↳ request: “Spence gets fatally hurt on the job and the reader (who is his girlfriend and also an agent) just cries over his body, I mean WAILING. In my head I see it as if it's some sort of music video for The Great Gig In The Sky by pink Floyd (iykyk, the song makes me BAWL my eyes out man). Just, absolutely distraught but also artistic, you feel me???”
↳ warnings: Major characters death! Pure angst, blood, wound mention, anxiety, stress, grief, sadness. Reader insert with no use of “y/n”
↳ author’s note: this is short (sorry!!). Not proofread and, I apparently suck at adding the lyrics of a song to the story (!!). I do hope you guys enjoy this, specially @ding-dong-big-schlong , who trusted me with this request and I hope I did it justice! <33
* ੈ✩‧₊˚
I am not frightened of dying, you know.
She turned sharply at the sudden noise, watching as the color drained from his face and pain shot through him. "N-no." Her steps quickened without her realizing it; the sound of her feet pounding on the ground distant in her ears. The familiar ringing in her ears, along with the muteness, was the only thing comprehensible.
He stood there, his hand shooting up to pat at the spreading pain coursing through his body. His vision blurred as he raised his hand to meet his eyes, crimson color seeping through his now-tainted fingers. His mouth opened, but no sound came out, his feet losing their place on the ground as he fell to his knees.
She watched him crumble to the ground, his body seemingly losing all strength, folding onto the ground with a heavy thud. She watched as his hands reached out instinctively but failed to break his fall, leaving him sprawled helplessly on the unforgiving ground, his limbs slack and motionless.
Their coms crackled with frantic voices, familiar tones urging caution, advising to wait for backup as she urgently called for medics. She tuned them out, the urgency in their voices only spurring her to move faster.
Any time will do, I don't mind
The searing pain shot through her knees as they collided with the cold pavement, her jeans now torn and her skin scraped raw, blood trickling from the friction against the rough concrete.
"Spencer—” Her voice quivered with desperation as she reached out, her trembling hands gently guiding him onto his back. “Look at me, Spencer, look at me!”
His eyes fluttered open, the hazel orbs dimming as they swept across the sky before locking onto her tear-filled gaze.
Despite the pain, all he could focus on was her eyes—so beautiful, their color a solace in any circumstance. Yet now, he couldn't bear the sorrow etched within them. The desperation, the pain. "Angel," he whispered.
His arm moved sluggishly as his brain struggled to command it, but eventually, he weakly lifted it and placed his hand against her chest. After a moment of hesitation, he began pushing her away with a grunt of discomfort. “Go.”
“Spencer, what?”
“G-go.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion, and her hand moved to lower his, stopping his relentless pushing. "I'm going to put you in my lap now, okay?" She whispered softly, her voice gentle and reassuring, as she settled beside him.
“N- no, please just go.”
He bled in her arms, watching her panic as she struggled to keep him awake, pressing down on the wound and apologizing each time a hiss escaped his lips. Yet, despite his protests, she pressed down harder whenever his eyes threatened to close again.
The tears had finally escaped her beautiful eyes, and the sight alone caused him more pain than the wound on his chest. “Go, ple—“
He couldn’t bear seeing her cry, so he struggled to pull away, shifting his body despite the searing pain threatening to overwhelm him. He knew his time was over, and it was okay.
Her grip tightened, pulling him closer until his head rested on her shoulder. With a trembling hand, she wiped at the blood on his lip, her tears mingling with his own as they wet his cheek.
Her shouts echoed in the night, the flashing lights illuminating her face so vividly that he wondered if he had already passed into the afterlife.
She looked so pained, and he looked so peaceful. A beautifully, disastrous mixture.
“Help is almost here, Spence. Please hold on.”
His eyes dimmed, his complexion paling as his breathing slowed. With a final, tight-lipped smile—the kind she had grown to love—he quietly whispered, “I love you.”
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime
“Spence?”
His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted, and his chest unmoving as his body rested limply in her arms, like a broken doll awaiting repair.
Her movements were quick as she carefully laid his body back on the ground, her hands trembling as she shook him. "Spencer!" she called out repeatedly, her voice filled with desperation as she continued to shake his body, not pausing even though she knew she might be causing him pain.
Her fingers searched frantically for a pulse, tears streaming down her cheeks as she moved her trembling fingers back and forth. She desperately sought the spot on his neck where she would feel his heartbeat against her fingertips.
With a desperate groan, she quickly blinked away the blurriness from her tears, her hands moving frantically until they landed on his chest. She pressed the heel of her hand against the center of his chest, interlocking her other hand over it, the urgency of her actions mirrored by the rapid pounding of her heart.
With each compression, she pleaded silently with his heart to awaken, her movements fueled by desperation as she struggled to recall the rhythm of the song Spencer had taught her for chest compressions.
With each compression, she felt the resistance of his ribs yielding beneath her hands, the sound of cracking bones lost in the urgency of her efforts. Despite the pain she knew she was causing him, she pressed on, the desperate calls for her name fading into the background as she focused solely on the sinking feeling in her stomach.
