#see sometimes its worth it to vanish from social media to fuck up your first sem of college for 3 months

[corpsentry]

hey nintendo im countin on u

#if the e3 doesnt reveal anything about botw2 then i will not be revealing anything about my life ever again on the internet #zelda #botw #breath of the wild #loz #tloz #the legend of zelda #legend of zelda #my art #my stuff #this is an excuse for me to draw 1) hair 2) shiny bow 3) leggy #we will not talk about the feet. feet are not real this drawing simply would not look right without some feet at th ebottom #that is the only reason the feet are present. otherwise we do not talk about them #see sometimes its worth it to vanish from social media to fuck up your first sem of college for 3 months #so that when you get back *boom* fireworks baby

[realityhelixcreates]

Dance of The Spheres Chapter 1: Terran Tarantella

Chapters: 1/?

Fandom:  Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: PG 13

Warnings: drugging, kidnapping, implied murder

Characters: Loki(Marvel), Heimdall(Marvel)

Additional Tags:  Loki Goes Overboard, But When Doesn’t Loki go Overboard, Mature Reader, Disabled Reader, Political Intrigue

Summary:   

“I see a bad moon a-rising

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin’

I see bad times today”

                       Creedence Clearwater Revival

A small group of men, and one woman gathered in a small room; the kind that seemed like a storage closet from the outside, the kind that had cameras installed, but not functioning. Beyond this room, the basic hustle of running a government rushed on, but within it, all heads were turned to a handful of hand written documents scattered over the table.

“And you're absolutely sure this translation is correct?” One of them asked.

“Yes.” The woman said. “Well, as much as I can be. Old Norse is a contentious language, but this is written so much more clearly than most of our primary sources.” She gestured to the letter in question, written in gold ink on purple parchment. It was a museum quality piece of work, and it would likely never see the inside of one. Its contents were just too incriminating. Especially since the President seemed to be seriously considering it.

“Hm. Well then, we should probably chose someone shouldn't we?” He said.

“Mister President?” The translator asked. “Are you sure? I've been quite plain about what this says. What is being asked of us. It's...reprehensible. And frankly, I am surprised that King Thor would even allow it.”

“Ma'am, this is a culture that is old beyond reckoning.” Another man-one of the generals? She couldn't keep them straight-piped in. “An alien race on top of that. It's only to be expected that they would have customs that are unfamiliar, even repugnant to us. We should keep an open mind.”

It was ridiculous. She knew for a fact that many of the people in this room and beyond held virulent hatred for several cultures that existed on Earth. There was no reason they should be showing this kind of cultural sensitivity to a bunch of aliens who just showed up and started making demands. Especially that one...

“I ask you to understand that sometimes we make hard sacrifices for the good of all.” The President said. “Asgard is a galactic superpower.”

“Was.” She pointed out. “Now they're a bunch of refugees.”

The President gave her an annoyed glance. “They will no doubt regain their power shortly. Their technology is wildly advanced. And if we go along with the occasional weird little whim they have, they will be grateful. So America gains access to Asgardian tech. Imagine how many people could have their lives bettered by Asgardian friendship.”

The translator couldn't help but wonder since when this man gave a shit about bettering the lives of others. It was disgusting, that this was probably just another path to money and power for him. Even moreso that no one else in the room was questioning this, even a little bit. They were all known for eating scraps from his table anyway, and likely looking to grab some of those benefits for themselves. At what expense?

She decided to start looking for another job.

“Asgardian friendship would certainly be a boon for our country.” She said. “Do you have further need of me?” She wanted out of here badly now. She didn't want to be in the room while they made this awful choice.

“No.” The president said. He tapped one of his men on the arm. “Escort her out, would you?”

With relief, she followed the man out of the room.

She never made it to her car.

                                                                               ******

Loki wandered through the dark and cramped byways, to the furthest reaches of their new settlement, past the places where the rest of his people felt safe, past where even he felt safe. These outside places were no longer the haunts of petty criminals or undesirables exactly, not that he feared such unsavories. No, these rough walls were now the lair of the most notorious and hidden Asgardian of all. So mythical was she, that almost no one knew she still lived.

Gullveig the witch. If stories were to be believed, she was the first witch. If stories were to be believed, she had been killed three times, and returned each time. If stories were to be believed, that meant she was now beyond death.

If stories were to be believed, that meant he was as well.

