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jgthirlwell · 3 years

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2020 Year In Review

This year once again I invited some friends and colleagues to reflect on 2020

JG Thirlwell

Composer

Foetus Xordox Manorexia Steroid Maximus Venture Bros Archer

www.foetus.org

2020 was a troubling and disturbing year. I created a lot of music and experienced a lot of nights waking at 5am in a panic. I deeply missed the sacred experience of being able to see live music. In its absence of that I listened to a lot of music. It was difficult to whittle down this list but here are a lot of albums I enjoyed in 2020, in no particular order.

Le Grand Sbam Furvent (Dur Et Doux) John Elmquist’s HardArt Group I Own an Ion (900 Nurses) Roly Porter Kistvaen (Subtext) Liturgy Origin Of The Alimonies (YLYLCYN) Clark Kiri Variations (Throttle) Dai Kaht Dai Kaht I & II (Soleil Zeuhl) Chromb Le livre des merveilles (Dur Et Doux) Horse Lords The Common Task (Northern Spy) Ecker & Meultzer Carbon (Subtext) Insane Warrior Tendrils (RJ’s Electrical Connections) Jeff Parker Suite For Max Brown (International Anthem) Jacob Kirkegaard Opus Mors (Topos) Tristan Perich Drift Multiply (Nonesuch) Bec Plexus Sticklip (New Amsterdam) Vak Budo (Soleil Zeuhl) Merlin Nova BOO! (Bandcamp) The The Muscle OST (Cineola) Zombi 2020 (Relapse) Regis Hidden In This Is The Light That You Miss (Downwards) Rival Consoles Articulation (Erased Tapes) Sarah Davachi Cantus, Descant (L.A.T.E.) Sufjan Stevens The Ascension (Asthmatic Kitty) Idles Ultra Mono (Partisan) Daedelus The Bittereindeers (Brainfeeder) Boris No (Bandcamp) Aksak Maboul Figures / Un peu de l’ame des bandits / Onze Danses Pour Cobattre La Migraine (Crammed) Noveller Arrow (Ba Da Bing) Felicia Atkinson Everything Evaporate (Shelter Press) Ital Tek Dream Boundary (Planet Mu) Author and Punisher Beastland (Relapse) Sparks A Steady Drip Drip Drip (BMG) Corima Amatarasu (Soleil Zeuhl) Code Orange Underneath (Roadrunner) Deerhoof Future Teenage Cave Artists /Silly Symphonies / To Be Surrounded../ Love Lore(Joyful Noise) Sote Moscels (Opal Tapes) Run The Jewels RTJ4 (Jewel Runners) Oranssi Pazuzu Mestarin Kynsi (Nuclear Blast) Master Boot Record Floppy Disk Overdrive (Metal Blade) Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith The Mosaic Of Transformation (Ghostly International) / Ears (Western Vinyl) Michael Gordon Acquanetta (Cantelope) Neom Arkana Temporis (Soleil Zeuhl) Rian Treanor Ataxia / File Under UK Metaplasm (Planet Mu) Helm Saturnalia (Alter) Ivvvo doG (Halcyon Veil) Robert Normandeau Figures (Empreintes Digitales) Ben Vida Reducing The Tempo To Zero (Shelter Press) Beatrice Dillon Workaround (Pan) Dan Deacon Mystic Familiar (Domino) Sea Oleena Weaving A Basket (Higher Plain Music) Elysian Fields Transience Of Life (Ojet) Rhapsody Symphony Of Enchanted Lands II - The Dark Secret (Magic Circle) Duma Duma (Nyege Nyege) Ulla Strauss Tumbling Towards a Wall / Seed (Bandcamp)

Honorable mentions Carl Stone Stolen Car (Unseen Worlds) Nazar Guerilla (Hyperdub) Iwo Zaluski with the Children of Park Lane Primary School, Wembley The Remarkable Earth Making Machine (Trunk) Nahash Flowers Of The Revolution (SVBKVLT) Cindy Lee Whats Tonight To Eternity (Bandcamp) Insect Ark The Vanishing (Profound Lore) 33EMYBW Arthropods (SVBKVLT) Declan McKenna Zeroes (Tomplicated) Layma Azur Zeii (Bandcamp)

FILM TV Succession ZeroZeroZero Escape at Dannemora 1917 Small Axe : Five films by Steve McQueen Pirhanas Monos The Hater Better Call Saul

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Drew Daniel

Matmos, The Soft Pink Truth

an alphabet of 2020 recordings

Arca “KiCk i” BFTT “Intrusive / Obtrusive” clipping. “Visions of Bodies Being Burned” Duma “Duma” Eilbacher, Max “Metabolist Meter (Foster, Cottin, Caetani and a Fly)” Forbidden Colors “La Yeguada” GILA “Energy Demonstration” HiedraH Club de Baile “Bichote-K Bailable Vol. 2” Ian Power “Maintenance Hums” Jeff Carey “Index[off]” Kassel Jaeger “Meith” Laurie Anderson “Songs From the Bardo” Mukqs “Water Levels” Negativland “The World Will Decide” O’Rourke, Jim “Shutting Down Here” Perlesvaus “These Things Below with Those Above” Quicksails “Blue Rise” Rian Treanor “File Under UK Metaplasm” Slikback “///” Terminal Nation “Holocene Extinction” Ulcerate “Stare Into Death and Be Still” Various Artists “HAUS of ALTR” William Tyler “New Vanitas” Xyla “Ways” Y A S H A “Summations” :zoviet-france: “Châsse 2ᵉ”

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Sarah Lipstate (Noveller)

With all live performances canceled, this was truly the year of demo videos and home studio recording for me. These are 10 pieces of gear that came out in 2020 that helped keep me feeling creative and inspired during lockdown. In no particular order:

EHX Oceans 12 Dual Stereo Reverb - The Oceans 12 ticks all the boxes for what I’m looking for in a great soundscaping reverb. I used the Shimmer and Reverse algorithms in conjunction a lot when I was composing music for a film score.

Chase Bliss Audio Blooper - While I don’t actually own a Blooper, I had the pleasure of borrowing one from Mike of Baranik Guitars after NAMM this year. He made an incredible Blooper-inspired guitar and I was completely charmed by them both. Chase Bliss always delivers pedals that push me creatively and the Blooper truly hits the mark.

Cooper FX Arcades - I love everything Cooper FX has released to-date so the opportunity to access those sounds in one pedal via plug-in cartridges is just awesome.

SolidGoldFX NU-33 - I was asked to do a demo of this pedal for its release and ended up being really charmed by this box’s approach to lo-fi nostalgia. I’ve used it a lot for film scoring and highly recommend adding it to your collection.

Demedash Effects T-120 DLX V2 - I LOVE a good tape echo and the T-120 Deluxe V2 ranks up there with the best I’ve tried. This pedal made its way to me this Christmas and I look forward to making some beautiful sounds with it in the new year.

Hologram Electronics Microcosm - The Microcosm is one of those pedals where you should fully read the manual before diving in but once you put in that initial effort you’ve got a massively powerful tool on your hands. It does glitch like no other. Definitely worth the homework

Azzam Bells MP019 - I discovered this unique instrument through a post on Reverb’s IG page and immediately looked it up and ordered one. These experimental percussion instruments are hand-made in Italy and they’re as beautiful visually as they are sonically. I used it for bowed cymbal and daxophone sounds on a film score and it was absolutely haunting.

Echopark Dual Harmonic Boost 2 - I love the control you have over dialing in the perfect amount of grit with these dual boost circuits. I use it a lot as a textural tool when I’m laying down drones or bringing in big distorted swells. It’s one of the most versatile overdrives in my collection and I love that.

Fender Parallel Universe Series Volume II Maverick Dorado - I was smitten with the Maverick Dorado when I first saw it at NAMM. It has a lot of the specs that I look for in a guitar and the body shape with the Mystic Pine finish just blew me away. I hope that I get to use it live soon.

Polyeffects Beebo - The Beebo is one of those pedals that I genuinely feel is smarter than I am. It’s like an entire computer in one small touchscreen box. I can’t claim to have mastered using it yet but the sounds that I have managed to get out of it so far have been brilliant. I’m looking forward to spending more time with this box in 2021

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HELM 2020 REVIEW

Let's get the bad stuff out the way first, 2020 was undoubtedly an awful year. I'm still not sure how to really respond to seeing a global pandemic bring the capital to its knees and everything I love and hold dear to a grinding halt. Our government fucked it's response, putting profit before people and killing tens of thousands. The Labour Party descended into farce with the newly elected leader Sir Keith revealing himself as a bland centrist with no opposition or ideas. On a personal level it sucked not being able to travel or see my friends in different parts of the world - or even the same country - who I am starting to miss a lot. However, I was fortunate enough to get through the year with my sanity intact. Music, art and culture once again being my main positive. I think I listened to more music than I have in any year ever. I read more books than I have done since I was a teenager probably. I also re-discovered the joys of walking long distances and am extremely thankful for living near a lot of incredible green spaces: Epping Forest, Walthamstow Wetlands, Walthamstow Marshes, Wanstead Park, Wanstead Flats...

Music. My favourite albums of the year.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin kynsi Wetware - Flail Raspberry Bulbs - Before The Age Of Mirrors Necrot - Mortal Rope Sect - The Great Flood Private World - Aleph Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never Pyrrhon - Abcess Time CS+Kreme - Snoopy Speaker Music - Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry Drew McDowall - Agalma Regis - Hidden In This Is The Light That You Miss Nazar - Guerilla Zoviet France - Russian Heterodoxical Songs (and all the ZF reissues!!) Triple Negative - God Bless the Death Drive Permission - Organised People Suffer Actress - Karma & Desire Acolytes - Stress II The Gerogerigegege - >(decrescendo) Chubby & The Gang - Speed Kills Flora Yin-Wong - Holy Palm Eiko Ishibashi - Hyakki Yagyo The The - See Without Being Seen Prurient - Casablanca Flamethrower Henning Christiansen - L’essere Umano Errabando La Voce Errabando Subdued - Over The Hills And Far Away Rian Treanor - File Under UK Metaplasm Komare - The Sense Of Hearing Shredded Nerve - Acts Of Betrayal Jesu - Terminus Autechre - SIGN Hey Colossus - Dances / Curses Sparkle Division - To Feel Embraced Mark Harwood - A Perfect Punctual Paradise Under My Own Name Still House Plants - Fast Edit The Bug & Dis Fig - In Blue Kommand - Terrorscape Haus Arafna - Asche Khthoniik Cerviiks - Æequiizoiikum Worm - Gloomlord Kraus - A Golden Brain Faceless Burial - Speciation

A shout-out to Jon Abby's AMPLIFY series on Bandcamp / Facebook, which I contributed a new piece of music to.

A shout out to the labels where most of the music I listened to seemed to come from:

The Trilogy Tapes Iron Bonehead Penultimate Press Dais La Vida Es Un Mus

Gigs. Despite live music being destroyed in 2020 I still saw a few unforgettable performances at the beginning of the year.

Graham Lambkin @ The ICA, London Puce Mary / JFK @ The Glove That Fits, London Demilich @ Finnfest, The Garage, London Container / PC World / National Unrest @ Venue MOT, London S.H.I.T / Asid / Chubby & The Gang @ Static Shock Festival, ExFed, London

Books I enjoyed. Most not published this year, but all read in 2020.

Joe Kennedy - Authentocrats David Balzer - Curationism Tom Mills - BBC: The Myth Of A Public Service Simon Morris - Consumer Guide: Special Edition Luke Turner - Out Of The Woods Various - Bad News For Labour Mike Wendling - Alt-Right Baited Area issues 1 & 2.

Film. Three good films I saw this year which I hadn't before.

Suspiria (Remake) Midsommar Cannibal Holocaust

Podcasts. I listened to a lot of these whilst walking.

We Don't Talk About The Weather Novara Media Tysky Sour & Novara FM Grounded with Louis Theroux System of Systems Red Scare loveline episodes Suite 212 NOISEXTRA Social Discipline CONTAIN

TV.

Didn't watch a huge amount and what I did was mostly trash. For some reason I rewatched both series' of This Life, a British drama from the late 90's about a group of young professionals house sharing and navigating their careers. Very cringey and has aged terribly, but it was perversely fascinating to revisit something from that time in the age of the pandemic. Following on from this I binge watched the entire series of Industry which was entertaining enough. A programme about a bunch of horny bankers with what felt like a confused ideology behind it. It seemed stuck between trying to criticise and glorify the culture around the industry, but also protect the industry itself from outside criticism by portraying anyone who may oppose as an insufferable wanker. Currently halfway through Succession which is OK. The Murdoch documentaries on the BBC were excellent and a rare respite from their descent into client journalism.

