#like 90 percent of this post is from roll call

[disco-troy]

Duke and Jason

The interesting thing about Duke’s relationship with Jason is that though he is a part of the family, he wasn’t really there for a lot of the divisive things that happened when Jason came back. Duke also never knew Jason beforehand or encountered the ghost of previous Jason; Dick, Babs and Bruce knew Jason before, Tim, Cass, Steph, and almost everyone else had to live with the ghost of Jason’s death haunting their moves and their relationships with Bruce, before Jason came back. Duke, meanwhile, joined after Jason’s return, and for him the status quo has always been what it is. To Jason, having someone who never thought of him as different than the Jason he is would be very important to him. Despite Duke’s knowledge of the past, sometimes distance makes the biggest difference - and Duke has the luxury of not having any emotional entanglements into who Jason was.

In addition, Duke comes at a time where Jason is able to openly admit he has brothers - and very much considers him to be one.

Artemis: Honestly? It was like kissing my brother. If I had one. Jason: Thank god! I was thinking the same thing. And I have four.

On Jason’s side, he seems to have decided to take a sort of mentorship role for Duke. The main instance is in the Roll Call short story in which Jason and Duke do a fight simulation on a very high level and Jason shares his hard-won wisdom.

Panel One -  Jason: Lesson number one: quips and retorts should only be used for distraction.

Panel Two- Jason: Find your own way. Because following in the Batman’s footsteps and being something that you’re not -- is the fastest way to get killed

Panel Three- Jason: No. That’s a given. Lesson number four? No matter how you feel or what you think... you’re never alone

Jason makes sure to tell Duke that no matter what, he’s never alone. Jason wants Duke to know that no matter what, he will always have his back but it means more than that. Jason had long periods of time where he thought he was abandoned, and he lashed out as a result; hurting himself and others. A lot of the advice Jason gives Duke is not only useful things, but things Jason wished that he knew when he was younger. It seems to imply that Jason might see a bit of himself in Duke, and that he sees it as his responsibility to help Duke become something better.

Jason: -- How many times are you planning to die, Duke?

Roll call also has a scene that drives me insane in which Jason recreates being beaten to death by the Joker in front of Duke. It's pretty ambiguous whether or not this was on purpose. If it was on purpose, was it to show Duke what happened to him, was it to confront his fears on his own terms with his brother next to him? If it was by accident, did he brush it off to make Duke feel safe, or was he okay with Duke seeing him like that because he trusts Duke? Either way, Jason is comfortable enough around Duke to feel safe with him seeing one of his biggest traumas.

Joker (standing over Jason with a crowbar): I guess it’s over your dead body

And, after they finish the simulation (and Duke of course jumps right in to help Jason), Jason's right back to joking with Duke.

Jason: Heads up Narrows, more clay bastards on the horizon. Batwoman and her crew usually warm up in the mud room on a level four practive setting.

Duke continues to help save Jason, notably in the Cheer’s story arc.

Jason: ... Have your back (urban legends 6)

(Although, it equally drives me insane that despite Duke helping Jason and Bruce in this arc, he’s the only member of the family to not be in both Jason and Bruce’s dream worlds which drives a lot of questions - do they not want Duke to have been a vigilante and thus part of the family? Has Duke's entrance into the family been too recent for them to add them to their fairy dream worlds? Is the author simply forgetting to mention Duke being there even though Duke is in the comic saving Jason and Bruce? My personal interpretation is because Cheer deals very much with Jason wanting the Joker dead, a dead joker means that Duke’s parents were never Jokerized, and thus Duke couldn't be a part of the family in a dream world where Joker was dead.)

Their relationship with what the Joker did to them is another huge parallel between Duke and Jason. When the Joker killed Jason, and when Duke’s parents were Jokerized mark a difference in both of their lives - now divided in the before Joker touched their lives and after. It's interesting to see how both Jason and Duke expected Batman to save them initially, and ended up needing to take their lives into their own hands, though there are huge differences in the way Jason fought for revenge, when Duke’s feelings were expended on fixing his parents and not towards the joker. Of course, the two situations are not completely comparable, but it is a similarity that impacts their lives.

Duke (to Batman): I know you can save them. My parents. All of them. Just like you always do.

They also have nicknames for each other! Jason calls Duke “Narrows”, which is a pretty outspoken acknowledgment of some of their similarities, being children from Gotham. 

Panel One - Jason: Narrows, meet crime alley. we do things differently. Find a functional outfit.

Panel Two - Duke: Need help? Jason: No, narrows, I don’t

It is important to note that Duke and Jason’s living situation are not identical, though they are similar - the Narrows is often neglected in Gotham.

Jim Gordon (about the Narrows) : Its Gotham’s poorest neighborhood. Made up of nearly a dozen diverse communities. Its been let down over and over by the mechanisms put in place in order to protect it. Under-protected. Under-represented. It’s been burned so many times you are practically feel the embers everywhere.

However, as opposed to Jason, Duke did have a stable family as a child, his mom was a social worker and his dad was a construction worker. After his parents were jokerized, Duke had to live in a series of foster homes, so both Jason and Duke (along with Dick) were impacted by the childcare system in Gotham.

In addition to Jason being comfortable sharing himself with Duke, Duke is able to get by with a lot of jokes about sensitive topics in Jason’s life.

Duke (about Batman): And he’s not my boss. Or the the target of my daddy issues.

Jason: you’re the latest robin. You’re supposed to... whatever. Brighten his dark side. All that crap. So he doesn’t propose to a villain and then run off and do... This! Duke: Jay, what? Dude, when you were robin you got dead then came back as a vigilante villain! And you’re telling me to “brighten his dark side”. (Batman 33 (2016))

Duke: Question. Didn’t you die already?

If that had been anyone else, I don't think Jason would have brushed it aside that easily! Anyways, Duke and Jason have a super interesting relationship and I hope more people keep exploring it!

#like 90 percent of this post is from roll call #shhhh #stay tuned for dick and duke or duke and damian #also! please feel free to add more panels and details #i tried to grab as much as I could but its obvi not everything and it was getting long #duke thomas #jason todd #batfam #dc comics #they are brothers your honor #this is part of my evil plan to get more people to use and talk about duke #is it working yet #uh feel free to dm or comment for issue numbers #duke thomas meta #jason todd meta #relationship meta

[bokafix]

Hire or DIY for your Next Painting Project?

Considering hiring a professional for your next painting project or taking the DIY route? Let's take a look at all you need to know to make the best decision for you!

The Decorator's Dilemma

Ready to give your living space a fresh coat of paint? It’s time to decide: should you embrace your inner artist or rely on the expertise of a professional? According to a recent survey on DIY habits in the UK, a whopping 90 percent of females have conquered the art of painting and decorating, outshining their male peers at 82 percent. 

In this blog post, we'll discuss the pros and cons of professional help versus DIY, along with tips and tricks to help you make the home of your dreams. 

Get your brush and paint bucket ready, and let’s get started!

From DIY Dilemmas to Flawless Finales

There's a certain sense of accomplishment that comes with rolling up your sleeves and embarking on a DIY painting project. It lets you channel your inner artist and gives your home a personal flair. But don't brush off the project's complexity, time commitment, or your skill level! 

Before diving in, ponder the pros and cons and make sure you don't end up with a fixer upper instead of a masterpiece. When it comes to painting, surface preparation is the key to success. Remember, you must scrape, sand, patch, and fill every nook and cranny before diving into the fun part. Trust us, no fancy paint can disguise a wall that resembles the moon's surface! 

And do you want to know the secret to a professional looking finish, free of lumps and bumps? The kitchen sieve! Might sound crazy, but painters and decorators swear by this hack for achieving flawless results. Position the sieve over a clean paint scuttle, pour the paint through, and let it work its magic. It effortlessly strains out any unwanted particles, ensuring a smooth finish. Plus, it's sustainable and can be used repeatedly. And the best part? It only costs £2! Don't strain your creativity, let the kitchen sieve do the work.

How to Choose the Ideal Paint Colours for Your Space

Choosing the right paint colours is like unlocking a world of possibilities for your home. They can help create an atmosphere that speaks to you, because colours have powers when it comes to influencing our emotions. So, let's dive into some tips to help you choose the perfect paint colours!

According to colour psychology, different colours and shades can bring to light various emotions. So it's crucial to choose a colour that nurtures the room's purpose. Transform your space with vibrant shades for an energetic and lively atmosphere and create a serene environment with soothing blues and greens. 

Did you know that illumination not only brightens up a room but also has an influence on your wall colour? Before you make that final decision, consider how light plays its part. Rooms facing north or south enjoy indirect sunlight, giving them a cooler atmosphere. On the other hand, rooms facing east or west get direct sunlight and need warmer undertones. 

A pro tip is to grab a sample and paint a square on your wall. Watch how it behaves with different lights throughout the day! This little experiment ensures your colour choice thrives under any lighting condition. 

And if you're feeling a bit stuck and need some extra guidance to make this crucial decision, here is an expert guide to choosing the right paint colour for you!

When to Call in the Professionals

Ultimately, knowing when to seek professional help and when to tackle it yourself is the key to making wise choices in home projects.

Therefore, if your walls are in good condition and you're looking for a simple colour change, feel free to tackle the project yourself. Touching up small spots or repainting a small room, for instance, can often be done without hiring a professional. However, remember not to skimp on tools. Using low quality materials with expensive paint won't lead to the best results. Invest in quality tools to achieve a professional looking finish.

On the other hand, hiring a pro can be a smart move. They're experts in paint types and know which ones work best for each surface and room. With their skills, they handle all the necessary prep work, leaving you with a flawless finish. They bring their own tools, saving you money and space. Plus, they work efficiently, giving you time to focus on what you love. 

The Answer to the Decorator's Dilemma

We know that taking on a DIY painting project allows you to express your creativity and add a personal touch to your home. So, remember to prioritise surface preparation for the best results, and don't forget the kitchen sieve hack for a smooth finish. Consider the impact of the lighting in the room and the select the best colour to show your desired ambience.

All that being said, for expert advice, a flawless finish, and time saved on prep work, hiring a professional is a wise choice. So, consider the complexity of the task, your desired results and your budget before deciding.

And if you choose to hire a pro, Bokafix is here to help you find the perfect decorator and painter. Streamlining the booking process, our app ensures an experience free of stress. Download the Bokafix app today and start your renovation project in no time.

Happy painting!

#home & lifestyle #home decor #diy #home improvement #lifestyle #guide #wall painting #painting #tradeswomen #service #interior decor

[hoffhaas26]

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[tmbacorbett]

Freebie Book Blitz: After the Ending by Lindsey Pogue & Lindsey Sparks (Fairleigh)

  Title: After the Ending Authors: Lindsey Pogue & Lindsey Sparks (Fairleigh) Genre: New Adult Post Apoc Hosted by: Lady Amber’s PR

Blurb:

The Walking Dead meets X-Men in this evocative post-apocalyptic love story and adventure!

  → superpowered post-apocalyptic survival

→ unbreakable friendships

→ gritty dystopian settings

→ a touch of romance

  The Virus spread. Billions died. The Ending began.

We may have survived the apocalypse, but the Virus changed us…

  If someone had told me three months ago that 90 percent of the people in the world were about to die, I would’ve laughed.

  If someone had told me the survivors would develop unbelievable abilities, I would’ve called them crazy.

  If someone had told me I’d find love with the least likely person, I would’ve rolled my eyes.

  And if someone had told me that, after everything, the people I cared about most would be torn from my grasp, I would’ve walked away.

  I wish I could walk away now…

  WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “Never a dull moment! What an amazing story.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “A fantastic series. Loved every book!!!”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “This was a highly unexpected addicting surprise.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “Simply amazing!”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “This was a truly amazing and emotional ride.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “I have never ever read such an intense story. Gripped my soul. Best series EVER!”

FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME!

Lindsey Pogue is a genre-bending fiction author, best known for her soul-stirring, post-apocalyptic survival series, Savage North Chronicles and Forgotten Lands. As an avid romance reader with a master’s in history and culture, Lindsey’s adventures cross genres and push boundaries, weaving together facts, fantasy, and timeless love stories of epic proportions.

  When she’s not plotting her next epic storyline, or dreaming up new, brooding characters, she’s wrapped in blankets watching monster flicks with her own leading man. Lindsey and her husband live in Northern California with their rescue cats, Beast and Blue.​

Author Links:

Amazon | Facebook | Reader Group | Instagram | Twitter

TikTok | Bookbub | Website | Goodreads | Newsletter

FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME!

Lindsey Sparks is a bestselling Science Fiction and Fantasy author who lives her life with one foot in a book—so long as that book transports her to a magical world or bends the rules of science. Her novels, from Post-apocalyptic to Time Travel Romance, always offer up a hearty dose of unreality, along with plenty of history, mystery, adventure, and romance.

  When she’s not working on her next novel, Lindsey spends her time hanging out with her two little boys, working in her garden, or playing board games with her husband. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family and their small pack of cats and dogs.

  Author Links:

Website | Facebook | Reader Group | Instagram

Pinterest | Newsletter | Amazon | Bookbub

FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME!

The post Freebie Book Blitz: After the Ending by Lindsey Pogue & Lindsey Sparks (Fairleigh) first appeared on TMBA Corbett Tries to Write.

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[joyffree]

✯✯✯ FREEBIE ALERT ✯✯✯

After the Ending by Lindsey Pogue & Lindsey Sparks (Fairleigh)

The Walking Dead meets X-Men in this evocative post-apocalyptic love story and adventure!

→ superpowered post-apocalyptic survival

→ unbreakable friendships

→ gritty dystopian settings

→ a touch of romance

The Virus spread. Billions died. The Ending began.

We may have survived the apocalypse, but the Virus changed us…

If someone had told me three months ago that 90 percent of the people in the world were about to die, I would’ve laughed.

If someone had told me the survivors would develop unbelievable abilities, I would’ve called them crazy.

If someone had told me I’d find love with the least likely person, I would’ve rolled my eyes.

And if someone had told me that, after everything, the people I cared about most would be torn from my grasp, I would’ve walked away.

I wish I could walk away now…

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “Never a dull moment! What an amazing story.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “A fantastic series. Loved every book!!!”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “This was a highly unexpected addicting surprise.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “Simply amazing!”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “This was a truly amazing and emotional ride.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  “I have never ever read such an intense story. Gripped my soul. Best series EVER!”

@authorlindseypogue @authorlindseysparks

#Hosted by @LadyAmbersReviewsPR #FreeRead #Oneclick #PostApoc #NewAdult #Adventure #LindseyPogue #LindseyFairleigh #LadyAmbersPR #FreeEBook #MustRead #AfterTheEnding #Bookish #BookBloggers #Bookstagram

[snarkwrites]

ssw | embry call ; let me take care of you.

NOTES:

As I said yesterday... I’m going to break down the list of prompts I originally intended to use for just one one-shot into a few different ones for this because I just felt like the first one flowed so well using only the one... This is the second part to the one shot I posted yesterday. And there will be at least a few more parts after this. I can’t say when they’ll be coming, but I can say they will be coming eventually.

Again, same as yesterday.. I am not a medical professional. Nor have I ever had amnesia of any kind. I’m trying my best with this, so apologies if it doesn’t seem realistic or whatever...If it matters/bothers anyone, that is.

Question though.. Would anyone be interested in at least one part of this being written in his point of view? Because I feel like it’d be interesting to write that way... It’d be third person..

PROMPTS:

Taken from [ here ] or [ here ]. The prompt used for inspiration here was obviously, Let me take care of you.

FANDOM / CHARACTER:

Twilight / Embry Call x Imprint!OFC, Merisa.

OTHER WORKS EMBRY & MERISA ARE FOUND IN:

[ he looks down. she looks up. ] 

WARNINGS:

amnesia tw, vague injuries mentioned tw, just gonna say her current soon to be ex boyfriend is an actual piece of garbage so.. yeah.. Sexual tension. Beyond all these, there’s not really anything else I can think of.

TAGGING:

@kyleoreillysknee​  is the only one currently on my Twilight taglist. If you see this and you’d like to be tagged also, add yourself to the doc below or lmk. It’ll make me super happy.

OTHER STUFF:

[ faq | request rules | sfw masterlist | tag list doc ]

The phone rang, shattering the silence and my train of thought. Okay, so it wasn’t a train of thought because I was more or less staring out the window of my grandmother’s living room and watching Embry Call work on my grandmother’s old car out in the driveway, but.. The phone was a distraction I didn’t want.

I grumbled when it didn’t go quiet. And after a few more seconds I’d had all I could take of the high pitched sound in all it’s annoying glory. I sprang up from the couch gingerly, grabbing up the remote to pause the true crime documentary I’d been engrossed in about Richard Ramirez and I hobbled into the kitchen, wincing every step of the way.

A scowl filled my face and I tensed up just as soon as I picked up and I heard Greg on the other end of the line. Upon hearing his voice, all sorts of unpleasant memories came rushing back. It was too much. 

“Merisa?”

“What, Greg?” I snapped. Impatient. Peering out my grandma’s living room window. Biting my bottom lip as I watched Embry tug the stained tank top he was wearing up over his head and wipe at sweat on his forehead with it before tossing it on the concrete slab next to his open toolbox.

“I asked you a question.” Greg cleared his throat expectantly.

Is it bad that I was so caught up in watching Embry do mechanic things outside that I didn’t even attempt to make an effort to listen to a damn word Greg said? Because this is exactly what happened.

“I wasn’t listening.”

Greg gave an annoyed huff at my honest answer and I rolled my eyes. Grumbling. The crackle of static over the phone line breaking through for a second or two. Whether I asked for him to repeat himself or not didn’t matter at all because Greg went on and asked his question again anyway.

“I said don’t you think you should be planning to return to Seattle soon? You were only supposed to be gone for a few days. It’s been nearly four weeks.” Greg stated. Pausing for a minute to grumble to himself about how this was typical of me, telling him one thing and then doing something entirely different.

And I snapped.

“Does the fact that I nearly died three and a half weeks ago just not mean anything to you at all or..?” I snarled, going quiet for a second or two. Determined to stay calm. But exploding felt so damn satisfying. It was hard to resist. I got the feeling that I spent 90 percent of my time around Greg biting my tongue and that had me wondering why. What did this guy have that kept me with him? The more I wondered about it, the harder it was to come up with any real sort of answer.

“Sorry. I should know better than to ask questions I already know the answer to.” I apologized. In my own petty way, of course.

Greg took my apology as sincerity and he sighed. Disappointed, obviously because I wasn’t there to tend to his every stupid whim. “I’m sorry too, it’s just.. I told you we had plans. You know how important this weekend is to me and the fact that you’re not even trying to come back… I’m just disappointed, sweetheart. That’s all.”

,, well excuse the fuck out of me for grieving. excuse me for loving my mother enough to want to go to her funeral. Excuse me for nearly dying and needing to heal and getting in the way of your precious plans,asshole.” I wanted to say it so badly that I had to bite the insides of my cheeks and ball my hands into fists just to keep it in. I sighed. “Instead of making this harder than it has to be, you could actually be a caring boyfriend and come to make sure I’m okay… I mean.. I am dealing with memory loss and injuries...”

Surprise, surprise. He suddenly had a thousand excuses as to why he couldn’t -and wouldn’t, just do that. And my stomach churned. Did he even give a shit? Why was I still wasting my time? Why had I even bothered answering the phone in the first place this time?

I made up my mind right then. As soon as I got off the phone with him, I was going to block him on all socials. I was going to block his number on my cell phone. And if I saw his name on my grandmother’s caller ID when the phone rang, I was just going to walk out of the room.

“I’ve gotta go.” I muttered. Before Greg could say anything else,  I hung up the phone angrily. Slamming it down on it’s cradle.

From the doorway, Embry cleared his throat and stepped into the living room. “Trouble in paradise?”

“If that’s what paradise is I’d hate to imagine hell.” I flopped back on the couch dramatically. Wincing when yes, it still hurts to move certain ways. Or too much at once. 

Embry sat down in my grandmother’s recliner. Staring intently at the television which was paused on the clubhouse scene from Dirty Dancing.

I grabbed my cell phone from the end table and did exactly what I made up my mind to do. Blocking Greg on every single one of my socials. And out of pettiness, I changed my relationship status on Instagram to single.

He’d never even bothered to change his, if memory serves. Why had I changed mine?

There was still so much I had left to fill in as far as my memory gaps, but it was coming back in leaps and bounds. Something told me that the last thing I needed to have done was return to Seattle. Otherwise, I might not have ever remembered or  even realized to begin with, what kind of man I was involved with because I’m pretty sure that Greg wouldn’t have started to really show his true self.

He’d done a pretty fair job of hiding just how controlling and easily irritated by the slightest inconvenience he really was so far, I mean, I hadn’t dropped his ass.

I smirked in satisfaction as I put down my phone. 

I happened to glance over at Embry to find him staring at me. Like he wanted to say something or he was lost in thought. Before I could help myself, I was staring right back. Getting pulled into the depths of his eyes. Eventually dropping my gaze down. Lingering on his mouth when he licked his lips.

I couldn’t stop staring. This was starting to become habit whenever he was around. Especially if he wasn’t paying attention so I knew I could stare to my hearts content and get away with it.

I stood and cleared my throat. “I’m gonna go get myself some lemonade. Do you want anything?” I asked as I walked over to the doorway leading into the kitchen.

“If there are any more bottled waters?” Embry asked hopefully. I smiled and gave him a thumbs up. And as soon as I was in the kitchen, I leaned against the fridge. Fanning myself with one of my grandmother’s magazines that happened to be sitting on the counter.

After I managed to pull myself together just a little bit, I grabbed a bottled water for Embry and I poured myself a glass of lemonade. And when I turned to walk back into the living room, I found myself body to body with Embry as he stepped into the doorway between the two rooms.

My thighs clenched just a little at the way it felt to be pressed against him. Hard muscles against my own softness. For a second, when I opened my mouth to tell him I’d gotten his water like he asked for, the words hung in my throat.

Finally, I managed to get it out. “Your water, sir.” I held out the water bottle to him and after holding it against the back of his neck for a few seconds, he uncapped it, practically swallowing down half the bottle in one gulp.

Eyes locked on me the entire time. I know this because I’ll be damned if I could stop staring at him either. I tried. And failed.

He cleared his throat.

“Oh, right.. You probably wanted to wash your hands…” I stepped out of the doorway, pouting to myself a little because the second physical contact was broken, I missed the feel of his body against mine.

He walked over to the sink. Turning it on. Washing his hands. And I happened to notice he had a few busted knuckles.

“You need those sanitized. C’mere.” I nodded to the stool on the other side of the counter. Embry shrugged. Muttered that it wasn’t a big deal.

“It’s called infection setting in. And it can happen.” I insisted, nodding to the stool again. When he shook his head and took another sip of water and calmly insisted that he was fine, I shook my head and hobbled over. Grabbing hold of the hand that wasn’t injured. Leading him to the stool. “Sit.”

“Okay, alright. You know, you’re a lot bossier than I remember.” Embry muttered, gazing down at me. Even sitting down he was still taller. Bigger.