But that was not why he was here.

In all the whispers, in all the screamed confessions, all the gibbering of those who had visited her, her power was very real. Real and terrible, for she could grant any wish, any wish at all, and sometimes that was far more than the wisher actually wanted. Word a wish poorly, and it would be granted. Fail to think through the consequences of a wish, and it would still be granted. It was why she had been killed so many times in the first place. But that was the fault of the wishers, not Gullveig herself.

And Loki had thought through this wish, and knew what it would cost him. But the gains...if he had calculated correctly, predicted correctly, the gains for Asgard could be immense. Steeling himself, he found the one area that appeared to be lit, and entered.

“You have returned again.” She said in her cracked and watery voice. Her back was to him, and she appeared to be warming her hands over a tiny fire in a glowing crucible. Fires-real fires-were strictly forbidden within the confines of Asgard right now, but it was debatable whether those embers counted as a real fire, debatable whether she lived within Asgard. On the edge of things, always as she liked it. “So you are truly committed?”

“I am.” Loki said. “I have made my decision.”

The old witch cackled in amusement. “It may be your last! After this, you will be different. You know this, yes? This person who stands in my doorway? He will no longer exist.”

“That is by design.” Loki said.

She turned to face him. She was, by far, the oldest Asgardian he had ever seen; bent, wizened, wrinkled and scraggly. She didn't look the part of a witch. She wasn't horrifying to look at, simply old, frail, wrapped in a pale shawl. She wasn't frightening at all, except that he knew her to be older than his father's father, and that she had one, single-minded focus in life that transcended any morality or ethics she might have ever had.

“Did you bring me what I want?” she asked.

“Yes.” He offered up a sizable sack, filled with every last scrap of gold that he owned. He had pried it from his armor, stripped it from his jewelry, and pricked out every last shimmering thread from his royal wardrobe. His, and only his: she would not accept any that he had taken from someone else. This had to be his sacrifice to make-the first of several.

Gold was all she ever wanted. Anyone could buy her services, if only they offered gold. Sometimes she didn't care where they got it, but as a ruler, he was a special case. No one knew what she did with it. Surely, she had collected enough over the millennia to build a palace out of it, but it was never anywhere to be seen.

She smiled at the sight of it, seemed to stand straighter, move more spryly.

“Now, for yours.” She plunged her claw-like fingers into the crucible, stirring the embers and ashes with rapidly blackening talons. She plucked forth a glowing ring, strewn with runes, and shook it, blowing ashes from the darkening metal. Using her tattered apron, she polished the ring until it shone even in the weak light of her tiny hovel.

It was not gold, which she would never have parted with, but platinum, a metal that just happened to be fairly abundant in their new settlement. He did not know if the powers of Midgard were aware of the riches to be found in the place they had allotted to Asgard, but he would certainly see that Asgard got to claim them.

The glow and runes had thoroughly faded from the ring before she set it on his palm, with the instruction 'not to put it on until you mean it'. But he knew exactly what he was going to do with it. He had taken the opportunity while Thor slept the long and powerful sleep of an Asgardian ruler, to send a message to the country of most of his brother's friends. The country he had tried to conquer. It was a message that promised things, as in days of old. A promise of power, of friendship, of mutual benefit, in exchange for a life. The simplest and most common of agreements.

Perhaps that might make up for his earlier...indiscretion.

He vanished the ring to his magical hiding place, and exited Gullveig's home. While Thor slept, Loki ruled, and it wouldn't do for him to be missed. Winding along through long, rough corridors, until he returned to the well-lit and finished walls of Asgard's new buildings, he found Heimdall and his advisors waiting. Perfect. He needed to tell them to expect a visitor soon.

                                                                            ******

“There. I think that's everybody within the parameters.” One worker said, pushing back from his computer.

“Let me check.” His partner leaned over the keyboard. “Lessee...age range, yeah...unmarried, yeah...less than twelve thousand a year, yeah...anti-Party sentiments on social media...arrest record, yeah...'other undesirable'? That's pretty cold.”

“This whole thing is cold.” He agreed. “But the projected benefits are worth it. Whoever's chosen will be contributing more than their current life is worth.”

“Cold as ice. Well, let's do this.” His partner hit the sort command, the program sifting through millions of names before settling on one at random.