Thanks to anyone who listened to my music this year also. Best wishes to you all for 2021.

Luke Younger

http://hhelmm.com | http://alter.bandcamp.com

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Elliott Sharp

composer

1. My Nr. 1 lesson: patience. Whether it's bouncing through 30 seconds of severe turbulence at 39000 feet or slogging through 30 minutes of a interminable piece of concert music, one attribute I've tried to develop is the ability to see past the discrete and awaited ending, the exact framing of the immediate process, but put it into the context of a larger time frame. I've found that this year more than all others has demanded it. Breathing helps...

2. Books: revisiting old favorites from the realm of Thomas Pynchon and Philip K. Dick (both especially relevant), digging into John Lomax's portrait of Jelly Roll Morton, the works of Colson Whitehead, random things off of the shelf…

3. Composing: with touring off the table, I focused on that which needed to be written, some requested and commissioned, some spontaneously springing forth. Composing requires that one open the windows wide to the world, which at this moment brought in grief, terror, uncertainty, anxiety, visions of plague and pestilence and incipient fascism. Okay, now shut the window and get to work! How to process, translate, transform? The work can be a comfortable and obsessive cocoon once one learns to handle the radioactive materials and put them into the creativity reactor.

4. Beans! We have long been a fan in our house of the wide world of legumes but this year brought two stars to the front: the black bean and the red lentil. The black bean commands the lofty peaks but the seemingly infinite variations of dal surround it. Ginger, garlic, turmeric, smoked paprika, cayenne, onions, and olive oil form the basis then imagination builds.

5. Online teaching substituted for my canceled conduction of workshops in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. Between the participants and myself, we built a temporary but very congenial space online to share concepts and music. In addition, private lessons brought conversation and music with new friends in Germany, Italy, California, Australia, Illinois, Denmark, Pennsylvania, Spain, Florida, Brazil.

6. What started out as "stress baking" (before I even had heard of the term) soon became a frequent practice that yielded very edible results. The twins preferred the sweeter forays into banana bread and chocolate cake. I tried to find a balance between tried-and-true techniques and experiments in texture and taste with yeasted pumpernickels, multi-grains, and seed breads.

7. While not the same as performing 'live ', online gigs proved that it was possible to generate a surprising amount of adrenaline even without the pheromonal handshaking of a room filled with receptive ears. As a corollary, online recording collaborations with friends worldwide proved to be inspiring and a suitable substrate for sonic experimentation, exploration of new instruments, tunings, effects programming, structures. In these realms, shout-outs to Helene Breschand, Mike Cooper, Henry Kaiser, Tracie Morris, Mikel Banks, Dougie Bowne, Payton McDonald, Billy Martin, Colin Stetson, Jim O'Rourke, Scott Amendola, Roberto Zorzi, Jason Hoopes, Eric Mingus, Melanie Dyer, Dave Hofstra, Don McKenzie, Sergio Sorrentino, Veniero Rizzardi, Taylor Ho Bynum, Scott Fields, Bachir Attar, Karl Bruckmaier, Robbie Lee, Matthew Evan Taylor, Matteo Liberatore, Al Kaatz, David Barratt, Jessica Hallock, Kolin Zeinikov, Robbie Lee, Jeremy Nesse, James Ilgenfritz, Sergio Armaroli, Steve Piccolo, Sandy Ewen, David Weinstein, Jim Whittemore, Chris Vine, Werner Puntigam, William Schimmel.

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Daniel O’Sullivan

(Grumbling Fur, Guapo, Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses, Ulver, Sunn O))), Æthenor, Laniakea, Miracle, Mothlite, and This Is Not This Heat.)

Music Richard Youngs - Ein Klein Nein Alabaster DePlume - Instrumentals Hildegard von Bingen - O Nobilissima Viriditas Francisco de Penalosa - Missa Ave Maria Peregrina Carlo Gesualdo - Responsoria 1611 Dirty Projectors - Five EPs Sonic Boom - All Things Being Equal Brother Peter Broderick - Blackberry Richard Horowitz - Eros Of Arabia Duncan Trussell Family Hour Cocteau Twins in the bath

Books/comics Alexander Tucker - Entity Reunion II Derek Jarman - Chroma Stephen Harrod Buhner - Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm The Penguin Book Of Irish Poetry - edited by Patrick Crotty The Gospel Of Ramakrishna - translated by Swami Nikhilananda Lucretius - De Rerum Natura Plotinus - Enneads Ram Dass - Grist For The Mill Lisa Brown - Phantom Twin

Other Fasting / meditation / macrodosing Walks in freshly coppiced woodland (for the smell mainly). Plants / Foraging / Growing Traditional ferments Douglas Sirk movies Mandolorian Writing songs on the piano Rediscovery of Kenneth Graham via my kids

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Karl O’Connor (Regis)

01.Wolfgang Press - Unremembered, Remembered 02. Klara Lewis - Ingrid Live at Fylkingen 03. Jesu - Terminus 04. Dave Ball - Leeds Poly Demos 1979 05. Edwin Pouncey - Rated Sav X (the Savage Pencil Skratchbook) 06. The Bug - In Blue 07. New Order - Power,Corruption and Lies ( Writing Sessions ) 08. JG Thirlwell and Simon Steensland - Oscillospira 09. FM Einheit and Andreas Ammer - Hammerschlag 10. Thurston Moore - By The Fire 11. Body Stuff - Body Stuff 3 12. Ann M Hogan - Honeysuckle Burials 13. Rob Halford - Confess (Autobiography)

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Caleb Braaten (Sacred Bones Records)

Shirley Collins Hearts Ease Dehd Flowers Of Devotion Duma Duma Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways Green-House Six Songs for Invisible Gardens John Jeffery Passage Drew McDowall Agalma Sweeping Promises Hunger For a Way Out Colter Wall Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs Woods Strange to Explain

My Favorite 90’s Nostalgia Movie Rewatches

Colors Ghost Dog Menace II Society The Player Rounders Safe Starship Troopers Trees Lounge Vampires Waiting For Guffman

Most Culturally Bankrupt Year : 1997

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Charlie Looker

(composer, Psalm Zero, Extra Life, Seaven Teares)

Ten Things That Didn’t Happen in 2020

1. I didn’t write a ton of new music. Don’t get me wrong, I wrote some. I always do. But mostly I focused on my new YouTube channel, essays, and on getting old recordings released. I haven’t even been working a day-job so I thought I was going to write my next Ring Cycle, but I really didn’t find Covid inspiring.

2. Trump wasn’t re-elected. Cool.

3. I didn’t lose anyone to Covid. I am, of course, profoundly grateful for this. But I feel pretty embarrassed remembering group-texting ten friends in March, “We are all going to see a loved one die. Every single one of us. Don’t kid yourselves”. I can get hysterical, and that was somewhat irresponsible of me.

4. No revolution happened. I don’t mean to be smug or cynical, or to belittle anyone’s participation in the protests. But, as far as I can tell, nothing happened in 2020 that promises to reduce police brutality or human suffering of any kind. We’ll see. That burning Minneapolis police station was exciting to watch at the time, if only on an aesthetic level.

5. I have a stack of unread books I bought this year, just staring at me, with nary a crease among them. These include:

Adorno and Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (looks amazing, but I haven’t touched it) Marx, Grundrisse (it’s 1000 pages for fuck’s sake. Amazon also accidentally sent me two copies, and its double presence in the stack is just comical) Reza Negarestani, Intelligence and Spirit (the first 15 pages blew my mind, then my mind blew it off)

6. I didn’t settle into living in LA. I moved here six months before Covid and I was just starting to cultivate some friendships and play shows. This was quashed and I still feel like I still live in New York. I still barely know the layout of the city here.

7. No brand-new buzzy musical artists burst onto the scene, that I can recall. No new hyped micro-genre of the moment. There was just no way for there to be a hot new trend. I’d say that was refreshing, but it wasn’t.

8. Tyson’s return was not awesome. Two minute rounds, ended in a draw. I’ve been getting way into boxing this past year. This fight was a bummer. I’m looking forward to Mayweather vs Logan Paul (LOL) because we know it’s comedy ahead of time.

9. For three weeks in July, I didn’t do a single thing other than watch street fight compilations on YouTube and Worldstar. That’s just grim.

10. There were no school shootings in March. Apparently, this was the first March with no school shootings since 2002. Not a single 7th grader got a hand job in March either. I cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to be a kid now.

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Chuck Bettis

https://chuckbettis.com

Other People's Music released this year:

Coil "Musick to Play in the Dark" (Dais)

Duma "s/t" (Nyege Nyege Tapes) Twig Harper "External Boundless Prison/ in 4 parts EP" (self-release) I.P.Y. (Ikue Mori, Phew, YoshimiO) "I.P.Y." (Tzadik) Kill Alters "A2B2 Live Stream 11/13/2020" (self-release) Krallice "Mass Cathexis" (self-release) Lust$ickPuppy "Cosmic Brownie" (self-release) Doug McKechnie "San Francisco Moog: 1968-72" (VG+ Records) Merlin Nova "Boo!" (self-release) Omrb "Milandthriust, The Graths of Mersh" (self-release) Akio Suzuki & Aki Onda "gi n ga" (self-release) Yoth Iria "Under His Sway" (Repulsive Echo) Wetware "Flail" (Dais)

My own music released this year:

collaborations

Chatter Blip "Microcosmopolitan" (Contour Editions) Matmos "The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form" (Thrill Jockey) Reverse Bullets "Dreampop Dsyphoria" (self-release) Snake Union "live at Roulette" (self-release) Snake Union w/ Hisham Bharoocha, Bonnie Jones, Heejin Jang, Matthew Regula "Three Arrows" (Rat Route) Thomas Dimuzio "Balance" (Gench Music) YoshimiO & Chuck Bettis "Live at the Stone" (Living Myth)

solo Chuck Bettis "Arc of Enlghtenment" (Living Myth) Chuck Bettis "Motion Parallax" (Living Myth)

compilation Various Artist "Polished Turds Vol.1" (Granpa)

Music Books read this year

"Intermediary Spaces" by Eliane Radigue/Julia Eckhardt (Umland) "Ennio Morricone In His Own Words" by Ennio Morricone/Alessandro De Rosa (Oxford University Press) "Free Jazz In Japan: A Personal History" by Soejima Teruto (Public Bath Press) "Rumors of Noizu: Hijokaidan and the Road to 2nd Damascus" by Kato David Hopkins (Public Bath Press)

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Maya Hardinge

(musician / artist)

list of things i liked this year

first ever solo road trip through new mexico and Texas right before lockdown experiencing manhattan with no cars on the road . having a car to escape in to nature. (which i craved so much) walks and bike rides with friends… FRIENDS! The web site ‘workaway’ that helped me feel that there were options for escape. playing games weekly on zoom during lock down teaching yoga weekly on zoom. Witnessing and being part of the BLM protests. witnessing and being part of the demise of T sitting on my couch at 6am drinking a cup of tea, appreciating my apt. making time to meditate. halloween without tourists .

some music I’ve bought and/or enjoyed this year Elvis Perkins-Black Coat Daughter Patricia Kokett -Soi soi Henning Christiansen - OP201 Bryce Hackford- Safe Svitlana Nianio and Oleksander - Snayesh yak? rozkazhy Brannten schnure - Sommer im Pfirsichhain Killing Joke - Nighttime David Shea - Tower of mirrors Shakey - Shakey Woodford halse tapes Coil - Musick to play in the dark

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BJ Nilsen

sound artist / composer

Work 2020

Despite Covid 19 lots of things actually did happen.

