#also 'no one to talk to but the trucks' IS big 'i was desolate. all alone in the empty manor. me and a staff of eighteen servants.' energy

[vittyviperfromvioletland]

The Lyric “I” Drives to Pick up Her Children from School: A Poem in the Postconfessional Mode

BY OLENA KALYTIAK DAVIS

“i” has not found, started, finished “i’s” morning poem,

the poem “i” was writing about “i” having sex with the man “i” left her husband for

the night before or maybe just this morning.

a sex poem, so to speak, so to say, so as to lay...

a foundation for...

what????????

SEX

i lost my sex /poem!

how did it go?

i know it was called

SEX

something about my bosky acres,

my unshrubb’d down

‘bout all being tight and yare

(bring in tiresias?)

did you say soothe?

tiresias, who lies fucking more?

whoops.

who likes fucking more?

(“bring in // the old thought //(allen grossman doing yeats)

that life prepares us for//what never happens”)

today (the color of ) my sex

was lavender then yellow

gold then muted mossy grey and green

i bid my lover

lower

i bid my lover shhhhhhh

i bid my lover

linger

i bid my

lover, go

lover, go!

(see!)

i bid my lover stay

away

“i” notices it is almost time to pick up her children from school!

“i” realizes she has gotten nowhere, nowhere near it, much less inside it, wasted another morning, can’t fucking write a poem to save “i’s” life, oh well,

“i” is, at least,“working”.

“i” pulls on her tight jeans, her big boots, her puffy parka.

“i” remote starts her car.

“i’s” car is a 1995 red toyota 4-runner with racing stripe that doesn’t have enough power for “i”.

“i’s” car stereo also doesn’t have enough power for “i”.

“i” drives cross town listening to dylan, who has plenty of power for “i”.

“i” wonders how why dylan isn’t “i’s” man.

“i” gets some looks from some lesser men, some in better, more powerful trucks, even though “i’s” dirty dirty-blonde hair is covered by a woolen cap.

“i” feels the power of being a single mom in a red truck.

“i” knows it is not enough power.

“i” thinks “i am the man, i suffered, i was there”.

“i” is almost broke, but

“i” thinks “i live more in a continuous present that i enjoy”.

“i” thinks “amor fati”.

“i” notices the chugach mountains.

“i” notices the chugach mountains sometimes look good and sometimes bad.

“i” remembers that yesterday the chugach mountains looked desolate and dirty and roadblocky.

“i” notices the chugach mountains look particularly beautiful today covered in sun and snow.

“i” almost thinks “bathed in sun and snow” but stops herself.

“i” feels that “i” can maybe find, really start, really finish her sex poem tomorrow.

“i” likes the dubus thing about adultery having a morality of its own.

“i” also likes “human drama”.

“i” really enjoyed “i heart huckabees”.

“i” thought sex was overrated for a long time, then not for a year and a half, and now, again.

“i” gives, well, has given, good head.

“i” takes it like a man.

“i” thinks there should be a new “new sexualized and radicalized poetry of the self”,

“i” knows the “single-minded frenzy of a raving madman” but,

“i” mostly keeps her head.

“i” remembers that “as long ago as 1925, boris tomashevsky, a leading russian formalist critic, observed that the “autobiographical poem” is one that mythologizes the poet’s life in accordance with the conventions of his time. it relates not what has occurred but what should have occurred, presenting an idealized image of the poet as representative of his literary school”

“i” wants to be a man like marjorie perloff, helen hennessy vendler, boris tomashevsky.

“i” thinks, on the other hand, “i mean i like in art when the artist doesn’t know what he knows in general; he only knows what he knows specifically”.

“i” thinks: “that mantel piece is clean enough or my name isn’t bob rauschenberg”.

“i” just wishes “i” could talk more smarter theory, no

“i” just wishes “i” could write more smarter poems, no

“i” thinks “WHY I AM A POET AND NOT A...”

“i” thinks “KALYTIAK DAVIS PAINTS A PICTURE”.

“i” wants to include the word “coruscate” in it, and, possibly, a quote from rudolf steiner.

“i” wishes she could remember abrams definition of the structure of the greater romantic lyric, but that it presents “ a determinate speaker in a particularized, and usually localized outdoor setting, whom we overhear as he carries on, in a fluent vernacular which rises easily to a more formal speech, a sustained colloquy, sometimes with himself or with the outer scene, but more frequently with a silent human auditor, present or absent.” and that “he speaker begins with a description of the landscape;’ and that “an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought anticipation, and feeling which remains closely involved with the outer scene.” and that  “in the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision or resolves an emotional problem.” and that “often the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation” evades her.

“i” wants to say “silent human auditor, are you absent or present?” but “i” knows “i” makes, has made, that move too often.

“i” knows “i” is alone in her red truck.

“i” reconsiders, perhaps it is like giving good head?

“i’ thinks his his he himself, but not too bitterly, then

“i” thinks “i”, then,

“i” thinks “you”.

“i” has not told her lover that “i” is not in love with him any longer, but “i” knows he knows, must know.

“i” has not told her lover that “i” had a long conversation with “i’s” x-husband on the phone last night.

“i” thinks “my sidestepping and obliquities”.

“i” thinks love is what went wrong.

“i” feels elizabeth bishop reprimanding “i”.

“i” thinks like a gentle loving firm almost slap but really just a squeeze of, not on, the hand from a, the, mother neither one of them had for very long, long enough.

“i” has not thought of “i’s” dead mother in a long time.

‘i” thinks of jonatham letham and his dead mother and his wall of books.

“i” thinks of mark reagan and his walls and walls of books, and how his landlord, fearing collapse, made him move to the bottom floor.

“i” thinks of doug teter and his smaller, but still, wall of books.

“i” thinks of jude law.

“i” thinks jude law probably doesn’t know how to read.

“i” knows that no lover can be her “objective correlative”, still

“i” thinks “so true a lover as theagenes”.

“i” thinks “so constant a friend as pylades”.

“i” thinks “so valiant a man as orlando”.

“i ” thinks “so right a prince as xenophon’s cyrus”

“i” thinks “so excellent a man in every way as virgil’s aeneas”.

“i” notices dylan is almost done singing “to ramona”.

“i” loves “everything passes, everything changes, just do what you think you should do.”

“i” thinks dylan is singing to “i” .

“i” thinks he means now, and now, and now; daily.

“i” is almost there.

“i” wonders if “i’s” meditation is too long, has gotten away from “i”.

“i” thinks it should take precisely as long as the ride: 15 minutes tops; well, 30  in a snowstorm.

“i” knows it is not snowing.

“i wonders if “i” should at this point even refer to “i’s” meditation.

“i” thinks “man can embody truth but he cannot know it”.

“i” thinks “especially under stress of psychological crisis”.

“i” thinks what’s worse, anaphora or anaphrodesia?

“i” thinks of the diaphragm still inside her.

“i” shutters at the audacity of her sex.

“i” is exactly on time to pick up her daughter.

“i” must wait another 45 minutes to retrieve her son.

“i” will try and remember to remove it promptly when they get back to “i’s” house, i.e. home.

“i” has fucked with the facts so “you” think she’s robert lowell. (but whoever saw a girl like robert lowell?)

“i” doesn’t care if “you”, silent human auditor, present or absent, never heard of, could give a flying fuck about, robert lowell.

[nexusnickva]

Ultra Space Links the Main Series Pokémon Games with the Mystery Dungeon series

(This is just a theory I posted onto r/GameTheorists)

Given the scope of the series, it's no surprise the Pokémon has gotten it's fair share of spin-offs. From Pokémon Ranger, to PokéPark, to Pokkén Tournament, each spin-off has it's own unique vibes to it. Most of the games take place in either far away regions, such as Pokémon Ranger with Fiore or Pokkén Tournament with Ferrum, whereas others such as PokéPark exist in alternate universes separate from the main series. Because of that, you would expect that the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon subseries of games would fall into the same latter category, but there's something kind of amiss about it.

The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games follow an isekai sort of formula. The basic premise is that the protagonist, a human, has been transported to a world inhabited only by Pokémon and transformed into one too. After meeting a partner Pokémon and most likely joining some sort of team, the protagonist must traverse various dungeons alongside their partner Pokémon in order to find a way back home. That all sounds well and good, but the thing that used to confuse me is that the Pokémon of the Mystery Dungeon world know about humans. They acknowledge humans, but only as fictional beings.

"Humans don't exist anywhere except in fairy tales, or that's what I always thought." - The Partner, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (I'm just gonna source the entire game's transcript here you can Ctrl + F it)

I always wondered how the Pokémon of the Mystery Dungeon world knew about humans if humans don't exist in there world, but I would write it off as a silly "Hee hoo, Pokémon fictional in real world, human fictional in Pokémon world" gaff. That was until a very crucial detail in the most popular games in the subseries hit me like a truck.

(MAJOR SPOILERS for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky/Time/Darkness ahead)

So, in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky/Time/Darkness, the big plot twist half way through the game is that the amnesiac protagonist who could only remember their name and that they were human is actually from a ruined future, fighting alongside their partner Pokémon Grovyle against the traitorous Dusknoir who used their amnesiac state to gain their trust and vilify Grovyle. That sounds pretty straight forward until the glaring issue becomes apparent. The protagonist is from the ruined future of the MYSTERY DUNGEON WORLD. When you go to the ruined future, there's no other humans in sight, and it's quite clearly a desolate version of the world you previously ventured through. Considering that there's no other humans anywhere, only very few Pokémon, it's unlikely that there's just a secret society of humans there. So how did the protagonist, a human, get to the Mystery Dungoen world? Well, that question remained unanswered for over 9 years until Generation 7 of Pokémon finally gave us enough hints to put together the puzzle.

Generation 7, Sun and Moon, introduced the concept of Ultra Space: a spatial realm that connects a bunch of alternate dimensions and worlds together. Ultra Space can be accessed by Ultra Wormholes, which are commonly opened by the Light Trio (Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma) but can also occur naturally. Canonically, there have been cases of people falling into Ultra Wormholes (deemed as "Fallers") as well as cases where societies have been formed within Ultra Wormholes such is the case with Ultra Megalotropolis. Considering every Ultra Space area you visit in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon contains at least one Pokémon and rarely humans, it's not out of the question that one world in Ultra Space was inhabited by Pokémon exclusively who wound up making themselves an entire society that would go on to become the world of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. Perhaps the protagonist from the Explorers games was a "Faller" who never actually returned to the main series world. That's not all, however, as another bizarre connection between the main series games and Mystery Dungeon subseries exists.

In the aforementioned Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky/Time/Darkness games, in order to evolve a Nosepass, you require an item known as the Coronet Rock.

" A rock that radiates a peculiar energy, rumored only to exist on Mt. Coronet, a place that no one knows anything about. It allows certain kinds of Pokémon to evolve." - In-game item description

Notice that it directly refers to Mt. Coronet in the tool-tip. Mt. Coronet is not an area in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. None of the Mystery Dungeon games allow you to go there. Why? Because Mt. Coronet is from the Sinnoh region of Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. The thing that strikes me as odd is the fact that they know what Mt. Coronet is, but don't know anything about it. This could be one of two things.

A) The inhabitants of the PMD world heard about Mt. Coronet via Fallers and coined the name "Coronet Rock" after this mysterious, other-worldly place.

or

B) The PMD world is an alternate version of the main game's world in the same way that the Ultra Ruin in an alternate future version of Hau'oli City from Alola and Mt. Coronet actually exists there.

Both potential answers still point to the Mystery Dungeon world being connected to the main series world via Ultra Space.

One last thing that isn't necessarily evidence, but it's a neat thing that may potentially be a hint at what my theory proposes. Canonically, Ultra Wormholes were discovered by a man named Mohn, husband of Lusamine of the Aether Foundation and father to Lillie and Gladion. Gladion in particular is the main rival of Pokémon Sun and Moon and has a bizarre connection to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. Both his encounter and battle themes are guitar remixes of the Run Away, Fugitives theme from the original Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team. The main series games have never really gone out of their way to reference the Mystery Dungeon series, so it's quite interesting that the son of the man who discovered Ultra Space has a guitar remix of one of the most pivotal songs from the original Pokémon Mystery Dungeon as his theme.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. I know that not all of my evidence is necessarily damning, but I feel like there's enough there to have a fun time discussing it. That's what making these posts is all about; proposing fun new ways to think about some of our favorite games, considering things you didn't think possible, and mainly just getting to talk about the things we enjoy. After all... it's just a theory.

A GAME THEORY!

I will never get tired of ending theories with that.

#game theory #fan theory #pokemon #pokemon mystery universe #gladion #pokemon sun and moon #sun and moon #alola #ultra sun and ultra moon #ultra space #ultra beast #explorers of darkness #explorers of time #explorers of sky #pmd #pmd eos #pmd explorers

[ssfghfrrggf]

Down is Faster than Up Chapter 4/ the final chapter

“Hey! Look who’s back!” Herrmann cries, as his gaze meets Stella’s

She’s greeted with whoops and cheers from everyone else as she walks into the common room for the first time in what feels like forever. She’s picked up her fair share of shifts at Molly’s the last week or so, but it still feels like it’s been forever since she’s seen everyone; it’s different seeing everyone at Molly’s than it is seeing them here at the house.

“How are you feeling Momma?” Mouch asks, standing up to give her hug.

“Good as new and ready to be driving 81 again,” she says cheerfully and hugs Mouch back.

“Aw! Right off the bat she’s reestablishing her dominance!” Casey jokes from where he’s standing next to the counter sipping his morning cup of coffee.

“You’re sure I can’t drive one last shift?” Mouch asks, his tone playful and teasing.

“You’ve had a month and a half to drive that thing, I’m taking my seat back,” Stella laughs. She’s missed the swing of things, driving the truck, the banter with the crew… all of it.

“Are you sure you still know how to drive?” Gallo asks, with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Excuse me, what’d you say candidate?” Stella says and puts her hands on her hips.

“Nah-ah-ah. Not candidate anymore, old lady,” Gallo replies, grinning from ear to ear.

“You wanna repeat what you just said?” Stella demands, pinning him down with a playful glare, and making a side mental note to congratulate him on completing his candidacy.

“Why? Did you forget your hearing aides?” Gallo asks, with a victorious smirk.

“Nah, it all sounded like gibberish baby talk to me. Little baby Andy can form better words than you,” Stella retorts, and Gallo opens and closes his mouth a few times trying to find some witty clap back. Ritter gives him a comforting pat on the back.

“It’s okay man, no one wins against Stella with these things,” Ritter says quietly, and hands his friend a cup of coffee. “Drink this.”

“That’s right,” Stella gloats. “Drink the bitter taste of defeat.”

“Alright,” Casey says, chuckling to himself. “How are you?”

“100%, Captain,” Stella replies. “The doctor gave me the all clear and I’m ready for full duty. I got the paperwork in my bag.”

“How’s Severide?” Cruz asks hopefully. She can’t help but wonder if he’s been the acting lieutenant this whole time; she knows everyone here, except probably Matt and Sylvie, are expecting Kelly to make a push to come back, but she’s pretty sure he won’t. He seems pretty committed to the idea of being a stay at home dad, which after everything that happened she’s more than okay with. She’s just sure if he’ll really be happy; he’s not a sit around and doing nothing all day kind of guy.

