in; chatting away and having a sneaky drink or two before the proceedings began.

A quick gloss over the room could tell you that this was no regular “gala”. I couldn’t see one person that I didn’t recognize from the entertainment industry; from Colbert to Kimmel, Cruise to Stiller, Aniston to Lawrence; the list could go on…. and on. It practically blew my mind how this “charity event” had somehow slipped under the radar as the best kept secret in Hollywood.

‘Let’s break ourselves in gently, huh?’ Chris decreed, untangling our fingers so he could take my hand and hook it around his forearm - calmly guiding us down the small set of marble stairs towards the bar. I caught myself smiling in appreciation at him, the nerves now truly beginning to kick in at the intense nature of such an occasion.

Looking around, I noticed how strange it felt to feel like you really know someone when, (in reality), you don’t. Unfortunately, I kept having to relay this mantra to myself as I eyed Bryan Cranston, who was stood talking to Gwyneth Paltrow… God I loved that man.

After a minute or so, the search for an actual familiar face was becoming fruitless and I was just about to resign myself to being glued to Chris’ arm all night when some dark locks came into view behind passing strangers. My eyes widened, and a grin formed; like I somehow knew everything was going to be alright now that I had this person in my sights.

In fact, I was so consumed by my discovery that I barely noticed Chris pat my hand and inform me he was off to get us a drink before departing in the opposite direction.

So naturally, I just couldn’t help myself. Weaving myself in and out of Hollywood royalty, I eventually laid my hand on the familiar shoulder and with my best She’s The Man impression, out flew the screechy ‘Sebastian!’ nickname I’d stupidly come up with all those years ago.

Jumping a little in surprise, my victim quickly turned around and his face melted in an immediate gleeful grin. ‘Adrian Warner? Whaaat!?’

Sebastian Stan wasted no time in leaning forward and gifting me a kiss on both cheeks. 

‘What is this? Twice, in one year? You’re spoiling me over here, missy!’ He joked, completely leaving behind whoever it was he was conversing with to give me his full attention. I was so happy to see him. To feel like I had an actual ally amidst this celeb-fest was beyond comforting. New York was a whole different scene and I never felt like a “celebrity” there for the most part, so God knows I especially didn’t feel like one here.

‘Right? This feels like Déjà vu from the last time. You’re like my only life line here!’ I admitted with a nervous little laugh.

‘Why’s that? You here by yourself?’

‘No, I’m here with-‘ I paused for a second, searching for the right words, ‘- as someone’s… date.’

Because I was…

He nodded and looked as though he was about to inquire some more before stopping short, his eyes now shooting behind me; just in time to see Chris returning with two stiff drinks in hand.

‘Wait...’ Sebastian’s smirk intensified before his mouth opened fully in complete shock, eyes darting back and forth between Chris and I; the cogs in his brain turning until the click finally materialized. ‘No. Fuckin’. Way.’

‘Dude…’ Chris warned lowly, an almost embarrassed guise on his face as he handed me one of the glasses containing some kind of dark brown consistency.

‘Oh-ho-oh, outstanding!’ Sebastian began cracking up, like he’d just seen a tortoise and a hyena make love and was kinda into it. ‘Noooww I see why you were keeping namey-names a secret, Evans!’

I looked at them both strangely before laughing lightly at Sebastian’s childish use of ‘namey-names’. Chris seemed to return his sentiment with a deliberate silence.

‘What!?’ Sebastian laughed defensively, ‘I approve! I think this is great; two of my favorite people!’

-

I was delighted with the easy start, but I knew that would all quickly change.

Within twenty minutes, I had gone from the comfort of only Sebastian to the overwhelming depths of reality as Chris Hemsworth, his stunning wife Elsa and the ethereal Elizabeth Olsen introduced themselves and joined the “group” conversation; all three, at least what they thought to be, subtly side eyeing me at any given second.

What discomforted me most (but deep down delighted me), was the fact that it was easy to see the amount of respect everyone had for Chris; to the point where I felt almost unworthy to be by his side. So, I was truly grateful for Sebastian and the history we had in that moment, much like I had been at Chris’ housewarming party. He’d chosen to disclose to the group the time we pulled a prank on our elderly co-star from Tall Bill with a stripper-gram on his 75th Birthday; setting me up to look like a true comedy genius when, truthfully, it’d been a joint effort…

‘No, don’t sell yourself short! You called the company!’ I argued, playfully pointing at Sebastian.

‘Yeah, but then “Misty” turns up in a trench coat… and nothing else! So I straight up bail and as I was peacing out, all I can hear in the distance is “… Is that coat vintage???”

His high-pitched impression of me sent the group off into a chorus of laughter. To see the creases in everyone’s eyes, including Chris’, as they all cracked up at my undeniable obsession with fashion, (to the point where I’d asked a stripper where her coat was from…), was rewarding but mostly relieving.

So far, so good.

I took another tiny sip from the drink in my hand and reluctantly swallowed the strong liquid inside, squinting slightly as I did so. I let my eyes flicker over to Chris, silently questioning his choice of alcohol.

Catching my eye, he bent over and quietly spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘I thought it might take the edge off a little?’

I wanted to playfully banter with him about why he had one, but I didn’t get the chance.

‘Do you guys know what table you’re on?’ Elizabeth interrupted, her voice so dainty and light as she took a small sip from her champagne flute.

Chris and I looked at one another before shaking our heads in sync, ‘Should we?’ ‘Was there a list?’

‘There’s place cards on all of the tables. We got here early and were bored, so we already had a little snoop around.’ Elsa chuckled, her striking Spanish accent coming through along with her friendly nature. I had quickly warmed to all three of them, finding them to be completely personable despite their immense fame.

Yet it seemed almost cruel that every time I started to settle into my surroundings, another spanner was thrown at me.

‘Well heeey, fancy running into all of you here…’ A deeper voice joked, causing us all to turn around; just in time for Chris to receive a kiss on the cheek in greeting. His deep-rooted smile at her presence confirmed my suspicion as to who this mystery person could be.

I hesitantly took a slightly larger sip of my drink, acutely aware that the pressure was really on now that she was here.

I had always admired Scarlett Johansson for the part she had played in showing that young actresses had the ability to not only be pretty but that they were also very capable of starring in damn good movies. Lost in Translation was still, to this day, a movie I couldn’t skip over if it was showing on TV. Chris had known her for years, since the very beginning of their careers, and had always spoken so fondly of her.

Once Scarlett and her husband had finished greeting the familiar faces in the group, the arresting set of emerald greens finally fixated on me; the only stranger in the circle. I smiled immediately, truly thrilled to meet her before cautiously looking to my left at our common ground.

Eyes popping in realization, Chris rested his hand on the small of my back in assurance and introduced us. ‘And this, is Adrian. Adrian, this is Scarlett.’

