#are we going to have to talk about the freaking conditions of the factories where the muppets were made?

[alarrylarrie]

Or, alternatively, we could let people enjoy their silly little things in their silly little corner of the internet.

#NOT EVERYTHING IS A DISCUSSION POINT???? #whyyyyyy do some people feel the need to discourse something TO DEATH #when most people aren’t even slightly serious #it’s like. #are we going to have to start having long in-depth conversations about Jim Henson? #because one time someone said Harry had a muppet face #and now some people tags photos of him as muppet???? #are we going to have to talk about the freaking conditions of the factories where the muppets were made? #BECAUSE THAT IS THE LEVEL SOME PEOPLE HERE ARE AT AND I- #I don’t get it #I just… don’t get it at all #let people be happy #let people be silly #let people say nonsensical things #for Christ’s sake it’s a fandom about the apparent relationship between two musical artists #take a nap drink some water GO OUTSIDE #some people take all of this SO seriously and are so miserable…why be here at all? #ARE YOU OKAY? #ahem #anyway.

[space-blue]

Hi, I'm not sure if you've talked about this before and it might be silly to ask this, but I'm curious about your opinion:

There was a scene that surprised me quite a bit in episode 6 when Vi escapes. Initially, Silco was sitting calmly, and then boom! Everything explodes. It's understandable, but it's strange because Silco has always reacted in a cautious and calm manner, except for one time in episode 3 when he was talking to Vander. After that, he has been someone who knows how to stay calm. I've seen people say that Silco's reaction is because he's a megalomaniac who doesn't like anything being out of his control, but I don't think that's the case. I think it's something more complex. I see Silco as someone who internalizes everything to maintain control or appears to have it, keeping his thoughts and emotions to himself. That's why you see Silco exhaling or releasing tension before and after meeting with his associates, but I might be wrong. Anyway, I'd like to know what you think is the reason for Silco's actions.

And I'm sorry if I made a mistake in my grammar, I don't speak English very well

Hello anon! Thank you for reaching out and asking me this question... It sends me back to my Arcane meta days with a big smile on my face.

But honestly, I don't know who looks at Silco in that episode, having finished the story, and thinks he screams because he's megalomaniac. Not only does this not go with the rest of his character, it just fails to comprehend his character arc.

Silco doesn't want power. He wants freedom, and he wants his mission to realise itself. Silco has more of a religious fervour to him. He's a zealot. He speaks of the 'Nation of Zaun' with an air of rapture. He believes it, lives only for it. Just because we may not like his ways doesn't change that. I mean look at this guy :

#fully lost in the sauce

A character who really wants power would be Finn. We see him fallen to the trappings of wealth, plotting to uproot Silco from his position. Finn never shows any care for the cause. He only cares about supplanting Silco.

If Silco truly cared about power, then why is he still leaving down deep, on top of a night club? If he's a megalomaniac, why are his list of conditions for Jayce not covering him, but demanding amnesty for his people and equal access to the Gate for commerce?

No. Silco isn't a megalomaniac. He definitely wants to be in control, but that's hardly surprising for a leader. We also only ever know Silco at crazy important moments of his life, where his plans are running wildly or exploding in his face. It's not exactly every day Silco.

Most of the people we see him interacting with also tell us things : of course he needs to be ruthless and in control while facing Marcus. That man would lash out at the slightest show of weakness. Same with the other chembarons, who actively turn on him after the factory attack (that makes him look weak).

Silco isn't a control freak to be a jackass. He's like that because he's a Zaunite, and a Zaunite in a dangerous position of power. He's shaped by his environment too.

Anyway, why does he lose his cool in episode 6?

It's actually a very short answer! It's because of Jinx.

Jinx is his everything. Across my many meta posts I covered how codependent they are. How she physically abuses him, yet he never reaches out with any force towards her. The most violent he is, is after she nearly ruined his life plans and won't listen, and all he does is snatch a pen from her hand to make her pay attention.

They exchange caresses, rest against each other. He keeps her gifts on his official desk and actively uses them. And in the end, he can't accept her mortality, and sacrifices everything he's suffered and fought for his entire sad, fucking miserable life, because he loves her more than his cause.

So why does Silco lose it? Because Vi is alive, Vi is looking for Jinx, and Vi is the only person who could actively take Jinx away from him.

I mean like a day or two prior Jinx lost her shit and nearly killed Sevika because she saw a pink haired girl. Silco takes her to the pilt to try and soothe her and put her demons behind her, the only way he knows how. And then she happily gets to work! She's doing well!

But Silco isn't dumb. He knows Jinx is unstable and unpredictable. And finding Sevika hung like a ham from the ceiling? With a broken arm? Yeah, he knows she knows, and she's pissed... And he KNOWS that he just told her that VI IS DEAD. Which he 100% believed! Since when Sevika tell him about Vi being back he's like "From the dead???" in total horror and disbelief.

Marcus completely blindsided him, and it's a race against time now.

A race in which if Vi lives and finds Jinx... His Jinx, the only person he thinks he has... The girl he loves more than his cause, even if he hasn't fully realised it yet... Might hate him. She might decide to leave him.

Then he'd be alone again. And uhm... IDK if you all noticed but like... Silco isn't exactly a picture of clean mental health either. He's trauma ridden, set in very harsh ways, and has a solid spark of paranoia (which has kept him alive, but also isolated).

So the Silco screaming and spitting and kicking is a Silco who thinks that potentially everything will be fucked up now. He's stressed about the developing situation (the one where he asked his unstable daughter to basically make a nuke with stolen uranium, while juggling an increasingly strained sheriff and actively traitorous colleagues), AND the potential idea of his ONE person, his one broken, fucked up, twisted emotional bond, potentially being ripped from him.

Last time that happened, Vander was trying to drown him.

So he's just in a Bad Place™️

Cut the poor man some slack ahaha. I think it's normal that the mask finally cracks and reveals his emotions.

Silco isn't a cold character! His speech to Vander shows his zealotry and his passion! He has a dark humour too, and is aggressive and bitter when cornered. Silco wears a mask of cool professionalism when it's convenient, which is very often, as a leader in the undercity. But he also shows lots of emotions whenever suits.

I don't think you can be a cold character and stay riveted on your insane freedom fight for like 20+ years. He's got a big fire burning in there, and the scene in episode 6 is the proof of how hot it gets when he thinks he's about to lose it all. All your examples of him 'reining it in' are great too! He clearly has strong emotions. He just manages them a lot.

I hope this answers your question! AAaaaahhhh look at me, I just went and gushed, didn't I?

Thanks a lot Anon. And your English is better than some native speakers I know, so don't worry! <3

#thank you anon #silco #arcane #arcane silco #arcane meta #it's been a while #he just came out of his little office in the back of my brain #strutting out being like #somebody called? #jinx #arcane vi #silco and jinx

[pitchshitterarchiver]

PITCHSHIFTER INTERVIEW IN 1998:

Back inside the cool, air-conditioned confines of the band's tour bus, which Jon has dubbed "The Dolphin" (affectionately or in spite, I'm not sure), we escape the heat and sit down to do the interview. I'm nervous as hell. I've been waiting a long, long time to see Pitchshifter in person, and to end up lucky enough to be able to speak with Jon Clayden beforehand is both a nightmare and a dream come true. Despite my foot getting stuck in my mouth a few times I find Jon (and all the band) to be generous and kind, well-spoken and intelligent, and, above all, to have a wicked, wicked sense of humor--but of course.

In the end I discover a tight-knit band, both musically and as friends, and who, after a long road together, are happy to finally have their music getting some well deserved notice, and glad to finally be allowed to focus on it exclusively on their own terms--all with the support of their new label.

How's the tour been so far? Any memorable moments?

J.S. Clayden: Oh, a million! The tour's been really good. America's always insane 'cause every state's a different country. We played in Reno the night before last night, and there's some curfew for under twenty-one's in the town center after nine-thirty or ten, or something mad like that! So you can be married, with kids, have your own business, but you're still not allowed to go into the town center. Things like that make me realize how insane America is. There'd be a riot in European countries if that was the case. It'd be like "RIOTTT!!!" Ha ha! There've been a lot of memorable moments. Meeting Jello Biafra in San Francisco. He came to the show and said he really liked our stuff, and talked about working together. My jaw hit the floor and I was like "Aaahhh!!! You're Jello Biafra and I'm no one!" That was really cool. Fear Factory came out to one of the shows. The weird chick from the Addams Family movies turned up for one--can't remember her name. It's been quite mad meeting those people.

So now that you've been from one end of the country to the other, and have spent a whole lot of time in-between in the midwest, what's your take on American culture?

J.S.: I think American culture is like any other culture--it's just tits, beer, and shit TV. It's the same in Germany, it's the same in England. We read The Sun newspaper in England, which has an average reader age of eight, and which is the highest selling newspaper; whereas a paper like The Guardian that actually does have some valid points is way down on the list.

But as in any culture there's fucking really cool things in America that you don't get in other countries. Because we are from four-thousand miles east, the way people perceive us is really different. I think we actually, and I don't mean it in an arrogant way, but when we come to America people actually take us for our worth. In England you're nothing special and you're instantly dismissed, even though when we play there we play for a thousand people. But you can never really make that jump in England to be like Nirvana or whatever 'cause of that mystique of coming from somewhere miles away and, you know… I think when we come to America people do listen to our music and go, "We don't have any music like this here. This is indicative of where they come from and what they do." We're taken more on the value of what we're worth rather than "being cool."

Well, people here have definitely been looking forward to seeing you come and play. I know a lot of people, including myself, who have been waiting quite awhile to see you actually make it out to the west coast...

J.S.: People say that, say stuff like, "I've been waiting for six years to see you play and stuff." And it just freaks me out and I feel kinda bad 'cause we're just the support band and we only do forty-five minutes. Sorry you've been waiting for six years, I wish we could play longer.

Leave them wanting more for the next time you come back…

J.S.: We're going to be back in October or November. After this tour we do three weeks around Europe on the Vans European Warped Tour with The Specials, NOFX, Civ and The Deftones. Then we do two weeks in Australia headlining, a week headlining in Japan, then a couple of gigs in the UK because everyone gets upset when we don't play in England for ages. And then we're going to come straight back to America.

Is it going to be another coast to coast?

J.S.: I hope so. It should be a couple of months, probably until around Christmas.

Do you like being out on the road?

J.S.: I don't think I have any option. Ha! I think yeah, it's a nice lifestyle. It's kind of compulsive and destructive simultaneously. There's a lot of benefits. You get to meet a lot of people, exchange a lot of ideas, see a lot of things that other people will never see in their lifetime, experience a lot of stuff. One day we're up the CN tower and the next day we're on a rollercoaster atop a tower in Las Vegas. You think, "God, what are we doing? It's madness!"

I dunno, you can probably squeeze in what would take nice people half their life in like three months. But it's also quite destructive. Don't get me wrong, I used to drive a delivery truck--a waste of all my years in college. This is a far more productive thing to do with your life, I think. But it can be really destructive--it's impossible to have a girlfriend. We all had girlfriends before this tour, and we all went, "Hey honey, I'll be back on Christmas Day." And they all went, "Don't come back." Heh. So there are negative aspects. Luckily none of us have children or pets.

#alt #alt metal #alternative #alternative metal #metal #idk #metalhead #nu metal #pitchshifter #industrial #industrial metal #industrial nu Metal #90s #98 #late 90s #mall goth #rock

[the-firebird69]

The motors on the air conditioning units run forever and I mean it 20 30 year lifetime they run constantly and they use the horsepower to push big fans and a lot of air at pressure now they don't make that much noise they sound completely different unless you're a technician but it sounds kind of cool it's like an electrical sound and a humming. But these larger motors can be used for automobiles some of these air conditioning units like camper like a RV A motorhome that you drive and that's the whole unit and our son has been inside one and is expecting it just to see if they actually hooking it up and it works and was running his job and they push a ton of air and he said you don't want to be in it already sort of was it was like a window and those motors are about 89 horsepower and that might be enough using their technique and it might be enough on the lighter car so he's going to try and tassels he was a transformer and they require of like 200 volts and they do require more amperage but the transformer will do that and the automatic is nice he has an automatic car with it's kind of a pain in the ass really bad it shifts bad compared to other cars and these things shift really nice and smooth hey you can almost not mess them up.

And we tested them and made a bunch and her son and daughter say what are they clueless and they use these electric motors on other stuff but these HVAC unit ones seem to work great some of them work better than others then Arnold owns train and his work on a certain vehicle it's a truck and you wouldn't expect it but the gearing is right so he told Blake and he made one can you call Ben Arnold and he said no way meaning I'm excited about it but I can't do with you and you heard our son say you have to maybe a Tesla truck he got on the line again said I'm sorry I said that I'm having a problem it says I know about it because he needs money he heard and also he said how do you think this sounds train truck and they said oh my God but he was saying Tesla truck but how about Tesla trade Tesla powered by trane. They both got excited it's two megaliths in the industry and a relative of Tesla and someone who was Tesla and Ben Arnold was on the team with Tesla and owns trained this isn't that fascinating the owners of the company are doing it what's going to happen next where you get that ice cream with no sugar and low fat. Then Arnold started screaming with laughter and said I think we have to do that this is stupid nobody uses fat anymore might have to it says he doesn't want to talk about it. It comes down to that we're not going to be searching for a fat cow. He started laughing and laughing that's true. And I'm not going to be doing that. So he was talking about trucks earlier and I helped reach the subject and I'll tell you what this is a damn good idea those electric trucks have tons of torque so you can rip like the living s*** out of practice anything and sometimes they need that for a PTO also they started whining and crying and it was really weird so they need people to back and they need investors and factories I will never start and the max probably wanted to go they say they do they need it down there and they did now they want to get the boys something for mentioning them strange blue red people and blue emerald so the same shut up and stuff it's probably the cocaine.

It's going forwards now and he says a car is something I can drive but not with lithium but I can special order the alkaline probably on a Tesla car and everybody would freak out and BG wants me to have one and it's because of his AI fantasy it's really a Rock and roll fantasy our son says and daughter so yeah okay we're going to try and get these things going

Thor Freya

This is really exciting and interesting how it's happening and it is fun and having a truck is nice you can make some of that have really really massive horsepower and thick thick steel and they're just rip the tires right off almost anything that a military grade solid tire they are really powerful and we need those and we need those to move things around we have a couple giant earthwork trucks that have the light cycle drive and their electric and the steel on them is super strength and massively beefy about 80 ft tall 120 ft wide it's like a it's like the bank size building near the mall in Port Charlotte it's it's big and the steel on it's 3 ft thicken areas and on the drive and take off it is about 2 and 1/2 ft thick. My son says at 80 ft he could not lift the drive mechanism and we agree that's way too thick other Giants think they can but they haven't seen this two and a half thick

Olympus

People already have names for these things Tesla truck powered by train and of course zero motorcycles by Trump and BG as a name and he uses it and it's his American version he wants to make a Chinese version to compete with choaw he says get out of here it'll be war and things like that and take your automatic transmission idea in a sense is what with the Chinese air conditioner motor it says yeah we use them the factories as true too they last forever you go to work and you think it's going to break after 20 years 25 years and it doesn't cuz that's moving that air and it's great keeps everything clean and yeah the electricity works better cooler now we used to save on money and we weren't we are going to look at it. And automatic sounds great

Olympus

[bookio]

Tender Is the Flesh (2017) Agustina Bazterrica

Swedish title: Exquisite Carcass (2022)

Not a story for fainthearted, you really have to mentally prepare yourself going into this book because it's a disturbing dystopian novel where a virus wiped out all the animals, so humans have evolved into a cannibalistic society. Some humans are specifically grown to become meat, skinned for clothing and other stuff we normally treat cattle.

We follow on the shoulder of a male worker (who's name i forgot, maybe it was Marco?) who's basically a team leader in one of the biggest slaughterhouses. He check cattle conditions, does some meat chopping, handle paperwork and manage new recruits. There are two main plots surrounding this main character. One is that, his wife has left him temporary because they recently lost their baby son and are in mourning. And the second one is that, he receives a living "exclusive meat" in form of a young woman as gift, to keep in his barn.

A lot of things happen so i'm going to mention the parts that stuck with me, because they're jumping around in my head and need to be let out. So, SPOILERS:

• How cow and pig slaughterhouses work today, is exactly how this human-meat is sorted and prepared too in this book. They're in cages, sorted, mistreated and shaved. However it seems the female humans are often in risk of getting raped - this is illegal, but mostly because the company call this "contaminated meat" and have to destroy them later. I think the rapist may be turned into meat too as punishment? Not sure.

• On page 83, it's dramatically presented like a big twist that the human-meat cannot communicate, because their vocal cords are genetically removed. But when it hit i went "wait, you already told us this" and had to double check, and yes on page 32 they casually talk about it quickly. So the suspense built up for the reveal came as if the author had forgot she already wrote it.

• "Exclusive meat" is human-meat that has been chemically injected and modified to grow quickly, but been treated more carefully and set on strict diets to "flavor" the meat. Like rare expensive food. This is the woman MC receives, she's been on almond diet and is physically around twenty years old but mentally like a child.

• Some human-meat are skinned to make fashion or furnitures. Black people are most wanted for that. While others are fattened up drastically, to harvest fat from.

• A common problem the factory has is fake unemployed people sneaking in to record the process for kicks, to spread on the web. MC despise this very much and isn't shy to call or kick them out.

• Mosquitoes, birds and dogs are present in the book, but is too hazardous to touch due to the virus. Some people wear umbrellas because of fear to be hit with contaminated birdpoo.

• Homeless or poor people are named "scavengers" and are allowed to take whatever they want from the slaughterhouse's disposable pile of "rejected meat".

• The government allows cults to make "sacrifices" to the slaughterhouses to calm the religious hysteria. Them thinking their meat will be blessed in family's bellies, but in reality their meat go to scavengers. It was kinda scary but entertainment to read how the cult mightly chant about being the bigger person and powerful, but then totally freak out when realizing the slaughter process is very real and mechanic. Nothing magical about it.

• "Urlet" is a hunting ground for rich people. They make me sick! They buy athletics or black males and pregnant women for their meat hunting games, and then celebrate with BBQ. They also have this shady side business where they'll loan you money, and if you are unable to pay back, you have (i think) 24 hours to avoid the hunters to clean your debt. When MC visit, they've just shot and killed a rockstar who'd failed to pay what he owed.

• If one doesn't want your family elders or passed away friends to end up on a platter, you have to witness the cremation and sign legal papers by their passing, to prove they didn't get eaten.

• MC randomly visits a experimental hospital. It's very out of character but it's noticeable the author really wanted to show the medicine aspect of human-meat society. Firstly, the female doctor has a really cringy introduction. I had to read it twice to be certain how absurd it was. She present herself as "not like other woman that blindly follows the call of their natural biology", therefore is a independent female scientist. Why. Why did you write it like that, so weird.

Here's some of the experiments they make: how the brain respond to getting injected with heroine every day, how long a heart can beat with the human alive but heart exposed, no eyes, only breathe in nicotine, a kid's reaction to unresponsive mother that has been sedated. MC asks what we all are thinking "Isn't the purpose of these experiments already kinda obvious?" which makes us realize is basically a torture factory.

-

I think it's important to state the question, in a society where consuming humans is the new norm, are there anyone with good morals left? MC likes to think so, and the story really wants him to be that good example.

Even though he go against the mistreatment of human-meat, his actions speak otherwise. He claims to be vegetarian, but eat meat to please others. When finding some hidden puppies, he pet and imagine giving them a home but then turns his back when the puppies are found out and killed infront of his eyes.

He first take care of his given gift (the living naked woman-meat), but when cleaning her up, he get so aroused that he quickly has to have sex with the butcher woman he knows. He later can't control himself and rapes the female-meat anyway, but claims it's for pity and out of love. Yeah right.

When MC realize she's pregnant, he names her Jazmine and keeps her locked inside a room with water bowl and food. Like a hamster in a giant cage. He caress and sleep next to her, til the point of her developing Stockholm syndrome.

An annoying thing i have to mention, is MC's constant definition of himself as "the man with a dead son, married to a broken women". I can't tell if it's to remind the reader or just simply self-pity for his character, very repetitive to the point of awkwardness.

His sister is the "bad guy" of this book, for not caring about their demented father and for recently buying a full frozen human to keep in special freezer, for food consumption. As if him having sex with his human-meat isn't just as bad.

The book ends with MC calling his wife over for the secret birth of his child with Jazmine. She's overjoyed having a baby after the loss of their son and we think they're gonna be some sort of poly relationship, but no. Immediately when the kid is born, MC kills Jazmine, showing he's just a bad as everyone else. And his wife being a caring nurse, also showing her true colors by exclaiming "hey, she could have given our more babies!!". Disgusting!

It's disturbing how normal everything is presented despite many of the characters showing sign of instability (cause by cannibalism i guess). But even if the book was really awkward at times, it was 100% fresh and terrifying. I definitely won't look at meat the same way again tbh. 4/5 stars

- - - - -

Sensor (2019) by Junji Ito

One of the prettiest hardback books of Junji Ito, however not one of his strongest works imo. It's definitely a personal preference, but space aliens doesn't scare me much, idk why!