“He’s walking on his own two feet again,” she reports. “The physical therapist is impressed with how quickly he’s turning it around.”

“Any idea when he’s coming back?” Capp asks. “We miss having him around.”

“Not really sure, guys. He’s still got a lot of recovering to do, and not just physically,” Stella replies. There’s times she worries about him; what happened to him produced a real shock to his system.

“You have paperwork to give to Boden, right?” Casey asks, interrupting the conversation about Kelly.

“Yes, I do,” Stella replies, grateful for the shift in discussion. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay on that conversation path without accidentally saying something about Kelly thinking about retirement.

“Let’s go get it filed and make sure he knows you’re here.”

“Thanks for the save, Casey,” Stella says once their a little ways down the hallway.

“He’s still thinking he’s not going to come back?” Casey asks, sounding disappointed.

“Yeah, he really hasn’t even talked about doing any of this physical therapy so he can come back here, it’s all just for Andy and being able to do things with him,” Stella replies with a smile. She’s always known Kelly would be a good dad, but she never really imagined he’d give up squad for it. Thinking about him retiring is a bitter sweet thought, she’ll miss him being at work with her, but knowing he’s safe at home is more than she’d ever even let herself hope for.

“You don’t think he’ll get bored?” Casey asks as they reach Boden’s door.

“I’m really not sure. He seems content right now,” She says before opening the door to the chief’s office.

A look of pure joy floods across the battalion chief’s face as she opens the door, and he stands up grinning ear to ear. “Kidd! I thought I smelled something stinking up my house!”

“Happy to see you, too chief,” Stella replies with a laugh and offers him a hand shake. He skips her hand and goes straight for a hug instead. After a couple seconds he pulls away and straightens himself up.

“I’m glad you’re back. The house isn’t the same without you around,” he says clearing his throat. “The place wasn’t the same without you around.”

“Glad to be back, sir,” Stella replies and hands him her papers. “And I’m cleared for full duty, here’s all the paperwork.”

“You’re feeling ready to be back?” Boden asks, thumbing through the papers. “There’s no rush. You’re spot on 81 is safe, if you want to take a few more weeks.”

“Top of my game chief,” Stella reports confidently.

Boden looks from her to Casey and nods. “What’s the word on Kelly?”

Stella glances sideways at Casey who nods and closes the door.

“He’s not sure if he’s coming back,” Stella says, clearing her throat. Kelly had given her permission to tell Boden if he asked. “And he’d like for that to stay between the three of us until he decides for sure.”

The chief nods understandingly. “I never thought Kelly Severide would retire before me. How serious is he?”

“He seems to mean it, at least right now. There’s no saying he won’t get bored down the line and want back in; but this was a real reality check for him, chief,” Stella replies. It was a reality check for both of them. “He wants to make sure he’s around for Andy.”

“Tell him to take all the time he needs, and that no matter what he decides he’s always welcome here, and that 51 is his family.”

“I will, chief. Thank you,” Stella replies, and Boden looks like he’s about to say more, but the bell rings and interrupts him. Stella can’t help but smile a little, everything works exactly the way it used to.

***

Severide can’t remember the last time he saw the station empty; it’s strange and unnatural walking into the station and finding the bay empty and the squad table desolate. 

“Well, Andy, we were going to say hi to mom at work,” Kelly says adjusting his son’s position in his arms, as he turns taking in the empty apparatus floor. It makes him nervous and antsy, like he shouldn’t be here like he should be out on the call with the rest of 51. It also makes him nervous for Stella, whatever call they’re out on, it’s a big one if everyone is out of the house. “Guess we’ll have to do a tour instead.”

He casts one last glance over his shoulder at the empty bay before letting himself inside the main building. The only sounds inside are the noise of air coming in through the ceiling vents and the sound of the TV still playing in the common room. Kelly sighs and makes his way to the couch; he’s half tempted to turn back around and go to the squad table, but the thought of doing that feels wrong somehow. If he’s quitting, then it’s not really his squad table anymore… just like this won’t really be his house anymore- his home away from home. Out of respect, he doesn’t sit in Mouch’s spot on the couch even though the old firefighter isn’t there.

He’d always imagined becoming an old firefighter in this house, hoped for it really. It had always seemed so right, but now he’s not sure. Everything has changed so much for him so fast; being a firefighter was all he’d ever wanted, but now he’s a dad and it seems to be the only thing he wants now.

It’s not long before the sound of the trucks pulling back into the station startles Kelly out of his thoughts and brings him back to reality.

“Now that’s not a sight I ever thought I’d see,” Mouch says coming into the common room shaking his head happily. “Kelly Severide with a kid.”

“What are you talking about?” Herrmann declares with a mischievous tone his voice. “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner with the amount of-”

Mouch cuts him off with a scolding glare and Herrmann just shrugs innocently.

“You wanna hold him?” Kelly offers, ignoring Herrmann’s comment.

“Of course I do!” Herrmann says reaching out his hands to take Andy. “Come’er big guy!”

“Hey! Lieutenant!” Cruz dealers gleefully, obviously thrilled to see him, as he comes through the door followed by Casey, Gallo, Ritter, and finally, Stella.

“See, I knew you couldn’t survive more than a couple hours without me,” Stella teases lovingly and scoots past Cruz to get to him.

“No, I just knew you couldn’t survive a couple hours without me and Andy, so i decided to come down to the house,” Kelly replies softly as Stella wraps her arms around him and rests her chin on his shoulder. He didn’t realize until now how much he really needed the hug from her.

“So when are you planning on making your triumphant return?” Cruz asks, walking over to the counter to retrieve an apple.

“Yeah, the house really isn’t the same without you around,” Herrmann adds, bouncing Andy gently on his hip.

Kelly pulls himself out of Stella’s hug and rests his arm over her shoulder as he looks around the room. For the longest time, this place was home, the single balanced constant in his life, and in many ways it always will be. And all these people are his family. It feels wrong to walk away from it, but in many ways it also seems so right. He glances to Stella, who sadly doesn’t hold the answers he’s looking for only the key to his heart, she and Andy are the only things he needs.

“I don’t think I am, Cruz,” Severide finally says. Telling them he’s not sure would’ve been easier, but they’re his family and they all deserve to know the truth. There’s a shocked silence. “I haven’t decided anything for sure yet, but I almost died before getting to meet my kid so it gave me a lot to think about. I don’t want to miss a second of watching him grow up.”

Herrmann is the first one to break the leftover silence after Severide finishes his explanation, and he has a big smile on his face as he does so. “I never thought you’d retire before me and Mouch. And I feel inclined to talk you out of this because you’re the best damn firefighter I’ve ever seen, but I’m not gonna. If it’s what you feel the need to do for your kid, then you go right on ahead and do it. We’ll all have your back no matter what you decide. Besides, looking at this cute little face, I can’t say I blame you.”

“I’ll drink a toast to that after shift!” Mouch agrees and gives Kelly a pat on the shoulder. “Retirement with a nice family is the best thing you can hope for in this job. We’re happy for you.”

Cruz still looks stunned and confused, but he nods his head in agreement. “You do what you have to do lieutenant.”

“Thanks man,” Kelly says and gives him a firm handshake. If he decides to go through with this, after all, he’ll have to recommend Cruz for a promotion to lieutenant. He can’t think of any better hands to leave squad three in.

Then he looks across the room to Casey, who gives him a simple affirming head nod. It's a simple gesture, but it says everything that needs to be said as they reach a silent understanding. A long time ago he, Casey, and Darden had joked about running the house together someday; one of them as chief and the others as captains, and then eventually retiring together. They were young, dreams were dreams, and ambition was everything. Then things had changed. Darden had died. Sev had still hung onto the idea of running the place with Casey someday, and he’s pretty sure Casey did too. But there are some things worth letting go of ambition for. Family is definitely one of those things, and Casey understands that.

#chicago fire #kelly severide #stella kidd #stellaride #this chapter was significantly shorter than the previous 3 but i think it works and makes a nice ending #i hope everyone enjoys it! #i'll probably reblog this post in the morning

[utterlyinevitable]

Do We Have A Future?: April

Part 1 | Part 2: November | Part 3: January

Paring: Dr. Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Dr. Rebecca Lao) Word Count: 2.1k Warning: Adult themes, mental health triggers, themes of depression, pregnancy complications and termination Summary: Rebecca told Ethan and now they have to live with the aftermath of their decision.

Author’s Note: Sensitive subject matter means I really suggest only reading if you are 18+ years old. 

Taglist: @ohchoices @dulceghernandez @aylamwrites @binny1985 @ramseysno1rookie @interobanginyourmom @queencarb @imactuallytheceoofthecompany @rookiefromedenbrook @eramsey28 @choicesficwriterscreations

________________________________________

They seemingly had put this event behind them. The couple moved through the motions of daily life as shadows of who they used to be. They kept a routine and followed it to a T - Ethan profoundly thankful for the false sense of normalcy for which it gave. He could rest easier knowing they were almost in sync again. But unbeknownst to him, Rebecca thought about their unborn child and the life they could have had every single day. 

Becca’s pride still kept her from seeking help. She didn’t want to bother Ethan anymore with the what-ifs and could-have-beens. She believed he truly had moved on and forgotten - he didn’t seem weighed down by their decision anymore, his eyes weren’t as heavy as hers anymore. 

She had gotten very good at pretending she wasn’t being swallowed alive. Every morning she dressed herself in her best clothes, would put her makeup on carefully over her weaknesses, and paint a smile on her face all the while thinking of the little imaginary bundle sleeping in their pristine second bedroom. In her mind she and Ethan turned the spare bedroom into a pink and white haven of a nursery after days of arguing over textures and color schemes wanting everything to be perfect for her. The thought of her baby’s peaceful, scrunchy face gave Becca the courage to continue on.   

At work Becca tried very hard to avoid the overgrown concern of her friends and the other members of the diagnostics team but there was no escape. She had been back at work for nearly four months and they’ve all seen her destructive and desolate actions - from not sleeping to overworking and constant avoidance of any sort of personal actions. One day at lunch Sienna and Kyra tried to get her to open up but Becca put on her curated mask and distanced herself further. 

“Hey,” Sienna said with all the courage she could muster. “How's life at Ramsey’s?” she asked as she sat down across from her best friend whom she spotted alone at a corner table and staring at the wall. 

Becca’s eyes were void of emotion, just hollow spheres staring back at two of her dearest allies. Her chicken and avocado salad remained closed and untouched with not even a fork in sight. Between Sienna’s uncertainty and Becca’s disinterest the air around them was cumbrous.  

“Are you gettin’ it all the time?” Kyra tried to lighten the mood with an eyebrow wiggle as she took her seat next to Sienna. 

Becca took a second to contort her features before answering, needing to muster up enough strength so her voice didn’t sound as weak as the two pairs of concerned chocolate eyes boring down on her made her feel. 

“It’s good,” she forced through a weak smile hoping her friends bought it for joy. “Weird...but also in a good way?” 

It was weird in the sense that Becca still knew Ethan didn’t believe in marriage or children, and yet he made the leap. He pushed himself and solidified her as his partner - his life partner with a set of keys, name on the bills and all. On paper as far as litigation was concerned Ethan and Rebecca were on their way to a civil partnership. Although she doubted they would make it that far. It’s only been a few months. We could still break up… 

On edge, Sienna took a big gulp of air in hope that she worded her next question just right, “Are you happy?”  

Her eyes searched her broken friend’s features for any indication of the truth. 

“Yes,” Becca replied meekly. 

“I’m worried about you,” Sienna whispered back. 

Kyra broke the trance between the two hurting girls and added just as softly, “We’re all worried about you.”  

Becca shifted her weight towards Kyra. 

“I’m fine,” with great effort she etched a small convincing smile into her features. 

Her eyes met Kyra’s and for a second she felt guilty for keeping this a secret - for worrying her one friend that should be enjoying her new lease on life. Kyra has been in remission for the last six months after undergoing a risky and experimental surgery last year. On top of her shallowness, Becca now regretted not being able to let Kyra lead the carefree life she battled so ruthlessly to get. 

“Just busy with everything going on. Ethan’s been having me shadow tough cases,” Becca lied. Ethan didn’t want her anywhere near the most disastrous of cases for fear something would set her off and she’d crumble back into that dark hole once and for all. But Becca didn’t listen. She would tag along with June and Baz, Ethan unable to stop her without letting the cat out of the bag. 

Kyra didn’t waver in calling her out, “Becca, we’ve barely seen you since you moved out.” 

Looking down at the table, the insecure friend with a weight permanently lodged in her chest said, “We have a lot going on.”  

“Can we talk about it?” Sienna all but begged, “I’m sure it’ll make you feel better.”  

Becca brushed off the notion with a shake of her head, “It’s nothing.” 

Kyra’s hand reached across the table for Becca’s, “You know you can tell us anything, right? We’ll still love you.”  

They may still love me but they’ll never look at me the same way. They’ll never see just Becca, they’ll see me as the failed mother that I am. 

Becca folded her hands in her lap and sat taller. Looking between the two before her, she responded, “I love you too.” 

  The only person not throwing a pity party at Becca’s expense in the slightest was Dr. June Hirata. For that she was actually grateful for the arrogant and manipulative doctor on her team. Although psychological behavior is her trade, June did her best to keep her questions and analysis of Becca to herself. No point in igniting that fire again, June thought as she reminded herself of the time Becca scolded her for reading her employee file behind her back way back when. 

June knew ever since that encounter that Rebecca regarded her with extreme contempt, however one day she just couldn’t stop the gnawing desire to know why Dr. Rebecca Lao so adamantly avoided working on cases with her boyfriend after watching the two not-so-subtly stare each other down at daily briefing. 

“What’s going on with you lately?” June so casually asked as they walked in stride through the illuminated walls of Edenbrook to their next patient’s room - a four year old boy who hadn't had a bowel movement in weeks and the warning signs of vertigo.  

“Nothing,” Becca muttered firmly before dismissing, “Don’t worry about it, June.” 

“Whatever you say, Dr. Lao.” Although Becca wasn’t looking at her she could feel Dr. Hirata’s harsh eye roll. “Trouble in paradise?” the British doctor added, shooting her shot. 

Not only did June make notes of Becca’s recent behavior, she noticed how Ethan had changed over the last few months as well. At one point the hair on his chin was longer and more unkempt than she’d ever seen. His facial features were older as if he carried a burden - one much bigger than his previous hardship of holding onto Naveen’s secret years ago. Dr. Hirata never thought she’d seen this statuesque man crumble any lower than when he thought his dear friend was on death row. 

June observed how Ethan was on edge and snapped easily during those early weeks of the incident. Then he seemed to tiptoe around Rebecca at work, secretly reassigning some of her cases or running the tests himself behind her back. Now more recently she noted that the pair avoided working one-on-one. He was protecting something and the thought of not knowing irked Dr. Hirata to no end. 

I know I’d want to work closely with my boyfriend every chance I got. 

It wasn’t a secret Ethan and Becca were dating, Elijah let it slip to a few of the nurse’s by accident once long before. Even if he didn't, anyone who spent enough time with the two doctor’s could feel the undeniable chemistry that radiated off of them - the pure unadulterated adoration they shared even in the darkest of times.   