‘Hi, it’s a pleasure to meet you!’ I stepped forward and held my hand out in greeting.

With the added “emphasis” on my name, Scarlett’s own eyes widened at the “hint-hint” tone that Chris was emitting before she grinned in my direction. Her eyes turned kindly, and she accepted my handshake with what appeared to be true enthusiasm.  

Funny, Chris knew that Sebastian was a long-time acquaintance of mine and yet the only person who seemed to know that I even existed in the “romantic sense” towards him was Scarlett. A truly interesting choice. Maybe one day I’d feel comfortable to ask him about it.

-

Gleefully our introduction seemed to go well, however the “hi, nice to meet you’s” didn’t stop there…

Like a hurricane, I was quickly introduced to production, crew and more cast members alike. Clearly a tightknit “family”, I was blown away by just how many people were interested in meeting Chris’s “date” for the evening.

In an unusual turn of events, unlike how his mother met most of the girls he dated, it felt like his colleagues just weren’t used to meeting the women in his life; which was oddly comforting.

Some people recognized me but for those who didn’t, I stood there and received rounds and rounds of ‘So you’re an actress?’ ‘Are you in anything coming up?’ ‘What’s next for you?’ questions. I knew they were only trying to see if I was just using Chris to further myself, which saddened me a little to think that might have been the case in the past for him.

It warmed my heart to its core when Chris would jump in for me at times. ‘She just wrapped a movie with Ben Affleck, which he directed, right?’ Like he didn’t already know…

‘Yeah, it was a really great project to have been a part of.’ I’d continue, flashing Chris a grateful “smile” with my eyes all the while.

-

After what felt like forever, the pianist, who had been lowly playing in the background, announced into his microphone that the evening’s festivities would begin in twenty minutes and began asking everyone to take their seats.

Capitalizing on this brief interlude, I handed Chris the dregs of my drink and informed him that I was going to the bathroom.

‘Alright, I’ll find our seats…’ He smiled before pressing an affectionate kiss to my cheek; pride radiating on his face at how everything was turning out.

-

As I quickly peed, I silently praised Chris’ assistant Jake for the Olive Garden takeout he had brought over earlier; otherwise that hard liquor would’ve gone straight to my head.

Pulling some tissue paper from the holder, I also took the time to reminisce on how well the night had gone so far. Sure it had been a little intense but for the most part everyone had been nice, and to see Chris so overjoyed at the ease of his rapidly unifying worlds was extremely heart-warming. He was so exhausted and stressed, it felt good to be contributing to the lighter aspects in his life.

I eventually stepped out of the stall and didn’t even bother to hide my amazement at the printed cream wallpaper and golden sconces. Each vanity mirror was splattered with age; which only added to its decadence.

I bent down and washed my hands in the mother of pearl sinks, blissfully unaware of the arrival of the girl who had been in the stall next to me.

I grabbed my clutch with my still damp hands and rummaged around for my lipstick, eventually picking it out and pulling the lid off for a top up.

‘Excuse me, could I borrow some soap?’

‘Yeah of course, go ahead.’ I smiled before raising my head to the mirror to apply the lipstick. In doing so, I made direct eye contact with the girl;

…and in that moment, it was like the very depths of hell was laughing at me.

Dressed in crimson red, a set of hazel eyes widened at me in complete horror; wholly surrendered into a state of shock as her expression was reflected into the mirror for us both to see.

‘Oh… my… God…’ The voice squeaked; neither of us removing our vision from the mirror for fear of confirming the horrors of reality on the other side of it.

You know, in a fucked up “funny” kind of way, the last time I had seen Chelsea Hewitt-Lewis, her expression had been much of the same…

-

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears; easily drowning out all other sounds. In some alternate reality, I knew my initial reaction would’ve been one of watery eyed sobs brought on by a suppressed case of PTSD.

But there was none of that here.

Throwing my lipstick back into my purse and shutting the flap, I quickly backed away; the room spinning as I did so. My mind was blank, my mouth was parted, and my eyes were void of all moisture.

It almost irked me that her own reaction seemed to be a mirror reflection of my inner turmoil. What gave her the right!?

I felt like I would have rather she punched me in the face... because then at least I’d know where we stood.

But I suppose she’d already done that to me two years ago; except her “punch” wasn’t physical.

-

I fled the bathroom, despite my deep desire to return and just projectile vomit into a stall. My resolute stare was fixated to the ground, but I managed to register the fact that my feet were still carrying me somewhere.

Step by step by step by step. It was inevitable that I was eventually going to crash into something; or someone.

‘Woah, hey, there you are!’ Chris smiled, doing his best to restore our balance as he gently gripped my elbows. ‘I was just coming to find you; I found our table.’

Call it shock, but I found myself nodding like some sort of zombie. Really gripping his arms back, I caught myself tugging at him as a means of leaving the area as soon as possible.

And I almost got away with it, too…

Looking just as shaken as I did, Chelsea exited the bathroom and walked along my already beaten path before eventually recognizing Chris. Raising a brief smile at her new co-star, she sought comfort in the familiarity of it all before noticing who was attached to him.

And that pretty smile fell immediately.

‘Oh, hey! Chelsea, right? I’m Chris.’ He smiled warmly, reaching his hand out upon noticing her back.

My eyes BURNED in response. It felt like the world was on fire and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to straight up slap their hands apart, vomit on them, or both. I never thought for one second that I would curse Chris’ kindness until this very moment.

‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you...’ Chelsea responded shakily, slowing accepting Chris’ hand; her nervousness apparent.

My eyes, once again now void of any moisture, twitched before succumbing to rapidly blinking away this unfolding nightmare.

No.

No, no, NO.

You can’t have him.

Not this one!

My body language reeked of “fuck off before I make you” and she knew it. It was distressing that I almost didn’t recognize myself. I wasn’t an angry or violent person by any means.

‘I should get going, it really was… nice to m-meet you.’ Chelsea bungled out before quickly shuffling away, my stare tracing her as she did so.

-

My mind was like the aftermath of a tornado and all I could do was attempt to come to terms with, and somehow salvage myself from, the wreckage that was my self-esteem.

I was oblivious to the thousands of dollars being sold off around me. I was oblivious to the fun and laughter that the host was managing to pull from his vast crowd. I was oblivious to all but my own selfish thoughts.

As if the universe didn’t already hate me, there she sat, four seats away, shoveling her food around her plate and avoiding eye contact with the other eleven people at the table as they conversed amongst themselves; much like myself. 

Every now and then, I would glance up and observe her.

I truly wondered what was going through her mind? I wondered if she ever actually felt guilt or remorse, or anything for that matter? Was she awkward now because she was confronted with her own hurtful actions?

‘Adrian?’

My head snapped to my left and I clapped eyes on Chris’ concerned face.

‘You okay?’ He eyed me, ‘You seem a little spaced out…’

Spaced out? Oh!