Her anger surged, his chest remaining still, his blood-stained lips turning blue, and his skin paling from the loss of blood. "Spencer!" The chest compressions were abandoned as her closed fists pounded his chest, attempting to coax his heart into action. "Wake up!" Each strike grew more forceful, each plea more desperate. "Spencer, wake up! Wake up!"
Strong hands tugged at her vest, forcefully trying to pull her away from him as she persisted. She could hear the familiar voice behind her, begging her to let go—to let Spencer go. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
With a swift motion, her closed fist swung behind her, aimed at creating distance between herself and whoever was grabbing her. “Let go! Let go!” She landed a couple of pathetic hits on them, causing them to hiss in pain and release their grip.
Her knees scraped along the concrete as she swiftly crawled back to the genius's side, the blood on the floor mixing with the blood escaping from the nasty scratches on her knees.
“No- No!” Her sobs escaped her lips as her hands raised into fists again. This time, however, they stayed frozen mid-air as her eyes locked onto his face. “Spence—”
Her hands lowered, holding onto his shoulder as she sat on the back of her legs defeated. She felt the anger and strength slowly leaving her body as she pulled his lifeless body towards her, cradling him in her arms. “Spencer, please…” The rosy pink of his cheeks had disappeared, the glint in his eyes covered behind forever closed lids. Spencer had vanished before her eyes, and yet she could still see him right in front of her, but it wasn’t her ‘Spence’ anymore. Now, it was just the body the soul she had fallen in love with used to occupy.
“Please,” she pleaded, the last reserves of her strength employed in drawing him closer. Her crimson-stained hand tenderly cradled his face, her thumb stroking back and forth as she grappled with the swift departure of his familiar warmth. “Please…”
Sobs and gasps for air wracked her body, repeated pleas of his name falling from her trembling lips. Her heart screamed in agony as her mind processed the harsh reality of his departure. An empty void settled within her, a feeling she knew would never dissipate.
“I love you, too.”
Her head fell onto his shoulder, tears streaming down her cheeks and wetting the cold skin on his neck where the comforting heartbeat she once synced hers with was now absent.
Go take a look at this beautiful trove of old SparkSound magazines someone is selling on eBay. For the price they might as well be made out of gold, but the seller's been nice enough to take big, largely readable photos of so many of the issues.
Is there a similar digital hoard of scanned versions? I'd love to see more! (I've seen photo pages in full but only snippets of the rest.) The absolute like... raw, sloppy, fanzine chaos of these as as official publications from a major label band is blowing my fucking mind, even if it is just for the fan club. It's literally their mom cutting and pasting and cramming mentions from both Melody Maker and TV Guide onto an A3 sheet of paper, layouts be damned. The apostrophe on her typewriter is broken for a couple issues but she carries on with an asterisk. She's also around 60 by this point and banging this out to an audience of hundreds or thousands like it's a local Kiwanis club newsletter. But she's doing it with gusto, by gum, and it's punk as hell.
The best thing about it is that the lack of style is made up for by the absolute top-tier access to the band, and her being surprisingly on top of pertinent details.
For those of you who weren't in a fandom before the internet, those behind-the-scenes photos were like your favorite band's proof of life. There was no Instagram or Twitter, or anything that proved they existed between national TV appearances and touring in your area (besides those mentions in Melody Maker anyway). If you were lucky, your fandom had the capacity to trade videotapes and people in Scranton could see local TV appearances in Los Angeles and vice-versa. If you were really lucky they weren't all copies of copies with potato quality sound and video.
Likewise, if you wanted the 12" extended European dance mix of a song with a B-side unavailable in the US, you had to either special order it somewhere and pay through the nose, hope it was in the imports section of a record store (and still pay through the nose), or you had to trade cassettes or burned CDs and hope the other person didn't flake on you. The fact that she's saying "Don't go running to the import section yet, the single will be out on ____ record label on this date with this track listing" is WAY more info than we usually got from our official sources.
All "Mary Martin" needed to do for exclusive content was take pictures of her sons on vacation. On one page she's absolutely dunking on Russell them in wry cut-and-paste captions and on another she is the perfect hype man, telling people shows at The Greek Theater are gonna sell out so get your tickets early (but hold your horses on travelling- they're working on Japanese dates for September so you may not need to fly to the US). The personal thank-yous! The CARE! *slams fist on table*
If any other band had their mom as the head of their fan club it'd be the most contrived shit in the universe, a complete lie, or both. I fucking love these guys.
Homophobic that I have to record and edit a whole video in order to share the songs I write in a visual medium tbh
I need a wizard to just magically broadcast how good I made this cover of a song from The Last Unicorn. Beam it directly into the hearts and minds of the nation and also the author Peter S. Beagle, whom I googled just now and who is still alive AND WOULD SURELY GIVE ME THE RIGHTS TO USE HIS LYRICS IN MY GRAPHIC NOVEL IF HE ONLY KNEW HOW SICK MY UKULELE SKILLS ARE
It's that time of year again where Mari Lwyd starts to be talked about and shared around and an INCREDIBLY misleading post gets shared a lot. As someone who grew up with Mari Lwyd I wanted to clear some things up.