I stuck out my tongue at him. “If it keeps you from getting a nasty infection in your hand, I’ll take it.” I muttered. My gaze settling on him. Instantly getting sucked right back into those deep brown eyes and lost.

After a second or two of both of us staring at each other yet again, I cleared my throat. “I should go find the first aid kit.”

“It’s under the sink.” Embry answered quietly. I bit my lip. Nodding as I muttered mostly to myself, “Under the sink.” and turned away to get it.

“You don’t have to do this. I’m telling you, it’s fine. I deal with this all the time. Kind of happens when you work at a garage, Merisa…” Embry trailed off as I glanced back at him and stated in a firmer tone, “Let me take care of you, okay?”

I grabbed the bottle of peroxide and a rag. Sitting on the stool adjacent to his. Grabbing hold of his hand and placing it in my lap.

“You have tiny hands.” Embry muttered, almost sounding dazed. I glanced up at him through a curtain of hair as it fell right into my face because I bent my head just a little to see his hand better. I swallowed hard. Trying not to think of how good it felt to have his hand in mine. Or on my body.

When I exhaled, it was shaky.

That had me raising a brow.

If this man had one tenth of a clue just what he stirred up in me, I swear to God…

He jumped as the peroxide made contact with the open wounds, bubbling and fizzing as it cleaned the wounds out. 

A memory came back to me… I was younger. Probably around five. My grandmother sat on the stool Embry currently sat on and I sat on the stool I was currently sitting on. My leg was in her lap and she was dabbing some red liquid on it that burned like the fire of ten thousand hells. I was crying and trying to jerk my leg away, but my grandma just held onto it. And when she finished, she leaned in… Blowing gently on my injured knee. 

As the bubbling started to slow down, I raised Embry’s hand, leaning down. Blowing on the knuckles a little. Glancing up at him and teasing playfully, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“I’ve felt worse.” he finally mumbled after we’d been locked in a quiet staredown for what felt like minutes instead of seconds. 

It sank in that I was still holding onto his hand. And he wasn’t making an effort to pull his hand away, either.

My grandmother cleared her throat from the doorway and smirked at the two of us playfully as she came in, sitting groceries on the counter. “Am I interrupting something, Merisa?”

“No, not at all.” I answered. Smiling. Letting go of Embry’s hand as my cheeks burned. I felt like a teenager just walked in on by her parents.

Embry slid off the stool and brushed his hands over his jeans. “I need to get back to it.” he muttered. Hurrying out of the house. As soon as the screen door banged shut behind him, I let out a ragged breath. Fanning myself with the magazine again.

Trying to ignore the look I was getting from my grandmother.

When she couldn’t resist any longer, she spoke up. “He’s single.. If you’re wondering.”

“Grandma!” I laughed out, shaking my head. My gaze lingering on the window. Fixed on him.

My grandmother spoke up again. “It’s been so nice having you here, Mermaid… It’ll be a shame to see you go.”

Before I really stopped to think about it, I replied “ Honestly? I’m tempted to stay.”

My grandmother pulled me into a tight hug. Smiling at me as the hug broke. “I won’t stop you. The decision is yours.”

I nodded. Waiting until she was in the other room with one of her soap operas going full blast before I wandered back over to the window that faced where Embry currently was outside. Staring out at him with my fingertips pressed against the glass.

I thought he’d caught me one time because he stopped what he was doing beneath the hood of the car to glance around the yard. I moved away from the window quickly, shaking my head and laughing at myself about it.

I’ll repeat. If Embry Call had one tenth of a clue the effect he had on me...

#embry call #embry call x oc #embry call x oc fanfiction #embry call x oc imagine #embry call imagine #embry call fanfiction #embry call fanfic #embry call oneshot #embry call one shot #embry call imagines #my writing ; embry call #my fanfiction ; embry call #my fics ; embry call #my oneshots ; embry call #my imagines ; embry call #// injuries vaguely mentioned tw #// amnesia tw #// imprint bond #// just haven't gotten around to figuring out how I'm gonna work that in here. #// me. fixing the fact that embry didn't imprint.

[dark-magical-ships]

I guess promos are a thing that's happening? Unless April Fool's joke idk. Stuff goes over my head a lot. But hey! I'll play along.

Most everything you might need to know is on my official intro post, but to reiterate the important stuff:

About Me

Hi! You can call me Amy, and I'm your crazy cardgame hell mutual. :3

I am autistic, and I am an adult.

I follow back from a blog that starts with W and also has three words spaced out with hyphens.

I very rarely paint landscapes, but mostly I write fanfic. I have two projects right now and post about them a good bit.

My carrd can be found here, but it's pretty much just an F/O list. :P

My pronouns.page can be found here—yes I know that clicking that will tell you my real name and my main blog URL; I trust that if you care enough to check the pronouns.page then you'll also respect my wish to keep my selfshipping private for now.

Blog Content

I post 99% SWF content and like 1% very mildly-spicy content at most. I doubt anything truly NSFW will ever end up on this blog, but might find its way onto my main.

This blog is also like 90% me screaming into the void about my undying love for Seto Kaiba, so. Prepare for that.

The other 10% is Yu-Gi-Oh shitposts.

The other other 10% is me screaming with the mutuals about literally whatever.

Yes, I know that's too many percents. That's how we roll here.

DNI/BYF

Kinda complicated; see my intro post—the tl;dr is: Standard DNI requested on the honor system. If I find out about you harassing people/sending hate for any reason, you will be blocked. No discourse here, please.

Let's be friends! :D Send me asks, DM me, spam me with likes and reblogs, I don't mind and I don't bite... much. ;) <3

#spring promo #promo post #self promo #f/o community #self ship #self ship community #self shipping #please reblog! <3

[heresyourramen]

Seo Changbin - Green Eyed Monster

Halloween was ages ago but I still wanted to post this one. 

Changbin x female reader insert (Heavily tattooed y/n, she’s strong too since her job is a personnel trainer, idk whatever)

5.9 K Words

It does contain SMUT/EXPLICT CONTENT

Warnings: A horror house, a lot of angst, pretty vanilla sex some light oral, jealousy, some fluff. 

"Its charming!" your voice echoed through the cold night air. 

The old mansion or at least what was left of it was probably anything but, though like anything if you looked hard enough you'd find the quirks. the gothic architecture had fallen apart, the steel spires and some old grey, rotten wood all that remained its steel spires and a  very creaky weather vane  that's rooster shape became somewhat ominous in the darkness of the night, well that and the sounds of people screaming inside every now and again probably also didn't help. 

"It's probably haunted and we're all going to die," Changbin's monotonous voice  came from beside you and you saw Felix clutch onto your boyfriends arm tighter and you half wished your love for all things spooky had remained a secret so that you could be the whiny baby  but alas, Changbin had met  you on a day you were wearing your favourite oversized Freddie Kruger t-shirt and therefor that was an impossible feat from the start. Han was clinging to your puffer jacket sleeve,  Minho stood beside you his face impassive  as he also stared ahead, out of the corner of your eye you saw Hyunjin sneak up on him from behind, he breathed down the back of Minhos neck, you've never seen someone go so pale so quickly but as soon as Minho turned around Hyunjins own fear was prevelant on his face as he flinched away from Minho who nearly put him in a choke hold.

 You let out a small sigh, when you thought touring the haunted house would be a  fun little activity for pre-Halloween festivities but when the boys thought they'd be able to manage wandering with you they'd obviously forgotten the last time they let you pick the movie for the designated movie night.  Your hope of cuddling with Changbin had been thrown out the window at the first jump scare, Felix claiming a spot on his lap instead and Han clinging onto you like a koala, his flailing had caused you to miss half of the movie itself. Chan had sat quietly enduring the movie his hand sneaking to hold Jeongins hand in his own for comfort, Hyunjin and Minho had clung onto each other  desperately and Jeongin had watched with the same level of interest as you and Changbin.  Chan was stuck recording  with Seungmin and Jeongin on a new vocal unit  track, keeping them away from tonight's little adventure and leaving and your boyfriend as the only two who might actually enjoy this horror show.

"Thanks sunshine." You rolled your eyes, you loved him but sometimes he was insufferable. You stepped forward walking through the crooked iron gate along the path lined with different carved pumpkin lanterns, Han either to scared to let go or too busy looking around for the  monsters his imagination was conjuring followed after you. You were a few steps in and the other shuffled through as well, following in your wake. 

The massive door lay  turned in against the wall and if it wasn't  for the small lights decorating the tickets table it would've looked like a big mouth of darkness waiting to swallow you whole and the entryway was deserted only some graffiti and stupid kids names carved into the ancient walls. You felt Han shiver most probably because of the breeze but you took his hand and gave it a gentle and what you hoped was a centring squeeze, not wanting the activity to induce a panic attack for him although that might be impossible because of what could be waiting around every corner. When you looked back  to check that no one had tripped over some old sticks and trash  that was blown onto the porch, your eyes immediately met Changbins his face was as impassive as ever but his brow had a small furrow to them as it moved from your face to your hands now hidden by Jisungs sweater paw and you turned your head back not really feeling guilty about it. 

Changbin was a naturally cuddly person with his members but for some reason he had kept PDA and clinginess with you to a minimum , rarely even holding your hand and only ever giving you a hug as a greeting in front of his members. Of course as the relationship progressed the boys saw you often enough to be comfortable with you as well, they'd be affectionate in a friendly way but often the affection you received from the younger boys felt more than that, that Changbin would show you. 

In private it was like his hands were glued to your body, always touching you in some way, hand resting on your thigh if he was busy otherwise he'd be cuddling you and peppering you with kisses 90 percent of the time. It hurt you that he didn't want to do the same for you in person but you'd left it alone knowing he would have good reason but it also meant in your perspective he had to accept that  being affectionate was part of your nature, and babying the boys was part of your natural trait as 'the mom' friend.  Han squeezed your hand as you passed under a not so stable looking archway and into a room with an old fire place following the neon arrows taped to the floor. Suddenly Minho- and Hyunjin's petrified screeches came from behind you and you saw a white hand come from underneath a table clutching onto Hyunjins ankle Minho screeching because Hyunjin nearly tackled him to the ground in his dramatics.  Hans other arm wrapped around the one holding his hand as he suctioned himself onto you, Felix also practically now being carried by Changbin. 

When you turned to lead the way into the new room a clown towered over all of you in the middle of the entryway, its plastic hatchet raised and a terrible grin with sharp teeth painted on the mask, your eyes widened and you couldn't help but giggle this however was inaudible thanks to the howls the boys sent up at the sudden shock. You lead Han around the clown, the actor in the suit only allowed to turn as he follows you with his scary smile as you walked passed. 

This was how the rest of the evening continued a jump scare coaxing wails and terrified screams from everybody but you who simple giggled at the outrageous costumes and Changbin who's expression remained mostly passive. When you exited the massive doors Felix and Han was practically dragging you and your boyfriend out and into the cold night air again.  When you all piled into your car Han having called shotgun the boys immediately started rambling loudly over the pop hits that played on the radio. When they mentioned they should do it every year you rolled your eyes at the outrageous suggestion. 

"Hey Noona, why do you like scary stuff so much." Han inquired eyes wide as everyone's attention shifted towards yourself and everyone else in the car went quite as you scanned the street to park so you could get ice cream, you sighed and parked at the end of the street.