Nodding frantically and rousing a smile, I attempted to bring myself back into the moment. ‘No, no, I’m great.’

‘You sure?’ He eyed me skeptically, ‘You haven’t touched your food… You don’t like it?’

‘No, n-no, no! The food’s amazing!’ I picked up the fork in a feeble attempt at backing up my lies.

‘Then something’s definitely wrong.’ Chris deadpanned, his eyebrows dropping. I managed to let out a genuine little laugh at his concern, touched at the fact he knew me so well.

‘No, I’m okay. Honestly.’ I leaned forward, and we met in the middle for a chaste, but affectionately small peck and I found myself pulling away with a real smile on my face. ‘I think I just need a little air.’

Chris immediately wiped his mouth and dropped his napkin, his hands gripping his seat as he raised himself slightly.

‘Woah, no, no, you stay!’ I quietly commanded, feeling almost overwhelmed at how thoughtful he was being.

Chris eyed me carefully as he slowly lowered himself back down. ‘You sure?’ I rested my hand on his shoulder and kissed the top of his head as I stepped away from the company. ‘Mhmm. I’ll be back in a second.’

Little did I know, I was going to be followed regardless… and not by Chris.

-------------------------------------

I feel like this chapter loses itself in the middle but thank you regardless for getting to the bottom and reading it! I appreciate you so much!

[ayearofpike]

Spooksville #1: The Secret Path

Pocket Books, 1995 129 pages, 18 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-53725-3 LOC: CPB Box no. 277 vol. 14 OCLC: 33152776 Released October 1, 1995 (per B&N)

All the kids in town know the creepy truth about Springville, to the point where nobody calls it anything but Spooksville. Adam Freeman, who has just moved to town, doesn’t believe it — at first. But then he finds himself and his two new friends in another dimension, on another side of the town, and he has no choice but to believe.

As grumpy as I was with the end of Pike’s Archway output, I need to take a step back from that in considering Spooksville. This is, after all, a jump back in time, to when Pike was maybe at his strongest and most relevant (in terms of sales, anyway). It also strikes on the heels of Goosebumps, the highly successful kids’ horror series by R.L. Stine, which was often imitated and emulated (and even parodied) through the decade. Naturally, most of these series didn’t last, as the whole industry got turned upside down by an English kid who slept in a closet. However, if you wanted to argue that Goosebumps marked the death of juvenile literature as we once knew it, I wouldn’t stop you — even though it’s apparently still around.

The major difference between Goosebumps and Spooksville is continuity. All of the original Goosebumps books (I mean, as far as I know; I read like one and a half and quit in exasperation, unable to get behind Jovial Bob’s new direction) have different characters, different settings, and different problems or spooky moments driving the narrative. Spooksville, on the other hand, is the central location for all the events that occur throughout this series, and there are a set of characters who are involved in all the trials and travails we see (again, as far as I know from Wikipedia).

Let me state up front: I acknowledge that these books are not and were not for me. There’s a strong case to be made that this style of juvenile horror book marks the real definition line between Generation X and Millennials, regardless of how old you actually are. Even so: by the time Pike started publishing this series, I was already in college. I did not read them, I had no use for them, I was frankly annoyed that Pike was pouring his energy into this series and then giving us older kids dreck like The Hollow Skull. I felt abandoned by this author that I so respected. And I already alluded to my distaste for Goosebumps, which my brother loved, but even he was too old for Spooksville.

So maybe it’s better that I’ve given myself this distance from the series before I read and discuss it. It might also help that I have kids of my own who are just about the age of the target audience — this could help me better appreciate what Spooksville is trying to do. 

(And this is probably all the metadiscourse I’ll give to Spooksville, too, not having a connection to the series outside of it having been written by my childhood favorite author. Save you some reading!)

Let’s dive right in to The Secret Path. Right off the bat: there’s not really a lot of story in this story. It serves more as an origin story, as letting us know that hey, here’s this creepy place where a bunch of weird shit is about to happen, and these are the kids you’re gonna get to know while it happens. The type is set HUGE when you compare it to Pike’s typical YA books ... even though the pages are bigger, there’s maybe only half as much text on each one. So at half the length of his longest YA by page count, The Secret Path probably only has a quarter of the exposition.

We open up with Adam, a twelve-year-old who’s just moved with his family to Springville, a secluded town somewhere on the unspecified Left Coast. Based on geography, this could be just about anywhere north of Santa Barbara: the town is surrounded by hills, with taller mountains to the east, and comes right up against the ocean. He’s buying sodas for himself and his dad when he meets Sally Wilcox, a talkative and imaginative local who is immediately drawn to Adam. Like, one of the first things she asks is whether he left a girlfriend behind. She also warns him about the town’s reputation and its idiosyncrasies, and the fact that only kids can see these and adults will never believe them, and it’s all so unbelievable that he ... well, doesn’t. But he’s glad to have made an acquaintance, and agrees to hang out and get the tour of the town.

This, for once, does seem like an actually little town, if it can be traversed by middle-school pedestrians. As they’re exploring, Adam spies a runaway grocery cart heading for a fancy car and stops it before it can crash. This serves as his introduction to Ann Templeton, the beautiful and knowledgeable descendant of the town founder, who lives in, apparently, a castle next to the town park. Sally calls this place “the witch’s castle” — and so Ann probably is one, just like her great-great-great-great-grandmother. They’re at odds here: Sally is warning Adam not to get sucked in, but Ann seems so nice that it’s hard for him to step away. She does have a little oddness to her demeanor, though ... like she knows things she shouldn’t, like she’s dangerous. After all, Ann is the only adult who calls the town Spooksville.

But she drives off, and then the kids meet Watch. Literally, this is all the name we get for this dude, because he’s wearing four watches. He says it’s to keep track of his scattered family and what time it is where they are, so we immediately both feel sorry for Watch and want to know more of his story. We aren’t going to get it yet, though: Watch is determined to figure out how to access the Secret Path, a way to get to hidden or alternate dimensions right here in town. Bum knows the way, he says — literally, a bum who lives on the beach and has supposedly been cursed by the witch. Watch is on the way to take him food right now, in fact, and learn the secret.

Bum’s guidance for finding the secret path is simple and yet opaque: they must follow the witch’s path through the town, and remember that they bury witches upside-down. The witch, they presume, is Ann Templeton’s great-etc.-grandmother, who was born here and after whom nothing was the same. So they travel along the trail of her important experiences and life events, eventually ending up at the cemetery with no idea of how to go in there upside-down. So Adam and Sally sit down to think while Watch is looking at the tombstone, but also neither of them is particularly keen to travel through a cemetery to an alternate dimension. But when they look up, apparently a long time later judging by the darkness, Watch is gone, and his glasses are on the ground.

