#also i assumed these were songs /about/ the characters and not under the conceit that these are songs the characters are listening to

[hezekiahwakely]

After spending literally multiple days and nights listening to hours of new music, here are my thoughts on what the Protocol playlists might tell us about the characters. I'm gonna break it down by large themes and I'm putting it under a read more bc I don't know how to not ramble about this. its SO MUCH

Gwendolyn Bouchard 👁️

Hers is the most self-explanatory. Girlboss is girlbossing and paying for it. But I did pick up several nuances.

Gwen is: Cold, power-hungry, and ambitious (you should see me in a crown, Are You Satisfied?, Severance theme). Suffering from her own hubris (Oh No!, Gasoline). Resentful and envious, especially about family, wealth, and power (Family Jewels, 24 hours, Warriors). Touching the dark and being supernaturally influenced (Mr. Bonzo theme, Evil Eye, We Don't Talk About Bruno, Making Love to the Dead).

Special mention to the 'daddy's money' reference in 24 hours.

Samama Khalid 😶‍🌫️

Sam makes ridiculously long playlists, like me, so this entry is gonna be long, but the emotional vibes were pretty easy to pick out once I got through it.

Sam is: Straight chillin' to some lo-fi beats, desi hip hop, and melodic bops (literally too many to list but, Remind Me, Forgive the Mess, 93 'Til Infinity, Magpie, Fire Sale, Iniesta Flow, I Guess, Prarthana, Hai Hai, etc., etc.). Rebellious (The Adults Are Talking, Reptilia). Bonded with someone (Halo Flip, soulboy). Yearning, romantic, and playful (Girl Like You, Mr. Sandman, New House, Meteor, You Only Live Once, Be Your Girl, Dear Jean, Say The Word, My Girl/Hey Girl, Smiley, The Real Sugar). Reminiscing about a break-up (Oui, Afterparty Lover, Last Nite, Stick Season, Turn off the Lights, Jessie (i miss you), WONDERING, Afterthought, I Love You, I'm Trying). Full of regrets, pain, and melancholy bitterness (Seasons, Can't Call It, Let It Go, nightmares, Pretty Insane, different tomorrow..., Cigarette Daydreams, CABIN FEVER, Self destruct, Go Back, Stuck Here With Me, Bliss City). Alienated, yet wanting to be alone (uh-oh) (Creep, Alone, Stone cold., Paint it, Black).

Special shout-out to all the implications about the old Sam/Alice relationship. And I'm especially worried by the potential meanings of Downside Up, Let It Go, Go Back, and Stuck Here With Me.

Also, interesting that there's a lyric-free track just called 'drained' at the end of his playlist. I'm sure that's fine.

Alice Dyer 🌀

Oh my girl. What is going on with you. She has impeccable and predictable taste, at least. But... then there's the Ominous Implications again...

Alice is: Rebellious, anarchic, and irreverent (Underclass Hero, Toxicity, Tribute, Buddy Holly, Dragostea din tei, Feel Good Inc., Piss Off, Rebel Rebel, Ghost Town, Brimful of Asha, Surrender, Uncle Walter, United States of Whatever). Blasting high-confidence power anthems (Material Girl, Therefore I Am, Jump, Bad Reputation, The Middle). Depressed behind a mask of high energy and false cheeriness (SugarCrash!, Mad World, Bathroom Floor). Yearning after someone's love (A.M. 180, Zombie Love Song, Nearer Than Heaven, Save Tonight, Ms. California, Because I Love You, Fell In Love With A Girl, Take Me Out). Reminiscing about a break-up (Ciao!, Built This Way, Kidz 'N' Stuff, FRIENDS, Free Fallin', Not In Love, Who Knew, Song for the Dumped, When It All Falls Apart, Laid, Complicated). Feeling crazy and overwhelmed (uh-oh) (Basket Case, In Too Deep, Bonkers, I'm A Robot, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, 19-2000, Wonderland, High, Undone, Cosmic Castaway). Creeped out and brushing up against the supernatural (Walking On Air, The Blue Wrath, Pet Sematary).

Oooh. Oh, the implications. The Sam/Alice break-up. The potential for feelings that remain. I HAVE to know what happened between them.

Also, here are some select lines from five Alice songs presented without comment: "Yeah, I'm a zombie, baby," "I'm a robot, I'm a robot/I don't have any feeling in my heart," "I don't wanna be buried in a Pet Sematary/I don't want to live my life again," "Take me down, six underground/The ground beneath your feet," "Walking like a zombie, like a zombie."

I'm sure that's all fine.

Celia Ripley 🕸️

The most mysterious new member of the OIAR, her music choices are appropriately enigmatic. The Vibes make me excited to see what she's hiding under the surface.

Celia is: Raring for a fight (Seven Nation Army, Rumble, know your place, Run from Me). Fed up with the system (Blood//Water, Run You). Bold, sexy, headstrong, and self-confident (Creature, Took A Trip, River, Do It For Me, Aerials, Uber). Struggling against supernatural influence, feeling trapped and helpless (Mama! There's a Spider in My Room, Where Is My Mind?, I Feel Like I'm Drowning, Closer, Space Dementia, Rain)

So we've all but confirmed the theory that she's from the OG Archives timeline and that she has continuing ties to the Web from passing through Hill Top Road. I think we have hints here that she's manipulating the others, but I also think there are signs that she's fighting her own battle against an evil trying to take her. There also seems to be an overarching theme of water in many of her songs for some reason 🤔

I can't wait to get more of Celia. Even if she is lying, I'm rooting for her (<hoping this doesn't come back to bite me in the ass)

In conclusion, I love them all already your honor, and I want to thank the cast for putting such loving care into crafting these for us. Thank you for such great food to feed our wild theorizing.

#i think i had the most fun listening to hindi rap for the first time #theres just something about following the flow and beat when you cant understand the language. its really fun #sort sort i love to arbitrarily sort #also i assumed these were songs /about/ the characters and not under the conceit that these are songs the characters are listening to #just play in this space with me #tmagp #the magnus protocol #gwendolyn bouchard #gwen bouchard #alice dyer #samama khalid #sam khalid #celia ripley #tmagp theory #also i started writing this a few weeks ago and since then ive been listening to KR$NA obsessively lol. thank you Shahan

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

Random Review #3: Sleepwalkers (1992) and “Sleep Walk” (1959)

I. Sleepwalkers (1992) I couldn’t sleep last night so I started watching a trashy B-movie penned by Stephen King specifically for the screen called Sleepwalkers (1992). Simply put, the film is an unmitigated disaster. A piece of shit. But it didn’t need to be. That’s what’s so annoying about it. By 1992 King was a grizzled veteran of the silver screen, with more adaptations under his belt than any other author of his cohort. Puzo had the Godfather films (1972 and 1974, respectively), sure, but nothing else. Leonard Gardner had Fat City (1972), a movie I love, but Gardner got sucked into the Hollywood scene of cocaine and hot tub parties and never published another novel, focusing instead on screenplays for shitty TV shows like NYPD Blue. After Demon Seed (1977), a movie I have seen and disliked, nobody would touch Dean Koontz’s stuff with a ten foot pole, which is too bad because The Voice of the Night, a 1980 novel about two young pals, one of whom is a psychopath trying to convince the other to help him commit murder, would make a terrific movie. But Koontz’s adaptations have been uniformly awful. The made-for-TV film starring John C McGinley, 1997′s Intensity, is especially bad. There are exceptions, but Stephen King has been lucky enough to avoid the fate of his peers. Big name directors have tackled his work, from Stanley Kubrick to Brian De Palma. King even does a decent job of acting in Pet Semetary (1989), in his own Maximum Overdrive (1986) and in George Romero’s Creepshow (1982), where he plays a yokel named Jordy Verril who gets infected by a meteorite that causes green weeds to grow all over his body. Many have criticized King’s over-the-top performance in that flick, but for me King perfectly nails the campy and comical tone that Romero was going for. The dissolves in Creepshow literally come right off the pages of comics, so people expecting a subtle Ordinary People-style turn from King had clearly walked into the wrong theatre. Undoubtedly Creepshow succeeds at what it set out to do. I’m not sure Sleepwalkers succeeds though, unless the film’s goal was to get me to like cats even more than I already do. But I already love cats a great deal. Here’s my cat Cookie watching me edit this very blog post. 

And here’s one of my other cats, Church, named after the cat that reanimates and creeps out Louis and Ellie in Pet Sematary. Photo by @ScareAlex.

SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you plan on watching Sleepwalkers and want to find out for yourself what happens.

Stephen King saw many of his novels get adapted in the late 1970s and 80s: Carrie, The Shining, Firestarter, Christine, Cujo, and the movie that spawned the 1950s nostalgia industrial complex, Stand By Me, but Sleepwalkers was the first time he wrote a script specifically for the screen rather than adapting a novel that already existed. Maybe that’s why it’s so fucking bad. Stephen King is a novelist, gifted with a novelist’s rich imagination. He’s prone to giving backstories to even the most peripheral characters - think of Joe Chamber’s alcoholic neighbour Gary Pervier in the novel Cujo, who King follows for an unbelievable number of pages as the man stumbles drunkenly around his house spouting his catch phrase “I don’t give a shit,” drills a hole through his phone book so he can hang it from a string beside his phone, complains about his hemorrhoids getting “as big as golfballs” (I’m not joking), and just generally acts like an asshole until a rabid Cujo bounds over, rips his throat out, and he bleeds to death. In the novel Pervier’s death takes more than a few pages, but it makes for fun reading. You hate the man so fucking much that watching him die feels oddly satisfying. In the movie, though, his death occurs pretty quickly, and in a darkened hallway, so it’s hard to see what’s going on aside from Gary’s foot trembling. And Pervier’s “I don’t give a shit” makes sense when he’s drilling a hole in the phone book, not when he’s about to be savagely attacked by a rabid St Bernard. There’s just less room for back story in movies. In a medium that demands pruning and chiseling and the “less is more” dictum, King’s writing takes a marked turn for the worse. King is a prose maximalist, who freely admits to “writing to outrageous lengths” in his novels, listing It, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers as particularly egregious examples of literary logorrhea. He is not especially equipped to write concisely. This weakness is most apparent in Sleepwalkers’ dialogue, which sounds like it was supposed to be snappy and smart, like something Aaron Sorkin would write, but instead comes off like an even worse Tango & Cash, all bad jokes and shitty puns. More on those bad jokes later. First, the plot.

