#Atkins High School

[gigijb1969]

Rockets 2023 Central Texas/Stonewall Launches ended today, Saturday, May 6, 2023

Rockets 2023, Central Texas Edition, ended today. The original schedule listed 15 rockets for today. Petrolia HS had two rockets that moved from the launch in North Texas last weekend to this one, and Fredericksburg HS relaunched an earlier rocket that had been unsatisfactory, so that brought totals to 18 for the day. Launching began a 11:41a.m. and ended at 5:35. The team packed up the site…

View On WordPress

#Highschoolrockets #ItISRocketScience #Launcher01 #RideTheSkies #rocketscience #RocketSeason #STEMRockets #SystemsGoNewMexico #SystemsGoNews #SystemsGoNM #Alamo Heights High School #Atkins High School #Captain Garrett #Chelsea Burow #creative writing #Decatur High School #Double Horn Rd #engineering #engineers #Fabens High School #faceboo #fredericksburg #Fredericksburg High School #Georgetown High School #Ginger Burow #GingerBurow #Goddard Level #Granger High School #Hamilton High School #houston

[mybeingthere]

Paul Jenkins (1923-2012)

Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Paul Jenkins’ interest in art began with frequent visits to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art where he was drawn to its Asian art collection. While a high school student, Jenkins experienced the chemistry of painting working summers in a ceramics factory. Watching expert artisans at work, Jenkins witnessed the tension in timing the correct moment to add something in an artistic creation. After serving in World War II, Jenkins used his military service benefit to attend the Art Students League in New York from 1948 to 1952. Jenkins’ four year course at the League occurred during the advent of Abstract Expressionism, a style which saw painting not as a recording of an object or place but as an emotional event. Meeting Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, Jenkins realized his own artistic goal was to transform intangible feeling into valid pictorial forms. He saw that Pollock did this in woven webs of paint while Rothko achieved it using tonal fields of color as containers of light. Jenkins noted that both Pollock and Rothko achieved structure while leaving no trace of brushstrokes. In becoming an Abstract Expressionist, Jenkins discarded deeper perspective, recognizable subject matter, a contained composition, and standard brush use. Perhaps remembering the glazes melting, flowing, and interacting in the kiln at the ceramics factory helped Jenkins discover his unique painting technique.

[sagan-starstuff]

I did it, I watched Requiem all the way into the end and now I will watch season 8 again for the first time in like 15 years. Mulder is so sweet to her. He was ready to get out of the car and live for Scully. They were so close to getting out of the car, and then...

Oh God it hurts just like it did when I was 14, my heart. My Scully, alone. My Mulder, tortured and not knowing about his baby. My Skinner, having to tell Scully he lost Mulder. (I bet the Gunmen told her first. They would want to be there for her.)

The week after Requiem originally aired I was so upset that I put up missing posters for Mulder around my high school. This went exactly as well for my social status as you would expect.

On a lighter note, can you IMAGINE this group of people putting that takeout order together?

Langly: "Ok so fried chicken, sweet and sour pork, burgers and fries..."

Krycek: "Actually since prison I've been doing this Atkins thing so no rice for me."

Mulder: "Fuck you. Langly, get him extra rice."

Skinner: "Actually I'm doing South Beach, no rice for me either."

#the x files #the xfiles #x files #thexfiles #xfiles #txf #msr

[f4nd0m-fun]

Another bout of Uncle Jon Angst

So, in this AU, a strong enough ghost will have wings of its own, showing the fact that it is powerful, akin to how some animals have different marks to showcase danger. Clockwork switches between a Pygmy owl as a child, barn as an adult, and snowy as an elder. Pariah is crow through and through. After Danny became Pariah's Heir, he was gifted a cloak made of Clockwork's feathers, constantly shifting, with Pariah's mixed in as well, since they technically ghost-adopted him. This makes the cloak not only even more comforting beyond its weight to Danny, but a very powerful artifact in its own right. Pariah has also had most of his abilities sealed by Clockwork so someone can directly watch the ghostling that is Danny. So he's stuck in a crow form sticking with Danny (thank you @hallowsden for the Crow AU!) and protecting him. I HC Pariah as having a shadow core, which means he can vaguely form in dark areas, but it's kind of like Johnny's shadow beast. Another detail, I have written that only Halfas can become Ghost Kings/Queens, which means Pariah was one once. By sealing him and sending him with Danny, Clockwork hopes to restore some of his humanity. (Why do you think the Observants were so quick to want to kill Dan? They had seen it before in Pariah). Thankfully, it does work, though slowly.

Final note, Crane wasn't going to let him skip school, and Johan Welch is an asshole literature teacher at Gotham High (not the Academy). He also wasn't going to use his last name so the Bats could track the poor boy, so he used an old name the family dropped ages ago to enroll him. Anyway, actual thing is longer than the others and I've already said so much that... boom, an actual Read More! Also, it's midnight when I'm posting. 😅 Finally, Trigger Warning

It describes some of Danny's accident, including the loss of his wings, and shows a panic attack.

Danny was no stranger to bullies, whether it be lunch money, tests, or a punching bag they were after. He was also used to teachers who pushed their rules, who played favorites and sneered at those they thought of as less. At least he had his cloak, a secure weight upon his shoulders, much lighter than the crown he would day wear.

Mr. Welch seemed to zero in on his sour mood. "Nightingale?"

A sigh escaped his lips. "Yes, sir?"

"Tell me, in the Silmarillion, what is the moral behind the oath of Fëanor?"

He stared at the board a bit before glancing at the book in front of him. "I'm not certain, I think it’s that you shouldn’t promise something if you can’t actually do it?"

The teacher sighed. “No, Nightingale.”

There was a snicker behind him, Danny ignored it.

“Yes, Atkins? Can you answer?”

“Choosing violence in the heat of the moment will almost always end with suffering.”

“Good job.” He looked at Danny. “Now, was that so hard?”

“But-”

“You got it wrong, Nightingale.”

Danny hadn’t realized how close the teacher was until the cloak was yanked off his shoulders, feathers scattering. “No! Give that back!”

“You can have it after class is over.”

The laughter that had been bouncing through the room suddenly stopped at that; all the students knew better than to take another’s prized possession. Some money, maybe their homework, or even a jacket? All fair game. But anything that was clearly precious? You never knew how the kid would lash out.

Danny watched as the teacher walked away, but he did not take stock of the room itself. His wings, they were gone, seared away again. And he shook, like the shocks that wracked his form, mouth aiming to scream the silent terror that took over as his vocal cords were fried and healed time and time again until he had made his way out, wings in tatters, the scent of burning meat hovering over his f-

“Ghostling, you are not experiencing that anymore...” The tone was deep and stern, the barest hint of kindness underneath the ancient voice, mingling with a soft sorrow..

Danny continued to shake, but leaned into the cold warmth of armor and shadow. He had no idea where he was or how he’d arrived, but he was glad his p̸a̴t̷r̵o̸ was here for him.

“I guided you to a dark space as well as I could, it is hard for me to show after all.”

Danny didn’t pay too much heed to the words, merely listening to the soothing tones and trying to calm himself.

Pariah was determined to get that cloak back quickly, It was an important gift to his heir, and was too powerful to be left in the wrong hands. But, right now? All his focus was on the ghostling. “You can see the glow of my eyes, yes?”

Danny slowly looked up at his face and nodded weakly.

“What else?” Pariah mused as he waited for a response.

“The... light under the door...”

“Good. Again.” Perhaps it was a good think Tik had trapped them together in a loop until Pariah learned how to help the ghostling.

“Uh... there’s shelves in here.”

“Can you find anything else?” Thankfully, ghosts could see well in darkness, though Shadow Cores like himself did even better.

“I think I see a mop? P̸a̷t̵r̴o̷, are we in a closet?”

“Are you feeling better? Can you name something you can feel?” He hoped he didn’t forget anything until Danny was fully calmed.

“A... bit.”

He felt a smaller hand grab the figment of his own.

“I... can feel you, sorta. Your armor, your... essence..?”

He nodded. “What else?”

“The... floor. It’s solid.”

“Good. Give me ano-” Before he could finish, Pariah’s connection to the shadows was lost as the door opened. His form lasted not even a second in the light, but his hearing caught the reaction of both his heir and the intruder. Suddenly, the door was slammed and he felt the connection grow again, sighing softly as he returned. “Call your uncle,” he hesitantly began, hugging the ghostling again. “I don’t think you should stay here the rest of the day.”

“But your- my-”

“The cloak will be returned, I assure you, and whoever picks you up will make certain it is returned.”

Danny sighed heavily, and clung to Pariah as he fished his phone out of his pocket.

#winged uncle scarecrow au #winged uncle jonathan au #uncle scarecrow wings au #uncle scarecrow au #jonathan crane #dark ages #clockwork #pariah #oc #crow pariah au #winged ghosts au

[shefanispeculator]

Sam Bergeson is the only son of Alison Krauss.