“It’s none of your business,” Becca snapped as she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from letting her emotions take over. 

Rebecca knew her relationship with Ethan was far from what it once was. They didn’t have the same banter anymore or playfully debate to get in the last word. They found it increasingly complicated to challenge one another now; neither wanting to push the other too far. They were fragile. They were a window - the thick glass of their relationship looking ahead but also peeking back into the other side, constantly and simultaneously staring back at what once was and what’s to come. One small stone could break them - only having to find the spot with the most tension and they’d shatter. 

Ethan and Becca continuously strived to bring back the passion they once shared. She would take him out to dinner or to his sacred box at the opera, things she knew were convivial and released his stress. Ethan would plan dates to Naveen’s cabin where they could spend some time enjoying the outdoors, or he would spend countless evenings looking for new and trendy food trucks to drag her too, just like her friends used to do back before. All they wanted was for the other to be happier. 

Sometimes a little gleam would pass through their features, though not long enough for either one to relish in it. 

***

They laid in their king-sized bed wrapped in each other's arms after a grueling day at the hospital. Becca’s head nuzzled in the soft nook where Ethan’s bare chest met the crook of his neck - her favorite spot. The rain poured down sideways outside rapping on the large window with monotonous ticks. Ethan’s eyes stared blankly at the bare ceiling cherishing their comfortable silence while absentmindedly tracing circles over his ratty t-shirt on her back. Both were thankful for the peaceful closeness found in the simplistic nature of snuggling, the intimacy found in the warmth of the other. 

In the safety of their dark bedroom, shielded by Ethan’s embrace and cloaked by the late hour of time Becca found the courage to speak from her heart, 

“What do you think our life would be like if we had it?” 

It’d be six weeks til due date this week.  

“Becca…” Ethan warned. 

A quick surge of unencumbered courage kept her going, “It’d be due in June… Would we be looking at houses or turning the second bedroom into a nursery?” 

He let out a sigh. At least she’s finally talking about it. 

Finally Ethan let themselves indulge in bringing up their future. 

“I’d imagine we’d buy a townhome nearby,” he rationalized, furrowing his brows as he thought of the logistics of making room for baby. He moved his hand up from her back to run his fingers through Becca’s messy hair, still looking at the blank canvas ceiling as he painted the picture. “I like this area; it’s quiet and close to work. We would need a couple more rooms definitely and a backyard for Jenner and…” His hand ceased all motion. “it to play in.” He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge a child - their child. That’s not what the universe had planned for them. 

Letting his words give her security she smiled into his chest and continued the fantasy, “My mom would definitely want to come stay with us the first few months.” Her hand on his chest searched for his free hand in the dark. 

“My dad as well,” he told her matter-of-factly as he laced their fingers together. Ethan let out a preemptive chuckle, “Hell, Naveen would probably move himself in,” he joked and she could hear the happy smirk adorning his lips. She felt his chest rise and fall a little quicker as he laughed to himself at the thought of his mentor being consistently present throughout their children’s lives. In this moment - wrapped up in the dream - everything made sense. 

None of this would be possible without her, he thought with a small shake of his head, thinking of their beginning and how she made all his days all the more bearable. How, through her weaseling, she was able to give Naveen more years than he could have imagined and a family Ethan never thought possible. 

Although the springtime storm raged outdoors the atmosphere around the couple was light and airy. A curated happiness circled around them, begging them to fall into the future.  

“The more the merrier!” she noted happily. Cuddling further into Ethan, needing him to be so much closer. “It takes a village after all.”  

Without thinking Ethan responded with a grin and a kiss to her head, “Our kids won’t be lonely, that’s for sure.” 

Her heart leaped. 

Is he coming around?

____________________

A/N: Whelp. We only have one more part left... i’m not ready for it to be over 😥

like/comment/reblog i need the validation

#open heart #open heart fanfic #choices open heart #choices fanfic #choices oph2 #oph #oph ff #ff #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #tw: abortion #tw: mental health

[kvetchlandia]

Dave Heath     New York City     c.1957

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,   who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

--Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″  1956

[newloverofbeauty]

Richard Avedon:  Peter Orlovsky & AllenGinsberg  (1963)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

 dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

 angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural 

darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, 

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, 

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, 

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, 

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, 

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night 

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, 

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, 

illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, 

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over 

the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun 

and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings 

and kind king light of mind, 

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx 

on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-

wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, 

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale 

beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, 

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and 

eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes,

 meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, 

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, 

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

 who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, 

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, 

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, 

 who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, 

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, 

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, 

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and 

followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, 

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and 

the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, 

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big 

pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

 who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, 

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing 

while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed 

down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, 

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, 

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime 

but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, 

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, 

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, 

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, 

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath 

when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, 

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate 

the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb

 and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, 

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of 

cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall 

and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, 

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed 

in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, 

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, 

cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable 

lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops 

in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & 

especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, 

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden

 Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay 

and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

 who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a 

door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, 

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the 

wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, 

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, 

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, 

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, 

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, 

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, 

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, 

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, 

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to 

open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, 

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine 

shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, 

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown 

and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the 

filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses 

barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz 

finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, 

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, 

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision 

or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, 

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, 

who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out 

the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, 

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, 

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads 

and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, 

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers 

to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, 

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, 

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented 

themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and 

who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, 

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, 

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the 

visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, 

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes 

of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

 with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M.

 and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, 

a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— 

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— 

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the 

alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, 

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and 

trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs 

and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater 

Omnipotens Aeterna Deus 

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you 

speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

 the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, 

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and 

blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma 

sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio 

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat 

a thousand years. 

 –Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″ 1956

[stonecoldjerseyfox]

Jersey on my mind (part 20)

The sun rises and slowly transforms the pitch black night into early morning, then into forenoon. Daryl observes how the quiet community, as if it had been in a coma overnight, slowly wakes up. He sees people come out of the houses, hears Carol calling out ‘breakfast’s ready’ inside the house and the clinking of forks, spoons and knives against plates. But he doesn’t move from his spot at the porch stair. 

Ever since he and Jersey handed over the watchtower to Eric and another Alexandrian that he haven’t bothered to put a name on and Mila went to sleep for a few hours, he’s been sitting here, sunken in thoughts.

It’s too much to process somehow. Everything he feels, everything he found out about her; it’s overwhelming not knowing what to do with all of these swirling… whatever it is. She’s like a goddamn hurricane. All hair and hell. Damn, she’s pretty, beautiful even. And that accent. She talks a lot. She’s pragmatic to the point of being indifferent. Maybe because she was raised like a goddamn robot by a psychopath. She’s hot tempered, impatient, stubborn... and holy fuck, Daryl digs it. All of her; the big heart, the kindness, the humor and the sarcasm. It’s like booze mixed with cherry coke. The way she looks at him… or is it just a creation of his own imagination? Is he a complete idiot for thinking that she looked at him in a special way when they sat there together, in the dark, sharing that bottle of vodka? Could it be- no! Obviously she doesn’t- he’s a fool. But the way he felt, throughout his entire body and soul, when their hands touched, he definitely felt something. But that might just be it, his own stupid delusion. When she told him she’d been engaged, and declared that whoever gave her the ring was dead, Daryl felt like the devil himself for feeling relieved, but also bad for feeling like that. 

The night has truly been peculiar, he thinks, while resting his gaze on a bird in a tree, trying to feed its squeaking nestlings. Parts of what Mila told him Daryl had recognized from his own childhood. He’d been beaten up many times by his old man, leaving deep scars that never faded. He’d been neglected and abused for most of his childhood, by everyone when it came down to it. But he was a boy. Not that it justified his father's actions towards him, but Daryl could at least, and used to, fight back. He was a pretty good fighter at an early age and knew he had to aim for the kidneys. But Mila was a girl, an unwanted girl who had to face the shame and blame for not being born as the son her old man so badly wanted. He’d reminded her every single day of her shortcoming, and she had apologized, and that (and when she told about the physical abuse, because that’s what it was, even though she didn’t refer to it that way) had hit him hard. How she somehow, even though she clearly despised and distanced herself from his actions, could talk about him with something that sounded like affection, Daryl found astonishing. Like she desperately cling on to the good memories, the few she might have. Was it a perfect example of Stockholm Syndrome, or just pure madness? She’d lived in a lie for almost her entire life, he’d murdered people; how was it possible that she was so indifferent after what she’d been through? Or maybe she just managed to conceal it behind a thick wall of oppressed feelings. He could understand that more than well in a way. But on the other hand it seemed like she’d turned her life around; she had a kid who she’d managed to keep alive. Her story had made him feel secure, less odd about his own history that he’d tried so hard to oppress, to push back into the deepest darkest corner of his soul, never to reveal to any living soul. 

Daryl had never talked to anyone about his upbringing, in fact he’d never talked to anyone as he talked to Mila. Somehow she managed to get these things out of him, that he had previously buried deep inside himself, that he’d never in a million years thought he would tell anyone as he told her the other night. She treats him in a way he’s never been treated before. 

Daryl twitches when he feels a thug on his vest. He removes his chin from the stock of the crossbow and turns where he sits on the porch stairs. 

“Hey kiddo.”

Juri smiles and sits down on the stairs next to him. He’s dressed in dungarees and boots, has seemingly managed to dress himself this morning, but has failed to tie the shoelaces that dangles around his soles.

“That won’t do. Come here.” Daryl waves his hand and nods at the shoelaces that flutter in the wind. The boy obediently raises his foot, Daryl takes it and puts it to his knees and begins to lace the small boot. “Gotta tie ‘em up good, or they’ll fall off ya’ feet.” he says and ties the shoe steadily, but not too tight. He doesn’t want to be responsible for causing Jersey Jr. a broken foot.

Daryl ties the other shoes too, then they sit there next to each other, quiet. Every now and then the boy snails up at him curiously. When Daryl snails back, Juri looks away, giggling. He’s kinda funny, Daryl thinks to himself and smiles. Cheeky, a li’ rascal.

“Ya’ mum’s not up yet?” he asks. 

Juri shakes his head, then makes a snarling sound. 

“She snores?” Daryl grins. “Yeah, ‘bet she does, kiddo. Heard ya’ were a snorer too.” He gives of a grunt, like a pig and Juri bursts into a big, faint, silent laugh. “Ya’ wanna go for a walk?”

Juri nods eagerly. 

“Let’s go.” 

Daryl gets up, grabs Juri under his armpits and lifts him up and places him on the ground. They walk around the pond, a walk that normally doesn’t take half an hour, but since his companion is only 3 feet tall, the pace is below average. When they arrive back to the house, Mila’s standing on the porch, shielding her face from the sun with her hand. Daryl once again gets all warm throughout the body and his tongue starts to crawl back up toward his palate. No, dammit! Juri starts to run towards her when he sees her, with three flowers clenched in his hand, that he picked next to the pond. 

“For me!” Mila’s smile could light up the entire Safe-Zone if it would've been night, when he hands her the flowers. “Moya lyubov, thank you.” She looks up at Daryl. “Where are your flowers?”

“Didn’t pick any.”

“What a shame.” She stands up and looks at Juri. “You know what! Carol has been an angel, and made lunch for you, Romeo.”

Mila shoves Juri into the house, while the boy waves at Daryl from between her legs. 

“Slept well?” 

“Enough.” she answers easily. “I need to get out of here for a while. Gotta go find new shoes for Juri. What kind of mother lets her son walk around in heavy boots in this heat?” 

“Good luck with that.” Daryl scoffs. “Getting past those assholes unnoticed won’t be easy.” 

The sapphire eyes peers at him through the sun. 

“Wanna join then?” She asks boldly with a grin. “Show off those hunter skills. Trust me, it’s easier to find game meat than a pair of kids size nine’s.” 

Daryl snorts and looks around. It’s not an impossible mission, but foolish. On the other hand, he can’t just wander around in here. He’s convinced that she would leave on her own if he doesn’t follow, no matter how much he, or anyone else, opposed it. 

“Gear up, Jersey.” He therefore answers and nods a little. 

Mila smiles triumphantly, turns on her heel and enters the house. She returns minutes later, with the automatic rifle on her shoulder and a backpack, dressed in a worn, black leather jacket over the dark t-shirt.

“New jacket?”

“Not directly. I got it for my eighteenth birthday. Saw it in this store down in Ashbury Park and thought, ‘hey, I’d look so cool in that’, so Adam and Peter brought it to me.” She corrects her left  boot with the other foot. “I love fun jackets! Fringes, embroideries- I'll be buried in this one, if that's the last thing I do.” Mila smiles. “Oh, and I told Carol we were going out.”

“What did she say?” Daryl asks, clenching his jaw. Some things are better left unsaid. Like sneaking off in the middle of what can be likened to a siege.

“Something like, have fun-” Mila replies and hurries down the porch. “And take it easy.”

They walk toward the wall, toward the place Daryl climbed to enter the Safe-Zone. Mila climbs onto the truck easily and soon they’re standing on the roof of the trailer, looking out over the landscape on the other side of the Alexandria walls.

“Head for the woods.” Daryl points. “The bike’s in there somewhere. Short run.”

Quickly and silently, they get down the trailer and start running towards the trees, into the woods. 

“Ya’ know where to go?” Daryl asks as they find the motorcycle in the same place he left it.

“I have a strategy.” Mila replies. “Houses with toys and swing sets outside usually have kids stuff inside too.”

“Fine.” Daryl gets the motorcycle up and leads it up the road. “Let’s go find some swing sets.”

He straddles the motorcycle and scoots forward, to give her room to sit behind him. Mila throws her leg over the body of the bike and sits down on the leather seat and wraps her arms around his waist. Daryl takes a deep breath, tries his best to maintain a normal heartbeat. 

”All right.” he coughs nervously. 

He warns the engine once again before he kicks off. He can feel all of the power in the machine throughout his entire body. Behind him, Mila squeezes his waist and makes a delighted cry as he increases the speed as he maneuvers the beast on the desolated road. 

“This is awesome!” Mila hollers into his ear.

A smile spreads on his lips and he speeds up, causing Mila to hug harder around his waist and laugh. They cruise around the nearby residential areas, scouting for children’s bikes in the driveways, basketball hoops, colorful slides and toys. Eventually, they find a street that seems to fill all the criteria. Daryl hits the brakes and the motorcycle stops next to a two storey house with a hoop and a climbing frame in the yard. Mila climbs off and takes her rifle, attaches the silencer over the barrel. 

“Okay, let’s find some shoes.” Daryl states. “Lead the way.” Briskly, Mila starts walking toward the door, rips it up and raises the AK in front of her and walks into the house. He follows, cautiously listening for hissing sounds and dragging feets. It’s clearly not her first rodeo. Mila immediately starts looking in wardrobes, in the laundry room and in cabinets. 

“Nope. Nothing.” she notes after a while. “Let’s continue.”

They leave the house and start walking down the street. Mila’s long hair blows effortlessly in the wind as they pass by abandoned houses, driveways and overgrown lawns. In the distance Daryl sees a lone, limping walker approach them in the street. He lifts the crossbow to his shoulder, aims and shoots. In the distance he sees it fall into a pile on the grund.  