Sleepwalkers is about a boy named Charles and his mother Mary who travel around the United States killing and feeding off the lifeforce of various unfortunate people (if this sounds a little like The True Knot in Doctor Sleep, you’re not wrong. But self-plagiarism is not a crime). Charles and Mary are shapeshifting werewolf-type creatures called werecats, a species with its very own Wikipedia page. Wikipedia confers legitimacy dont’cha know, so lets assume werecats are real beings. According to said page, a werecat, “also written in a hyphenated form as were-cat) is an analogy to ‘werewolf’ for a feline therianthropic creature.” I’m gonna spell it with the hyphen from now on because “werecats” just looks like a typo. Okay? Okay.

Oddly enough, the were-cats in Sleepwalkers are terrified of cats. Actual cats. For the were-cats, cute kittens = kryptonite. When they see a cat or cats plural, this happens to them:

^ That is literally a scene from the movie. Charles is speeding when a cop pulls alongside him and bellows at him to pull over. Ever the rebel, Charles flips the cop the finger. But the cop has a cat named Clovis in his car, and when the cat pops up to have a look at the kid (see below), Charles shapeshifts first into a younger boy, then into whatever the fuck that is in the above screenshot.

Now, the were-cats aversion to normal cats is confusing because one would assume a were-cat to be a more evolved (or perhaps devolved?) version of the typical house kitty. The fact that these were-cats are bipedal alone suggests an advantage over our furry four-legged friends, no? Kinda like if humans were afraid of fucking gorillas. Wait...we are scared of gorillas. And chimpanzees. And all apes really. Okay, maybe the conceit of the film isn’t so silly after all. The film itself, however, is about as silly as a bad horror movie can get. When the policeman gets back to precinct and describes the incident above (”his face turned into a blur”) he is roundly ridiculed because in movies involving the supernatural nobody believes in the supernatural until it confronts them. It’s the law, sorry. Things don’t end well for the cop. Or for the guy who gets murdered when the mom stabs him with...an ear of corn. Yes, an ear of corn. Somehow, the mother is able to jam corn on the cob through a man’s body, without crushing the vegetable or turning it into yellow mash. It’s pretty amazing. Here is a sample of dialog from that scene: Cop About To Die On The Phone to Precinct: There’s blood everywhere! *STAB* Murderous Mother: No vegetables, no dessert. That is actually a line in the movie. “No vegetables, no dessert.” It’s no “let off some steam, Bennett” but it’s close. Told ya I’d get back to the bad jokes. See, Mary and Charles are new in town and therefore seeking to ingratiate themselves by killing everyone who suspects them of being weird, all while avoiding cats as best they can. At one point Charles yanks a man’s hand off and tells him to "keep [his] hands to [him]self," giving the man back his severed bloody hand. Later on Charles starts dating a girl who will gradually - and I do mean gradually - come to realize her boyfriend is not a real person but in fact a were-cat. Eventually our spunky young protagonist - Madchen Amick, who fans of Twin Peaks will recognize as Shelly - and a team of cats led by the adorable Clovis- kill the were-cat shapeshifting things and the sleepy small town (which is named Travis for some reason) goes back to normal, albeit with a slightly diminished population. For those keeping score, that’s Human/Cat Alliance 1, Shapeshifting Were-cats 0. It is clear triumph for the felis catus/people team! Unless we’re going by kill count, in which case it is closer to Human/Cat Alliance 2, Were-cats 26. I arrived at this figure through my own notes but also through a helpful video that takes a comprehensive and complete “carnage count” of all kills in Sleepwalkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmt-DroK6uA

II. Santo & Johnny “Sleep Walk” (1959) Because Sleepwalkers is decidedly not known for its good acting or its well-written screenplay, it is perhaps best known for its liberal and sometimes contrapuntal use of Santo & Johnny’s classic steel guitar song “Sleep Walk,” possibly the most famous (and therefore best) instrumental of the 20th century. Some might say “Sleep Walk” is tied for the #1 spot with “Green Onions” by Booker T & the M.G.’s and/or “Wipe Out” by The Surfaris, but I disagree. The Santo & Johnny song is #1 because of its incalculable influence on all subsequent popular music. 

I’m not saying “Wipe Out” didn't inspire a million imitators, both contemporaneously and even decades later…for example here’s a surf rock instrumental from 1999 called “Giant Cow" by a Toronto band called The Urban Surf Kings. The video was one of the first to be animated using Flash (and it shows):

So there are no shortage of surf rock bands, even now, decades after its emergence from the shores of California to the jukeboxes of Middle America. My old band Sleep for the Nightlife used to regularly play Rancho Relaxo with a surf rock band called the Dildonics, who I liked a great deal. There's even a Danish surf rock band called Baby Woodrose, whose debut album is a favourite of mine. They apparently compete for the title of Denmark’s biggest surf pop band with a group called The Setting Son. When a country that has no surfing culture and no beaches has multiple surf rock bands, it is safe to say the genre has attained international reach. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many bands out there playing Booker T & the M.G.’s inspired instrumental rock. Link Wray’s “Rumble” was released four years before “Green Onions.” But the influence of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” is so ubiquitous as to be almost immeasurable. The reason for this is the sheer popularity of the song’s chord progression. If Santo and Johnny hadn’t written it first, somebody else would have, simply because the progression is so beautiful and easy on the ears and resolvable in a satisfying way. Have a listen to “Sleep Walk” first and then let’s check out some songs it directly inspired. 

The chords are C, A minor, F and G. Minor variations sometimes reverse the last two chords, but if it begins with C to A minor, you can bet it’s following the “Sleep Walk” formula, almost as if musicians influenced by the song are in the titular trance. When it comes to playing guitar, Tom Waits once said “your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they’ve been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don’t explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing.” Not only is it comforting to play and/or hear what we already know, studies have shown that our brains actively resist new music, because it takes work to understand the new information and assimilate it into a pattern we are cogent of. It isn’t until the brain recognizes the pattern that it gives us a dopamine rush. I’m not much for Pitchfork anymore, but a recent article they posted does a fine job of discussing this phenomenon in greater detail.

Led Zeppelin’s “D’Yer Maker” uses the “Sleep Walk” riff prominently, anchored by John Bonham and John Paul Jones’ white-boy reggae beat: 

Here it is again with Del Shannon’s classic “Little Town Flirt.” I love Shannon’s falsetto at the end when he goes “you better run and hide now bo-o-oy.”

The Beatles “Happiness is a Warm Gun” uses the Sleep Walk progression, though not for the whole song. It goes into the progression at the bridge at 1:34: 

Tumblr won’t let me embed any more videos, so you’ll to travel to another tab to hear these songs, but Neil Young gets in on the act with his overlooked classic “Winterlong:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6r66n3TFI On their 1996 EP Interstate 8 Modest Mouse pay direct homage by singing over their own rendition of the original Santo & Johnny version, right down to the weeping steel guitar part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_PwXjCqqs The vocals are typical wispy whispered indie rock vocals, but I think they work, particularly the two different voices. They titled their version “Sleepwalking (Couples Only Dance Prom Night).”

Dwight Yoakam’s “Thousand Miles From Nowhere” makes cinematic use of it. This song plays over the credits of one of my all-time favourite movies, 1993′s Red Rock West feat. Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dennis Hopper, and J.T. Walsh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu3ypuKq8WE

“39″ is my favourite Queen song. I guess now I know why. It uses my fav chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8kGMfXaFU 

Blink 182 scored their first hit “Dammit” with a minor variation on the Sleep Walk chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0g16_LQaQ

Midwest beer drinkin bar rockers Connections scored a shoulda-been-a-hit with the fist-pumping “Beat the Sky:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSNRq0n_WYA You’d be hard pressed to find a weaker lead singer than this guy (save for me, natch), but they make it work. This one’s an anthem.

Spoon, who have made a career out of deconstructing rock n’ roll, so that their songs sometimes sound needlessly sparse (especially “The Ghost of You Lingers,” which takes minimalism to its most extreme...just a piano being bashed on staccato-style for four minutes), so it should surprise nobody that they re-arrange the Sleep Walk chords on their classic from Gimme Fiction, “I Summon You:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teXA8N3aF9M I love that opening line: remember the weight of the world was a sound that we used to buy? I think songwriter Britt Daniel is talking about buying albums from the likes of Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins, any of those grunge bands with pessimistic worldviews. There are a million more examples. I remember seeing some YouTube video where a trio of gross douchebros keep playing the same progression while singing a bunch of hits over it. I don’t like the smarmy way they do it, making it seem like artists are lazy and deliberately stealing. I don’t think it’s plagiarism to use this progression. And furthermore, tempo and production make all the difference. Take “This Magic Moment” for example. There's a version by Jay & the Americans and one by Ben E King & the Drifters. I’ve never been a fan of those shrieking violins or fiddles that open the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bacBKKgc4Uo The Jay & the Americans version puts the guitar riff way in the forefront, which I like a lot more. The guitar plays the entire progression once before the singing starts and the band joins in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKfASw6qoag

Each version has its own distinctive feel. They are pretty much two different songs. Perhaps the most famous use of the Sleep Walk progression is “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers, which is one of my favourite songs ever. The guy who chose to let Bobby Hatfield sing this one by himself must have kicked himself afterwards when it became a hit, much bigger than "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiyq2xrSI0

What can you say about “Unchained Melody” that hasn’t already been said? God, that miraculously strong vocal, the way the strings (and later on, brass horns) are panned way over to the furthest reaches the left speaker while the drums and guitar are way over in the right, with the singing smack dab in the middle creates a kind of distance and sharp clarity that has never been reproduced in popular music, like seeing the skyscrapers of some distant city after an endless stretch of highway. After listening to “Unchained Melody,” one has to wonder: can that progression ever be improved upon? Can any artist write something more haunting, more beautiful, more uplifting than that? The “need your love” crescendo hits so fucking hard, as both the emotional and the sonic climax of the song, which of course is no accident...the strings descending and crashing like a waterfall of sound, it gets me every fucking time. Legend has it that King George II was so moved by the “Hallelujah” section of Handel’s “Messiah” that he stood up, he couldn't help himself, couldn't believe what he was hearing. I get that feeling with all my favourite songs. "1979." "Unchained Melody." "In The Still of the Night." "Digital Bath." "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" "Interstate." "Liar's Tale." “Gimme Shelter.” The list goes on and on. Music is supposed to move us.