In Feburary I visited the only active nuclear plant in The Nederlands as part of my "Expanded Field Recording” project together with SML. In March revisited the Acousmonium at the Elevate Festival in Graz with an additional trip deep inside the Schlossberg recording old mining trains. In March and April I did two daily recording projects “Pending and Auditory Scenes” - both of Amsterdam during lockdown. In May did my first Zoom field recording workshop with the CAMP project. In June & July two research trips in Waldviertel, Austria with Franz Pomassl. In August recorded bells and organs in 10 different churches around Amsterdam for Jacob Lekkerkerker. In September recorded Kali Malone at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam. Performed at Heart of Noise Festival in Innsbruck and A4 in Bratislava. Also went ice-skating for first time in 20? Years. In November and December I travelled to Jeju island to record field recordings for a project by Femke Herregraven for the Gwangju Biennale, commissioned for 2021. Did lots of gardening, released two tapes “Call it Philips, Eindoven” and “Zomer 2020” with Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson. NOW! Looking forward to 2021.

http://bjnilsen.info https://soundcloud.com/bjnilsen/sets/auditory-scenes-amsterdam

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Vicki Bennett

(People Like Us)

Negativland - True False https://negativland.com/products/truefalse-cd (this came out last year but is so THIS year) Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways https://www.bobdylan.com/albums/rough-and-rowdy-ways/ The Soft Pink Truth - We from Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase https://thesoftpinktruth.bandcamp.com/album/shall-we-go-on-sinning-so-that-grace-may-increase Carl Stone - Stolen Car https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/stolen-car Porest - Sedimental Gurney https://porest.bandcamp.com/album/sedimental-gurney Matmos - The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form https://matmos.bandcamp.com/album/the-consuming-flame-open-exercises-in-group-form Domenique Dumont - Miniatures De Auto Rhythm https://antinoterecordings.bandcamp.com/album/atn044-domenique-dumont-miniatures-de-auto-rhythm The The - See Without Being Seen https://www.thethe.com/product/see-without-being-seen-cd/ Ciggy de la Noche - Hold Tight HMRC https://soundcloud.com/ciggydelanoche/hold-tight-hmrc Neil Cicierega - Mouth Dreams http://www.neilcic.com/mouthdreams/

and my details: http://peoplelikeus.org/ https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/ pic: http://peoplelikeus.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Welcome-Abroad-promo3-2-scaled.jpg

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DJ Food

Music - Type 303 - Sticky Disco / Analogue Acidbath 7" (45 Live) The British Space Group - The Ley of the Land CD (Wyrd Britain) Squarepusher - Be Up A Hello LP / Warp 10 NTS mix (Warp) dgoHn - Undesignated Proximate (Modern Love) LF58 - Alterazione LP (Astral Industries) Robert Fripp - Music For Quiet Moments series (DGM) Run The Jewels - RTJ4 (BMG) Simf Onyx - Magenta Skyline / The Unresolved 7" (Delights) Luke Vibert - Modern Rave LP (Hypercolour) JG Thirlwell & Simon Steensland - Oscillospira (Ipecac) Aural Design - Looking & Seeing 7" / DL (Russian Library) Luke Vibert - Rave Hop (Hypercolour) Clipping. with Christopher Fleeger - Double Live (Sub Pop) APAT - Terry Riley's 'In C' performed on Modular Synthesizer (YouTube) Field Lines Cartographer - The Spectral Isle LP (Castles In Space) Jane Weaver - The Revolution of Super Visions single (Fire Records) King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - K.G. LP (Flightless) Humanoid - Hed-Set - forthcoming on (De:tuned)

Film / TV - Inside No.9 (BBC) What We Do In The Shadows Season 2 (Netflix) Tales From The Loop (Amazon) Keith Haring - Street Art Boy (BBC) John Was Trying To Contact Aliens (Netflix) The Social Dilemma (Netflix) The Mandalorian (Season 2) (Disney+) Long Hot Summers - The Style Council documentary (Sky Arts) Zappa (Alex Winter)

Books / Comics / Magazines Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell (Profile books) The Often Wrong - Farel Dalrymple (Image Comics) Edwin Pouncey - Rated SavX (Strange Attractor Press) Jeffrey Lewis - Fuff (all issues - really late to the party on this one) Rian Hughes - XX - A Novel, Graphic (Picador) Cosey Fanni Tutti - Art, Sex, Music (Faber) Caza - Kris Kool (Passenger Press) Dan Lish - Egostrip Vol.1 Electronic Sound magazine Decorum - Jonathan Hickman & Mike Huddleston (Image) John Higgs - Stranger Than We Can Imagine Simon Halfon - Cover To Cover (Nemperor)

Very few exhibitions or shows this year for obvious reasons

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angelmichelangelo · 3 years

Text

First Line Fic Game

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

Thank you for the tag @panlesters !! <3 i’m not sure who has and hasn’t been tagged already but i’ll tag the lovely @echoedvoices and anyone else who wants to join in :D

1. and when the whole world is watching

Walker is unhinged.

It’s apparent in the way his eyes are bulging from his head, the irritable twitch of his fingers, the thick pulse in his neck that strains against the pale of his skin like a snake writhing under bladed grass.

It was also apparent in the dark, red blood splatter on the once polished shield he held tightly in trembling hands.

2. the no man’s land of my mind

Everything is cold. His body is tickled with it, his skin shivers as the icy breeze brushes past him, and when his muscles tense and constrict, there’s a dull ache; body used and underused in unison.

His head is throbbing, like his brain pulsating against the walls of his skull, banging like a tight skinned drum, desperate with each beat to escape itself.

3. the fox

“He’s gonna be sick.”

There’s a voice that feels both a million miles away as well as super close at the same time, like they’re literally in his ear.

4. company policy

There’s music thumping through the wall, faded and muted that makes it hard to hear the exact lyrics, but if Dan was to strain his ear, he’s sure he’s able to pinpoint what it is, since he’s sure that recognising music is some kind of lame superhero power he has, but in all honesty, it’s a little hard to concentrate with someone railing him from behind.

5. catboy roleplay thursdays

Thursdays, Phil decides, are for his time. After hours of watching Jenna Marbles videos, Phil soon becomes very accustomed to the phrase that becomes a household name signature in his house, “me time.”

6. filters

Phil is sure he’s probably wasted about eighty percent of his adult life on his phone. Between the endless scrolling through TikTok and the wormhole that is Snapchat clickbait news stories, Phil is pretty much glued to his phone, even when he knows he shouldn’t be. 7. king of packed lunches

“How the hell do they make it look so good?”

Phil’s back is aching, burning almost, as he’s leant over the kitchen counter, squinting down at his phone as the TikTok replays again for what feels like the billionth time, the speedy hands of a mother perfecting what seems like the world's most incredible lunch box.

8. the fisherman’s guide

A seagull soars across the sky. Its wings spread wide, momentarily paused against the blue as it glides through the air, not before it flaps its wings again. It passes through the sunlight, briefly shadowing the world for a moment in a blink of darkness.

9. an empty house

Numbness spreads across his body like he’s been dunked in freezing cold water. It’s tingling in the tips of his fingers, burning fiercely in the soles of his feet, making him want to just run.

The police station is too loud. It’s too bright and it’s too big and his heart is so heavy where it sits in his chest, it feels like a rock pulsing against his ribs, each beat and each out of sync pounding is like another dull ache there, spreading across each inch of his body until he’s completely and utterly numb.

10. fall and i’ll catch you

The early sunlight filters through the half pulled blinds of the bedroom window. It oozes all over the room, dancing against the walls and door, falling over items dotted around the teenager’s room. It floods over his body, the small warm feeling prickling against his skin, and when it comes to rest across his face, does it wake Peter up.

11. eight million

She sits by the phone, fingers trembling, her leg bounces with a bubble of anxiety that flows through her body, jolting every nerve in her body like hot electricity. He was supposed to be on the bus. He was supposed to be okay. But it’s been half an hour since the world ended and she hasn’t heard from anyone.

12. thanatophobia

It’s a fear of dying. It burns itself into so many minds across the earth and universe. It lives, deep rooted for a lifetime, or is sparked to life early. It’s a bubbling anxiety that grows in the pit of your stomach and comes out in sleepless nights and heavy beating hearts. It’s a fear that can’t be faced.

13. familiar faces

Phil’s deep into a Mario Kart round when there’s a knock at the door, making him jump. He looks at the door, then back at the TV where he’s slipped into eight place as Baby Peach absolutely totals him with a green shell that–

The door knocks again, and Phil pauses his game, his own Mii frozen on the screen with a look that can only be described as utter disappointment as Phil turns away and heads towards the door.

14. end of the page

“Thought? Feelings? Hate it, love it? Kinda wanna set fire to it?”

Phil’s shoulders are shaking with a silent laugh as he takes the mug from Dan’s offering hand, bringing the rim of the mug to his lips as he takes a long, slow sip. Honey flavoured tea, his favourite.

15. coming home

The key in the lock seems to echo so loudly in the quiet of the night, and as Phil struggles through the front door, feet clip clipping loudly into the hall, he can hear the sounds of Dan’s shushing as their dog bounds towards them from the other room, probably where he’d made himself on the sofa he knows he’s not allowed up onto, and Phil pulls the baby carrier up out of his eyeline, shushing him further as he starts to whine, tail wagging, clearly wanting some attention since he’d been left alone most of the day.

16. vacation getaway

Phil is squeezing the last of the suncream into the palm of his hand, squirting out rather pathetically, he looks at if for a moment as it melts between his fingers under the hot sun, and he starts rubbing it up and down his arm, when there’s suddenly a shadow being casted over him.

17. just another drop stitch

When Hermione wakes, she’s cold. It’s something she’s become very accustomed to in their cottage, and as their first winter here had rolled around, she’d had to use her initiative to find ways to keep her waking feeling freezing.

18. beneath the ice

When Kurt wakes, the first thing he does is stumble out of bed, almost tripping over his own feet as he runs towards his window, pressing his face against the glass, fogging it up with his breath as a grin breaks across his face, eyes lighting up at the sight of the snow that’s now blanketing the outside world. He doesn’t hesitate to spin on his heel, rushing out of his room to find his dad, skipping two, three steps at a time.

19. in sickness and in health

Of course both Dan and Phil get sick during their honeymoon.

Of all the places they’d travelled around the world, Hawaii had been one place they’d somehow managed to skip out on.

20. dear santa

Dear Santa,

My name is Dan and I live in England and I’m eight years old. I’m in Year 3 at school and it’s okay I guess. The work isn’t so hard but the other kids in my class are kind of mean and I don’t really like them that much.

#i can't tell if the opening of my fics have a pattern or not #fic #phan #tag game #ty for this :D

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scribbleb-red · 5 years

Text

The Scars - (Sculptor Neil x Muse Andrew AU)

Three years ago Neil (a reclusive but renown sculptor) met Andrew (a nobody going nowhere).

Andrew had found Neil's cat, hiding under his car. Neil took a liking to Andrew.

Andrew could see Neil was full of secrets, but the snark and the intrigue kept him coming back.

But a pestering journalist from Galatea magazine (ie. the plucky bitch that is Allison Reynolds) managed to track down Neil (known mostly as N) and from surveilling them, deduce that Andrew is N’s latest muse for his upcoming show.

Andrew, who knew nothing of Neil's work, feels used.

He feels used and shattered and like the tentative *something* he thought he was forming with Neil was all a lie, all for some stupid rocks turned into stupider shapes.

He packs up his life, as he has over a dozen times before, and disappears.

No goodbyes. No explanations.

He doesn't need more lies from Neil Josten.

N's much anticipated show never happens.

In a single, rare interview, he announces his retirement from the art world.

It's cost him too much, he says.

Andrew feels a thrill in his chest; it's all spite.

Three years go by.

Andrew is living in New York, working in an auction house.

He only took the job because of Renee, who needed someone to come in and help urgently.

He's on his second week when it's announced that they'll be auctioning off a private collection called "The Scars".

It's by N.

As an artist N has always been recognised for his subject matter, for confronting the worst of the human condition by pushing the boundaries of material and media. "The Scars" is a selection of his earliest pieces - they're grotesque, alien - and Andrew recognises the subject matter, the inspiration behind them.

There's the puckering iron brand from Neil's shoulder.

The pebble smooth bullet wound.

The lacerations over his stomach where a road tried to shred his skin.

A fractured monstrous child.

Andrew hates them. Hates their rawness. Hates their truth.

"Rumour is, he'll be here tonight," Renee tells him as they prep the room.

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

"N," Renee explains. "No one knows who he is, of course, but apparently he's been trying to buy back his work. Allison's column speculated that he'd be here for the show."

"So a whole lot of fans are going to turn up?"

"Sorry to make your life difficult." Andrew shrugs. She's thinking of the extra work he'll have on the door. He never told her about the months spent with Neil, the summer nights, the autumn walks, the winter his heart froze over.

The crowd arrives.

Allison is amongst them: eyes sharp, heels sharper.

Matt Boyd comes next with Dan Wilds, known for her strategy on bids.

Kevin Day stalks through, ear piece in, determination setting his jaw.

Andrew does not see N.