“That house seems promising.” Mila points toward a house with what looks like a homemade skateboard ramp in the driveway. 

Daryl runs over to the walker, lying in a pile on the asphalt, to collect the arrow. When he turns, Mila has caught sight of a rotten creature, appearing from behind the molding ramp. With ease she lifts the rifle, aims and places a bullet in its head and it drops to the ground with a thud. With a crooked smile Daryl remembers what she said about the soup can. He then finds her inside the house, browsing the books in a bookshelf in the living room. 

“Children's Books!” Mila holds up a book for him to see. Where the wild things are, Daryl reads from the cover. He’s never read it. On the other hand, his ma’ never read books for him and Merle. “There’s so many cute books here! Peter Rabbit, Paddington-” she grabs the books and puts them in a pile. 

Daryl rests on the back of the couch, watches her stacking books on a chair. He’s amazed by how she engages her entire heart and soul to make sure that the boy has everything he could ever wish for. What would it have been like growing up like that? 

With about ten children's books stuffed in the backpack, Mila then continues through the house in the search of a new wardrobe for Juri, faintly humming. Daryl finds a weapon cabinet where the owner forgot a Glock and a few boxes of ammunition, and Mila finds a pair of Chuck Taylor’s in Juri’s size.

“Half a size too big, but his feet will grow.” She states and puts the shoes in the backpack.

If he thought they were done by now, Daryl was mistaken. They therefore proceed to the house next door.

“You notice something?” 

Daryl immediately turns all vigilant, looks around in search of hostility movements. Mila laughs a little. 

“What?” Daryl scoffs, mildly irritated, and lowers his guard. 

“We’re alone.” Mila says as they walk around a dense bush, once perfectly trimmed in a rounded shape, in front of the porch. “Like a little adventure. Pretty fun, right?” 

She feels the door handle and nods. Unlocked. She pushes the door open and it goes up with a creak. Mila quietly walks into the hall, Daryl follows, with a gut feeling that something will happen. And his guts don’t lie. All of a sudden Mila’s pushed to the carpet by a walker coming at them from the left, followed by its two companions. The first one attacks Mila and Daryl’s grabbed by a male, missing an eye. Mila swears loudly, a muffled bang is heard when she shoots the walker right in the face and tries to get up from the floor. Daryl tries to pull away from the one eyed bastard, that clings to his vest. The rotting mouth and disgusting fingers claws to his torso. 

”Watch it!”

With impressive force Mila grabs a hold of it by its shoulders, pulls it away from him and throws it into the opposite wall of the hallway. She takes her knife from her boot shaft and pushes it into its forehead. Daryl takes a hold of the last, remaining dead asshole and pushes an arrow deeply into its skull, forcing it down on the floor. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Ey, wha-”

Without another word, Mila lifts his shirt and searches his torso for wounds, or at least he thinks that’s what she does. Oh god, please don’t. Daryl gets intense chills of pleasure all through his body by her touch. Those soft, delicate fingers send shivers throughout his body in sheer delight. She withdraws, sighs in relief. 

”Though it bit you.” she says. 

“I’m fine.” Daryl replies, hardly meeting her gaze as he pulls the shirt down.

He tries to steady his breath, all while Mila still pants faintly. Their eyes meet, or are more like glued to each other. Daryl’s heart beats hard inside his ribcage, he can almost hear it like a drum inside his ears. Suddenly, before he’s able to say or do anything, Mila has thrown herself onto him, presses her lips against his in a kiss out of this world. It’s so sudden and so surprising that he can’t turn all flushed and angry, his usual defense mechanism in unfamiliar situations. But it’s also everything he’d ever dreamt it would be. Why would he withdraw? With her hands on each side of his face, her soft tongue finds its way in-between his lips into his mouth, exploring every inch of his mouth like a gold miner looking for nuggets. It’s mesmerizing, he’s never been kissed like this in his entire life. 

He cups her face with his hand, the one not holding on to the crossbow, feels the soft skin towards his palm. It soon finds its way to her lower back, as he presses her body against his as she begins to guide them away from the hallway massacre, with the three dead corpses, into the other room. Daryl briefly presses her up against a wall, making a framed picture fall to the floor. The rough, passionate kissing turns into a frenzy of hands and heavy panting. Daryl drops the crossbow to the floor and steers Mila towards the dining table. He pushes her towards the table, while their fingers eagerly search for buttons and zippers during heavy breathing and intense eye contact. 

He’s so excited, so frantically horny. Never before has he felt such a desire. He fumbles, all while Mila’s able to kick off one boot, push down her jeans and underwear, making them dangle around her leg and unbuckles his belt at the same time like a fucking magician. Daryl lets out a grunt as his palms run over her bare, soft thigh. He presses his forehead against hers and they kiss again, moaning into each other's mouths. Mila’s chest heaves rapidly underneath the t-shirt as she unbuttons his jeans, pushes them over his hips, releases his pulsating cock and drags him closer. She caresses him, touches him to the point of almost no return. Daryl ends it by grabbing her buttocks in his hands, lifts her up onto the table. She spreads her legs, pants breathlessly as she pulls him in between. Daryl grunts as he lightly fondles her, she’s so fucking wet. For him! That’s the most fucking incredible part, well, one of thousands right now. There is no darn turning back now. Without breaking eye contact, almost drowning in those sapphire eyes, while inhaling her scent, the floral and everything that enchants him, Daryl enters her, making both of them exhale loudly. She tightens around him and it feels as if he will come right away. Jesus christ, I can’t hold it, he finds himself thinking as he feels a rush of pleasure spread through his body, it won’t go. He starts to grind his hips into her, causing her to moan loudly, to dig her fingers into the back of his vest, as she jerks her hips forward against him. He lets out a low growl and starts to pound into her, making the table squeak, holding her in place while he with the other hand softly grabs the hair on the back of her head, not breaking their eye contact; all while a feverish heat runs through his body. 

Dear god he doesn’t want it to end, but he can feel himself edging as her body clenches around him, and he realizes that it’s more than close. He can feel it, her entire body screams that she’s on the edge too. She lifts her head to the ceiling, as she reaches climax and the surge of warmth from her orgasm surrounds him. Daryl moans loudly into her neck, feels his entire body tremble as he digs his hips into her, as deep as he possibly can, exploding inside of her.

They gasp for air, as if there wasn't enough oxygen in the room, bodies trembling, but they don’t break eye contact. Something warm runs down his cramping thigh, bolting with his runaway pulse.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Daryl’s whimpers, his voice breaks. He swallows, but doesn’t move, just keeps holding on to Mila’s body like a castaway clinging to a piece of board. “I’m sorry-” 

“I’m not.” Mila pants with her fingers entangled into the back of his head, the other hand grasping the back of the vest. “I’m not.”

They remain like that for a few seconds; silent, trying to get a grip of the whole situation and what just happened, how amazing it was. Daryl lowers his eyes, for the first time in what feels like forever and with a soft movement he wipes away the warmth from her inner thigh with his thumb. He feels high on adrenaline, feverish, standing there with one hand under her left thigh and the other in a firm grip round her buttocks, welded together. 

“I want ya’.” Daryl manages to utter between the heavy breaths, looking back at her. “Ya’ asked me what I want. I want ya’.”

Mila caresses his face with the other hand, runs it softly over his lips. 

“I want you too.” She replies. Daryl’s uncertain, did she actually say that? The faint smile he gets, between the panting breaths, somehow says it all. ”You heard me, Dixon.”

#daryl fanfiction #daryl x oc #daryl dixon #twd daryl #Jersey on my mind #Daryl Dixon Fanfic #The Walking Dead fanficition #The walking dead fanfic #fanfiction #twd fanfiction #fanfic #twd fanfic #the walking dead fandom

[lochsides]

evermore: Track-by-Track review

I didn't think I'd be writing another review for a Taylor Swift album so soon after folklore but here we are. Truthfully though, evermore feels more like a figment of my imagination than a real album, and as a result this album has been a grower for me. When Taylor said evemore would be the sister record to folklore, I was curious as to the distinguishable differences between the two, because Taylor wouldn't simply give us the same album twice. evermore is, strangely, both the wild younger sister that's more experimental and the wise older sister with a mature outlook on life. Where folklore was a product of isolation, evermore is a product of creativity and that can be felt in the music.

I’ve written my thoughts and theories on each song, and bolded my favourites, below the cut, if you’re interested. I also included my current ranking at the bottom.

Taylor has been very good at picking leading singles for the folklore/evermore era. willow is brilliantly catchy while maintaining the alternative folk sound that she established in folklore. Her vocals suit the song so well, especially on ‘follow’/“hollow” in the chorus. They pair so beautifully with the mesmerising production. The reason this song is one my favourites is purely because of the rhythm and the guitar. The lyrics are, for once, a bonus. As an entry point to evermore, willow does not ease the listener in, the song instead throws the listener in the deep end — which I feel was intentional, as Taylor said evermore was the product of wandering further into the folklorian woods.

champagne problems is easily my favourite song on this album. Storytelling is Taylor's biggest strength as a songwriter and I think this song is a achingly beautiful example of what an emotive storyteller Taylor is. It would be so difficult for me to pick a favourite lyric from this song but I love how she sets in train in the opening line, "you booked the night train for a reason, so you could sit there in this hurt / bustling crowds or silent sleepers, you're not sure which is worse." The accompaniment is gorgeous and the composition of the bridge is breathtaking. Every time the bridge plays I get chills.

gold rush was a grower for me. I'm still not a fan of the intro/outro but I enjoy the production in the rest of the song once the beat kicks in. I think it's one of the more experimental sounds on evermore but it's very catchy. I won't even talk about how the chorus called me out with "I don't like slow-motion, double vision in a rose blush, I don't like that falling feels like flying 'til the bone crush."

'tis the damn season is the non-holiday-holiday song that still has a classic sound and production. I know this song is Dorothea's perspective but I get a lot of illicit affairs parallels with this one as well: "don't call me baby" / "you could call me babe for the weekend", "what started in beautiful rooms ends with meetings in parking lots" / "the road not taken looks real good now, time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires".

tolerate it is a hard song for me to review because I literally zone out every time I listen to it. I think it's my brain's way of protecting me from toxic relationship trauma 🙃 but it's another gut-punch track five, what else is new? I mean she literally said "now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life, drawing hearts in the byline, always taking up too much space or time," and broke my nervous system.

no body, no crime is the best country song Taylor has ever written, period. The sirens at the start, the storytelling, the way it sounds like an old-school murder-mystery movie. HAIM on the backing vocals were great, though I do wish they had at least a verse of their own. That's literally my only critique of this song. It's that good.

There's so much maturity in Taylor's outlook on happiness. I connect this song to her tarnished relationship Sc*tt/BMG and how she's happy after leaving but she was also happy during the time she was with them. I really enjoyed the simple addition of the piano and the way it built up to add depth to the production. Taylor's delivery of the line "no one teaches what to do when a good man hurts you and you know you hurt him too" really hits me.

dorothea is a really nostalgic, retro school-dance-vibe, kinda playful song with a personality, which I adore. The production is absolutely timeless. I woke up today with the chorus stuck in my head. I think "if you're ever tired of being known for who you know, you know, you'll always know me" is fun word play and I'm a nerd of that type of thing. (Side note: to me, this song feels very reminiscent of her friendship with Karlie Kloss, right down to the "selling makeup in magazines.")

coney island gives me desolate, abandoned theme park vibes. The simplicity of the production only enhances it. It's everything I could've hoped for in a song titled "coney island" and featuring The National. Matt Berninger's vocals are absolutely astounding. What does it say about me that my favourite aspect of this song is the feeling of despair laced into its bloodstream.

ivy is another favourite but what did I expect from a song filled to the brim with longing and mentioning the crescent moon? The instrumentation and her vocal styling is similar to willow. There are also lyrical parallels of "... your freezing hand, taking mine" / "I'm begging for you to take my hand" and "how's one to know I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bone" / "I never would've known from the look on your face" and she echoes both those sentiments in a different way after the respective bridges and I wonder if that's intentional. Knowing Taylor Swift, probably.

cowboy like me belongs in the center of a country/folk/slow blues Venn diagram. It's the perfect blend of the three genres. Marcus Mumford's back vocals sound so good with Taylor's. "We could be the way forward, and I know I'll pay for it" and "the skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up" are great lyrics.

I'm not all about the way long story short stars but the song quickly settles into its skin. This is easily the most pop-sounding song on evermore but it's still somewhat experimental in comparison to Taylor's existing discography and I think it's cool that she can find space to experiment within a musical space that she has all but mastered. Say what you will but Taylor Swift knows how to make hits no matter the genre. The lyrics "he's passing by, rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky and he feels like home" reminds me so much of Call It What You Want.

marjorie gave me chills on the very first listen when Taylor sings about how her grandmother left her backlogged dreams to her. I love that they used her grandmother's actual vocals in the background, that's a really heartwarming detail. This song comes with some really solid advice too. It just feels very personal. I love the way production builds on "what does didn't stay dead" right to the bridge, which is my favourite part of the song.

closure is easily the most experimental song on the album with that the scratch tape sound and those drums. I love the sheer pettiness in her tone and the lyric "don't treat me like some situation that needs to be handled" is brilliant. That said, this is probably my least favourite. I think it's a cool song but just not for me.

evermore has some of the most beautiful lyrics on the album. "I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone, trying to find the one where I went wrong" and "barefoot in the wildest winter" are some of my favourites. I'm not a big fan of the sudden shift in tempo on either end of the bridge but Justin Vernon's falsetto makes up for it. The production is otherwise beautiful.

Note that the bonus tracks are currently at the bottom because they have not been released yet.

#taylor swift #evermore #reviews #music #ts

[gremlinkween]

Bad Moon Rising

Part 2: Mermen, Vampires, and Werewovles, Oh My! 

Summary: The reader finds and rescues a hurt merman who tells her that his name is Jim. She helps him without a second thought, but his presence might attract the attention of other supernatural creatures she never knew existed. This will eventually be a foursome (Jim Mason x Michael Langdon x Duncan Shepard x Reader) mythology/supernatural au.

A/N: I'm not dead! Instead of just saying that I was gonna do something, I figured my welcome back post would be the next revised chapter of BMR as an apology. I had some repressed memories come up and they were repressed for a reason so that rocked my boat real hard, but hi everyone! I'll get to the asks sitting in the inbox hopefully tonight, but it might have to be tomorrow. So for the new readers, the last one of the foursome is introduced, but we’ll get to actually see more of Michael and Duncan in the next part. There is an oc in here, Rory, that we’ll see more later. I’ve had him for awhile and he’s actually one of my fave characters ever. You can totally imagine Cillian Murphy for him. Again, if you want to be on the tag list, just hit me up and let me know what you think!

Warnings: No smut yet, sorry. There is blood, injury, mentions of mental illness, depression, crying, concern about having a total break from reality.

Word Count: 2.3k

Tagging List: @langdonsinferno, and @moonagecordelia and remember, my tag list is all sorts of messed up so please lmk if you want to be on it! either for this story or all my work! 

Previous Parts: Part 1

“I thought that vampires fed off of humans? Why did he go for you instead of me?”