“Well, there's our unlucky lady.” He said, pulling up all the personal information the computer had. “Sorry about this, miss, but maybe you should've made better life choices. Either way, your sacrifice will usher in a new age of prosperity for us.”

“Well, when do we get her?”

“We've got people in her town. We'll just send them a message tomorrow. Well, sleep tight, miss. There's no telling what that freak is going to do to you.”

“Fucking frigid, man.”

                                                                             ******

With a groan, you pulled yourself out of bed. Another day, another dollar. Never quite enough dollars for the amount of days you spent though.

You found your cane and hobbled to the shower, wasting precious morning moments under the warm spray. You probably wouldn't get a chance to bathe this evening. You would be going to a protest-you had finished your sign last night, and it should be dry by now.

You didn't bother to turn on the lights; the sun was peeking through your window, and it wasn't like your studio apartment had much clutter to trip over anyway.

Getting your leg attached, and grabbing a slice of buttered bread, you just barely caught the bus to work.

It was simple data entry, but it-barely-paid the bills. And it didn't require you to stand for hours, or be constantly walking back and forth, or talking directly to customers, so you were thankful to have it.

You'd still be voting for better conditions though, and surreptitiously trying to unionize. You, and everyone there were still being exploited, and it wouldn't do to just accept that, simply because it could be worse.

Now if only Betty had called in...Nope, she hadn't. It was practically every day lately, that you prayed for your ultra-conservative coworker to just stay home, but she never did. She bragged to you-or within earshot of you-very often about her perfect attendance. You could never prove that she was doing it as a jab to your occasional medical related absences, but you wouldn't put it past her.

She noticed you slipping your sign under your desk.

“That's inappropriate.” She said with unconcealed disgust. Ugh, the twit would hate protesters. She somehow thought she was closer to those power-hungry hangers-on that the regime seemed to draw out of the woodwork. She had much more in common with the people crawling in the streets than she ever would with the so-called 'president' and his cronies, and she would actually benefit from the changes you were all marching for, but her pointy, oyster-white nose was so far in the air that she would never see it.

“It's none of your business.” You grumbled, slipping into your chair, and setting your cane aside. You wouldn't be getting up from there for the next few hours.

“It is my business to know whether I share a cubicle wall with a violent thug!” She trilled sanctimoniously.

“Okay, first of all, that kind of accusation is inappropriate, and prohibited by company policy. Second of all, what am I gonna do? Limp at you?”

“If you decide to get aggressive with me, I can't escape. I have to run down the stairs, but you can beat me to any floor, just by using the elevator!”

“This again? Give it a rest!” You were this close to reporting her. Again. Maybe if you did it enough times, somebody would actually do something about it.

Betty held a genuine grudge over the fact that you were the only employee on this floor who got to use the janky old service elevator. Everybody else had to use the stairs. Never mind that it was literally the only way for you to even get to your desk. No, if there was something that some people were allowed to do, but Betty wasn't, it was clearly incontestable proof of oppression against Betty herself. Also, if the 'wrong sort' of people were allowed to do the same things Betty was, well that was also anti-Betty oppression. She just wanted so badly to be able to claim oppression, that she didn't realize that she actually was being oppressed by the people she wanted just as desperately to emulate.

She was exhausting.

“Good morning you two! Hey Betty, you got those numbers for me yet?” Saved by the boss. Well, not really. He didn't like you, but he didn't like Betty either. He didn't hate either of you. He was just the boss-make believe friendly, but distant, concerned with other things. However, he disliked when employees wasted time, and Betty did. A lot. That's what happened when someone was an incorrigible gossip.

Betty slunk back to her desk, cowed for at least a few minutes. He handed you a bit more work to do, then meandered down the aisle, greeting other employees, and handing out more work on his way to his own tiny office. He wasn't all that important either, in the scheme of things. It was really amazing how many people kept their gaze so fixed on the people in power that they couldn't see them pouring quicksand around their feet.

But you would lend your voice to the march on their behalf anyway. They deserved better too. Maybe they'd see it someday, instead of continuing to fight against their own interests.

For now, though, you would concentrate on your work.

The morning came and went, your little lunch alarm signaling its death. You grabbed your cane and walked slowly and carefully to the break room. You kept a week's worth of small lunches in baggies in the fridge here. Salami, little cheese slices, crackers, cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, and grapes. Not much, but tasty and filling, and you got all the food groups. There was an unspoken rule about not messing with other people's food that, thankfully, nobody in the office had ever broken; at least not while you'd been here.