It also awkwardly reminded me of a story i wrote in high school? My story was called "Key of the Universe" ("Universums Nyckel", sorry for cringe) and surrounded a character that one day landed on earth with no memory, but had the ability to communicate and see through space & time. Sent by the souls of other planets to save earth from incoming danger! In my story, they had a human sidekick and could run really fast, always chased by crazy agents! The end of the story would have the main character fulfilling it's purpose and sacrificing themselves to save earth, but also through this act find tranquility. I outgrew this alien plot but..

..that's basically the story of Sensor too !!

A woman is born from golden volcanic ash (in shape of strings of hair) and can sense a great monster approaching earth. Her sidekick is a journalist man and she's chased by a cult that worship the incoming monster.

She however see through time and space, to connect with another guardian, a Christian preacher called Miguel (it's Jesus) who was taken by the cult and crucified (like Jesus) when trying to introduce tranquility mindsets . He became one with the universe and with the main girl too.

The book doesn't really have a proper explained ending, like most of Ito's work, things are just described to fade away without any explanation after many days of madness. 2/5 stars

[dangermousie]

CFC Chapter 54

“A crashing car?” Ahahahaha I see you, Meatbun. But it was indeed an utter pileup!

I know I commented on this passage in its various iterations eight billion times already but I still have more to say. And it’s that XQC taking so long to realize that even though HY is young, his emotions and feelings are as genuine and strong as those of anyone older is so realistic - people do tend to think that especially with regard to children - think of a reaction of an adult to a three year old crying over ice cream they dropped. It’s all amused even if not meanly so. Because to an adult with vastly more experience, this is not a big deal. But what that forgets is that whether it’s ridiculous to someone else or not, to the person at issue that is a real feeling, AND that of course a person can only feel through the lens of their experience - what else is there? Emotions aren’t any less valid because they are informed by lesser or different experience.

Honestly, to me so far this is one of the driving messages of the novel - everyone is in their own world of issues and pain and none of these characters can truly look through the lens of another person and it would be so much better if they did. To XQC, for so long, He Yu’s strong feelings (and we know so many of these feelings are awful - despair, and self-loathing, and loneliness) never quite felt real and therefore never quite felt fully valid. And by the time it wasn’t the case, it was too late.

But the same is true for He Yu - he is so concentrated on his own grievances and his own pain, he cannot perceive others’ different issues. In He Yu’s mind, he’s the winner and always champion of Misery Olympics and while he’s had a horrible time of it, that doesn’t mean other people didn’t either just in different ways. Whether because of his condition, his issues or just his age, HY is not empathetic in the least.

And think about it - XQC does not have a horrible illness. He does not have unfeeling parents. But he had to watch his beloved parents brutally murdered in front of his eyes at 13 (!!!!) and then had to raise a 5 year old by himself. Is it worse or better than HY’s trauma? That’s a matter of opinion but what there is no question about is that is a different type of trauma and a different type of scar. Or think about the patient in the asylum whose name I am too lazy to look up - her life is such a theater of horrors that to me, it makes the combined issues of HY and XQC seem small, though once again that’s subjective. Nobody wins when people start this sort of competition.

My heart breaks for XQC but also - I am sorry - if/when HY x XQC hook up again (how? I have no idea! But that is one of the joys of Meatbun - I both have no idea how/where it’s going and utterly trust her), please have He Yu read up and learn things because Good God. You should not be in major pain the morning after unless you are into pain and XQC clearly is not!

The other thing is the bit about XQC forcing himself to walk in his usual ramrod-straight manner is the moment I went utterly gone for him. I mean, I liked him and found him interesting before. But this is the thing that flipped that invisible switch for me and I went rabid and irrational and now I am Team XQC and I don’t care what he wants and does from now on, he should have it. It’s so small but so real. My mother and her mother were both big on straight posture. And one of the reasons they gave was when you walk with good posture - you look confident but also it makes you feel confident and stronger. And I’ve actually found it to be true - when you throw your shoulders back and straighten your neck and hold your head up, it does not just give others a signal, it gives a signal to your own brain. So to see XQC insist on doing it, despite being emotionally and physically shattered - because of his pride refusing to give up, because he’s so unbending, but also this being some sort of instinctive armor, just hits straight through the heart.

OK, I laughed at HY as a fucking machine. But also, this is another point in the whole “everyone has issues” narrative and HY’s life could be worse. HY, with all his other issues, can pay an insane amount, an amount that XQC could not pay in a million years, so easily. It’s not even a blip to him. Hell, the fact that he forgot to pay speaks to that - I can see forgetting to pay a friend a couple of bucks back right away because it’s not much money. HY forgets because it does not loom in his mind. And this rich lifestyle is instinctive, is ingrained in him. I think he’d find it hard to be poor.

THAT is what he’s thinking about? Priorities are...

The sole good thing that came out of this insanity is that XQC is getting in touch with his emotions, even if those emotions are (rightly) rage. He’s too closed off from them normally.

The fact that you slept with a man should be secondary to the fact that you drugged and raped him, but here we are...

To me, this sums up He Yu as a moral wasteland. To still, when sober and past his fit and not under influence of wine, to still feel excitement over his revenge and to somehow twist it that it’s XQC’s fault for being raped by He Yu is !!!!!!!!!

(I suppose if I were charitable, I’d assume that the disquiet is small stirrings of almost dead conscience and his “he deserved it” is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable to himself, but I honestly don’t want to think so because I am so angry at him. Not until I see some more evidence. I don’t feel like being indulgent with He Yu since he’s indulgent with himself enough for two.)

1. The fact that you can tell from the picture XQC got taken by a man (I am gonna defer to Meatbun’s expertise here) definitely points to the fact that the pictures are going to be used for something bad later - because if it’s just oh XQC had sex, so what, he’s single what’s the big deal. But like this it becomes a different matter. No idea if it will be used for HY or XQC or both, and by whom (money is on Duan and co, but after the way HY went off, I would never say HY himself won’t use it badly somehow) but knowing Meatbun, it will go for maximum damage.

2. Ruthless? Perhaps. Unfeeling? Hmmmm. I am not He Yu’s biggest fan atm but that’s a wonderfully misleading adjective here. He does still seem to be in shock. And fixating.

3. The whole “hahahaha XQC is a hypocrite when he was all ‘I am not interested in sex’“ is - I am not sure if HY is just short-circuiting (fine) or using a rapist justification/rolling in a sea of toxic toxicity (not fine) because I am sorry, that’s totally like “he/she had a reaction, can’t be rape” writ large. Yeah, sure he had a reaction - you poured drugs down his throat. That has nothing to do with his default preferences or his actual state. THE FUCK?!

Anyway, we end on the whole “u mad bro?” bit and you know what strikes me? HY was all “I am done, we are done, my revenge is complete I don’t care” but here he is, still desperately seeking and craving reaction and interaction from XQC.

I remain utterly puzzled as to how these two will ever be a couple except for a couple being defined as “two mutually homicidal people.” Leaving aside everything else, I am willing to accept HY is in the closet - clearly whatever his orientation is, it includes men. But I do not get that sense from XQC at all. When he’s not drugged, he’s barely interested in sex with anyone and I do not get the sense he’s in the closet either. Chances of anyone, let alone He Yu, who is both a man and someone who raped him to humiliate him, being able to entice him into sexual encounters voluntarily is about the chance of me going to visit Mars. Meatbun loves doing insane things so I can’t wait.

PS I know people use the term psychopath all the time casually but ummm, I think He Yu may actually be one? When he has his father (!!!) on speakerphone, calmly carrying a conversation with the man as he’s raping his father’s friend in the club as he talks (!!!!!) that is...in RL I’d be “team lock him up for life, there is something so basic broken in him that it can’t be fixed.” Like - the hell? The ability to put things on different shelves so much is not in the same country as sane (it makes me think of 2ha and TXJ banging CWN being the curtain while performing court business but TXJ was bona fide clinically insane and also this is worse because this is his actual freaking father omg.) Of course, only time will tell whether it’s evidence of him being irreparably incapable of normalcy in terms of living in the world/interacting with others or it was an extreme psychotic (in casual parlance not medical one) break because most people are capable of truly horrific stuff if certain levers are pushed and his default is saner. It’s the question, isn’t it? Whether He Yu’s factory default setting is the monster of the previous chapters or the kid who’d cut his wrists so as not to hurt others.

Anyway, this novel is a terrifying roller coaster ride and I love having strong emotions.

#cnovel #meatbun doesn't eat meat #case file compendium

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 10, The Runway Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

[Silence]

John: Marc?

Marc: Hi, I'm Marc Roskin, Producer and Director of this episode.

John: I'm John Rogers, Executive Producer, and the one with the Guinness, so you have no excuse for missing that cue.

Albert: And I'm Albert Kim, I'm the writer of the Runway Job.

John: Here we go. And this is a great opening sequence, what- is this a set Marc Roskin? How did you create this incredible look?

Marc: This is the largest girls school uniform factory on the west coast, and they-

John: So this is some sort of internet connection where you order school uniforms or-?

Marc: It was very hot. No, this was-

Albert: Strangely Marc knows a lot about girls’ school uniforms. I don’t know why, but-

Marc: Yes, this was an actual working factory. A lot of the background workers are some of the factory employees who knew how to operate the machines. It was right across the river, really close, and they opened their doors to us just like everybody did in Portland.

John: I love the fact that we wanted to do a fake sweatshop, so when we shot in there, when they saw the hours they shot the workers in the fake sweatshop, we're like, ‘These hours are horrible. How can you people work under these conditions?’ And Albert, since we’ve just seen someone collapse with these- this great shop, which, actually, I believe was the pitch. How did you come up with the idea for the episode?

Albert: Well as you know, I'm quite the fashion icon in the office, so it was quite natural for me.

[Laughter]

John: Yes.

Albert: No, I knew that I wanted to set an episode in the fashion world because it seemed like a fun environment to get into, and lots of great visuals and scenes with models and fashion designers and runway shows. So I knew the area was there, and then so the trick was coming up with a sympathetic victim, and then, as always, a credible villain and threat. So I did a little research and finding the victim wasn't too tough, because the real- in the real world, the fashion industry has sort of been dogged by allegations of sweatshop abuse for a while, so having the sweatshop victim came fairly easy. Finding the threat required a little more research, but as I dug into it, I found that it was actually a real world connection between sweatshops and global clothing counterfeiting, which is controlled by the Chinese Triads.

John: It's interesting because a lot of people talk about intellectual rights and stuff in new international treaties and people immediately think of movies, television, digital rights. A lot of it also involved intellectual rights on clothing.

Albert: Yes. Clothing counterfeiting actually counts for more of the income of these Triads than illegal narcotics trade. So it’s a huge billion dollar business for them and right then, sort of, the pieces fell into place for the elements of the episode.

John: And now these actresses are, Marc?

Marc: That is- um-

Albert: Jen.

Marc: Cathy Vu.

Albert: Cathy Vu and Jen Hong.

Marc: On our left and Jen Hong, and they were great though local Portland actresses. And they knew how to speak some Mandariarin and it worked out great. This was actually, in the shooting order, Jeri Ryan's first episode working with us.

John: Yeah, it's really interesting because, you know, the crew- the cast was genuinely kind of freaked out by Gina not being on set, and so a lot of the weird vibe you get on this episode is from ‘there's a new person’ and of course Jeri became great friends with everyone and really fit in, but it was a really interesting vibe the first couple days on set. It really felt like, yes, Jeri’s a new person here; we don't quite know how to handle it.

Marc: But we had to play it like she was already part of the team because we shot these out of order.

John: It does help that really you don't make her part of the team until the end of the previous episode. 

Marc: Right.

John: This is almost a cold relaunch.

Albert: And we played that in the episode, too, so you sort of everyone's tentativeness around her worked well for the dynamics within- the character dynamics within the story as well.

John: And this is, again, this wass also a scene we added just to- It was interesting, we really wanted to make sure that everyone understood that Sophie- Because originally there was going to be a giant gap between episodes, we wanted to make sure everyone understood Sophie signs off on this. You know, audiences were very attached to Gina Bellman - rightfully so - and we did not want them to think we were shuffling her off and bringing in a new actor. We listen to you. Not a lot, not really.

[Laughter]

John: But we do listen to the bigger screams. Also love the callback there that Hardison screwed up in the Ice Man and that's what motivated this entire- this entire replacement.

Marc: We always like to bring up Hardison's screw ups; blowing up offices and whatnot.

John: Blowing up offices. But it's interesting that this is one of those trios where you just kind of park the camera and, you know, they have the dialogue, just let them run; let them do 4 or 5 versions, get the hell out of their way.

Albert: And this scene is really our version of: the kids are wondering where mommy went. You know, so it's like they are a little uncomfortable, it's a new family dynamic, so they're on the phone with her.

John: Yeah.

Marc: Right. But of course, they don't want dad to know that they are speaking to mom.

Albert: Yeah.

John: Yeah, and that's a- that actually started in Ice Man, where they are calling and not telling Nate. And we continued it all the way through where they just don't feel comfortable letting Nate know. And that was a nice little moment with Beth, you know, just ‘I miss you’. It's not often we crack the shell on Parker, that's part of the advancement of the character, to show that she's comfortable in the family, even if she’s not comfortable with other humans. And these two actors the- not those actors, that's stock photography- but the two actors playing the bad guys are?

Marc: Grace and what's her last name?

Albert: Grace Hsu and Tom Choi.

Marc: Grace was a Portland local, she was fabulous; and Tom came from Los Angeles. They did a really great job. 

John: The con here is kind of convoluted. It's interesting, just watching this, is the idea that we really had to come into the fashion show from- the fashion industry is one of those industries where if you're inside it, you know everything. We had to constantly figure out, what does the audience need to know in order to understand what we're doing without overexplaining it?

Albert: Right. Again, this is a case where research helped. I mean, to actually looking into what happens during fashions shows. It's based on a real life event, Fashion Week, which normally takes place in New York though there are regional ones all around the country where there are big showcases for new designers as well as opportunities for the stylish designers to bring out their new lines and things like that. So we knew we had an event that was tied to a specific time which helped; it gave us a very limited time frame. And then, again, researching into how the Triads operate and what their connection is to the clothing industry. All of that just helped flesh out the con.

John: I love the Parker giving her instructions on how to be photographed, you know Sophie gave her instructions three weeks ago for some other con. And this was kind of fun, creating the idea for how do you create- in modern media, how do you create the illusion of an actual human existing for some period of time, object permanence to a great degree?

Albert: Right.

John: So you figured out how to- you know, my wife watches a lot of fashion TV and it was kind of backing up: how do I actually know who the hell any of these people are? And it was because of the fashion shows and magazines. Cover both of those and you're done. And DVRs have certainly been a boon. And also this, printing off one magazine it's actually easier than we made it look. 

Albert: Yeah.

Marc: Oh yeah.

John: There's actually a service that prints off short runs of magazines that you can use if you're say doing a trade show or running a con.

Albert: This was all done on location. Beautiful house. This beautiful house in- was it in Clackamas?

Marc: Yeah, just outside of Clackamas.

Albert: It was great. It was a huge mansion that worked perfectly, and we ended up recreating the mansion later when we blow it up.

John: Also that what they're doing there, where they are looping, that's exactly what it looks like at Electric Entertainment - it’s basically just a laptop and a mic in the kitchen and that's how we finish up these episodes. No, but it was fun to be able to say, ‘Oh well, put the words on her mouth when we’re on her back, just like we do with actors.’ 

Marc: Right.

John: Presently, Tim Hutton delivers no more than 50% of the dialogue you hear per episode. We put the rest in his mouth later with a cunning Tim Hutton imitator. Yeah, this is to close off the sale that she's locked in.

Marc: Yeah, just to continue the sale.

John: Now Marc, you directed a bunch of episodes by this point, coming into this, right?

Marc: Yes.

John: And what was it like having a new human on the staff?

Marc: It was interesting. We- it brought a new life to it, and was interesting to see how everybody worked together. And she was just trying to get a feel for everybody and, you know, she was really easy going and said, ‘Listen, if you want a different performance, please, I'm here to help you guys.’

John: ‘Who likes to do this style? Who likes to do that style? Is that head writer really drinking that much in the middle of the day?’ Basic questions.

Marc: What is that smell coming from his trailer?

John: It's shame. It's the smell of shame. This scene was actually not in the original shoot, right? We wound up- this is one of the scenes that was: how much do we explain to the audience? Do they explain what Fashion Week is or isn't? And when we kinda looked at the first cut, it was like, you know what? I know because I watch it on Saturday morning on fashion TV, but we gotta make sure we establish the rules.

Albert: Right. Just a little more explanation as to how the fashion world works and where the con is going; just another step in the process.

John: And an excuse to get Aldis in orange.

Marc: Exactly and have Aldis in orange and Eliot in mascara.

John: That's eye makeup, that's not mascara.

Marc: Sorry.

John: Don’t. Please. Please, I don't want that phone call again, don't make that mistake.

[Laughter]

Albert: What's great about that factory, even this part of this set was also in that factory. 

Marc: This was just another portion of it.

John: Wait, so all the dresses and stuff, did we bring those in or those were-?

Marc: Yeah, we just put up the bolts of fabric and some employees.

Albert: We spent a lot of time in that sweatshop.

John: Yeah. As one does.

Marc: As one does. 

John: I love, by the way, in this episode, just watching what Kane is doing behind her during this scene. I'm- he's making a lot of interesting choices for Eliot there. Especially with the card snap coming up. And this was a lot of fun, too; this was a lot of the fun of the show is learning all the rules and idiosyncrasies of each industry.

Albert: Sure, that's part of the formula is figuring out what's the interesting world you can look into and then diving into and explaining to the audience how these worlds work.

Marc: Well it's funny, cause she needs to explain it to her teammates on the show.

John: And the card! I love the card delivery.

Marc: And the card the bam, yeah, you get to explain it to the teammates and explain it to the audience as well.

John: We’re really replicating what we’re doing in the room. Which is, one person knows the field pretty well and they explain- I remember when we did Iceman and we were talking about getting the serial numbers off the diamonds and Chris Downey was like, ‘I'm not following’ and I went, ‘It's like getting VIN numbers off a car’. ‘Oh, ok perfect!’ And that wound up in the script. Also this was fun having somebody who didn't know how the earbuds worked; it kinda reset the rules for the audience. And some beautiful- how did we get all this beautiful Boston stock footage?

Marc: Some we bought, some we shot. 

John: You actually went out and shot a lot.

Marc: I did. Myself and Dave Connell spent a couple days running around the great city of Boston.

John: Now this is your directing debut, isn’t it Albert?

Albert: It wasn’t my debut, but it was probably the longest sequence I've done.

John: And it's just naked backs.

Albert: It was just tedious, grueling labor to just have to order these models around to take off their clothes and take off their shoes. No, it was great, it was. We already had the set, we finished the big scenes in the set, so Marc let me take a few people out and just get as much fun behind the scenes stuff you can, so that’s kind of where we ended up.

Marc: You and Norbert, right?

Albert: Yeah, Norbert. That was one of his first days there.

John: I love the hair. Whose idea was the Swiss Miss hair?

Albert: Well the other thing about this episode was hair, makeup, wardrobe, obviously had a field day with it. They were really excited about being able to put their best foot forward on a lot of this stuff, so they were able to-

Marc: Yeah, they really had a good time.

John: I also love the fact that Hardison is basically using CIA technique of human intel signals  and analysis on the PA’s on a fashion show to figure out who’s in charge without actually figuring it out. It's a lot of fun, and our friend Apollo Robbins helped us out with the envelope slip, and it helps that Beth is very good-

Marc: This girl is great; she was a lot of fun, this girl, Caitlyn, Caitlyn Larimore. We- she read for us a few times on other things; we just knew there was gonna be something for her eventually.

John: So really, if you're looking to act, you should get out of whatever little LA or New York, whatever little hick town you're in and move to Portland because that's where you're gonna get some work.

Marc: Move to Portland; that's where it's gonna happen.

John: This actually hacking into the printer is something we've done before. A favorite trick of Apollo is to print stuff out in your office when you don't realize something is about to happen. And then the slide- 

Marc: That wonderful calligraphy on those envelopes was my mother in-law’s.

John: Really? That's great.

Marc: Yes, Louise.

John: We didn’t pay her did we?

Marc: Oh god no.

John: Alright, just making sure. We are a cable show.

Albert: But she ends up featured as a featured extra in the episode, too. She's in the fashion show; you'll see her later staring down Parker.

John: Mother-in-law? You got your mother-in-law on tv?

Marc: That's right.

John: Wow, you're the best son-in-law ever. This actress- actually nice shot. We wound up repeating that character later. I remember we were kinda restructuring; we were like, ‘Oh, we can just use her again, that’s fine.’

Albert: I remember watching her read, and she was great at it, so we decided to, rather than use a separate character for a scene later on, just, you know, bring her back. And she wound up doing that scene later when they approach the security people.

John: Just some love for the extra, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ A little something from Eliot just for you.

Marc: Just a little.

Albert: Well he had to know that if you're gonna do a fashion episode, one with lots of models, that Eliot was gonna be right in the thick of things there.

John: Yeah. And the overheard- How did you stage this? The overheard conversation is a staple of the show and the bane of all directors everywhere.

Marc: Yeah, we didn't have a lot of time on this day, but we figured out a way; just keep her in the background, eventually a couple close ups of her ears perk, and soon they'll drag her in deeper. 

John: Now each one of them is doing a specific person. I can't remember, he's doing-

Marc: Lagerfeld.