“Well, yeah, vampires feed off of humans, but that’s not their only food source. Faerie blood is actually more nutritious and flavorful for vampires, just humans are more readily available and easier to hunt. He probably smelt my blood and sought me out.”

“… Wow, I mean makes sense, I guess?” It really didn’t, nothing made sense to her, but also Jim could tell her that the sky was actually purple and the ocean was orange, and she’d believe him at this point.

“You should probably take care of him.”

“Yeah, probably. Do I need something stronger than rope.”

He scoffed, “Yes, probably something more like a stake through the heart.”

She looked to the darkly angelic figure passed out on the floor. He looked helpless now, and she could see that the wounds that were on the cat adorned and tarnished his skin. He was hurt, and probably just looking for a way to heal himself. She felt bad, but on the other hand, Jim was in danger. So was she. This was fucked up. “No.”

Jim gave her a look like she might be insane.

“I said no. He’s just trying to survive like you. I’ll get like, chains or something. That should hold him?”

Jim looked at her with such bewilderment, she felt like she was the weird one in the room. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s probably going to end badly.”

She was still looking at the vampire. Probably, she was thinking, but that’s not what she said. “I think it’s going to be fine.”

“…. Okay, if you say so.” Jim was still so unsure of this. “Just move him please.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

—————————

Moving the vampire that was nearly double her size wasn’t an easy feat, but she did it. Thank god for the hauls of fish she’s been lugging around her whole life or this might actually be impossible. She had him propped up against the support beam in the living room. That was the sturdiest place in her house she could think of, but you knew you needed to move fast. There was no telling how much time you had before he woke up, and she couldn’t imagine he’d be happy when he did. Now, the next problem was finding chains and a lock that was probably heavy duty enough. She figured the boatyard, but she’d really have to move her ass.

She grabbed the keys to her dad’s old beat up pick up truck and a jacket and hurried out the door. She was humming to herself in a tense song, a habit she did out of nervousness, and fumbled with the keys.

“Hi there, Y/N, a little la-” a familiar voice called, but with the night’s events, she was already under so much pressure, and she yelped and nearly threw the keys. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Hi, Rory. Sorry, it’s been a night.” Oh Rory, the older Irish gentleman that ran the dock’s favorite bar to go to in the evening, and her next door neighbor. She had known him her whole life, a steady constant in this crazy shit show her life had been these past couple of months. She really wasn't alarmed with him being out so late. With his business, he always had been a night owl.

“I can see that,” his thick accent rang out with a chuckle, and she blanched for a second. “Dragging in buckets of sea water?”

“It’s an art project,” She answered maybe a little too fast and he cocked an eyebrow. “You know, for processing trauma. I read about it.”

“Okay then, Y/N,” he was unsure, but he was going to drop it. He knew grief made people do some strange things sometimes. 

“I’m going out for more things.” She didn’t know when to stop talking apparently.

“Well, good luck with that at 3 am. Just be careful,” he wished her well, “It’s a full moon, all the crazies are out tonight.”

She just chuckled uneasily, if she could only tell him. “Will do, you get some rest.”

“You too, dear.”

She was finally able to get the truck open and started, and she sped off to the boatyard.

————————————

The yard was desolate and particularly eerily this night. Mist from the water was creeping over the place and gave it an all too fitting gothic appearance. She really wished that the world would stop being so poetic for a change. She found herself pulling her jacket tighter as she walked in between the older and busted up boats, something making the hair on the back of her neck stand up on end. A presence was following her, but she was all too tired of the night's weirdness to give into the thought. Surely, tonight couldn't get weirder. 

She had to kick the door down to the supply shed, but she doubted anyone would really care. This was the forgotten side of town anyway. She found heavy duty chains and a padlock fairly quickly, a feeling of satisfaction filled her that was quickly overshadowed by something else. Her head whipped up to the door and then to the window. She saw nothing, but she swore she felt eyes on her. Very intent eyes. God damn it. At this point, she was just hoping for another human.

The best thing to do was just get the hell out of there regardless, she decided, and without actually breaking into a run, she moved as fast as she could.

Outside, she swore she hear footsteps of something. It was much too big to be a person, but she didn’t know what it could be. Could be anything. She didn't know, and she was getting tired of this one night getting so fucking weird. There was an idea trying to creep into her mind, one that she was trying to violently shut out. She actually might just give up if she was right.

There was a movement and then a soft growl. She blanched again, but sighed. Of course. No, of course this would be the night that even more insane shit has to happen. She turned to the boat she saw the movement coming from and her eyes widened, yet she was somehow not surprised. A giant wolf monster sat perched up on the cabin and she nodded. “Sure. Yep. This might as well happen. Let’s just get this over with.”

It glowered at her as it crept down and off the boat, but in the bright moonlight, she saw the deep wounds ruining the lay of the coat. It growled again and began to stand on this back legs, standing at it’s full eight foot height, but she held dropped the chains and held up her hands. “Don’t even think about it, buddy,” she said firmly and the wolf’s ears pitched forward, clearly curious about the lack of fear.

“I’ve got a hurt merman and a vampire I need to restrain soon or he’s going to try to eat the merman at home. I see that you’re hurt. I can take care of you, but I need you to stop being a dick.”

It looked like it was debating something it’s head before settling down on all fours and cautiously moved towards her before gently nuzzling into her neck, smelling and licking her, she figured that this was some kind of greeting that werewolves had, but he was being friendly, but she just rolled with it. It was that kind of night that was already weird enough. She scratched behind it’s ears and it practically mewled and she had to smile, that was pretty cute.

“Come on, let’s go. I have to get back before the vampire wakes up.”

He limped along with her, and she had to help the poor thing up into the bed of the truck, but he was behaving quite well. She covered him up, with one of the tarps she used for the fish, and hopped in. Hopefully, she wasn’t too late, and she felt worry pit itself in her stomach.

———————————————–

She had to make sure the lights on in Rory’s house were off before she uncovered the newest friend and boy from her truck and hurried him into the house.

The first thing she did was check to make sure that the vampire was still out and passed out where she left him. Thankfully, he was, and she was able to breathe a sigh of relief. She went back to the kitchen as the werewolf began sniffing around. “Go upstairs, it’s the room with the lights on.”

The wolf looked at her uneasily, but he relented and sulked up the stairs on all fours, looking over its’ shoulders at her.

She grabbed the chains and quickly secured the vampire to the post. There was a moment that nearly had her passing out, his nose flared a couple of times when she got closer, but luckily that was his only response to her.

She didn’t waste anymore time though, grabbed the medical box for the third time tonight, and she was running up the stairs. Once she reached the top of the stairs, she saw the large furry head pop out of the doorway. It was odd to have such a large creature in her house, but she didn’t think about that just yet. She sat the box down on the desk and she heard it growl softly.

“Come on, I know this is going to hurt a little bit, but,” the wolf cut her off with another, more aggressive growl.

“Uhhh, Y/N,” Jim called from the bathroom. “What was that?”

She turned around and went to the door. “I might have made another new friend tonight.” The wolf’s head popped into sight from the door to look at where the other voice came from out of curiosity, and Jim went white.

“That’s an alpha werewolf.”

She grunted as he pushed his way into the bathroom and began smelling and licking at Jim’s neck like he had done with her, and Jim couldn’t help the giggles that escaped his mouth and it only encouraged the wolf to tickle him more, but he eventually pushed him off gently.

Jim smiled shyly at the wolf before looking to her again. “Why was he growling at you?”

“I was just getting ready to stitch up his wounds.”

The monstrous animal’s ears pinned back at the word and Jim swatted his muzzle, startling the wolf.

“Be nice. She doesn’t know anything and you can’t talk in that form,” Jim chided with a small smile.

“You don’t need to rub it in!” She was almost defensive, but Jim was laughing.

“Werewolves don’t need stitches, particularly alphas. He’ll be fine by tomorrow night, you won’t even know that he was hurt.”

She nodded, but then stopped. “Why did he come with me then? If he didn’t need help.”

Jim’s eyes were practically shining with mischief. “He probably thinks you’re cute.”

She was bright red now and she looked at the clear amusement both of them had.

“Or he had other reasons, I’m just,” He had to think about it. He wasn’t sure about the human word for this. “Having my fun?” He had a little shy smile, and while she was scowling, her heart melted a bit at the expression.

“I didn’t realize I was opening my door to such jokesters,” but even she had to laugh.

She let out a yawn, and she realized how tired she was out. It hit like a freight train now that she didn't have a murderous vampire on the loose and she no longer had to play doctor. “Well, I think I’m going to be retiring for the night. Jim would you like a pillow or something?”

He cocked he eyebrow. Right, that makes sense that they wouldn’t have them in the ocean.

“I’ll go get one for you away.”

The wolf followed her out of the bathroom and crawled up on the bed for no regard to his weight as he circled like any dog would before settling down on the bed. She grabbed one of the extra pillows and returned to stuff it in the corner between the wall and the bathtub and Jim hesitantly rested his head against it before his eyes lit up.

“This is very comfortable. What did you call this?”

She chuckled, “A pillow. Goodnight, Jim.”

He smiled, “Goodnight, Y/N. Thank you. again.”

“It’s no problem.” With that, she left again for the bedroom.

She looked at the wolf, seemingly asleep, and she decided what the hell. She took her bra off and her pants, leaving herself in just a shirt and underwear. She crawled into bed under the blankets and tried to get comfortable, but sleep wasn’t coming to her at all. She was just replaying the events of the night.

So, at the beginning of the night, it was crippling loneliness and a solid crying session, then late night sailing on the boat …. Then she saved a merman …. Then they got attacked by a vampire ….. and then she picked up a werewolf ….. and now there’s a merman in  her bathtub, a vampire chained up in the living room, and a werewolf in bed with her. She sighed. This was…. weird. This was a weird night. This couldn’t have happened, could it? This stuff was made up. Oh god, she was having a mental breakdown. She was breaking and this wasn’t real. None of this was real.

She was starting to hyperventilate, panic gripping her, but then she felt a warm head, a very warm, very large, and very fluffy head nuzzle into her chest. A strong, furry arm ending in a hand with extremely long and sturdy claws wrapped around her abdomen and pulled her tight. An animal’s tongue licked her cheek and she had to laugh at how much it tickled. She heard the wolf make a noise deep within its throat in approval and she relaxed. This was real. It was very very real and she had the feeling that this wolf wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

Sleep soon took over, and for the first time in what felt like years, there was a smile on her face.

#cody fern fanfic #cody fern fanficiton #michael langdon imagine #duncan shepherd fanfic #jim mason fanfic #Bad Moon Rising

[talkingtothetallman]

God > SNAFU

I hit a SNAFU.

 If you haven’t heard of that term, it basically means you ran into a problem. You hit a wall, and now you don’t know what to do. The phrase originated from the military, however I won’t bother telling you what SNAFU stands for since the verbiage isn’t PG… or really even PG-13. Regardless of what the individual letters of the acronym are, I still ran into a problem.

 I hit a SNAFU.

 I was in the back dough room at Papa Pete’s doing my normal job of rolling pizza dough through a clanky rolling machine and cutting out various shapes of crusts on a flour infested counter. Quite the exciting routine, really. I had my earbuds in, jamming to my tunes while I was working, and things were just cooking right along. Then it hit me. Like a Mack truck, a churning wave of uneasiness swept over me. I was filled with a dread and anxiety. My heart raced and I felt every single nerve scream.

 My girl’s flight had been canceled.

 Now to be clear, I didn’t exactly know this at the time. Last Saturday, Abby mentioned to me that the airport she was flying out of was canceling flights. Keep in mind that this is a tiny airport, containing only two terminals. Fun fact, it’s considered an international airport because it flies to Canada. Admittedly, that’s extremely pathetic, but hey, it’s not exactly being dishonest.

 Anywho…

 Abby hadn’t received any emails saying that the flight was canceled, so both of us assumed that everything still had the green light. Turns out, such was not the case. Apparently her flight to a larger airport is now canceled and we never got word. Just like that, we were faced with a problem. Yes, a SNAFU: how on Earth do we get together now? The connecting airport is nearly five hours away and that isn’t exactly a quick jaunt over the pond or anything. Things frankly seemed bleak in my eyes. Any hope that I would get to spend my 20th birthday with my sweetheart seemed to evaporate, almost like it hadn’t even been there in the first place.

Let me just stop myself and commend my sweet gal. Yes, she looked sad, but man did she have more hope than me! Quite inspiring to be honest. I wouldn’t trade her for anybody else. The hope in her eyes, the reassuring smile, the trying heart. Golly sakes, what a blessed man I am!

 After checking the flight number online and trying to make a phone call, things didn’t look good. I requested to used Delta’s text messaging help service, so I could at least talk to somebody instead of a computer with zero personality, zero understanding. No offense, guys, but I prefer a real person to help me with my problems.

 Enter my new friend, Asia.

 Yes, that was her name. I’m dead serious.

First off, thank you, Asia. If you ever read this, you made my day. Forgive me for all my questions! I owe you one!

I explained my problem to Asia, and she informed me that the airport Abby was trying to depart out of wasn’t sending any flights, but were receiving them. Hey, don’t ask me, I don’t make the rules. So, Abby couldn’t change her flight to a different time or day, nor use the airport entirely. Throw out any idea of flying in the night before and staying overnight in the airport for 17 hours. I mean, wouldn’t you want to hang out a damp, clammy airport, trying to sleep but feeling on the edge because you don’t know what’s going on around you for 17. Hours.? Sounds lovely, don’t you think? Throw that on my bucket list.

That was all sarcasm if you didn’t realize. It definitely sounds like a poor way to spend an evening.

However, thankfully, after much dialogue back and forth, dear Asia said Abby can fly out of the connecting airport to Portland and be flown into the world’s smallest international airport when she comes home! Abby’s brother John is going to drive her there and hang out with some of his friends in the big city, so now we can get together again!

 The only SNAFU with the new itinerary is that her flight plan home has an extra stop, but is virtually the same amount of time as the old one. Hey, she gets to see more country this way :)

 Isn’t amazing how things can seem so desolate, and then turn around on a dime and be right again? I was scared that my girl and I would have to wait longer. I didn’t want that. She didn’t want that. But I also recognized that maybe that’s what God wanted. Not that He didn’t want us to be together, but maybe because He didn’t want us together again… yet. Such a thought is so easy for me to agree with when things are going smoothly, and yet so gut-wrenchingly difficult to comprehend when you’re in the thick of a icky situation.

 To be honest, it really reveals to me how often I don’t fully trust in the Lord. It shows me how I don’t always act like “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those take refuge in Him” (Nahum 1:7 ESV). I was praying, asking the Lord for His will to be done, asking for help in trusting Him, but was I earnestly seeking out His will and His will alone? Was I earnestly trying to trust in Him? It’s not easy. Not remotely. But I am reminded that I am called to be sold out to my Lord Jesus Christ. I feel weak and vulnerable, but yet my Lord is so strong. There is so much reward for just resting in Jesus. To borrow the affectionate lyrics to an old hmyn, “’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take Him at His Word. Just to rest upon His promise, just to know ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I’ve proved him o’er and o’er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace, to trust Him more.”