Also hello, if you are unaware who Mari Lwyd is. This is about the Welsh tradition of the horse skull who visits houses during the Christmas to New Years period in Wales asking for alcohol.
First off and probably the most important one:
Mari Lwyd is not a cryptid!
I can not emphasise this enough. She. Is. Not. A. Cryptid. There is no story or mystery about a ghost or zombie horse roaming the Welsh valleys. She's not even supposed to be a ghost or a zombie. It's just a horse skull on a stick with a guy under a sheet. She's a hobbyhorse and a folk character used to tell Welsh stories and keep songs alive. When people spread the misinformation that she's a cryptid, it's the equivalent of saying Kermit the Frog is a cryptid.
She is actually only one character in a wider cast of characters who go door to door or, in more modern times, pub to pub. The cast of characters can change town to town and village to village but there are some common ones I see time and time again. The Leader, the Merryman, The Jester and The Lady are just some I see regularly. Punch and Judy used to be more popular a few years ago but I haven't seen them in a while as their tradition has mostly fallen out of popularity. In most cases, almost the whole cast will be played by men. Even the characters are considered and referred to as female. Though this again depends and varies by which group is partaking in the Mari Lwyd tradition.
This point also goes onto my second point,
Mari Lwyd does not rap.
I think this comes from a very common misunderstanding of what rap is vs spoken word. Rap is a very specific style of music originating from the African American communities of the USA and has it's own structure and motifs unique to it. It's a lot more complex than people give it credit for as a style of music and just flippantly assign anything similar to it as being rap. If someone is talking fast or reciting poetry, it is not rap. Or anything that is an exchange of words between two people is not a rap battle. Mari Lwyd does not do rap, actually something that gets left out of these posts is the fact Mari Lwyd does not even speak. It's actually the Leader, who does all the speaking and song based banter between the house/pub owner for entry. Mari Lwyd just clicks her mouth, bites people and bobs her head around.
I think Mari Lwyd is a really beautiful and unique part of Welsh culture. She's not actually as wildly celebrated as a lot of the posts make her out to be. Actually, I think most Welsh people themselves learn about Mari Lwyd through the internet as well. Her popularity is increasing thanks to the drive of local groups wanting to keep the traditions alive and a renewed desire to document Welsh traditions before they're gone. Which is why it's such a shame that she's turned into something she's not to earn horror points on the internet. I think this is why it bothers me so much to see the misunderstandings of the culture and the folk tradition. Mari Lwyd's origin is very hot debated as well as how long it's been going on for. But I think it's thanks to a lot of traditions like this that the Welsh language and our stories weren't lost forever. Welsh culture is recovering as is the language. But it's still in a very fragile place. I think it's why it's important to document and correct information when it's spread.
Anyway, if you want to see the tradition in action, here's a lovely video from the Cwmafan RFC going to one of the pubs for charity. It includes the song exchange with the pub owner for entry and the whole pub singing and joining in once Mari Lwyd and the rest are inside.
youtube
As well with another video from St Fagan's showcasing the more traditional and door to door form with the larger cast.
Omar Sharif (Funny Girl, Lawrence of Arabia)—Dark and thrilling, strange and sweet, honey in your ear, spice in your mouth, he was Sherif Ali the Arab, Yuri Zhivago the Russian, Colonel Grau the German and much much much more, here's to the one and only Omar Sharif---- Pharaoh of romance!!! (I'm sorry Im stealing lyrics from the song "Omar Sharif" but it ain't lying!)
Toshiro Mifune (Rashumon, Seven Samurai, Grand Prix, Stray Dog)—i love and respect my boi tab hunter (rest in peace you beautiful, beautiful man ❤️), but after i watched like 12 of his movies in a row on tcm last year, i ALSO love and respect toshiro mifune, son of a literal actual hatamoto’s (a high-ranking samurai) daughter, also very possibly related to the best judokan EVER, AND, he’s the guy who SHOULD have been obi-wan kenobi. the fact that he’s ALSO hot as hell just adds to his appeal.
This is one of two polls in the tournament semifinals. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.
THIS POLL LASTS FOR 24 HOURS.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
Toshiro Mifune propaganda:
"In addition, he spoke fluent mandarin and every time he was casted in foreign films, he said his lines in the language of the movie (although they ended up dubbing him. He wasn’t happy about it though).”
Submitted: this gifset
Also submitted: this video (yes, that one)
"Crucial Toshiro Mifune propaganda: THOSE LEGS."
"That is hella muscle. Go watch The Hidden Fortress, aka Star Wars A New Hope. His thighs deserve an award."
Omar Sharif propaganda:
"he and Peter O'Toole didn't have the heaviest "we're fucking" energy in Lawrence of Arabia for nothing!"
"Additional Omar Sharif propaganda (I am counting as propaganda both the way he looks and the way Peter O'Toole is looking at him.)"