Andrew's not looking for him, by the way, of course not.

Andrew wants nothing to do with N. Nothing to do with his scars or his smiles, his secrets or his promises.

He's not scanning the crowd, looking for a shock of red hair. He's not hyperaware of every flash of blue.

And that's when the bidding starts. The first sculpture is "Mother's Ruin". On one-side it's bullet-smooth, a puckered dot; on the other a female shape pulls through, raging, screaming, mouth deadlier than the wound.

Kevin starts the bid. Dan follows. Back and forth they go.

When Kevin taps out, eyes hard as the stone from which the sculpture is cut, Dan releases a vicious and victorious smile.

Which is when a new bidder enters the arena. Dark hair. Dark scarf. Dark cane across his knees. A familiar set to his shoulders.

But no. It isn't N. It can’t be.

But it isn't Neil either.

Or if it is, it's like seeing someone else's e-fit of him. All wrong. Something real is missing. This man is brittle, lean as a clip-point. His wrists are all bone.

N doesn't flinch when the hammer falls and the final price is put on his own work. He is eerily still. Andrew thinks about a time when any loud noise would have made Neil startle with excitement, a new sensation, something to explore. When he was the most animated person in any room - all energy, all life.

The same thing happens on the next piece. And the next. Kevin and Dan are furious. Allison is watching Neil with the same deadly look in her expression that Andrew remembers from when she appeared at his front door all those years ago.

Andrew doesn't understand.

(And he doesn't want to. He's not interested. He doesn't care.)

But as the auction ends and Neil is in possession of all of his art once more, as Allison stalks towards the man they both know to be N, Andrew finally sees his face. Gaunt and blank, bruises under his eyes.

Neil looks like one of "The Scars" - a ruined version of himself, sunken and shrunken and beaten down.

Andrew is moving before he can think about it. Moving to block Allison's path, to stop her from reaching a man that is so clearly sick and strange and unlike himself.

Seeing Andrew coming, Allison stops. She knows the warning set of his jaw, it's the same expression he wore when he threw her off his doorstep. She stops, but she grins. He can almost see the ideas spinning inside her skull. Muse and artist reunited once more? Was this a story?

When he turns, Neil is gone.

Fortunately, Andrew knows he has to be around. There's paperwork to be done, after all. So he goes outside. There's a familiar black sports-car parked there. Andrew leans against it and waits. And waits.

"Are you really going to smoke that entire pack waiting for me?"

Andrew exhales smoke through his nose.

Even Neil's voice is ragged, rough with disuse. He tells himself it doesn't matter.

"What do you want, Andrew?"

"You upset a lot of people here tonight," Andrew says.

"What do you want, Andrew?"

"Interesting move, buying up your own art. Are you trying to create a scarcity effect? Trying to inflate the price?"

Neil asks a third time: "What do you want, Andrew?"

Andrew fixes a look on Neil, he really does look dreadful.

What's with the contact lenses? He wants to ask. What's with the hair? Why are you so thin? What happened? Are you sick? Are you dying?

"I'm not coming to your funeral," he says.

"What?"

"Whatever's wrong with you, I won't be there."

Neil shakes his head. "I'm not dying."

Lie. Lie. Lie.

Andrew didn't realise he'd be able to hear dishonesty in Neil's voice as easily as he ever had.

"Don't lie to a liar, Neil. Didn't you tell me that?"

"Ha." Neil leans heavily on his cane, sees Andrew's scepticism. Insists: "I'm not."

"I'm taking a turn," Andrew says, sees the pain lancing over Neil's features when he hears it. It looks an awful lot like grief.

Neil still nods.

"Why are you buying back your art?"

Neil's face twists: mouth tipping down, eyes squeezing shut. "I'm destroying it. All of it."

The cigarette nearly drops from Andrew's lips. He catches it in time, rolls it between the tips of his fingers. "Why?"

"It's not your turn."

"Then take yours."

Neil looks at him. Andrew wishes his eyes weren't muddy brown, that he could see the man he knew, not this underworld shade.

"No," Neil says. "I've taken quite enough from you."

It's cryptic. It's nonsense. It's infuriating.

"Fuck you," Andrew says. "Why are you destroying The Scars?"

"Get off my car, Andrew."

But Andrew knows about self-destructiveness. He's not stupid. He knows that look.

And he might not care about art, or sculpture. He might hate Neil for the lies he omitted day after day. He might loathe Neil for giving him colours only to take them away. But Neil was on the right side of hope last time he saw him. He doesn’t like this grey-washed half-man.

"Tell me," Andrew says. It's almost a growl. "Tell me why you're doing this."

Neil sighs. "Not here. Get in the car. My place is nearby."

Andrew never wanted to be in close proximity to Neil again but he wants to know what's going on more than he can pretend he doesn't care.

So they get in the car and they drive and they come to Neil's apartment, a classic loft in a red brick block. It's huge, shabby and unloved, everything a little tatty at the edges.

Like Neil, Andrew's brain supplies. Never taking care of himself, heart so big it felt empty.

Neil makes coffee. It's just how Andrew likes it, from the sugar and cream right down to his favourite mug.

He frowns. "You kept this."

"I shouldn't have, I'm sorry."

The apology makes Andrew bristle.

Andrew asks for the truth again. Why is Neil destroying "The Scars"?

"Not just them. All of them. All of it." And Neil begins to talk.

It starts the day Andrew found his cat, when he turned up on Neil's door, soaked to the bone with King tucked into the front of his coat.

"I never told you why she was out there, did I? I threw her out. I was in way. Panicking. Freaking out. I thought nothing was safe."

Neil talked about meeting Andrew. How he felt immediately drawn to him, like to like. He talks about the mornings when he woke up and the brightest thing in the day was the promise of Andrew's presence. He describes how those bright moments translated into his work.

"Hope."

He doesn't linger on the soft moments, though Andrew's brain supplies them: iced coffee on the park swings, warm smiles, red hair against his shoulder, lying his head in Neil's lap, sharing smoke, swapping truths.

"Hope," Neil says like the word is a fragile thing. "Crept into everything I made. It made the edges softer, made jagged pieces slide together, drew colours out of grey stone."

And he started making new things too - mixing gold and marble, hard with soft.

"I thought I was inspired by kintsugi - the idea of repairing broken things in a way that revitalises them. New life."

And then Allison came. And she spoke to Andrew. And then she spoke to Neil.

"She told me what you said, Andrew. She told me how very sick I am."

Andrew frowns. "What did she say I said?"

"That I hurt you. That I used you. That what I did was like rape." Neil's words are biting and blunted and all together mirthless. "I was taking from you without permission. That I'm just like him, like my father."

Andrew is silent.

"I hadn't even thought about it. I know I should have. The work was just so separate to us - I didn't see how I was using you. How I was abusing you. But of course it wasn't kintsugi - it was you. Everything. The gold. The marble. The edges. The way they fit."

"And the way I felt." Neil's breath is a rattle. He really is too thin. "The way I felt about you was also everything."

"Was?"

"Is," Neil corrects, reluctantly. "And I know that's wrong. That it makes you uncomfortable. And I get it. I do. It made me realise how my art is monstrous."

"I wasn't cutting anyone open. I wasn’t physically hurting anyone. But I was destroying people. Flaying them alive. Slicing them open. Revealing their secrets. Wasn't I? The Scars. The Butcher. White Bones, Black Sand. Every collection. Every act of brutalism. Exacted over and over with every witness."

The silence that falls is oppressive. It's the sky before a storm. The water closing over your head when you can't swim.

Andrew knows he has to say something.

Andrew knows what he has to say.

"Allison got it wrong, Neil. She got it wrong for both of us."

Because Andrew was never angry about being a muse.

No, when Andrew found out who Neil was, he felt cold.

And when Allison asked him for comment on what it was like to be 'the latest', he felt numb. Like none of it was real.

Whatever they had was meant to be nothing. But finding out that it really was nothing - the coffee and the conversation, the confidences and shared quiet - all of it meaningless... That bottomed him out, sent him plunging straight down into the cold, dark places in his brain. That was why he was mad. That was why he left.

Was it all real after all?

"You hurt me." Andrew can't deny that. He'd been prepared to never let anyone or anything else in ever again. Because Neil isn’t something he could ever take back or recover from. Neil was a chance he shouldn't have taken. "But I'd do it all again."

There is a moment when Neil's brain hasn't quite caught up - where he looks like he might be torn between running & crying & breaking apart. There is so much damage to undo here. Years they need to discuss. Issues Neil probably hasn't spoken to anyone about, recluse that he is.

Andrew makes the first move - placing his mug on the table, moving to stand in front of Neil. He places two fingers under Neil's chin, tilting his face upwards.

"You are Neil Josten, and right now you are sick, but not because you're your father. You haven't abused anyone. You never abused me."

"Andrew..."

"Don't. Argue. About. This." Andrew says. "I know you like to run your mouth and catastrophise - but tonight you're just Neil, and I'm just the man who found your fucking cat. And you're going to take out those hideous lenses and get some sleep."

When Neil doesn't move, Andrew lifts him out of his seat.

When Neil stumbles without his cane, Andrew helps take his weight.

When Neil asks Andrew to stay, Andrew borrows a t-shirt that's just a tiny bit too snug and curls up on the other side of the bed.

When Andrew takes Neil's hand, they're missing the callouses he remembers.

When Andrew brushes Neil's knuckles with his lips, they both almost stop breathing.

Before Andrew falls asleep, he thinks maybe, just maybe, that if he asked for a kiss -a real one- Neil would say yes.

The end.

#andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #sculpture AU #the scars

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beansonbread2 · 3 years

Text

BEANSONBREAD AWARDS 2020 - BEST SONG

AWARD NO.3 - BEST SONG OF 2020

PAST WINNERS

2019 > Weyes Blood ‘Andromeda’ (see full list HERE)

2018 > Let’s Eat Grandma ‘It’s Not Just Me’ (see full list HERE)

2017 > Richard Dawson ‘Ogre’ (see full list HERE)

2016 > Solange ‘Cranes In the Sky’ (see full list HERE)

2015 > Kendrick Lamar ‘The Blacker The Berry’ (see full list HERE)

2014 > FKA Twigs ‘Two Weeks’ (see full list HERE)

2013 > Oliver Wilde ‘Perrett’s Brook’ (see full list HERE)

2010 > Untold ‘Stop What You’re Doing (James Blake Remix) (see full list HERE)

2009 > Joker - ‘Digidesign’ (see full list HERE)

2008 > Lil’ Wayne - ‘A Milli’ (see full list HERE)

2007 > Panda Bear - ‘Bros’ (see full list HERE)

2006 > Hot Chip - ‘Over And Over’ (see full list HERE)

RULES - A maximum of THREE tracks from any one artist. Songs can be tied in the same position.

*SPOTIFY PLAYLIST WITH (ALMOST) ALL THE TRACKS*

THE RUNNERS UP (in alphabetical order)..

100 Gecs, Count Baldor, GFOTY ‘Stupid Horse (remix)’

645AR ‘Bible And A K’

A.G. Cook ‘Silver’

Alabaster DePlume ‘Whisky Story Time’

Amaarae ‘Hellz Angel’

Arca ‘Time’

Arlo Parks ‘Black Dog’

Ashnikko ‘Daisy’

Blackpink & Selena Gomez ‘Ice Cream’

Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion ‘WAP’

Caribou ‘New Jade’ / ‘Home’

CHAI ‘No More Cake’

Chloe x Halle ‘Do It’

Clipping ‘96 Neve Campbell’

Cornershop ‘St Marie Under Canon’ / ‘No Rock Save In Roll’

Crack Cloud ‘Favour Your Fortune’

Dan Deacon ‘Become A Mountain’ / ‘Sat By A Tree’

Darkstar ‘Jam’

Dean Blunt, Joanne Robertson, Vegyn ‘Troll’

Deerhoof ‘Future Teenage Cave Artists’ / ‘Sympathy For The Baby Boo’

Dirty Projectors ‘Overlord’

DJ Douggpound ‘Creamed Popcorn On The Cob’

Dorian Electra ‘Sorry Bro (I Love You)’

Doves ‘Prisoners’

Dry Cleaning ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’

Dua Lipa ‘Hallucinate’

Fenne Lily ‘Alapathy’ / ‘Solipsism’

Fiona Apple ‘Shameika’

FLOHIO ‘Unveiled’

Gerard Black, Rozi Plain, Jamie Whitby-Coles 'Beiggy'

Giant Swan ‘Silkworm’

Good Sad Happy Bad ‘Blessed’ / ‘Star’

The Go! Team ‘Cookie Scene’

Grimes ‘Delete Forever’

Gupi & Fraxiom ‘Thos Moser’

HAIM ‘The Steps’

Happy Spendy ‘Feelings 2’

Hen Ogledd ‘Trouble’

Hot Chip ‘Worlds Within Worlds’

Janelle Monae ‘Turntables’

Jane Weaver ‘The Revolution Of Super Visions’

Jay Electronica ‘Ghost Of Soulja Slim’ / ‘Shiny Suit Theory’

Jessy Lanza ‘Anyone Around’ / ‘Lick In Heaven’

Jpegmafia ‘Bald!’