John: He's doing Lagerfeld. She’s doing Donatella Versace. I can't remember the British guy that Hardison is locked in on, cause I remember Aldis actually had pictures of him. I’m trying to remember...

Albert: André Leon Talley from Vogue, who is the legendary creative director of Vogue. And he's sort of channeling him. But yeah, again, during the course of research-

Marc: I got my ladder shot in there, by the way. I'm just two for two on-

John: On having ladders in your-

Marc: Yeah.

John: That's good; that's excellent.

Albert: This whole set was built; this was the whole fashion show.

John: We actually built this in the museum that we shot the finale for 207 in, right?

Marc: No, this was just an empty warehouse. 

John: Did we have permission?

Marc: Yes we did.

John: Good. Cause sometimes we don't; sometimes we just build stuff and then get the hell out before the cops show.

Marc: Yes, we used a lot of fabric to hide things.

Albert: But the beauty of it is, if you go to real fashion shows, it's kind of what it is. The highlight of fashions shows are supposed to be the clothes, so they keep the surroundings very minimal, and that's- that's always the idea of a fashion show. So luckily for us, it's fairly easy to recreate realistically as a set.

Marc: A lot of times it's just a wedding tent and a runway and chairs.

Albert: Well anyone who's watched Project Runway can see what it's like. It’s just a runway and some folding chairs.

John: I thought we built- that's interesting. Where did we go back to the museum for? I can't remember; it's gonna drive me crazy. Whose idea was the buckles?

Albert: Buckles was something I came up with in the script when I was trying to figure out how to explain what a poor designer Gloria is.

John: What's the one thing nobody likes a lot of?

Marc: Buckles.

Albert: So it became a little joke that someone that- someone, I think it was Chris actually pitched the joke about ‘pilgrim chic’ which we put in there, and found out later that that's actually kind of a real thing. If you make up any kind of joke in the fashion world you'll find out eventually that it's a real thing somewhere.

John: Yes.

Marc: This was actually the workers rec room, which was pretty much an open area room and- 

John: You're kind of ruining the whole sweatshop vibe with, like, ‘They had a rec room.’

Marc: Yeah, they had a rec room and basically we've pretty much four walled it. 

John: Yup.

Marc: And, you know, put in-

John: Which means?

Marc: To put up a wall to close it off. 

John: So this is a bigger space behind him.

Marc: Yeah, it's actually pretty much the same size, but it's just a platform where they had their lunch table set up. But we liked the ability to have shots like that where we can look down onto the floor, it was always-

John: And then shoot back up.

Marc: It was always something that I know that you guys mention, that we wanna have more connection with our victims. So we placed that shot-

John: It is tricky, particularly when we’re doing complicated ones, you can lose track of that vic that's in the opening, and we really tried this year to tie it back a little bit more.

Albert: Yeah, it was interesting. I had a conversation with another writer just the other day about - who works on a crime procedural - and they have the same issue about how to connect with their victims. It's much harder for them because usually their victims are dead. So they show up in the beginning dead, and they can wrap things up with the relative of the victim at the end. If you notice, what a lot of crime shows do is they have flashbacks, so then you get to learn the personality of the victims through the flashbacks.

John: Oh, interesting.

Albert: So we don't do that, but our victims are alive so there are opportunities, like in this scene, to reconnect with the people who we’re working for and establish what our emotional stakes are.

John: And this is also one of the places where we sort of set up- and if you watch what we did with Jeri’s character, and sort of the difference between Sophie and Tara Cole. Tara Cole is a short grifter. Sophie is never gonna push it, she's never gonna try to get the big payout. And Tara’s job is to get in and get out with as much money as possible, so this is one of the times where we really sort of set up how she needs to adjust. Though when you look at the back half, we don't really change it that much. The team doesn't really change, it's- she kind of adjusts herself to fit in the team a bit more. They wind up using her short term push just as a different sort of batter.

Albert: Whereas personality-wise, there's something you told me I remember which helped make everything click which was - Tara is really kind of a guy’s girl. You know, she's the kind of girl who sits around and watches football with the guys on Sundays. Sophie is very much a girl's girl; she's out there doing the shopping and fashion and all that stuff. So that kind of distinguishes the two characters. Although they fulfill the same role within the team, they're very distinctive in terms of their personality. 

John: But that's also from when we originally created the show. A lot of these characters have slightly different personalities, and the actors brought other personalities, and we realized as long as that job was fulfilled in the team, you can range pretty widely within there. How did you shoot- where the hell is she?

Albert: She's supposed to be-

Marc: Tashkent, right?

Albert: Tashkent. So- 

John: Uzbekistan?

Albert: Yes.

John: Oh right there you go. Of course. ‘Cause Tashkent is in Uzbekistan. Who doesn't know that?

Albert: Right.

Marc: And yes, so we shot Gina on a much later date, during a later episode, and just one green screen and some stock footage behind a little wind machine and there you are.

Albert: And camels.

Marc: And some camels, yes.

John: As one has in Tashkent. 

Marc: In Portland.

John: Oh no, we went to the Portland zoo see, I was hoping you'd give them the whole speech about sand, and yeah. That's a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of- and that was another thing, too, to make sure that Sophie wasn't just a character that you checked in with once a week. She had to have her own little arc that whenever you went to her she had a distinct attitude about the team. Yes and the reindeer gag, which I really foolishly insisted on keeping in the script because it was my favorite bit.

Albert: It was brilliant; it was great; it was all John.

John: That's mine. Whenever you see a joke that doesn't quite work and seems kind of doomed but we keep, that's usually me diggin in at the table, particularly if it's absurdist. Now did we put banners up or is that digital?

Marc: Digital. Those were digital banners on the building. Do our little whip pans to Eliot and whip back. 

John: Just to establish, yes, he's with a model. Where do you think he was gonna be? And he’s out.

Marc: And he's angry he has to leave the model.

John: The- and again, it was interesting to, sort of, know that we had to plot out these arcs on the back six, and figuring out exactly, like, how do we show trust and acceptance? And, you know, you can do it in dialogue, but you don't want people talking about their intentions. And the ear bud became kind of an interesting metaphor; it goes in and out of use over the back six and even with Eliot we wound up using it.

Marc: Yeah, it's like the chief asking for your gun and badge.

John: Yeah, exactly. And it also solved the problem later when you know it’s- she shouldn't have heard X. 

Albert: Right.

John: And that's a big problem on the show is in theory, if they can all hear each other’s conversations... Whereas a lot of cop shows, a big chunk of the time is, ‘What did you find out from witness x, Billy?’ What did you find out about witness y? Alright now let's put it together.’ They know. Now how did we do this blow?

Marc: Now that wass digital smoke, and that is a model.

Albert: Green screen model.

Marc: Yeah, we modeled the windows and actually shot it in our parking lot right here in Highland, in Santa Monica Boulevard.

John: Now we built- we do builds on the- building’s blowing up is better with models. The cars we've found we can do just digitally, but the buildings really look great with the model.

Marc: But we still use the model for the car as well. We just don't have the time or the money to do full explosions, you know, we do just a little aftermath with some debris and smoke.

Albert: Especially when it's someone's real house.

Marc: Yes.

Albert: Don't want to-

John: Generally they kind of frown on that, of just blow out the windows.

Albert: Because last year we did, Marc and I worked on another episode where we blow up a warehouse. And it was an abandoned warehouse, so you blow out the windows and break the glass, so it's not such a big deal.

Marc: Yeah, we did a little damage to the Prison Break set on that. What they shot was-

John: I remember, because I pulled up the day you were shooting that, I was like ‘I hope I haven't missed the blow.’ I was a quarter mile away and my windshield shook and I'm like OK, that was a little bigger than we anticipated’.

Albert: But this was a house with six kids was it?

Marc: Six kids, yeah.

Albert: So it was-

John: So blowing it up wouldn't have changed it all that much.

Albert: Probably not. Actually that family was incredibly neat.

John: And this is a lot of fun. And again, this is where, if you pay attention, we never tell you Tara’s backstory; if you pay attention all six episodes, you can figure out exactly what Tara used to do before she became a con woman. The information she knows, the way she puts stuff together, you’ll figure it out. Also the yelling. This was a lot of fun, because Eliot would be annoyed in this situation, and Chris Kane is never funnier than when Eliot is incredibly annoyed.

Marc: That’s right, and it's usually with Hardison.

John: Yeah. Thank you, I don't know how you make this show without phone cameras I really- we couldn't have made this show in 1978 this would've been a lot harder.

Albert: Or earbuds.

John: Or earbuds. Well earbuds we could've got around, but- no earbuds might have made our life easier, actually.

Albert: This was another thing that came up in research, actually, when I wrote a book about the Chinese Triads, and it is actually true that they're signature weapon is a meat cleaver. We looked at a few pictures of them, they're pretty impressive; they are really big and they have engravings on them, stuff like that. I've also looked at way too many pictures of victims of the Triads.

Marc: Yeah, missing fingers, and hands, and arms.

Albert: But that, again, it just added another fun element, knowing that there was, in reality there was a signature weapon that they use, and gave Eliot another fight scene.

John: Of course they'd be fancy meat cleavers, you're not gonna just pick a meat cleaver at Tesco or the kitchen section of Best Buy; you're gonna get one specially made. This was a lot of fun, too, something we haven't done in a while, which was watching Eliot figure out his fight space. You know, control access doing the math in this head. You know, it's always a little easier if no ones around him, just so he can tear people around a little easier. Fun stunt. Jerri did this, right?

Marc: Yeah, she was really nervous about doing her first fight with us, but she was a trooper; she did a great job.

John: She actually killed that guy. I feel a little bad about that, that's the first time we've admitted that, but you know. This was one of my favorite fights, cause we don't do a lot of weapon fights.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And it really reads well; the cleavers read real. Also we do a nice fight style with Chris here.

Albert: We did use cleavers back in the first season with the Wedding Job.

John: Oh that's right, we had the kitchen thing.

Albert: A kitchen thing. But it was a different kind of fight; it was a one on one in an enclosed space. This was an open space with multiple attackers ,and again, different props to use. So like, you saw the mannequin dummy there, and the rolling carts, and things like that, and so it ended up being a really fun scene.

John: And again, thank god for the surveillance culture - the fact that there are so many traffic cameras. Although you may bitch about privacy, it really helps us.

Marc: It really, really helps us.

John: This was interesting. This- I forget how this came up, I think the fact he had two IDs, but they had only checked one. I had a friend who was a Mountie- and remember, we were talking about my buddy who had done undercover up in Canada, and gh said the problem was, the guys got the fake, ran up records on fake Canadian IDs and you never knew the original crimes. Yeah. ‘Hey, how does Tara Cole know how to handle a meat cleaver?’ You’ll find-

Marc: Yup.

John: There you go, and that's a nice hit. And the head butt. I love the head butt, I'm sorry, man, that's a great way to end a fight.

Marc: She gets to take part.

John: Also, there's a lot of really nice hair flipping around in that fight scene, I gotta say.

Marc: I love-

John: I don't know whose looks better.

Marc: It's like a [Unintelligible. Sounds like ‘Germat’?] commercial.

[Laughter]

John: And that's, again, one of the problems with having a really uber competent team is, ‘OK they would have run this guy's background. What is the one loophole we could find that Hardison could screw up?’ You know, it's not screw up, it's nobody’s perfect.

Albert: It's just overlooked.

John: That's the trick, it has to always be some sort of fair play thing. Not a mistake, not just a ‘I didn't look in that drawer.’ This is a legitimate loophole.

Albert: Look how great this location is, though. It's everywhere; there's stuff everywhere. We really would not have been able to duplicate this on a set. 

Marc: No.

John: What? No?

Marc: Never. 

John: I love that he keeps the voice up here. That killed me here the first time I saw the dalies I was like, ‘Is he still doing Lagerfeld’?

Marc: Jack Bouvier. 

John: Yeah the fingerless gloves are really the pièce de résistance there. There's a lot of stuff there that could be on anybody, but the fingerless gloves really digs in.

Albert: Again, that's straight out of the Lagerfeld book.

Marc: Tim went for it.

John: Are those glasses actually rose tinted?

Albert: Yes.

John: Yes they are, that's magnificent. And the evil speech of evil: ‘Listen, I'm just a businessman. I have obligations.’ You know, in his head he's keeping many people employed back in China. You know, and he's a copy fighter, he's like those electronic freedom foundation guys who doesn't believe in copyright.

Albert: He's a hero, really.

John: He is a hero.

Albert: Of his own story, but- 

John: Exactly, he just happens to interact with our story. 

Albert: Exactly.

John: And this is actually a cue, this is a hint to where Nate’s- This winds up being the first episode of the second half of the season. This is kind of a hint of where Nate’s arc is going for the season, where he's getting so addicted to control and not losing and beating the bad guy, he's starting to make poor decisions. And he makes a series of remarkably poor decisions through the back six that really just the competence of the team protects him from.

Albert: He's kind of like those football teams that keep pulling it out in the 4th quarter and just decide that's just what they have to do. So they don’t mind coasting through the rest of the game or even, you know, getting down and behind before then.

John: Yeah it's- it's the mental discipline, and something that Parker says later on in the season which is, ‘Be the Nate Ford that we came back for.’ The mental discipline that made him legendary and which they count on is starting to slip. And it's not because of the booze, it's because of what he's substituting the booze with.

Marc: Right.

John: This is me drinking my Guinness, by the way.

[Laughter]

Albert: It's not your Guinness, it's what you’re substituting for the Guinness.

John: No, no, this is my Guinness; I'm actually drinking.

Albert: Oh ok. It's actually another Guiness that is substituting for his Guinness.

[Laughter]

John: It's, again, a Guinness that's somewhere else that I would like to be drinking. Some bargaining, trying to get them to take Eliot instead of Jeri.

Marc: That wasn't something he planned for. 

John: No, no, and it's interesting, and again, this is all trust issues. She kind of volunteered herself for this position, she’s, you know- 

Albert: The trick is, part of the whole episode was really the character dynamics. Because it was a new character, because it was a new team member, even though she'd been introduced in the episode beforehand, this is really the first full con they run together as a team. So it was a very tricky thing, and so I had the outlines of what the broad strokes would be, but this is the point when you go to the show runner and you say, ‘John how does this work, exactly?’ And then John takes over.

John: We stare at the ceiling and- that's what the writers room is for. And this is great, we actually wound up paralleling this shot. You created this shot for this episode, Marc; we wound up paralleling this argument in, like, two other episodes. There's actually a similar version of this shot in the first half in the season finale, where it's like, we are now sitting judgment of Nate Ford, and we’re a little distrubed that we’re not feeling very comfortable here. Yeah, and this cutting pattern replicates, and it’s interesting, and it's because we have editors working over certain episodes that make certain choices. And those are I think the names of-

Albert: They were real Electric Entertainment employees.

John: ‘Maybe I want to meet...’ Yes. Hardison is the most hard done by character; he never gets what he wants. And that, again, is one of those things where this episode was shot in 6 ½ days.

Marc: Yes, there's my mother-in-law.

John: There you go; she's a lovely woman.

Marc: A lovely woman.

John: Are you checking the list of actors to pick her name up? That's not good.

Marc: No, gosh no.

John: You know, we had four different ways this scam works. All depending on exactly how this shooting schedule worked out. And I remember I had to sit down with my wife and I was like, ‘Alright’, cause she's big into this, I was like, ‘Exactly what is the timing and choreography on a fashion show?’ And there, the thing with the dresses and they're all transported across town. So it was a good lesson for writers is, the great thing about TV is you're shooting every week; the really great thing about TV that will also drive you crazy is, you learn how to have a bunch of choices. Because sometimes the world decides not cooperate with you, and you can't shut down production for two days and just go- You've worked on big films, you've seen this. Like, ‘You know what? We're just gonna take a day off and find the right location.’

Marc: Yes.

John: No. Not so much.

Albert: The scene coming up with Parker in the gown. This is really, if you think about it and you say that you're gonna do an episode with the Leverage team involved in the fashion world, kind of the promise of the premise is you're gonna get Parker in a fashion show. In a gown, in a fashion show.

John: Right, because she's the one person who would despise it.

Albert: Right, and you kind of have to deliver this scene.

John: This was also shot later, and it was interesting because we don't usually get Parker and Eliot- you know, Parker and Eliot in a two-hander. And if you go back, you can see in the back half of the season when we- especially when we saw how it worked out in The Lost Heir Job, it became kind of a little more standard that we go to this partnership. You also see it pop up in the bottle show, the bar show, what the hell did we call it?

Marc: Bottle Job.

John: We called it The Bottle Job, that's right.

Marc: The problem with doing these two-handers is he can get her to laugh and break.

John: Yeah, Chris can crack Beth up. Him doing the dirty dresses on the floor line, Beth I think broke character maybe ten times because we are in the basement shooting that day. 

Marc: And this is the dress that Nadine our costume designer built.

Albert: Yeah.

John: It's a pretty amazing dress.

Marc: A beautiful dress.

John: The thumb drive of intent. Thank you thumb drive, for giving us a short hand so audiences know what we're doing. 

Marc: Yes, so she basically- you'll see that all of the Andre V, that's the Andre V character, has a touch of yellow in it.

John: That's right. Nadine created a unified theme for the fashion line - the fake fashion line that we were doing. 

Albert: She created an actual line.

Marc: Yeah, so she created a whole line and there's a touch of yellow in everything and as you’ll see when we get to the runway-

John: Where's this dress? We should auction this dress off.

Albert: Nadine probably has it.

Marc: It's actually in my car.

John: Oh no. I wish I didn't know that.

Marc: And then Dave Connell carried it with the lighting design as well.

John: Oh that's great, that is great. It's like we do this for a living.

Marc: Almost.

John: I love that Parker does the most- the little slide across the spot; that's a lot of fun. And now, did you shoot this at night? You had how many days on this set?

Marc: I think we did this-

John: You had the day, which was the warm up and then-

Marc: I think we had this location for two days.

John: That's not bad.

Marc: That's Jeffery Gilbert who played Andre V; he was just great. And I love Parker with the moves.

John: With the big head turn.

Marc: Just for a moment she thinks she got it under control, of course.

John: No, not so much. Walking is hard; walking in those heels is hard.

Albert: Walking in heels is hard.

John: I also love the little improv- it wasn’t in the script, but I remember seeing it in the dalies - she cracks her neck.

Marc: Yes that was definite Parker move. And I know this had to be- the scene coming up had to be a John Rogers line, where it's written that Andre V is banging his head repeatedly against the wall.

[Laughter]

John: Well, yeah, because I do that in the writers room.

Marc: And they said, ‘We gotta move on.’ I said, ‘No, I need to get the guy banging his head.’

John: Trust me, have some sympathy. And this is where we pay off the idea that Tara has heard about this team, and now believes she's given Nate one clue as to what she’s gonna do and she's desperately hoping they're as good as they think they are, and she’s doing the set up to this, she's setting up this beat. It was tricky, because we did actually play- she does actually look like she's selling the team out here, and if you're watching the DVD, you are watching all the way through the seasons. aAnd we did go back and forth on how loyal would she be to the team. And it really is the fact that one of the reasons you watch the show, or at least I think one of the reasons you watch the show, is the family vibe.

Albert: Absolutely.

John: And just having somebody who wasn’t into the family vibe in the middle of it, it might've been interesting from a writing standpoint, and we’re all fans of the show who write the show, it wasn’t interesting from an audience standpoint; it felt a little overly clever, a little constructed. But we do it just enough that we can get she's part of the team, but she doesn't buy into Nate’s bullshit, and as a result her actions in the finale make some sort of organic sense. And the van, oh, the van.

Marc: Gotta have the van.

John: Not anymore.

[Laughter]

Marc: Well-

John: No the- and this, again, we had like four variations how this particular con worked. Who did those designs? Who did-? We have a lot of actual fashion designs floating around in this.

Marc: I think Nadine.

Albert: Nadine and her team did pretty much everything.

John: They sketched them up and sent them off to Derek to do the computer graphics.

Albert: They did the sketches, they did the buckles sketches, they designed the clothes. Like I said, this was a real- this was a field day for the wardrobe and makeup and hair.

Marc: For the glam department.

John: That was nice, too. Cause the thing we originally missed, that having him hand him the badge, it’s a nice touch. Again, the trick when you’re doing- Some of the endings we stop and explain a lot, some just kind of unroll, and you have to make sure you set up all the pieces. And a lot of times when you're running and gunning and shooting, that stuff goes away.

Marc: It does. And so much of it is like, you get to a certain scene like, oh my god, in the flashback you're supposed to see that happens later.

John: Do you break those off separately when you shoot these or-? I mean, I know you, kind of, barely read the script.

Marc: A lot of times they are within the scenes and god bless Suzanne, our script supervisor, she just, she-

John: She's the best. She's actually the best I've  ever worked with.

Marc: She's the gatekeeper, yeah, she’s amazing. 

John: A Script Supervisor’s job, in case you don't know, if you're watching, is to sit next to the Director with a copy of the script, with special notations that they go to school to learn, to track what is in every shot, what the angles are, what the sizes are, who’s crossing, who’s walking in from what direction.

Marc: She's basically- she's keeping score and she’s the directors best friend, or worst enemy.

John: You will hear a lot of directors, even really experienced directors say-

Marc: As well as an editor, because, you know, an editor just gets a hard drive of footage, and if he can't decipher her notes, then he's gonna struggle as well.