Sally is convinced he’s gone to the other side, and so she and Adam set about puzzling out the last part of the riddle. What if upside-down just means backwards, they decide? So they start at the cemetery gate and walk backward to the tombstone. But instead of bumping into it, they fall into nothing and land in another cemetery, this time under a red and lightening sky. And the bodies are climbing out of their graves. They run for it, deciding to try their houses, because of course that’s what a scared kid would do is try to go home even if they’re obviously not actually home. But Sally’s house is flattened by a giant tree, and Adam’s house is full of nothing but spiderwebs and corpses. While they’re looking, the front door is kicked in all of a sudden, and they have no choice but to  try to escape out the bedroom window.

Sally makes it, but Adam is seized by a knight in black armor who knocks him out and takes him to the castle dungeon, where Watch is also being held. The room is also full of clocks, which for some reason run backward. The witch herself enters not long after Adam wakes up — surprise, surprise, she looks just like Ann Templeton, but with red hair instead of black. She’s carting a couple other kids, who are all inexplicably missing parts of their faces. Apparently the witch seamlessly removes them and puts them into her collection of dolls. And if they don’t tell her where Sally is hiding, they’re up next. Obviously they don’t know, so she drags them to the surgery room or whatever, where there’s also a massive hourglass, filled with sparkling dust that flows from the bottom to the top. Surprisingly, fear doesn’t make these kids know an answer they never had, so the witch goes to prepare the boiling bath that will cleanse these filthy children before she takes their eyes. 

Of course, as soon as she leaves the room, Sally shows up to save the day. She can’t break the cuffs on the boys’ wrists, but she can break the hourglass, which they figure is the witch’s most prized possession. And then everything goes apeshit. In the craziness, the post that holds the boys’ cuffs breaks, and they’re able to escape, back down to the dungeons to let the other kids out. Only the doors are all open and the other kids are already gone, apparently down a long passage that leads the group back to the cemetery. While they’re trying to figure out how to get back to their own dimension, the witch shows up and grabs Adam by the neck, ready to get her eyeballs one way or another. Fortunately, Adam is holding a handful of sand out of the broken hourglass, and he throws it into the witch’s eyes. She shrieks and falls, and the dead bodies in the cemetery reach up out of the ground and pull her under with them.

But still: how do they get the hell out of this creepy backward monster dimension? It’s so obvious if you think about it: walk at the tombstone FORWARD. They get back some six hours BEFORE they left ... you know, time running backward on the other side. And so Watch goes to talk to Bum some more about what happened, and Adam and Sally go home, with the promise of more adventures to come.

And that’s the end of The Secret Path! So now we’re on the not-so-secret path to where this series is going. Titles in this genre are somewhat more on the nose than we’ve seen from Pike before, and so just looking at the list can give us an idea of what to expect. Still, I’m going to try to stay open and acceptant of what these stories might tell us, while at the same time not expecting anything too meaningful. And who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF DETAILS

They will have all the extra motivation that comes from being freed from the constraints of research. So far, we've reduced the problem from the direction of the arts, you're less likely to depend on this sort of calming lie is that we grow up thinking horrible things are normal. You could start users with a seed filter, but ultimately each user should have his own per-word probabilities based on the pie fallacy is stated explicitly:.1 Combine that with Pirsig and you get: Live in the future is to focus extra attention on specific parts of the email. Most hackers' first instinct is to try to think of startup ideas. As subjects got softer, the lies got more frequent. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? And the reason you should avoid these things is that you are already working as hard as you can in so many print publications—which is one of the first things he'll ask is, how much more.2 Let me repeat that recipe: finding the problem intolerable and feeling it must be very hard. In fact, faces seem to have made that deal, though perhaps it has to be able to filter them. I do, I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp.3

In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. At YC we call ideas that grow naturally out of the corner of his mouth is very disconcerting. This isn't quite true. Competitors commonly find ways to work around a patent.4 If economic inequality should be decreased. The source of the problem it fixes.5 The same is true in the arts, but most hackers are very competitive.

There is no such thing as better, it doesn't make any difference what Larry Page's net worth is compared to yours. Treat a startup as an optimization problem will help you avoid another pitfall that VCs worry about, and rightly—taking a long time it was most of making things easier, but now that the things we build are so complicated, there's another rapidly growing subset: making things easier. Windows itself.6 But really it doesn't matter much which you use. Why do you keep emails around after you've read them? The problem is not, in itself, what makes startups kick butt, but rather that small groups can be select. Marie Curie was on it because she was a woman, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway.7 What are they to do? You pick the companies you want to get rich, and this trend has decades left to run. Right?

How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company. While the best way to discover startup ideas is to work with him on something. Kids, almost by definition, lack self-control.8 But it's not just fastidiousness that makes good hackers avoid nasty little problems. A viable startup might only have ten employees, which puts you within a factor of two? But I also think that the more different it gets.9 I've learned, to some degree, to judge technology by its cover. When you negotiate terms with a startup idea in one month, what if they'd chosen a month before the Altair appeared? What would you think of a financial advisor who put all his client's assets into one volatile stock? But that world ended a few years?

But you can't trust your opinions in the same way about the operating system. Notice all this time I've been talking about the limit case: the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you endanger your health.10 The unsexy filter is to ask yourself whether in your previous job you ever found yourself saying Why doesn't someone make x?11 Programs are very complex and, at least, by eliminating the drag of the pointy-haired middle manager who would be your boss in a big company: the pay's low but you spend most of your time working on new stuff. I wouldn't try to defend the actual numbers. Except in a few cases to buy a certain stock. Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. The Matrix have such resonance. Arguably pastoralism transformed a luxury into a commodity. Being at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, there will be things that are false, and I'm going to talk about it to have anything more useful to say.12

Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money.13 Of all the approaches to fighting spam, from software to laws, I believe Bayesian filtering will be the single most effective. Don't spend much time worrying about the details of deal terms, especially when you first start angel investing. The part of angel investing that the decisions are hard. When I protested that the teacher had said the opposite, my father replied that the guy had no idea what he was talking about—that he was on the list because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right startups is for investors.14 We were all lied to as kids, and some of the growth in economic inequality we've seen since then has been due to bad behavior of various kinds, there has been a qualitative change in the world. A job means doing something people want.

The way to kill it is to be young. This way you might be able to make something useful.15 I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be anything waiting for it. It was not till we were in our twenties that the truth came out: my sister, then about three, had accidentally stepped on the cat and broken its back. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, approach offers as in this approach offers having a probability of more than. The reason our hypothetical jaded 10 year old leaning against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the founders' own experiences organic startup ideas—by spending time learning about the easy part. If anyone wants to take on this kind of project. The cartoon strip Dilbert has a lot of other people's. Pay particular attention to things that chafe you. A company big enough to be fairly conservative, and within the company the people in the future, not now.16 So the guys you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of.

Notes

Down rounds are at selling it. Living on instant ramen would be improper to name names, while simultaneously implying that lies believed for a patent is conveniently just longer than the 50 minutes they may end up reproducing some of these groups, which is the odds are slightly worse.