You could see into the tidy lines of cubicles from the break room, and while you crunched away at your carrots, you noticed something worrying. There were two men in matching suits and shades talking to Betty. She spoke to them animatedly, gesturing at your cubicle. One of the men peeked inside.

Oh, you didn't like that at all.

You didn't actually have anything to hide, but you knew damn well that didn't matter. If these were cops-or worse-they would find whatever it was they wanted to find, one way or another.

By the time you got back from your lunch break, the men had disappeared, but Betty still had a distressingly smug grin on her face. You checked every drawer and every cranny of your desk: nothing had been taken, and nothing had been left behind. You went back to work, trying to ignore the anxiousness that was creeping up your back.

You had just finished and sent your last spreadsheet when your boss opened his door and called you to his office. You slowly made your way there, trying not to pay attention to the malice sparkling in Betty's face, or how your other coworkers glanced at you with pity or distrust.

The suspicious pair of men were hiding out in your boss' office, and you'd never seen him looking more uncomfortable.

One of the men positioned himself closer to the door behind you, not that you could run anyway.

“Um...Do you know why I called you in here?” Your boss asked.

“I assume it has something to do with your new friends.” You said sourly. This was going bad, you could see it a mile off. You honestly didn't know why they were here, or what they wanted. “Seriously though, no I don't. Why have you called me in here?”

You'd make him say it at least.

“Er, well, unfortunately your employment with us has been, well, terminated. So, if you would just gather up your things-”

“Woah, woah, woah!” You interrupted.  “On what grounds? Because these guys said so?”

'These guys' said nothing.

“No, no, it's, uh...your arrest record...”

“That's ridiculous! Why didn't you fire me two months ago then, when it happened? Because you know it was pure bullcrap, that's why! You saw the footage; I never threw anything at that cop! He tripped over some garbage that was already there, then turned around, knocked me down, and hit me with my own cane. They let me out the same day because they knew they had nothing. Cane's still bent.”

“Look, I'm sorry, but you're fired. I'm sorry. Now go on, get out of here.”

And take them with you seemed to be the unspoken plea. You stormed out of the office with as much dignity as you could, spoke to no one, shoved the meager contents of your desk into your purse, gabbed your sign, and got into the old service elevator for the last time.

You would be reporting this, to anybody who would listen. It was completely unacceptable. And now you would have to go through the ordeal of applying either for unemployment, or disability. You hoped your savings would last long enough for your appeals to go through.

You spotted their reflections in a display window on the way to the bus stop. The two men from the office were following you now. Were they feds? Had Betty and your spineless boss sold you out to the feds? You hadn't even done anything!

You almost expected it when they dragged you into an alley, a pungent-smelling cloth held tight over your face, muffling your voice. It made you cough, but that also made you inhale, and in moments, soft blackness wrapped around you.

#danceofthespheres #loki x reader #disabled reader #loki (marvel) #thor (marvel) #Heimdall (Marvel)

[robertdowneyjjr]

any mcu (Tony centric) fic recs? xoxo

I wasn’t too sure if you were looking for any specific pairing or time period within the MCU, so I’ve sorted this list out into a few different pairings, and for stevetony’s case, uhhh several different ~eras~

This is mostly stevetony though. With some pepperony, irondad spiderson, and various other pairings sprinkled in. Under the cut, because this got ridiculously long.

Steve/Tony – CACW // IW

almeno tu nell'universo by @silkspectred50/50 Steve/Tony POV, but very much Tony-centric as it’s set in Italy, where Tony goes to discover some things about his mother’s past that he never knew about. Steve goes along with him in hopes of winning Tony’s forgiveness.

shelter from the storm by @silkspectredTony adopts a baby. Guess who’s Majorly Fucked Up™ about it.

A New Way For Us by ann2who (@stark-spangled-lovers)(Time travel) They fight Thanos—and they’re losing. And before Tony knows what’s happening, he’s standing with Doctor Strange in front of the Eye of Agamotto and gets send back in time. Can he find a way to fix things this time around, or are they doomed to fall apart all over again?

System ID: J.A.R.V.I.S. by @cptxrogersAfter Civil War, Tony is struggling with heading up the team and dealing with the emotional fallout of being betrayed by those closest to him. Luckily, an old friend is back to help protect Tony and ensure he comes to no harm. A Jarvis lives AU.