John: I've seen really experienced directors, guys who are famous, they will finish and will turn to their script supervisor and go ‘What do I need?’ Cause they're watching the coverage while the directors watching the-

Marc: And we do a lot of different things and as a director, you're watching performances, and you're making sure you're hitting all the right emotional beats, and you know, when we do certain scenes where we have multiple characters, or you’re doing a 360-

John: We have a five-hander here.

Marc: Yeah, or doing a 360 and the camera’s going around and around, you need someone to be keeping score for you.

John: I like the physicality, by the way, watching this again, of watching Tim does with his face when he’s with the character and when he's just dropped it, and all of a sudden that kind of fake character, the wardrobe doesn't matter if he's just pissed, and you know he's dug in.

Marc: As soon as he's pulled off the glasses-

John: It's Nate.

Marc: It's Nate. 

John: Great job.

Marc: And we haven't even had him say that, when Tom, later on, you know, points that out, you're not even who you say you are, he, like, looks at him in a certain way.

John: Yeah. No, nice call. The- oh yes, this was, again, interesting, is one of the things that really depends on the speed with which these guys can rip this stuff off. You know, in one of the original versions we were talking about where the dresses are actually transported- right after the fashion show, the dresses actually are driven across town and are put in a private closed viewing for the buyers. They won’t let anybody else close to those dresses because even with photographs, they can be knocked off within a matter of 48-72 hours. Which is stunning, which is what you're trying to fight when you're trying to fight piracy. And hung by his own sin, which is one of the rules.

Albert: There's always a rule. Yup. Going back to the wardrobe and hair and makeup departments, the other thing you don't end up seeing is that they went through a lot of their own iterations of what- before what you see on the screen. They did a lot of tests, they did a lot of different looks. If we had time, we could probably show all these other test photos they took, and different hair configurations, and make up, and at one point they did this whole sort of Kabuki look, but we decided that might've been a little too fashion forward for this show. They really went all out.

Marc: They went all out.

John: Did you say fashion forward?

Albert: Sure.

Marc: And some of them were just based on the element of time, you know, we wouldn't have time to change actors over to a certain style, and-

John: Yeah, cause I mean, that's the thing, is when the difference between shooting Parker as Parker, and shooting Parker as Parker as fashion model, is two hours to change that character's look.

Albert: At least.

John: At least. And the walk of victory.

Marc: Dun dun dunnn.

John: This is nice, this is- I, you know, I always love the 60s, 70s call back; it's a nice style choice. Also, you've got that great street to shoot down. Where was that? Was that outside of-?

Marc: That was right outside of the actual warehouse location.

Albert: Across the river.

Marc: Just across the river from downtown Portland, so it was really close; you know, had a nice overpass.

John: Looked like that section of T that’s elevated.

Marc: This, again, is supposed to be in Asia, which was actually just another area of the warehouse again.

John: And then that's a kind of an iconic shot for this show now. That's nice, the Jeri Ryan era, as the fans call it. If you go on the boards and see the fans arguing over which six episodes are the best in the giant ouvre of Leverage ouvre. And she pays a horrible horrible price for her treachery.

Albert: Those are real working steam presses, and I can tell you from having been there, they were ridiculously hot. 

[Laughter]

Albert: I didn't want to be anywhere near it. I was like, ‘Wow, Gloria is really a trooper going through this.’ She had to learn how to operate it; it had, like, foot petals and things.

John: This is why it's good to be a writer, is, we write horrible things and then the directors and actors go live there, while we occasionally- Sometimes we venture from the hotel room to go visit the set.

Marc: At times.

John: But it's for the best if the writer isn't there; just causes trouble.

Albert: We can go pose and take pictures with the models; that's when we show up on set.

John: Yes. And then this is actually based on, there's a bunch of factories now that are owned by the employees that were taken over. Some car factories, some- there was a big thing in South America for a while of the workers seizing foreclosed factories and opening them up as co-ops.

Marc: I did not know that.

John: Yes, there you go. Anything we can do to undermine the infrastructure of capitalism of America in Leverage we try to, we try to.

Marc: Now this is a happier factory, it's brighter.

John: Brighter colors.

Marc: Yeah, it's brighter colors, there's sound.

[Laughter]

John: I love that. I love you sitting in the director’s chair like, ‘Alright, now make it the happy sweatshop.’

Marc: How else can we make them happy?

John: Lunch breaks.

Marc: Lunch breaks! Sandwiches. Sandwiches make everyone happy. Everybody’s happy with a sandwich.

John: There you go, and milk, that's delicious. Look, and we saw that particular extra was unhappy earlier.

Albert: That's right.

Marc: She was.

John: There you go; really sold it. And again, it's interesting because, you know, you shot two years of this now, and you understand the vics aren't a big part of actual screen time, they are on in the opening, they're on in the closing. Those actors are insanely important, because it means you have to like them really fast, and if you don't like them really fast, you know, it won’t pay off.

Marc: Yeah, and they have to keep up because, you know, it's not like we get a lot of time to do rehearsals, and so some of the crux of the episode can be in their hands.

Albert: Oh yeah, the emotional core of the story always hinges on the victims and their choices.

John: And sometimes those scenes with Tim Hutton in the bar, that's the entire reason you're gonna care about this episode. And this is a lot of fun with- this is when we- again, we really track, if you watch the back six episodes where Tara Cole feels in how she's getting the money. Happy about getting the money, ambivalent about getting the money, not caring so much, you know. She never doesn't care, cause that's just wrong. And now, it's interesting, Tim and I had a nice conversation about this particular phone call, cause he called me about this and he's like, ‘I'm not sure where we're going with this.’ I'm like, ‘You know that moment when you've had an argument with the wife and you've realized you've said the wrong thing and you can never take it back?’ And he's like, ‘Oh yeah.’ and I'm like, ‘That one right there.’ And it's one of my favorite little Nate/Sophie scenes and they're not even in the same room. Because it's, you know, it's- banter is fun, relationships are hard.

Marc: Right.

Albert: Oh I like that. Banter is fun, relationships are hard. 

John: And, you know, end of day, unless you show a couple of these scenes every now and then, you don't buy these relationships as real. And that's why I think one of the reasons the Eliot/Nate relationship feels very grounded is, we give opportunity for Chris Kane and Tim to kind of dig in on the fact that they don't always agree, those characters.

Albert: And you gotta give somewhere for the characters to go. That's the thing about a scene like this, at the end it gives them somewhere to go after here.

John: That was great. Thank you so much, guys, that was a lot of fun. The episode was fantastic.

Albert: That was The Runway Job.

Marc: Thank you.

John: Anything you wanna say to the nice folks before we move onto the next one?

Marc: Stay tuned.

[Laughter]

John: It's a DVD, I don't think they’re gonna wander off-

Marc: For the season.

John: Oh for another season, that's right. Season 3. Albert anything you wanna say?

Albert: No this was great, this was, I think, my third episode working with Marc. Third, that I'd written. Kind of fourth.

John: Kind of codependent.

Marc: Yes, yes.

Albert: We are, but I've learned that one thing: banter is fun, but relationships are hard, so we gotta keep working on it.

Marc: That’s right.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 10 #Season 2 Episode 10 #The Runway Job

[detectiveinchicago]

Please, don’t go

Fandom: Chicago Fire

Pairing: Blake Gallo x reader

Requested by: @tomanyfandoms04​

Warnings: Medical Stuff might not be accurate.

Word Count: 1.806

GIF IS NOT MINE. 

Being in a relationship with a firefighter was being willed to have your heart on edge all the time. Every time he went out on a shift Blake knew that you had gotten used to letting it be because you were sure that if you thought about it every day you were going to freak out. You had been dating for over 10 years; you had met in high school after Blake had lost his family in a fire when he was twelve. Blake spent most of his time at the fire station or training. He knew in his heart that he was destined to be a firefighter and you supported him; you were always there for him. When you started studying finance, he was also there for you during the long study nights. You were always happy for each other’s achievements; it was their nature.

Less than a year ago I had entered a new station “It’s my dream job baby” he had told you. The problem is that he was too intrepid and impulsive for his own good, but despite your reservations, he had been doing very well. You remember how proud you were of him when he ran that race to raise awareness about lung cancer in the fire department.

You had talked about getting married, of course, but it never seemed like the right time. Blake, however, was trying to find that moment for many months. He was sure he loved you and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you, so why wait? Even though Blake had been looking for the right time for months, it never seemed to be and the ring was still in his pants pocket, either you were both exhausted when you came home from work or you were at Molly’s or you had something to do. It always seemed like there was something more important to do.

“Have you seen this?” A coworker had asked you while pointing to the television where there were images of a fire in a mattress factory that firefighters were trying to put out. You hoped that Blake was not there, but unfortunately you knew that was not the case. The fire was so big that they had called all the units, so most likely he was there. At least she hoped he was at least being careful.

It was after seven when you arrived to the apartment you two shared. You left the keys on the front table next to your coat and your wallet when your cell phone rang.

“And it is?” you said, rubbing your eyes. You needed a shower.

“(Y / N)? This is Chief Boden I work with Blake Gallo” a raspy voice spoke to him on the other end of the phone. Was Blake hurt? It wasn’t the first time he’d hurt himself at work, that’s for sure.

“I know who you are” You answered. You had to ask “Is Blake okay?”

“We don’t know” Chief Boden replied across the line with a sigh “We are in Chicago Med waiting for news”

“I’ll be there” you answered before cutting off the communication and taking your things again.

You could feel your heart leaking out of your chest. You weren't sure you wanted to experience that pain again. Never had Blake’s superiors answered “We don’t know” whenever they called her it was “He’ll recover in two weeks” or “He needs to rest and stay home.” Then you would just take leave from your work to accompany him, Did you know how anxious he got when he had to stay home?

When I arrived at Chicago Med, the uncertainty did not improve. Nobody had news about Blake’s condition. And everything got worse when a doctor came out to talk to Otis’s girlfriend, one of Blake’s companions, and she cried. You needed no more negative thoughts, so while everyone was mourning the death of one of them you quietly slipped away. You sat by the hospital door and started looking around. The place seemed grim.

“Is it going to be okay, you know?” You turned to look and saw Captain Casey, you had seen him before in Molly.

“Why do you say that? You just lost one of yours,” you answered acidly, not wanting to be so daring “I’m sorry”

“Don’t apologize, I know it’s not the best time,” he replied leaning a hand on your shoulder “You just have to have faith”

“Sometimes faith is not enough” You responded by getting up and shaking your clothes “Blake and I have been together for over 10 years, I know what kind of relationship I have but I can’t help but get nervous” Captain Casey looked at you with a smile of sympathy as you reentered inside. Otis’s girlfriend kept crying and you couldn’t stop the bad thoughts from coming back.

“Blake Gallo’s family?” asked one doctor entering the waiting room

“That would be us” you replied to the doctor and Captain Casey smiled at you. You knew that this was how fire stations worked, they had each other backs inside and outside work.

“Blake lost a significant amount of blood, he had the explosion from the front and we are monitoring his organs and vital signs, he has several burns on his torso and back, his lungs have also been severely damaged so we are monitoring to see how he evolves. I’m sorry, I wish I could give you better news” The doctor explained to you.

“At least he’s not dead” you thought, but then you realized that that was not a great consolation

“Do you want to see him? You can take turns one at a time” He asked and you nodded. The doctor directed you to the ICU and showed Gallo’s door before heading to the nurse’s unit.

He looked so calm, so peaceful. It just looked like he had gone to sleep, but you knew it was the effect of the drugs. He had bandages around his chest and he was intubated, but he was still your Blake. The one who always made you smile, the one who was always by your side when you were sad, the one who massaged you when you were tired and the one who cradled you until you fell asleep at night. Even though his body looked like it had been in a war and his face looked unpolluted, you assumed it was because she had been wearing his helmet and protective mask. You sat on the empty chair and took his hand; you weren’t sure she could feel it, but still; you stayed there; you took advantage of all the time you had before letting your friends pass.

“Please Blake, don’t leave me, we still didn’t have enough time together, I need to have more time to love you and to feel your love, I need you, please don’t leave me now”

Three days after Blake was in the hospital, one nurse gave you the few belongings he had in his uniform before the explosion. Of course, he had his cell phone and his watch, but he also had a small box. So as she sat in the chair next to Blake’s bed you opened the bag, he had some missed calls from you on his cell phone and when you opened the box; you found yourself with an engagement ring. You took him in his hands and you cried; you cried because you expected him to wake up so you could get married. You wondered how long he had been keeping that ring.

“Blake, open your eyes, I want to marry you. Please don’t leave me now, I want us to get married and invite all our friends, I want to have that special day with you, I want you to tell me again how much you love me, for please don’t go “

You spent every day in the hospital and when you weren’t there; you were bathing and then sitting again next to Blake’s bed or in the waiting room. That was your routine for the last week. Sometimes you brought your laptop to do some work tasks to distract yourself. His colleagues from the station had stopped by to see him several times.

“Do you ever stop working?” God, you thought you’d never hear that voice again. His voice was scratchy, but it was his voice. You raised your eyes from the computer and started crying. You hadn’t cried in all those days but at that moment it felt perfect to have a little sentimentality “Don’t cry” Blake told you as you approached him.

“I’m crying because you’re alive” You replied “And because I love you so much” you added while he grabbed your head.

“How long was I asleep?” I ask while you wipe your tears.

“About a week” you informed him while you brought him a glass of water

“That’s been a long time” he replied, drinking some water, “I thought I was going to die, (Y / N)”

“You need not explain to me” you said, taking his hand between yours

“I thought I was going to die without seeing your beautiful face again,” he said caressing your cheek “I thought I was going to die without telling you how much I love you, how much I need you and how much I want to make you my wife” you approached him and gave him a little kiss on the lips

“You wanted to ask me to marry you and you had no better idea than to go around carrying this ring in your pocket?” you asked with a small smile on his confused face “The nurse gave me your things a few days ago, I don’t know how you didn’t lose that ring” you said

“I’ve been trying to ask you to marry me for months” Blake replied scratching his head embarrassed “I bought the ring at Christmas”

“Christmas? Blake, it’s May” you said raising your eyebrows

“It never seemed like the right time” he defended “We were always busy”

“Blake, I would have told you yes even if you had proposed to me in the shower” you informed him “I want to marry you, I want you to have a great wedding with all our friends, I want everything with you, I love you Blake”

“I want everything with you (Y / N) since we were teenagers I knew that the only thing I wanted was to see your face every morning and be by your side”

#one chicago #chicago fire imagine #chicago fire one shot #chicago fire #chicago fire imagines #chicago fire x reader #blake gallo #blake gallo imagine #blake gallo one shot

[whiskey-bumblebee]

show me your boobs

Pairing: Pale/Reader

Word Count: ~1200

A/N: haunted house shenanigans, PDA, exhibitionism (does it count if there’s no sex??), sexy but no sex because they get SPOOKED

Pale doesn’t really like Halloween. Aside from making sure his kid’s gonna have an okay time, and the sexy costumes, and the fun cooking, and the couple’s costumes, and the late night scary movies, and the echoes of kids trick or treating down the hall, and the way you sit on his lap to do his makeup for this one night a year, and the haunted houses, and the-

Pale likes Halloween.

You’d never expect it from him though, a guy who bitches about kids holdin’ out their buckets all expectant and stupid fuckin’ movies and teenage guys all pressuring their girls into the teeniest thing they can still legally wear in public. Yet, here you are, on the subway to Brooklyn, where he’s been told there’s a haunted house attraction worth the trip out.

Someone’s glammed up their townhouse, the yard and everything covered in decorations. Now that it’s after dark, there aren’t many kids around, so you and Pale and the other freaks will have the place to yourselves. 

Your heart picks up a little, seeing the performer in the doorway, how convincing her costume is, even if she’s wilting a bit after a long afternoon of hosting screaming teens. 

“Alright, if you’re pregnant or have heart conditions or anything like that, I don’t recommend heading inside,” She listed, bored.

Pale nudges you softly, raises his eyebrow.

You laugh and nudge him back. “No chance, fella. Sorry.”

He holds his hands up playfully. “Just checkin’.”

“Okay then, it’s a dollar each then you can head inside, turn left.”

Pale dropped two bills into the pumpkin-shaped bucket on the chair beside the door and took your hand. “Ready, doll?”

You shrugged your shoulders up and down, loosening up, then nodded.

As you entered and turned left, you were greeted with an old fashioned factory set; a conveyor belt, some pipes, theatrical fog. 

“They say he died here,” Someone whispered from behind you, causing you to jump slightly and move closer to Pale.

“Who?” Pale asked, teasing.

“Ol’ Nelson. Fell into the conveyor belt.”

Pale kissed your cheek and whispered in your ear. “You’re alright angel, ain’t nobody ever died on a conveyor belt. How the fuck you fall in one of those anyway?”

“Alright, thanks for the heads up,” Pale called, ushering you forward.

He whispered in your ear again. “If you wanna leave, we can tell ‘em and they’ll let us out.”

You squeezed his hand, telling him you’d heard.

Someone leapt from the next doorway, wearing a bloodied apron, and screamed.

You yelped and Pale swore loudly. 

“Jesus fuck what you yelling for? Huh? You Nelson’s missus or what?”

The performer sneered down at you, tilting her neck at an odd angle and laughing.

“Alright,” Pale chuckled. He squeezed your hand again and you squeezed back.

The next room was more gory, filled with admittedly plastic-looking remains. Nelson, you presumed. The light was an eerie white, coming down through the skylight in the ceiling. It was a long rectangular room, and at your cautious pace, it would take you a while to get through.

“Jesus, doll, you look so pretty,” Pale squeezed your hand. “When you’re breathing all heavy like that it pushes your tits out, didn’t notice earlier.”

You blushed and adjusted your corset. Pale swatted your hands away.

“Nah, nah. Let a man enjoy it,” He smiled. You rolled your eyes playfully and waited for the next scare.

“Doesn’t look like there’s anyone in here,” You breathed.

“Think you’re right. Wanna show me your tits?”

“Pale!” You scolded, hitting his chest softly. 

You peered into the dark, hoping your eyes would adjust and you’d be able to spot anyone before they got the chance to scare you.

“C’mon, angel, I’m serious. Wanna kiss ‘em.”

Cautious, you shifted your top down slightly. “In here, really?”

Pale hummed and ducked down to kiss your neck, still continuing to walk as he did so. Gently, he sucked a mark onto the side of your neck and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay, Pale-”

Someone lunged from the pile of limbs, screaming. Once you’d cried out and even Pale had jumped a foot away from you, they began to mumble, chanting something under their breath.

You hurried to the next room, the office of the factory it seemed. Papers were scattered everywhere and two hands sat atop the desk, as if filling out paperwork.

While you were still catching your breath, Pale cracked a joke about death and taxes and you huffed a laugh.

“Geez, I wonder how much that guy heard before he decided to jump,” You breathed.

Pale stroked your back. At least, you hoped it was Pale. 

“Reckon he was waiting to see if we’d-”

Dozens of eyeballs spilled from somewhere to Pale’s left, rolling across the floor to where you stood.

“Pale?”

“Hm?”

“Your hand is on my back, right?”

“Mhm. Just wanna make sure you ain’t gonna freeze in place or nothin’. And now you gotta dodge the eyeballs so you don’t sprain an ankle. Want me to carry you?”

You laughed and kissed Pale’s shoulder, the room too dark to aim for anything more specific. “I’m okay.”

You made it out into the fading daylight and you found yourself relieved. It had been fun, especially with Pale’s commentary, but you felt yourself shedding layers of tension now you were out. 

Pale draped his coat around your shoulders. “You okay?”

Offering a smile, you nodded. “Yeah, just a bit spooky.”

He nodded. “So... Can I see your booooobs?”

You shook your head with a smile. “We’ll see once we’re back home, huh? You’re looking a little scared yourself.”

“Oh really?”

“Uh huh. A little Pale.”

He laughed and nudged you playfully. “Jesus, walked into that one, didn’t I?”

You peeled the collar of Pale’s coat from your neck, and tried to spot any bruises. Pale swept in and caught your lips with his own. You obliged and draped your arms over his shoulders as he dipped you low.

He pulled away with a satisfied smile and ran his hands over the bones of your corset. “Think you should wear this dress more often.”

“Mm, honey you keep talking like that and I’m not gonna be able to keep my hands off you either.”

Pale held his hands above his head with a grin. “Go ahead, baby, all yours.”

Smirking, you glanced over your shoulders to check there was nobody nearby. You dropped to your knees and pressed a single kiss over the fly of his pants.

Quickly, you stood up again and kept walking to the subway entrance, leaving a slack-jawed Pale behind you. You glanced behind you with a wink.

“C’mon honey, think it’s best if we make it home before we’re fuckin’ on someone’s lawn.”

“You don’t think we’d pass as an ornament?” Pale threaded his fingers through yours.

You shook your head. “Animatronics ain’t that good yet. Besides, I think you’ll wanna see the matching garter belt, am I right?”

Pale sped up, tugging you along behind him as he chuckled.

“Easy tiger,” You smiled. “We’ve got all night.”