Something similar has been happening for a reason.

Most were wrong, but investors can get done before that.

Give the founders.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can teach startups a lot more frightening in those days, then they're not ready to invest, it is still what seemed to us.

It was harder for you? Exercise for the talk to a car dealer.

Some are merely ugly ducklings in the production of high school kids at least bet money on convertible notes often have valuation caps, a market price if they did that in practice signalling hasn't been much of The New Industrial State to trying to focus on their utility function for money. So it may not be if Steve hadn't come back. They therefore think what they meant. So what ends up happening is that so many trade publications nominally have a single cause.

The existence of people we need to.

Different sections of the world as a definition of property without affecting and probably also the fashion leaders. Later stage investors won't invest.

We could have used another algorithm and everything I write out loud at least for those interested in each type of mail, I advised avoiding Javascript. One of the corpora.

After reading a draft of this essay, I have a standard piece of casuistry for this situation: that startups usually lose money at first had two parts: the source of food. Exercise for the talk to an adult. Throw in the King James Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and many of the flock, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with other people's.

If not, and B doesn't, that's not relevant to an investor derives mostly from the example of a type of thing. None at all. Which OS? You can build things for programmers, the work of selection.

So far, I suspect five hundred would be worth trying to capture the service revenue as well, but this sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. But an associate is not pagerank commercialized. A small, fast browser that was really only useful for one user.

It might also be good employees either. There is nothing more unconvincing, for example, would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push founders to try to be staying at a particular valuation, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the mercy of investors want to stay in a limited way, without becoming a police state. But in most competitive sports, the computer hardware and software companies constrained in a place to exchange views. No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a company that could be mistaken, and—and probably also a second factor: startup founders are in a series.

Together these were the case of the growth in wealth, and there didn't seem to have too few customers even if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference. This probably undervalues the company than you expect.

Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the best startups, the higher the walls become.

Thanks to Brad Templeton, Trevor Blackwell, Fred Wilson, the friends I promised anonymity to, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston for smelling so good.

[dorevenge]

where ignorance is bliss - chapter 13: made us mellow

SUMMARY: Howard's plans for Project Brooklyn are stolen, and the gang reunites for one last ride. [AO3 LINK]

CHAPTERS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [13] 14 15 ☆

Having abandoned the arc reactor project, claiming the idea was “impossible in this era” and that he needed to be able to “synthesize a theoretical new element” to actualize it, Howard has buried himself in a new project. The guilt of having lost Captain Steve Rogers all those years ago in the first World War has weighed heavy on his shoulders for the last 40 years. I hear him on the phone often, late at night and early in the morning, with someone named “Fury.”

“I have to recreate Erskine’s formula,” he said. “It’s what he would have wanted. It’s what Steve would have wanted.” Howard wasn’t Howard without a current obsession – I just wish sometimes he would divert that energy into his relationship with his son. Tony is seventeen, rebellious and stubborn – just like Howard, and I feel like a single parent. At least I have Edwin. I don’t want to picture out household without Edwin.

Holidays and birthdays alike passed while Howard was locked away in his labs, researching. Always researching. He’d make the polite appearance before dismissing himself again, still mumbling about his legacy.

May 16, 1987 - Los Angeles, California, Stark Industries Headquarters

“You’ve got a bad habit of pissing off your business partners, Stark,” says Hank Pym over his sixth cup of coffee. His frown seems permanently etched into his face, the furrows in his brow deep.

“Are you saying that the Ant-Man can’t do this mission?” Howard counters. We were supposed to be at lunch by now, but yet another squabble has broken out.

“I’m saying the Ant-Man is not an action figure. He’s not to be brought out whenever S.H.I.E.L.D. decides it’s easier to throw decades of my hard work at a problem instead of their own men.” Hank finishes his coffee and sets the mug down. “I have been a loyal S.H.I.E.LD. partner since 1968, almost twenty years. I was more than happy to step up and try to fill in when Vanko fell through, and I am proud of the work we have done together, but I will not sacrifice my life’s work for your pride.”

Howard shakes his head. “It’s not just my pride here, Hank.” He falls silent.

“You won’t even tell me what you want me to risk my life to retrieve. I assume it’s your next big thing you’ve been working on by yourself every night, too coveting to tell the rest of your team what it is, too proud to ask for help. And now you’re scared it’ll be leaked, and you won’t get proper credit.”

Howard, now hunched over his desk, defeated, looks up. “It’s the serum. Someone stole my work on the serum.”

“What serum?”

“Project Rebirth. The super soldier serum. The magic mystery vial that gave Captain America his powers. I deciphered some of Erskine’s old notes; he had encrypted them through like four different languages. I’m having decent results on lab mice, and it can’t get into the wrong hands.” Howard’s voice is grave and cold.

Hank takes a seat, his anger lessening. “Why are you opening up Project Rebirth again?”

“As we were studying the Tesseract, I’ve kept getting these new ideas, new tests to try, and it just clicked. I’m tentatively rebooting it as Project Brooklyn as a tribute to Mr. America himself. This could change America again if I get this right.”

“And why didn’t you ask for help, Howard?”

Howard throws his hands up. “Why do I do anything? Hell if I know. The arc reactor became a pipe dream for the future, so I looked to the past. I spent years searching for Steve, scanning the ice, and I failed him over and over. He deserved better. I should have gone down in the Valkyrie, not him.” I hide my face in my hands when he says this, pained at the thought of never having met Howard. “But this is the way the cards played out. I owe it to Steve to make the future better. For the next generation of Americans, for the world, and for my son. Obadiah’s in Washington, you got your particles; I didn’t want to waste anyone else’s time in case it was just an old man’s fantasy, but I needed something to distract myself.”

Hank straightens up, his demeanor totally changed. “Do you have any leads on who might have stolen your work?”

“I have some blurry camera footage of a young woman taking out our security team. All four of them. By herself. I’d be willing to bet that she’s one of those Black Widows from Belarus, considering how she was flipping them around like they were ragdolls.”

“Those things are real? I mean, I’ve heard about the child assassins from Russia from Agent Carter’s stories, but I didn’t think they were still around.” Hank’s jaw hangs a little in surprise.

“Oh, they’re still around. They just keep getting better. She and I had a couple nasty encounters with one in particular, back in the day. And I’m willing to bet her successors are even worse than she is.”

Hank’s face twists as he goes deep in thought. “How are the men on the security team doing? Can they give us any details? Otherwise, we’d need to send some agents out right away before she hops on a plane, and we lose your work forever.”

“I don’t think they’ll be talking anytime soon. I-” Howard stops, then holds up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”

Howard gets up and runs to the door, turns on his heel to kiss me on the forehead, “Sorry, doll, we might have to reschedule lunch,” then leaves. He returns just a moment later with an old cardboard box and sets it heavily on top of his desk. It’s labeled “Strategic Scientific Reserve: March 4, 1942; Project Rebirth.” It’s yellowed from age, and a wave of dust flies out when Howard opens it.