He was born in July 1999 in United States to Alison Krauss and her ex-husband Pat Bergeson.

Sam’s father Pat Bergeson is an American guitarist, harmonica player and occasional songwriter. He is best known for his live and session work with Chet Atkins, Lyle Lovett, Suzy Bogguss and Les Brers.

Like his parents, Sam Bergeson is a producer, songwriter and mixer.

Prior to graduating high school, Bergeson had his work featured in a national Geico ad campaign that ran during the NFL season and the feature film “Love The Coopers.”

He signed a publishing deal in 2017 with Nashville’s Combustion Music and has continued to grow and flourish in both the country and pop worlds.

Sam Bergeson has written and produced for many great acts, including arranging and remixing for Blake Shelton, High Valley, Chase Rice, and Hunter Hayes. As a writer, Sam has excelled in rooms with some biggest musicians including Josh Osborne, Tommy Lee James, Dave Kuncio, and Geoff Warburton.

He recently landed a song in the critically acclaimed movie Blush, the TV show Younger and has many other songs poised for release.

Bergeson co-wrote and co-produced the Top 15 Dance single “I Still Remember” from Caroline Romano ft. R3hab.

Sam Bergeson is 23 years as of 2022.

[k-renee]

this thing i wrote

topic : sad shit about jeff (and monty, i guess) dying

pairing : jeff atkins x poc!fem reader

a/n:: this is like 80% accurate and there's like ONE made up character. the brother of reader, essentially. sorry it's shit <3

jeff atkins had always been my best friend. since the day i met him. the day he died. the day i watched them lower him into the ground. always.

my twin brother andre and i had moved in next door to him and his parents. my mom had forced me and and dre to go outside until they were done unpacking, which wouldn't be for hours. so we sat on the porch, bored out of our tiny little kid minds.

then jeff came out.

he had skin a little lighter than his brown hair, but it was the summer, so he was darker. we all were. he had diamonds in his ears—and he was lying to us about it cuz they were actually rhinestones, now that i remember—and i thought he was so cool for that. i mean, dre and i both had our ears pierced, but it was different because dre only had one ear done, and my earrings were all kawaii and had faces and shit.

but for real, i think the coolest, craziest, most...exotic—if you will—thing about jeff was his eyes. one minute they were blue, the next they were green. it just beat me and dre's plain dark brown eyes that were so dark you couldn't see the irises.

anyway.

he asked us to play baseball with him in his backyard, since he only had one player. himself. i honestly believe he's the reason why i sometimes feel bad for only children.

so we did. and jeff was damn good at it. i don't even know why he asked us to play like he was up for a challenge, because he beat us easily, even though he was outnumbered.

but after that, it was history. we all went to school together. we grew up together. we spent all of our summers together. and over time, one more kid came around.

montgomery de la cruz.

and monty, he was an asshole. a stupid, insane asshole who was like two years younger than us only because he was held back. he was almost a spawn of satan. but he was our friend. we all changed together, no matter how bad of a person one of us (monty) was.

then high school came around. that…that changed everything.

those were the summers that i literally turned pretty. i started to sprout and grow into a woman, and monty and dre and jeff were all there to see it (kinda weird if i think about it now). and everyone noticed. everyone. but i didn't care, because the most important one, that was jeff.

and i was always in love with jeff, i knew that. andre knew that. hell, maybe jeff knew. but the summer before freshman year was when it really mattered. when i really felt it. he’d always have given me some stupid weird fluttering in my stomach everytime he smiled or laughed, but that summer—it was butterflies.

eventually, we started dating. “going out”, essentially. and it was great. i didn't need to argue with him because we agreed on everything and we always had since the beginning of time. i didn't need to be too scared to tell him stuff because he already knew everything. that is—or was—my favorite part about our relationship.

and then just like that, he was gone.

one hour jeff and andre were dragging me to a party. we were having fun. jeff had one drink. dre and i shared three cans of diet coke. jeff went on a beer run i told him not to go on.

the next hour, clay was calling my brother in hysterics.

i was screaming for monty and zach to drive us to the hospital. my nose was bleeding because of my blood pressure, and i had an ice pack on it on our way, but it didn't do anything because i was crying so hard. we got to the hospital. his parents were there. the doctors looked at me. looked at us. looked at our colored faces with no sympathy and told us jeff was already dead. lifeless, in a hospital bed. they didn't even bother cleaning him up. just brought him in and didn't do a damn thing to help save him.

and they all made up this fucking story that he had been drinking and driving. he was drunk, and that's why he died. he crashed on his own, and it was his own fault his life was over.

but that wasn't it. and i learned that two years after he died. i believed this false narrative everyone had made up, and i hate myself for it. i knew him better than anyone, and when i should've been there for him when all people were doing was talking shit, i wasn't. i let them talk because i believed their bullshit.

every day i think of how they put up posters that discouraged underage drinking right after jeff died. how drinking and driving would get you killed. were they not aware or sensitive about my feelings? our feelings?

jeff and i had plans. me, dre, and him were graduating that year. jeff got his full baseball scholarship at some college and i got into an hbcu on a 95% scholarship. dre was gonna get into something, we knew it. we had faith even though his grades weren't too great. we were all gonna visit each other and call everyday. and then jeff was gone. he fucking crashed into another car and it was all over. everything he'd worked for had all gone to shit because he fucking died.

and i hate myself for putting him in that position. letting him leave in the first place. going to that party with him in the first place.

then years later, monty was killed after he was sent to prison.

i'm not gonna say that monty didn't deserve everything that came at him. i can't deny that monty was a terrible person. i can't deny that he was a monster. because he was.

but it's hard to admit that when you grew up with the monster. when you were a close friend of the monster. when you loved the monster.

nothing romantic, but i loved monty. we all did. not because of how sick he was—he absolutely needed help—but because we knew him. those who need help get thrown in prison and are locked away from the help they deserve. the other, worse monsters, like bryce walker, don't get put in prison. walker did ten times worse than monty and only got a measly community service sentence. monty couldn't get half of what he needed because he was—let's face it—darker and poorer than bryce was.

and that monster died too.

maybe bryce's family feels the same way that i do about monty. they hurt so many people, including me. but i can't say–no one can say–if they truly deserved it.

the funny thing is that monty and bryce were friends. so i really don't know if they both deserved it or if they both didn't. and maybe you think they have more in common than i let on. maybe you think that they were both monsters that used people for their own satisfaction, for their own pleasure, and they ultimately paid the price with their lives. and maybe that's true.

but who fucking knows. we're not god out here, but nobody here is an angel.

jeff wasn't perfect, i know. but he was trying. he tried. we all were. we all do. he just wanted to cheer up anybody who he thought was unhappy. he wanted to help people. he wanted to have fun.

and that's all he wanted. he wasn't selfish. he wasn't a drunk bastard alcoholic. he wasn't a jock who was a jerk like scott. he wasn't a somewhat-okay guy who had a good heart somewhere like zach. he wasn't a monster that used people for his own benefit like monty and bryce.

jeff was an angel. to me. to his family, to everybody. and he deserved better. he deserved more than that.

#13rw #13 reasons why #jeff atkins #jeff atkins x reader #13 reasons season 2

[dustedmagazine]

Music for Films, Vol. IV: Once upon a Time…in Benedict Canyon or, Tarantino, Redux

(N.B., I wrote an earlier piece in this series about Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof [2007], which seemed to me to represent the apotheosis of that director’s postmodern sensibility, for cinema and for its use of pop music. That still seems accurate to me. But Tarantino’s Once upon a Time…in Hollywood [2019] turns out to be a much more interesting engagement with both of those aspects of his filmmaking, and with postmodernism, generally — and it’s also a film I admire a bit more. So we go around again. If, however, you are sick of Tarantino and of chatter about his films, I get it. For sure, he’s irritating as hell in interviews — and below, I start with some of my own irritation at his winking and ironical guffawing. But, as is the case with someone like Richard Hell, it’s useful to separate the man from the work, and if you can pull that off, the work can be pretty great.)

There are moments in Once upon a Time…in Hollywood at which Quentin Tarantino’s auto-referentiality tips over from risible cleverness into unsavory self-obsession. See the scene about 80 minutes into the film, during which Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, effortlessly cool) finally picks up the always hitching and emphatically sexually available Pussycat (Margaret Qualley, breathlessly feral). After they connect on their shared histories with Spahn Movie Ranch, Pussycat settles into the Coupe de Ville’s massive bench seat and, inevitably, puts her feet up on the dash. Her toes smush into the windshield; the bottoms of her feet are filthy. You can just about feel Tarantino hyperventilating — or maybe he’s laughing his ass off at us. Tarantino and feet, it’s an exhausted punchline by now. And the moment is almost a direct quotation, a visually inverted rendition of the opening shot of the narrative portion of Death Proof, in which Butterfly’s (Vanessa Ferlito) feet rest on the dash of Shanna’s (Jordan Ladd) Honda Civic. Tarantino seems to want you to make the connection, and, perhaps, to feel a little bit gross about the fact that you can.