#pale x reader #pale #pale burn this #burn this #burn this lanford wilson #pale x you #pale/you #pale/reader #pale imagine #pale one shot #whiskey bumblebee halloween extravaganza #my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #self insert

[tellywoodtrash]

immj2 25.12.20 lb

you know what’s hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighly unrealistic about this scene? that she picked up a call from a number she doesn’t have saved. no millennial does that. we wait till it stops ringing and then google/truecaller the number and see if someone worth talking to.

vansh knows this and is thinking omg what kinda crazy person have i married?????? this bitch bonkers.

anyway, after ACP Anda, i think she deserves another catchy nickname, so imma call her Bitch-oo Babe.

he fully knew who was calling based on his reaction and is trying to distract her. this shadyassssss fucker, man.

also music therapy? i shudder to think what kinda music this freak might like. those alone might be grounds for divorce. i could never be with a person whose music taste i don’t at least begrudgingly tolerate, if not respect and appreciate.

anyway, hearing his voice, Bitch-oo Babe hung up, like any sane woman would, knowing that this dude is around.

HE KNOWS. HE FULLY KNOWS. FUCKER.

this looks hella uncomfortable. not to mention dangerous. stop distracting the driver!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ghar nahi, kahin aurrrrrrrrrr. for quality time. with this dude. oh boy.

lmaoooooooooooo she’s like “but dadi.......???”

“riddhima, dadi se main pyaar karta hoon but tumhe nahi lagta honeymoon par dadi ko laana thoda awkward ho jayega???” snortttttttt.

she’s like nooooooooo but dadi’s waiting for us and he shows his horndog side and is like and i’ve been waiting monthssssssss. AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT, ASSHOLE??? TUMHE FURSAT KAHAN FROM PLAYING SHITTY MINDGAMES, INSTEAD OF LIKE..... STRIP UNO OR SOME OTHER FUN GAMES THAT WOULD RESULT IN ORGASMS? 

he literally just told her “humara din hai, riddhima. aaj ke liye apne dimaag se sab kuch baahar nikaal do.” oh don’t worry bro, she’s permanently like that only. aapko aaj ke din ke liye koi special instruction dene ki zaroorat nahi hai.

gaadi mein gadbad. of course. but it just stopped. didn’t blow up or anything. hmph.

how fortuitous ki gaadi stopped in front of this beauuuuuuuuuuuutiful setup. hum toh jab bhi phas jaate hain kisi busy road pe hi hota hai, and then traffic builds up behind and honks at us repeatedly and makes us cry.

he’s saying “nice” but very creepy shit about aaj ke baad jeene ke liye kuch bachega nahi and aakhri pal and all, and this idiot girl is just simpering at him instead of having alarm bells go off in her head. sis................ why are you like this??????? self preservation naam ki cheez kyun nahi hai tummm mein??????? like, i’m a depressed bitch who is constantly craving death and even my brain is like GET OUT IF YOU WANNA LIVEEEEEEEEEEEE every time i hear something “meaningful” said by this guy.

of course when he’s being normal, she has to ruin the moment by thinking of telling him everrrrrrrrrrrrrrything. sigh. why are you two so fuckinggggg exhausting?

SOMEONE’S WATCHING THEM FROM OUTSIDE HERE ALSO?!?!!?!? WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK, ARE THESE TWO NEVER TO BE FUCKING LEFT ALONE EVER?????????????????????? JESUS.

YET AGAIN, SHE’S TRYING TO TELL HIM THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE PAST AND HE DOESN’T LET HER COMPLETE WHAT SHE’S SAYING. BOY IF YOU DON’T SHUTTTTTT THE FUCK UP AND JUST LISTEN TO HER I SWEAR TO FUCKIN’ GOD..........................

SHE EVEN TRIES TO TELL HIM KI LET ME COMPLETE THE FUCK I’M TRYING TO SAY IT’S LIKE A BURDEN ON ME I NEED TO GET IT OFF AND THIS ASSHOLE................ I .................

blah blah ateet hai, not present and aane waala kal, blah blah blah. let’s live our life and forget everything in the past. yeah ok, let’s see if he’ll follow his own words or if he’s gonna dig up shit from the past and torture her over it.

bathroom mein ek surprise hai? oh boy. this fucker’s surprises are never good. 

thankfully she used her brain and is like was all this planned, us coming here???? he’s like jagaah yehi thi, but the car breaking down here was a coincidence. sure. i don’t believe a single word outta your mouth, you silver tongued fuck.

man, you’re so hot. why can’t you just be a good human being also???? ouff, apparently, that’s asking TOOOOO much of men these days.

aslkjdlsakjdlsakjdlaskjldkjsalkdjsal the way the psycho theme music just started playing in my head!!!!!!!!!!!

some shady talk with angre. could be talking about riddhima, could be talking about anupriya. who knows??????/ either way, some woman about to get her life ruined by this fucker.

behen still adamant on confessing the truth to him. wrote one big dramatic letter. who the fuck writes letters anymore???? put that shit in an email or a whatsapp message or some shit, sis.

anyway, condition is that gimme a rose and i’ll understand you’ve forgiven me and want to start a new life with me despite all this.

kept the letter next to his wallet.

ek pal ka sukoon nahi hai is ladki ki life mein. always from the frying pan into the fire.

vansh came running, tab tak person has disappeared. with his wallet. (and her letter.) so he’s like koi chor tha shaayad.

SHE JUST TOLD HIM SOMEONE TRIED TO KILL HER AND HE’S LIKE SO CASUAL ABOUT IT AND SAYING “RIDDHIMA, RELAX, KUCH HUA TOH NAHI NA TUMHE?” WHAT. THE. FUCK?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?! DID HE PLAN THIS?????? WAS THIS THE SURPRISE HE HAD WAITING FOR HER IN THE BATHROOM????????

he’s like let’s go home if you’re uncomfortable and she’s like NOOOOOOOO I’M FEELING BETTER NOW.

yeah. this is the face of someone feeling “better” minutes after being attacked.

sis soooooooooo horny for her husband she’s just brushing aside trauma acquired 2 minutes ago, to get laid. god, could never be me. 

jesus christ what the fuck it’s like a gulabjal ka factory exploded nearby. i have a headache just looking at this. so fucking ott.

anyway, she’s panicking about no gulab in his hand. SIS. LOOK AROUND YOU??????? GULAB HI GULAB HAI. HAR JAGAAH. LIKE...... WHAT MORE GULAAB THAN THIS YOU WANT, HUH??????????/

LO. HAATH MEIN BHI GULAAB. HAPPY? LORD.

happy tears, happy tears. (FOR NOW.)

everytime he does this getting down on his knees and making this 🥺🥺🥺 face thing, i go buck wild.

god he looks soooooo good and he’s saying allllllllllllll the right things. pity i don’t believe him.

behen ne bhi kar diya pyaaaar ka ailaaaaaan.

LOL WHAT KINDA AMATEUR BS IS THIS???? SIR WHERE’S THOSE MOVES YOU HAD AS VIHAAN????????? UGH, I MISS VIHAAN. HE WAS SO MUCH SEXIER THAN THIS DORK. 

i’m so fucking mad that this is the fucking nonsense they gave us as first sex scene. ugh. ek toh lip sync. woh bhi to a song i hate. upar se so much ootpataang nonsense. in terms of disappointment, i think this might rank even higher than shivika’s laal ishq. that at least had sexy soundtrack and the expressions and all on point. this is literally cringey as fuckkkkkk.

wow. one neck kiss that lasted .03 seconds. thanks. i’m all satisfied now. 😒😒😒

anyway, i sat through it so y’all could have these caps of rrahul’s face looking good. enjoy.

agla episode mujhse abhi dekha nahi jayega. uska lb kal. i need to go get rid of my disappointment at whatever this was, by watching some new girl or something. ok bye.

#ishq mein marjawan 2 #immj2 #immj2 lbs #episode liveblogs

[thel3tterm]

Our Author is Dead

This is my current novel project. I’ve been working on it for ~5 years, and its been through many painful drafts and revisions.

Current status: about halfway through the final draft. ~23 chapters and counting.

Read it here!  What is it about?

When Rouge’s boyfriend, Michael, goes missing under mysterious circumstances, he leaves behind boxes of incomprehensible research, and a realization that he hadn’t been the meek eccentric they always believed.

Rouge wanders from town to town, trying to piece together what happened and hopefully bring him home.

Along the way, they have to deal with biological monstrosities, an enigmatic being who eats words, a vigilante in a rabbit mask, overpowered teens on the run from a nightmarish organization, and worst of all- a war over who gets to be the protagonist of the story they apparently live in.

The World:

Our Author is Dead takes place in a country known as Doma.

Doma is very similar to our contemporary society. There’s junk food, convenience stores, comic books, air conditioning, interstates… but no electricity. The east is bordered by an ocean, and its western desert ends in an incomprehensible, uncrossable ‘wall’ of abnormality.

Lets Talk Biomancy: All technology is based upon living organic tissue- a field known as Biomancy. The field is completely normalized in their world. It gets them from place to place, lets them communicate long distances, runs the factories, does pretty much everything electricity does for us. In many cases its unnoticeable, running through the walls or inside of gadgets one might not even suspect are alive. The most noteworthy examples though, are full fledged lab created ‘animals’ of sorts. They might be pets, household assistance, or most commonly, vehicles. Zap Heads: Some people actually do study electricity, and believe in the merits of it as an alternative means of engineering. …Of course, we all know that its just a fringe science and that there’s no way to actually use electricity for anything substantial. People who study it call themselves Electricians. Everyone else calls them Zap Heads.

Novus: A subgroup of people in this country are known as Novus. A Novus, for one reason or another, is born with a slight or major split from their own body. Most people are only able to have an influence within themselves. They are only able to think inside their heads and move what’s attached to them. A Novus is able to have an influence outside of themself, which can manifest in a myriad of ways. Some might bend reality around them to their will, some might be able to reach into another person’s head and change things around. -Novus are looked at negatively by most of the country, and are often disparagingly called ‘Wiz’, based on the thought that they’re like witches. -Medical researchers believe that it is some kind of a birth defect, but are unable to determine if the root is environmental or genetic. -They’ve been noted to have a much higher average body temperature, and a weaker immune system. Flexing their 'abnormalities’ seems to require an extreme amount of energy, so they need to eat a lot more than average and struggle to keep a healthy weight. -Religious people believe that it is caused by a moral failure, and that Novus need to have more self discipline to 'correct’ themselves. -Upon discovery, Novus are immediately documented and given a facial tattoo and serial number. -Most Novus wind up being seized and taken to a 'rehabilitation’ center before they reach the age of eighteen. Few will ever actually leave the rehab centers. Only a small number remain free to adulthood. The Bones: One of the oldest and most prestigious families in Doma is known as the Bones. Despite appearing frequently in history textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, important dinners, parties, and the like, very little is ACTUALLY known about the Bones. Here are some definite knowns: -They invented Biomancy several hundred years ago. -They are the only family who actually knows how to make a Biom from scratch, and they hold this secret very close. (Factories merely assemble the Bioms, but an outside party is not able to make a working one unless it comes from them.) -All of their children are women. No Bones has ever been a man. -They seem to have an extreme influence over all the goings-on in the country. Politics, Novus control, science, media, you name it, they’re there. Melissa Bones is currently in charge of their family operations, and her daughter Pamela is the up and coming heir. Characters: Rouge: -27 years old -Novus -Non-binary (they/them) -Very thin, brown hair (unless they dye it) usually in a sideshave or shaggily uneven, long face, tan skin, chipped front tooth, average height -Almost always wearing a patched up and shabby blue coat. -Anxious, self loathing, self-described as 'completely ordinary and boring’, sarcastic, artistic, tenacious -Was diagnosed a Novus at age 17 in a freak accident. They had never caused anything to happen before, and have done nothing unusual since. -Was rescued from a rehab center under equally bizarre circumstances by a childhood friend, and is a rare 'adult’ Novus. -Has a taste for the finer things in life, and likes to critique food and visual design -Loves outlandish fashion, but has no money for it -Is looking for someone dear to them who mysteriously went missing Valence: -Is that even her real name? -19 years old -Extremely powerful Novus. Perhaps the most powerful there ever was. -Can bend reality around her, create bursts of light and heat, move objects at a distance, alter the shape and material of things -Stocky and muscular, on the shorter side, round face, tan skin, black hair typically kept short -Prefers masculine clothing -Prone to anger, determined, stubborn, courageous, strong moral compass, black and white mentality, fiercely independent -Both of her parents are well known 'Zap Heads’. Her siblings are well known activists and researchers. While smart, she was more drawn to music, and felt trapped under the expectations placed on her by her family. -Was friends with several vigilantes and rogue freedom fighters who knew her family -Was taken at age 18 after snapping someone’s leg in half, and brought to a secret facility run by the Bones -Broke herself out and has been on the run since -Was in a shitty garage band. Plays bass. Loves comic books and underground music. Tariku: -14 years old -Novus with the ability to 'see’ into people’s inner selves and mess with their heads, plus a few other things I won’t mention here yet. -Dark skin, thick hair, short because he’s still young but will grow to be tall, on the thinner side -Prefers to dress crisply, usually opting for collared shirts -Wears a blindfold most of the time to prevent accidentally spying on people. (Also because he was taught that his ability is a sin, and he can’t turn it off…) -Thoughtful, cautious, strategic, quiet, prone to guilt, shows little emotion but feels things intensely, rarely shares what he’s thinking about, extremely curious but is often too afraid to explore or take risks -Never swears or uses contractions while speaking -Grew up in a facility with several other Novus with similar abilities who were being trained for a specific, mysterious, goal -Knew Pamela Bones -Decided to escape with Valence after an incident he is keeping a secret, for now -Is curious about 'normal’ things people his age do, but is so far underwhelmed by the reality of the outside world Corvid: -??? -This thing seems to show up randomly in Rouge’s room at night. Is it even real?  -It talks in garbled voices patched together  -Wears a raven mask. Who knows what it is or what it wants. Is it even human? Michael:  -A childhood friend of Rouges, then boyfriend -Tall, gangly, dark curly hair, freckles -A bit of a know-it-all, passionate about everything, pleasant and friendly, keeps things to himself, doesn’t like to share uncomfortable details of his life -Difficult family life, a lot left unsaid -Might be involved in really dark and shady things -Got kidnapped and who knows where he is now Proto: -Lives in the woods -Always wears a rabbit mask, even while they’re sleeping, like a weirdo -Supposedly a friend of Michael’s, but Rouge had never heard of them -A friend of Valence’s as well, and worked with her family -Vigilante, destructive Pamela Bones: -20 -Pale skin, freckles, bright red hair kept long, perfectly aligned teeth, green eyes, a bit on the shorter side, fit, curvy figure -She’s everywhere, it seems. An international icon -Sounds bubbly and friendly enough, but there’s something wrong with her voice, and her eyes, and her smile. It seems a bit uncanny, a bit... off somehow Read it here! ________________________ Tag list: @leonajasmin-writeblr @zburatorii

#oaid #writing #writeblr #wip #spilled ink #writers of tumblr #current project #original writing #original characters

[crue-sixx]

The Lady In The Water

Title: The Lady In The Water

Author: tiddly-winx

Fandom: The Dirt

Summary:  The tortured soul of a murdered woman lingers above her watery tomb.  Her spirit resides in the apartment she once called home, her power growing stronger on rainy days. You are a medium-you can see hear and talk to ghosts.  You must help them find the light.

Note: Based on the Haunted Apartment HC.  The character of John Rimbauer and his house Rose Red are of the mind of Stephen King.

Warnings: Swearing, violence, paranormal and scary shit, implied rape murder and drowning, ghost sex.  If you are squeamish please don't read.

Late 1880's

Amelia Grace was a low level worker, who had joined the labor union in the strikes for better working conditions.  She soon went up the latter in the Union ranks and became the spokesperson for the cause.  Across the continent in New York, a horrible fire broke out in a textile factory that burned over 100 poor souls of women and girls alive.  The owners had locked the doors with heavy chains during working hours, so that their employees would be forced to work their entire shifts with no breaks.  One of the machines had caught fire and in a matter of minutes and only a handful of workers jumped to safety, though not entirely safe.  They sustained broken bones and horrible burns-scarring them for life. 

She was now speaking at a rally against a Seattle based businessman John Rimbauer.  He had built a factory in the city where he employed the cruelest of men to be his overseers.  She had been speaking with some of the women and girls in his employ and from what they relayed to her, John Rimbauer had an insatiable sexual appetite.  When he'd come and inspect the books, he'd call some ladies into his office and spend extended periods of time with them. afterward the ladies having expressions on their faces that looked as if they'd made a pact with the devil.

She was nabbed by his men that night at her residence and taken to a sewer.  She had been chained to the floor with little room for movement.  Before her, John Rimbauer himself stood before her and clucked his tongue "Little hens should know that it's the rooster who calls the world to arms" he reached down and brushed a thumb against her chin delicately.

Amelia spat in his face, to which he calmly wiped off the saliva.  With a wicked grin on his face, he took from her what all people value most-consent.  Over many weeks, he deprived her of nourishment and forced her into debauchery previously unknown to her.  When the flood waters came and filled the sewers, she met her fate, but not before she cursed his name, his family and wherever he'd reside.  But her spirit remains to this day tethered to her apartment unit, where the very thing that was her death became the source of her power-water.

Death was only the beginning.

Early 1980's

You had heard rumors of the missing woman named Amelia Grace, that she was still alive somewhere in a bog in Ireland for some shit like that.  You didn't believe a word of it, so you decided that she was long since dead and buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the city. 

You see, you were a hunter of all things paranormal and your brother Mick had given you a hot tip that something was going down in his friends' apartment.  He said he'd hear a woman's whisper softly in his ear, then a cold chill would wash over him like he'd been splashed with ice water.  You didn't bother with all the high-tech equipment, you had a knack at attracting weird shit to you, which is why you were always secretly Mick's favorite sibling, from the day he found you playing with an imaginary friend.

You were rolling a ball and he thought it was hitting the wall and rolling back to you with momentum, but when he saw the ball stop in the middle of the room and roll back to you, he shit his pants.  He made sure to watch you so you didn't say anything to your parents and wind up in the loony bin, instructing you to shut the Hell up if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary.

You had moved up here in his place with him to help him with his medical condition, paying him back for all the childhood memories he had shared with you.  He made you feel normal, while all the other kids (including your own brothers and sisters) called you a freak and rubbed your face in the mud.  He had warned you about his band mates, that they'd try to get in your pants.  You teased your brother "I might just need someone in my pants,  my hand does get lonely down there".

He chocked on his coffee and said "You're disgusting" with a furrowed brow.

You met his friends, they seemed really cool.  You knew better than to admit you could see, hear and communicate with ghosts right off the bat, but this place felt more powerful than others.  To your ears, a leaky faucet was the scream of a person in pure agony.  It sounded like someone dragging a rusty fork across a chalkboard. 

You only stayed five minutes until you had to leave.  You quickly apologized and told Mick to explain it to them later.  You knew they'd scoff in your face-just like everyone else did.  You elected to stay away a few days and do some research and you were giddy with glee when you saw Amelia Grace's name on the records of tenants, you had to go back almost 100 years worth of documents at the library, the building had changed hands so many times it was almost impossible to track the original owner.

While you were away, things started getting more noticeable around the unit, then going downright dangerous.  The landlord had said that nobody lived in this unit longer than a year, especially males, and they would soon see why. 

On the rare occasion that Vince actually did the dishes, something in the dishwater caught his eye.  Where should have been his reflection, the visage of a pretty woman took it's place.  She was smiling at him and laughing, then she raised her finger and curled it towards her.  He was completely captivated, him not knowing he was leaning over the sink and putting his face in the soapy water.  Her touch was like a ray of warmth, her hands caressing his face with the softness of a feather pillow.

When he opened his eyes, the woman had turned into a rotting shell of her former self. She let out a shrill scream and her leather, bony fingers clasped his head tightly and tried to drag him deeper.  He panicked and tried to pull away from her, but this only strengthened her resolve and almost had drowned him in the sink when Tommy pulled him up with "What the Hell Vinny?!  Why're trying to drown yourself dude?!"

Vince looked back to the dishwater, where the majority of it was splashed about the countertop and floor.  His eyes were wild like he'd taken a hit of a drug, but he hadn't even touched anything like that yet today.  "Th-the girl..." was all he could stammer while Tommy tried to console him. the drummer telling the singer that he was probably still either drunk or high from last night.  It took more convincing on Tommy's part to calm his friend down, but it was done.

A week later, Tommy was in the shower when he heard a bubbly voice from the drain calling his name.  I also sounded distant, like it was far away.  He bent down to listen, and as he was eye level with the drain, a thick clump of hair sprang up and wrapped itself around his neck.  It was slimy and stringy, and way too strong to be just normal hair.  He stumbled and fell, dragging up even more hair with him.

He watched in utter terror as he saw decaying flesh drag itself from the drain and assemble before him.  He looked into the dead eyes of the female, her hair wrapping him in a cocoon of mold, debris and the unholiest of foul smelling filth that not even the devil himself could concoct. Tommy was so horrified that he didn't even notice the temperature of the water was rising substantially-beyond what was normal or bearable to a human to withstand.

His skin began to sizzle, and chemical burns began to appear on the surface.  It was then the pain overtook his fear and began yowling for help.  Nikki was in the kitchen when he heard Tommy fall in the shower.  He got up to see if he was okay, but knew it was quite the opposite when he was screaming for assistance.  Nikki kicked down the door and had to look away only for a moment before helping his friend. 