"Because it's fun." the truth is that it had become a comfort much like getting piercings or tattoo's had, the pain, the adrenaline rush, they all clouded your brain in a new way that your sadness didn't and since then each of those items had become associated with feeling better, and even though your mental state had changed since a few years back it didn't change the fact that it was important to you. Changbin new this was the real reason, dammit it was one of the first conversations you had when you started dating and that's when he noticed you awkwardly shifting around the smiley with your tongue as you smiled uncomfortably he announced that he really wanted ice cream and diverted the attention away from you successfully. You got out and made sure the car was locked as you started walking until suddenly you felt someone jump on you, you heard Felix giggle and you grinned hooking your arms under his thighs as you carried him on your back an easy feat thanks to the hard work you put in the gym on the daily the few meters to the front of the late night ice cream shops entrance, conveniently located on the same block as their apartment. You've spent many nights here, post date night, post gym, heck even post sex but it didn't matter because it was Changbin who had made this place one of those things that help you feel better, but it was probably because he made you feel better.  Felix hopped off and you looked over to your boyfriend eyeing the two of you with that same look he had given Han clinging to your side, before directing everyone to the counter. 

You all sat happily eating the ice cream, laughing at the boys making fun of each others expressions when they got scared. You giggled along with them your legs resting on Han's lap who had claimed the seat beside you in the booth before any one could give it a second thought, you licked at your own ice cream the metal of your tongue ring against the creaminess a sensation you'd never get used to yourself.  At first you were confused when Changbin had approached in the gym at what seemed to be the end of a session with Chan, your friends who had used to train with you telling you that you often looked more than intimidating when doing your workouts, which you understood, you were the definition of the modern post break up stereotype, hair dyed nearly white except for your dark roots, tatted from your neck to your fingertips, pierced and hitting the gym nearly two hours a day with thigs big enough to crush skulls in between them, except your last break up had been two years ago and you hadn't felt the need to date again. Well, until Changbin who had nervously shifted himself from side to side and asked you to go for coffee with him, you had barely answered your eyes scanning at the veins that lined his big arms, looking bigger thanks to the pump from working out. You swore some drool had escaped your mouth as you ogled him and quickly said yes, truth be you had admired him plenty of times from across the weight section, I mean who didn't, he was beautiful. Point is you were beyond out of place with the sunshinyness of the boys, only ever somewhat looking like you could maybe fit in when you stood next to Bang Chan and Changbin with their monotonous outfits of black. But they had all warmly accepted you, with zero reservations,  as if the piercings and tattoos barely even existed, something you appreciated in a culture it was so seriously frowned, them treating you not like an outsider meant the world to you. 

But you thanked whatever deity existed everyday for all of them, no matter what, because for now you could say you wouldn't be getting new piercings or tattoo's soon at least not for the reasons you were used to getting them. When you were done, saying good bye to each of the boys, with soft pecks on the forehead from Felix and Jisung and a timid wave directed at them as they walked away, you released a deep breath the air foggy as it left your nose. 

Changbin taking your hand, hooking his pinky with yours as he walked with you back towards the car, it wasn't unusual for him to go home with you after a day out. When you got in the car instead of your usual comfortable silences after busyness of a day there was an uneasiness to it, you shifted in your seat uncomfortably before driving to your place only a few blocks away.  Changbin sat looking out the passenger side window not even trying to change the music on the radio like he usually would and you swallowed hard. It's been a long time since your previous relationships and they almost always ended in a week of this type of suffocating silence, with a goodbye and a 'I've found someone else', your knuckles turned white  gripping the steering wheel hard as you nibbled your bottom lip, but you felt your body relax as his hand softly rested on your thigh. The warmth a comfort to your anxiety, his thumb rubbing slow circles easing away all the bad with each rotation. 

 He got out and patiently waited for you to grab your gym bag from the back of the old SUV before making your way back towards him. He wrapped his arm around your shoulder and tucked you into his side as much as your thick puffer jackets would allow.  Your apartment wasn't big but it had a loft that allowed a little bit of separation and when you made your way upstairs your anxiety sparked once more when Changbin didn't follow you up and immediately flop down on your queen sized bed like he usually would. 

Changing out of your jeans and into some leggings and one of his old fluffy pink sweaters you slowly made your way back downstairs, despite your intense and obviously intimidating appearance you hated conflict and honestly you wished your anxiety would vanish so you wouldn't have to worry about talking about whatever it was that caused this uncomfortable silence. As you set about rinsing all your shake mixers in hot water while some water boiled so you could make coffee you felt his intense gaze on your back from where he sat at the small counter that separated your kitchen and living room area. When he cleared his throat you froze, hands still half in the soapy water as you waited.

"Y/n we can't avoid this conversation." you sighed audibly tongue poking at your smiley as you turned around again.

"Changbin I'm avoiding it because I don't even know what the conversation is going to be about." your tongue pokes at the side of your cheek irritation bubbling inside you for some reason and you fold your arms over your chest but quickly let them fall to your sides trying to stop yourself from creating a defensive wall. Changbin's jaw flexes visibly as he bites down in frustration, this wouldn't be your first argument and you had a feeling it probably wouldn't be your last but it still didn't mean it was something you wanted to do at almost midnight after a long day. Your arms automatically crossed across your chest as you leaned against the sink and Changbin stood up from his seat to stand right in front of you his hands resting on your biceps tenderly.

"I don't like seeing the guys so affectionate with you, and before you say something-", he held up a pointed finger as you prepared yourself to interrupt him mouth already open but shutting quickly at his gesture, " - I know that's something I'll have to discuss with them and not you but I wanted to tell you how I felt." 

"Well Binnie it would help if you didn't give them any space to do so." Your brows furrowed as you looked up at his only slightly taller figure, his eyes scanned your face confused a silent question asking what you meant by that. You huffed eyes diverting to the ground and away from his gaze, your hands cupping your elbows instead of defensive you came across scared.

"You don't show affection towards me around them." You mumble and quickly look at him his gaze still confused but he didn't step away his hands were still softly gripping your arms.

"Binnie you cuddle them and let them cuddle you all the time when I'm around, there's no space for me to initiate any type of PDA between us and besides I wouldn't initiate it because they're your friends and I don't want you or them to feel uncomfortable. " His grip on your arms tighten for a second before his touch leaves you completely,  Changbin takes a step back and crosses his arms. 

"You're right I don't want them feeling uncomfortable, that's why I don't do it Y/n, you are a lot to take in and we need to give them time to get used it." You felt a pang in your chest he's never once said anything negative about your appearance, never even hinted that it bothered him and him using it as an excuse made a different kind of anger bubble inside you.

"Well I'm pretty sure they've warmed up to me by now judging by how you're getting jealous ." You didn't even try to keep your tone neutral every word dripping with sarcasm a you stared him down, hard. "Jealous?" he rolls his eyes up exasperated and chuckles and places a hand on his chest, " I'm not jealous."

"Oh? Then what are you?" you quirk a brow a smirk tugging at your lips. this was exactly why you avoided conflict, you knew yourself, and you knew you didn't fight fair. 

"I'm tired of my girlfriend hanging on my members like she isn't already in a relationship and acting like she'd rather be having them fuck her into the mattress." Your gaze darkened and your face turned into an ugly snarl.

"Changbin, listen to yourself." Your tone was low and an obvious warning, he didn't know much about your previous relationships, but he knew how you felt about cheating.  He ignored it, taking a step back into your personal space.

"Gee I bet that'd be nice, huh? Dating two famous stars at the same time." Your eyes that had been screwed shut as soon as he'd stepped closer shot open wide. Never once had you ever said anything about dating him because he's famous or done something to actively make his life even more difficult as an idol sure you were active in the industry you were a fucking dietician and personal trainer for a variety of stars but he knew how you felt about mixing your personal life with your work. 

"What . The. Fuck. Changbin?" you two both stood glaring at each other you never thought you'd see the day that jealousy could turn the man in front of you this ugly. You were looking for something in his eyes in the form of remorse or even a little bit of guilt but nothing but anger and something you could describe as jealousy darkening his gaze and staring your figure down. 

"You better give me a very good reason as to why I should still let you stay the night and not  make you get a taxi right now."  Your eyes lowered into a glare a hungry and angry fire in the pit of your stomach as you pointed in the direction of the door.  When he crashed his lips onto yours it was hard and messy and you mumbled inaudible protests into his mouth that was still devouring your lips.  Your brain went static when his one hand laced through your hair and the other your waist and in other scenarios you wouldn't have minded but now you hated it, he'd hurt you, and you were mad but his kisses had the ability to slowly melt your fury into lust a weakness he seemed to exploit.

 His lips detached from yours, messy and swollen red from his harsh biting and you gasped finally breathing, as he planted open mouth kisses past your jaw and down your neck, you can't remember when your hands had gone to his chest but you didn't mind your hands sliding down and under his t shirt finger grazing over his hard abs and back to his hard pecks. The way he moaned against your neck set off a bunch of butterflies in your stomach, and you smiled dumb. His hands roamed across your body and finally found resting place under your ass that he tapped softly ordering you to jump, and you did so legs wrapping around his waist out of habit his lips back on yours furiously devouring you once again.  He only did so until he reached the stairs, pulling back to make sure he wouldn't fall on your way to the bed, you took this as ample opportunity to strip, as you tugged off the sweatshirt leaving you bare and Changbin paused his ascent with a pretty whine, before placed a tender kiss in between your boobs right on top of the blackout rose tattoo on your sternum, before biting at the same space and you bit down hard on your bottom lip to suppress your own whine.  

He continued making his way up, knee's almost buckling when you sucked and nibbled at the space on his neck right under his ear. When he got up the stairs he put you down softly before adjusting you roughly so your head was on the pillows and he was removing the tights and panties at the same time, he quickly took his shirt off after but before you could reach out and touch him his arms immediately went to your hips as he hooked them under your legs the only part of him in reach, his head.

 He started biting and nibbling down the inside of each of your thighs soothing each new little bruise with an open mouth kiss getting teasingly close to your dripping core before suddenly pressing his tongue flat against your clit and suckling on it your moan tore through the room and replaced your pants as he continued sucking and softly nibbling on it slowly pumping two fingers in and out of your wet pussy. 

Gripping at his hair hard in an attempt to ground yourself you nearly tugged his head hard enough you thought you might've pulled out strands, when he curled his fingers inside you as you unleashed a whine, but he only groaned deep in his chest the vibrations through your clit causing a different wave of pleasure to move  through you. The way your walls clenched around his fingers almost sucking the digits he was scissoring in deeper, as you came closer to your release he detached himself from your clit and pulled his fingers out abruptly.

 The snarl you unleashed as your head whipped up made him smirk, you knew exactly what he was doing, Changbin was a motherfucking tease and after arguments he seemed to enjoy it even more as he wound you up till you were nearly teetering off the edge, dragging you further and further away from your orgasm until it'd suddenly crash into you , and crash over you hard. Using your hold on his hair you pulled him up so his face was hovering over yours again and you had to work hard to repress the shiver running up your spine at how absolutely breath taking he looked, swollen lips pulled in a smirk and dripping with the evidence of your arousal, his full cheeks covered in it, half lidded eyes looking down on you pleased with himself and the hard hold you had on his dark tresses. You were debating flipping him over, fucking him stupid and then leaving him high and dry like he often tries to do with you but he stopped all thoughts of doing so when you heard a belt buckle and a zip as Changbin pulled back to stand and take off his pants and boxers your grip loosened on his hair at the implication of the sounds. He made his way back over you, the same lazy smirk still on his face some part of the fuzziness started fade and you lowered your gaze into a glare.

"The silent treatment?" he said quirking a brow, as he reached over to your bedside drawer and took out a condom your eyes following his actions and your hands resting next to you on the sheets, fisted them hard in an attempt to contain your body's neediness. 

"It's okay baby, you wont stay like that for long." as soon as the condom was on he was positioned between your legs and he was pushing inside you slowly, inch by inch. You bit down on your lips hard enough to draw blood as you tried to contain your whine as you clutched the bed sheets beneath you, no matter how many times Changbin's size was always almost too much to handle but the pain always became a brief memory as soon as you adjusted. 