Kayla Painter ‘Prey At Night’

Kelly Lee Owens ‘Arpeggi’ / ‘Melt!’

King Creosote ‘Susie Mullen’

King Krule ‘Stoned Again’

Lambchop ‘Reservations’

Laura Marling ‘Strange Girl’

The Lemon Twigs ‘The One’

LICE ‘Conveyor’ & ‘Arbiter’

Lil B ‘I’m Kanye’

Lil Uzi Vert ‘POP’

Little Simz ‘Might Bang, Might Not’

Magdalena Bay ‘Story’

Marie Davidson & L’Œil Nu ‘Renegade Breakdown’

Michael ‘Sole Trader’

Mogwai ‘Dry Fantasy’

Moses Sumney ‘Virile’

Mumble Tide ‘Love Thing’

Nadine Shah ‘Club Cougar’

Noname ‘Song 33’

The Orielles ‘Space Samba (Disco Volador Theme)’

Oro Swimming Hour ‘Cold Tangerina’ / ‘Crocodile’

Park Hye Jin ‘Like This’

Pa Salieu ‘Betty’

Paula, Povoa, Jerge ‘Primavera’

Pet Shimmers ‘Thawed Out Plainclothes Demon’ / ‘Snake Eats A Lady’

Phoebe Bridgers ‘Garden Song’

Pictish Trail ’Bad Algebra’

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs ‘Reducer’ / ‘Rubbernecker’

Planet 1999 ‘Replay’

Planningtorock ‘Jam Fam - Chanel Show Version’

Poppy ‘Fill The Crown’

Pottery ‘Texas Drums Pt. I & II’

Pozi ‘Whitewashing’

Princess Nokia ‘Green Eggs & Ham’

Remi Wolf ‘Woo!’ / ‘Photo I.D’

Rico Nasty ‘IPHONE’

RMR ‘Rascal’

Run The Jewels ‘Yankee And The Brave (ep.4)’

SAULT ‘Stop Dem’ / ‘Wildfires’

Scalping ‘Deadlock’

Sega Bodega ‘Salv Goes To Hollywood’

Sleaford Mods ‘Mork n Mindy’

Soccer Mommy ‘Bloodstream’ / ‘Crawling In My Skin’

Spectres ‘Tanning The Albatross’ / ‘On Nepotism’

Sufjan Stevens ‘Video Game’

SZA (feat. Ty Dolla $ign) ‘Hit Different’

This Is The Kit ‘Coming To Get You Nowhere’ / ‘This Is What You Did’

Thundercat ‘Black Qualls’

Tierra Whack ‘Peppers and Onions’ & ‘Dora’

Tim Heidecker ‘Come Away With Me’

Tkay Maidza ‘Shook’ / ‘Grasshopper’

Urkt ‘Rich Now’ / ‘Sour’

Warm Digits (feat. Rozi Plain) ‘Everyone Nervous’

Wasuremono ‘Big Big Smiles’

The Weeknd ‘Blinding Lights’

Wesley Gonzalez ‘Wind Your Neck In’

Wharfwhit ‘Bangers’

Willie J Healey ‘Fashun’

Working Men’s Club ‘White Rooms And People’ / ‘Valleys’

Yard Act ‘Fixer Upper’ / ‘Peanuts’

Yves Tumor ‘Kerosene!’

---

THE TOP 70 SONGS OF 2020

70. Black Midi ‘Sweater’

69. 645AR ‘Sum Bout U (feat. FKA Twigs)’

68. King Krule ‘Alone, Omen 3’

67. Savage Mansion ‘Weird Country’

66. Pet Shimmers ‘Madonna’s People’

65. Daniel Blumberg ‘Teethgritter’

64. Katy J Pearson ‘Take Back The Radio’

63. A.G. Cook ‘Oh Yeah’

62. Kelly Lee Owens (feat. John Cale) ‘Corner Of My Sky’

61. Moses Sumney ‘Me In 20 Years’

---

60. Alexia Avina ‘Fit Into’

59. Kero Kero Bonito ‘Fortune Teller’

58. The Avalanches feat. Blood Orange ‘We Will Always Love You’

57. Yaeji ‘Waking Up Down’

56. Black Country, New Road ‘Science Fair’

55. These New Puritans ‘The Mirage’

54. Clementine March ‘Le Continent’

53. Shygirl ‘Freak’ / ‘Leng’

52. Ed Dowie ‘Robot Joy Army’

51. Pa Salieu (feat. Mahalia) ‘Energy’

---

50. Office Hours (Tim Heidecker, Fred Armisen & Daniel Cupps) ‘Brick By Brick’

49. Gorillaz (feat. Peter Hook & Georgia) ‘Aries’

48. Amaarae ‘Fancy’

47. Alabaster DePlume ‘Visit Croatia’

46. Pictish Trail ‘Fear Anchor’

45. Yves Tumor ‘Gospel For A New Century’

44. Dean Blunt ‘As Long As Ropes Unravel Fake Rolex Will Travel’

43. Oneohtrix Point Never ‘I Don’t Love Me Anymore’

42. Thundercat ‘Dragonball Durag’

41. Kero Kero Bonito ‘It’s Bugsnax!’

---

40. Perfume Genius ‘On The Floor’

39. Dua Lipa ‘Levitating’

38. Rina Sawayama ‘Comme Des Garcons (Like The Boys)’

37. Pozi ‘The Nightmare’

36. Jockstrap ‘Acid VAPOURWAVE rap RMX’

35. Magdalena Bay ‘Airplane’

34. Arca & Rosalia ‘KLK’

33. Squid ‘Sludge’

32. 100 Gecs feat. Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito, Rico Nasty ‘Ringtone (Remix)’

31. Bonnie Prince Billy ‘In Good Faith’

---

30. Good Sad Happy Bad ‘Shades’

29. Charli XCX ‘Claws’ / ‘Forever’

28. Bill Callahan, Bonnie Prince Billy, Dead Rider ‘Our Anniversary’

27. Pictish Trail ‘Lead Balloon’

26. Jockstrap ‘The City’

25. Oneohtrix Point Never ‘Auto & Allo’

24. Katy J Pearson ‘Hey You’

23. Self Esteem ‘Favourite Problem (Alternative version)’

22. Tim Heidecker ‘Nothing’

21. SAULT ‘Free’

---

20. Moses Sumney ‘Cut Me’

19. Shygirl ‘Slime’

18. Charli XCX ‘7 Years’

17. Rina Sawayama ‘XS’

16. The Flaming Lips ‘Flowers Of Neptune 6’

15. Wesley Gonzalez ‘Change’

14. Perfume Genius ‘Describe’

13. Dorian Electra (feat. Village People & Pussy Riot) ‘My Agenda’

12. Crack Cloud ‘Ouster Stew’

11. The Flaming Lips ‘Will You Return/When You Come Down’

10. Dorian Electra ‘Gentleman’

9. Tim Heidecker ‘Property’

8. Tara Clerkin Trio ‘In The Room’

7. Planet 1999 ‘Party’

6. Phoebe Bridgers ‘Kyoto’

5. Laura Marling ‘Held Down’

4. Crack Cloud ‘Post Truth’

3. The Flaming Lips ‘At The Movies On Quaaludes’

2. Oneohtrix Point Never ‘Long Road Home’

1. Jockstrap ‘Acid’

#list #Awards #2020 awards

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itsmyusualphannie · 5 years

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an elemental match

Title: an elemental match (ao3) Author: itsmyusualphannie Artist: fay-pepper - check out her amazing art here!! it’s so good. like how. <33 Beta: m0xicity - thank you sm for your help! Word Count: 8.5k Rating: T Warnings: Blood, broken bones, earthquake Summary: “one moment can change a day, one day can change a life, and one life can change the world” - not buddha dan and phil, who like everyone else in their world have some level of superhuman powers, are out and about when tragedy strikes. they have powers, though. they can fix this, right? right. (right?)

Author Notes: i’ve been wanting to do a powered-dnp (not superheroes) for a while now, so this was super fun to write! it went a tad darker than i intended, but don’t worry, it has a happy ending! (sort of?)

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick. Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

“Nope!” The chair’s legs screeched against the floor under Phil as he slid back from the desk. He rolled his shoulders and stood, shoving the chair back into its place. His open laptop on the desk was brightly lit, cheerfully mocking him. He frowned at it. “No. I’m done.”

The clock tick-tocked again from where it hung a few feet above the desk. Phil wondered why he had even gotten it. He turned and left the room.

He found Dan in the living room, prone on the floor with his face upturned toward the ceiling. His eyes were closed, mouth opened slightly as he breathed steadily. Phil stood over him and nudged him with a socked foot. “Hey, Dan.”

“Shh, fuck off,” said Dan without opening his eyes. “I’m...meditating.”

“You look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

“Meditating,” Dan insisted.

Phil poked him in the side again. “You said you wanted to look at the video once I finished editing it.”

“Ugh. You suck,” but Dan had opened his eyes and he was heaving himself up now. His fingers dug into the rug as he gained his balance, and then he stumbled to his feet, grabbing Phil’s arm for balance. “Whoo,” he said. “That’s fun.”

“Don’t pass out,” Phil told him. He reached to nudge a curl that had fallen across Dan’s forehead.

Dan let him. “So you’re finished editing, then? I thought it’d take you longer.”

“The clock was driving me insane,” Phil admitted. He tucked the curl back to rejoin the tumbled mess on Dan’s head. The bare skin it revealed felt too intimately naked, so Phil replaced the curl with a quick kiss. Dan laughed when Phil’s lips pressed against his forehead. “Dork.”

Phil shoved his shoulder half-heartedly. “I’m romantic. Shut up.”

“Sure you are,” Dan agreed, too quickly. He headed toward the office. “Come on, I’ll look over your video.”

Phil let Dan go ahead of him while he detoured to the kitchen. Although they had eaten lunch a few hours ago, he felt like a snack was necessary right about now. He opened the first two cabinets and, finding nothing good, left them wide open as he wandered to the next cabinet. Finally, he found a pack of Haribo that had been shoved to the very top of the self just out of reach of his fingers.

“Phil!” Dan called from the other room. “You’d better not be getting something to eat. We’re going shopping as soon as I’m finished with this.”

Phil glanced up at the bag of sweets, then toward the office. Making up his mind, he turned back toward the cabinet. He stretched his hand up to the high shelf and flexed his fingers, wiggling them a little in a come-hither motion. The bag, untouched by his physical fingers, nevertheless heeded the mental call. It shifted on the shelf, and then, in an abrupt movement, threw itself off the shelf into Phil’s waiting hand. Phil hurriedly ripped it open and dumped a handful of the gummies into his other hand, then held the bag in his palm and lifted it back toward the shelf. The bag floated off his hand and back into place, adjusting itself between two other containers.

Phil abandoned the kitchen, leaving the cabinets open as he popped a few gummies in his mouth. “Nope, not eating anything!” he assured Dan. He pushed open the door to the office and crossed the room in a few strides, stopping behind Dan, who was seated at the desk chair in front of Phil’s laptop.

Dan didn’t look back at him, but his voice was amused. “You know I can literally feel that you’re lying to me.”

Phil shoved the rest of the gummies in his mouth, hastily chewing them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said around his mouthful. He glanced over Dan’s shoulder at the video that was playing on the laptop. “Any suggestions so far?”

“I’m only two minutes into it,” but Dan paused the video. “Actually, yeah, here. This transition is a little weird. I’d cut it a second or so sooner.”