He grabbed up a towel to wrap around Tommy, who was shaking from shock and fear.  Nikki then got on the phone for an ambulance and did as the dispatcher instructed him to.  Normally he would have told whoever was giving him orders to fuck off but he didn't want to hurt Tommy any further.  Vince came home to see Tommy be wheeled away on a stretcher and he looked to Nikki for answers.  "What the fuck happened?!"

"I don't know" Nikki was so mad he was shaking "Maybe the landlord fucked with the boiler or the damn thing's broken!"  he went and cussed out the landlord over the issue and the landlord insisted that he didn't touch the boiler, even going as far as to show them that the boiler was up to code, in working order and at a reasonable temperature for bathing.

Vince remembered what happened to him and relayed it to Nikki "Dude, there's something off about our unit man!  I saw some bloated chick in the water while I was washing dishes last week!"

"You're so full of shit Vince!" Nikki laughed sarcastically "I don't know what to believe, you saying we have a ghost or you saying you did the fuckin' dishes!"

"I'm serious!" he actually started bawling "Remember when Mick's sister Y/N could only stay a few minutes before she looked like she was gonna be sick?"

Nikki DID remember you, only because you were hot and he wanted to fuck you.  He did think it was strange that you focused on the water pipes in the unit, but he was naturally attracted to people who were somewhat odd.  "Vince, get it out of your head that our place is haunted!  If you don't like it you can move the fuck out!  I'm staying right here!"

The blonde stared in disbelief and said "You know what?  Fuck you, Sixx!  There's something wrong with this place!" he walked backward while flipping Nikki the bird with both hands "I'm staying with Mick and Y/N!"

With all the events of the day, Nikki opted to drink alone in the apartment and shoot up.  He was alone in his bed, in a drug induced sleep when he felt the soft wetness of your kisses on his cheek.  He jolted awake to see you naked straddling his hips.  He smirked as you gave a playful wave. and said "Surprise!"

"How'd you get in?" he asked in his slurred speech.

"The window" you giggled "Just like everyone else!" you leaned forward so your nipples grazed his and said "You know, I wanted you to fuck me since the day I saw you..." the rain outside made the light distort your features so he couldn't see what you actually were-the ghost taking your form, the thing he truly desired.

Now Nikki Sixx wasn't one to turn down sex when it was freely offered so he leaned forward and kissed your lips, then moving down to your breasts.  He was getting hard just by touching and kissing you.  He reached down to play with your pussy but you stopped him "I'm already so wet for you, baby" you groaned into his mouth "Just fuck me already" you pulled his cock up and you slid him into you with ease.

He moaned loudly, you being wetter for him than any other bitch before you.  "Jesus Fuckin' Christ Y/N you're so hot..." he slowly began thrusting into you, but you leaned forward and pinned his arms to the bed.

"No, no, no Nikki" you chastised "I'm callin' the shots tonight" he chuckled, him secretly liking a woman dominating him.  "You just stay still and I'll ride your cock like the Lone Ranger rides Silver..." he laid back, with your still pinning him down.

Soon, he was at his limit "Oh my god Y/N you're gonna melt my dick off!" he then shot his load into you and after a moment of bliss, he stared in silence as you began rotting right in front of him.  You were decaying rapidly, the stink of human waste oozed from the walls, dripping slowly like molasses.

He knew that Vince was right- their place was haunted.  He tried to get the ghost off of him, but her frame became heavier with each thrash.  He got some relief when she stopped only to be horrified when she began dry heaving.  He knew what was next, but he couldn't stop it.  She vomited sewer water onto him, the putrid potion going in his mouth and up his nose.  Thankfully he closed his eyes as the torrent of dirty water hit him. 

When he was finally able to get up, he noticed what felt like to be soft wet kisses was actually a dripping faucet right above his bed.  He looked around to try and find the mess the ghost had made of his room, but the only mess he could find was of his own doing in the crotch area of his sheets.  He cleaned himself up a little, got dressed and went over to Mick's where he told you all that he believed what Vince said was true.

"Told you, asshole!" the singer retorted.

"So what do you want to do now?" you asked both of them "With Tommy in the hospital and you two here, the unit's empty right?"

Mick looked at you and said "Oh no Missy!  You're not going over there alone!"

"Mick I HAVE to" you told him sincerely "I've been doing research on the building and I think I know who she is...all I have to do is speak her name and she'll be gone" you put a hand on his shoulder "I am not that scared little girl anymore Bobby" you called him by his real name, him reluctantly letting you go.

The unit definitely smelled like a sewer that was for sure.  You turned on all the faucets and opened the windows to let the rain in.  The howling wind and the metallic scream from the pipes became one-you seeing the ghost in front of your very eyes.  She was looking at you not in hatred but curiosity, like she was reading an interesting book.  You locked eyes with her and dared not break the stare.  "Amelia Grace!" you shouted.

The ghost hollered in pain, a look of surprise overtaking her.  You said her name again and she screamed louder.  You shouted her name a few more times, bringing her to her knees.  You knelt in front of her and grabbed both sides of her head, sending her images of the newspaper clippings you found in various libraries.  She stopped screaming, and tears of joy began rolling down her face.  Her skin was healing itself so she looked more alive than dead.  "John Rimbauer has paid dearly for his misdeeds" you gently told her.

"His house was cursed, claiming his beloved daughter" you went on "his family in ruin.  You have been avenged, Amelia.  You don't need to linger here anymore..." you gave a soft kiss on her forehead "Go in peace..." she smiled, a heavenly glow engulfed her as she made peace with her death.

The rain stopped, the whole unit soaked but it was warm again.  When you came back to Mick's place, you were exhausted and plopped down on your bed without a word.  While you were asleep, Mick took the time to tell them about you and your gifts.  They believed every word-even Tommy when he came back from the hospital.

They quickly moved their stuff from the unit to Mick's place and you all slept in the living room where there was more area to accommodate more bodies.  They didn't want to go back, and you didn't blame them.  You kept in touch over the years and you deepened your research to locate Amelia Grace's remains in the sewers.  You eventually did and arranged for a proper burial, her epitaph reading "A revolutionary, murdered before her time.  May she find comfort knowing her death was not in vain"  you felt a warm hand touch yours, you looked up to see Amelia Grace.

"Thank you" she said as she handed you an antique necklace "If I ever had any daughters, I'd want them to be as courageous as you..." she kissed your hand and vanished for the final time.

"Who you talkin' to babe?" your husband Nikki asked, your twin girls Amelia and Grace not far behind him.

"Just an old friend" you assured them, looking back at the grave and closing the book on the case of Amelia Grace for good.

#motley crue #mötley crüe #the dirt #nikki sixx #tommy lee #mick mars #vince neil #motley crue imagine #mötley crüe imagine #nikki sixx imagine #tommy lee imagine #mick mars imagine #vince neil imagine #motley crue fanfiction #mötley crüe fanfiction #nikki sixx fanfiction #tommy lee fanfiction #mick mars fanfiction #submitted #not mine #submission

[bangtansdoc]

Into the light.

Part 1.

Ost: OMG!- Joy red velvet ( Ost of the great seducer).

Pairings:Park Jimin(BTS)×reader

Genre: Fluff, horror(maybe Idk), Vampire! Au, CEO! Au, secretive and very clingy-ish Jimin. Ack guys this is one's a long read. Hope you can follow through to the end.

Ost: Joy(red velvet)- OMG!(Ost of the great seducer).

Word count: Honestly I don't even count it anymore.

Synopsis: You need money. Park Jimin has money. You end up getting a job as a house keeper in his gargantuan mansion. But what secrets might the handsome CEO be hiding underneath his flashy image?

PS: This whole fic was inspired by Jimin's GDA 2019 looks. It was le'jin'dary.

He watched as blood pooled out from her body. There was so much blood. He wondered if it was normal for her to produce that much, considering who she was. He tried to reach out to her, to hold her hand, even though he knew she was already gone. His vision faded, and he knew it wouldn't be long before he joined her.

***

"Hey Y/N are you watching the news right now?!" Your best friend's voice screeched out of the phone before it reached your ear. "No I'm not Joon. What's the problem?!" "Go find a TV right now. Or..." "Joon! I'm on my way to work now. Can't it wait?" "It IS about work. And it can't wait. Y/N..." "Ok see you later Joonie!" "No don't you...." You quickly hung up the phone as you felt a migraine creeping along your head to the base of your skull. You leaned your head against the bus window and sighed. You were exhausted. It was bad enough that you were working two part time jobs(they were initially four but Joon had argued that if you didn't tone it down you would flunk all your classes and probably end up in a hospital which had ended in you clocking him over the head and eventually conceding cause....he was right) but you also had a big test that you really weren't prepared for. You brought your fingers to your temples and massaged them lightly. "Don't fret Y/N." You spoke softly to yourself. "You can do this. Only two more years left till you graduate. You got this." Your phone buzzed with a text message. It was Joon. "PICK UP THE PHONE NOW YOU STUPID BRAT." You sighed again and switched off your phone. "Not today Namjoon. Not today." You whispered again to yourself as the bus arrived at your stop and you disembarked.

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You jogged lightly towards the glue factory, adrenaline coursing through your veins as you prepared to tough it out through another day of work. So it was to your surprise when you met several employees loitering around the factory's compound, with several men moving boxes out of the factory and into a large truck. You quickly approached the elderly woman that was the head of staff. "Mrs Avery?" She looked at you and relief washed over her face like you were the answer to all her problems. "Oh Y/N! Thank goodness you're here!" "What happened?" "Don't you watch the news dearie? Some whistleblower reported the president of the factory for embezzlement. So they cut us all off, packed up and are 'moving to rural areas'. Pssht." Your eyes bulged out of their sockets. "What?! But-- but---" "There's nothing we can do dearie. We're all out of jobs now." She said again as she quickly made her way to another group of employees. Your mind raced and spun around. Packed up...cut us all off....out of jobs... Your tuition fees were due in a month. And you were perfectly, utterly and catastrophically broke. You fumbled for your phone in your trousers pocket and dialled your best friend's number. "Joon! I'm doomed! Doomed Joon! I'm- I'm gonna get kicked out of school. The factory---it-it shut Down. I don't have any money Joon! What am I gonna do?!" "Calm down Y/N! Your tuition isn't due for about a month. You have plenty of time to find a new job before then. "No no no! Don't you get it?! No job will have as high a pay as a factory in time, and no factory will hire a part timer now after this whistleblowing incident!" You could see practically see Joon scratching his forehead in thought. "Ok Y/N? Take a deep breath." He paused as you did so. "Now calm the hell down, and come on over so we can figure out what you're gonna do." You blinked back several tears as you hung up and bolted for the bus station.

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"Maybe you should ask your parents for some cash." You stared at Namjoon like he had just sprouted horns. "Kim Namjoon. How long have we been friends?" "Since kindergarten." "Exactly. So you of all people should know that that isn't an option." "But you're really desperate now. You can't do this alone." "So what's gonna happen to my FIVE siblings Hun? I've been taking care of myself by myself pretty well. Now is no different." Namjoon sighed exasperatedly like you were the dumbest person in the world. He was probably right. But what were you to do? Growing up in a family of eight was no joke. Your father was a teacher and your mother owned a bakery. But their earnings alone were not enough to cater for all your needs. So you had decided to unburden them by fending for yourself. You had started working as soon as you were old enough. Your parents were apprehensive at first but you were able to alleviate their fears of your working affecting your studies. You had worked your way through high school, moving from job to job and had been offered admission into a prestigious University. Your family was again afraid that the tuition was too much for you to handle alone, so you had borrowed money from Namjoon, which you were still currently trying to pay back. It had seemed that luck was on your side when you got a job at the glue factory. The working hours were reasonable and the pay was good. You figured that if you saved enough you would be able to make it through the four years of college. Until this happened. "I could lend you money again." You covered your face with your palms. "I still haven't finished paying you back for the last time you lent me money." "It doesn't matter." "It does matter! Our tuition is not chicken feed!" Namjoon shrugged. "It's not my fault my parents are rich." You groaned again before throwing a plushie at him. "Dogmatic jerk." You muttered under your breath. "Don't worry. I'll think of something." "Yeah well whatever you think of, better think of it fast."

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"Hey hey Y/N check out what's on the news right now." Namjoon said as he plopped down beside you in the school cafeteria. "Do you spend all your time watching the news?" You asked teasingly, making him open his mouth in thought which you giggled at. "Probably." He replied and you burst out in laughter. "Anyway guess what?" You decided to humour him. "What?" "You know the glue factory you used to work at? The one that got whistleblown?" You looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Ok ok you do. Well park Jimin just bought it." "Park Jimin? The mega ultra super rich business tycoon?" " Yeah, the mega ultra super shady one. Something's not right about that guy. I know it." You rolled your eyes. "You've 'known' it for six months now." "Yeah I mean all people know about him is that he's super young and super secretive. We're talking about no friends, no family, not even a freaking pet....." "Namjoon..." "And he lives in this gigantic mansion with no one but his housekeeper." "Maybe he just likes his privacy." "Yeah no one ever just ' likes their privacy' . Especially super rich business moguls. He definitely has something to hide." Namjoon paused. "I'm thinking of making him the protagonist of a book I'm writing." You stood up with your tray of food. "Goodbye Joon. Call me when you have something better to discuss. Like where to find a job maybe?" "Hey I'm helping out as much as I can." You leaned towards him and kissed his cheek. "Well you should help out more than that." Your phone buzzed with an alarm. "And there goes my lunch break." You shoved your food into Namjoon's arms. "I have to go job hunting." "Hey let me come with." Namjoon said as he hurriedly stood up. "No you don't have to. I'm going to the job center to ask if they have any openings. And you have class." Namjoon raised an eyebrow. "And you don't?" "Well I won't even have a class to ditch anymore if I don't get a job now. See you." You said again as you quickly made your way out of the cafeteria.

***

You stared at your phone and sighed. It had already been a week since you had been to the women's job center. They had been skeptical, especially after you had stated all your conditions, working part-time during the week, Sundays free and also the fact that you were a student. However they had promised to get what they could for you, especially after you had begged them that you would work anywhere as long as the pay was good. But now here you were, staring intensely at your phone. What if you weren't able to find a job in time? You were sure that asking your parents for that much money would definitely affect at Least one of your siblings. You rubbed your temples and felt that awful migraine creeping along your skull again. You were not a happy-go-lucky endearing kind of girl who was always smiling even while suffering, but you always kept a healthy level of optimism in your tank, never letting your troubles or problems get the better of you. Namjoon had also played a great part in that. You fell back on your bed. But lately it had been getting harder to see the good side of things. You groaned in frustration, wondering if the job center was really finding it hard to get you something to do. Your phone suddenly buzzed to life, and you sprang off the bed like a rabbit, stumbling to the dresser and grabbing your phone like your life depended on it. You glanced at the caller ID and curled your toes in anticipation. "Hello is this Y/N/L/N?" A soft voice boomed out of the phone. "Yes. Yes it is." You said quickly, your heart in your throat. "Ok. I'm from the women's center. I'm happy to inform you that we've found a job for you." You heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh thank God. I thought you weren't gonna be able to." The voice let out a soft chuckle. "Well it was difficult. But we managed to get something for you last minute. You are really lucky. The job offer sprang up out of nowhere. And it meets all of your conditions." You couldn't believe your luck. You wanted to leap into the air in Joy. "Thank you so much. When can I start?" "Uh, you still have to come down here as Soon as you can to get more details. Your employer is very particular about the people he hires. He is a private man and wants to interview you first." You mused on this. "Whatever he wants. As long as I get the job." "Ok then. Come down to the agency tomorrow so I can give you the details." The voice said and hung up. You fell back on your bed again smiling like an idiot. "YES!!!" You shrieked as you wriggled about. You heard a small voice at the back of your head. "Don't count your chickens before they hatch Y/N." You pushed away the thought. Things were finally looking up.

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You sat down in front of a desk with a computer on it. You had arrived at the job center and had been waiting for about twenty minutes. You checked your phone for the time. You were beginning to get agitated. Where was the attendant? A middle aged woman suddenly plopped down in front of you. She greeted you with a warm smile. "Miss Y/N?" She asked and you responded with a nod. "Sorry for taking your time." "You spoke to me on the phone?" "No my coworker did. But she's out sick today so she told me to take care of you." "Oh." You responded and waited for the woman to continue. She switched on the computer and began to tap at the keyboard. "Ok so you've been offered a job as a housekeeper." "Uh can I know who I'm working for?" The woman smiled. "They wanted you to find out when you came for the interview." You were confused and began to wonder if this was some elaborate prank by Namjoon. Really. How private could one person be that they were keeping their identity a secret from their prospective employees? Were they some kind of mafia clan? You started to think of declining the offer when the woman, as if sensing your doubt, spoke up. "It's not dangerous Y/N. And I promise you the pay is very good. The CEO is just a very private man." CEO she said. There was something off about this woman too. You eyed her carefully. Ok Y/N. Let's see how this goes. "Alright." You said finally. "Great." She tore out a slip of paper and scribbled something on it. "Here's the address. Your interview is in two hours." "Two hours?! Well why didn't you...." "I didn't think you'd accept the offer." She didn't think you'd accept it? Exactly what was going on? You hurried to get your things. "Good luck!" The woman yelled after you as you dashed out the door.

You stopped short in front of an enormous gate. The gate had two iron carvings of a Jade dragon embedded into it. You heaved a sigh and pressed the doorbell. You waited for a while and was about to press it again when a deep male voice boomed over the PA system. "Yes?" Yes? Oi. "Uh, I'm from the women's center. I applied for the post of housekeeper." "Oh. You're early!" Yeah barely. You thought as the voice said again and after a while the gates slid open. You stepped into the compound and gasped so hard you almost passed out. Before you was the largest compound you had ever seen. There was a huge maze like garden on both sides of the compound, and sandwiched in between them was a beautifully lit walkway. There were lights and lanterns decorating each side of the walkway and you could only imagine how it would look at night. You walked slowly and gasped again when you saw the house. At the far end of the compound stood the biggest palace you had ever seen. In front of it was a pavilion, and in the pavilion was a water fountain with water sprouting out of it. The house was enormous and you felt as if you were standing before the tower of Babel* instead of a freaking house. The mahogany doors swung open and a well dressed Man with blonde hair walked out and towards you. He was just as beautiful as the house. You began to wonder if you had accidentally walked into another dimension.

"Y/N? Welcome." The man said cheerily, smiling at you constantly. "Come on." He spoke again and you shivered. You followed him into the house and your eyes almost fell out of their sockets. You were standing in a very grand Hall, fit for a king. Now you weren't an artsy girl, but you could make out several pieces of art work placed in the hallway by the walls, all leading up to a glass stand, above which hung the portrait of a young girl in a hanbok. You stared at the portrait, entranced by the girl's beauty and how sad her face looked, before wondering what sort of creep you were about to work for. "Beautiful isn't it?" You heard the male's voice beside you. He was also staring at the painting. "Yes. Yes it is." "It's the most exquisite piece of art in the mansion. Apparently the CEO described the girl to the artist himself." You turned to face the man. So he wasn't your employer? You had thought that this CEO being so private would've interviewed you himself. Guess even the most private still order lackeys around. At this point you still didn't know who exactly you were working for. Just what kind of mess were you getting yourself into? "This way." The handsome male led you towards a beautiful set of spiral stairs. You ascended quietly as the man led you again into a parlour room. He sat down on a cushion and you sat opposite him.

"So Y/N. Hi. I'm Kim taehyung. I'm CEO Park's PA." An alarm went off in your head. CEO Park. CEO Park. CEO Park!!! "I'm sorry do you mean CEO Park jimin?" Taehyung studied you. "Yes." Oh God!! CEO Park jimin, the super secret mega business mogul that Namjoon disliked. Why hadn't you seen the signs? It was when taehyung had asked if you were alright that you realized you were gasping for breath. "I'm fine. I'm fine." Taehyung studied you again. God was he handsome. You hoped the CEO looked nothing like him or else it would be very hard for you to concentrate on work. "Okay." Taehyung leaned back on his chair and crossed his legs. "Let's discuss the conditions of your employment." "But I haven't accepted the offer yet." Taehyung raised an eyebrow. "Well you're here aren't you?" You shifted in your seat. "So you'll be working Mondays through Saturdays, like you requested. Your job requires regular maintenance of the essential parts of the house. A Gardner and a mailman come occasionally. You'll also be residing here..." "What?" "Yes. In order to be fully efficient you can't afford to commute every day. Trust me it'll be much easier if you lived here." You sighed and wondered again if you were making a mistake in accepting this job. "You'll be receiving six thousand dollars at the end of every month..." Your eyes widened and your voice caught in your throat. "I'm sorry. Six thousand dollars?!" Taehyung smirked at your reaction. "At the end of every month." He paused. "Do you have anything to add?" You cleared your throat. "The-the pay for this month, can I receive it now? Like up front? I really need the money. I promise I will work for the full month I owe." Taehyung narrowed his eyes before placing a piece of paper before you. "That's a contract. Sign it." You carefully picked up the contract and signed it, sealing your fate. Taehyung smiled. "There. With that you can't run away. We will catch you if you dupe us." You gulped. "I'll speak to the CEO. The money will be forwarded to your account before the end of the day." You smiled brightly as tears brimmed in your eyes. All your money problems had just been solved in under an hour. "Thank you so much." You gushed, extremely grateful. Taehyung smiled a boxy smile at you, almost as if he was as excited as you were. "Anything else?" He asked. You sighed. "When can I start?"