"Shhh baby," he cooed softly in your ear as he brushed sweaty strands of hair out of your neck as placed more opened mouth kisses down where his fingers had softly grazed before, his breathing heavy at the tightness around him as he waited for you to signal that he could move. When he pulled back your eyes fluttered open and you gave him a stern look and you felt him pull almost all the way out before thrusting back into you slowly.

 The pace made it feel like he was never ending but eventually his hips was once again flush against yours his head poking at a specific spot inside you that had you shuddering a moan escaping through your lips your eyes screwing shut. This time he pulled out thrusting back in hard and your lips went wide open in a silent moan as his finger directed your chin so you faced him, your eyes fluttering open.

"Come on baby, I want you to say my name..." his voice is deep and raspy in your ear as his fingers gripped your jaw trapping your head so you could only look up.

"I want to make sure you know who's making you feel," he thrusts into you hard and your back arches so your chest is pressed against his.

"...this..." another hard thrust and your moaning, borderline screaming, loud enough you know your neighbours will be complaining the next day.

"...good." this thrust felt so deep you were sure if you looked down you'd see him poking through  your stomach and your hands flew nails digging into his back and legs wrapping around his waist in encouragement. He starts a relentless pace his hips slapping against you harshly as he hits continuously hits the spot that has you moaning, tears welling up in your eyes that are screwed shut and your hands move to desperately clutch at his hair again, his grunts and own moans right by your ears making you keen, he shifts his arm hooking under your knee pushing it up and almost against your chest and suddenly he's deeper.

"Binnieeee!" your scream echoes of the walls off your otherwise silent apartment your back arching as stars start to enter in your peripheral and your moans become louder. 

"See baby," he mumbles, panting against your exposed neck as you toss your head back in sheer pleasure as he continues his relentless pace, "that wasn't so difficult." he planted open mouth kisses on your neck, nibbling at already bruised and marked skin, purple over the blue ink that decorated your throat. His high was approaching even faster as he watched you fall apart beneath him and by the way your walls were fluttering he knew your own orgasm wasn't far away. 

His arm unhooked from underneath your  leg but you were to far gone too even notice, your brain had gone blank your vision white as he brushed his fingers against your clit. You came hard, shuddering and Changbin felt himself cumming as your walls squeezed him dry as he rode out both your orgasms.  He pulled out of you and you whimpered at your own sensitivity, he discarded the condom and came back pecking your forehead.

"Go get ready for bed baby, I'll change the sheets." His voice was gentle and as you grabbed something to sleep in you felt a heavy weight settle on your chest, your fuzzy and tired brain not quite comprehending it as you cleaned yourself and got under the clean sheets. Even as Changbin came back from his shower his front pressed to your back arms squeezing you tightly against him, his lips kissing the back of your neck goodnight before cuddling you till you fell asleep the weight didn't go away. 

You had woken up sore but not nearly as sore as you thought you'd be, when your alarm went off at 5 a.m. you had quickly switched it off, Changbin's snores the only sign he was indeed alive and not a corpse, with the way he was able to sleep through anything you often ended up checking his breathing on days he didn't even make a sound. You peeled yourself out of bed grateful that you had showered after your promiscuous activities, albeit half-assed and sleepy. You jumped up an down as you pulled up the teal coloured yoga pants and slipped a big black hoodie over the matching sports bra. You busied yourself with your usual routine, making your breakfast, blending the protein shake and then making your coffee and leaving Changbin's on the bedside table just before you left. 

It wasn't unusual for you to leave him alone at your place after he stayed the night it was rare that you didn't have a client in the early mornings but you felt that nothing was resolved. In fact as you drove to the gym you felt that frustration bubble again, you were hurt and mad that Changbin had gotten his way when he had no right too.  After your session with your first client you felt somewhat better, the endorphins from working out helping you feel better even if it was only a little. 

The days that followed allowed for numbing routine to push your unease to the back of your head Changbin had mentioned they'd be busy the days that followed your weekend but you thought you'd at least be able to spot them in the gym, better you didn't because you wouldn't know how to act. When you got an invitation for dinner at their apartment for tomorrow you were half surprised and half relieved, it had been five days of silence and work, not completely unusual but he'd at least send an 'I love you' or an 'I miss you' text when he was super busy. 

Only when you drove to his place after getting ready after work did the nervous jitters set in and you tapped away at the steering wheel before pulling into the underground parking lot. The lift ride felt like an eternity and you couldn't decide if it was unnaturally cold because of air conditioning or because it was winter and you wondered if the fluorescents were always that bright? You took a centring breath and lightly tapped the door, you heard heavy foot falls on the other side and then the door swung open and Felix was tugging you inside he'd helped you take off your jacket while you slipped off your sneakers and gave you quick side hug before having you follow him into the living room. It was dark all the curtains drawn and some red fairy lights were strung up alongside some fake cobwebs, some bat cut outs and what looked like skeletons you'd find in a biology class room, on the floor was a pile of blankets and cushions Jeongin, Minho, Hyunjin and Han sat on the floor in front of the tv different bowls of Halloween themed candy in front of them as they chatted away, Felix who had left you came back out with cookies decorated in orange and black icing and Seungmin following with two big bowls of popcorn. 

You heard Changbin and Chan's familiar giggles as they made their way from their room you assumed and your shoulders dropped the tension disappearing at the fact that Changbins smile remained even when he saw you. He made his way over to you and he tugged you into a tight hug tilting his head back and pecking your lips tenderly. Your brain stopped working for a second, his lips like a pause button for your thoughts and you couldn't help but melt as all your senses  became filled by Changbin, his cologne filled the air around you and his arms created a safety bubble around you, when he pulled away and you felt the red rush to your face you realised what he'd done. He took your hand pulling you to sit on the couch next to Chan and Felix, when he tugged you down you nearly fell into his lap and when you tried moving away he pouted and tucked you into his side as he looked down at you, the other boys chatting away without a care in the world.

"What's going on?" you whispered blinking confused and eyes wide. 

"We're celebrating Halloween and you get to pick the scary movie." Changbin said and handed you the remote. 

Your brain was still trying to focus on the fact that he was being affectionate in front of everyone else and you quickly selected Scream, not too scary and a movie you watched religiously every year for the holiday. 

Seungmin sat back and handed you one of the big popcorn bowls and immediately Felix, Chan and Changbin greedily stuffed their hands into the bowl as the movie started. For the most part the boys remained in their own seats allowing you and Changbin to cuddle in peace him lying on the couch with his back on the arm rest and you draped between his legs, head resting on his chest, there was still flailing about and screaming loudly at the murders and jump scares, but seeing as Felix  was seated next to Chan he got to Koala someone  else and Seungmin and Jeongin acting as the calm for the others antics. It was nearing the  end of the movie, the build up featuring an array of dramatics and Han turned facing the two of you his hand grabbing yours that was dangling down the side of the couch past Changbins waist and trying to hide behind it. You smiled sweetly but your eyes went wide as Changbins arms wrapped around you and he sat up slightly.

"Yah, this is my girlfriend hold your boyfriends hand." he said in an aegyo like tone his chin nodding jokingly in the direction of Minho, Han giggled and turned to face the screen but didn't let go of your hand and you looked up at Changbin who sat smiling at the screen and you had to contain your giddyness, nuzzling your face back into his chest as you smiled like an idiot. When the movie ended and the boys started talking animatedly about their favourite parts and getting up to fetch more snacks for the next one you felt Changbin shift. 

"Y/n?" Changbin says and hum looking up at him, he looked extremely uncomfortable and you could see how he forced himself to look you in the eyes.

"I'm sorry, I know this doesn't make up for what I did or how I made you feel, I had no right too, I know I manipulated the situation. Jealousy just got the best of me, but I'll do better for you." His voice sounded pained, every word laced with regret and you adjusted so you could hold his face between your hands squishing his cheeks, almost surprised that he let you but his neediness to be babied obviously cancelled out his anxiety.

"You're right what you did wasn't fair, but lucky for you I can't stay mad at you for long." his shoulders relaxed and you pecked him softly on his lips and when you pulled back you could've sworn you saw the galaxy in his eyes.

#stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids smut #skz smut #stray kids changbin #seo changbin #skz fluff #halloween #skz angst #skz Felix #skz chan #skz minho #skz lee know #skz hyunjin #skz seungmin #changbin smut #binnie

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

HALESTORM's LZZY HALE Encourages Young Musicians To Perform Live Without Use Of Pre-Recorded Tracks

HALESTORM's Lzzy Hale has encouraged young musicians to perform live without the aid of backing tracks, calling it "the most real, pure feeling you can get in this life."

In recent years, more and more artists have been given a pass for relying on pre-recorded tracks, drum triggers and other assorted technology that makes concerts more synthetic but also more consistent. For better or worse, pre-recorded tracks are becoming increasingly common for touring artists of all levels and genres and they're not just used in pop music — many rock artists utilize playback tracks to varying degrees.

On Friday (February 19), Hale took to her Instagram to write: "To perform a live rock show... no tracks, no click, no lip syncing, no trickery... is the most Real, pure feeling you can get in this life. To hold the moment in your hand, to know in your bones that this could be magic or a train wreck , depending on how you've prepared and the risk you take being on stage... and then trusting in your soul to perform.. that is LIVING in its purest form. I encourage every young musician to Expose themselves in this way. Know what it's like to have the room depend on you to elevate it. Play in front of a room filled with two people and the sound guy... make it sound like u are performing to a stadium instead. It's the most beautiful way to find yourself as an artist. Because if you can do all these things and then make it to playing to stadiums and major festivals, that FEELING is an intangible void that cannot be filled with anything on this earth. Can't wait to get back to this very soon!"

This is not the first time Lzzy has spoken out against using backing tracks to enhance her band's live performances. Last June, she told "Offstage With DWP" about HALESTORM's insistence on performing completely live: "We do it more selfishly, not necessarily as a statement. But it has kind of become this interesting statement. We're very proud of that. But also, just again selfishly, I don't think I'd enjoy myself. I've guested with people — I've dueted with people and got up onstage where they have those things and I can hear it in my in-ear monitors — and some of it is, like, 'Chorus in one, two, three, four…' I'm, like, 'Oh my gosh! This would drive me nuts.' And also, I would rather have us sound imperfect than have somebody figure out that I'm miming, or a shaker goes awry — 'Where's the tambourine coming from?'

"I'm not a fan of when I find out my favorite bands do that," she continued. "And, like I said, I'm not knocking anybody who does it — you do you. But for us, that's just not our M.O. And there's nothing more fun that going out on stage and knowing that you're responsible for either we're gonna be tight, we're gonna be loose, something's gonna go wrong, we're gonna have to pull the train back onto the tracks, but that's cause we're listening to each other.

"And also, if we weren't actually playing, we would just get worse as musicians," she added. "We've been to shows where somebody's computer went down — the tracks are no longer there — and then they don't play anymore. And we're, like, 'Can't you just plug the instruments in?'

"I honestly think you would get so used to kind of like doing a music video and just miming along that maybe you can't [play live] anymore. So we've become better musicians because we challenge ourselves in that way."

Last March, SHINEDOWN guitarist Zach Myers said that "90 percent" of rock artists use at least some pre-recorded tracks during their live performances. He told Rock Feed: "It bothers me that it bothers people. I'm, like, 'Why does this bother you?' It's the way it is. People have been doing this since the '80s. And we want the sound to be the best it can be. Could we go up there, just the four of us, and put on the best rock show ever? Of course. But that's not how we wanna do it."