The whole scene is shot through with problematic erotic energies, generated less so by Pussycat’s directness (“Obviously I’m not too young to fuck you, but obviously you are too old to fuck me”), more so by Cliff’s reasons for not pursuing her (“What I’m too old to do is go to jail for poontang”). And Tarantino has Dee Clark’s “Hey Little Girl” lasciviously jangling from the Coupe de Ville’s radio: “Hey little girl in the high school sweater / Gee, but I’d like to know you better / Just a-swinging your books and chewing gum / A-looking just like a juicy plum.” Gee. I get the crassness of the choice, which provides an intensification of the more playful song accompanying Cliff’s first look at Pussycat on a different LA street (and about 63 minutes earlier in the film), Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” With all the signaling, ogling and panting, it’s easy to forget the song that immediately proceeds “Hey Little Girl,” sonically framing the initial gestures of Cliff and Pussycat’s conversation.

The song is typical of Neil Diamond’s peculiar talent for constructing gravid schmaltz that is neither too serious nor too cloyingly mawkish (mostly, anyways). That emotional tonality seems a less than intuitive choice for Cliff and Pussycat’s encounter — until we remember why she wants a lift to Spahn Ranch, and who might be there to meet them. Diamond’s Brother Love is a religious huckster, a metaphysical con man, and so, in part, was Charles Manson, a wannabe acid-soaked Svengali who managed to bewitch more folks than seems believable. Pussycat’s passionate desire for Cliff to meet him (“Charlie is reeeeally gonna dig you”) suggests Manson’s poisonous influence over her. She is thus the fictional avatar of numerous women and girls, like Mary Brunner, Susan Atkins and Squeaky Fromme, who fell under Manson’s influence, utterly convinced of his psychic and prophetic powers.

Manson, as is widely known, was erstwhile friends with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson and with producer Terry Melcher. Manson first went to the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, where Manson Family members would eventually murder Sharon Tate and several others, looking for Melcher. Manson was attempting a career as sort of demented folksinger manque, and he wanted to bug Melcher about it. By 1969 Melcher was coasting on the rep he had built producing the Byrds’ hit records from 1965 and most of Paul Revere & the Raiders’ sides from 1965 to 1968 (and that band’s singer Mark Lindsay also briefly lived at 10050 Cielo), including this tune:

Watching Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) bounce around the room is a charming experience, and Robbie’s still-youthful beauty is an interesting counterpoint to the aesthetic pleasures of Pitt’s middle-aged body. In truth, Robbie isn’t given all that much to do in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood; mostly Tarantino seems to have told her, “Okay, be adorable” (though we should also note that it isn’t hugely easy to be adorable on demand). There may be an intent in that: to revise the dominant filmic profile on Tate, the sex kitten in Valley of the Dolls (1967) and half-naked beach bunny in Don’t Make Waves (1967), presentations underscored by a nude-photo-supplemented article on the actor in Playboy. Tarantino renders Tate beautiful — not much else one can do with Robbie — but never insists on her as a libidinally charged presence (save for a shot or two of her feet …).

Hence the smart choice of the Paul Revere & the Raiders tune. Their goofy costumes and bright vocal harmonies cast them very much in the mold of the British Invasion, with Beatles-ish overtones of mop-topped sweetness, and the explicitly anti-dope messaging of the band’s hit “Kicks” further associated them with a cleaned-up vibe, distinct from druggy counterculture. In the film, Tate teases Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), “Aw, what’s the matter? You afraid I’ll tell your friend Jim Morrison you were dancing to Paul Revere & the Raiders?” Morrison doesn’t appear in the movie, but in just another minute of screen time, Manson (Damon Herriman) does. Sebring stops him at the front door of 10050 Cielo, and when Tate approaches (walking past a massive reproduction of a poster for Don’t Make Waves, Tarantino just can’t help himself), Sebring tells her, “It’s okay, honey, it’s a friend of Terry’s.”

Of course, the arc of history tells us that it’s not okay. The sheen of good feeling and innocent kicks pop culture was attempting to sell in the late Sixties had been mussed up by all the “fucking hippies” that Cliff and Rick Dalton (Leo DiCaprio) continuously curse at as they drive the Strip. Even Spahn Ranch, in the film formerly the production site for Dalton’s hit cowboy show Bounty Law!, has been overrun by Manson’s accumulating freaks. That’s another historical fact that Tarantino lovingly recreates, reducing the Ranch to a relic, a dusty ghost town haunted by sweaty, fried, raggedy heads and a legion of young women, Pussycat among them (Dakota Fanning turns in a terrific performance as Squeaky: paranoid, overheated, drenched in weird, wanton ambiguities).

Their presence is disorienting, but it can’t entirely dislodge the visual logic of the cowboy film, the Western. In part, that’s due to the sheer amount of time the film devotes to painstaking reconstructions of Westerns, in cinema and TV, in LA and Italy; see especially all the minutes of Dalton on set, filming his guest appearance for the pilot of Lancer, a Western that ran on CBS through the late 1960s (and we should note that Bruce Dern, who portrays George Spahn in Tarantino’s film, did some work on Lancer early in his career). But the more interesting nods and allusions to the Western cluster around Cliff: buckling on a holster-style work belt when he fixes Rick’s TV antenna; staring down the line-up of Manson Family women who gather across the dirt lane in Spahn Ranch, like bandits inviting a gunfight; and most emphatically, his shoot-out-style stand-off with Tex Watson (Austin Butler, and more on that just below). Appropriately, when Cliff gets his first few minutes of solo camera time early on in the film, Tarantino scores it with a song that works through numerous tropes of the Western antihero.

Some might assert that a Gram Parsons tune would better suit both the Western style and LA in 1969. But I’ll argue for the Seger song, even though it was recorded when he styled his band as the Bob Seger System, not yet the Silver Bullet Band (which would get us semiotically closer to the gun and the cowboy). “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” (1969) is certainly a rhythmic match for Cliff, as he careens through the city’s streets and freeways in his beat-to-shit Karmann Ghia. And check out the lyrics: a tale of a “ramblin’ man” who left home at thirteen; a past-master of roulette and dice; rugged and a little ugly, but full of macho sexual confidence. All he needs is the horse. Most significant, the song’s lyric speaker eventually notes, “Gotta keep moving, never gonna slow down / You can have your funky world, see you around.” That’s Cliff to a tee, but it’s also Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name, who is always ready to ditch the scene when the civilized world becomes too much its petulant, cynical self. Better out in the bush, among the cacti and canyons. And while the usage of “funky” seems a poor fit for a cowboy’s mouth, it’s right on point for the film’s take on LA, as it lurches into counterculture’s violent dissolution.

It's unfair to counterculture to peg that dissolution to the Tate-Labianca murders. We can more meaningfully reference the 1970 explosion at 18 West 11th Street in NYC, or Eldridge Cleaver’s fugitive conversion to evangelical Christianity, or Altamont, or any number of other events, betrayals and tragedies. But the Manson Family’s perverted use of countercultural language (“revolution,” “the pigs,” “grokking”) is particularly galling in its confusions and lunatic bloody mindedness. Tarantino is tuned into it: see Sadie’s (Mikey Madison) deranged rant about “pigs” and “fascists.” Even a year earlier, other speakers were using the terms with much greater clarity, and many of those speakers were black.

So what do we do with this:

Black confronts white. Bad guys threaten good guy. The stand-off morphs into a massacre, but not before Cliff brings up the Western again, reminding us of Spahn Ranch and of Tex on his “horsie,” belittling him and adding to Cliff’s inability to take Manson’s minions at all seriously (Cliff, to Tex: “Uh, you are?” Tex, intoning: “I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business.” Cliff, dismissive: “No, it was dumber than that…”). Soon Brandy the pit bull is chewing Tex and Sadie to pieces, and Cliff is hammering Katie’s (Madisen Beaty) head into any number of hard, angled surfaces. (Let’s not linger on Dalton’s flamethrower.) The violence is gratuitous, meaty, precisely staged and shot. It’s a Tarantino film, after all. And in this brutally antic sequence, the film and the director shift into another generic form, very dear to Tarantino: the revenge drama.

A number of Tarantino’s films have employed revenge plots: all of Kill Bill (2003, 2004), Death Proof (2007), Django Unchained (2012). Inglourious Basterds (2009, featuring a cartoonish but still satisfying performance from Pitt) expanded its revenge to world-historical scale, using film as a weapon for culture to take its vengeance on Hitler, and on the Nazi Party’s development of cinema as a vector for political propaganda. Once upon a Time…in Hollywood is less expansive but still has complex dimensions: American pop takes its revenge on Manson, rolling back his invasion of LA’s industrial and cultural turf and reversing — if only symbolically — his extinguishment of Tate and her career, of all the images and roles she might have given us.