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"YOU WHAT?!" Namjoon yelled at you after you briefed him on your new job. "Y/N..." "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before I decided this Namjoon, but I really need this. You know that." "Yes, but..." Namjoon ran a hand through his brown hair. "Forget all jokes now. I've read a lot about CEO Park to know that he's hiding something. Something that could be potentially dangerous. Working for him.... Living in his house, puts you at risk. He could be some kind of secret mafia boss for Christ's sake!" You stared at Namjoon's concerned eyes and pulled him closer to you. You knew he was just worried about you , but you honestly thought he was just being paranoid. All in all, you couldn't blame him. You cared about him just as much to be paranoid if the roles were reversed. You planted a chaste kiss on his soft lips. "I'll be fine Joon. Really. I promise the second something seems off I'll quit immediately." You smiled at him and his expression softened. "Fine. But that doesn't mean I'm okay with it." "I know." "When do you start?" He grumbled, a sound you associated with a large, pouty bear. "Uh, tomorrow. Wanna help me pack?" He stared at you, incredulous. "Tomorrow? But shouldn't they at least have given you some more time to pack?" "I chose to start tomorrow. Better to get it over with as soon as possible right?" Namjoon shrugged as he picked up a pink bra, scrunched his face and tossed it aside. "Can't argue with that." He said as you grabbed the bra and stuffed it into your suitcase. "Trust me Joon. It'll be over before you know it. Oh and by the way, you should see his house. You'll love it."

❇️❇️❇️

You stood up from your crouched position and stretched your back. You had already successfully moved into the CEO's mansion and had been working for a week now. You saw taehyung regularly, he always popped in with a smile and the excuse of ' fetching some documents' when you knew he was probably checking up on you, obviously at the CEO's orders. Said CEO had not shown his face in the house since you arrived. You hadn't even seen his car in the driveway, not that you would notice anyway, with the fleet of cars parked in it. It was always the same routine everyday, and it was exhausting, but the amount at the end of your Bank book made it totally worth it. It was actually a bit easier because you were on break and you braced yourself for the stress you would face once school resumed. You took one last look at your Bank book for encouragement before exiting your room to begin the days duties. You made your way downstairs to the storage room and passed by the front door. You stopped abruptly as you saw a pair of male shoes placed beside yours. Must be taehyung's. But he had left the previous night. And why didn't he let you know he was back in the house? When did he even get in? You rolled your eyes and shrugged off the thoughts. He probably had something else to take care of and it wasn't like he had to tell you each time he came in. You grabbed your equipment and made your way to the pool.

You pulled back the sliding glass doors and stared at the exquisite marble pool before you. You gently placed the cleaning equipment on the floor and was about to drain the water when you noticed a movement in the pool. "Taehyung?" You called out, as you cautiously approached the pool edge. There was no answer. You moved closer and slipped on the marble, tumbling into the pool. Now you hadn't meant to be so overdramatic, but your fall had caught you off guard. You thrashed and flailed in the water, your movements causing you to sink further in. Suddenly, strong arms gripped your sides and hoisted you out of the water. You felt the arms holding on to your sides and a pair of legs wrapped around yours to stop them from thrashing about in the water.

You sputtered and coughed, before opening your eyes and both your heart and time stopped. In front of you, with his arms around you was the most beautiful human being on the planet. His eyes were a deep blue and they stared at you intensely, his lips were plump and pink, and his blonde, wet hair matted across his face. The sunlight reflecting on the water hit his face and he shone. He sparkled like an angel and you became as dumb as a mule. He must have sensed that you were in shock as he put his arms around your waist and guided you out of the water and into the folding chair. He stared at you again, before grabbing a towel and he began to walk away. Your brain came out of autopilot right then and you scrambled to your feet. "Wait!" You yelled, and the man stopped, turning back to you, his eyes burning with curiosity. "Thank you for-for saving me. My name's Y/N. Who- who are you?" You sputtered out. "Y/N right?" His voice came out, soft and pleasant. "You must be the new house keeper. I'm your boss, Park Jimin."

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Part two will be out soon! Hopefully!.

Comments would be appreciated!!!

#bangtanfluffs #park jimin #fantasy #vampire au #horror au #bts ceo au

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

The Smartphone Society

The automobile was in many respects the defining commodity of the twentieth century. Its importance didn’t stem from technological virtuosity or the sophistication of the assembly line, but rather from an ability to reflect and shape society. The ways in which we produced, consumed, used, and regulated automobiles were a window into twentieth-century capitalism itself — a glimpse into how the social, political, and economic intersected and collided.Today, in a period characterized by financialization and globalization, where “information” is king, the idea of any commodity defining an era might seem quaint. But commodities are no less important today, and people’s relationships to them remain central to understanding society. If the automobile was fundamental to grasping the last century, the smartphone is the defining commodity of our era.People today spend a lot of time on their phones. They check them constantly throughout the day and keep them close to their bodies. They sleep next to them, bring them to the bathroom, and stare at them while they walk, eat, study, work, wait, and drive. Twenty percent of young adults even admit to checking their phones during sex.What does it mean that people seem to have a phone in their hand or pocket everywhere they go, all day long? To make sense of our purported collective phone addiction, we should follow the advice of Harry Braverman, and examine the “machine on the one side and social relations on the other, and the manner in which these two come together in society.”Hand MachinesApple insiders refer to FoxConn’s assembly city in Shenzhen as Mordor — J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth hellhole. As a spate of suicides in 2010 tragically revealed, the moniker is only a slight exaggeration of the factories in which young Chinese workers assemble iPhones. Apple’s supply chain links colonies of software engineers with hundreds of component suppliers in North America, Europe, and East Asia — Gorilla Glass from Kentucky, motion coprocessors from the Netherlands, camera chips from Taiwan, and transmit modules from Costa Rica funnel into dozens of assembly plants in China.Capitalism’s simultaneously creative and de­structive tendencies spur constant changes in global production networks, and within these networks, new configurations of corporate and state power. In the old days, producer-driven supply chains, exemplified by industries like auto and steel, were dominant. People like Lee Iacocca and Boeing legend Bill Allen decided what to make, where to make it, and how much to sell it for.But as the economic and political contradictions of the postwar boom heightened in the 1960s and ’70s, more and more countries in the Global South adopted export-oriented strategies to achieve their development goals. A new type of supply chain emerged (particularly in light industries like apparel, toys, and electronics) in which retailers, rather than manufacturers, held the reins. In these buyer-driven models, companies like Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Walmart design goods, name their price to manufacturers, and often own little more in the way of production than their lucrative brands.Power and governance are located at multiple points in the smartphone chain, and production and design are deeply integrated at the global scale. But the new configurations of power tend to reinforce existing wealth hierarchies: poor and middle-income countries try desperately to move into more lucrative nodes through infrastructure development and trade deals, but upgrading opportunities are few and far between, and the global nature of production makes struggles by workers to improve conditions and wages extremely difficult.Congolese coltan miners are separated from Nokia executives by more than an ocean — they are divided by history and politics, by their country’s relationship to finance, and by decades-old development barriers, many of which are rooted in colonialism.The smartphone value chain is a useful map of global exploitation, trade politics, uneven development, and logistical prowess, but the deeper significance of the device lies elsewhere. To discover the more subtle shifts in accumulation that are illustrated and facilitated by the smartphone, we must turn from the process by which people use machines to create phones to the process by which we use the phone itself as a machine.Considering the phone as a machine is, in some respects, immediately intuitive. Indeed, the Chinese word for mobile phone is shouji, or “hand machine.” People often use their hand machines as they would any other tool, particularly in the workplace. Neoliberal demands for flexible, mobile, networked workers make them essential.Smartphones extend the workplace in space and time. Emails can be answered at breakfast, specs reviewed on the train home, and the next day’s meetings verified before lights out. The Internet becomes the place of work, with the office just a dot on the vast map of possible workspaces.The extension of the working day through smartphones has become so ubiquitous and pernicious that labor groups are fighting back. In France, unions and tech businesses signed an agreement in April 2014 recognizing 250,000 tech workers’ “right to disconnect” after a day’s work, and Germany is currently contemplating legislation that would prohibit after-work emails and phone calls. German Labor Minister Andrea Nahles told a German newspaper that it is “indisputable that there is a connection between permanent availability and psychological diseases.”Smartphones have also facilitated the creation of new types of work and new ways of accessing labor markets. In the “marketplace for odd jobs,” companies like TaskRabbit and Postmates have built their business models by tapping into the “distributed workforce” through smartphones.TaskRabbit connects people who would prefer to avoid the drudgery of doing their own chores with people desperate enough to do piecework odd jobs for pay. Those who want chores done, like the laundry or cleanup after their kid’s birthday party, link up with “taskers” using TaskRabbit’s mobile app.Taskers are expected to continuously monitor their phones for potential jobs (response time determines who gets a job); consumers can order or cancel a tasker on the go; and upon successfully completing the chore, the contractor can be paid directly through the phone.Postmates — the darling of the gig economy — is an up-and-comer in the business world, especially after Spark Capital pumped $16 million into it earlier this year. Postmates tracks its “couriers” in cities like Boston, San Francisco, and New York using a mobile app on their iPhones as they hustle to deliver artisanal tacos and sugar-free vanilla lattes to homes and offices. When a new job comes in, the app routes it to the closest courier, who must respond immediately and complete the task within an hour to get paid.The couriers, who are not recognized employees of Postmates, are less enthusiastic than Spark. They get $3.75 per delivery plus tips, and because they’re classified as independent contractors, are not protected by minimum wage laws.In this way, our hand machines fit seamlessly into the modern world of work. The smartphone facilitates contingent employment models and self-exploitation by linking workers to capitalists without the fixed costs and emotional investment of more traditional employment relations.But smartphones are more than a piece of technology for wage work — they have become a part of our identity. When we use our phones to text friends and lovers, post comments on Facebook, or scroll through our Twitter feeds, we’re not working — we’re relaxing, we’re having fun, we’re creating. Yet, collectively, through these little acts, we end up producing something unique and valuable: our selves.Selves for SaleErving Goffman, an influential American sociologist, was interested in the self and how individuals produce and perform their selves through social interaction. By his own admission, Goffman was a bit Shakespearean — for him “all the world is a stage.” He argued that social interactions can be thought of as performances, and that people’s performances vary depending on their audience.We enact these “front-stage” performances for people — acquaintances, coworkers, judgmental relatives — that we want to impress. Front-stage performances give the appearance that our actions “maintain and embody certain standards.” They convince the audience that we really are who we say we are: a responsible, intelligent, moral human being.But front-stage performances can be shaky and are often undermined by mistakes — people put their foot in their mouth, they misread social cues, they have a piece of spinach lodged in their teeth, or they get caught in a lie. Goffman was fascinated by how hard we work to perfect and maintain our front-stage performances and how often we fail at them.Smartphones are a godsend for the dramaturgical aspects of life. They enable us to manage the impressions we make on others with control-freak precision. Instead of talking to each other, we can send text messages, planning our witticisms and avoidance strategies in advance. We can display our impeccable taste on Pinterest, superior parenting skills on CafeMom, and burgeoning artistic talents on Instagram, all in real time.New York magazine recently ran a piece about the four most desirable people in New York City according to OKCupid. These individuals have crafted such attractive dating profiles that they are pummeled with attention and racy requests — their phones ping continually with messages from potential paramours. Tom, one of the chosen four, regularly tweaks his profile, subbing in new photos, and rewording his self-description. He has even used OKCupid’s MyBestFace profile-optimizing service.Tom says all this effort is necessary in our present “culture of likes.” Tom considers his OKCupid profile to be “an extension of himself”: “I want it to look good and clean so, like, I make it do crunches and shit.”The incredible reach of social media and people’s rapid adoption of it to produce and perform their selves are engendering the emergence of new technologically mediated rituals of interaction. Smartphones are now central to the way we “generate, maintain, repair, and renew as well as . . . contest or resist relationships.”Take texting rituals, which, with all their complex, unwritten rules, now play a commanding role in the relationship dynamics of most young adults. One need not deal in toxic nostalgia to admit that new, technologically mediated rituals are displacing or radically altering older conventions.Digitally maintaining, generating, and contesting relationships through smartphones is somewhat different from using phones to complete tasks associated with wage work. Individuals don’t get paid a wage for their Tinder profile or for uploading photos of their weekend adventures on Snapchat, but the selves and the rituals they produce are certainly for sale. Regardless of intention, when a person uses their smartphone to connect with people and the imagined digital community, the output of their labor of love is increasingly likely to be sold as a commodity.Companies like Facebook are pioneers in the enclosure and sale of digital selves. In 2013, Facebook had 945 million users who accessed the site through their smartphones. It made 89 percent of its revenue that year from advertising, half of which came from mobile advertising. Its entire architecture is designed to guide the mobile production of selves through a platform that makes those selves salable.That’s why it instituted its “real names” policy: “pretending to be anything or anyone isn’t allowed.” Facebook needs users to use legal names so it can easily match corporeal selves with digital selves, because data produced by and connected to an actual human is more profitable.Users of the dating site OKCupid agree to a similar exchange: “data for a date.” Third-party companies sit in the background of the site, scooping up users’ photos, political and religious views, and even the David Foster Wallace novels they profess to love. The data are then sold to advertisers, who create targeted, personalized ads.The pool of people who have access to OKCupid’s data is remarkably large — OkCupid, along with other companies like Match and Tinder, is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, the sixth-largest online network in the world. Crafting a self on OKCupid may or may not yield love, but it definitely yields corporate profits.Awareness is spreading that our digital selves are now commodities. New School professor Laurel Ptak recently published a manifesto called “Wages for Facebook” and in March 2014, Paul Budnitz and Todd Berger created Ello, a fleetingly popular Facebook alternative.Ello proclaims: “We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product.” Ello promises not to sell your data to third-party advertisers, at least for now. It reserves the right to do so in the future.However, discussions of the peddling of digital selves by gray-market data companies and Silicon Valley giants are usually separate from conversations about increasingly exploitative working conditions or the burgeoning market for precarious, degrading work. But these are not separate phenomena — they are intricately linked, all pieces in the puzzle of modern capitalism.iCommodifyCapital must reproduce itself and generate new sources of profit over time and space. It must constantly create and reinforce the separation between wage laborers and owners of capital, increase the value it extracts from workers, and colonize new spheres of social life to create commodities. The system, and the relationships that comprise it, are constantly in motion.The expansion and reproduction of capital in everyday life and the colonization of new spheres of social life by capital are not always obvious. Thinking about the smartphone helps us put the pieces together because the device itself facilitates and undergirds new models of accumulation.The evolution of work over the past three decades has been characterized by a number of trends — the lengthening of the workday and workweek, the decline of real wages, the reduction or elimination of non-wage protections from the market (like fixed pensions or health and safety regulations), the proliferation of part-time work, and the decline of unions.At the same time, norms regarding the organization of work have also shifted. Temporary, project-oriented employment models are proliferating. Employers are no longer expected to provide job security or regular hours, and employees no longer expect those things.But the degradation of work is not a given. Increasing exploitation and immiseration are tendencies, not fixed outcomes ordained by the rules of capitalism. They are the result of battles lost by workers and won by capitalists.The ubiquitous use of smartphones to extend the workday and expand the market for shit jobs is a result of the weakness of both workers and working-class movements. The compulsion and willingness of increasing numbers of workers to engage with their employers through their phones normalizes and justifies the use of smartphones as a tool of exploitation, and solidifies constant availability as a requirement for earning a wage.Apart from the Great Recession, corporate profit rates have steadily climbed since the late eighties, and not only as a result of capital (and the state) rolling back the gains of the labor movement. The reach of global markets has widened and deepened, and the development of new commodities has grown apace.The expansion and reproduction of capital is dependent on the development of these new commodities, many of which emerge from capital’s incessant drive to enclose new spheres of social life for profit, or as political economist Massimo De Angelis says, to “put [these spheres] to work for [capital’s] priorities and drives.”The smartphone is central to this process. It provides a physical mechanism to allow constant access to our digital selves and opens a nearly uncharted frontier of commodification.Individuals don’t get paid in wages for creating and maintaining digital selves — they get paid in the satisfaction of participating in rituals, and the control afforded them over their social interactions. They get paid in the feeling of floating in the vast virtual connectivity, even as their hand machines mediate social bonds, helping people imagine togetherness while keeping them separate as distinct productive entities. The voluntary nature of these new rituals does not make them any less important, or less profitable for capital.Braverman said that “the capitalist finds in [the] infinitely malleable character of human labor the essential resource for the expansion of his capital.” The last thirty years of innovation demonstrate the truth of this statement, and the phone has emerged as one of the primary mechanisms to activate, access, and channel the malleability of human labor.Smartphones ensure that we are producing for more and more of our waking lives. They erase the boundary between work and leisure. Employers now have nearly unlimited access to their employees, and increasingly, holding even a low-paid, precarious job hinges on the ability to be always available and ready to work. At the same time, smartphones provide people constant mobile access to the digital commons and its gauzy ethos of connectivity, but only in exchange for their digital selves.Smartphones blur the line between production and consumption, between the social and the economic, between the pre-capitalist and the capitalist, ensuring that whether one uses their phone for work or pleasure, the outcome is increasingly the same — profit for capitalists.Does the arrival of the smartphone signify the Debordian moment in which the commodity has completed its “colonization of social life”? Is it true that not only is our relationship to commodities plain to see, but that “commodities are now all that there is to see?”This might seem a bit heavy-handed. Accessing social networks and digital connectivity through mobile phones undoubtedly has liberatory elements. Smartphones can help battle anomie and promote a sense of ambient awareness, while at the same time making it easier for people to generate and maintain real relationships.A shared connection through digital selves can also nourish resistance to the existing hierarchy of power whose internal mechanisms isolate and silence individuals. It’s impossible to imagine the protests sparked by Ferguson and police brutality without smartphones and social media. And ultimately, most people are not yet compelled to use smartphones for work, and they certainly aren’t required to perform their selves through technology. Most could throw their phones into the sea tomorrow if they wished.But they won’t. People love their hand machines. Communicating primarily through smartphones is fast becoming an accepted norm, and more and more rituals are becoming technologically mediated. Constant connection to the networks and information we call cyberspace is becoming central to identity. Why this is happening is a labyrinthine speculation.Is it, as media and technology expert Ken Hillis suggests, simply another way to “stave off the Void and the meaningless of existence?” Or, as novelist and professor Roxane Gay recently pondered, does our ability to manipulate our digital avatars provide a balm for our deep sense of impotence in the face of injustice and hate?Or — as tech guru Amber Case wonders — are we all turning into cyborgs?Probably not — but it depends on how you define cyborg. If a cyborg is a human who uses a piece of technology or a machine to restore lost functions or enhance her capacities and knowledge, then people have been cyborgs for a long time, and using a smartphone is no different than using a prosthetic arm, driving a car, or working on an assembly line.If you define a cyborg society as one in which human relationships are mediated and shaped by technology, then our society certainly seems to meet this criterion, and our phones play a starring role. But our relationships and rituals have long been mediated by technology. The rise of massive urban centers — hubs of connectivity and innovation — would not have been possible without railroads and cars.Machines, technology, networks, and information do not drive or organize society — people do. We make things and use things according to the existing web of social, economic, and political relationships and the balance of power.The smartphone, and the way it shapes and reflects existing social relations, is no more metaphysical than the Ford Rangers that once rolled off the assembly line in Edison, New Jersey. The smartphone is both a machine and a commodity. Its production is a map of global power, logistics, and exploitation. Its use shapes and reflects the perpetual confrontation between the totalizing drives of capital and the resistance of the rest of us.In the present moment, the need for capitalists to exploit and commodify is strengthened by the ways in which smartphones are produced and consumed, but capital’s gains are never secure and unassailable. They must be renewed and defended at every step. We have the power to contest and deny capital’s gains, and we should. Perhaps our phones will come in handy along the way.

#anti capitalism #anti technology #consumerism #mass society

[motorcyclegear101]

How To Change Oil On a Motorcycle – Rookie Video Guide

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How to change the oil on a motorcycle in 11 easy to follow steps. Watch our in-depth video tutorial created for beginners and save $$$ on dealership costs.

Warm Engine

Remove Drain Plug

Drain Oil

Check Oil For Contaminants

Remove Filter

Replace Drain Plug Seal

Install New Filter

Reinstall Drain Plug

Top Up Oil

Run Engine

Check Oil Levels

For most riders changing your motorcycle engine oil is the maintenance task second only to checking tire pressure that you’re going to perform most frequently.

Instead of spending lots and lots of money paying somebody else to do it, you can spend a little quality time with your bike learn a little bit about it make sure the jobs get done right by doing it yourself, this guide is here to help you do that.

For this example I am going to be using a Harley Davison Street Glide, this is going to serve as our representative example.

We prefer to put our motorcycle on a lift when changing the oil but it can be changed just as easily on the center stand.

The Harley Street Glide is going to be a representative motorcycle but there’s a wide variety of motorcycles out there and there’s a lot of different ways to change the oil so check with your owners manual to for the correct information on where items are located.

This post is sort of a general theory and overview about getting the oil out of the bike getting fresh oil into the bike and getting your filter on and off, just keep in mind your motorcycle may not be exactly the same.