 I couldn’t ask for better lyrics at a time like this. Every day, sometimes without us even realizing it, we show so much proof of Jesus working. Isn’t that wonderful? Shouldn’t that inspire us to firmly plant our feet in the fertile soil of Jesus Christ, that we may grow in Him? Lord God, give me the grace to fully set my trust in You.

#GodisGood TrustinGod TissosweettotrustinJesus

[backofthebookshelf]

105 Hill Top Road: What the Fuck

(Relevant episodes: 008, 019, 043, 055, 056, 059, 067, 078, 089, 114, 130, 134, 139)

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious at this point that Anya Villette came from another reality, right? The timeline's different but the Powers are the same. At least one of them, with that spidery tree. She goes into the house in one reality and wakes up in another one, where all her friends tell her, "oh yeah, when shit like that happens to you, you go to the Magnus Institute," and she says, "the what now?" And there's this building in Chelsea that wasn't there before and they take her statement and then she...what? Does she disappear? Do the spiders get her? Or does she just not have a legal identity in this reality so that's why they can't find her?

(Did Gertrude actually read this statement? She's probably busy as hell in 2009, she's been working on rituals, Mary Keay has just turned herself into a book, Leitner's running around in the tunnels. And she was skeptical of Dekker's theories; would she be as skeptical of something like this? Presumably she read Vanderstock's statement, she would have wanted to know, and he mentioned the "scar in reality" but would she have believed it? Would she have considered it worth following up on, even without the spiders doubtless doing all they can to keep people from paying attention?)

Vanderstock mentions "other Powers" at work at Hill Top Road, but the only one I can identify besides the Web and the Desolation is the Spiral, and that only vaguely: Ivo Lensik and Father Burroughs were both Spiral-adjacent. And I wonder about that table, too; everything about it seems Spiral-like, except for the fact that it is used to trap a Stranger creature. Granted I can make a case for hypnosis being related to spiders, but still.

Still no idea what actually happened there, of course. Agnes would have been fully grown (26, per her death certificate) by around 1980, assuming she ages normally, which is kind of a big assumption. (139 makes it sound like it took her twenty years to be eleven years old, but that might be me misinterpreting.) Vanderstock makes a reference to Gertrude doing something that delayed their ritual preparations just after Jude Perry joined; not sure whether that's when she first met them in '89 or when she "completed her transformation" in '91, but let's average the difference and call it sometime around 1990. But the house at Hill Top Road burned in 1974, so whatever was happening there happened well before they'd given up on their ritual.

(Besides, it really sounded like the Last Feast was the first ritual Gertrude had successfully and intentionally disrupted. So either she did this accidentally or it was something else. But why assume it was her, otherwise? In 2008 Mary makes a snide comment about Gertrude not getting out and doing much herself, which is hilarious because she disrupted at least two rituals in 2008, but it does indicate that she's at least not seen as someone who gets involved. But that's almost twenty years later; maybe she used to get out more? Maybe the Eye had a particular interest in something? We've got a few statements from the 90s but mostly 1996 and later; we've got exactly one statement from the 80s and it's Tucked In. Anyway. This is (probably) a distraction.) (Interestingly Jon only comments on Agnes's death, not on whatever happened in the early 90s, which makes me wonder if it wasn't Gertrude at all but the spiders themselves. But Vanderstock is so sure it was her.)

I can't find anything in other statements that tells us much of anything aside from one thing: the Institute got a new Head in 1973, a year before the house burned. It might be nothing, but if the Web and the Eye are as closely aligned as we keep speculating they are, it might be something. (This was Elias's predecessor, James Wright, about whom we know nothing at all.) There is a really annoying lack of statements from the 80s and early 90s; we have virtually no idea what was going on in the supernatural ecosystem at that time. Would those be the statements on tape that were found with Gertrude's body, perhaps? What did happen to all of those? Two or three boxes of tapes is a lot of statements.

But back to the point, what was happening at Hill Top Road? It was owned by the Fieldings from the 1800s, which makes me think it's been a Web stronghold that long. (I'd love to know if Walter Fielding knew Smirke or Magnus or anyone else in their circle.) By the sixties Raymond Fielding was using it to harvest...victims? Hosts? What did happen to the kids Ronald Sinclair saw in the basement, who had been turned into spider egg sacs? Were they just there to feed the baby spiders, or were they turning into spider-Jaegers like the one Trevor Herbert met in 2009? (Daisy told Basira her first sectioned case was something to do with spider husks but we never got any other details. That would've been the latter half of 2002. We got no other details but I'd be interested to know where it was. HEY JON TALK TO YOUR COWORKERS.)

So okay, 105 Hill Top Road is a spider factory, cool. Then Agnes shows up. Two-three months later she saves a guy from getting et by Raymond Fielding for no apparent reason, that's nice of her. (Agnes likes cute boys confirmed.) And it seems like she stops him from taking in more kids, because they say the number of kids at the house dwindles until it's just Agnes left, and then Raymond disappears. It's "years" that Agnes lives in the house alone and mostly never leaves, though pets go missing from the neighborhood, before, in 1974, a five-year-old goes missing. A week later the house burns down and in it they find only Raymond Fielding's skeleton, sans right hand. So that sounds like Fielding was feeding on the kids, and catching smaller prey after he didn't have them any more, and when he worked back up to kids again Agnes caught him and stopped him. But it had to be more than that, because this is the fight Vanderstock describes as creating "a scar in reality," and which tied Agnes to the location. The fact that she kept Fielding's hand worried Arthur Nolan, which yeah, that would worry me too, but I'm not an avatar of destruction created by an evil cult, so I have to assume it was for some reason other than "eew."

(I also have to wonder exactly what their ritual required, other than Agnes herself, because there's a long time between 1974 and 1990. But.)

Then, in 2006, the house is being rebuilt and Ivo Lensik is working on it evenings and weekends, and who shows up at the door but Raymond Fielding, in an old-fashioned coat and looking "like something out of an old Polaroid," showing off the deed to the house and poking around. This show doesn't really go in for ghosts, and besides he was an avatar or something, so I'm gonna go with "alternate universe Ray Fielding," I guess. Who then...gets burned to a crisp after being inside the (new) house for two minutes? There's a smell of burning and a scorch mark on the floor. This freaks out Lensik so bad he falls and hits his head and also worries that he's getting schizophrenia (which his father apparently had, except schizophrenia doesn't work like that, that was definitely Michael) and he goes to the hospital, where a local nurse apparently likes suggesting exorcisms to people.

(There's no indication that anyone from the Lightless Flame noticed AU!Ray, so I'm assuming for now he was destroyed/banished/yeeted back to his own reality by whatever latent Desolation power is attached to the place.)

So one night the exorcist shows up and while he's waiting outside Ivo Lensik just. Snaps. He cannot handle that tree. That tree is looking at him and he doesn't like it. He takes a crowbar to it and it bleeds; he chains it to his truck and pulls it down. At this point Agnes, who's out with Jack Barnabas being blessedly normal for a change, spasms like something hurt her and makes a panicked phone call, and then Arthur and Diego and everybody show up at her flat with an unlit lantern, a bag of candles, and a jar of tiny spiders, and then she asks them to kill her. Vanderstock puts it down to Jack Barnabas, but in Barnabas's own statement it's very clear that the tree comes down, she calls in a panic, they meet her at her flat, and then she kisses him and he's in the hospital for three days. (I'm not saying her attachment to him didn't ruin the ritual, that's probably why she made whatever decision she did, but the tree was an inciting incident.)

(At the same time the tree is coming down, too, Father Burroughs is inside the house feeling like he's burning alive, and the Spiral is speaking through him insisting that he's already been claimed and the Desolation just doesn't care. It doesn't stop until the tree comes down outside. There's also no indication that any Desolation avatars noticed this.)

Under the tree is a six-inch-square box covered in twisting lines and there's a whole OTHER thing, because that box belongs in the center of the table that trapped the not!Them, and how did it get from here to there? How did it escape the fire that burned down the original house? (Graham had it in 2005. Dekker had it in 2001. No clue where it went between 2005 and when it shows up at the Institute in 2015.) And what was the purpose of it when Fielding used it, had the kids sit around it every Sunday dinner? Did he bury the box, with an apple inside, to protect himself from Agnes? Is that why pulling down the tree hurt her? (In Anya Villette's statement the tree is heavily spider-identified, to the point where she refers to it interchangeably as "branches" and "arms," of which it has eight, but in Ivo Lensik's statement he notices that it was heavily burned at the base. Was it attacked by the Desolation? In which case why did pulling it down hurt Agnes? Was she, in fact, tied to the tree itself? In which case, given the importance of the tree in the alternate reality, is there an alternate Agnes out there? Maybe one where she got to go on dates with cute boys instead of having to either die or burn down the world?)

AND. As more than one of us have pointed out by now, in 114, Jon says:

I’ve half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but… I don’t know. Ever since it first came up I’ve felt like it would be… just a very bad idea.

And then Tim walks in and he and we forget all about it, but doesn't that sound like spidery manipulation to you? It does to me. So whatever Agnes and the Desolation did at Hill Top Road, it had a lasting effect (both in terms of leaving some remnant of the Desolation there and in the side effect of the...apparent dimensional portal?...) but the spiders do still seem to hold a lot of sway there as well.

What this has to do with anything I wish I knew, but I will say that 114 was the first thing I thought of after Garland Hillier's "la porte est la porte," which also sounds a lot like "all the doors are open now" from The Bifrost Incident (which is probably an entirely different continuity and has nothing to do with this other than ~themes~ but you know), but now that we've been talking a lot about the Powers as places I'm not so sure that means anything other than poor Hillier managed to walk into the domain of the Extinction and found his way out again for a while. But if the Powers are places, does that imply that Anya Villette came from one of them, or that there are other mostly-normal universes that haven't been taken over by the Powers? And if they exist...well. What does that imply about saving our universe from them, or losing it to them? (By "our" I mean "Jon and Martin's universe," obviously, "our" universe is another one entirely. I hope.)

tl;dr (TOO LATE): I have absolutely no idea what was or is happening at Hill Top Road but I’m pretty sure the spiders don’t want anyone poking around and also someone should go poke around there immediately, unless that's what Martin is doing right now, Martin stop, go back and get your boyfriend, he's freaking out

#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #it's a meta party #you bet i just spent three and a half hours writing that #i'm so interested in hill top road #(road trip to oxford????) #very long i'm so sorry so much has happened and none of it makes sense

[mst3kproject]

910: The Final Sacrifice

I grew up in Calgary, which means that the riff about Edmonton being kind of like hell but less so is at least six times funnier than it would be otherwise.  My sister did her IT degree at the same school (the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) as the people in this movie were taking their film classes. I’ve probably been to places where they shot scenes and didn’t know it… all of which makes The Final Sacrifice particularly dear to my heart, even by MSTie standards.

Seven years ago, young Troy’s father was chased down and murdered by armed luchadors in the woods somewhere.  Now, grown into a man of at least twelve, Troy is determined to find the killers.  In an attic he discovers a mysterious map and a bunch of information about the ‘Ziox’, but before he can puzzle it out the luchadors attack! Troy escapes by climbing into a truck driven by Canada’s second-greatest hero (after Wolverine), the one, the only Zap Rowsdower.  Together, the two of them set out to conquer Zap Rowsdower’s car trouble and uncover the secret of the Ziox, a lost civilization that once ruled the land of Fish Creek Provincial Park!

First, some Canadiana.  The Lemon Mine is a legendary lost gold deposit supposedly found by prospector John Lemon. Also, Maple Syrup Rustling is a thing that goes on in Canada.  Over the winter of 2011-2012, nearly three thousand tonnes of it were stolen from the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, one barrel at a time.  Canadians regard this in the same way as other countries might think of big art or bank heists, with the perpetrators becoming folk-culture heroes.  Also also, Brain Guy was wrong.  The worst thing ever to come out of Canada is, hands down, our geese, which attack livestock, destroy aircraft, and don’t even taste good.  They are the worst of all birds and we apologize.

Second, some racism.  According to the movie, the Ziox were a lost civilization who lived in Southern Alberta eleventy thousand years ago, “way before the Indians” and built cities of gold in the middle of the prairie.  Since Sartoris and Zap Rowsdower, among others, are descendants of these people it appears they were supposed to be white.  Because there’s no way anybody who wasn’t white could have built huge cities full of golden pyramids, right? It’s not like there were entire cultures in the Americas who were known for exactly that!

Those peoples didn’t live in southern Alberta, though, for the excellent reason that there’s nothing here.  This area is miles upon miles of rolling grassland, from the foot of the mountains all the way to Manitoba, with not much in it but buffalo and buffalo by-products. There’s some sandstone you can build quaint town halls with, but not pyramids that will last thousands of years.  The wildlife aren’t suitable for domestication.  There’s no meaningful amount of gold.  There weren’t even very many trees until Europeans started planting them as windbreaks.  For as long as there’s an archaeological record, the indigenous peoples around here have been nomadic hunters.  Permanent settlements couldn’t get started until the railway arrived to bring in supplies.

On to the movie.  When you want to tell a big story but have only a little budget, one popular way to do it is by having most of your adventure happen in the middle of nowhere so you can save your money to make a big impression in only a few key scenes. Take, for example, The Princess Bride, which is mostly just a few people in the wilderness but put enough into the palace sequences to make us believe we were in a Renaissance-era world.  The Final Sacrifice is a stellar example of a film that’s too damn cheap to even get away with that.  They wanted demonic idols and spectacular caverns and an ancient city rising from the earth but all they got is a bunch of toothpick models and papier-mache, almost as pathetic as the dinosaur puppets in Future War.

The nail in the coffin is that The Final Sacrifice can’t even do wilderness very well.  The outdoor scenes are in very open scrub, which are rather desolate but don't give the impression of somewhere miles from civilization.  It looks, like I already observed, a lot like Fish Creek Park, which is about a twenty-minute walk from where I grew up and sees a steady stream of picnickers and brownie troops all summer.  Any given shot in The Final Sacrifice looks like if you moved the camera three inches to one side you’d see a bunch of little kids making s’mores.

I’m pretty sure the writers originally had something much grander in mind, and had to tone it down a lot to get it to the screen with the money they had – because when you think about it, it’s obvious that The Final Sacrifice is a story about the lost continent of Atlantis.  You’ve got an ancient advanced civilization that was punished for its hubris and blasphemy by sinking, and which promises untold power and wealth to whoever can find its remains.  That’s a tale that ought to span continents, with adventurous archaeologists and deserted isles and plane crashes and such things… but all anybody had was a small town and some back woods a few hours’ drive out of Calgary, so they had to make do. The result feels like a story trying to be bigger than it is, as if the events in the movie only think they ought to have world-shaking implications but actually don’t matter to anyone.

Adding to the impression that there’s something missing from this movie, the story depends an awful lot on some very odd coincidences.  I can buy that Troy lives only a couple hours’ drive from the site of the Ziox city – that’s where his father lived and worked, and since Troy’s aunt didn’t know about the cultists there was no reason for her to move.  But then the truck he climbs into just happens to belong to a former member of the cult?  Zap Rowsdower is supposed to be an alcoholic drifter who just wants to get away and forget, so why the heck is he still in the area?  Canada is big.  Go to Halifax.  Go to Resolute Bay.  Hell, leave the country.  Why stick around within a few miles of the evil cult that threw you out?