King George II stood because he was moved to do so. Music may be our creation, but it isn't our subordinate. All those sci-fi stories warning about technology growing beyond our control aren’t that far-fetched. Music is our creation but its power lies beyond our control. We are subordinate to music, helpless against its power and might, its urgency and vitality and beauty. There have been many times in my life when I have been so obsessed with a particular song that I pretty much want to live inside of it forever. A house of sound. I remember detoxing from heroin and listening to Grimes “Realiti” on repeat for twelve hours. Detoxing from OxyContin and listening to The Beach Boys “Dont Worry Baby” over and over. Or just being young and listening to “Tonight Tonight” over and over and over, tears streaming from my eyes in that way you cry when you’re a kid because you just feel so much and you don’t know what to do with the intensity of those feelings. It is precisely because we are so moved by music that we keep creating it. And in the act of that creation we are free. There are no limits to that freedom, which is why bands time and time again return to the well-worn Sleep Walk chord progression and try to make something new from it. Back in 2006, soon after buying what was then the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, I found myself playing the album’s closing track over and over. I loved the chorus and I loved the way it collapses into a lo-fi demo at the very end, stripping away the studio sheen and...not to be too punny, showing its bones (the album title is Show Your Bones). Later on I would realize that the song, called “Turn Into,” uses the Sleep Walk chord progression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exqCFoPiwpk

It’s just like, what Waits said, our hands goes to where we are familiar. And so do our ears, which is why jazz often sounds so unpleasant to us upon first listen. Or Captain Beefheart. But it’s worth the effort to discover new stuff, just as it’s worth the effort to try and write it. I recently lamented on this blog that music to me now is more about remembrance than discovery, but I’m still only 35 years old. I’m middle-aged right now (I don’t expect to live past 70, not with the lifestyle I’ve been living). There’s still a whole other half life to find new music and love and leave it for still newer stuff. It’s worth the challenge, that moment of inner resistance we feel when confronted with something new and challenging and strange sounding. The austere demands of adult life, rent and routine, take so much of our time. I still make time for creative pursuits, but I don’t really have much time for discovery, for seeking out new music. But I’ve resolved to start making more time. A few years ago I tried to listen to and like Trout Mask Replica but I couldn’t. I just didn’t get what was going on. It sounded like a bunch of mistakes piled on top of each other. But then a few days ago I was writing while listening to music, as I always do, and YouTube somehow landed on Lick My Decals Off, Baby. I didn’t love what I was hearing but I was intrigued enough to keep going. And now I really like this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMnd9dvb3sA&pbjreload=101 Another example I’ll give is the rare Robert Pollard gem “Prom Is Coming.” The first time I heard this song, it sounded like someone who can’t play guitar messing around, but the more I heard it the more I realized there’s a song there. It’s weird and strange, but it’s there. The lyrics are classic Pollard: Disregard injury and race madly out of the universe by sundown. Pollard obviously has a special place in his heart for this track. He named one of his many record labels Prom Is Coming Records and he titled the Boston Spaceships best-of collection Out of the Universe By Sundown. I don’t know if I’ll ever become a Captain Beefheart megafan but I can hear that the man was doing something very strange and, at times, beautiful. And anyway, why should everything be easy? Aren’t some challenges worth meeting for the experience waiting on the other side of comprehension or acceptance? I try to remember this now whenever I’m first confronted with new music, instead of vetoing it right away. Most of my favourite bands I was initially resistant to when I first heard them. Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Guided by Voices, Spoon, Heavy Times. All bands I didn’t like at first.  I don’t wanna sleepwalk through life, surrounding myself only with things I have already experienced. I need to stay awake. Because soon enough I’ll be asleep forever. We need to try everything we can before the Big Sleep comes to take us back to the great blankness, the terrible question mark that bookends our lives.

#sleep walk #santo & johnny #neil young #queen #dwight yoakam #led zeppelin #the beatles #betterdaysareatoenailaway

[fics-of-my-mind]

Trust - Chapter VII.

'Nick, just leave me alone,' I said answering the phone. My voice was way too whiny for my liking.

'Talk to me, please,' he replied sounding tense and a bit worried. 'I know that I didn't have time to talk, since Priyanka interrupted us, but...'

'Yeah, and now that you have, do you expect me to just be on standby and jump into a conversation when you give me the honor of talking to me?!' I asked, my bitter self trying to push him as far away as possible.

'No, but...'

'I'm not just someone that you can go to whenever you feel like it, then don't give a shit about for days.' I know that I was overreacting, yet I couldn't stop myself. I was irritated and having period cramps and the two together didn't lead to any good.

'I'm sorry that I made you feel like that,' he said calmly, and I hated that only from hearing his voice I was already feeling calmer. 'I just couldn't get away, Priyanka knows that something is up.'

'And what is that?' I asked quietly, biting my lip. Not that I was in the mood for this conversation but we might as well did it now. 'What are we doing?'

He was quiet for a while. Then I could hear him sigh deeply.

'I don't know.' His voice was uneasy and unsure.

Warnings: mature content, BDSM content Pairing: Nick Jonas / Other Female Character This fanfiction can also be found on Wattpad by fnntth

I don’t own Nick Jonas or any other recognizable characters. This fanfiction is completely fictional, its only purpose is entertainment.

Chapter VII. - Play me your guitar, that song I love

Nick’s texts are bold

Milla’s texts are italic

'What have you been doing today?' Nick asked. We've been on the phone for the past twenty minutes, the mood between us extremely flirty and light. I guess that's what FaceTime sex does to you. I would've expected it to be awkward, but we weren't at that phase yet, I guess. We were avoiding talking about last night like real mature adults.

'Not much,' I shrugged. 'I've been fangirling,' I brought up the topic. Truth is, I wanted to talk to him about some recent discoveries I've made in the past few hours, just didn't know how to bring up the topic.

'Oh, really?' he asked cheekily. 'I thought as a great Jonas Brothers fan for life there is nothing new for you,' he noted, and I could almost see the conceited smirk on his face.

'There is barely anything about you that could surprise me, but...' I started, biting my lip.

'I'm not going to like this, am I?' Nick asked, his senses working perfectly.

'Probably no.' There was a pretty big chance that he is no going to like the topic, but after everything I've read on Tumblr and Wattpad for the past few hours – really, I could still be surprised of how easy it was to get lost in the sea of information and theories -, I needed to know what was true. 'Demi Lovato,' I said her name, having a feeling that he'd get the idea of my recent reads.

'I had a feeling you weren't just going to let that go,' he noted, sounding a bit frustrated. I didn't care. Nick knew almost everything about me and my life, it was only fair if I got to take a glance in his.

'Well, I mean, she is one of my teenage idols. I love her voice, I've loved her songs.'

'Yeah, so did I,' he sighed deeply. I imagine this must've been an uncomfortable topic for him, but wasn't the point of this whole 'friendship' to be open with each other? Most of the things I've told Nick made me very uncomfortable too, but I still did it.

'Something happened between you two,' I started.

'What do you think exactly happened between us?' he asked. I wasn't even surprised that he didn't just start to share the story right away, but rather made me tell him that I think went down. He could've just shot me down, saying that he wasn't going to talk about it, but for whatever reason he didn't. Maybe he presumed that if he wasn't going to share, I wasn't going to share either.

'You want to know how much the fans could see of it?' I asked. It was kind of interesting, talking with him about this. We got a basis of comparison about how much the outside world could actually guess about the events between two celebrities.

'I do,' he replied. 'I promise I'll tell you what actually happened, I'd just like to hear how the outside world perceived it.'

I could understand where he was coming from. This could give him an insight on how to do things if he actually wanted to keep his private life private. I felt so touched that he didn't even try to deny answering my question. I had no idea why he trusted me this much. I mean, yes, I've told him some of my deepest darkest fears and concerns, but I was a no one compared to him. My private life getting out in the open didn't matter, while his private life being leaked could lead to serious troubles. Not that I had any intention of betraying his trust, but the mere fact of Nick not being concerned about me selling him out, had me in awe. I don't think anyone has ever laid such trust in me.

'You and Demi were best friends. First your success as Jonas Brothers boosted hers, then after the band broke up, her success boosted your solo career. You did interviews together, mutually promoted each other, went on tour together.'

'Everything you've said is correct,' he replied carefully, waiting for me to continue.

'Somewhere along the line you started to have feelings for each other. You had the question whether or not ruining the friendship between you two was worth it, whether it could become something serious. I imagine you were the one that didn't want to risk it, since Demi wrote those songs about you.'

'I was,' he nodded. 'I'm not sure they were romantic feelings in the beginning anyway. Maybe it was just pure lust, I mean, we were both sexy, both single, maybe something just brought our attraction towards each other to the surface.'

'I think you were extremely annoyed about the songs,' I chuckled, continuing my presumptions. I loved those songs by the way, I always thought that Demi was an incredible artist and both Only Forever and Ruin The Friendship were amazing songs.

'Why would you think that?' he asked, sounding a bit amused.

'Because you're a control freak,' I shrugged. At this point of our acquaintance it wasn't an assumption, it was more of a fact. He didn't even try to deny it. 'And Demi just wrote a song with not only some hints, but your initials in the lyrics. Everybody knew it was about you, and, well, Ruin The Friendship was also kind of candid,' I explained. 'But I guess the songs did the trick in the end, didn't they?'

'I was so mad at her,' he said, reminiscing. 'I always tried to keep my personal life, most of my feelings under wraps, until at least I was sure of where things were going. Yet here comes Demi and tells the world about what was going on between us.'

'What is the 'you're only brave in the moonlight' thing about? Did you two sleep together earlier, or...?'

'No,' he replied instantly. 'But we did talk about crossing the line a few times, usually when we were both drained or tired or emotional and not thinking clearly.'

'So when did you two cross the line?' I asked, the fangirl in me being on her peak. This was amazing, I was getting details that I never thought I'd hear.

'Last night of tour,' Nick sighed. 'It would've been stupid to try anything until we had to constantly work together.'