Former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach has previously said that he is "one of the last people" who are still not using pre-recorded tracks at their live shows. "I don't know how much longer I can say to you that I don't use tapes onstage, because I don't, and I never have," he told Consequence Of Sound. "And I still don't. When I have opening bands, and they're using tapes, and then I come out and I don't use tapes… sometimes, it makes me feel stupid, because I'm like, 'What am I doing, when all these kids half my age can come onstage and do all of my moves, but they don't have to warm up for an hour before the show, or weeks, before the first show?' Sometimes, I'm like, 'Why do I even bother, if the public is so used to this other way?' It's becoming very rare to come see a good band that's actually a real band — that's not miming or doing silly moves while a tape is running. It just becomes more rare as the years go on."

In 2019, IRON MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith said that he doesn't "agree" with certain rock artists relying on pre-recorded tracks during their live performances. "I tell you what, I see it with a lot of younger bands, and I don't think it's a good thing at all," he told the New York Post. "I mean, the music is getting too technical now. You have computerized recording systems, which we use, but I think we use them more for convenience than because we need to. We've toured with a couple bands that use tapes — it's not real. You're supposed to play live; it should be live. I don't agree with using tapes … I think it's a real shame."

One musician who has been open about his band's used of taped vocals during live performances is MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx, who said: "We've used technology since '87." He added the group employed "sequencers, sub tones, background vox tracks, plus background singers and us. [MÖTLEY CRÜE also taped] stuff we can't tour with, like cello parts in ballads, etc.... We love it and don't hide it. It's a great tool to fill out the sound."

In a 2014 interview, MÖTLEY CRÜE guitarist Mick Mars admitted that he wasn't comfortable with the fact that his band used pre-recorded backing vocals in its live shows, claiming that he preferred to watch groups whose performances are delivered entirely live. "I don't like it," he said. "I think a band like ours… I have to say '60s bands were my favorite — '60s and '70s bands — because they were real, like, three-piece bands or four-piece bands, and they just got up there and kicked it up. Made a mistake? So what? Sounded a little bit empty here or there? So what? It's the bigness and the rawness and the people that developed and wrote the songs and made them and presented them. To me, that's what I really like. I mean, I could put on a MÖTLEY CD and play with it all day long. I don't wanna do that."

KISS lead singer Paul Stanley, who has been struggling to hit the high notes in many of the band's classic songs for a number of years, has been accused of singing to a backing tape on KISS's ongoing "End Of The Road" tour.

Back in 2015, KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons slammed bands who used backing tapes for not being honest enough to include that fact on their concert tickets.

"I have a problem when you charge $100 to see a live show and the artist uses backing tracks," Simmons said. "It's like the ingredients in food. If the first ingredient on the label is sugar, that's at least honest. It should be on every ticket — you're paying $100, 30 to 50 percent of the show is [on] backing tracks and they'll sing sometimes, sometimes they'll lip sync. At least be honest. It's not about backing tracks, it's about dishonesty.

"There's nobody with a synthesizer on our stage, there's no samples on the drums, there's nothing," Gene continued. "There's very few bands who do that now — AC/DC, METALLICA, us. I can't even say that about U2 or THE [ROLLING] STONES. There's very few bands who don't use [backing] tracks."

#lzzy hale #Halestorm #2021 news

[d-criss-news]

Darren Criss is fully in his element on Quibi’s Royalties, and not just because the 10-episode comedy finds him playing a Hollywood songwriter surrounded by Glee alumni.

The experience of co-writing and producing a musical project for a fledgling streaming service took Criss back to his days at the University of Michigan, where his mantra became “chaos is the mother of invention.” As he tells TVLine, “During the process, we made no claims to it working. We just had to slap it all together, and I think it turned out pretty great. That’s the fun of your friends coming together for something that ultimately has a lot of heart, soul and a cheeky earnestness about it.”

Criss also says he wanted to use Royalties as an opportunity to increase the Hollywood presence of his classmates-turned-collaborators, Nick and Matt Lang. “We started StarKid, which is our theater production company, about 10 years ago, and they’ve been in the trenches of that forever,” he explains. “Being the Mr. Hollywood of the group, I’ve been dying to get people in the film and television industries to get their eyes on them.”

For this reason, the trio took a “dexterous” approach to shopping the idea around. “If someone had said they wanted this to be a three-hour movie, we could have created it as such,” Criss says. “What’s nice about [Quibi’s shorter format] is that it’s a great exercise in maximizing the space you have. And it lends itself really well to comedy. Good storytelling is hopefully malleable, so I really enjoyed this process. It wasn’t how we set out to do it, but it was a great challenge.”

Below, Criss elaborates on the process of bringing Royalties to the small(er) screen, from casting it on his phone to editing it on the set of Netflix’s Hollywood:

TVLINE | Let’s start with the important stuff: There are a lot of hot dogs on this show. How many did you actually have to eat? [Laughs] Not many, because I’m not much of a hot dog guy. I’m not much of a processed meat guy. (Hashtag super California granola hippie loser.) While I do love a good hot dog every now and then, I don’t think anyone likes them in continuous succession, so I tried to minimize them as much as possible. That was the least of our challenges.

TVLINE | OK, what were some of the actual hurdles you had overcome? Like a lot of things I’ve done, it was very fast and furious. The actual adage is that necessity is the mother of invention, but for a lot of those early StarKid shows, I amended that to say that chaos is the mother of invention. For a lot of the shows I worked on in college, I would write the songs just a few days before they were on stage. I also didn’t really know my lines and everything was thrown together, while the Langs had been working on the book for months. Similarly here, they’d been working on these scripts for months. But by the time pre-production rolled around, we had to write and record 10 songs in 10 days, then do pre-production for not only basically a 90-minute movie but also 10 separate music videos. [Director] Amy Heckerling flew in and also had very little time to prep. And we had to get it all done before I shot Hollywood for Netflix. So we had way more to do than was frankly possible.

On top of that, we didn’t really know how to deliver to Quibi. What are they looking for? What aspect ratios should we be shooting in? What type of coverage do we need to get? It was the Wild West in many respects. And that was something that could have been a huge problem, not having any precedent, but I’m someone who sort of relishes that. When you’re in the Wild West, there are no rules, which to me is a great thing.

TVLINE | When you go back and watch the episodes, do you find yourself watching horizontally or vertically? I find myself going back and forth. When we were editing it, I would try to watch it on my phone as much as possible. The post-production process was the longest part of this entire thing. I would shoot a scene of Hollywood, then have to run over to the editing room. Sometimes the editing room would be in a sprinter van outside my trailer. It was tough because you’re editing in a conventional way with a nice screen and nice speakers, but the mix and the final print of this will be on your phone, which can be hard to imagine. For the songs, I wish people could watch with a big speaker system. I hope people are listening with their headphones.

TVLINE | Of those 10 songs you co-wrote, do you find that any one gets stuck in your head more than the others? Well, they’re all stuck in my head, but not for the reason they should be. They’re in there because I had to listen to them over and over again, so I’m fond of a lot of the songs, but I’ve kind of lost objectivity. The songs have also had so many different lives. It sounds one way when you write it, another when you produce it, then another when you have the artist sing it. And then there’s how the song feels when it’s in a music video. There were lines in songs I thought were funny, but when I saw my friends [and Glee co-stars] Chord Overstreet and Kevin McHale singing them at a Griffith Park overlook of Los Angeles, with Chord in a ridiculous Scott Stapp/Jared Leto circa 2003 wig, I start loving it in a new way. They’ve all found ways to enchant me as they move forward.

TVLINE | That’s another thing I enjoyed about this, all the Glee reunions. And not just Chord and Kevin. Even people like John Stamos and Jennifer Coolidge. You know what’s funny? I forgot that John Stamos and Jennifer Coolidge were on Glee! I became friends with them separately. Yes, they were on the show, but these are also people that were at my wedding. I forget we have a Glee connection. I wish I was that clever in the outset, like, how many people from Glee can I get together? … We actually started shooting before I had a huge percentage of people cast. This is in conjunction with a casting director, but I had to cast about 70-80 percent of this thing on my phone. It was me calling people and saying, “I have this really goofy thing. We’re homies, can you do me a solid?” So I owe a great debt of gratitude to the people who were game enough to show up to this wacky thing that I’m sure sounded absurd over my pitch on the phone, much less for a platform that they hadn’t heard of yet. The first season of anything is tough, because you have to establish so much.

TVLINE | Well, without giving too much away, the finale does leave things open for a second season. How much thought have you given that? Anytime you write anything, you always think bigger than what’s there. The game, so to speak, of having two songwriters that have to write songs for crazy situations and artists is an endless playground of funny scenarios. We came up with so many ideas for stories, at least five or 10, and then ended up saying, “This is a Season 2 or Season 3 concept. It’s too much out of the gate.” We really had to economize what we threw at our audience, so hopefully we can earn enough interest and trust in these characters and in their hijinks that we can expand the world a little bit in a second season.

TVLINE | On top of that, I feel like it’s a show that could lend itself to social distancing better than some others. A lot of people have been considering that. What is the socially distanced version of our show? With enough creativity, you could definitely do that. I’ve done songwriting sessions from home — FaceTime, Zoom sessions and all that. There is a world where that exists, so who knows? If that happens, you can say you wrote it here first.

All 10 episodes of Royalties‘ first season are available to stream on Quibi. To watch individual music videos on Criss’ YouTube channel, click here.

#darren criss #tv line #royalties #royalties press #press #july 2020

[newstfionline]

Sunday, May 16, 2021

IRS to the rescue? Tax audits eyed for infrastructure cash (AP) Republicans say they won’t raise taxes on corporations. Democrats say they won’t raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. So who is going to pay for the big public works boost that lawmakers and President Joe Biden say is necessary for the country? Enter the IRS. Biden is proposing that Congress build up the depleted and often-maligned agency, saying that a more aggressive collection of unpaid taxes could help cover the cost of his multitrillion-dollar plan to boost infrastructure, families and education. More resources to boost audits of businesses, estates and the wealthy would raise $700 billion over 10 years, the White House estimates. It’s just the latest idea emerging in the bipartisan talks over an infrastructure bill, which saw Biden huddle at the White House this week with congressional leaders and a group of Republican senators. The GOP senators, touting a $568 billion infrastructure plan of their own, said they were “encouraged” by the discussion with Biden, but all sides acknowledged that how to pay for the public works plan remains a difficult problem.

DarkSide, Blamed for Gas Pipeline Attack, Says It Is Shutting Down (NYT) The criminal hacking group DarkSide, which the F.B.I. has blamed for carrying out a ransomware attack that crippled fuel delivery across the Southeastern United States this week, has announced that it is shutting down because of unspecified “pressure” from the United States. In a statement written in Russian and provided to The New York Times on Friday by the cybersecurity firm Intel 471, DarkSide said it had lost access to the public-facing portion of its online system, including its blog and payment server, as well as funds that it said had been withdrawn to an unknown account. It said the group’s main web page and other public-facing resources would go offline within 48 hours. “Due to the pressure from the U.S., the affiliate program is closed,” the statement said, referring to intermediary hackers, the so-called affiliates, it works with to break into corporate computer systems. “Stay safe and good luck.” What that pressure may have been is unclear, but on Thursday, President Biden said the United States would not rule out a retaliatory strike against DarkSide that would “disrupt their ability to operate.” Cybersecurity analysts cautioned that the DarkSide statement could be a ruse, allowing its members to regroup and deflect the negative attention caused by the attack.