But it’s possible to discern other layers to the vengeance, if one listens. Running throughout the fight sequence is the Vanilla Fudge’s bombastic, psych-rock rendition of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1967), which is both a suitable and a strange choice. Suitable, in that its acid intensities resonate with Manson and with Cliff, who is tripping throughout the scene. Strange, though, in its lack of a clear thematic relation to the scene’s action, which seems to have guided other songs’ selections — certainly “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” and “Hey Little Girl,” and “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” and even, in its limited way, “Good Thing.” So why would Tarantino abandon that logic here, at the film’s big, bloody climax?

As ever, with Tarantino, the layers have histories.

“You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” of course, was first recorded and released by the Supremes, for whom it was a #1 charting single in 1966. There’s a sort of pattern suggested by the film, of utterances and meanings developed in black American culture that are quickly adopted and refitted, frequently rendered vanilla (hello) and commodified, by white culture. To be sure, the Supremes also produced a successful commodity with their version of the tune. But the play among those songs and vinyl sides suggests a more problematic set of appropriations — among them, Weatherman’s use of the revolutionary language developed by the Black Panthers and Stokely Carmichael, which Billy Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and others spouted and spun out to fringe actors, like Manson, who degraded it, rendering it nearly meaningless.

“Helter Skelter” was another of the Manson Family’s watchwords, and another of Manson’s nutty notions, alleging that the Beatles song was endowed with the power to launch a race war in America. Manson’s racism mixed paranoia with his megalomania. He envisioned an America in which blacks would murder all the white people, save for him and his followers. In his view, blacks were too incompetent to govern themselves; they would need a white leader, and it would be Manson. So while Ayers and Dohrn called cops pigs in an attempt to make common cause with black revolutionaries (who were deeply skeptical of the white kids and their enthusiasms), Manson and his minions called cops pigs out of a chaotic psycho-social melange of persecution, ressentiment and bizarre apocalyptic divination.

So maybe we should linger on Dalton’s flamethrower a bit, after all. He uses it to torch Sadie to death, the Mansonite most earnest in her identification of him as another “piggie.” Close to the film’s beginning, there’s an ersatz movie clip drawn from The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey, in which Dalton, as the fictive hero McCluskey, uses the same flamethrower to burn a bunch of Nazi officers to death. It’s another Tarantino callback, to the climax of Inglourious Basterds and the incineration of many, many more fascists (and that scene had the benefit of the fever dream of Shoshanna Dreyfus’s [Melanie Laurent] face, projected onto the celluloid-fed inferno and madly laughing, surely one of the best images Tarantino has ever concocted). But the visual synonymy identifies Sadie with the Nazis. She seems to be the fascist. She has certainly been infected by Manson’s racist manias and linguistic depredations.

That may be too clever, by half — but with Tarantino, that sort of playful cascade of images and associations that ends up feeling meaningful is generally what we get, and in this case, there is a sort of critique to be made. If the postmodern in part emerged amid the collapse of counterculture’s revolutionary agendas, Once upon a Time…in Hollywood directs its wrath at a symbol of that collapse, and of the resulting nightmares borne on dope, irrationally enraged agony (especially over Vietnam, news of which occasionally issues from car radios in the film) and harebrained political analysis by kids reading texts that had currency amid a very, very different conjuncture. While Tarantino’s revenge narrative morphs generic forms again at the end, into alternate history, there’s a way in which that mutation can be read as a useful provocation. Not just a thought experiment, or a gesture lionizing fiction’s weirding power, in some ironized celebration of relativist spectacle. But a reminder that while history has to happen the way it happens, our histories are constructions, and they tell very partial and very particular stories. It’s an old saw, now, to recommend postmodernity’s meta- moves and pop cultural saturations as testing grounds for our reading strategies, but that doesn’t make the assertion any less cogent. Perhaps, to burn through the layers of images, to burn down the funhouse of contemporary revisionisms and to fight the fascists, who continue to manipulate media, what we need is a powerful instrument: our minds, tempered by their interactions with tempting narratives that wish to tell us pleasant stories.

Or mavbe we just want to watch Sharon dance, Manson be damned.

Jonathan Shaw

#music for films #jonathan shaw #once upon a time in ...hollywood #dusted magazine #quentin tarantino

[withlovewriting]

Mixed Drinks and Smoke Rings 17: The Second Coming

Chapter Seventeen: The Second Coming

Xanny, packed in my Off-White fanny, I been going off, I’m manic, Shit wearing off, I’m landing, More on the way, don’t panic, Drank too much, God damn it, Shut that door, don’t slam it, Shit too loud, can’t stand it, I can’t stand it

Summary: New to town, you didn’t need a friend, you needed a dealer. Thankfully, a girl from your Narcotics Anonymous meetings knew just the guy.

Characters: Fezco (euphoria) x Non-descriptive Reader

Words: 4,405

Chapter Warnings: Drug use, abusive relationships, i already wrote out this damn thing once and then pressed the back button on my mouse by accident so if there are any mistakes its because im dumb and didnt save it as a draft as per 

Series Warnings: Addiction, sexual themes, cursing, abuse (various), smut, drug use, teenagers being fucking idiots. 18+ only, minors DNI

Previous Chapter:

Next Chapter: 

Masterlist

taglist: @iamasimpingh0e​ @chelseagirl77​ @zeida​ @thepawn1999​ @alanis-altair​ @purplebtsmagic​ @fuckrigthoff​

'A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems minuscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.'

At least, that's what J.D Stroube once wrote.

Your life so far felt like one big game of dominoes, but you'd be stupid to blame all of your bad situations and decisions on other people. After all, even if you had to pick between the lesser of two evils, it was still you who had made the decision.

You might've been led to the water, but you're the horse who chose to drink.

As you walked through the school corridor you're friend, Chloe was going on and on about something -- you'd lost interest around 30 seconds into the one-sided conversation -- when your eyes wandered to the large mahogany stairs, where only the most elite of students hung out.

The popular kids -- like a million different teenage films -- seemed untouchable. Whilst loitering on the stairwells was forbidden, even the strictest of teachers would often walk right past them, and no punishments were ever given when they'd boldly stroll into class after the bell.

Everyone wanted an in with them, regardless of how, or why. And you most definitely were not immune to the charm.

As you passed the group, your eyes met those of Liam Ryder, easily the most popular boy in school, and a whole grade above you.

Not only completely ignoring Chloe, but you were also totally oblivious to Keon Jackson, only aware of him when he accidentally shoulder clipped you -- his own nose deep in a book -- sending you both flying.

Your face felt hot when you heard laughter, the high-pitched cackles from Jen Atkins seemingly much louder than anyone else's as she peered down at you from where she was sat, like some kind of puffed-up pigeon.

God, you wanted the ground to swallow you whole.

Brushing off Keon's bumbled apology, you pushed yourself to your knees, quickly grabbing your dropped belongings. As you moved to grab your textbook, a hand shot out, grazing yours as you both reached for the book.

Taking a deep breath, you finally looked up, eyes connecting with the same brown eyes that had distracted you in the first place.

He gripped your textbook as he quickly stood, offering a hand out to help you up.

"Really, I'm so sorry, I-" Keon began once more, cutting himself off when Liam sent him a sharp look.

"Scram."

And just like that, he did.

Turning his attention back toward you, his eyes softened as he visibly checked you over, "Are you alright? You went down pretty hard."

Trying your best to swallow down your embarrassment, you sent him a tight-lipped smile, followed by a curt nod. The problem with the elites, was that they were nice to look at, but terrifying to actually speak to.

Raising a quizzical brow at you, he smirked, "What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?"

Your eyes widened as you realized how rude you'd appeared, stuttering out a reply, "Shit. I mean... Uh sorry."

Shaking your head, you felt like an absolute idiot, "Thank you. I meant to say thank you."

His smirk only deepened as he watched you squirm, "I've seen you around. You're in my AP class, right?"

Unsure of why he was talking to you at all, you forced the lump in your throat down as you nodded, "Yeah. I uh... I sit near the front..."

If there was a God, you could only hope he'd strike you down where you stood for being such a damn loser. Instead, the bastard let you stand there, wringing your hands and babbling. Clearly, you didn't attend church nearly enough for the big man upstairs to help out.

"That test last week man... I barely scraped by. You did well though, right?"

You did more than do well, you wanted to say. But it didn't seem the appropriate time to brag, "Yeah, I did OK."

His dark eyes bore into yours for a moment, his free hand rubbing the back of his neck, "So, uh... Do you by any chance tutor people? I would totally pay, I just-"

Your eyebrows shot toward your hairline as you barely registered him now fumbling around his words. The elites of the school were smart enough, sure. But they usually relied on the brains of the less socially inept to do their school work.

"I don't usually tutor anyone," you watched as his face fell, shoulders deflating a little, "but I'm happy to go over my notes with you for next week's test."

His smile stretched across his face, meeting his eyes, "Yeah, that would be great, actually. Thank you."