'And what happened?' I continued the questioning. 'I mean, the girl was so clearly in love with you.' Not that I could blame her.

I didn't want to assume what exactly went down between them, I was hoping that Nick would tell me. Sure, I've read fan theories, even some fanfictions, but hearing the tale of two friends becoming more from the first hand seemed like the most reliable source.

'Yeah, she was.' His voice sounded sad, and I suddenly felt guilty from bringing up old scars just because I was curious. 'I wasn't. For me it turned out to be only lust and extremely deep love for my best friend. I'm not saying that it couldn't have worked, but... I was young and didn't think that a relationship I needed to work hard for, even if it was with someone as amazing as Demi was worth my time. I wanted to concentrate on my career and...' he stopped.

'And the friendship was ruined?' I guessed quietly. It was a sad story, something I really felt bad about.

'Exactly. We were stupid to ruin something great in our lives.'

'Did you try to fix it?'

'Sure. But Demi said she couldn't be my friend, that she needed time, then she started getting into bad crowds and using again, and...'

He didn't have to finish the story. Demi Lovato overdosed and almost died. The media was full of that story, and Demi was gone for a long time after that. I'm sure that there were parts that I could've asked about, like if Joe and his past relationship with Demi was a factor in all this, but I felt like this information was already much more that I could expect from Nick.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'For asking, and bringing it up.'

'Don't apologize for wanting to get to know the real me, Milla,' he said quietly. He's said this countless times before, but I still felt like I was intruding in the private life he's worked so hard for to keep private. 'I don't apologize from asking about your life either.'

'It wasn't your fault, you know,' I said carefully, sensing that Nick was partly blaming himself for Demi's overdose. I mean, they were friends, then they did something stupid that they couldn't fix and the she almost died. I've known Nick for long enough to know that it couldn't be something that he took so lightly.

'Thank you, but­—' his answer was suddenly cut into half, when another voice joined in our very private conversation.

'Nick? What are you doing? Why aren't you in bed?'

Even if I didn't know the voice, I could've guessed. It was Priyanka.

My heart instantly started racing faster, and my breath caught up in my throat. Nick was also startled, judging from his lack of answer for a minute.

'I'll be right there, Pri,' he said uneasily, his voice a trembling a little, before disconnecting the call without another word.

This was more than enough to make me feel like a dirty mistress, someone that could be just shaken off when the wife entered the scene. Nick's 'I'm so sorry' text a few seconds later didn't exactly help ease my thoughts.

We've barely talked the next day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. It was all making me crazy and surprisingly sad.

So, I'm watching Camp Rock

I sent the text biting my lip. It was four days later and I had no idea where we stood. We went four days with not speaking more than some basic 'how was your day' texts and it was making me go crazy in my head. At least I've had work to take my mind off things, but it wasn't really helping.

After partly getting over the event of hearing Priyanka calling Nick to bed, my mind kept racing around that night. How aroused I was, how sexy Nick looked. How he had control over me, even though he was far, far away. How sensitive I was and what unknown things I've felt.

Not that I could fully let go of the wife thing. Feeling guilty was something I've never expected to come. Yet, as I kept thinking about Nick, about how much I wanted him, how he's been acting, the constant texts, phone calls, face times and opening up to each other, I couldn't help but feel guilt crawling into my bones.

He was married. Married to an amazing and beautiful woman. A woman loved by millions, fans shipping them all around the world. He's had a very public relationship, engagement and wedding to that woman. His family's welcomed her into their circle. Even though everything we've been doing seemed harmless, somehow I didn't feel like it was anymore. Not with sex being on the table, even if just as a conversation topic.

It clearly wasn't just a fan crush anymore. It started to turn into something real, with real things happening between us, even if just online, 6000 miles apart. I didn't know what to expect, what to hope, everything was making me feel crazy, especially the fact that we went days without a normal conversation.

I've missed his voice, his texts and it scared the shit out of me. I've never felt this about anyone, especially not someone like Nick. I don't know if it was the sex talk part of our relationship, or just the fact that for two months we were constantly connected to each other via our phones, but I missed him bad. So, I dug up my old fangirling ways and started watching one of the earliest programs I ever laid eyes on him: Camp Rock.

I or II?

2.

You started to be hot in this one.

started to?

I know you hate to hear it, but Joe was hotter than you back then

He didn't answer for minutes and I just started thinking that I shouldn't have said that when my phone buzzed again.

the only thing that matters is I'm hotter now

been hotter ever since the band went on a hiatus

I smiled at him not saying that the Jonas Brothers ended, but putting it as if it was just a hiatus. I knew he blamed himself, it was clear from interviews, even though he tried to play it cool. Always said that at least he got the band back together. But whenever we've talked about it, I could feel his guilt that was still there.

I don't know about that

Joe was so hot in See No More

is this a hint to give you my brother's number so you can stalk him?

I rolled my eyes at him. Even though I'd probably go into fangirl mode if he sent me Joe's number, he wasn't the Jonas I wanted to be connected to.

Don't worry

that damn shirtless selfie made you hotter

C'mon, we all know which selfie I was talking about.

I'm glad

Okay.

His answers were kind of short and emotionless. It's like he didn't want to talk, or he tried to keep the texting as short as possible. Any other time I would've assumed that he was with Priyanka, but now, thanks to us barely talking for days and what happened between us a few nights ago, plus almost getting caught, my mind was heading towards darker places.

Maybe this was it.

Maybe this should be it.

Maybe this was all he wanted. Some fun with a girl he was never going to see again.

Maybe now that it was risky for us to talk, he didn't want to do it anymore.

I wasn't going to push myself on him – not that I could really. If he wanted to talk, he'd text or call me. Otherwise I had to try and let this go. Not that this was going anywhere. He had a wife. We lived 6000 miles away from each other. He was Nick Jonas. Our lives weren't compatible, not at all.

I was just some girl, someone he passed the time while he was closed in his own home. Getting to know a stranger, that was interesting for the both of us. Maybe we mutually used each other to keep our minds off the current situation.

Anyway, I was a winner in this situation. I've gotten to know the Nick Jonas, the man that I've been a fan of since I was twelve. I got to learn things. I also understood better now who he was. And it wasn't just the 'Nick Jonas factor', it was also the fact that I've been talking to Nick. Just Nick. A regular boy. An amazing person. It was so worth it, even if this is it.

My stomach clenched when thinking about this being the end.

I didn't want that, I've gotten used to having him talk to me.

We went another three days with barely texting, and I was already mourning the relationship we've never even really had. I was like this at times, overthinking, letting go of things way too suddenly. I just couldn't really handle the feelings I was experiencing.

Being on my period didn't really help the case. It made my bad mood a thousand times worse.

By the time the weekend came, I was curling into fetal position on my couch, wallowing in my self-pity and thinking about how I've never truly appreciated that this was happening between us. It was like a shock, all happened so quickly and I just had to go with the flow. I was really thinking about letting go of Nick completely, like being so over-dramatic and unfollowing him on Instagram, but I couldn't make myself hit the 'unfollow' button. And, really, it was too much.

I was watching Gossip Girl, trying to get some comfort in my pain – both emotional and physical. Maybe it was a little exaggeration, but I was actually in a lot of pain. I felt more alone than ever, I wanted this coronavirus situation to finally be over, I wanted to see my friends and I wanted Nick. I would've given anything for a chance to hug him, or even, just to see his pretty face.

Yet, the moment my phone's screen lit up with his name, notifying me of an incoming call, I hit the decline button. Two minutes later, when he was calling again, I just let it ring.

I was cranky, I was whiny, I was hurting, and as much as I missed Nick, I was mad at him for ignoring me for so long.

The third time, it was a FaceTime call that I decided to ignore.

are you ignoring me?

I opened the text but left it on read. I just didn't feel it in me to communicate with him in any way. Not in my period pain, or the tiredness of the week. Not when my mind was in dark places.

so yes

Came the next text.

I won't leave you alone until you talk to me

I knew it wasn't just an empty threat. Nick definitely was the person to always get what he wants. This made me angry.

Not in the mood, Nick

what's wrong?

I scoffed and turned the phone facing down.

Nothing should've been wrong, yet I felt like everything was. I was having opposite feelings, part of me dying to hear Nick's voice and feel a bit better, the other part wanting to ignore him and let him go before he got even closer to me. He was already way too close.

My mobile buzzed with a few more text messages that I didn't even read, before he was calling me again.

'Nick, just leave me alone,' I said answering the phone. My voice was way too whiny for my liking.

'Talk to me, please,' he replied sounding tense and a bit worried. 'I know that I didn't have time to talk, since Priyanka interrupted us, but...'

'Yeah, and now that you have, do you expect me to just be on standby and jump into a conversation when you give me the honor of talking to me?!' I asked, my bitter self trying to push him as far away as possible.

'No, but...'

'I'm not just someone that you can go to whenever you feel like it, then don't give a shit about for days.' I know that I was overreacting, yet I couldn't stop myself. I was irritated and having period cramps and the two together didn't lead to any good.

'I'm sorry that I made you feel like that,' he said calmly, and I hated that only from hearing his voice I was already feeling calmer. 'I just couldn't get away, Priyanka knows that something is up.'

'And what is that?' I asked quietly, biting my lip. Not that I was in the mood for this conversation but we might as well did it now. 'What are we doing?'

He was quiet for a while. Then I could hear him sigh deeply.

'I don't know.' His voice was uneasy and unsure.

'I need an answer Nick,' I shook my head. Hormones were making me go crazy, so the next moment I was on the verge of tears. 'Is it just fun for you? Just making this whole quarantine shit go away faster? I...'

'No, of course not. You know that I'm not someone who just plays around with people,' he replied instantly, almost as if he was shocked that I'd even imply that he was just using this whole thing for fun. 'C'mon, I've told you things about me that I never told anyone.'

'Then wh—, you're married,' I said. Saying the word 'married' caused me to wince. 'Whatever this is, it isn't right.' We both knew it wasn't. Even if it just started off as innocent texting, getting to know each other, when the sex talks and constant flirting began, it stopped being harmless. 'Maybe we shouldn't talk anymore.' One teardrop made its way down my cheek.

'Don't say that,' Nick said quickly. 'You don't mean that.'

I stayed quiet. I really wanted to mean it, I should've. It would've been the right thing to do. I bit my bottom lip as more and more tears started following the first one.