Spanish politics (Times of London) Isabel Diaz Ayuso, 42, head of the Madrid Assembly, is Spain’s rising conservative star; Pedro Sánchez, 49, is the prime minister. She inflicted a humiliating defeat on his Socialist government when she doubled her Popular Party’s number of seats in snap regional elections last week, in large part due to her keeping open the Spanish capital during the pandemic. Their defeat has rocked Spain’s political landscape. Ayuso walloped the Socialist party, shaking Sánchez’s standing, while totally wiping out the centre-right Citizens party and hobbling the advance of the far-right Vox party. Dismissed by her opponents as a Trumpista populist and lightweight novice, Ayuso is now tipped as a future national leader and her brand of liberal conservatism is being held up as a model for winning future general elections. While the left licks its wounds and looks for scapegoats for its loss, in the streets of Madrid people stop her to hail her as a heroine. “You are a fighter. You have courage,” a woman interjected to say to her during her interview with The Times. “Thank you for defending us.” Ayuso believes Sánchez’s days are numbered. “The election has generated enormous hope in Madrid and across Spain for those who are looking for an alternative type of politics,” she said.

Masks off, Poles cheer reopening of bars and restaurants (AP) Poles pulled off their masks, hugged their friends and made toasts to their regained freedom as restaurants, bars and pubs reopened for the first time in seven months and the government dropped a requirement for people to cover their faces outdoors. The reopening, for now limited now to the outdoor consumption of food and drinks, officially took place on Saturday. Yet many could not wait for midnight to strike and were out on the streets of Warsaw and other cities hours earlier on Friday evening to celebrate, gathering outside popular watering holes. Some brought their own beer to hold them over until the they could buy drinks at midnight—though some bars were also seen serving up beers and cocktails early. “Now they are opening and I feel so awesome. You know, you feel like your freedom is back,” said Gabriel Nikilovski, a 38-year-old from Sweden who was having beer at an outdoor table at the Pavilions, a popular courtyard filled with pubs in central Warsaw. “It’s like you’ve been in prison, but you’ve been in prison at home.”

Spy Agencies Seek New Afghan Allies as U.S. Withdraws (NYT) Western spy agencies are evaluating and courting regional leaders outside the Afghan government who might be able to provide intelligence about terrorist threats long after U.S. forces withdraw, according to current and former American, European and Afghan officials. The effort represents a turning point in the war. In place of one of the largest multinational military training missions ever is now a hunt for informants and intelligence assets. Despite the diplomats who say the Afghan government and its security forces will be able to stand on their own, the move signals that Western intelligence agencies are preparing for the possible—or even likely—collapse of the central government and an inevitable return to civil war. Courting proxies in Afghanistan calls back to the 1980s and ‘90s, when the country was controlled by the Soviets and then devolved into a factional conflict between regional leaders. The West frequently depended on opposing warlords for intelligence—and at times supported them financially through relationships at odds with the Afghan population. Such policies often left the United States, in particular, beholden to power brokers who brazenly committed human rights abuses.

India’s coronavirus crisis spreads to its villages, where health care is hard to find (Washington Post) BANAIL, India—The illness traveled silently through the narrow lanes of this prosperous village in Uttar Pradesh, infecting both young and old. People complained of fevers, cough and breathlessness. Then they began to die. Vipin Kumar, a farmer in his 40s, was one of them. More than 20 people with coronavirus symptoms have died in the village over the past two weeks, according to locals, a significant increase over the three or four deaths per month the village saw before the pandemic. Most of them, like Kumar, were never tested. “Not a day goes by when there are no deaths,” said Hariom Raghav, a farmer and businessman who had just returned from a cremation. “If things continue like this, the village will empty out soon.” The story of Banail has been playing out in villages across India as the virus continues its deadly surge: Rural areas, where over 65 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people live, had been spared in the first wave of the pandemic but are now facing devastating numbers of infections. Three quarters of all districts in India are reporting a positivity rate of more than 10 percent, a health official said Tuesday, an indication of how widely the virus had spread.

China lands on Mars in major advance for its space ambitions (AP) China landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time on Saturday, a technically challenging feat more difficult than a moon landing, in the latest step forward for its ambitious goals in space. Plans call for a rover to stay in the lander for a few days of diagnostic tests before rolling down a ramp to explore an area of Mars known as Utopia Planitia. It will join an American rover that arrived at the red planet in February. China’s first Mars landing follows its launch last month of the main section of what will be a permanent space station and a mission that brought back rocks from the moon late last year.

Back-to-back tornadoes kill 12 in China; over 300 injured (AP) Back-to-back tornadoes killed 12 people in central and eastern China and left more than 300 others injured, authorities said Saturday. Eight people died in the inland city of Wuhan on Friday night and four others in the town of Shengze, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east in Jiangsu province, local governments said. Tornados are rare in China. In July 2019, a tornado killed six people in the northeastern Liaoning province, and another tornado the following month killed eight on the southern resort island of Hainan.

As protesters flee Hong Kong, Taiwan quietly extends a helping hand (Washington Post) Bobbing off the coast in a Zodiac speedboat scrubbed of identifying features, Kenny and four others waited nervously for the last leg of their desperate, 350-mile journey. The five had been arrested months earlier on the front lines of demonstrations in Hong Kong. They had escaped across the South China Sea, steering toward Taiwan with just some snacks, identification and a satellite phone. Now came the final hurdle: convincing the approaching Taiwanese Coast Guard—and the government—not to turn them back. Taiwanese authorities brought the five ashore, housed them in a government complex and provided clothing, cigarettes, television, table tennis games—even English teachers. Eventually, the Taiwanese, who treated the presence of the five as a state secret, helped arrange flights to the United States, their new home. The experience of the five shows the lengths to which self-ruled Taiwan has gone to protect and help fleeing Hong Kong protesters. As Beijing tightens the noose around Hong Kong’s democracy movement, Taiwan has emerged as a key destination for those escaping the dragnet—just as Hong Kong offered sanctuary for dissidents from mainland China in the 20th century. “Hong Kong was once a safe harbor, but now, Hong Kongers need a safe harbor,” said Samuel Chu, a second-generation activist whose father helped students flee China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media (AP) An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by the military to silence reporting from the territory amid its battle with the militant group Hamas. The strike came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike followed another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp in Gaza City killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children.

Medics: Israeli airstrikes kill 26 in downtown Gaza City (AP) Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 26 people Sunday, medics said, making it the deadliest single attack since heavy fighting broke out between Israel and the territory’s militant Hamas rulers nearly a week ago. The Gaza Health Ministry said 10 women and eight children were among those killed, with another 50 people wounded in the attack. Rescuers raced to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble. Earlier, the Israeli military said it destroyed the home of Gaza’s top Hamas leader in a separate strike in the southern town of Khan Younis. It was the third such attack in the last two days on the homes of senior Hamas leaders. Israel appears to have stepped up strikes in recent days to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas as international mediators try to broker a cease-fire.

With strikes targeting rockets and tunnels, the Israeli tactic of ‘mowing the grass’ returns to Gaza (Washington Post) For more than a decade, when analysts described the strategy utilized by Israel against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, they’ve used a metaphor: With their displays of overwhelming military strength, Israeli forces were “mowing the grass.” The phrase implies the Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and their supply of crude but effective homemade weapons are like weeds that need to be cut back. But the long-term benefits of the “mow the grass” strategy have come under question. Zehava Galon, a former lawmaker with the leftist Meretz party, wrote for Haaretz that the strategy results in “perpetual war” that forgets “human beings are also able to talk, not only to carry a club.”

Arab World Condemns Israeli Violence but Takes Little Action (NYT) The Arab world is unified in condemning Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and the way the Israeli police invaded Jerusalem’s Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Governments have spoken out, protests have taken place, social media is aflame. But by and large the condemnation is only words, not actions—at least so far. The region’s concerns have shifted since the last major Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2014, with new fears about Iran’s influence, new anxieties about popular unrest in Arab countries and a growing recognition of the reality of Israel in the Arab world. Even those countries that normalized relations with Israel last year—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco—have all openly criticized Israeli policies and called for support of the Palestinians and the defense of Jerusalem. The escalation of violence has put a great strain on those governments, which had argued that their closer relationship with Israel would help restrain Israeli actions aimed at the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza. “I have not seen any Arab state that has not expressed support for the Palestinians on a rhetorical level, and it would be very difficult for them to say anything otherwise,” said H. A. Hellyer, a scholar of Middle East politics at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. “But what they do about it is very different.”

#headlines #news

[aion-rsa]

The Conjuring 2’s Enfield Case: A True Story That Still Haunts Us Today

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Lorraine Warren has seen true evil at the start of The Conjuring 2 and wants to call it quits — at least for a while — but when the Hodgson family finds itself under siege by a terrible haunting, the paranormal investigators have no choice but to help. Set in the late ’70s in the London Borough of Enfield, The Conjuring 2 ticks off many of the same boxes as the original: haunted house, demonic possession, and a relentless pace full of jump scares that doesn’t let up until the Warrens are back in their spooky museum, locking away their latest ghostly trinket just before the credits roll.

And like the first movie, which is based on the real-life investigations of demonologist Ed Warren and the clairvoyant Lorraine, The Conjuring 2 is heavily inspired by a true story, one that captured the attention of British tabloids — and even the BBC — just as Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror was hitting bookshelves. The film nods to Amityville, the Warrens’ most famous case, in its opening scene, and later ties it to Enfield through the recurring “Nun” demon Valak.

But there was no demon in the real Enfield case but a poltergeist, a malicious spirit that haunts people through physical disturbances such as shuffling things around a room, levitating its victims, or banging on doors at night. And in the film, the Warrens, who tag along with British paranormal investigators Maurice Grosse and Anita Gregory, do suspect a troublesome spirit before the third act reveal that there’s actually something demonic behind the creepy ghost of Bill Wilkins.

The real-life Hodgson family began experiencing poltergeist activity in their Enfield home in 1977. At first, Peggy, a single mother of four, didn’t believe her daughters Janet, 11, and Margaret, 12, when they told her the chest of drawers in their bedroom was moving on its own. But when the chest slammed against the door, locking Peggy out of the girls’ room and forcing her to run to her neighbors for help, she was convinced.

Peggy called the police, and like in the movie, a constable reported that “a large armchair moved, unassisted, 4 ft across the floor,” according to the Daily Mail. The police officers’ quick exit from the house is played for laughs in the film, but a terrified Peggy Hodgson probably wasn’t laughing at all.

The disturbances only got worse from there. The Hodgsons reportedly suffered all manner of strange happenings in the house for the next 18 months, including furniture being overturned, toys being thrown, banging noises, writing appearing on the walls, and even levitating children. In 2012, Janet told iTV (via People) that cups would inexplicably fill with water, things would randomly burst into flame, and that disembodied voices would speak to them, too.

According to Janet, “The most frightening [encounter] was when a curtain wrapped itself around my neck next to my bed.”

Peggy eventually turned to the press for help, reaching out to the Daily Mirror. The tabloid sent a photographer, Graham Morris, to the house to capture the hauntings, and that’s when all hell broke loose. The Enfield case might be one of the best documented paranormal cases in history, thanks to Morris’ disturbing pictures of his visit to the Hodgson house.

Among these images is a photo of Janet being tossed across her bedroom by the poltergeist while her sister Margaret watches in horror. As you might suspect if you’ve watched The Conjuring 2, it’s very possible that the picture is staged, Janet leaping off her bed and onto the floor, but we can only go by Morris’ account here, and he seemed convinced.

“It was chaos, things started flying around, people were screaming,” Morris said of his visit, according to the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mirror and the Hodgsons next called the paranormal investigators of the Society of Psychical Research, including Maurice Grosse and Anita Gregory, along with Guy Lyon Playfair, who isn’t depicted in the movie.

“When I first got there, nothing happened for a while. Then I experienced Lego pieces flying across the room, and marbles, and the extraordinary thing was, when you picked them up they were hot,” Grosse told writer Will Storr about the first days of his investigation (via the Daily Mail). “I was standing in the kitchen and a T-shirt leapt off the table and flew into the other side of the room while I was standing by it.”