Phil watched as Dan rewound the clip. The Phil on-screen was laughing as a handful of glitter floated around his head like a halo. Dan, with a few swift clicks, deleted an awkward segment that Phil had missed in his editing earlier. He pressed play again, and now the video showed a smooth flow between the moment Phil had been easily controlling the thousands of particles of glitter and the instant he had released his power over them and they had all cascaded over his head. Since Phil had filmed all of this in one take, he’d had to be careful with the use of his powers, not eager for a headache. If he overused them, one of his dreaded migraines would creep up on him, and not even Dan’s empathic powers could help him. In this case, though, the abrupt release of the objects he was controlling hadn’t been intentional - he had heard a dog barking outside, and naturally, had lost his concentration.

Rubbing at his hair in memory, Phil grimaced. “That was two days ago and I still have glitter in my hair.”

“Please don’t remind me,” said Dan, his gaze still affixed to the screen as the video continued. “I have glitter in my pants.”

He laughed. “Well, you didn’t have to let me - ”

“Nope. No. We’re stopping that line of conversation.”

Still chuckling a little, Phil didn’t finish his sentence. He kept watching as Dan finished the video, making a few more small adjustments that Phil hadn’t caught. He was pleased with the small reactions he got from Dan’s perusal, the involuntarily laughs and moments of surprise. This was one of his favourite parts of the video-making process.

The video was barely ten minutes long, but Dan took his time looking it over and it was a good half an hour later when Dan saved the file for the final time and sat back in the chair. “It’s good,” was all he said.

“Good?” Phil huffed a laugh. “Is that all?”

Dan stood up in an elegant movement, spinning and draping his arms over Phil’s shoulders. “It’s fantastic. It’s creative. The bit with the glass dildo-looking thing was a bit much, but I love it. So will everyone else.” He punctuated his input with a lingering kiss.

Phil hummed against Dan’s lips, letting his hands drift to loosely hold Dan’s waist. “Mmm, okay. Good. Thanks.”

Dan pulled back and cast him an unimpressed stare. “You taste like Haribo.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Phil blinked widely.

Dan scoffed but gave him another quick kiss. “Twat. Come on, we need to go shopping.” He pulled back from Phil’s grip and left the room. Phil grabbed his phone from the charger on the desk before he followed, checking to make sure that it was fully charged.

“Are we just going to Tesco?” Phil asked after Dan, swiping at his phone as he wandered into the living room.

“Unless you want to go somewhere else!” Dan yelled back. He had detoured to the bedroom, apparently.

Phil pulled down the notification bar on his phone and frowned at the bright news alert that was visible. He clicked on it and was directed to a BBC One news article. “Uh...maybe Starbucks!” he called absent-mindedly. “After we’re...done shopping…” He trailed off without noticing it, his finger tugging up the article page so he could quickly skim it. There had been another tremor on the east side of London. Specialists were considering it minor, as it was under a 4.0 on the Richter scale and was barely noticeable. Still, it was one of several that had happened over the past few months, and the tremors were never located in the same place.

“Weird,” Phil mused to himself. He jumped as a hand landed on his shoulder.

“What’s weird?” asked Dan, peering over his shoulder. He sounded breathless, tugging down the bottom of the shirt that he had apparently just changed into. His hair was mussed, but artfully so. He must have gone by the bathroom for a moment.

Phil showed him the screen. “Another tiny earthquake.”

“Huh.” Dan thoughtfully regarded the article for a moment, then turned away to grab his shoes from the rack by the door. “There’s been a few of those, haven’t there?”

Phil closed the article and set his phone down on the table in the hall beside him, joining Dan to slip on his own shoes. “Yeah, it’s a little odd.”

“I dunno,” said Dan. He tied his shoelaces and stood, glancing around. Clearly spying what he was looking for, he trotted across the room to grab his phone from the coffee table. “It could just be nature. Y’know, the world is ending and whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised. It could also just be some kid coming into their powers and still figuring out what’s going on.”

Considering that, Phil admitted to himself that it made sense. Every child on Earth was born with some power lying dormant in their genes, which usually revealed itself at puberty or during some traumatic stressor in their life. Few were truly powerful; most were just tiny, usually-ineffectual powers like an abnormally strong bladder, tasting by touch, changing colours of fabrics, and being able to moisten objects by touching them. Most people had versions of their parents’ powers that were easily recognized once they manifested.

Phil’s own power had been a sort of combination of his parents - his mum could manipulate bursts of wind and his dad could make anything float as long as he had touched it in the past few hours and was able to physically lift it. Phil’s power might have been on the higher spectrum of abilities since he could manipulate many objects at once such as thousands of glitter particles, but since he couldn’t do it for very long, he wasn’t considered particularly powerful.

“That could be it, I guess,” Phil acknowledged, “but if so, it’s odd that they wouldn’t have been identified yet and taught to control it.” Since most powers were so various and weak enough that they couldn’t affect anyone’s surroundings much, there wasn’t any specialized public education for them, but in the case of stronger manifestations, there were private schools to help individuals control them.

Dan just shrugged, fishing the keys from the bowl on the coffee table. “It’ll be fine. Unless it’s nature, then we’ll probably all die.”

“Dan,” Phil scolded.

“Global warming,” He said darkly. “It’s going to kill us all.”

Phil shoved him toward the door, laughing despite himself. “Stop it!”

Unlocking the door, Dan ducked outside, chuckling. “Oh, you know I’m right. The icecaps are melting and the penguins are - ”

“If you say one more time that all of the penguins are dying out, I’m going to revolt,” He threatened, snatching the keys from Dan’s hand and locking the door resentfully.

“I can feel that you think I’m funny,” Dan laughed at him.

Phil waved a finger at him. “Stop reading my emotions when I’m pretending to be upset. You could just...you could single-handedly save the penguins, is what you could do.”

He scoffed and held up one hand in demonstration. “This thing? I touch things with it to cool them off. I can’t refreeze the entirety of the polar ice caps. That’d be nice, though.”

“What would be nice,” Phil shot back, hesitating only briefly, “is your mum.”

Dan shoved him this time, huffing a laugh. “Oh my god, shut the fuck up.” His hands were cold against Phil’s shoulder even through his shirt, a clear demonstration of Dan’s secondary power.

That - his hands - was what automatically placed Dan in the top 1% of humans with powers. Neither of Dan’s abilities was remarkably strong - his empathy power and his ability to chill his hands to the freezing point of 0° celsius - but having a second power at all was incredibly rare. Like Phil, however, overusing either of his powers resulted in a negative drawback. Dan’s was mind-numbing exhaustion.

Dan’s secondary power also gave them an...interesting bedroom life. Before he met Dan, Phil would never have thought he’d have any sort of wild kinks. Now, though…

Dan poked Phil in the cheek with his cold finger. “Oi,” he said. “Stop thinking about sex.”

“I’m not!” Phil protested. “Besides, you can’t read my thoughts.”

“I can sense your sex emotions,” Dan said, unimpressed. “We need to get groceries, and if you start imagining us in bed before we even leave the building then we’re not going to get anything done.”

Phil cast him a haughty stare. “That’s just proof of your lack of self-control.”

“We’re leaving,” Dan declared.

“Coward,” Phil retorted, but followed him toward the stairs without further argument. They trundled down to the ground floor and made their way out onto the street. It only took a moment to hail down a cab, and then they were on their way to Tesco.

“Did you get the list from the fridge?” Phil asked a few minutes later, a belated question since the cab was already pulling over to let them hop out at Tesco. It was, after all, a little late to go back and fetch the list.

He looked exasperated as he shut the door behind him. “No, Phil, I told you to get it.”

“What? When?”

“When I was changing!”

Phil considered that. “Oh. Huh. I didn’t hear you.”

Dan rolled his eyes, but it was more fond than annoyed. “I knew you would.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket as they walked inside Tesco. “I took a picture of it last night just in case.”

“Oh, good. We need cereal too, since I added that to the list this morning. For...no reason. I just decided that we need more...to add to what we already have.” He grabbed a trolley and pushed it ahead of them while they headed for the far side of the store.

“Sure you did,” said Dan, clearly not believing him. “And it’s definitely not because you ate the rest of it during a two a.m. snack spree.”

Phil nodded. “No, definitely not,” he agreed innocently. He swerved the trolley into the bread aisle. They didn’t actually need any bread, since they still had half a loaf, but Phil didn’t think they would go shopping for another few weeks so it wouldn’t hurt to stock up.

“Do we have any tortillas?” Dan asked, trailing beside Phil as he swiped at his phone. “It’s not on the list, but I wanted to make fajitas tomorrow night.”

“I don’t think so,” Phil replied after a moment of thought. “I don’t remember using them all up, but I haven’t seen any.”

Dan leaned to grab a loaf of bread and toss it in the trolley as they walked. “Oh, didn’t we have those wraps last Saturday when PJ and Sophie visited?”

“Oh yeah, we did.” Their friends had come over right before lunchtime, so Dan and Phil had offered them the easiest food they could make quickly. Phil recalled the tea that had cooled as they chatted, and PJ briefly using his ability to warm liquids and reheating it with a wave of his hand. “And we ate the rest of the biscuits, add those to the list, too.”

Dan complied, tapping away at his phone. The rest of the shopping trip commenced this way, wandering down aisles searching for items on the list and occasionally getting distracted by things that weren’t. Phil had to convince Dan that he did not need four of the exact same candle since one would serve the same purpose, while Dan was very firm about not getting a massive chocolate bunny.

“But we need it,” Phil had insisted.

“Philip Lester. No. You’ll get high on the sugar.”

And that was that. They were leaving Tesco only an hour after having entered it, arms laden with bags.

“I have realized our mistake,” said Phil as they stood on the pavement outside Tesco, waiting for the Uber that Dan had called.

“What?”

“Well, I wanted to get coffee. But now we have to take these groceries back or the refrigerated stuff will go bad.”

Dan shrugged, glancing at the phone balanced in one hand to check for the status of their ride. “We can go back out. We need more exercise anyway, we’ll just walk to the one a few blocks from our flat.”

“I guess,” he agreed reluctantly. Dan was definitely more into the exercise than Phil was - they had already both gone jogging this morning and Phil was perfectly happy with that level of effort for the day. Coffee would be worth it, though. He was jolted from his thoughts of exercise and coffee by a bag that was starting to slip down his arm. “No,” he told it, eyeing it suspiciously. It didn’t listen, the weight of the bananas inside dragging it further and leaving faint red lines on his arm. He loosened his grip on the bag in his other hand and wiggled his middle and index fingers at the bag. It obediently slid back up his arm, ignoring gravity to settle in the crook of his elbow.