'Tell me what's wrong,' he asked after a few minutes of silence on the line. His voice was deep, caring, and I almost felt better as he spoke the words.

'I'm just so... alone,. I've just realized how much, when you didn't have time to talk to me, I guess,' I shrugged, drying some of my tears off. These last few days showed me how lonely I exactly was. I felt stupid, not realizing it earlier that just because we were talking with Nick, he still wasn't with me. 'Whatever, Nick, I don't want to burden you with this, you have more important prob—'

'Hey, hey, hey,' he cut into my words. 'You are never burdening me, okay? I want to know how you're feeling. What you're feeling.'

'Lonely. And... guilty.'

'Don't,' he said, and I could almost see how frustrated he was. 'Out of the two of us, you shouldn't be the one to feel guilty.'

'Do you?' I asked in a small voice.

'Yes. All the time.' His voice was firm, hones, yet somehow sensitive. 'But I also feel happy when I'm talking to you. Free. Like I can finally breath. You're like coming up for fresh air after almost drowning.'

Words. He was good with them. And they were just what my sensitive and tired soul needed to hear.

'That's very poetic, Jonas,' I said sarcastically, with a tiny smile playing on my lips. 'Almost like you're a songwriter or something.' I could her a soft chuckle from the other end of the line, and it made my heart melt. 'You know what would make me feel better?'

'What?' he asked instantly, his voice so soft.

'If my favorite Jonas Brother sang to me,' I asked sheepishly. Honestly, I have no idea why I haven't asked him before.

'I knew I was your favorite.'

A/N: Thank you so much for your feedback on the last chapter! I’m so glad that I’m not the only person liking this story.

Please share your thoughts with me! Where do you think it is going? Do you like it? 

X

#nick jonas fanfiction #nick jonas imagine #nick jonas fic #nick x reader #jonas brothers #jonas brothers fanfiction #jonas brothers imagine #fanfiction #Nick Jonas

[communistkenobi-archive]

fic titles meme

tagged by @hauntedfalcon​! thank you hannah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Look at the most recent 20 (or however many!) fanwork titles on your AO3 account and answer the questions below.

this is long so i will put it under a cut ↴

20 most recent fics:

greater griefs (The Clone Wars)

Fields of Ribbon (The Clone Wars)

showing a dancing bird of paradise (The Clone Wars)

It’s Called Diplomacy (The Clone Wars)

Heretical (The Clone Wars)

Rain Again (The Clone Wars)

Half the Sky (The Clone Wars)

A Real Backwater Skug Hole (The Mandalorian)

Satisfy (The Mandalorian)

Happy Hunting (The Mandalorian)

Dinui (The Mandalorian)

Grow Fonder (The Mandalorian)

bad poetry (The Mandalorian)

Distractions (The Mandalorian) 

i’ve been all around this world (The Mandalorian)

Dialectics (Prospect)

You Wear it Well (The Mandalorian)

a faint trembling (The Mandalorian)

Little Laramie (Destiny)

in medias res (The Last of Us)

1. How many are you happy with?

I’m assuming this is just referring to the fic titles and not the actual fic itself, so with one notable exception they’re generally fine.

2. How many are…not great?

i hate that i called bwsh “a real backwater skug hole”. it started as a one shot so i wasn’t picky, but now that its like an actual story it will forever piss me off. I’d probably also rename “Rain Again” to something more significant.

3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute?

i put basically no effort into naming smutfic so those were complete throwaways. Usually titles are hard for me so they all tend to be last minute lmao

4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning?

“Fields of Ribbon” popped into my brain before the idea fully formed. “in medias res” was also an easy choice early on, same with “Little Laramie”. with the more thematic/gimmicky fics I write, I tend to get an idea about the title early on.

5. How many are quotes from songs or poems?

lmaooo well “singing a dancing bird of paradise” is from Hot Knife

“i’ve been all around this world” is from New Railroad by Crooked Still

6. How many are other quotes?

“greater griefs” is from the book The Song of Achilles

7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork?

I usually pic titles for fics that describe theme rather than plot, so that might actually mean the smut fic titles are the only actual descriptive ones, lmao.

8. Which best reflects the theme of the story?

I really like “Half the Sky” and “Little Laramie”. “Dialectics” is a very pretentious title but it works with the fic and the movie more broadly. 

9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/pov of the fanwork?

“It’s Called Diplomacy” definitely. the whole conceit of the fic is that obi-wan forces everyone to have fun at a fancy dinner party, so although he’s not the main POV character since it bounces around, it’s a good summary of what the actual fic is about and the headspace the characters are in - either being chastised or being the one doing the chastising. 

10. Which is your favourite title?

Half the Sky!! it’s one of my favourite things I’ve written in a while and the title I think summarises it very well (tonally/thematically/plot wise/etc).

Hannah tagged a couple mutuals already so I am tagging:

@jate-kara 

@beskars 

@trillaas 

@woahpip 

@fingergunsmando 

@phantom-of-the-keurig 

@coredrive

@kanouchi

@mariaromanovs

@kotorswtor

@waxedpaperdoor

@likesummerrainn

@mintaequ

@vergildidnothingwrong

@carbonight

@saratogaroad

@acaigawritesstuff

@ladywolvesbayne

@cappurrccino

#misc.txt #fic #ask meme #thank you for tagging me hannah!!! #ALSO ASHFJKDS SORRY THATS A LOT OF PPL #i tried to tag mutuals that i know write fic regularly BUT IF I FORGOT U IM SO SORRY #PLS DO THIS IF U WANT TO

[tonotbelionized]

The Mentality of Adam Taurus

Note: Before I start on this post, I would just like to say this point. This is not a post that excuses or tries to downplay Adam’s behaviour and abuse of Blake, as well as his actions against the people around him. I simply wanted to write what was going on in his mind and delve deeper into this psychology with help of someone who actually has a degree in it!

Adam Taurus is most certainly a hated character in the FNDM and the show, and for good reason. He’s manipulative, violent, and abusive terrorist and wishes genocide and subjugation on innocent people. His actions have severe effects not only on his main victim, Blake, but Yang Xiao Long, the cutting off her arm by him leaving her with PTSD and exhaustion from her trauma.

But how exactly did he end up to be this person? 

It’s very much the argument of not only nature vs nurture but also how underlying mental issues can impact on someone through the years. We’ll see through Adam’s history and see how the events of the past have had an affect not only on Adam, but the cycle of abuse in relation to his character.

Adam’s Childhood in the SDC

Adam’s childhood has never been shown or explored in canon material, so much so that we don’t know at what age he was branded, escaped or even joined the White Fang, but we at least have some idea from what we’ve seen in RWBY and in other materials. 

From his theme song; Lionized, and what Blake had given about the treatment of the Faunus under the SDC, we can safely assume that Adam’s childhood in the dust mines was not that of a normal childhood. His own parents were never mentioned, whether they were there at all or dead is unknown, but that would leave Adam in a very poor situation; no positive role models and people to teach him important lessons. 

A child needs positive role models in their life because it’s through the people around them that the child learns not only how to act when around other people, but also how to behave in society as a whole. If that role model is not a positive influence, or even there at all, then the child is left either learning that toxic behaviours are okay or having to learn lessons themselves. This just increases the risk of the child learning the wrong lessons, but also has them landing hard when they failure without the adult there to cushion the consequences of the child messing up.

In the working environment of the SDC, Adam was probably raised in an environment that is extremely damaging to a child. His primary source of socialization, a role that is given to parents and siblings in a family dynamic, is not there in Adam’s case because all the workers are on the same level with the superiors of the company above them in a position of power that is canonically abused. This would leave Adam alone with no one around him to teach him like a parent would, and so he has had to stumble around while growing up in a home where someone would be abused severely if they did something wrong.

This culminates in his branding. The reasons behind his branding are unknown, but he has said that people have hurt him before, in all different ways, so it’s likely that this branding was done specifically to hurt Adam. This is an incredibly painful lesson for a minor to learn, and because of this isolation that Adam suffered from previously is never resolved, he would have had to deal with this traumatic experience alone. Eventually, it was just buried and never properly dealt with in a healthy way to allow Adam to move on from it.

This isolation stemmed from his childhood explains his behaviour later on in life. Adam had no one to rely on, he had no concrete role models to learn from or to be taught important lessons as he grew up, and this meant that when he eventually found someone that he loved, Blake, he treated the relationship in a toxic and abusive way. 

First Years in the White Fang

Adam had been in the White Fang for longer enough that he saw Ghira in charge, before he stepped down five years before the start of the series. Most of his years during this time is shown in his character short just before Volume 6′s release,and it’s where we’ll be looking at most for this part of the topic.

It’s unknown how old Adam was when he joined the White Fang, but he had already been branded by the time he did so. All throughout the short, we are shown how he changes over the years with his mental state and past trauma affecting him, as well as the events that happen to him. With the White Fang, Adam is finally in a group where he’s on equal ground with everyone except Ghira and Sienna, who are both in a position of power over the rest of White Fang members.

His sense of identity had been brought down from his time in the SDC as a worker, especially with his dehumanization because of his Faunus heritage, and it’s a problem in the White Fang that continues. He isn’t now seen as his own person, but rather a part of an overall group, and both Sienna and Ghira actually don’t seem to care enough to change this fact. In fact, both their behaviour would likely confused Adam even more just because of how contradictory they are.

This isn’t to say that they are at fault for Adam becoming a monster. His actions are his own, but I found it interesting on the effect it would have on him with how both leaders treated him. All of Ghira’s shown interactions with Adam have been negative reinforcement, and it comes at a time where we see that Adam actually isn’t as violent as he would be later on in his life. He handled all the humans attacking the Faunus group in an effective non-life threatening way, the only life he takes comes when he had no other choice, and he would believe that it’s the only way he can protect Ghira.

So when Ghira chastises him for doing so, Adam’s body language shows that he’s actually ashamed of what he did. His head is hung low, his shoulders are down and he doesn’t look up at Ghira. I noticed while watching that Ghira doesn’t actually explain why Adam’s actions were wrong in a way that Adam would take in, he’s more angry and scolding rather than calmly explaining. Going off what we said about Adam not having someone in his early life teaching him right from wrong and explaining why he couldn’t do certain things, it shows just why Adam doesn’t seem to take the advice to heart after that. 