Leaving Promises Against Your Skin by @nostalgicatsea(Soulmates AU) “Someday, someone will choose you, Tony,” his mother had said, her hands back to cupping his. “And no one, not your father, not anyone, can ever take that from you.” (second in series but can be read as a standalone fic)

(Un)stuck by @navaanwritesHe finds himself in different places, living different lives. And yet it all comes back to Steve.

Things We Learned at the End of the World by JenTheSweetie1. Even the apocalypse can’t keep people away from Olive Garden2. Smoothies do not replace conversations3. Tony has really obvious sex hair4. Home might be a little different, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go back

between dust and despair (series) by @rudderless-in-an-ocean-of-starsIn the aftermath of the apocalypse, Tony Stark does the one thing he knows how to do better than anything else.He builds.

Steve/Tony – AOU // post-AOU

Language by @sailorchibiThis is how Tony fixed the team and the damage he’d done, and in the process learned how to start fixing himself. Well, maybe the latter might take a little help from Steve.

Fixer-Upper by @imafriendlydalekTony leads the way up the steps to the house, and as the door swings open with a long creaking sound - note to self: oil door hinges - Steve’s eyes widen. He steps inside, turns slowly on his own axis as he looks around.“Tony, this place, it’s…” There’s a sense of wonder in his voice. Tony smiles inwardly. It is just the kind of thing Steve would like. Steve, who has a keen appreciation for fine aesthetics, who has a healthy - okay, sometimes more than healthy - sense of history and an acute desire to preserve things he deems worthy.“This place is a dump.”Well, so much for that, then. Tony shifts his weight to one leg as he takes an appraising look. “It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, yeah, I’ll give you that, but it’s not past saving. Just needs some TLC.”Steve uncrosses his arms and shoves his hands in the pockets of his pants. “Well listen, you ever want an extra set of hands with some of the work, just give me a call.”

Caesura by @ylixiaTony’s gotten maybe twelve hours of sleep in the past four days, and he’s been carrying the deaths of everyone that matters to him like a rock in his gut.

The Path I Started by JayEz (@multifandom-madnesss)Tony rebuilds, modifies. Takes fragments and gives them new order. He does not create. He can’t, not anymore. Not after this. Or: After the events of Ultron, Tony rebuilds the tower by himself and shuts everything out to the point that Pepper takes desperate measures and asks Steve to come and help.

Steve/Tony – post-Avengers // canon divergence // pre-AOU

Master of Communication by somanyfeels (@aceofultron)Tony didn’t like being touched, on the rare occasions he wanted physical contact he would initiate it. It was how things were, how it had always been, and he was fine with it. His new team didn’t know, they just kept touching and Tony wasn’t quite sure how to ask them to stop.

Untitled Playlist Number 5 by dapperyklutzThe many times Tony Stark plays BAMF-ing music while the team fights their Baddie of the Week. And somehow, along the way, between sleepless nights, game nights, movie nights and saving the world every other week — plus looking out for his wayward protégé whom he cares for very deeply -— he falls head over heels in love for a certain super soldier.

Who’s Your Caterer? by Bandearg_Rois(Mainly Steve POV) After moving into the Tower, the group starts taking meals together. This is a story about food, and about love, not necessarily together. Also contains physics and old movies, not at the same time.

Run Program: {x} (series) by Amuly (@everybodyilovedies)Taking care of Tony is a lot of work. Especially when you’ve only got one arm. And your code dates back to the 1980s.

Best Kept Secret by @alchemyaliceIn which there is a secret friendship, and Tony can’t deal with feelings, so Natasha has to do it for him. These two features may or may not be related.

honey, you’re keeping me afloat by mmotionEvery so often, on evenings with nobody else, Tony and Natasha drink some wine together and talk about everything and anything.

five times tony stark was kissed by a teammate (and one time he kissed a teammate) by colourexplosionin which people kiss tony a lot and he doesn’t get it

grey and other colours by @theappleppielifestyle(Demisexual and Demiromatic Tony) Distantly, Tony hears Clint say something like, “No, I definitely heard he was an equal opportunist. Like, equal-equal, no preference. Hey Tones, who are you attracted to more, dudes or chicks?” He calls the last part out to Tony, who runs the words over in his mind and unthinkingly says, “I’ve actually never been attracted to anyone, it’s really worrying.”