A car up in front of the pavement and Dan waved briefly at the driver. “Uber’s here,” he told Phil, already heading for the trunk of the car. The driver hopped out and helped them load their groceries into the back of the vehicle, putting the most fragile items into the safety net. Once they had everything arranged, Dan and Phil climbed into the backseat and they were off back to their flat.

~~~

“Straw?” Phil asked hopefully, but the barista had already turned away, harried and rushed with the line of customers out the door. Phil looked down mournfully at his drink. The straws by the door were gone and Dan was already tucked into their usual table in the corner, sipping at his macchiato as he swiped through his phone.

Excuse me, Phil heard from a woman slipping past him to escape the Starbucks. He only had time to notice her arms piled with coffee and a bag of chips clenched in her teeth before she was gone. She must have mentally projected the words at him using her power, he supposed. Taking a step back as another customer navigated through the line in front of him, he craned his neck to see if there were any straws left in the container behind the counter. There were some left, in a half-full box of straws tucked beside the syrups. A barista snatched one and handed it, along with a drink, to a customer, then immediately went back to making drinks. Phil squinted, making sure he was focusing on just one straw - he didn’t want another incident to occur - and then casually, unobtrusively stretched his fingers toward them. Nothing happened for a moment, and then a straw wiggled in place. It squirmed free from the confines of the other paper wrappers surrounding it, then leapt high in the air, above the customers’ heads. Phil released his control over it, then hurriedly snatched it before it plummeted to the floor.

Pleased, he unwrapped it and shoved it in the lid of his drink as he made his way to the corner, where Dan was still on his phone.

“I can’t believe yours was done first,” he said, sliding into the chair across from Dan. “And then you abandoned me.”

“I can believe it,” said Dan, not looking up. He sipped at his own boring-looking drink. “I got something normal, and you got that...monstrosity.”

Phil glanced down at it. It was pink and glittery and ...definitely different. “I had to try it,” he protested. “Look, it’s delicious.” To demonstrate, he slurped deeply from the straw. He could feel his face collapse into disgust as soon as the first sugary drop hit his tongue. “Um.”

Dan laughed, finally glancing up, probably to take a mental picture of Phil’s expression. “It’s a good thing everyone here isn’t an empath, or that raving recommendation would turn them all away.”

“It’s...unique,” Phil insisted. He took another sip and resisted the grimace that wanted to live on his face.

Dan set down his macchiato and sighed, reaching out for the drink. Phil handed it to him unhesitantly. Taking a brief sip of the drink, Dan winced and shook his head. “Sometimes, Phil, you don’t need to try new things.”

Phil stole Dan’s drink to wash the taste from his mouth. “Well...now I know not to get it. Besides, it’s limited.”

“Float it over to the trash bin,” he instructed, shoving the colourful drink back to Phil and taking his own back. “Limited doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Rebelliously, Phil drank from it again. “I’m not going to waste it.” He set it down after a few moments when the icy cup became a little too much for his hands. Dan was having no trouble with his own iced macchiato clasped unflinchingly in his free hand - but then, he wouldn’t, with hands that were unaffected by the cold.

It was unfair, Phil decided, that Dan could consistently keep his drinks cooled to the perfect temperature. To retaliate, he stole his drink again.

“You’re going to buy me another one,” Dan threatened mildly. He was on his phone again, though, and Phil didn’t feel particularly intimidated.

“Who’re you texting?” he asked around the straw in his mouth.

“Cornelia. I was asking her about a new merch idea.”

“Ooh, the gloves one?” Phil thought that one would sell brilliantly. Dan’s secondary power was the one most prominently used on his channel - in fact, only diehard fans even knew about Dan’s primary empathic power. It just wasn’t something that could be visibly touted in his videos. As a consequence of that, while both Dan and Phil had sold merch themed around their abilities, Phil had a logo shaped like a burst of wind that was stamped on some products while Dan’s was an icicle, only marketed toward his secondary power. One of Dan’s most recent items - a foam cup holder that chilled drinks while keeping hands warm - had sold out in the first week.

“Yeah, she likes it, but she thinks they need to be a different type of fabric.” Dan frowned at his phone and typed out a message that was disturbingly fast for only one hand. “As if leather isn’t practical.”

Phil laughed. “Dan, just because your hands never sweat doesn’t mean everyone else don’t.”

“I mean, I was joking about the leather, but I don’t want them to be solid wool. That’s just as hot, right?”

Shrugging, Phil took another long sip from Dan’s drink. “I don’t know anything about fabrics.” He glanced down at the cup, noting the liquid dipping below the melting ice. He probably would have to get Dan some more.

“What kind of useless gay are you?” asked Dan half-heartedly. He sighed and set down his phone. “I don’t feel like figuring out merch shit right now.”

“Tired?” Phil regarded him, a little concern niggling at him. Dan didn’t look exhausted, particularly, but if he had been overusing his powers, it might be weighing on him.

Dan waved a dismissive hand. “No, I just...don’t want to deal with it. It’s really busy here, too. It’s a little distracting.”

Sometimes Phil forgot that Dan couldn’t particularly turn off his empathetic ability. He could narrow his focus onto one person to read every aspect of their feelings, or even project his own emotions, but unlike Phil, it wasn’t something he had to consciously activate to use. Phil remembered Dan once describing it as “street noise, like cars driving past outside. You’re not always paying attention to them, but you know they’re there. And when an angry or upset person is near, it’s like an ambulance going past with its sirens on.”

“Any sirens?” asked Phil. They used the analogy often, an easy way for Phil to gauge what Dan was feeling from the people around them.

Dan shook his head. “Maybe in the distance. It’s just...heavy traffic.”

There were quite a few people packed into this small Starbucks. Phil pushed the macchiato back toward Dan. “Here, have a drink. And chill it again? The ice is melting a little.”

“You’re so generous.” Dan’s lips twisted wryly, knowing. He could feel Phil’s attempt to distract him from their surroundings. “It wouldn’t be melting if you hadn’t stolen it.” His hands had already gripped the cup, and Phil watched, unendingly fascinated with the way condensation spread in tiny frozen crystals as Dan’s long fingers wrapped around the plastic. Phil sometimes wondered what would happen if he had gotten a secondary power along with his telekinetic abilities. He doubted the results of any other power would look as elegant as Dan’s.

“Are you going to finish yours?” Dan asked, raising an eyebrow at the drink Phil had forgotten existed. It was still sitting abandoned, pink and bright and eye-searing, by the puddle of melted water that Dan’s cup had left.

Phil took a stubborn sip from it, refusing to let himself react to the explosion of bitter-sweet that soured his mouth. His eyebrow twitched defiantly. “Yes. I spent almost four pounds on it.”

“Sometimes, we just have to acknowledge that an experience wasn’t what we wanted it to be, and chalk it up as a lesson learned. Sometimes, we just have to move on from our mistakes.”

Phil glowered at him and his wisdom. “I hate you.”

“You hate that drink more, though. Are you really going to continue to suffer just to prove some sort of asinine point?”

“I could,” Phil said mutinously. He tried to take another insistent drink, but his mouth refused to cooperate. The straw tap-tapped vainly a few times against his lips before he gave up. “Ugh, fine. Shut up,” he added before Dan, his mouth parted in a wide, silent laugh, could say anything. He glanced around for a trash bin, ready to push his failure of a drink through the air and dispose of it.

“Come on, let’s head back to the flat,” Dan interjected. “You can throw it away on the way out the door.”

Phil dubiously eyed the crowded line of coffee-impatient customers stretching out the door and down the sidewalk. “It’s too bad neither of us can teleport.”

“That would be convenient,” Dan agreed, standing and fetching his phone and halfway-finished macchiato. “Do you know how many awkward situations I would have just abandoned?”

“Who needs to converse when you can reverse?” Phil added, then frowned. “Wait, that’d be a time power wouldn’t it?”

Dan laughed. “Yeah, like that kid I told you I knew in primary who could like rewind twenty seconds of time? Everyone knew when he did it, though - he got uncontrollable hiccups for like an hour after.”

Phil didn’t like getting a headache if he overused his powers, but he couldn’t imagine it happening every time he used them. “Poor kid.”

Dan made his way determinedly for the door of Starbucks, going just slow enough for Phil to navigate past two teenagers and catch up. “Well, you know, the more powerful the ability, the stronger the body’s backlash. I think it’s a good thing, so we don’t have time-warping and mind-destroying supervillains trying to take over the world.”

“It sounds so ominous when you say it like that,” Phil squeezed behind a rotund woman happily chattering away on her phone and found the bin just beside the door. It was almost full, but he dropped the drink in anyway. He mournfully watched it fall into the rest of the rubbish and thunk heavily against an empty cup, taking a moment to wish it had been a better drink.

Dan had already ducked outside. He tapped the window, raising an amused eyebrow at Phil’s inability to keep up with him. Come on, he mouthed.

Phil shrugged helplessly back at him. He had to grieve for such a beautiful monstrosity - it was only right. The sugar deserved to be missed. Dan just rolled his eyes at him.

Fine, Phil mouthed back. He waited a moment for a gap in the line of customers, and then he edged his way between them. He had just reached the door, swinging shut as someone stepped inside, when he felt it. It was just a tiny shudder at first, and Phil thought maybe someone had nudged against him, but then the floor trembled beneath his feet.

It took a few seconds for everyone around him to become aware of the ground’s awakening, but a more violent palpitation caused a visible disturbance and the conversation in the Starbucks abruptly ceased, a loud silence falling among the inhabitants. Phil became aware that someone was gripping his arm, their nervousness allowing them to abandon civility and grasp onto the nearest stationary object. He could see the display case to his left quivering minutely and an abandoned cup atop it wavering, undecided whether to topple to the floor. The floor juddered again, and Phil felt his knees knock against each other in an attempt to keep him standing. The cup fell.

A hesitant scream breached the silence of the room, testing if it was the right reaction. It trailed away after only a moment, and now Phil could hear a low rumble somewhere deep beneath the ground.

Then the panic started; It wholly infected the group within seconds, and there was an instant rush for the door as dozens of people simultaneously decided that getting outside was their best option. Phil’s ears rang with screams, but since he had been directly in front of the door, he was immediately shoved out of the door and onto the pavement before he could even attempt to react. He staggered as his feet hit the concrete, almost losing his balance, but regained his equilibrium and forced rapid steps away from the pushing, sudden mass of bodies exiting the store. The ground still rumbled warningly beneath him, threatening worse. He could feel the intensity of the tremors increasing. The sign on the pavement that proclaimed the coffee and pastry of the day bounced a few feet and then, with a heave of the concrete beneath it, toppled sideways and was immediately trampled by urgent feet.

Dan. Stricken by the thought, and that his brain had abandoned it until now, Phil backed into the side of the store to get away from the stream of people and stood on the tips of his toes to look around. The brick dug into his back, rippling uncertainly, but he ignored the movements to scan the crowd. He and Dan were both taller than most of these people, but he couldn’t see Dan’s familiar curls or sloped shoulders anywhere.

“Dan!” Phil called, but it was drowned by the yells and screams of others around him. Someone bellowed “Earthquake!” but everyone already knew, and everyone was already running, as if there was any way they could escape the earth’s rebellious upheavals.

He attempted a step away from the wall, but an angry roll of the earth split the pavement in front of him and he moved back hastily, his shoulders thudding painfully back onto the brick. Feet juddering for balance beneath him, he couldn’t tear his eyes from the crack in the pavement. It seemed surreal, the casual rip through the concrete as if it was paper. Phil’s thoughts grasped desperately at his memory of that very morning - the article, the one with the earthquakes. The possibility that it would happen here seemed so infinitesimally low, but here it was.

Call 999. The idea came to him so suddenly that he realized it wasn’t his own - the woman who had pushed past him only a few minutes ago must have still been in the area and was projecting her thoughts to everyone in the area. And stop running.

Phil couldn’t see a single person stop running - projection didn’t control anyone - but there were a few people that scrabbled for their pocketed phones. A phone, he should call Dan. He reached for his pocket, but his fingers slipped uselessly against the empty fabric of his jeans, and he remembered with sinking despair that he had put down his phone on the table back at the apartment and forgotten to pick it up again. “Dan!” he called again, a vain effort lost amongst the noisy crowd now filling the pavements. The other stores along the block were emptying, all of the customers desperate for the open, freeing space of the street. Phil was vaguely sure that, in an earthquake, people were meant to get beneath a table or hold onto something and not run outside, but he had no way of stopping the panic from spreading as quickly as the tremors had begun. He felt utterly useless.

Someone screamed, just another noise amongst the commotion, but Phil’s attention was grabbed by the sound. It seemed like it was still inside the Starbucks, the one he had been unceremoniously propelled from in what seemed like hours ago but couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. His gaze jumped involuntarily from the panic before him to the glass door of the Starbucks just a few feet to his left. It was juddering in its frame, the glass shimmering in place as it threatened to break. There was another piercing wail from inside, and Phil was suddenly sure that someone had been left inside.

He moved without thinking, feet dancing around the shallow crevices that were splintering the ground to make his way to the door. Aware that the glass could shatter at any moment, he grasped the handle and tugged gently, but the door didn’t move. Glancing down, he found the cause of its impediment - the stone around the frame had climbed to escape the ground’s movements and imprisoned the door.

“Help!”

Phil’s gaze snapped up and past the shuddering glass of the door, and now he could see where the screams had originated. There were two teenagers in the far corner of the store. One was sprawled on the floor, a leg twisted at a grotesque angle. She was grasping it with both hands, her head bowed as if she was fighting against the pain. Another girl crouched beside her, trying to hold onto both the wounded girl and a table beside her at the same time. She shivered minutely, but Phil couldn’t tell if it was from pain or the ground still trembling beneath them. She opened her mouth to yell again, but then her gaze locked with Phil’s and her expression collapsed into relief. Waving, her voice shuddered as she spoke. “Help, please! My girlfriend tripped and we can’t get out!”

Phil was quite sure that coming outside, amongst this disaster and panicking people, wouldn’t help, but he wasn’t going to leave them. A few details of the scenario jumped out at him: the flickering lights in the shop; the abandoned coffee cups and pastries strewn abandoned across the tables and tumbled to the floor; and then, the worst of everything, the cracks climbing the darkly painted walls of the Starbucks. It was that which made up his mind more than anything.

“Keep holding onto the table!” he called through the nervously warping glass. “Give me just a second.” He braced himself against the next fierce roll of concrete beneath him. It felt like surfing a wave of brittle, uncertain catastrophe. He had never surfed, and he didn’t think he ever wanted to now.

A cautious tug on the door handle did nothing but anger the glass. A crack seared across the top corner and Phil hesitated. He didn’t want to shatter the glass if he could avoid it. The solution sprang to him as soon as he glanced back down at the frame that was held captive by the upheaved ridges of the stone walkway. Releasing the handle of the door, he flicked a finger and a mental order at the jagged edges of the rock. It resisted him for a moment, yearning to obey the more powerful force of the yawning earth beneath him, but he insisted, and it reluctantly complied. The obstruction sank into the walkway, the stone seeming to melt as it reformed under his power, freeing the frame, and he opened the door instantly, careful but persistent. It took him more than a few moments to navigate inside and across the trembling floor, almost tip-toeing to keep his balance when the ground heaved beneath him. He couldn’t help but glance up at the cracks that were webbing across the wall just beside the two girls on the floor. There was something almost anticipatory about the scrawled lines and the way they stretched eagerly for the ceiling. This building wasn’t safe.

Phil wasn’t sure anywhere was safe right now.

He knelt beside the two girls, ignoring the way his knees dug into the powdered concrete. He didn’t bother asking if they were okay - they weren’t, and neither was anyone right now. The wounded girl, her chin still tucked to her chest, was breathing shakily, her fingers bloodless at the grip on her own leg. Her hair, cascading around her face, shuttered her expression from Phil’s view.

The other girl had watched Phil’s approach with anxious eyes, and her voice sounded gritty now when she spoke. “We need to get out of here.” Her own hand was tightly gripped on the other’s arm.

Phil glanced up briefly at the wall and its spreading cracks. “Yeah, we do.” He surveyed the wounded girl’s leg, then, a hasty inspection that made his stomach twist. Her knee was twisted beneath her in an unnatural position that felt wrong to look at. At least there was no blood. “Do you think you’ll be able to move?”

She simply shook her head, the tips of her hair swaying. Phil could see the tiny purse of her mouth, the pain-tight crinkles that squeezed her eyes shut.

“I’m suppressing her nervous system,” the other girl hastily explained. “That’s my - I can do that, but only when she isn’t moving. Can you...you pushed down the ground outside? What can you - ?”

“I can control small objects,” Phil said, and then hesitated. “...Usually. I might be able to float larger objects, but it’s a lot harder and it doesn’t always work.” He had rarely, other than a few playful mental shoves during his childhood, actually moved a human being. Skin and muscle and bones were so much more fragile than blocks of wood and malleable concrete. Experimenting wasn’t really an option with this aspect of his power, not when he could easily injure delicate skin or breakable bones with the wrong mental nudge, and torn humans did not zipper back together like a ripped piece of fabric would under Phil’s attention.

Something was prickling at the back of Phil’s mind, a bubble of suggestion that felt familiar, but he dismissed it with little effort. When he focussed back on the nerve-suppressing teen crouched beside her girlfriend, he could see her eyebrows furrowed tightly together.

“Are you hurt?” he asked her. She hadn’t seemed injured, but she must have been the one screaming earlier. He might have missed something obvious.

She blinked, then nodded. “No, I’m fine. I just got...tired for a second.”

The floor shook beneath Phil again, gritting bits of crumbled wall into his knees, and it shook his awareness back to the store around them. He studied the cracks again, noting their rapid spread. His throat felt tight, too tight. Spreading cautious fingers, he tilted his palm toward the corners where the wall met the ceiling and prodded at the cracks, little more than a mental brush against them, in an attempt to gauge how deep they went. He needed to know if the structural integrity of the building was compromised. A few pieces of plaster crumbled and showered all three of them, mocking his efforts, but he got his answer only a second later when the ceiling creaked ominously above them.

“Okay, we need to leave,” Phil ordered.

Both girls started to move at the urgency in his voice, but they had all waited too long. With another heave of the ground and a groaning protest from the wall supports, the ceiling lost its will to stay perched precariously on the rebellious walls.

The ceiling fell.

Phil threw up both hands instinctively as the lights, plaster, and wooden beams crumpled inwards and down toward them. The entire building was crashing down upon him and he could feel the weight of it sink past his fingertips, past his desperately outstretched hands, past his arms and shoulders and chest, and settle deep into his bones. It wanted to crush him, and all he had to hold it back was the tightly wound threads of his ability that were twisted around his mind. The strings, those bits of energy that he associated with his power, yanked tight around his head and he clenched his eyes shut against the sudden, searing pain that blossomed in his mind. It was all-consuming, an instant migraine worse than anything he had felt even on his worse days. Briefly overusing his power and regretting the headache it invited was nothing compared to this. It had been less than seconds, and his blood was fiery pain in his veins, his bones quaked, and his skin crawled at the whispered sensation of air against it.

But...he could feel the air. He wasn’t physically crushed beneath a tonne of destroyed ceiling. The cords of his power were strangling his mind, but, somehow, he was still alive.

Phil opened his eyes. Around and above him, the building hung suspended in broken fragments, chunks of plaster, thick beams of wood, and glinting pieces of shattered lights all frozen in terrifying stillness.

“Oh my god,” breathed one of the girls.

He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t move. If he moved even one hand, still flung out at the mass of destruction hovering above them, then he didn’t think he could maintain it. He didn’t even know how he was doing it, not really. There was a part of him that felt detached and silent, observing the display of frozen destruction in a quiet curiosity.

“Oh my god,” said one of the girls again. He could feel her looking at him, shaken. “You’re bleeding.”

One of the threads of Phil’s power reached out for her with anticipation, but he let it slip away. The words that she had spoken registered faintly in the back of his mind, and yet it seemed inconsequential through the haze of pain that surrounded him. He could feel it, though, the blood creeping from the burst vessels in his nose and pooling in the dip above his upper lip.

“Holy shit,” said the other girl. It was the hurt one. Her voice was tight with her own pain from her leg, but she sounded clearer than Phil felt.

He had to force his thoughts to arrange themselves. Most of himself was vacant, wrapped around every misplaced molecule in the air above him, but the strings strangling his mind were drawing ever tighter and he knew something was going to break. Blood dripped from his lips when he spoke. “You need to get out of here.” His throat clamped around the words, and he had to force them out. Slowly, slowly, he let his gaze drift to the way out - and there was still a way out. It was narrow, and surrounded by dangerously suspended bits of the ceiling, but there was a path to the still-open door.

“We wouldn’t leave without you!” Her voice was desperate, but Phil knew in a distant sort of way that yes, she would.

But he could move. He had to move.

“Wait, can you...here.” The girls were moving now, and one hissed with pain, but Phil didn’t dare let his concentration shift enough to take notice of what they were doing. They were done in only a moment, and then they were standing beside him, one leaning heavily on the other. He was still in a half-crouch on the floor, and his fingers trembled in the outstretched pose he maintained.

“Please,” said the girl supporting the other. Her eyes were ringed with white, and she trembled in fear, but she held out a hand unhesitatingly to him. “Please, stand!”

The ground rumbled beneath them again, very briefly. Phil hadn’t noticed that the quaking had stopped until it moved again. It was only a brief slip of concentration, and Phil snatched back control in half a second, but one of the threads digging deep into his mind stretched, and stretched, and snapped.

It started in the corner of the room first. A whisper of suspended plaster pattered against the floor, and then a heavier particle of a lightbulb shattered on an overturned table. Phil clung desperately to the strings of his power, but they were fraying and his mind ached and he was so, so tired.

He was lurching to his feet before he even thought about it. His hands still outstretched, he swayed in place, half-expecting the ground to collapse beneath him or the broken chunks of the building to come crashing down upon them all, but somehow, there was no immediate consequence. His lungs stuttered in his chest, and he sucked in a breath, realizing that he hadn’t been breathing for a few long moments. His chest heaved, and he hurt. Tearing his gaze from the effects of his ability that surrounded him, he met the wide-eyed stares of the girls. The threads of his power began slipping from his grip.

“Run,” he said.

They ran. The injured girl cried out each time her wounded leg hit the floor, but her girlfriend was gripping her waist with a ferocity that Phil would have approved of if he wasn’t distracted by his own mind ripping free from the destroyed ceiling that he held in midair.

A beam, heavy and wooden, crashed to the floor behind the crumpled counter of the shop. Another string tore in Phil’s mind, but he fought against the others trying to wrench themselves from his grip. He took an unsteady step after the girls, who still hobbled desperately for freedom. If the ground moved now, he wouldn’t make it to the door.

The ground didn’t move, but the ceiling did. More clutter fell piece by piece, raining down upon the floor and crushing tables beneath them.

Phil held on, and he held on, and he slowly made his way for the door, and he held on.

And then he was stumbling out of the door just after the girls, and the store was crashing down behind him in a thunderous, bone-rattling roar, and his thoughts were warping terrifyingly inside him. He could taste the blood on his lips, mingled with the fresh air of freedom he had gained. His eyes felt glazed, and he stumbled off the pavement to get further from the store, still tumbling and settling in its ruin. Something crumpled, and Phil realized it was him. Someone caught him, but he didn’t know who it was. His mind was too loud, crashing against every nerve in his body. He felt hyper-sensitive, every touch and smell and glimpse of light screaming pain into him.

Suddenly, blissfully, it all quieted, and Phil let his eyes slip shut to embrace the warming darkness that enveloped him.