Tools Required

The next item we’re going to talk about besides the bike is the tools you’re going to need for this job. The tools I use for my motorcycle oil change is simply a collection of tools that we’re going to use for this oil change but again because all bikes differ a little.

Not all tools are going to be the same, however, there are some basic tools just about everybody’s going to wind up having.

Oil Filter Rench

First things first you need some method of getting your oil filter off. If you have an external spin-on filter a set of filter jaw pliers will definitely be helpful. However, if you have an internal filter you may not need that, you may just need something as simple as an Allen key.

Safety Gloves

I’m not a big clean freak, nor my a big safety guy, however, motor oil especially used motor oil is carcinogenic so protect yourself. I put plenty of carcinogens into myself, I don’t need any extra help so I use disposable latex gloves.

Consumables

We have our filter, we have our oil and a funnel and a plastic bag the purpose of which I’ll explain to you just a little bit later. And of course, a drain pan because you do want to capture that used motor oil, it’s pretty harmful to the environment recycling it is not difficult at all if you’re in North America.

Factory Service Manual

I’ve done thousands of oil changes and I feel pretty confident I can get through an oil change without a manual but there’s no shame in terms of having a manual on your bench.

Oftentimes I’m doing more complex projects and I’ll have three or four separate manuals opened up and maybe even a tablet computer pulled up with a forum so I can gain additional information. Knowledge is the most important tool so don’t be afraid of using it.

Most oil changes are fairly easy on today’s motorcycles, all of you should be able to get an oil change performed and again it’s going to bring you a little closer your bike.

You can get to spend a little bit of quality time with your best friend and you’re going to possibly spot problems before they crop up.

The first step I like to do when I’m doing an oil change is to check the oil. I like to see the level of it, low oil can do a variety of things. First, the engine tends to run a little bit hotter, the oil serves as a cooling agent in most motorcycles.

What To Look For

The other thing Its responsible for is lubricating the engine. On something like a Harley, it can be damaging to the engine if you’re running low but if you’re on a metric bike the oil performs a couple more functions.

Many metric bikes use the engine oil also as a transmission lubricant and it serves a tertiary function of cooling off the stator which is an electrical component.

Some bikes are famous for having Staters go bad a little bit early because they’ve been run low on oil, so if I see a bike that’s been run low on oil I know I can keep an eye out for some other damage that may have occurred.

The other reason I like to check the oil is I like to examine the consistency of it, sometimes there are things in the oil that can tell you about bad things that are happening in your engine.

For instance, if your engine oil was to look milky that can sometimes mean the coolant is getting into your oil.

That’s not going to happen of course on an air-cooled Harley but if you do have a liquid-cooled bike and you have milky oil that can be indicative of coolant mixing with the oil which is not a good situation.

The other thing you can sometimes see are metallic flakes. The oil will look sparkly when you’re looking at it, sparkling oil can also be a sign that maybe there is some metal on metal friction that shouldn’t be happening in there.

While these are bad things to see if you catch them early enough you can sometimes save yourself from having to purchase a replacement engine.

I know I’ve definitely replaced cases on Harley’s before and sometimes those problems could have been caught earlier had somebody been paid a little attention to the fluid and the obvious signs of damage.

Even though your factory service manual may not tell you to check the level and condition of your oil as part of an oil change I think there are some benefits.

To check the oil level locate the dipstick. Remember not every single motorcycle, yours included will have a dipstick necessarily. Some bikes have sight glasses in which case you’ll have to check the level by peering into a glass on the side of the engine.

Remember the position the bike is important as far as determining the correct oil level because the oil flows to the bottom of its tank. You may or may not have to check the bike upright or on its side stand, your manuals going to tell you how to do it.

You should know how to check your oil, it’s something every motorcyclist should be doing regularly. If you don’t see any signs of contamination of your oil (metallic flakes or milkiness) that’s a good sign.

At this point what I like to do with the dipstick if your bike has one is leave it just sort of hanging out of the engine, this is a sign most mechanics will use to let other mechanics know not to start a motorcycle because it’s being operated on.

Warm Engine

The very first thing you should do before draining the engine oil is warm up your bike, I tend to put my bike on the main stand and let it run for about five minutes to warm up the oil.

When the engine oil gets warm it gets thinner and when you drain it the old will drain quicker and more thoroughly.

You want to get the engine warm not hot, remember you will be touching some engine parts and they can get hot so you don’t want to get them too hot so you cannot work on the bike.

Drain Engine Oil

It’s now time to get the old motor oil out of this bike. The first thing you need to do is to get the drain plug out of the bike so we can get the oil out before we get to that let’s discuss a couple tips and tricks that might make your life just a little bit easier.

Tip 1

First things first make sure the plug you’re about to remove is indeed the oil drain plug. Some bikes have a number of plugs underneath, the Street Glide has a transmission oil drain plug, there’s also off to the side a primary oil plug.

If you don’t pull the correct drain plug the oil drain plug you may wind up doing just a bit more than an oil change.

Tip 2

The next tip I have for you too is using an oil drain pan. I also like to have a sacrificial rag placed in the pan.

This rag is going to get dirty and disgusting but what the rag does is for the initial deluge of oil that winds up pouring into the pan – it sort of help dampen that so the oil doesn’t go into the pan and jump right back out.

This will keep things clean, it will keep our work area clean and minimize some of the cleanups you will wind up doing at the end of the oil change.

Remove Drain Plug

The first thing you’re going to do is break the drain plug free. Nearly every pull on a drain plug is kind of difficult the first time, after that, it should unthread pretty easily. Once you have loosened you can smoothly spin the drain plug to remove it.

You may even be able to use your fingers to get the drain plug finally loose and get to the end of the thread, when when the plug breaks free the plug might pop into the pan which isn’t the biggest deal in the world so just make sure if it does end up in the pan that you remember to go back and get it before you dump your oil.

When you reach the end of the thread the plug will feel very loose, there is probably a whole bunch of oil about to shoot out of here so make sure you have the drain pan underneath the plughole to catch the sudden surge of oil. While the oil is draining you can move onto removing the oil filter.

Removing Oil Filter

Internal Filter

Removing the old filter is going to differ from bike to bike as we had talked about earlier. Some of you are going to have an internal filter if you do when you’re removing the access plate be careful when you’re getting the last of the bolts undone because those things are under spring pressure.

It’s not enough to be dangerous but it is enough to throw some parts out into your lap, you don’t want that because you want to see exactly how the order those parts came out in. Just be mindful of the fact that there are some little parts in there so make sure you’re taking everything out and returning it in the proper order.

External Filter

For those of you who are working on a bike with an external filter, you’re going to need to spin the filter off, sometimes that can be pretty difficult as we had mentioned earlier.

There are a variety of tools around to help get the filter off, some tools are helpful in certain situations and some tools are not. You may need one or two different cracks at it with different tools like the filter jaw pliers I mentioned previously.

Just like the drain plug, the filter will feel a little tight at first but once it has cracked it should come off pretty easy. Once it has cracked continue to use the tool to loosen until you feel it can be finished by hand.

Remember before we talked about that plastic bag? Now’s the time and you would be using it. One of the things you can do to help keep your mess to a minimum is to take your plastic bag and slide it over the filter or up if you have a low hanging filter.

You can envelop the filter with the bag. You should be able to loosen the filter in the bag to help keep the mess down.

Just a little shot of oil so make sure you have a pan underneath handy or some rags if you’re not going to use the plastic bag trick.

It can seem like it takes quite a while for your motorcycle to rid itself of all its oil but that’s actually okay, it gives you a little bit of time to perform some necessary housekeeping.

Drain Plug Seal

First things first your drain plug has some way of sealing against the oil pan, some of you may have crushed washers or perhaps like a fiber washer sealing your plug and your pan. In the case of our Harley, you may have a sealing o-ring.

Renewing the plug seal will help keep leaks at bay when you consider how inexpensive these o-rings are it really would be a shame to wind up smoking a motor because you had a leaky one and you lost all your oil.

Next up is your filter

If you’ve cleaned your motorcycle off correctly you’ll notice that there’s very little oil on the part of the engine, the motorcycle filter seals too.

Rubber being kind of catchy can have a tendency to grab and tear so what I like to do is grab a finger full of my new motor oil, dab a little on the filter o-ring and then just sort of work it around. This will help the o-ring slip and slide between the filter and the engine block itself, it will stop it from tearing.

One of the other things you can do too is if you have a canister style filter that faces upward, you can actually fill this thing up with oil. What that does is minimizes the amount of time your engine is running dry without oil going through it, you can save a little bit of wear and tear.

Fit New Filter

Now have our new oil filter prepped and it’s now time to install on the bike. A couple of items of note before we get to that.

First things first you want to check the motorcycles filter sealing surface, that’s important because the o-ring from the old filter may not have come off completely when you removed the old filter.

If you install a new filter on top of that old oring you’re guaranteed to have some leaks so make sure all of the old oring has been removed from the engine block before installing the new filter.

The other thing you want to think about is as far as installation is concerned is what tool you should use. Even though you may see on some filters they do have a method to get a tool on there, that’s only for removal, you should be able to install a canister style filter on your motorcycle by hand.

What you should do is screw it on by hand until you feel the sealing surface touch the motorcycle and from that point, you should tighten somewhere between three quarters in one more turn beyond it.

That will get the filter snug enough so that it’s not going to come off while you’re riding your bike.

One of the things I did was mark the filter so I can see how far I have to turn to get that three quarters to one turn and that little bit there should be all we need.

Top Up Oil

Our oil is down to a very very slow drip so it’s now time to reinstall our drain plug. We’ve got a fresh o-ring on the plug before we begin there are a couple of things you want to think about.

On our representative example bike Harly specs a torque of 84 to 108-inch pounds to crank down the oil drain plug bolt, again check with your bike to see what requirements are.

Another thing you want to consider is when you’re installing the plug install using your fingers first. The reason being if you have cross threaded the plug your fingers will feel the difference and not damage anything if you apply a tool to this immediately and start cranking down there’s a real possibility you could destroy some threads somewhere.

Once the threads catch you can finger tighten the thread without any risk of damage to any of the parts, once the plug is in as far as you can using your fingers it’s time to get a tool out in order to tighten it fully.

The Homestretch

Our new filter has been installed, our drain plug has been tightened and all we have left to do is fill the bike up with fresh oil. I’d like to take this moment to remind you that this is not the end of the oil change, this should end exactly as it began with a check of the oil even though 4 quarts is about the right amount for the Harly we want to visually confirm that.

What Type Of Oil To Use

There are many types of oil you can use for engine, we have written an in-depth article that explains what we consider to be the best oils to use for motorcycle engines. Check out our article “Mineral Oil vs Synthetic For Motorcycles” which goes into this in much more detail.

Once you have filled up with new oil according to your owner’s manual you can start your bike. This allows the oil to circulate throughout the engine and fill in some of the air gaps we’ve created and then recheck.

Theoretically, things should be spot-on and that should get us exactly where we need to be to get this bike ready to ride.

That’s the way we change our motorcycle oil, hopefully, those of you who are rookies learned a little something and you feel confident attacking this job and maybe you old hands happen to learn a trick or two that might make your next oil change a little bit easier.

The post How To Change Oil On a Motorcycle – Rookie Video Guide appeared first on Motorcycle Gear 101.

[georgialouisea]

Don’t Know

Pairing - Dean x Reader, Sam, Bobby.

Warnings - Angst, buried alive, blood, claustrophobic situation, asphyxiation,  character death.

Word count - 1866

Square filled - Buried Alive

A/N- Written for @spnangstbingo , I’ve been in an angsty mood lately and I guess it’s kinda showing.

Angst Bingo Masterlist

“So what? It’s burying people alive then eating them?” You asked looking over Dean’s shoulder at his laptop screen, running your hands down his chest you wrapped your arms around his neck.

“Seems like it.” Dean’s hands covered yours on his chest. “Wanna check it out?”

“Yeah, why not let’s go it’s only an hours drive away.”

“Go where?” Sam asked joining you both in the kitchen.

“To find out what’s burying people alive then eating them.” Dean looked up at his brother.

“Ew.” Sam’s nose scrunched up.

“Yep.” You smiled up at him.

“We’ll leave in ten minutes.” Dean patted your hand.

Letting go you stood up watching as Dean stood next to you. “You’re going to be okay on this one? You’re still not one hundred percent.” He wrapped his arms around you.

“I’m better now, I think I am.” Smiling at him your lips met his.

“Must be because you’re kissing me again.” He smirked kissing you again.

“You said ten minutes if you two carry on we’ll never leave.” Sam huffed.

“Shut up Sammy,” Dean growled.

“Listen, I’ll be in the car.” With a sigh, he left you both alone in the kitchen.

“He’s right.” Pulling away from him you couldn’t help the smile on your face.

“Well, he’s in the car … so we’re basically alone.” He grinned at you scooping you up your legs wrapped around his waist, his lips attacking your neck with each step.

-

“Seriously guys?” Sam looked at you as you both climbed into the Impala.

“What?” Dean smirked.

“It’s been nearly an hour.”

“Sorry, Sammy.” Smiling at him you settled into the backseat.

“What can I say she’s hot,” Dean smirked.

“Dean.” You rolled your eyes from the back seat. “Shut up.”

With a grin, he pulled out of the garage and onto the road.

“Are we sure this our thing?” Sam asked pulling off his jacket throwing it onto his bed.

“If it’s not our thing there’s a serial killer cannibal on the loose.” Sitting down on your motel bed you looked up at him.

“That’s not our problem, that’s for the real FBI to deal with.” He sighed running a hand down his face.

“When we’re sure it’s not our thing we’ll back down.”

“Okay.” Sam nodded.

“So what do we know?” Dean sat at the table looking at you and Sam.

“Everyone’s gone missing from around the same place.” Dean opened his laptop.

“The industrial estate.”

“But that whole place was fine today, no EMF, no dodgy dealings nothing.” Dean shrugged.

“Everyone’s gone missing at night,” Sam added. “So we’ll go back tonight.”

“Okay, we go back tonight.”

“Pick a floor.” Dean looked up at the factory.

“Is it really a good idea to split up?” Sam asked shutting the Impala’s trunk.

“It’ll be quicker.” Dean shrugged.

“Okay.” Nodded you checked your torch was working. “Let’s go.”

-

The factory was quiet only a few emergency light bulbs lit the hallways, creeping silently down the walkway you were scanning the place for anything supernatural or off.

“Y/N?” Sam’s voice called from a particularly dimly lit section of the room.

“Sammy?” You whispered, your flashlight flickered before cutting out.

“I’m down here.” He called out again.

Walking further into the darkness your foot hit something hard, stopping you crouched down, hands reaching out you felt along the unmistakeable flannel-clad chest rising and falling slowly. Pulling your phone out of your pocket you kicked yourself for not thinking of it sooner, shining the light at your feet Sam was unconscious, his face bloody and starting to bruise. “Sa-” As his name left your lips a blow to the temple made you see dancing stars before another made your world turn to black.

-

It was hot, hot and clammy, there was no air in the room. Running your hand across Dean’s chest you patted over his heart feeling him stir slowly. “Baby why is it so hot, open a window.” Your voice cracked.

“Y/N?” Sam asked his body tensing under your weight.

“Sam?” Your eyes opened to see nothing but darkness.

“What the hell is going on?” He whispered.

“Why is it so dark in here? And why the hell are we in bed together?”

“I need you to stay calm, can you do that?”

“Sam, I’m not a civilian.” You snapped trying to sit up Sam’s arms held you to his chest.

“Don’t move, Y/N you’re going to freak out and I need you to try not to.”

“Sammy, what’s going on?” Your hand curled grabbing onto his flannel.

“We’re in a coffin.”

“What.”

“Don’t make me repeat it.”

“A coffin?”

“Yes.”

“How.”

“I got knocked out pretty quickly, I’m guessing you did too.”

“You were on the floor then -”

“Pain?” Sam finished.

“Yes, pain.” Your head still rested on his chest. “We’re going to die.”

“No, no we’re not,” Sam argued quietly, you could feel him moving about his hand running across the wood.

“He has us, it’s either the monster or a serial killer.” You spoke trying to keep yourself from panicking.

“Dean will find you, he’ll find us, he’ll tear buildings apart until he finds us.” Sam sighed “Until then we need to stay calm and continue to keep our breathing steady.”

“Okay, we can do that.” You nodded up at Sam in the darkness. “I can do that.”

“If you’re going to freakout tell me, yeah?”

“Yes.” Your hand rested over his heart the beating under your palm was fast, Sam was freaking out, his breathing remained steady. “Can we talk or will we use up too much oxygen?”

“We can talk.” Sam pulled you closer. “What do you want to talk about?” He asked his hand running up and down your ribcage.

“Anything, everything.”

“This is probably going to be hard when we know everything about each other, tell me something I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to die.” You whispered.

“I’m trying to avoid that happening.” Sam’s feet shuffled against the foot of the coffin.

You were slowly panicking, trying to stay calm you gripped onto his flannel again. “Sam.”

“I know.” Sam’s breathing was growing more ragged as he struggled to breathe.

“I - It’s getting worse.” You closed your eyes, breathing felt like you were running a marathon up Everest.

“Shh.” Sam’s hand ran across your hair.

“You want to know something you don’t know?” Breathing was verging on impossible as your grip relaxed on his shirt.

“Go on.” Sam coughed covering his mouth with his hand.

“I had sex with Dean this morning.”

“I said something … I … didn’t know.”

“You’re going to be an Uncle.” You whispered.

Sam didn’t speak he only kicked against the lid of the coffin soil trickled through the tiny gaps in the wood, Sam’s hand covered your face shielding you.

“Sammy?”

“Yes?”

“Tell him I love him.” Your voice cracked as you felt yourself slipping. “So much.”

“Y/N, don’t …”

“I love you too, thank you for keeping me alive.”

“Y/N, you’re going to tell him yourself, you’re going to tell him -” He paused slowly fighting to fill his lungs with oxygen. “You’re pregnant, you’re going to tell him.

“I don’t think I am.” Your voice faded to barely a breath.

“Y/N?”

With a few laboured breaths, you felt everything blur, your desperate need for oxygen-starved, darkness was slowly taking over you.

“Y/N, Y/N -”

“Y/N! Sammy!” Dean shouted as he dug into the ground. “Hold on, dear God hold on.” When Dean’s shovel hit something solid both he and Bobby froze.

“You kids best be holding on in there!” Bobby called out as Dean took the axe from Bobby he swung hitting the top corner of the coffin leaving a chunk missing, he could hear someone gasping for air under the wood.

“Y/N! Sam!” Dean shouted as he fell to his knees ripping at the wood with his bare hands.

“Bobby I need some help!”

“Dean that wood can’t take any more weight, I’ll crush them both, get them out and I’ll pull them up.”

Dean’s hands ripped away chunks of wood his hands bloody until he could see you and Sam. Both of you looked like you were sleeping, you had to be sleeping.

Sam’s eyes flew open as he gasped filling his lungs with oxygen. “Y/N CPR now -”

“What?” Dean spluttered as he hauled your lifeless body off Sam’s chest, giving you to Bobby.

“Dean call an ambulance,” Bobby shouted down at him as he knelt beside you starting to administer CPR.

“Is she dead?” Dean whispered as he held his phone to his ear his eyes never leaving you as he asked the obvious question knowing Bobby wouldn’t be doing what he was if you were alive.

“She stopped breathing a few minutes ago.” Sam coughed as he stood up hauling himself out of the wooden coffin.

Dean spoke to the dispatcher giving them the location and your condition before hanging up, he pulled himself out of the hole in the ground before turning to help Sam out, as soon as his brother was above ground he crawled to you his hand reaching out for yours finding it he gave it a squeeze. “Please, please just breathe.” He begged. “Please don’t leave me.”

The minutes ticked by with nothing, no heartbeat, no breath, eventually Sam took over from Bobby when he tired.

“Sam I think we should call it …” Bobby’s hand rested on Sam’s shoulder.

“No! No, she’s going to come back, she has to come back.” Sam continued his eyes falling to Dean who was sat next to you, his hand rested on your cheek, his eyes never leaving you. “She has to.”

“Sam -”

“No, we’re not stopping until a paramedic is here.” Dean finally looked up away from you.

“Over here!” Bobby’s flashlight waved towards the emergency services running towards him across the clearing.

10 minutes, for 10 minutes they tried everything they could before the senior paramedic called a time of death. Dean crumpled silently as he hugged you, his eyes squeezed shut as he cradled your head. “No, please come back, you can’t leave me, I can’t do this without you.”

“Dean, they need to move her.” Bobby knelt down next to him. “Let them do their job.”

“I can’t leave her.” He cried.

“You have to, come on let’s get you up.” Bobby and Sam hauled Dean to his feet with tears falling from all 3 men.

“Dean.” Sam held onto his brother wrapping an arm around his waist holding some of his weight. “Dean.” He repeated, Dean’s eyes finally tore away from the gurney they were loading you on to.

“What?” His eyes leaving his brother for a few seconds.

“She wanted to tell me she loved you  …. and that …” Sam choked the words out as Dean looked up at him with fresh tears falling from his eyes, his grip on Sam’s arm tightening.

“What?”

“You were going to be a Dad,” Sam whispered, as the words left Sam’s lips Dean’s grip on his arm loosened, Dean crumpled to the ground screaming as he hit the ground.

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