Reasons Why (Whether They’re Real Or Not) by infinite_wonders (@thetwowriters)Tony is slow, has very little self-worth, and thinks that the universe hates him as much as he hates himself. Everyone else is long-suffering, especially Steve, because disproving that notion could take a while.

Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful Boy by mybrotherharry (@baffledkingcomposinghallelujah)The first time Jarvis holds little Anthony in his arms, he is overwhelmed by emotion that is surprising in its intensity. When little Anthony’s palm curves around his finger, Jarvis ducks his head to keep the others from seeing the wetness in his eyes. “Hello Master Anthony,” he whispers into the little ear, tugging the bundle of blankets closer to his heart.

Pepper/Tony and/or Iron Dad & Spider Son

call every girl we ever met maria by irnan“You’re telling me,” Rhodey said, gleeful, “you’re telling me that you’ve been shot, stabbed, sewn up, been riddled with shrapnel, had a magnet implanted in your chest, spent two years poisoning yourself with palladium, spent twenty years as a functioning alcoholic and had a vasectomy and you still managed to knock Pepper up?”

with arms wide open by @parkrstarkTony and Pepper are expecting a baby and Peter may be the one most excited…just maybe…

yet turning stay by irnan“Tony - you’re all I’ve got too, you know.”

The Right Thing in the Wrong Way by igrockspockPeople don’t ask why Pepper sticks by Tony as often as they should, and if they did, she probably wouldn’t tell them the truth:  that he’s never left her alone on the one day she actually needs him.

Twist of Fate by nikki_ofshadows (@karenninaaa)A single picture triggered Tony Stark to suspect that Peter Parker was his son, biologically.

i’m the satellite (and you’re the sky) by CamelotQueen (@missmgann)When Tony went to the Parker household to recruit Spider-Man, he had no idea what he was signing up for. AU where Tony is Peter’s biological father and neither of them know.

Welcome to the Family by FriendLey (@peppertoyourtony)Peter Parker spends time with Tony’s family. Happy is annoyed, Rhodey is amused, Pepper gets an assistant, and Tony feels betrayed.

The Publicity Verse by @xmypandabear A main of SpiderSon and IronDad with a side of social media and the internet (and healthy puddings of Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, Vision, FRIDAY, May, Ned and MJ) 

Exploding Head Syndrome by foolscapper(Mainly Peter) Everyone comes back, when the snap is undone. Or, well — almost everyone.

Gen + other relationships/pairings

Twenty-Five Years by @notfknapplicable(Tony/Rhodey) Nobody knows how long this has actually been going on. (Tony Stark has pretty much been in a monogamous relationship since he was 18 years old.)

The Years In Between by @notfknapplicable(Tony/Rhodey) A follow-up to Twenty-Five Years (best to read that one first). All the years we missed.This is it, okay? This is forever, you and me.

Sound of Madness by martianwahtney(Post-CACW, Tony/Rhodey) After the fight in Siberia, Steve takes Bucky and vanishes, leaving Tony to pick up the pieces. Tony does everything in his power to bring the Rogues home, and still, somehow, things go to shit.

Helpless in Love by Avengerz(Tony/Rhodey) Rhodey and Tony being together since their MIT years. They married as soon as they could, and are still hopelessly in love after ~30 years. One of these perfect, almost sickeningly sweet couples.

First Choice by @sailorchibi(StarkQuill) Two years ago, Tony’s heart was broken when Steve picked Bucky over him. Now, he was certain that the past was repeating itself with Peter and Gamora.He was wrong.

Placeholder by @sailorchibi(StarkQuill) In the days leading up to his birthday, all Tony could think about was last year. Last year, when he and the Avengers celebrated together. Last year, when he had a family. He’s not as alone as he thinks he is.

Paths Are Made by Walking by @potrix-the-queerschlaeger(WinterIron) The road to recovery is long, winding and a different one for every person walking it. Bucky chooses to help himself the only way he knows how; by doing what he does best. Or, alternatively; the one in which Tony is a mess and accidentally kick-starts Bucky’s protective mother hen instincts.