~~~

Phil woke up slowly, his thoughts piecing themselves back together as his eyes blinked open. It was dark in the room he was in, but he could make out a slumped form in the chair beside his bed. A slow, steady beeping came from a machine on the other side of him. He was in the hospital, then. He lifted careful fingers to his forehead as if to check that it was still in once piece, and was pleasantly surprised to find that nothing...hurt. He would expect his head to be splitting with a migraine after the bits and flashes of what he could recall.

“You got the good stuff,” came a gravelly voice from the person beside him. “A doctor with a healing ability was in here earlier.”

“Dan,” said Phil. His eyes stung, tears prickling at the corner of his vision as emotion swamped him. “You’re okay.”

“Fuck you,” said Dan, but it was too soft to be anything but fond. He moved abruptly, leaning halfway out of his seat to drape himself across Phil and bury his face in the crumpled neckline of Phil’s hospital gown. “God, you dick. You scared me so much.”

Phil’s arms had moved instinctively to grip him. “I couldn’t find you,” he said, the memory of that frozen panic flashing back to him. “You were just...gone.”

Dan’s laugh was a half-sob, muffled against Phil’s chest. “I couldn’t find you,” he said. “I got shoved across the street somehow and when the tremors stopped and I made it back to the Starbucks, it had already collapsed. I only found you because these two girls were bawling beside you thinking you were dead.”

“Are they okay?” Phil asked, suddenly urgent with the reminder of the couple that had survived an entire crushing building with him. “One of them had a broken leg, I think.”

“Yeah, there were a lot of ambulances and shit that pulled up seconds after everything stopped shaking and falling. They’re safe.” Dan finally sat back up, swiping ineffectually at his eyes with one hand, but the other found Phil’s hand under the thin, sterile hospital blanket and gripped it tightly. “I would have given them my phone number or something, but I was a little preoccupied with you being fucking unconscious.”

“Sorry,” Phil apologized weakly, but Dan laughed, the noise wet and catching in his throat.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, you controlled an entire building. That’s insane.”

It was insane. Phil didn’t want to do it ever again. His head throbbed at the reminder of the crushing sensation and the terror he had felt when he slowly lost his grip over his ability. “Yeah,” he said. “It was...crazy.”

Dan sighed, and he looked exhausted suddenly. The evening sun peeked through the room’s blinds, highlighting his chest and face in rosy golden strips. “God, Phil. You scared me so badly. Never do that again.”

“I don’t plan on it,” Phil agreed. He examined the deep, blood-bruised bags under Dan’s eyes and patted the narrow space on the cot beside him. “Here, nap until the nurse comes to check on me.”

“I’m not going to fit,” Dan protested, but he was already climbing in beside him. His curls tickled Phil’s cheek as he settled in, and his body felt like the missing piece of a puzzle when he pressed himself into Phil.

Phil still didn’t know quite what had happened - what was causing these earthquakes, how he survived such an overextension of his powers, or even what tomorrow would bring - but for now, he closed his eyes and let his arm curl around Dan’s hip and he breathed.

They were both okay. That was all that really mattered.

#phandom big bang #phandom big bang 2019 #pbb 2019 #phan #phanfics #phanfiction #phanfic au #phanfic superpowers #tw mild blood #tw broken bones #tw earthquake #telekinetic phil #empathic dan #+surprise power dan #angst #domestic #happy ending #mostly?#ok i'm done

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