“You know,” I suggest before they start rifling through the box, “I think there’s someone we should call.”

“Agent Carter, ma’am, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Yes, Mr. Pym, I’ve met you before. A couple times, actually. I conducted your onboarding interview upon you joining S.H.I.E.L.D.” Peggy shakes Hank’s hand as he freezes in awe.

“That’s right. Sorry, ma’am.” Do I detect a blush on Hank’s cheeks?

“Howard,” Peggy says. “I think I know all the details. We’re chasing a Russian Black Widow who stole your work attempting to recreate Steve’s serum, without the permission of anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D., who is mostly likely taking it back to Russia, our biggest threat at the moment, and you’re only just now telling us of its existence to cover your own ass. Is that right?”

I see Howard work up a smart reply, decide against it, hold his tongue, and instead respond with, “Hank already gave me a thorough tongue-lashing, Peg. I’m sorry. I thought the fewer people I asked for help, the fewer potential leaks. You can chew me out again once we retrieve the research, though, if that’ll make you feel better.”

Howard reaches into the Project Rebirth box he had retrieved. From it, he withdraws a small black box that reads “Vita-Ray Calibrated – Property of A. Erskine.”

“The Vita-Ray Detector. I used that after the implosion of the Roxxon Refinery to track down Van-Ert,” Peggy says. “But has Vita Radiation is only used once the serum has been injected to stabilize it.”

“Forty years ago, yes,” Howard replies as he goes through drawers and cabinets looking for something. “But I wanted to make something that would start working in the subject almost instantaneously, so I applied radiation to the samples multiple times throughout the manufacturing stages to stabilize. Found it!” He carries out what he’s found, a fan-like looking contraption. “The amplifier. The amount of Vita in the samples are very small, and the City of Angels is a lot bigger than it used to be. Let’s power it on… Bingo. We are ready to start Vita-hunting when you are, Peg.”

“Let me suit up. I’ll meet you outside,” Hank says excitedly.

“I suppose you and I shall need a driver,” Peggy says to Howard as Hank runs out the door. “You happen to employ a very good one, Howard.”

Howard smiles. “I’ll give Jarvis a call to pull the car around. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the excitement.” He grabs his coat from where it hung by the door, turns around, and sees me. “Maria.”

“I guess I should head home to relieve Edwin,” I say as he approached me.

“I’m sorry, doll. I… You’re not equipped to go out in the field, and I’d feel better knowing you were safe at home while we run around trying to catch this girl.”

“I could say the same thing about you, old man.” I am 52 now, the years racing past me, Howard a sprightly 70. Peggy is only four years younger than him, and Edwin older than all of us. “You can’t keep playing secret agent forever.” Howard hated the retirement word, but there was still a part of me that hoped I could convince him to retire and make him think it was his own idea.

Peggy leaves the room, announcing she’s called Edwin and she’ll meet him by the front doors.

“Maria, I gotta do right by the world and clean up my own messes.”

“How much longer do you plan to keep making these messes?”

“For as long as I can,” Howard says, and my heart sinks down to my stomach. “I feel like it’s my duty to invent everything I can think of, whatever I can, to make the future better. For Tony. For you.”

I straighten Howard’s collar and try not to look too upset. “Once you retrieve your research, make sure to pick up something for Tony’s birthday. He’s seventeen next week.”

“God, I don’t even know what seventeen-year-old boys want for their birthday. Do they still make Playboys?” Howard laughs at himself as I pretend to hit him on the side of the head.

“Just come home. I’m too old to be worrying about you being involved in high-speed car chases anymore.”

“Yes, dear.” Howard kisses me on the top of the head before leading the office and running outside. I hear Hank, Peggy, and Edwin greet him before the skidding of tires as they take off down the road.

Later that night, they all return for a celebration at the Stark Manor. Tony and I join them, and he tries hard to appear nonplussed about his father’s escapades; narrow turns, dodging bullets, close calls that lead to the four of them recovering only some of the research. They don’t spend much time on that last detail, instead opting to open more wine and more beer, focusing on how Howard screamed when he came face-to-face with the Black Widow agent. How’ll they proceed with the fallout of Russia getting their hands on some of the formula is tomorrow’s problem. For the first time in many years, the Stark household is full of people, laughter, and cheer.

If only Howard could keep a research partner for longer than just a few years without pissing them off.

Notes: It’s kind of implied in Black Widow (2021) that the Widows were injected with some form of the super soldier serum (aka why Natasha can take so many hits). Howard’s prototype of it is a nod to that.

[karmies]