You both stood in silence for a moment, his smile almost forcing a small grin onto yours. Feeling as though you'd only half-embarrassed yourself during this tete-a-tete, you finally spoke again, "Uh, I need to get to class..."

"Oh sure, yeah. Me too."

When neither of you moved, you let out a quiet chortle, "You uh... You still have my book."

It was Liam's turn to look mortified as his hand that had kept a firm grip on your book shot out toward you, only to tighten once you had grabbed the other end,

"Tomorrow, after school? I can drive you home after."

Waiting for your confirmation, he finally sent you a charming smile before releasing the book and making his way down the hallway, his head turning around only once, catching you still standing motionless, watching him leave.

Quickly spinning around on the spot, you couldn't help the large, beaming smile that tugged at your lips as you marched toward class.

What you didn't see, however, was Liam handing over a crisp bill to Keon as he passed.

Sitting on Liam's desk chair, you felt much more at ease than you probably should've, being alone in a boy's room.

He sat a respectable distance from you, choosing instead to perch on his king-sized bed.

He was tapping his pen along to whatever song was playing through his phone, silently mouthing along to the lyrics as he read and re-read over his notes.

Watching him for a moment, he seemed so relaxed in the comfort of his own home, even when in the presence of an almost total stranger.

Maybe, Liam was a lot more normal than you had originally been led to believe. Maybe the bravado and monkeying around in school was simply a front, a mask he was only content to take off in the safety of his own four walls.

Maybe, he was just as normal as the rest of you.

"Have you finished already?" He questioned, eyes never moving from his book.

Feeling your face warm-up, you quickly diverted your eyes back to your own work, "I finished like, ten minutes ago."

His brows pulled together as he looked toward you, the side of his mouth pulling up into a sideways grin, "So you've just been sat there twiddling your thumbs when you could've been helping me?"

You don't know whether it was his question or the look he was sending you, that made you nervous. Your leg bounced as you shrugged.

"Do you ever relax?" His tone was light, but his eyes were far too curious to mean it in jest.

"Of course I do... I'm just, I dunno..."

Thankfully, he only let you suffer for a moment or two as he silently watched you struggle for any word that wasn't 'nervous'. His eyes darted toward your still-moving leg before returning to you with a lifted brow. 

"High strung? Anxious? Scared? All of the above..."

"I'm not scared of you..."

Standing from his bed, he made his way over to you, his palm flattening against your thigh in order to stop its bouncing, "I'm not making fun of you, I swear. Just... You shouldn't be so worried all of the time. It's not good for your health."

A small chuckle escaped you, lessening the frown that creased your forehead. You watched as he leaned over you -- his body so close you could smell the faded scent of whatever soap he'd used this morning -- rifling through one of his desk drawers, 

"I have just the thing," he smiled, straightening up as he held the joint between his fingers.

Placing the unlit joint onto your rolling tray, you released a long sigh.

It had started innocently enough. A couple of puffs on a joint every now and then, hiding out in his room under the guise of studying. If his parents cared that he had a girl over, or that he was smoking pot, they never spoke up.

You'd never speak much in school, instead, your days were filled with gentle grazes as you passed in the hallways, and longing looks across the lunchroom.

His attention seemed solely focused on you whenever you were in his vicinity, and you'd even heard his friends mock him on occasion for being so distracted, even if they didn't know why. Yet, he continued to drown them out whenever his dark eyes met yours across a room.

Maybe that was what initially drew you to him. The way that, even in a room full of students, he could make you feel like the only person there with him, without saying a single word to you.

The stolen glances felt like a romantic secret, something only the two of you shared because nobody else --his friends, or yours -- mattered enough to know.

In hindsight -- which they say is 20/20 -- you knew this was because you were a secret. At least in the beginning. And maybe that was the first red flag you'd ignored.

"Please explain why you invited some girl that you've barely spoken five words to."

Tucker wasn't wrong. Liam technically hadn't spoken to you in school much since that fated day in the hallway. 

"She's cool, man. Trust me."

Your nerves were at an all-time high as you sat in the passenger seat of Chloe's car, tugging at your skirt. It had taken some convincing, but she'd finally agreed to check out what was being dubbed the biggest party of the year.

Tucker was rich, rich. His parents worked in real estate and -- thankfully for him -- seemed to spend most of their free time out on their yacht. 

You assumed that was why Tucker acted the way he did; he craved attention. Good or bad, it didn't matter. You didn't want to admit it, but you both had more in common than you'd assumed. Hell, most of the kids here did.

Your mother had flown out to DC before you'd even woken up that morning and wouldn't be back until late Sunday evening, and your father had gone to a sports bar with some work colleagues.

Although you'd had to practically drag Chloe there, a few other people in your group had willingly come along, excited to attend their first real high school party.

Sure, you all claimed that you didn't care about popularity, but you were human. All you really wanted was to be accepted, to be liked. Isn't that how every teenager felt?

"Look what the cat dragged in," a supercilious voice caught your attention as soon as you walked through the door as if she was awaiting your arrival.

"Oh, hey Jen." 

No matter how tempted you were to divert your eyes and look around the room for the familiar brown ones, you kept your eyes on the girl in front of you, her own piercing glare refusing to back down. You weren't sure where her sudden animosity had come from, but you knew she was playing some kind of game. You only wished you knew the rules.

"Are you two going to stare at each other all night or what?" Chloe grumbled, catching Jen's attention. Seemingly bored of playing with her food, Jen merely rolled her eyes before strutting off into the sea of people.

"What the hell was that about?"

Shrugging, you weren't entirely sure yourself, "C'mon, let's go see how big the pool is." 

Looking back, you couldn't feel anger toward your younger self. You just felt... sad.

You'd remember that party for the rest of your life, a bittersweet memory that you didn't know how or even if you wanted to rid yourself of.

That night was the first time you'd tried anything harder than pot. Liam had produced a line of Xanax, joking that if weed wouldn't help you relax, then this definitely would.

"Don't you think you've had enough?"

Chloe's question caused your eyes to roll, annoyance radiating off you as you took a bigger gulp from your cup, trying to prove a point. Wiping your chin, your eyes met Liam's across the room, watching as he obliviously nodded along to whatever his friend was saying, his burning stare not deviating from you since you'd first spotted each other.

"I'm just trying to enjoy myself. Maybe you should have a couple, might make you a bit more fun."

You knew your words were harsh, but you were 4 cups of jungle juice deep and fed up with her party-pooper attitude. She'd been counting down the minutes since your arrival, mumbling under her breath about how she'd have more fun watching paint dry, and being a little too loud with her deprecating comments. Chloe could be brusque at the best of times, downright rude at the worst.

You just wanted to have a little fun at the first party you'd actually been invited to. And here she was, acting like a total bitch.

"Well, I'm sorry that I don't think getting wasted on over-priced alcohol with a bunch of people who won't remember me in 5 years is 'fun'. I just didn't think you'd entertain them either,"

Pushing herself from the wall, she eyed the crowd dubiously for a moment before turning back to you, eyebrows pulled together, "Don't think it's odd that they even invited us? I mean, I'm not even sure they know our names. If they pull a 'Carrie' and pour pig blood on us, I wouldn't even be surprised."

Squeezing your eyes shut, you could feel your last nerve fray, "Fucking hell, Chloe. Get a grip, OK? First of all, I was invited, not you. Maybe, they'd know our names if you weren't being a colossal bitch all night. The fact that you think nobody here would bother with me unless they had an ulterior motive is fucked up."

Downing more of your drink -- ignoring the glances from classmates that had overheard your argument -- your chest heaved as guilt settled over you, weighing you down heavily. Sure, Chloe could be a little too much sometimes, but she was your friend.

Before you could open your mouth to apologize, Chloe shook her head, a  tremulous laugh falling from her tight-lipped, mournful smile, "Fuck you. Find your own way home."

You heard the hushed chatter and laughs as she pushed through the crowd, making her exit.

Releasing a sigh, you gently knocked your head against the wall behind you as you felt tears fill your closed eyes. Trying to garner the strength to follow her out and apologize profusely, your eyes fluttered open when you heard a familiar voice,

"Well, that was... dramatic.”

Your brow creased as you bit your bottom lip. Your face felt hot and you knew as soon as you opened your eyes, you'd start crying. Maybe you were a little too drunk.

"I'm uh... I'm sorry," You sniffed, feeling a tear roll down your cheek as you opened your eyes, "I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm gonna... I'm gonna head out-"

Leaning forward, Liam brushed his thumb against your cheek, wiping away the stray tear, "No, I... shit. I didn't mean you, I meant her. You're just having a good time and she's clearly got a problem with that."

Sending him a meek smile, you found yourself feeling a little more relaxed as his warm brown eyes watched you, "You heard that, then..."

"I think everyone heard that..." he shoved his hands into his jean pockets, "but she's jealous, you know? I would never invite you here under false pretenses... I just, you know... Enjoy spending time with you."

You forced down a deep breath, feeling like the exploding butterflies in your stomach would escape if given the chance. 