Then the poltergeist decided to speak.

As in the movie, the ghost of Bill Wilkins reached out to the investigators through Janet, a raspy voice emanating from the little girl while her “lips hardly seemed to be moving.” The spirit told Grosse and Playfair that it had died of a hemorrhage in the living room. Investigators later confirmed with Wilkins’ son that a man by that name had indeed died in the house many years before, according to Daily Mail.

In the video below, you can hear Wilkins’ supposed voice for yourself:

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There were skeptics from the start, of course, and the debate around the Enfield case continues today. Even Playfair observed in his case notes that Wilkins generally “refused to speak unless the girls were alone in the room with the door closed” and that the Hodgson children were “motivated to add to the activity with some tricks of their own.” Playfair wrote that when Janet knew cameras were on, nothing seemed to happen. But Grosse and Playfair were believers.

Anita Gregory concluded that the case was overrated, and many skeptics accused the Hodgson family of making up the haunting for fame or financial gain. At different points, the investigators caught the girls bending spoons themselves and banging on ceilings with broom handles. Like in the movie, catching the girls in the act seemed to be enough for Gregory and others to close the case.

In 1980, Janet admitted to iTV (via Daily Mail): “Oh yeah, once or twice [we faked phenomena], just to see if Mr. Grosse and Mr. Playfair would catch us. They always did.” Just ahead of the movie’s release, Janet told Daily Mail that only “two percent” of the occurrences were faked.

But what about the other 98 percent? Many other investigators outside of the SPR visited the Hodgson house in those 18 months, including the Warrens. While Ed and Lorraine didn’t have to save the kids from any demonic nuns in real life, whatever they did see while at the house seemed to convince them that supernatural forces were indeed at work.

“Those who deal with the supernatural day in and day out know the phenomena are there – there’s no doubt about it,” Ed said of the Hodgson case, according to People.

Meanwhile, a magician named Milbourne Christopher dropped by to check things out, and said the activity was the work of “a little girl who wanted to cause trouble and who was very, very clever.” Ray Alan, a ventriloquist, said Janet was playing tricks with Bill’s voice because she enjoyed the attention.

By 1979, the tabloids had moved on from the Hodgsons, while the experts couldn’t agree on a logical explanation. Despite the movie’s happy ending, the real-life case was never truly closed. Janet told Daily Mail in 2015 that things began to “quiet down” in the fall of 1978 when a priest visited the house. But the next family that moved in reported strange incidents too, including hearing voices downstairs and encountering a man walking into rooms. They only lived in the house for two months, according to Daily Mail.

Years later, Janet called the events she lived through in that house traumatic, revealing she had a “short spell” at a psychiatric hospital and that she was bullied at school, where her classmates called her “Ghost Girl.” She told Daily Mail that her mother also had a nervous breakdown. It’s not surprising, then, that Janet “wasn’t very happy to hear about the film” being made about the Enfield case, as it dug up old memories she’d hoped to leave behind when she moved out of the house at age 16.

But The Conjuring 2 wasn’t the first to dramatize the events of the Enfield case. The BBC’s controversial 1992 mockumentary Ghostwatch took a rather different approach. Disguised as a special live investigation of a haunted house on Halloween night, the 90-minute program was hosted by real-life broadcaster Michael Parkinson and featured several other TV presenters to lend it an air of credibility. The mockumentary even had a call-in number viewers could dial into to share their own ghost stories.

While the reporters are highly skeptical of the hauntings at first, strange things begin to happen that become more difficult to explain as the film progresses, and Ghostwatch crescendos when the reporters and their paranormal expert realize they’ve fallen prey to a very real poltergeist. The terrifying final scene of the film proved so controversial that the BBC received thousands of complaints after the airing as well as calls from frightened viewers who thought the program was real. The BBC never aired Ghostwatch again, although you can now find it on the Internet Archive. Today, the film is considered a cult classic among horror enthusiasts.

But in the end, The Conjuring 2 and Ghostwatch are just two more chapters in a story that continues to fascinate believers and skeptics alike more than 40 years later. And despite the many attempts to investigate the case or dramatize it, no one but the Hodgsons will ever know what truly happened inside that house in Enfield.

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Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared. https://nyti.ms/37h2SjG

Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared.

For decades, with little public notice, Native women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered. The disappearance of Selena Not Afraid is showing how much things are changing.

By Jack Healy, Photographs by Cristina Baussan | Published Jan. 20, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 20, 2020 |

BIG HORN COUNTY, Mont. — Jackie Big Hair slept in her car again, waking every few hours to fire up the engine and gaze at the frozen highway rest stop where her 16-year-old daughter had been reported missing.

“I just have to be here,” Ms. Big Hair, 50, said, watching semis lumber across the plains. “I don’t know where else to go.”

This was her vigil now, along with searches in Billings about 30 miles away, three weeks after her youngest child, Selena Not Afraid, was reported missing from a barren stretch of Interstate 90 in a southern Montana county where 65 percent of the population is Native American. Law enforcement officials said a van carrying Selena home the day after a New Year’s party in Billings had pulled into the rest stop after breaking down, and then reportedly started up again and driven away without her. Nobody had heard from her since.

A national outcry over the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women has reached a boiling point here in Big Horn County, a rural stretch of rolling mountains and ranch lands that contains the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations and has the highest rate of missing and murdered Native Americans in Montana, and among the highest nationwide.

Local activists had an incomplete count of 27 Native women who had gone missing in recent memory in Big Horn County alone. Now, there are 28. The difference here and in many parts of the West is that for decades the disappearance of mothers and children, cousins and friends almost invariably played out in utter obscurity, with modest law enforcement investigations that almost invariably languished unsolved.

Activists and researchers say the crisis burned unheeded for generations until a few years ago, when families’ stories of how their loved ones were sex trafficked, murdered with impunity or dismissed as chronic runaways gained traction through grass-roots organizing and social media, forcing politicians and law enforcement to take notice.

Last year, 5,590 Indigenous women were reported missing to the F.B.I.’s National Crime Information Center, but advocates say the staggeringly high rates of violence suffered by Indigenous people is still not fully reflected in official accounting. Some of the victims are misclassified as Asian or Hispanic, or are overlooked if they live in urban areas instead of reservations, or their cases are lost in a jurisdictional maze over which state, federal or tribal law enforcement agency bears responsibility for investigating.

Law enforcement officials said these can be extremely difficult cases to investigate, sometimes ranging over vast expanses of territory, but that they are committed to solving them. The families say the problem is more a matter of will and resources than of difficulty.

“Native women have been dehumanized from the very beginning,” said Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, a demographer who grew up in Big Horn County and is on the board of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, which has created its own database of cases. “The law has failed us time and time again. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of our people dying, of our kids going to jail.”

Now, families like Selena’s are taking an urgent public stand to pressure politicians and law enforcement to provide more aggressive responses to these cases. They are raising alarms through social media and even bracing themselves against Montana blizzards to keep their loved ones from being forgotten. They are organizing candlelit vigils, rallying at courthouses and sheriff’s offices and marching for days along prairie highways, reservation roads and to the steps of state capitols.

“We’re here demanding it,” Selena’s aunt Cheryl Horn said one afternoon, warming her hands with a bowl of chili as volunteers returned from another fruitless search of the nearby hills. “We’re not being quiet. We’re not leaving.”

In recent months, a flurry of federal and state agencies across the country and here in Montana have raced to respond with task forces and law-enforcement resources, including a new Justice Department effort to coordinate federal and local responses to disappearances and murders in Indian Country.

Law-enforcement authorities say that Selena, a member of the Crow tribe, went missing at about 2 p.m. on New Year’s Day. A New Year’s Eve party in Billings had spilled over into the following afternoon, and she was riding back toward her home in Hardin, about 50 miles east.

According to local and federal law-enforcement alerts, the van broke down and pulled over at the rest stop, where Selena was last seen walking into a field. Her family believes she was taken, possibly by a passing car.

When her relatives heard the news, they began pouring into the rest stop, circling their cars and campers and horse trailers into a makeshift windbreak and transforming a frozen spit of asphalt and concrete into a scene of prayer and protest.

They lit a campfire, searched through ranchers’ fields and garlanded the fences and sign poles with red ribbons and posters of Selena. They saturated social media with calls for help. “Internet warriors,” one of Selena’s aunts called the response.

At 16, Selena already knew the toll of violence too well.

She had buried three siblings — a brother who had been fatally shot by Billings police officers; a sister who was struck and killed by a car; and her twin sister, who died by suicide when she was just 11 years old.

“I’ve always felt like there’s a bad presence against us,” Selena’s older brother, R.J., said. “I’ve expected the worst.”

After Selena was reported missing, police officers from South Dakota and Wyoming joined Big Horn County sheriff’s deputies, Bureau of Indian Affairs officers and volunteers to search the nearby hills. Federal and local law-enforcement officers set up a command center in the basement of the county courthouse. Thermal drones and helicopters buzzed overhead.

The F.B.I. issued an alert for Selena and sent in a search team, but agents and sheriff’s investigators have said little more about her disappearance, or whether they are investigating the older acquaintances who had been riding in the van with her. .

The swift response has surprised some activists. “Nothing moves that fast,” said BethYana Pease, a Crow community organizer.

Families and activists say they have been sounding these alarms for years. They say the crisis flows from generations of discriminatory government policies and racism in reservation border towns like Hardin that devalue Native women’s lives and deaths.

Jay Harris, the county prosecutor, who is a member of the Crow tribe, said the proliferation of meth use and a scarcity of federal law enforcement had exacerbated the problem. Last November, the Crow chairman declared a state of emergency over what he called ineffective investigations and unanswered police calls on the 2.3 million-acre reservation, and said the tribe would move to form its own police force.

Some victims’ families wondered why the deaths and disappearances of their own mothers, sisters and nieces had not sparked a similar outcry. Ms. Pease ticked off names she said had never received justice: 14-year-old Henny Scott, who was found dead two weeks after she went missing in December 2018. Bonnie Three Irons, a mother of six, whose body was found in the mountains in April 2017.

Or 18-year-old Kaysera Stops Pretty Places. It was late August when Kaysera went out with friends in her hometown, Hardin, the county seat. Four days later, a jogger found her body in a suburban backyard next to the house where she had been that evening, just steps away from a busy road.

“Where the hell were these big shots when my granddaughter was missing?” asked Carmelia Brown, a relative who said she loved Kaysera as a granddaughter.

Kaysera’s family believes she was murdered, but her cause of death has lingered undetermined for four months, her autopsy still unfinished. Her family says it has never been told a certain time of death. The case is classified as “Suspicious” and still being investigated, said Mr. Harris, the county attorney.

Kaysera’s family members wondered how she could have lain in someone’s lawn for days without being seen. They were troubled that her body had been shuttled back and forth between the funeral home and state crime lab before being cremated by the county coroner, who is also the funeral director. They were disturbed that one of the lead investigators into Kaysera’s death had also been involved in an incident in which her younger brother was beaten and forcibly restrained.

“Why does nobody care about this?” asked Grace Bulltail, one of Kaysera’s aunts and an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re not being given any information.”

Family members were uncertain whether Kaysera and Selena knew each other, but their stories have become intertwined. When Kaysera’s family led marches to the county courthouse seeking answers into her death, Selena attended, her aunt Cheryl Horn said. She posted Facebook tributes to Big Horn County’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.

One morning at Selena’s roadside vigil, as one of her great-aunts lit the day’s fire, her overcoat swung open to show a red sweatshirt bearing Kaysera’s face.

“This is the justice that Kaysera didn’t get,” Ms. Horn, Selena’s aunt, said.

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