Then there’s Pipper.  He’s been hiding from the cult for years, he says, but he’s doing it in a cabin about ten meters (that's thirty-five feet for the Americans in the audience) from the site of the idol! That might make sense if he were guarding it, but he doesn’t know it’s nearby and professes to believe it’s just a legend.  So what is he doing there?  Movie audiences can handle magic and aliens and all kinds of other ridiculous things, but too many coincidences will kill suspension of disbelief in a way the overtly fantastical never can.

When you want to tell a big story in your movie, it’s also helpful if the audience knows what the characters want and what will happen if they fail.  On the first count, I guess The Final Sacrifice does okay.  We do know that Troy wants to find out why his father died and what’s up with all this stuff he left behind, and Zap Rowsdower just wants to get away from this distasteful part of his past but is sucked back into it by Troy whether he likes it or not.  On what will happen if they fail, however, the film is much less clear.  Sartoris talks about raising an army of invincible warriors and conquering the world, but it’s not clear how making a sacrifice to the idol in the woods will bring that about.  Does Sartoris believe the city will arise full of undead soldiers or something?  The only version of the associated legends we get comes from Pipper, who says nothing about any such thing.  We’re obviously meant to believe that at least some of the population escaped the sinking, since they had to go give rise to descendants like Zap Rowsdower and the luchadors.

The ending is clearly supposed to be ironic, as it is Sartoris’ death that satisfies the idol and raises the city from the ground.  This would have been more effective if Sartoris himself had lived long enough to appreciate the irony, but that much works well enough.  The rest of the events at the end of the film just leave way too many questions.  What happened to all the luchadors?   They pull off their masks and walk into the light and out of the movie.  Why did Zap Rowsdower’s tattoo disappear?  Does Sartoris actually have some kind of magical powers, since he seems able to telepathically contact Zap Roswdower in his sleep? Did the city actually blast off into space, possibly taking the luchadors with it?  Because there are definitely shots that make it look like that’s happening.  What’s going on there?

Honestly, that’s not a bad explanation.  Throwing some Erich Von Daniken, Pumaman or Hangar 18 bullshit into this would actually have made way more sense.  Wow, is that ever sad.

It’s easy to be really hard on The Final Sacrifice because it is so very cheap, but on the other hand it was literally made by first-year students at a polytechnic not known for producing filmmakers. When you think of it that way, it actually looks surprisingly like a real movie… but still not enough that it should ever have been released into the wild.  The fact that Tjardus Greidanus’ imagination was so much bigger than his budget makes it seem like he had some honest potential.  He’s still making both narrative and documentary films, and I’m kind of interested to see some of them.

#mst3k #reviews #the final sacrifice #90s

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #109

UPDATE 109: The Moment Skitter Achieves Her Goal

Last time Taylor saw Coil’s move: he sent a double and his villain lackeys to attack the mayoral debate, injuring Director Piggot in the process and managing to place himself as the big boss of the Protectorate. What shall be done now? Let’s continue.

Skitter’s eyesight hasn’t gotten any better during the trip between the hospital and Coil’s lair. She’s relying on her swarms to look, and since her brain isn’t using her eyes properly, there’s space for her to process everything the bugs are sensing, giving her a decent perception of her surroundings. It’s not that good, but it’s something! At least it’s enough for her to notice this place is empty.

The on-duty squads of soldiers were gone, as were the trucks, weapons, supplies and furniture.  The entire ground floor was desolate, with clean patches in the dust where furniture and crates had been.

Sounds to me like Coil not only is going underground by faking his death, he also just...abandoned his villain teams. I don’t recall anything indicating he would pack and leave, so this must be a surprise. Is Noelle still locked in a vault in the depths of this hideout? Did Coil abandon her, just...leaving her behind deep underground? The Travelers can’t have been happy about that. It could be a way to finally convince them to side with the Undersiders and try to throw Coil off his newfound throne.

Still, how’s anyone supposed to contact Coil now? Are all the communications limited to the cellphone line? I don’t think going to the PRT offices will help keep a low profile, so that may not be an option.

This hideout isn’t as empty as it seemed, the Travelers are here. Coil may have left the hideout to them, due to Noelle being in that vault! They noticed the swarms of bugs going around, so knowing that meant Skitter was nearby, they went up to meet her. Hello, guys! Skitter may be alone or just with Tattletale, but she sure isn’t mentioning that, instead she says the rest of the team is upstairs.

“Just saying, but you know Coil’s dead, right?” Trickster asked. “I saw it happen,” I answered him. I chose my words carefully, “So I have a very good idea of how dead the man is.” “Fair enough.”

Did the Travelers know in advance what Coil was planning to do? Seeing how they tried – half-assedly, may I add – to say Coil was totally dead and not sitting in the PRT’s offices right now, maybe only the Undersiders were supposed to be unaware he survived.

There’s still some hostility when the topic of Noelle is touched, the atmosphere is uncomfortable. Trickster, being the only one to be talking, is unashamedly hostile, pretty much listing all of the grievances he has against the Undersiders. It’s okay to cooperate in order to destroy a common enemy, it’s okay to try to sweet-talk someone in the team, it’s okay to try to convince enemies to join them, but they’re not friends! Honestly, that’s fine. Trickster isn’t really someone to be fond of. If he doesn’t want to cooperate with the Undersiders and would rather to be antagonistic towards them then fine, more power to him. He better not get in the way, though. All his hostility is fine as long as he doesn’t cause trouble for the Undersiders.

“There has to be more common ground there.  We can’t meet, share a box of donuts and talk about ways to mutually benefit our territories?”

Aw, that’s kind of sweet. Skitter truly wants to connect with them, maybe help each other. She sure is willing to give them a chance, and even try to benefit the people in the Travelers’ territories. Sadly, her befriending efforts don’t work at all.

“The fact that you have to ask that is a pretty good indication of how clueless you are about this. Let’s count the ways.  One, I don’t give a ratfuck about my territory or the people in it.  None of us do.”

Charming. I’m not surprised at all he doesn’t care about anyone except his own team, and that I have doubts about. Does he really speak for everyone? Is everybody in the Travelers as cold as he is? I never had the impression they were, honestly. Sundancer, for example, seems to disagree, but I really doubt any of them will pipe up and say that hey, they care about the people in the territories, even if they won’t talk with Skitter.

“Two,” he continued, “We don’t plan to be here much longer anyways.  Either Coil fulfills his end of the bargain and we’re out of this hellhole, or he doesn’t and we take a hike anyways.  Take our chances elsewhere.”

Or, and listen to me here, Coil keeps baiting them around with more promises and excuses, and that way the Travelers stick around against their will. If he doesn’t fulfill the promise, will the Travelers just drag Noelle around, with whatever problem she has? Ballistic plans to stay here in Brockton Bay to continue working with Coil, buuut what if others decide to do that too, since nobody is satisfied with Trickster’s leadership? He’s taking for granted everyone’s going to leave.

For a moment Skitter considers mentioning Ballistic plans to stay and I’m really thankful she didn’t. Trying to cause dissent in the Travelers wouldn’t work. Ballistic would get so annoyed and upset, and nobody would believe her. Really, I’m glad she didn’t even try.

Skitter stops Trickster from continuing his spiel for much longer, she gets the message: he’s not interested at all on working with the Undersiders for anything, they don’t need the Undersiders anymore.  To try to end this, Skitter goes straight to the point and says she had come here to offer the Travelers to come along when they ask something to Coil.

“Coil went to a lot of effort in putting together his grand plan.  He died in a blaze of glory and violence, just like he wanted.  Do you really want to spoil that by going on about how he’s still alive?”

...alright, so. Um. The reason why Trickster is repeating this is because Skitter maybe has a communication device recording this conversation, or is bugged – haha, very funny – or something. The thing is...would anyone believe Coil did all this long, calculated, complicated plan using dozens of people and untold amounts of money, all to kill himself in the end? I can guarantee absolutely nobody would believe such a thing. In fact, I bet if the heroes listened to this conversation, they’d take Trickster’s constant denial as a sign Coil likely isn’t dead. Besides...

“You mean outside of the possibility that you’re wired and my saying the wrong thing could out him?  Whatever.”

Saying that is as good as admitting Coil is alive. What’s plausible denial? Hell if Trickster knows.

The conversation ends in no unclear terms: the Travelers are not coming. Everyone enters the apartments they’re living in right now, leaving Skitter behind. Genesis is the only one who is left, she talks to Skitter for a moment, trying to appease her by saying Trickster is stressed because a lot he has worked for all this time is relying on the next two days. While that’s an understandable reason to be stressed and lashing out, he’s going a tad too far. I’m sure even after these two days he’ll continue behaving like this, so what will the excuse be by then?

“Then good luck with your thing,” she said.  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

How the hell am I supposed to take that?

There isn’t really a right way to take that. Joke’s on you, Genesis, you’re gonna keep seeing Skitter over and over again because she’s the protagonist of this story.

This badly-executed meeting wasn’t a waste of time for Skitter, she managed to get something out of it: knowledge Coil is up to something shady. It seems he did inform the Travelers of what he had been planning to do, and he may have intended to keep the Travelers away while Skitter talked to him. If he really was going to free Dinah, then he wouldn’t mind if the Travelers were there. Or...something like that. The wording is a tad confusing, but as I see it, the core of Skitter’s point is that Coil wouldn’t make it so there are no witnesses if he truly planned to fulfill his end of the deal. I’m completely unsurprised about that.

The second thing Skitter figured out by coming here was obvious once she found out the place had been abandoned: Dinah isn’t here. Well yeah! I’d be surprised if she had been left behind. Since I’m unconvinced he’s going to let her be free, he’s going to keep her under his control. The thing is...where could he have her? In the very likely scenario he is Thomas Calvert it’s not like he can keep her in a cell in the depths of the Protectorate building.

Turns out Skitter hadn’t been bluffing when she said the Undersiders were up there, waiting for any signal something had gone wrong, they’re all waiting on the roof and areas around the roof. Skitter cautions them to not wait on such a visible place, as a sniper may shoot them.

“You said these suits were bulletproof,” Imp said.  I noticed how she didn’t move.

They might be bulletproof. They do can withstand a blade, but they may not be bulletproof. Look, even if it is, I don’t think the costume will protect them from falling from the roof onto the ground.

Alright, looks like Skitter already has a plan and an idea of how this will be like: they will summon Thomas Calvert to meet them in a place on top of a building. This is supposed to stop him from just killing them all, too, so it’s all for increased safety. Feels a lot like a hostage negotiation, haha! Looks like it’ll be here, in the building that used to host the hideout, and to avoid being trapped Skitter makes it so they have a lifeline: swing off the edge of the building to safety. Hah! Fun times. She can’t guarantee it’ll be safe, but anyone would take a dangerous move with a chance of working, over a situation where it’s guaranteed they’ll die.

Everything Skitter is talking about here is about ways to be safe for when Coil inevitably turns against them. She knows Coil knows very well how all of their powers work, thanks to his extensive experience with them – on two timelines, as if that wasn’t enough. Skitter will set up all the precautions she can take at a time like this, but she doesn’t have much faith she’d be able to pull off something Coil hasn’t seen or heard about before. Aw, don’t be like that, Skitter! You have done waaaay more than what your enemies know you can do, you’ll be fine.

The Undersiders position themselves according to their prominence in the story, for strategic and emotional support purposes. Skitter, Grue and Tattletale are to the front, Imp, Heckpuppy and Regent to the back. On the other end of the roof, Coil makes act of presence. Indeed, it is Thomas Calvert. Skitter wastes no time, passing bugs all over Calvert’s face right away, experience I’m sure he found annoying.

“Undersiders.  After your last interaction with Director Piggot, I assumed you would want to speak to me and try establishing ground rules?”

“We know it’s you, boss,” Regent said.

My bugs caught the slightest exhalation from Director Calvert’s nostrils, a minor expression of annoyance. “The Travelers were a little more circumspect.”

Oh my god, everyone wants to pretend things aren’t as straightforward as they truly are, and the Undersiders aren’t playing along. Truly, the Undersiders aren’t into subtlety. I note he’s admitting this in front of the PRT squad that’s accompanying him, so I suppose everybody he’s with is part of his mercenaries. He’s getting his trained soldiers into the organization he controls now, I see.

Coil isn’t happy to see Skitter and the rest of the Undersiders are wearing their costumes, defying the order he had given about not wearing the stuff. Skitter argues that, since she got injured in the attack earlier, she’d rather play safe, as she wouldn’t have gotten injured if she had been costumed. True, but she also wouldn’t have been with Dad Hebert, so...would she have been at the town hall in the first place?

Once Calvert is certain Skitter and the rest didn’t get a surge of traitorous demeanor and tried to have a listening device here, he talks freely about what happened. Everyone in the room was carefully selected and briefed on what they had to do. The two mayoral candidates were recruited long ago, no word on if they were told they were going to get stabbed. Maybe they were! Circus and Chariot were hired nearly a year and a half ago, and both grew into the public’s perception according to Coil’s plans. I’m sure Coil already knew Chariot had been found out, anyway. Uber and Leet are recent hires, just for convenience.

Most reporters were selected and stationed well in advance, claiming the rear of the room where they would bear the brunt of the attack, so to speak.”

“They didn’t die?” I asked.

...that has to be the most surprising part of the entire hubbub. I notice it says ‘most’, so perhaps those Coil didn’t recruit did perish? Regardless, pieces of people must have been prepared in advance to simulate the deaths, although this all would mean their careers are over. All the money Coil must have paid them better have been worth it.

“The reporters, as I said, were plants. I needed news reporters in place who would be sure to catch the details I wanted them to catch.  Some editing of the footage just prior to it being sent to the news stations served to smooth rough edges and highlight key points.”

Okay, I’m satisfied! That explains so well the gap in logic I had mentioned in the last update, about how it was being taken for granted the reporters and their crew would be able to make content that showed Coil’s death! It was all planned. It never crossed my mind, the reporter crews would be part of Coil’s hired people as well. I’m really glad this was all mentioned! Thanks for realizing what was going on and taking measures to fill that hole, Mr. Wildbow, this is why you’re a good writer.

The point of the attack was to make Director Piggot look as ineffectual as possible. They doubtlessly will use some doctored footage from the attack to make her look bad! Or at least I hope so, because getting stabbed isn’t really a sign of uselessness. Mrs. Padillo will be the new mayor, and also some guy named Thomas Grove will recover. I thought the other mayoral candidate was supposed to be called Keith Grove, but okay.

Coil had prepared his plan so well he even had a second power supply ready to explode in case the heroes got rid of the first one, they had it in the lobby. He mentions how carefully everything was calculated, and that he left the crowd largely untouched. He also confirms they had engineered a technology that worked similarly to Trickster, using that to teleport masses of flesh in place of the press, so those would be blown up by the explosion. All in all, this entire thing seems to have been much less cruel than I thought it was. I’m sure Director Piggot would disagree, what with being stabbed.

Looks like this is the last time Circus, Uber and Leet will appear in the story, as they’ll be leaving Brockton Bay and won’t even have to return to a life of crime. No big loss for the story, really.