He could tell you were still embarrassed, and a little uncomfortable as he placed his arm around your shoulders, "C'mon, I've got something that will really take the edge off."  

The glass crunched under your sneakers as you made your way into the lounge, looking around at the destruction your father had caused. 

You'd visited the station a few times, once to give your statement, and the rest to try and speak to someone about bailing your dad out. You'd gone in guns blazing, telling them you had no intentions of pressing charges and that it was all a misunderstanding, but you were simply told that an attorney intended to. 

Kicking off, you were quickly escorted out with the threat of being arrested yourself.

You were told he was put on a 48-hour hold, his past DUI really coming back to bite him in the ass and the cost of the bail was enough to make you lose all hope. A bail bond agent would be your only option.

Grabbing the broom from the closet, you ignored your pounding head and began to sweep up some of the glass. You had a party to prepare for, after all.

"How are you feeling?"

Everything sounded slow as if you were swimming underwater. The drowsiness was bad enough, but every time you managed to open your eyes, the blurred vision was enough to make you slam them back shut.

It sounded awful but... You felt relaxed, just as Liam had promised. Sure, weed was great at calming you, too, but when Liam escorted you into a spare bedroom, his friends all sat around snorting a powder from the bedside cabinet, you felt like you couldn't say no.

"I, uh... You know. Good. I feel good."

You were aware enough to know your speech was slurred, but couldn't find it in yourself to give a shit. You did feel good. Just tired. Very tired.

Your head rested against Liam's shoulder as you were snuggled into his side. You don't remember how or when you came outside, sitting around the fire pit with his friends, but the party had seemingly calmed down, and you could only make out a few different voices.

"Maybe the drinks before were a little too much," he chuckled, watching your head fall forwards a few times, the motion pulling you from sleep, "C'mon, you can't go home like this."

Tripping over your feet, Liam gently guided you back into the house, ignoring the wolf whistles from his friends. 

Kicking the door shut behind him, Liam led you toward the bed, laying you down gently after he'd pulled back the duvet, "You should sleep it off. Fair warning, you'll most likely feel like shit tomorrow."

Totally unaware of his warning, you were already passed out.

Pushing your way past the large crowd that had congregated in your living room, you needed to find some peace and quiet.

You used to love parties, after you began to hang around with Liam and his friends, you attended one every weekend and hung out at an abandoned warehouse that the group would often refer to as the 'Factory' on school nights, getting high without the worry of someone's parents walking in.

You didn't have that problem right now.

Shouldering a drunken teen out of the way, your body ached with the contact. Whilst your nose had been bloody, and your lip split, the majority of injuries you'd received were from the fall down the stairs. Bruises and cuts from the glass littered your body, and sometimes you'd have a sharp pain in your ribs whenever you'd inhale too deeply, but with the looming price of your father's bond, you couldn't afford to go to ER. 

So you settled for a much less expensive way of soothing the pain. It was as if reminding yourself about your body aches caused them to hurt more, and you rubbed your wrist as you made your way outside to the small garden.

"Move." Your tone was stern, leaving no room for arguments as your classmate jumped up from the plastic chair, allowing you to settle into it instead.

You had binged your way through your pill supply, both with Rue and alone. You couldn't deny that you had pushed the girl away recently. You didn't mean to, but you liked to be alone when you wallowed in self-pity.

After what felt like only a few moments of peace, a loud sigh came from someone who practically threw themselves next to you, "Everything OK?"

Maybe you were stupid to invite him and his friends. Hell, you didn't know who half the people at this party were. It was an odd feeling, wanting to be alone but around people. You couldn't explain it, let alone begin to understand it.

Rue's Mom had offered you a place to stay after her daughter had filled her in on what happened, but after a few days, you returned home, worried about being able to hide your habits from her, and not wanting to pull Rue down with you.

"Just in pain," you told him truthfully, trying to ignore the way his dark eyes lingered on your bruised wrist.

"You uh... You haven't got anything for it?"

Shaking your head, you looked up toward the stars, barely able to see them because of the city lights, "My, uh... dealer... He's in between stock right now."

"And Devon?"

"Said he had to head out of town for something."

Liam watched you as you deflated a little. He could tell you were in the throws of a withdrawal from something, "Well, lucky I saw him before he left then."

Your eyes flung open, watching him quietly for a moment before sitting forward in your seat, "What have you got?"

"Does it matter?" His brow raised as he tried to hide a smirk. And in all honesty... No. It didn't matter. At this rate, you'd take anything he had to offer.

It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad, how quickly you could fall back into old patterns.

"I don't care, Rue. I ain't goin'."

"C'mon Fez, if not for her, then for me. I don't wanna be surrounded by her old, rich asshole friends."

A humorless laugh escaped him as he leaned into the sofa, "Neither do I. Which is exactly why I ain't goin'. You don't need to either if you don't wanna."

Rue couldn't fault Fez's logic. She didn't want to go, so why should she? The only answer she had, was guilt.

She was the reason your father was currently sitting behind bars awaiting a court date, and she was the reason why you'd clearly spiraled into an addiction Rue didn't quite expect from you.

Yes, you took drugs recreationally, and you often drank with them, too. It might've been excessive but... She knew you were currently binging on them, already telling you that you'd run out of your supply. You were popping pills like candy, so she couldn't find it surprising. Remembering her own outburst at Fez when he refused to fuel her own addiction, Rue was glad you hadn't bothered him, knowing he didn't have anything to sell.

Watching Rue as she appeared lost in her own world, Fez sighed, "Look, I know you been feelin' guilty about all that shit with her Dad, but don't, alright? It's on him, no one else. He's just lucky the cops turned up fo' me."

Rue turned her attention to Fez, watching as he lounged on the couch inconspicuously, yet she saw his fingers sink between the cushions, content once he found the cold handle of a gun.

"What were you gonna do?"

Making her way toward the other couch, Rue sat herself down, watching him attentively. 

"Kill him." Fez didn't even hesitate, causing Rue to release a long sigh.

"Shit man. You got it fuckin' bad."

Fez's face scrunched up as he rubbed a hand over his head, deep in thought. Rue didn't know everything, he was sure of that. But it seemed she did know something.

"We friends, Rue. You know that."

Shaking her head, Rue pushed herself up, "Bullshit. You're both so fucking annoying. You coming to the party, or not?"

He wanted to, even if just to check you were OK. Rue wasn't exactly forthcoming with her answers when he'd ask, and that somehow made him feel **worse**. He was certain she was hiding something, but he knew she was just trying to protect you, and calling her out on her bullshit wouldn't get him anywhere. He knew Rue, and he knew that she needed to ask for help before she'd accept any.

But Fez knew damn well he wouldn't be welcome, and coming to your house was asking for drama that he wouldn't partake in. You already felt betrayed by him, he didn't intend to twist the knife by showing up.

Taking his silence for an answer, Rue released an annoyed groan before making her way out.

He watched as she left, following her to the door to lock it, confused when she turned around and sighed, “Grow some balls, Fez.”

 He could've called her out on the comment, telling her that he was only neck deep in shit because he covered for her, knowing damn well you would probably never speak to him again.

But friends didn't do that shit to each other. So instead, he let her stomp down the road, praying that you had the sense to keep yourself safe tonight. But he couldn't let himself dwell on it, he was meeting up with a new dealer in a couple of days, hoping that he could partner with her considering Mouse's... absence.

Then, he had a date with Nate Jacobs.

#fezco euphoria #fezco fanfic #fezco smut #fezco imagine #fezco x y/n #fezco x reader #fezco fanfiction #fez euphoria #fez fanfic #fez smut #fez imagine #fez x y/n #fez fanfiction #fez x reader #euphoria fanfic #euphoria imagine #euphoria fic #mixed drinks and smoke rings

[mdnghtrxin]

(  alycia debnam-carey  |  ciswoman  |  she/her  |  twenty-four  )  — — —  it's  just  been  another  long  week  in  boring  -  ass  hawkins.  isn't  that  right,  vickie  ?  shit,  i  guess  they  can't  hear  me  over  i'm still standing  by  elton john  playing  through  the  headphones  of  their  walkman.  it  looks  like  they're  gonna  be  late  for  work  as  a librarian at  the public library.  did  you  know  vickie has  been  in  hawkins  for  her entire life  ?  yeah,  their  family  and  friends  describe  them  as  compassionate,  but  i've  seen  them  be  sarcastic  too  !  i  would  also  say  they  remind  me  of  mesmerizing green eyes, stacks of books scattered around her apartment, the sound of music playing in the background as you work, flannel shirts  but  is  that  weird  ?  i  guess  nothing's  too  weird  for  this  little  town,  huh  ?

Basics.

Name: Victoria Marie Atkins

Nickname(s): Vickie, Vic

Age: Twenty-four

Date of Birth: August 4,  1962.