I’m not saying that it’s Ghira’s responsibility to teach Adam because of his age and the fact that he isn’t Ghira’s son, but I am saying that this behaviour does have an effect on Adam nonetheless. If Ghira doesn’t explain something in a constructive way, how is Adam supposed to learn a lesson that he’s never been taught?

All of a sudden, Sienna’s positive reinforcement completely contradicts what Ghira is saying. All of a sudden what Adam did was right rather than wrong, and he is clearly surprised that people who previously did nothing when Ghira told him off were cheering what Adam did. He would definitely stick to any positive interaction he can get, and that’s why he goes to Sienna over Ghira. Both of these would no doubt confuse him even more because they both validate and invalidate his actions at the same time, and without the emotional maturity that he should have at that age,

I’d also like to add that his mask also adds to the dehumanization Adam feels, and it’s telling that he continues to wear it even when he’s in the White Fang, a place he’s supposedly among allies and fellow Faunus. Him pushing other Faunus to wear them could be Adam pushing his own dehumanization onto others, as well as the obvious implication that he’s ashamed of his scar. 

Egotistical and Egocentric

There are plenty of characters that I would call egotistical, most of all Jacques, but I do have to explain the differences in which egotistical and egocentric are used and how it applies to Adam.

Egotistical is a person who is excessively conceited or obsessed with themselves. It’s basically someone who thinks of themselves in high regard.

Egocentric is a person who thinks more of themselves in terms of their problems, showing an inability to take into other peoples’ accounts. 

Because of this, egotistical is more self-importance while egocentric is more isolationist, and I would use the term egocentric to describe Adam as opposed to egotistical. His whole problem is what Blake told Sun in Volume 5, that Adam had been so hurt in the past that he can no longer see past that trauma and would instead hurt the world in the exact same way. He’s grown spiteful and believes that his problems are the only ones that matter, and that everyone else who’ve suffered are weak and pathetic.

Adding onto that, the term egocentric is also applied to the period in a child’s life, usually between the ages of 2 - 7, where they have a very black and white view of the world in which they’re the only one that matters. Reading into Adam’s behaviour and words later in his life, and I can pretty safely say that he’s never been raised out of that part of his life because of his situation. This stage going into the White Fang where he’s now being praised for his actions doesn’t push Adam to grow out of it, and we’re now left with a man who reacts violently when people challenge those same decisions.

If we start looking at his actions with these points in mind, then it makes his character and mindset much more interesting.

Foil to Yang & Their Relationship to Blake

Adam serves as a foil to multiple people in RWBY; Sun Wukong, Ilia Amitola, and Yang Xiao Long. Because of the other two either not having a deep enough backstory form to compare, or being a less major character story wise, I will be focusing solely on the foil between Adam and Yang. 

Yang was very much raised in a normal household with Summer Rose and Taiyang, but even then it wasn’t completely happy after Summer’s disappearance and Taiyang’s depression. Despite this rough part of her life, Yang was still raised with a deeply mature outlook on life despite her seemingly carefree nature, she is deeply empathetic and is even the voice of reason during her time in Beacon. She understood that Ruby needed other people to bring her out of her shell, and was willing to given Blake a chance to explain after her revelation over being a Faunus. It’s clearly obvious that Taiyang, and Summer in her early years, had managed to raise Yang past that stage that Adam has been stuck in.

On the other hand, Adam didn’t have that same security in a family and was raised in a strictly abusive environment. This would have the effect on him not only knowing what healthy relationships looked like and believe that what was done to him is the right thing to do, but also meaning that Adam lacked that same maturity and empathy that Yang herself possesses. He’s unable to comprehend people who don’t think the same way that he does, and because of that he simply believes that their wrong in thinking that way.

It’s most apparent in his interaction with Blake during the fall of Beacon:

Blake: I never wanted this! I wanted equality! I wanted peace! Adam: What you wanted was impossible!

He can’t understand why Blake would want equality or peace with the humans, because that’s not what he wanted. In his mind, because her beliefs contradicted his own, that meant that Blake was wrong in thinking so and that what she wanted could never be achieved.

This difference in their raising continues on to how they both handle their similar fears; the fact that they don’t want to be left alone, and how this fear had then affected their relationship with Blake. Adam and Blake’s relationship was not only incredibly toxic and damaging for Blake, but only served as something that Adam could use to chain the one person he cared about to himself. His idea of love is emotional manipulation and gaslighting, and when the person of his affections acts out, he quickly shuts it down with shouting or physical violence, because that’s what’s been done to him when he did the same thing, and he had never learnt that behaving this way is not healthy.

That fear of being alone is in direct connection to the fact that when Adam had been severely traumatised, he was left to deal with the consequences alone. The thought that Blake would leave him in that situation would push him to do whatever he could to keep her with him, and when she ultimately left him, he couldn’t handle that isolation again and instead turned it to anger because he thought it was Blake’s fault for leaving, that it was her fault for not behaving or loving him enough. It’s very similar to Yang’s idea that everyone ultimately leaves them in the end, but it’s how they deal with this fear is what sets them apart so much.

Unlike Yang, Adam never got over this fear.

Yang herself had been shaped so much by people leaving her behind that she has severe abandonment issues, that like Adam she took Blake leaving her negatively because of this past trauma. However, unlike Adam’s reasonings being that it’s all Blake’s fault for leaving, Yang was only angry at Blake because she wasn’t told why she left, just like she never knew why her biological mother left either. Yang never thought that she had the right for Blake to stay, whereas Adam did.

Even with her abandonment issues, Yang is clearly miles better mentally than Adam even after her dismemberment and developing PTSD. She has never took out her frustrations on anyone around her, rather internalizing the problems and going on to help others, and even when she snaps at Weiss and Ruby in Volume 5, she’s clearly remorseful and goes to remove herself from the situation. 

Adam does not know how to deal with fear, frustration or anger in a healthy way like Yang does, and because of this he instead takes it out on people in the way that it had been taken out on him, because that’s all he knows. He shows in knowledge in when he’s overstepped a boundary, and when he does, Adam shows no remorse in his actions. Even when he rarely apologizes for his behaviour, such as in his short, he does so in a way that the attention is brought back to him and his own problems in that egocentric manner. 

I find it interesting in how they handle their decline in mental health. Whereas Adam keeps going down in this downward spiral, ultimately ending up in this place of isolation just like he was in the beginning, Yang ultimately pushed herself to recover and surrounded herself with her friends and family. She ends up in a better place with companionship to offset Adam’s isolation, and it’s this distinction that separates their relationship to Blake.

Adam’s relationship with her is now completely destroyed, and it ends with Blake finally killing Adam in self defense. Yang’s relationship with her is restored, and they both can start to recover after the trauma they both have suffered.

The Cycle of Abuse 

Adam’s not the only character to portray this subject in RWBY, especially when Salem was given an entire episode where we saw what she went through and why she developed into this villain, but he was the first abuser to appear in the show with his debut in the Black Trailer. 

Ultimately, he embodies the very real idea that a person who had been abused and hurt in the past is at risk of becoming that same abuser to another victim later on down the road. His branding and childhood in the SDC wasn’t an excuse for him to become the monster he did, but they did explain why his mind state had decayed to the point that we saw in the show. 

I know that some people actually don’t really like his writing, and I will admit that at first I particularly didn’t, but after going through this post, I feel that at least his actions aren’t completely random or one-dimensional now. To me at least, they make sense given what he’s been through, and I believe that this is what makes him at least a competent villain in the writing sense even if some of his writing still doesn’t appeal to me. 

That’s all I really have to say about this character. I likely have missed something in my jumbled notes, but honestly this is the basic jist of what I wanted to get across. Please, don’t take any of this as myself saying that everyone except Adam is responsible for his behaviour, because ultimately it was Adam’s decision to do all the things he did. I’m only offering explanations, never excuses.

Either way, thanks for reading this!

#rwby #crtq #adam taurus #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #ghira belladonna #sienna khan #I still don't know if I like how I've tried to get my views across but hopefully it's all good

[the-end-of-art]

Nobody in love is original

Christian Wiman wrote this gorgeous remembrance for poet Craig Arnold that is full of everything "the necessary but destabilizing intensities of poetry, and the life that one risks by cultivating those intensities, and the life that—in some cases, our cases, we both felt—poetry also rescues." I don't know about you, but in college I was trained to separate the poet from the poem, and while I think a poem needs to stand on its own without needing the context of a poet's biography to fill it with anything it's lacking, but in the last few years I have wanted so much for poetry to connect and reconcile me to other people, places, and things - and not least the people who write poems, inasmuch as we can ever know another person, or at least for as much as we can know them through an experience of their words. 

I truly believe that books find you exactly when you need them, and I just want to tell of the happy journey that led me to this at exactly the right time: years ago someone loaned me Carl Adamschick’s Saint Friend, still one of my all-time favorite poetry books. It was published by the McSweeney’s poetry imprint, and some months later, at random in the library, I saw another McSweeney’s book, and while I was really put off by the title, Love: An Index, which made me think it was going to be a book of poems built around a conceit, a trick, on the strength of the many good McSweeney’s poetry books I’d read, I borrowed it, and devoured it. There was definitely a central operating principle - sections began with A, B, C through Z - but I remember many moments in that book as rising above it to be really good, and I was moved that Rebecca Lindenberg had written it in memory of a partner who had died suddenly and unexpectedly in an accident. About three years later, @waitingforthecat liked one of my posts and I was intrigued enough by that handle to look up their tumblr, which wow is full of stuff I really love, and when I read the poem Bird-Understander I got that I-must-read-everything-by-this-poet-immediately feeling, and it turns out to be by Craig Arnold (and the beloved in Bird-Understander could well be Rebecca Lindenberg - and even if it isn’t literally, autobiographically, everything we write comes from who we are, and the people who make us who we are).