To us, he said, “It just isn’t worth killing good help.  Should my ultimate plans here fall through, it’s better to have individuals like them on reserve.”

Does that mean Skitter isn’t in danger of being killed soon? I’m glad. It’s not going to stop her from fighting Coil, but if he believes he can get her to cooperate...

There’s some more villainous monologue here, Calvert is explaining what will happen next in his plan to establish his grip onto Brockton Bay. As Director, he’ll lead the campaign against the villains. Now there are only two groups left in the city: the Undersiders and the Travelers. The Travelers will be the first ones targeted, and they will avoid capture. Huh. Is that why Genesis was saying in forty-eight hours there’d be some important results? The Travelers would elude capture and leave the city with a heap of cash – guess Ballistic won’t have the option of sticking around.

It’s a good idea to make it so fast, though. It’d make Calvert look like a pretty competent director, and although maybe some people would be skeptical about how fast he managed to defeat one of the very powerful villain teams, there’d be no proof of any sort of alliances.

The Undersiders would be losing their territories in the incoming months, too. They’d get away too, with amazing amounts of money, and a couple Undersiders would rule over nearby cities with villain presence, pretty much working as Calvert’s proxies in terms of power. All in all, it’s a pretty good and reasonable plan, for a villain. Too bad Calvert has no honor – I’ll never get over how he shot his captain in the back to heighten his odds of escaping.

“Why become PRT director?” Grue asked. “Why not mayor?”

“All eyes will be on the mayor after the recent fiasco.  Mr. Grove will serve as a red herring, drawing all suspicious eyes to him before he defers the election to Mrs. Padillo.  Besides, who would you rather rule?  A dozen capes or fifty thousand unpowered civilians?”

I meeeeeean...I’d rather to be under the rule of someone who knows what they’re doing for the benefit of the city, the number and power or lack thereof is irrelevant.

“You said the Travelers will be the first to be ousted,” I said.  “Does that mean you’ve found a solution to their problem?”

“No.  But we have several last resort answers, and those will be exhausted soon.”

Sounds to me like he already knows those last resort answers won’t work. Trickster isn’t going to be happy to hear that, but methinks he’s already resigned to that possibility.

With my bugs, I noted Tattletale making a hand gesture.  Left index finger and middle finger pressed together, she tapped her thumb against the tips of the other two fingers.

What’s this gesture supposed to mean? I replicated it and all, but I just don’t get the meaning. This was done right after Calvert mentioned the last resort options will be exhausted soon.

Now here comes the point Skitter was waiting for: Dinah. Calvert offers to give Skitter executive powers in naming the measures she’d like to see pass, including employment stimulation for laborers and a restoration of the ferry services – measures that’d be quite beneficial for Dad Hebert, whose identity I’m sure Calvert knows. This continued cooperation will go on for another year, and then Dinah would be freed. In other words: he’s trying to avoid fulfilling his agreement with Skitter. In terms of...well, terms, it’s not a bad agreement! Quite tempting, especially for someone who wants the best for her territory and its people, but Skitter really wants to have Dinah out of Calvert’s clutches. That I agree with.

...although...I won’t lie; Calvert’s offer is really tempting. Oh well.

“No,” I told him.  “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to let her go.”

“Then I will.  I’m disappointed, but I won’t have it said that I’m not a man of my word.”

My heart was pounding.  Just like that?

Nope! No no no no no. I won’t believe it until Dinah is safe and sound. I just can’t believe Calvert would let Dinah go, no way.

Calvert gives Taylor two options: she may return Dinah to her family, or she can pass her onto Skitter’s custody. He better mean ‘your custody’ as in ‘I’ll pass her to you and then you’ll deal with returning her’, instead of giving her to Skitter so she adopts her. Skitter decides Dinah shall be delivered to her family.

“Very well.  With your permission, we’ll release her to her parents, with some covert surveillance to ensure she does not reveal any details of my greater mission.”

So...this means it’s likely Dinah will be stalked for the rest of her life. That’s better than being drugged and captive in Coil’s hideout, but it’s far from an ideal situation. I hope that, now that Dinah will be free, Skitter still fights Coil, although that’ll be much more difficult now that he’s the director of the local PRT.

Tattletale and Regent shall go down to check on Noelle, while the rest go with Skitter to greet Dinah and make sure she’s delivered to her family. While these final cautious arrangements are made, all Skitter can do is stand around, flabbergasted something went right for once! For maybe the second time ever since Worm started, something Skitter fought hard for has been achieved, seemingly without any drawbacks! Haha, when things always crash and burn afterwards, these moments of triumph must be delightful.

For weeks, months, I’d been bracing myself to hear Coil say no.  To hear him say ‘I promised I’d consider it’ or ‘I promised to release her when my plan reached its conclusion, and that won’t happen for another year.’

Technically he did the latter. He just made it be an optional thing that Skitter could accept or reject.

There’s a fifteen minute ride, until they arrive at a building where there’s a squad of armed soldiers, a man who wasn’t armed, and a little girl. Hm...it’s kind of worrying Skitter can’t see yet. She has her bugs, but in my opinion, there’s a chance Coil may have arranged some sort of impostor. They let Coil return an impostor to the family, Skitter thinks everything is fine and dandy, and Coil gets away with keeping Dinah. It’s not that much of a stretch. Have any of the Undersiders seen Dinah, ever? I think Skitter has, but I’m not certain. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not impossible she’s some sort of decoy.

She hasn’t even said a word. I’m still pretty worried here.

The rather intense headlights of the truck are turned on, if Skitter had been able to see it would have been blinding. She tries to give Dinah some reassurance and finds nothing. It’s not that Dinah was suddenly pulled away or anything, though.

It’s that Skitter was teleported. It doesn’t take me long to realize it must have been similar to the technology he used during the town hall attack earlier. He teleported things and people around back then, after all.

So yeah, this was a trap. Calvert and a squad of his soldiers are in front of her, while she’s standing there surrounded with containment foam. Calvert himself had his gun aimed at her.

“No monologue?” I asked, “You’re not going to explain how you did it?  How you’re going to deal with my teammates or explain what happened to me?”

Hmmmmm...if it was anything like what happened at the town hall, he must have swapped Skitter with something or someone. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be convenient if Grue and Heckpuppy, who’d be nearby, get alarmed and realize Calvert isn’t playing fair. Perhaps a Skitter impostor? One that’d vanish mysteriously in a while, to never be seen again?

Regardless, the last line in this chapter is Calvert shooting his gun. No, no way Skitter is going to die here. She’s going to come close, and it’ll be hard to survive because she’s currently blind, but damn it’ll be difficult. I’m looking forward to finding out how she’ll get out of this! But that’ll be for next time.

Next time: in three updates

#worm #worm liveblog #webserial #liveblog #webserial liveblog

[unholyhelbig]

Bechloe Prompt: Chloe is a street racer where she lost her car in a pink slip race (where the winner keeps the loser car), no big deal except the car belongs to her best friend, Aubrey is out of town, and is now in the possession of her nemesis. In need to get it back before Aubrey gets back, she's forced to ask for help from Beca, a mechanic and former street racer that gave it up for unknown reasons, who also happens to be her crush.

Read my stuff on AO3 | SEND ME PROMPTS

A/N: Listen, I know this isn’t the greatest, but I’m trying to get back in the game. I’ve been kind of scarce on here lately when it comes to fanfiction. My life is kind of getting together. But yeah… I miss it! But I’m rusty.

The scorching heat didn’t’ help. It never did. It clung to Chloe like a wet cloth, baking off the asphalt in nearly visible rays. She was drumming her thumbs against the steering wheel, letting the sweat collect in an even brine against her brow. She had turned the engine off an hour ago and still couldn’t bring herself to get out of her car.  

Chloe’s life had been ruined in one single race.

When she was in high school and had first gotten her license, she would shut the headlights for her car off. It plunged her into a cooling darkness. She would sit, listening to her engine purr and staring at the line of trees to make sure she was completely alone. The North Carolina nights damning and isolating.

Chloe revved her engine before pushing down hard on the gas. The wind would flood the cab and the scent of gas clouded her lungs. She would drive as fast as she could: The meter suddenly climbing from 60. Her fingers would tighten around the wheel. 75. The road would bend like a warped spine. 80.

For a while, it was the only high that mattered. The only way she could feel alive in her desolate town, with her overbearing parents and suffocating life responsibilities.  Just hit the gas. Keep riding until she would suddenly have to smash the brakes for an oncoming car that had no chance of seeing her in the first place.

That’s why she started racing when she moved out to the West Coast. They had full societies dedicated to lining up on empty tracks. Three lights and then hit the gas. It wasn’t the same as the woods, but it still pushed blood through her veins.

It’s how she lost her car- well, Aubrey’s car. Aubrey who had told her to take care of her place while she was on an important business trip in the city. Aubrey who had a nice Lexus and kept it pristine enough to be a makeshift Uber. Aubrey who would very much gut her like a fish the second she found out about the pink-slip race.

Someone knocked on the window of her beat up truck. Chloe jumped, anxiety pushing close to her throat as she let out a yelp of surprise and shifted her focus. A stranger, a young girl with a baseball cap on and a toothpick hanging out of her lips, gestured for her to roll down her window. Chloe did.  

“You’ve been sittin’ out here for a long while.” The girl said, pulling her baseball cap off. She had a lot of hair, the brown locks falling around a perfectly innocent face. Her forehead was coated in sweat, her shirt branded with an embroidered name. Emily. “Must be hot.”

“It is-I” Chloe quickly pulled her keys from the ignition and pushed out of the car. The girl took a wide step back and shifted the toothpick from one side of her mouth to the other. “This is… Beca Mitchell works here, doesn’t she?”

She slammed her door and stare the woman down. She wore something that was a mix between a smile and a grimace. Emily plucked the toothpick from her mouth and flicked it on the ground next to a few cigarette butts.

“She does, but it’s by appointment only. Your truck acting up on you? One of our other guys can take a look at it.”

“No, no it’s not that. It’s a personal matter.”

Emily looked like she wished she had kept the toothpick in her mouth. Like she was just as bothered by the heat as Chloe was. There was the sound of drilling coming from the open garages a few feet away. A few distant voices and the scent of motor oil. Chloe had half the mind to get back in her truck. To drive away and to figure out some other option for her predicament.

“Right, well. She’s in her office. Better than boiling like a lobster out here in your truck.”

Emily had a bit of charm to her that Chloe couldn’t’ quite figure out. She mocked a salute and walked back into the much cooler garage, she imagined, to find something else to chew on. Chloe still stood evenly by the side of her car for a few moments before she pulled her shoulders back and walked towards the front office of the little tire place.

She was instantly cooled off the moment the door opened, and a little bell sounded in response. There was a fan oscillating in the corner with a light buzz- a receptionist looking up from the little spot that she was perched at. Her dull green eyes flashing in annoyance for a split second before clearing up.

“Hi, do you have an appointment?”  

“No, I don’t.” She walked up to the counter, feeling the sweat on her forehead harden against the fans blast. She saw the girl grimace.

“We can set one up for you. Oil change? Tire replacement? How is Monday at eight?”

“I don’t need my car worked on,” Chloe cleared her throat and shifted on the balls of her feet. “I just need to talk to Beca- If that’s possible. It’s important. Really important.”

Chloe hadn’t realized how hard she was pressing against the counter, but her fingertips burned. She kept her eyes trained on the receptionist, the woman typing away a few things on her computer with a puzzled look on her face.

“I’m sorry, but you have to make an-“

“I don’t have time for an appointment!” Chloe said.

The girl with dull eyes leaned back evenly in her chair. It creaked up her weight as she rose a drawn-on eyebrow at Chloe. The answer would still be the same regardless of if she raised her voice or not. Chloe needed to make an appointment, and Beca would quickly dismiss it the second she saw the name on her schedule.

“There a problem, here, Tammy?”

Beca was leaning against the doorframe to what had to be her office. Triggered by the loud voices, or one voice, in particular, Chloe would never know. Her attention was sharp, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail, jumpsuit hanging tied and low around her waist. Her white shirt was stained and hugging her body close. Her stare didn’t soften at the sight of Chloe. In fact, it solidified. She dragged that midnight stare across her frame and Chloe swallowed back chills. The fan was directly on her. Tied string waving in the current.

“Not at all, Miss Mitchell. She was just leaving. Weren’t you?”

Chloe swallowed roughly and stared between the two women. Tammy, she could take. Her eyeliner was drawn on too thick and her lips were outlined in a shade that didn’t compliment her skin tone. Beca, on the other hand, was stretching the sleeves of her shirt, her arms crossed over her chest and a dark look shading her features.

“No. No, I wasn’t. Beca, I need to talk to you.”

“And I have no interest in speaking to you.”

“Please, it’s important.”

“That’s what everyone says, Red. Begging isn’t flattering.”

Beca turned to walk into her office, and Chloe followed close behind. The receptionist drew in a sharp and angry breath, close to reaching for the phone but she didn’t do anything. Instead, she watched as Beca slumped into her office chair and Chloe straddled the line of trespassing.

The mechanic struggled to ignore her. Picking up her ink pen and scribbling against the paperwork she was struggling to file. Chloe saw this as her chance, she figured Beca could multi-task just as well as she could.

“Last night Max got ahold of my car- well, not my car, but a car.” She started “I was so close, so fucking close, but my wheels stalled. They always stall. You know how he works, Beca. He won’t let me race for it again.”

There was a round of thick silence, but Beca’s pen stopped moving. She didn’t’ look up. “I didn’t’ think I would see the day when Chloe Mother Fucking Beale would turn up in my shop asking for help.”

“Is that a no?”

Beca stood and trained her full attention on Chloe, her fingers pressing into the top of the desk as she frowned at the girl. “You’re fucking stupid for racing against Max in a Pink Slip. You know that?”

“I know.”

“I’m out of the game, have been for years now. I don’t even think I could win against something like that anymore.”

“I know that too.” Chloe said daringly “But you’re my only hope.”

#Beca Mitchell #Chloe Beale #Bechloe #bechloe au #bechloe fic rec #request

[englishlistwords]

Howl, Parts I & II

Allen Ginsberg- 1926-1997

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,   who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch! Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

From Collected Poems 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg, published by Harper & Row. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. Used with permission.

#allen ginsberg #howl

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

Howl~ Allen Ginsberg

I

 I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,   who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years. II What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch! Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! III Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland   where you’re madder than I am I’m with you in Rockland   where you must feel very strange I’m with you in Rockland   where you imitate the shade of my mother I’m with you in Rockland   where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries I’m with you in Rockland   where you laugh at this invisible humor I’m with you in Rockland   where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter I’m with you in Rockland   where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio I’m with you in Rockland   where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses I'm with you in Rockland   where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica I’m with you in Rockland   where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx I’m with you in Rockland   where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss I’m with you in Rockland   where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse I’m with you in Rockland   where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void I’m with you in Rockland   where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha I’m with you in Rockland   where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb I’m with you in Rockland   where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale I’m with you in Rockland   where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep I’m with you in Rockland   where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself    imaginary walls collapse    O skinny legions run outside  O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here    O victory forget your underwear we’re free I’m with you in Rockland   in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

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