Place of Birth: Hawkins

Gender:  ciswoman

Pronouns: she/her

Sexual Orientation: closeted bisexual

Family: Oliver Atkins, father / Louisa Atkins, mother

Biography.

Vickie was born and raised in Hawkins, being the only child of Oliver and Louisa Atkins. Growing up, she was always a quiet and shy girl, keeping mostly to herself. She didn't have a big group of friends and wasn't very popular, but she definitely preferred it like that, Vickie never liked the spotlight very much. When she was in high school, she joined the marching band where she played the clarinet.

Instead of going to college, Vickie ended up staying in Hawkins. She had dreams and plans, but things just didn't work out. Eventually, she got a job at the public library and that seemed to be it. Her life hasn't really been that eventful, ever since her break up with Dan, Vickie has stayed single and has been struggling with her sexuality for some time now.

More might be added in the future, this is all I can come up with at almost 12am.

#hwkinsfm.intro #vickie:intro

[lxvenderhxzehv]

(Sutton Foster) [The Starlet]. Please welcome [Emilia Atkins (She Her)] to Huntsville, WV. They are an [47]-year-old [VISITOR] who lives in [Town]. You may see them around working as a [private Vocal/Acting Coach]. They are looking for [Elijah Atkins] their [Younger Brother] Poor unfortunate soul. We’ll see if they survive.

Name: Emilia "Emi" Atkins

Nicknames: Emi

Age: 43 July 11th 1972

Gender: cis-female she/her

Sexual Orientation: Pansexual

Personality type: The starlet

Relationship status: single

Occupation: private Vocal/Acting Coach

Destination: Town

Tw: Body Image, Eating Disorder, and financial troubles

Bio:

Emilia Atkins was the pride and Joy of the Atkins family. Since the day she was born her parents showered her in gifts, and attention. Parading her around like she was a trophy baby. She was given everything she wanted at the snap of her fingers. She went to be best schools and only had the best private teachers. The best Nanny, Everything. And yet Emi still managed to stay had humble as ever. When she was 7 her baby brother Elijah was born. He was her everything. She adored him.

She grew up the daughter of a plastic surgeon always seeing her Fathers patients go in looking one way and coming out looking a different way. Some subtle some not so subtle either way Emilia took notice. So much so that she tired her best to look as best as she could, scared her father would poke and prod at her body and her face. All through High school she struggled with her looks, her weight, and her relationship with food.

She enjoyed the attention that much was obvious and she had herself quite the voice. While her Parents weren't too fond of her fine tuning her talent instead of studying her text books. They figured her little hobby wouldn't hurt. She started in a few community theater productions growing up while she was in high school. She told her friends she was Broadway bound however to her parents they thought she was on track to become a Doctor just like they always had pushed on her since the beginning. It technically wasn't a lie, she was a good student, made good grades while all the while doing what she loved. She got free passes to both schools The NYU School of Medicine and her dream school Julliard.

She backed her things and went to school right after she graduated. She told her parents she was going to NYUSM but in reality she was making waves over at Julliard. She kept the ruse for as long as she could, it wasn't until her parents came to a showing of one of her musicals and there were their daughter front and center of the stage. After the show she had hoped they would phrase her but it only ended up in tears and heart break. They disowned her, took away any money she received from them and cut all contact with her. She was a mess. Her eating disorder was back in full swing, she was drinking, parting, her grades were slipping. She was drowning.

Thankfully, she had Elijah and one night on one of her benders she ran into him. It snapped her back, She broke down in his arms about everything. About their family, about her health, everything. After their encounter she got better, school was good, she was doing amazingly and her career took off.

booking show, after show, after show. Eli would come too a few and they would always have dinner after to catch up. Last time she saw him he was working on a case. He had said something about going to West Virginia to get more clues. It always made her Anxious when he would travel. Something about this particular case gave her a bad feeling. Sure enough she was right.

She hadn't heard from him, and it wasn't like them to go long periods without talking to each other. So While her show was on hiatus she packed her things and took a trip to West Virginia. While on her way to her hotel they came across a rock slide and went the alternate route. Passing by a small town into Huntsville they were stopped by a few people on the street. They were told they'd never get out, their phones didn't work, and they had to be indoors by dusk or they would get killed by monsters.

Emilia arrived on March 1st 2024.

#huntsvilleintro #Musings (Emilia) #Face (Emilia)

[gigijb1969]

Rockets 2023 Friday, May 5, Central Texas/Stonewall Launch Report

Rockets 2023, Central Texas/Stonewall Edition, continued today. The original schedule listed 26 rockets for today. Three rockets aborted, bringing the total launched to 23. Georgetown arrived at Stage 3 first with 7 vehicles, making the first full volley all theirs, with rockets in the air starting at 10:51 a.m. Mission Complete was at 7:07 p.m. It was a slightly longer day today. Tomorrow only…

View On WordPress

#Highschoolrockets #ItISRocketScience #Launcher01 #RideTheSkies #rocketscience #RocketSeason #STEMRockets #SystemsGoNews #Alamo Heights High School #Atkins High School #Bekah Sosland Seigfriedt #Captain Garrett #Chelsea Burow #creative writing #Double Horn Rd #engineering #engineers #Fabens High School #faceboo #fredericksburg #Fredericksburg High School #Georgetown High School #Ginger Burow #GingerBurow #Goddard Level #Hamilton High School #houston #Houston Rockets #Kingwood High School #launches

[e-b-reads]

Books 3, 9, and 27?

Thanks for asking!

3. The Boy in the Red Dress, Kristin Lambert - A murder mystery set in the Prohibition era, at a very queer speakeasy. (The titular boy is one of the main acts, and also a suspect; the main character is a gnc young woman running the speakeasy, I think for an older relative, and a friend of the boy.) I'm having a little trouble remembering details because I've read a few different mysteries set in a similar period with similar numbers of queer characters...I think this was pretty good, maybe not absolutely spectacular!

9. The Lost Ones, Ace Atkins and 27. The Shameless, Ace Atkins - these are both in the Quinn Colson series (books 2 and 9, respectively). I kind of blurbed the whole series in this post you saw; it really did consume my first couple months of 2023, I read books 6-11 back to back. In The Lost Ones, Quinn has just been elected sheriff (for the first time), and is dealing with a high school friend who may be smuggling guns to a drug gang, and also a child abuse case. In The Shameless, Atkins goes for something just a little different, and some podcasters come to town to dig up a cold case that Quinn (still, or again, sheriff) might be implicated in - and also the crime syndicate in the county is still going strong. Just another day in (fictional) Tibbehah County.

(send me a number 1 - 206, and I'll tell you about a book I read in 2023!)

#books of 2023 #the boy in the red dress #kristin lambert #quinn colson #ace atkins

[6knotty6thotty6]

My Coming Out Story

Now that my long journey of education has come to an end. It's time for me to take the next step in life. Part of that step is officially coming out as aromantic asexual and non-binary. Art done by the incredibly skilled @DiscountMothman. Please follow and support them.

Full Story down below:

I'm AFAB (assigned female at birth). I've never felt gender dysphoria or gender euphoria. Whenever I look at myself in the mirror, I feel nothing. I was born with a deep voice, so people would call me "sir" whenever I ordered food through drive-thrus. I never got offended, but I know it wasn't right. I still never felt the need to correct them. I only felt awkward when they'd be proven wrong about their assumptions when I collected my food. I have a naturally curvy body, so no matter what I wore, people in public would call me "ma'am" or "miss," and I still felt nothing. On other social media platforms, I use a male-coded name and use he/they pronouns. It was initially for the sake of keeping my privacy (and avoiding unwanted creepy messages), but the more I kept doing it, the more I started liking it.

From when I was born to 5th grade, I was a stereotypical girly girl. I only wore princess dresses, and everything I owned was pink. Now, as a 24-year-old adult, I could care less about presenting feminine. If I have to dress up for an event, I wear black pants and a plain cardigan. I also realized that my "girly" phase was mostly due to my mom's influence. She always wanted a perfect little princess to dress up like a doll. She loves luxury brand fashion and accessorizing. She always got mad when I bought my clothes from Walmart and Goodwill instead of Dillard's and Nordstrom. The only times I wore makeup and earings was when my mom took me to a photo studio for my high school and college graduation. She loved the pictures, but I couldn't recognize myself.

CW: Mentions of eating disorders

Another reason why I never identified with being a woman is because I've never been thin. Thinness and woman have been correlated with one another for centuries. I've never been thin. I was never unhealthy, but I've never had a flat stomach. My parents were always bothered by that. My stepdad always betrayed me, saying that I was ugly, no man would ever love me, and I was doomed to die alone. My mom always put me on various diet plans that she'd see on tv: Slim Fast, Garcinia cambogia, Atkins, etc. I tried presenting as more feminine in high school, but that just made me more miserable. It also didn't help that I didn't have any friends.