From an interview with Jeremy Richards, “How to Write Love Poems”:

What’s the most pressing challenge in approaching a love poem? Craig Arnold: For a poet at the beginning of the 21st century, I think the most difficult thing is how to navigate this brave new world, where we’re in the midst of making up our collective mind about what it means to be men and women. In the Western tradition most love poems have assumed a male poet writing to or about a female object, who can accept or refuse the offering but who doesn’t otherwise say much, and the formal conventions of poetry have crystallized around that assumption. There are those wonderful Provençal troubadour poems that imagine the poem as a dialogue, a back-and-forth between two mutually desiring individuals, but those are among the few exceptions. Now when we sit down to write poems to our lovers—or to the people we hope will be our lovers—we’re more likely to be thinking: What am I responding to? How do I hope this person will respond? How is this part of an ongoing conversation? With “Bird-Understander” I wanted to say not, as an Elizabethan courtly sonneteer might have said, “Look, I made your words into poetry, aren’t I fabulous?” but rather “Listen, what you said to me, it’s already poetry, better than anything I could write, and it would make me happy simply to have you see that.” Where do you think most bad love poems go astray? Any love poem has to strike a careful balance between the particular and the common. As a lover you feel as though you and your beloved are the most intensely particular people in the world—“Never again a love like this,” as Roddy Lumdsen says. But the fact is that you’re submitting yourself to what is possibly the most common or universal human experience, and that sometimes the most direct and most accurate expression of that experience may, in fact, be the language of cliché. I’m thinking about the duet that Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman sing on the rooftop in Moulin Rouge, which is just a pastiche of trashy pop songs, and in some way that’s what all love poetry is leaning toward. But when you think about [it], what is a cliché, if not a poem that won? We feel that so many love poems are bad, or clichéd, but I suspect that what we dislike about them are not the clichés, but the experience of being in love itself. As poets we like to think that we’re original, and it embarrasses us to remember how utterly unoriginal we can be—the sudden appeal of the corniest things, the mood swings, the crying at movies and the like. Let’s face it, nobody in love is original. We all feel and do pretty much the same things, make fools of ourselves in the same ways, and hopefully come through it alive and well and happily in bed with someone else. But that’s also precisely the appeal of love poetry, the intensely humbling nature of the experience it tries to describe. As a younger poet, did you ever fumble with the bad, saccharine attempts at love poems that most of us write? What can we learn from those fumbles? It’s hard to say. I came into my writerly existence in the 1980s, the Decade of Irony, when it was very uncool to express any sort of strong feeling directly or plainly. If you wanted to be taken seriously as a writer, you learned to police yourself for any signs of sincerity, to cloak them in irony and diffidence and perhaps a certain obscurity. A while ago, my first lover sent me a copy of a poem I wrote when I was maybe 19, and what strikes me about it now is, though I clearly meant it as a gesture of love, I didn’t frame it as such. Rather than I addressing you, it was all in the third person, a sketch of a character from a noir novel, a sort of Philip Marlowe–like individual smoking underneath a window. It was a stealth love poem, a meta–love poem, a sort of “I have this friend who’s in love with you” kind of poem. The habit of indirection was already very strong in me, as it was with other poets of that era. So I think the danger then was actually not being too saccharine, but rather of being too cool, too frigid. Now the danger is probably being too caffeinated—I’m thinking of the maniacally antic poems of the New New New York School, whatever generation of that we’re on now. So one can fumble by being too cool, and one can fumble by burying the truth of one’s feeling under a heap of jagged and jarring images. I think Creeley, of all people, was able to hit the right note, plain and plaintive and wistful and awkward—what he brings out is the awful hesitancy of that moment where you’re holding out this little offering to somebody else and hoping to hear Yes I said yes I will yes. And what you’re risking is a certain kind of sentimentality. But for my money, I think it’s better to risk the sentimental and fail, than aim for frigidity and succeed.

So now I’m going to read Robert Creeley. I am so grateful to have poetry in my life.

(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69223/how-to-write-love-poems)

#Craig Arnold #Rebecca Lindenberg #Christian Wiman #Carl Adamshick #poem #poet #poetry #love #Jeremy Richards #Robert Creeley

[martincart]

SF 64 lieutenants headcanons

I'm a bit bored, so, I'm sharing more headcanons here, this time from the bosses of Starfox 64 (I promise to upload more headcanons of other characters), and although they are few, I would like to share them here.

In case you do not understand some points, I leave the references of the characters here where there are also more headcanons of them: https://martincart.tumblr.com/post/180221335218/martincart-the-bosses-of-starfox-64-are-here

Meteo Crusher Pilot/ Aaron Galaxicos:

 Before entering the Corneria academy, Aaron worked at his 25 years in various bars, and even in cabarets (and several of these, he ended up being fired by fights with clients) as a singer. For many people, he was really a good show (especially among women). During the war of Lylat, he sometimes sings in public to encourage the soldiers.

Also one of the many jobs he had was in a movie theater. He hated it a lot when a movie portrayed the chimpanzees (their species) as canibals.

Related to the first point, several of the songs he sings are romantic music, preferably of genres such as rock, jazz or swing (exam.of real music: Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra or Depeche mode ).

Already inside the military academy of Corneria, he was a brilliant student. He specialized a lot in body to body duels and in target shooting, he was also an expert in flight tests. The few weaknesses he had were in swordsman battles classes ... and in swimming.

His former classmate from the academy has always bothered him with the fact that his name sounds nice to a dog.

 He's a womanizer. Even in his advanced age, he continues to seduce and sleep with several women, younger than him. That also includes sleeping with several of his female soldiers durint LW.

His command during the war was mostly chimpanzees, but he also accepted other species of primates, such as baboons or gorillas.

Even though he wants to look like an elegant or disciplined person, there are times when Aaron acts derisive and it shows that he loves to have fun.

Aaron is an expert in hand-to-hand fighting, but he also has his own weapons: A Venom's pistol, and a whip (A riding crop) that can change to a long whip to attack his enemies from long distances.

 His mechanical eye serves to show holographic images of planets or files, also of people. Holographic images have no size limit.

He and Andrew have an enmity that looks childish in public. Many of these end up both wanting to humiliate each other or commenting on horrible words. Everyone thinks that this is due to the behavior of the heir.

He has a "good" relationship with Wolf, giving him advice on how to act in Venom and his society, in addition to military advice or information from other soldiers, especially Andrew or Andross. Wolf relies on him, apart from the fact that he likes to see how Aaron mocks Andrew (at the beginning).

He and Leon do not get along. Aaron respects Leon for being a good fighter and killer. Leon has his own cold opinion of Aaron.

Like the others, Aaron despises Pigma and does not understand why Andross recruited him. Pigma knows that Aaron is smart, but very sensitive. In addition, each one has a discriminatory / racist vision among them.

He has a good relationship with several of Venom's lieutenants, but he always wins a negative criticism from them when he commits something stupid and does not realize that, especially it is the Macbeth engineer who scolds him. It can also happen that they joke about him to make him angry.

There's a horrible, rather obscure relationship between Andross and Aaron.

 Among the soldiers of his squad, his most loyal soldier (best friend) is a mandrill named Marshall, who not only shares personal talks, but also intimate secrets.

Area 6 Commander/ Cobra Ryota

 In his hometown of Venom, he was the most specialized soldier of all, winning his position as commander.

Due to the first thing, when being considered a strong man, his family hope to have inheritance as strong as him. He was engaged in his 18 years with another warrior as strong as he, Dusa. It was a difficult relationship because both were gloomy character, but they could marry in love with each other. However, the inheritance plan could not be made upon discovering that Cobra is sterile. Andross promised Cobra that he would help him build a family during the war.

He was one of the first Venomians to meet Andross. He was interested in the old monkey just seeing him for the first time. When Andross decided to fight for all his people and create a better future for all, Cobra was the first to accept it, and he told Andross that he trusted all his faith to him and would always be his ally.

Andrew taught Cobra a lot about Corneria's culture, and even though he preferred to continue with his Venom culture, he gladly accept listening to music with the little monkey. He really liked Corneria's music a bit, but he prefers only the instrumental ones.

Speaking of his relationship with Andrew, Cobra has affection for the young heir, despite not showing it. Although, like many others, he detests Andrew's pampered and conceited attitude, and repeatedly punishes him for mistakes he makes, he does not blame him for participating in the war, and Andrew does it only for the acceptance and love of his uncle . There are also many occasions that Cobra protects Andrew from other people, or even, other Venom soldiers.

Also Cobra (and Caiman) accept that Andrew is staying at his base in area 6. Only this happens when Andrew feels insecure going to Venom, and prefers to stay away from the dark environment of the empire or Aaron.

For these reasons, Cobra fully relies on Wolf and Leon. He knows that Wolf is quite reliable and powerful, and that he cared for the young heir (even if it is reluctantly at first).

The same with Leon. In fact, Cobra and Leon have a very good relationship for their protective characteristics towards their friends.

Cobra threatens Pigma several times to eat him.

Previously, Cobra was very reserved when speaking, and during Lylat War he continues to be so, but sometimes he can respond to someone insulting him ( Exam: Pigma or Aaron).

Another detail that he hides is that he is very proud and loves to destroy enemies of Venom. That is why in battle, many see him laugh or act cruel (and for many, it is a terrifying image).

The favorite instrument of Cobra is the drum (of any type).

He is always seen drinking coffee at his base, many assume that he does not sleep at all because of his dark eyes (caiman is the only one that forces him to sleep ... and he does it ). It is also common to see him yawn.

Caiman Dilia 

The whereabouts of Caiman's biological parents are unknown. Caiman only knows that Cobra and Dusa found their eggs since they were very young, and both decided to raise him as a friend. Since he was born, he has a close relationship with Cobra and Dusa.

From a very young age, there were already exiles from the lylat system in Venom. All Venomians distrusted these unknown beings, and others preferred to kill them. Caiman was fascinated by these creatures, and he wanted to investigate them in secret from others. Even if it cost a little, he learned a bit of talking like them, becoming a translator between Andross and the Venomians when they met.

He also became very close to Andrew from his childhood. being always by his side and helping him to adulthood.

The only moments where Caiman acts rude to Andrew is when he loses respect to someone when it is not necessary, or when he sees Andrew bothering Cobra during his work.

There are times when Caiman gets "funny" with Andrew and makes him spend uncomfortable moments (especially in front of Wolf, Leon and Pigma).

Caiman loves Wolf and Leon. He admires Wolf's strength and bravery, and he adores Leon's agility in his attacks. but yes, he admits that Wolf is too proud, and warns him that that pride could go wrong. About Leon, he is only afraid of his cold personality, but he loves his cunning and that he is always to give reason to wolf.