7 Automotive Affiliate Programs: Make Money by Promoting Car Parts & Other Vechicle Accessories

  Did you know that automotive affiliate programs actually exist? Well, if not, you're not the only one.   I was surprised to find out about them a couple of months ago, when a friend told me he is doing really well with some of them.   That's why I decided to try them out for myself, so that I can make a list with the best ones for you.   Who doesn't love cars? Not only they are fun to drive, but they're also fun to look at.   However, the best thing is arguably making money by promoting them. So, if you're here to find out how to do exactly that, you're in the right place!   By the end of this article, you will know exactly what the best automotive affiliate programs are, as well as how to make the most out of them. Best Automotive Affiliate Programs   The auto industry will most likely continue to grow. That's because there are people who just want a normal car so they can go to work, as well as rich people who spend $300.000 on a Lamborghini.   Also, don't forget about the car repair services. Needless to say, there are a ton of options in regards to cars.   Meaning that there are many niches to choose from. Therefore, we compiled this list with the best automotive affiliate programs in order for you to choose between all these various niches.   Let's jump right into it.     7. Goodyear Affiliate Program   This is a company that you've probably heard of because Goodyear is probably the most popular tire manufacturer in the world.   It is more than a century year old and they are the go-to option for people that own exotic cars.   In regards to their affiliate program, it is hosted on the Commission Junction network, which is great if you think about it. That's because there are a ton of products on CJ, meaning that you will probably also get other ideas on what other products you can promote.   Also, Commission Junction is great because whenever someone clicks on your link, they will be tagged with a cookie that lasts for 45 days. Meaning that you don't need to make the sale right away in order to get credited with a commission.   Speaking of commissions, Goodyear pays $6 per sale or 6% of the entire order someone makes on their website.     Join the Goodyear affiliate program   6. Edmunds   Edmunds is a very popular company that sells used and new cars.   They provide advanced filters in order to help people find the right cars for them. Also, they have a calculator so that people can know exactly the amount of money they need to pay for a specific car.   Customers can easily compare car details, so they don't need to worry about missing options.   In terms of the affiliate program, they offer a 30 day cookie period, reports and even an affiliate manager.   Also, you will be able to negotiate your commission, which is always good. If you already have an audience, you will be able to get higher commission as opposed to not having an audience at all.   When it comes to car sales, Edmunds is one of the best options.     Join the Edmunds affiliate program   Related: Education Affiliate Programs   5. Buy Auto Parts   BuyAutoParts is a website that helps people with exactly what you imagine.   It is one of the best places for people to buy any kind of parts for their cars. They have more than 150.000 products on their website and they've been in the industry for more than 2 decades.   They offer advanced filters for the customers to find exactly what they need. Needless to say, if you need to replace your car parts, this is the place to go.   Regarding the affiliate program, the commissions range from 5%-8%. This might seem like it's not enough but keep in mind that these parts are usually very expensive.   The only bad part about BuyAutoParts.com is that the cookie duration is only 7 days. Meaning that you will need to do a bit more convincing in order to persuade customers to buy car parts.     Join the BuyAutoParts affiliate program   4. Tire Rack   Tire Rack is a website where customers can buy tires for their cars. They make it very easy to find the right tires for your vehicle by providing filters.   They've been in the business for more than 40 years, which is always good when promoting an affiliate program. That's because you can leverage their brand authority and trust in order to make your life easier.   The affiliate program offers a cookie duration for 60 days and 6% commissions. We all know that tires are expensive, therefore 6% is really not that bad.   Some people pay $500 for tires, meaning that you would make $30 for 1 sale.     Join the TireRack affiliate program   3. Autozone   Autozone is an American company that provides car parts, as well as other accessories.   At the time of writing this, they have more than 5.000 stores and they provide free shipping for larger orders.   The commission is 3%, which might seem to low to be included on this list. But one of my friends makes good money with this affiliate program, therefore it is definitely possible.   If you work a ton of volume, Autozone can be a good choice. Also, the cookie duration is 45 days which is very good.     Join Autozone affiliate program   Related: Shopify Affiliate Program   2. LeaseTrader   LeaseTrader is quite a unique company. On their website, they allow people to post their car and negotiate the lease transfer with interested customers.   The interested customers can filter through all the cars in order to find the right fit for them. Basically, it's a way around the penalties that come with not being able to pay your lease.   The commission for 1 transaction is 30%. And we all know how expensive a lease can be.   LeaseTrader surely has an interesting affiliate program that you should take into consideration.     Join the LeaseTrader affiliate program   1. EZ Battery Reconditioning   EZ Battery Reconditioning is my favorite program on this list. I've made (and still do) a ton of money with it.   It helps customer recondition their car batteries, so that they don't need to spend money on a new one.   Also, it is one of the best performing products on Clickbank and the commissions are $50 on the low end and $150 on the high end.   All this adds up to 75% commission. Also, the cookie duration is 60 days which helped me a lot when promoting it.   I would advise you to promote this product via Facebook ads because Facebook is the best at targeting the right customers.   If you want to learn how to do exactly that, I strongly recommend checking out Commission Hero. It teaches you from A to Z how to build a profitable affiliate business. Read the full article

[closetofanxiety]

New Jersey Death (match) Trip

I’m sorry this is long. If you’re reading on a mobile device, I know Tumblr makes you scroll through the whole thing instead of respecting their own html cut. 

Let’s just get this out of the way: I’m not reviewing the matches from Game Changer Wrestling’s Tournament of Survival 3. I haven’t watched enough death matches to qualify even as a mildly informed observer, and you know what? They kind of run together. It’s hard to distinguish one from the other, when you’re seeing one after the other.

When the first light tube spot happened on Saturday night, with a loud POP that could be heard everywhere in the building, the crowd erupted. By the time the hundredth light tube spot happened (not an exaggeration!), late into the show, no one in the crowd reacted at all. At some point, you just become numb.

I will say that, for sheer “Oh my God” spectacle, it’s hard to beat this kind of wrestling. I posted a bunch of short clips to my Instagram story, and friends who care not a whit about wrestling were messaging me all night about them. “What is that?” “Where are you?” “That looks insane,” etc. And when you’re standing a few feet away, the brutality is mesmerizing and almost artistic, like Artaud’s idea of the theater of cruelty, but for real.

On the other hand, all the criticisms I’ve heard of death match wrestling were on display: the comparison to the numbing effect of pornography seemed apt, as did the common complaint about guys who are theoretically trying to kill each other calmly waiting while their opponent sets up the next ridiculous spot. During one match (Ciclope vs. Alex Colon? I don’t know. They genuinely run together, especially in a tournament), one guy was setting up panes of glass on two chairs, but they kept slipping off, so THE REF started helping him out, while his opponent just waited on the turnbuckle for the suplex. Tell me that’s somehow less of an “exposing the business” scenario than an intergender match.

So, the matches were fine if you like death matches. Ciclope won, and good for him. What follows are my disjointed recollections of my first - and presumably last - experience at a death match tournament, lazily organized by chronology.

Saturday, June 2, 5:15 p.m.

I arrive at “the historic Starland Ballroom,” which turns out to be a grim loading dock of a building in an industrial park. The parking lot is practically full, and I am arriving 15 minutes after the scheduled bell time, thanks to traffic jams in Meriden, Fairfield County, and New York City. Let me say this: if I never drive across the George Washington Bridge again, it will be too soon.

Luckily, I have not missed anything. Doors were supposed to open at 4 p.m., but there is still a line of people snaking around the side of the building. We’re not just on Indie Time, we’re on Death Match Indie Time.

The crowd is about what you’d expect, with a uniform of black T-shirts and baggy shorts and a general commitment to ill health, although there are more women here than at most wrestling shows I’ve been to. I may be the only person here who has a favorite book. I see three different TSOL t-shirts, which somehow makes sense. I am surprised at the number of WWE shirts I see. I briefly thought about wearing a Kevin Owens shirt, but feared I’d be mocked and derided; within minutes of arriving, I see a huge guy with sleeve tattoos wearing the same shirt. There are more WWE shirts here than CZW shirts, in fact, which I guess is not surprising, given the enmity that exists between the established New Jersey promotion and the GCW upstarts. There are, in fact, more T-shirts here that say “CZW is Pussy” [sic] than CZW shirts.

There are people tailgating in the parking lot, and fragrant drafts of marijuana smoke drift by. A burly guy in an orange T-shirt that says SECURITY waddles up to me and tells me I can’t bring my shoulder bag inside the venue.

“I understand, safety first at the death match tournament,” I say. He nods, either not getting the joke or deciding whether I need to be restrained in a chokehold.

5:35 p.m.

I’m through the doors. There are metal detectors and bored-looking bouncers in orange shirts, because this is a crummy rock club. A guy in front of me with neck tattoos is told he has to take his bottle of prescription medication back to his car. A woman is arguing about a bag search.