CW: Brief mentions of sexual assault

I never really "felt like a woman." I know the concept of womanhood has a wide range of plasticity, but it still never felt completely right to me. For the longest time, I thought it was because I've never been sexually assaulted, sexually harassed, or discriminated against for being a woman. However, that wasn't right because I follow a few AFAB artists who were victims of sexual assault, and they still identify as non-binary. Also, being a woman isn't about suffering.

CW: Brief mentions of racism and female anatomy

Race also plays a major role in gender identity. Black women have historically been simultaneously oversexualized, dehumanized, and denied of their womanhood. However, I was never denied of my womanhood. If anything, I was treated too much like a woman. I developed breasts at the age of 9, so I had a lot of male attention growing up. At first, I'd be flattered when a boy said he liked me or I was attractive, but that feeling would immediately turn into uncomfortableness. I liked being acknowledged for looking good but not being pursued romantically or sexually. This is what clued me into the idea of being aro-ace. Even though I don't necessarily like having large breasts, I also don't feel the need to get breast reduction surgery.

I've never been in a position where I could question my gender, nor do I have any friends I can confide in. That was until now. Thanks to so many wonderful streamers I've discovered, I was able to get some clarity on my own gender identity for the first time in years. I've aslo befriended so many amazing and supportive people who I know will never judge me based on my identity. The more conversations I had about how neither male nor female pronouns felt right to them, the more things started making sense about me.

In general, I never think about my gender. However, I don't mind male pronouns because I tend to lean toward more male than female. That being said, when I look in the mirror, I don't see a beautiful woman, nor do I want to see a handsome man. All I see is me, and I love me.

#gift #giftart #furry #furryart #dragon #dragons #scaly #scalyart #demon #demons #aromantic #asexual #nonbinary

[silverskye13]

you are the reason I like cowboys, I now listen to country music on the daily and it has taken over my life so I thank you for this. I grew up in a household that literally fucking hated country music(like it wasn't allowed in the house hate) so this is kind of like a awakening for me so ye :]

Welcome to the cowboy fields! Please receive your standard issue six-shooter, hunting knife and cowboy hat. Make sure all horses are picketed with access to their necessities.

You hit like, a major nerve about country music. Probably because it's 1am. And I just ran down the longest rabbit trail of nostalgia. So even though you didn't ask: here's a LOT of country music recs under the cut.

As someone who was raised on super patriotic post 9/11 pop-country music and then spent most of their adult life running away from it, I'm really envious you get access to it now that it's diversifying itself again! If you want some older (90s) recs, Shania Twain, LeeAnn Rimes and Keith Urban used to be favorites of mine. Rascal Flatts was the only "boy band" I ever obsessed over, and their cover of "Life is a Highway" is always a banger.

Keith Urban's "Somebody Like You" and "Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me" still make me think of sunny days gunning it down the highway on the way to visit family in North Carolina. "Would You Go With Me" by Josh Turner is a love song I'm still hoping I find a love worthy of. It's also really hard to go wrong with Carrie Underwood. "Before He Cheats," is terrifying, amazing, powerful. "Blowing Smoke" by Kacey Musgrave is A Vibe. Miranda Lambert makes me think of my sister. She captures the same powerful-woman-murders-her-husband vibes as early Carrie Underwood, and "Mama's Broken Heart" was a favorite Im-having-a-mental-breakdown song for a lot of the girls in our high school. Reba McEntire's "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" is epic and unforgettable. "Suds in the Bucket" by Sara Evans is also very very good.

I'd also like to honorable mention: "Rain is a Good Thing" by Luke Bryan because I'm from semi-rural Indiana where we grow... A lot of corn. You understand a song about corn and whiskey would make every Indiana resident unironically turnt as hell. "I Loved Her First" by Heartland was played at every country wedding for a solid 5 years after it was released. "Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows You're There)" by Rodney Atkins was very inspirational the first 50 times I heard it on the radio. "Alright" by Darius Rucker blew me out of the water, because when I heard it first we used to watch the country music videos channel every day before school, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a black man singing country music and I cannot tell you how cool I thought he was.

I don't listen to much modern country music [does "Call Me By Your Name" count??]. After the early 2000s super-patriot-party-womanizer flavor of country took over, a lot of what I listen to instead is what's currently called "Folk", "Folk Rock" and "New Age Rock". Kinda captures what that sound and atmosphere of music used to be like before it got pop-ified. The Crane Wives, The Wailin' Jennies, Lord Huron, Colter Wall, and Barns Courtney are the closest I get to "Country music" these days.

If social justice is a thing you admire I Highly Highly recommend The Chicks. They pioneered the idea of disassociating country music from its southern pride/racist roots [and demonstrated it by dropping their very popular brand name, The Dixie Chicks]. They also pushed back against the uber-patriotism movement in the country music genre after 9/11, for which they were dropped from many, many venues and brand deals. They basically disappeared from the media overnight, because they took a stand against what they deemed to be an unjust upcoming war, and continue to work for social justice currently [you might've heard their song March March making rounds during the 2020 BLM movement. If you haven't, go listen to it, it's a bop.]

I hope you have fun exploring the genre! There's so much nostalgia for me there, and while there's definitely some controversy in it, there's also so many good people working to turn the genre back to something admirable again [imo]. :3

#Answering asks #Knitingtoday #Country music #Music recs #Wow sorry I blacked out and suddenly this was here #My bad

[nysocboy]

Nude Photos of Christopher Atkins

I met Christopher Atkins a few times when I lived in California: my friend was starring with him in a Smokey and the Bandits rip-off. 

 

Recently we became facebook friends. Well, me and 3,800 other people.  But I'm one of the few who responds to his posts.

"Come on, Christopher, it's big, but not big enough to write your entire name and a heart on." (I didn't really say that.)

Christopher was one of the first actors to go full frontal on the big screen. Several times.

In real life Christopher has been a gay ally since the start of his career.  While other actors were insisting that only women enjoyed looking at their physique, he was happily discussing his appeal to gay fans in magazines like The Advocate.

At 62, Christopher still performs occasionally -- you may have seen him in Lake of Fire (2020) as a high school runner's alcoholic dad.  But he's mostly concerned with his business ventures, and spending time with his family.  Here his Halloween costume is a poop emoji.  No, his son Grant is not really that buffed

Gemstone connection: Christopher and Walton Goggins both appeared in the tv series High Tide

The nude photos are on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

#Christopher Atkins #frontal nudity #The Righteous Gemstones #Walton Goggins #Blue Lagoon #gay ally

[chemblrish]

Hello!! Remember an anon ask that had some questions in it and a little story about anon and their father? It's me again lol

Do you know any very good chemistry books? Even though i like chemistry, i only study school chemistry, and i would like to expand my knowledge of this science. Do the books have russian translation?

Have you ever had days when you didn’t want to study and quit everything because of laziness? How did you force yourself to study? I'm a little scared for my future if I can't overcome laziness

Have a good day. I hope you'll understand my English :")

Hi, yes, I remember you!

Back in hs I only studied off Polish textbooks, so I don't really have anything to recommend on a school level, but if you're not afraid to venture a little further, I'd recommend Chemistry: Molecules, Matter and Change by P. Atkins and L. Jones. I used it a lot during my first semester of uni and I think it was a nice link between high school and uni. It's a beast of a book, but it covers pretty much all of chemistry (on a "first semester" level of course) and there are tons of diagrams, pictures, and tips on how to solve numerical problems. It's very popular, so there's a high chance it has a Russian translation too :)

If you're interested in popsci books, I'd highly recommend The Disappearing Spoon and Caesar's Last Breath by Sam Kean. I enjoyed them both very much.

But also, there's a girl from Belarus in my year who often uses Russian textbooks and she's very content with them, so maybe it's worth asking your chemistry teacher or a librarian? They might know of some hidden gems :)

Truth be told, I'm fairly disciplined with studying, so I'm afraid I don't have any good tips on dealing with laziness. But I think we often say "lazy" when in fact we mean "tired", "overwhelmed" or "discouraged".

I don't consider myself lazy, but I can definitely get tired, overwhelmed or discouraged sometimes. There's plenty of advice on studying when tired circulating around studyblr, but I believe the most productive thing you can do when you're exhausted is to rest and without shame at that. Whenever I'm overwhelmed by a particular task, I start by studying something else, then return to the more difficult topic.

As for getting discouraged... I think it's a matter of one's mindset. Chemistry is hard, failure is common, and I'd be a liar to say my own shortcomings don't bother me. They do! But I've been learning to just move on. I give myself one afternoon to recover if I need to, then remind myself the only way not to mess up is to do absolutely nothing, and that in the end it's all about learning and enjoying this precious opportunity to be in uni and to study science. That's what keeps me going (and what's probably a big component of my discipline).

So, don't get too comfortable calling yourself lazy 😉 Always try to see what the real problem is. Those are usually much easier to solve than "laziness". Good luck! 🍀

#if anyone has any other chemistry (text)book recs please do share them! #studyblr #chemblr #chemistry #inbox #stemblr #sciblr #chemistry asks