Caiman does not hide his spite towards Pigma. When he sees him near Andrew, he decides to take him away or look at him in a bad way.

In spite of his admiration with Andross, Caiman can notice the stress that the emperor gives Andrew, thinking that Andross is a really cold person.

An excellent relationship has with the other lieutenants. He loves to do any activity with each of them (except for Magno, who is more than brute force). He has a special relationship with Cobra. Like Cobra, he does not have much confidence in Aaron.

In the squadron of Caiman any species of reptile and primate is accepted.

Caiman's favorite instrument is the flute (like Cobra, of any kind).

Attack Carrier Captain / Magno Doenis.

Magno grew up under a patriarchal upbringing. Where he should be the leader despite being the third child of a family with eight children (he only has sisters). Despite that, his sisters had to fight at his side, becoming brute warriors like him. Magno still has a sexist mentality, and he shows it a lot with Dusa. He would do the same years later with Caiman and Cobra when the two become partners (he only complains in silence).

Magno was one of many who murdered the exiles before the war of lylat. There were times when he decided to eat them for lack of food, or just for his little nieces and sisters. That's why at the beginning he has a very bad image of Andross. He became his most loyal and strongest soldier during the war of lylat.

Magno can only see Andrew as an annoying child, and often shows his contempt for the young monkey. Luckily, Cobra always stops him before he does something bad to Andrew.

Magno was very happy to have Wolf and Leon in Venom because he sees the two as powerful, reliable soldiers, and especially, fun people. There are times when Wolf and Magno share beers or fight as training or for fun. Leon prefers to be next to Cobra for his more relaxed personality.

Pigma is Magno's favorite person to abuse.

Magno has a good relationship with Hook silver, the only problem is that he is very rough with the poor old captain who manages to hurt him a little, and that is why Fidel always threatens and watches over him. he rivalry much with Osamu to show his exploits in the gym. He and Granga had a very bad start in their relationship, but now they are able to tolerate each other. Magno worships his friend Cobra (who like Granga, did not have a good friendship before) and tries to become Caiman all a "real" man. Aaron is also one of the many victims of Magno in his heavy jokes.

His favorite instrument is the harmonica. 

Forever Train engineer/ Fidel Macbeth.

Fidel has grown up under the command of a strict man. From a very young age he has matured more than any other child in his city, and has become quite lonely by concentrating on his family affairs.

His favorite musical instrument is the violin. Since he was young he has always been practicing to play at his family's parties.

Fidel is much more mature than the other lieutenants, and is always punishing the others when they do any stupid things (especially Aaron and Magno).

Fidel and Andross have a very good relationship, especially when the two are two elderly people among several "young boys".

He relies on Wolf, and he knows he's a good driver, but he also knows he's an immature person, and it makes him angry to see him fight Andrew or Aaron.

Fidel considers Leon an excellent soldier, better than Wolf. He also admires that he can have a relaxed chat with him and Cobra.

He is very strict with Andrew, he often scolds him for his immature character, telling him that he must act as a better heir of the empire and wants to get him away from the war at all costs. Andrew obviously acts like the conceited child that is in front of these answers. When Andrew was just a child, he considered Fidel a grandfather.

His contempt for Pigma is enormous, especially for being a pig.

With the others, he appreciates and admires Cobra for his good work as a commander, he despises how Magno can be very rough as a person but knows that he is a good soldier. Fidel sees Osamu and Granga as two young boys despite the fact that they are both 36 years old, the same goes for Caiman. . Fidel and Aaron have a difficult relationship because of the extreme behavior of the chimp. Even so, no matter what happens, both appreciate each other.

His best friend is Hook Silver. The two of them know each other well before being exiled and before Silver decided to become a pirate. Despite the cold personality of Fidel, he admits that Silver is the only one that makes him laugh.

Sarumarine’s Captain / Hook Silver

Before becoming a pirate, Silver was known to be a sailor with a good heart. Many admired him for several reasons. Unfortunately, several of those jobs that he had was to arrest several primate criminals.Giving him some discomfort and hatred for some part of the primates in Zoness.

Many people remembered how Silver was very friendly with children (That's why Andrew also considered him a grandfather when he was a child). He would only reveal to a single person that he wished to have a family at some time in his life.

He and Fidel met when he needed a new boat and went straight to ask the best engineer of the lylat system (Fidel's father). While waiting for his appointment with Mr. Macbeth, Silver heard a beautiful violin song and discovered that it was Fidel playing. After a little interruption and talk, Silver asked him if they could play together with his melodica and his violin.

Mentioned in a previous point: Silver, like the others, looks at Andrew as a spoiled boy. Every time Andrew opens his mouth, silver pretends not to hear his words and proceeds to punish him. He is the only one of the other lieutenants who gives Andrew a job in his marine ships so that the heir learns discipline.

Like the others, he believes that Wolf is a very funny person and a good soldier for the empire. He also shares play times with Wolf and Magno.

He loves the agility that Leon has when fighting and piloting. He also thinks he is a great pilot.

At this point you should already know his opinion of Pigma (?.

Silver is a person very loyal to his emperor, and loves to spend time with Andross. More than anything, he loves to play chess or appreciate the sea of Zoness with him.

The crew of Silver is composed, in its majority, of macaques and gorillas. Although he can also accept another soldier from any other primate species.

A special feature of Silver is that he has more qualities of real Japanese macaque. Aka. his movements and gestures seem more like that of a real monkey.

His favorite instrument musical is the melodica.

Shogun Pilot/Osamu Kumo

Osamu learned about the handling of weapons and how to build them under the ruins of an abandoned library in Papetoon. I practice too much until becoming a great dangerous criminal on the planet.

In his spare time, he loves to exercise (and always tries to make his best friend, Granga, exercise with him). Or he may also be simply playing hide and seek with the other members of the empire among the trees.

Unlike the others, Osamu sees Andrew as a little younger brother. Try to have more patience than most others do not do with Andrew, and always prefer to give him advice about becoming a better person than simply punishing him. But yes, who does not lose patience with a boy like the young heir?.

Osamu and Wolf have a good relationship. The two are pretty similar with their proud and bearable personality. Think the same of Leon as a pilot, except that he sees him as a boring man.

Osamu loves practicing target shooting with Pigma.

Osamu always jokes calling Fidel "papa" because of his strict attitude and for always scolding him. With Silver he does not know what to have fun with since he is very old and he finds it boring. He has too much fun together with Magno and Caiman and he thinks Cobra is boring. With Aaron he is very mocking, since he always reminds him between jokes that he is only a man who destroys rocks and the other an expert high-ranking soldier of the empire (Osamu does not want to admit that he has a huge affection for Aaron, even though he now became a horrible person).

Osamu greatly appreciates Granga not only as his best friend, but as his lifelong brother (a younger brother, specifically). The two love to practice together any kind of skill for their empire, make jokes to others and spend time together. In addition to trusting and protecting each other. Osamu will always say that the main reason he wants Granga is because he never had a brother or a family during his whole life until he met him.

His favorite instrument is the acoustic guitar.

Granga / Jacob Jr.

When he lived in Corneria, he tried to enter the best technology-computing university in the whole city by passing a compulsory exam. Unfortunately, he did not manage to enter, feeling horrible and stupid at the thought that he was not smart enough to pass.

Due to what happened to the previous point, the only job that Granga managed to get to work was as a waiter in a luxurious restaurant (he admits that he was doing quite well and his boss treated him well).

He was only raised under the arms of his sweet mother, Leonor. The two had a beautiful mother-son relationship, but granga always disliked her too much as she only called him "Junior" even when he was 20 years old (until now he even hates to be called Junior or by his name).

Leonor took care of Granga alone when he was barely a child. Nobody knows about his father. Granga only makes mention of his father by making horrible comments about fatherhood or when another character talks about his relationship with his father.

He also had a nice girlfriend at the time, but when he started working as a hacker, she was the first to leave him (he does not care much).

Andrew always saw him, and he will see him, like an older brother, but one quite stupid. The two always fight and insult each other, and if it were not for Fidel, Cobra or Osamu, they would even fight hand to hand between them. He has the least patience with Andrew.

his opinion about Wolf or Leon is the same as the others, except that Granga shows more his superiority than the others want to hide towards Wolf and Leon.

Pigma knows that Granga is not as powerful or brave as the others, but even so, the worst thing that Granga can do to Pigma is to hack his machines.

Granga adores his emperor, not as much as a fanboy would, but he would certainly try to do whatever he wants by the name of his leader. The biggest reason why he appreciates him too much is because Andross showed a lot that he saw potential in him.

Granga has a difficult relationship with Magno due to past events, but neither do they have much trouble between them. Unlike Osamu, Granga only sees Fidel as an old nut, and Silver as a laughing old man (even so, he secretly admits that he loves them). He appreciates Cobra, but advises him to talk more like Silver or Caiman (even if that means being scared by his laughter). Since they have known each other to the present, Aaron and Granga always fight among themselves. In itself, Granga is the most honest with Aaron to tell him that he is a shitty person.

The only person (besides her mother, previously, and also of andross) who always teaches her affection for the unimaginable, is Osamu. Granga loves the spider monkey too much as a brother, and he will always do his best to rescue him from any fight or disaster in the war (knowing that he is a very weak and cowardly person inside him). There are certain things that Granga does not like about his friend, like the fact of smoking or that always forces him to exercise, but already being by his side he will be quite happy.

 He loves to listen to electronic music, dubstep or Spanish music. The funny thing is that his favorite musical instrument is the tambourine.

For some rare reason, he insults a lot in Spanish.

That's all for now, if you have any questions, have my ask open to ask! See you!.

#My work #My headcanons #Star fox #Star fox 64 #Star fox 64 bosses #Venom Gang #Meteo Crusher pilot #Aaron Galaxicos #area 6 commander #Commander Cobra Ryota #Caiman #Caiman dilia #Jacobo Jr Granga #Granga #Magno doenis #Attack Carrier Captain #Fidel Macbeth #hook silver #Sarumarine captain #Forever Train engineer #Shogun pilot #Osamu Kumo #M-Art.inc

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Soft Power (the play with a musical)

#soft power #soft power (musical) #david henry hwang #conrad ricamora #musical #jeanine tesori #leigh silverman #alyse alan louis #definitely deserves the actress tony if this makes it to broadway #sam pinkleton #category: musicals