There’s a small table set up just behind the metal detectors. It’s hard to know who might be part of the GCW staff. A guy in a black T-shirt and baseball cap is yelling at a woman, possibly about people getting in with bogus tickets.

“I know every name on every ticket sold,” he tells her. Then, to me, he says, “What’s your name?” as I hold out my crumpled printout.

I tell him, and he says “You’re good.” I don’t feel good, but I go in anyway.

The venue is absolutely packed. There’s a ring set up in the middle, and a VIP seating section on what must be the stage for all the shitty bands that play here. There are rows of chairs on all four sides of the ring, and all of them are occupied. Behind the chairs, in standing room areas, crowds of people jostle for position.

My ticket theoretically entitles me to a seat in the third row. Pathetically, I hold my ticket up to a person working at the GCW t-shirt table and inquire about getting a seat.

“Sorry, bro, first come, first served,” I am told. I could have saved $15 and bought a general admission pass, I ruefully reflect.

It’s standing in the back, near the t-shirts and the barbecue vendor, that I notice the long bar is empty. This is a shame, as I am extremely thirsty and would pay at least $10 for a bottle of water. It turns out the venue decided not to serve alcohol tonight, which is the first good decision anyone has made all day.

I wander around, noticing merch tables and the Nick Gage-mocked treats for sale. No one has any water. The treat woman, God bless her, points me to a small bar in the back of the room where the venue is selling pizza, Red Bull, and bottles of water. I buy two and want to sob in gratitude.

“Yo, we’re starting soon!” a voice announces over the PA. It is now 40 minutes after the announced bell time.

5:45 p.m.

A man in black shorts and a baseball cap bounds into the ring. The crowd erupts in cheers. It is the same guy who knew every ticket buyer’s name. This must be a GCW owner.

“Yo, look at all these mothafuckin’ shot callers in this place!” he yells, and the crowd roars its approval. Are GCW fans shot callers? Am I now, by extension, a shot caller? I feel briefly stirred, until I reflect that a genuine shot caller would be allowed to bring his shoulder bag into the venue.

The guy tells us that regular ring announcer is sick tonight. “He’s in the bathroom, shitting and puking,” the guy says, and the crowd cheers, as if excited by any bodily function. Instead, there’s another ring announcer, who is dressed like a frat guy at a golf course and sounds like the world’s most convincing Joel Gertner impersonator. I mean, he really, really sounds like Gertner. It was uncanny, and throughout the night, it was weird to hear that voice and see it coming out of a guy who incels would characterize as a “Chad,” instead of a tubby, hairy Long Islander with a leopard-print neck brace.

We’re ready to go. The music starts. It’s Nick Gage’s music. The crowd goes insane. I am watching from the small bar at the back of the room. I have two bottles of water and a cupcake. I wanted the “MDK” variety (red velvet with cream cheese frosting), but the woman told me they all melted, so I get the “Ultraviolent,” which is just a vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting. It’s a little soggier than I’d like, but it hits the spot. I am eating a cupcake and watching men rake pizza cutters across each other’s faces. This is Roman decadence. Our society is doomed.

The matches come and go. Shlak is here; people on Woke Wrestling Twitter hate Shlak and regard him as a Nazi, but I don’t know exactly what the source of that grievance is. He was recently shot in the leg, as he posted on Twitter, along with the motto, “I welcome death.” He gets a big welcome here. In his match, Markus Crane - who is introduced by Not Joel Gertner as “The Devil’s Big Red Dick” - repeatedly does horrible things to the leg where Shlak was recently shot. Eventually the referee stops the match and awards the win to Crane, which results in bloodthirsty disapproval from the crowd.

As this is going on, I notice a man watching the show at the bar, with his 8 or 9 year old son. I briefly think about calling the police, but instead I pay $3 for a slice of pizza that I saw delivered in a box and have another water. Between matches, members of the ring crew use huge industrial brooms to sweep all the broken glass out of the ring, because, safety first at the death match tournament.

7:30 p.m.

It’s intermission now. I don’t know who’s winning. I go over to Takayuki Ueki, the Big Japan wrestler who lost to Nick Gage in the first round. He seems nice. I buy a Big Japan yearbook from him and get him to sign it. Some other guys are selling loads of wrestling magazines from Japan. I buy one with a Minoru Suzuki cover and one with a Naito cover. I am a gormless tourist. “Got any joshi magazines?” I ask. The guy looks at me like I just asked him to make me a casserole. He does not have any joshi magazines.

I buy a Tournament of Survival shirt with all the participants, because I want to remember one of my most questionable decisions as an adult. Now I have a shirt with someone who may or may not be a Nazi. I will not wear this on first dates.

The show starts up again. I’m standing closer to the ring now. During one of the matches, I get hit with broken glass from one of the light tubes, a spot happening about 15 feet away. I decide to go back to my spot in the bar at the back of the room. I have another water.

Nick Gage comes out to wrestle Ciclope. A guy tries to start a “U-S-A!” chant and is immediately drowned in a sea of booing. I’m oddly relieved that the death match crowd in 2018 has no time for jingoism. After 10 minutes of brutalizing each other with glass, pizza cutters, light tubes, a fishing pole (don’t ask), and whatever else, Ciclope beats Gage with a schoolboy, which is hilarious. To me, anyway. The crowd is infuriated. Nick Gage was infuriated, and suplexed the ref through a pane of glass. Well, Nicholas, perhaps you shouldn’t lose matches to routine roll-up pins, hmm?

Joey Janela comes out. He’s wrestling the resurgent PCO in a non-tournament match. This is my first glimpse of the new look PCO, who I have vague memories of from childhood, during his goofy Not-the-Mounties stint in the WWF as one of the Quebecers. Pierre Carl Ouellet, Indie Darling, is one of the weirder and better wrestling stories of 2018. It would be like the Ding Dongs coming out of retirement to win the PWG tag team championships with a dizzying routine of high spots.

Janela and PCO start with a lockup and go into chain wrestling, and it’s like listening to jazz after hours of black metal. It’s so different and refreshing. Eventually they start breaking out the Home Depot supplies, of course, and since part of Indie PCO’s gimmick is that he has a gross, welt-covered chest, there are lots of chop spots involving that. But this is a good match overall. A solid 3.5/5 and my favorite of the night.

9:00 p.m.

It’s time for the main event: Ciclope vs. Miedo Extremo. It’s a death match. Ciclope wins. I scoot out early so I can exit the crammed parking lot and get on the road to my hotel, which is in Neptune. I have a full day ahead of me tomorrow at Asbury Park, where I plan to visit some weird places for a newspaper column I write. It’s also, unbeknownst to me, the day of the Asbury Park Pride parade, so the town is quite full, which explains why I paid $250 for two nights at a Red Roof Inn. I may be the only person in the state who, in about 12 hours, was a death match spectator, Catholic Mass attender, and inadvertent Pride parade viewer. What a day. What a weekend.