Scars by @arvensis5(WinterIron) When Tony tried to urge the homeless guy sleeping on the steps of the Tower’s loading dock to move, he never expected that he’d found Hydra’s pet assassin—James “Bucky” Barnes. Now, after months of keeping his presence a secret from the Avengers and helping Barnes learn to cope with both his returning memories and the modern world, Hydra is back for their favorite toy and Tony must call in old friends to save the life of the man he just might have come to care for a little too much.

potato guns and repulsers by gossamernotes (@brooklynboystosupersoldiers)(Tony & Harley) The story wherein Harley Keener thinks over his life and watches where it goes after he meets the one and only, Tony Stark. It doesn’t really go the way he planned.

Amend by ancalime8301(Post-CACW, Tony & team) Negotiating the Accords, dealing with Ross, the end of his relationship with Pepper, Steve’s faction coming back to the Avengers compound … the stress finally catches up with Tony in dramatic fashion. The team has to decide to step up and handle things while Tony can’t. Tony has to decide if he’ll let them.

That’s it for now! Let me know if you’d like more recs later :)

#tony stark #stevetony #pepperony #iron dad spider son #tonyrhodey #winteriron #starkquill #fic rec #fic #anonymous #ask #buckytony

[ohnojustimagine]

Bring Me Out

Drew Gulak/Reader 2435 words; um… there’s some smut? sort of angst? general weirdness with a happy ending, maybe? fuck knows, seriously.

Inspired by Drew’s match with Tony last week.

***

You’ve worked for WWE for a while, though up until now you’ve been based at corporate headquarters, only attending shows occasionally. But your promotion to the social media team means that you’re going to be on the road with the rest of the circus that’s the cruiserweight crew, and so far, you love it.

The weird hours, the travelling, the adrenaline of being backstage… you’ve never been one for the nine to five, so you’re pretty sure this is going to suit you down to the ground. And on your first night, Drew goes out of his way to introduce himself to you, which you appreciate. “Drew,” he says, shaking your hand firmly. “Drew Gulak.”

“Nice to meet you,” you say politely.

“I just wanted to welcome you to the 205 Live team,” he tells you. “We run a tight ship around here, and I like to think of myself as the captain of that ship.”

“Great,” you reply, a little too brightly, somewhat surprised that the nerdy, officious persona he effects in the ring is apparently not just an act.

“So if you need anything, anything at all, just let me know.”

“I’ll do that,” you say.

“Good,” he replies, nodding, and for a second you think he’s going to say something else, as if he’s hesitating, but then he hands you a GULAK pin and gives you a thumbs up before striding off.

You stand there, watching him walk away, getting the vaguest impression that you’ve maybe missed something, but you shake your head, dismissing the feeling.

***

You don’t see him again until next week, when he approaches you in catering, standing beside your chair as you sit, sipping a cup of tea.

“You settling in okay?” he asks.

“All good,” you answer. “Getting the hang of things.”

“You know,” he says, shifting awkwardly, leaning against the table for a second but then straightening up, “I wanted to say that if you ever need someone to ride with, or just talk to about things, then I’m your man.” He pauses for a second, but then goes on, saying, “I know this place can take some getting used to.”

“Well,” you say, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And if you ever…” he coughs slightly, and oh god, you think, because he’s blushing. “If you ever,” he goes on, “want to, you know, get a coffee or something…”

He’s hitting on you, you suddenly realize. And he’s doing it in the most endearingly inept way possible, which is actually kind of charming.

But he’s not your type, not at all, so you say, holding up your mug, trying to be nice about it, “I drink tea.”

“Oh,” he replies, not getting the message, “tea, then. Any hot beverage, or just a… beverage in the general sense of the word.”

“I’m fine for now,” you say, kindly, wanting to let him down as gently as you can.

“Yes.” He nods. “Well, that is indeed okay.”

He’s so accepting of it, not trying to persuade you or argue the point, and you’re grateful for that, at least, and you don’t want him to feel like he can’t ever speak to you again, so you ask him a few questions about what he has planned for his PowerPoint tonight.

His face lights up, and he sits down next to you and talks at some length about the extra-special slides he’s prepared. And he’s so engagingly enthused about it that you find yourself listening, sincerely interested.

“Sorry,” he says, after a while, stopping himself.

“No,” you reply with a smile. “I don’t mind.”

***

And while Drew might not be your type, there are plenty of guys backstage who are. You’re a big fan of bad boys and risk takers, and there’s no shortage of those among the talent. But you’re careful to remain professional, always keep your distance, not wanting to jeopardize your job. In fact, the only person you end up becoming genuinely friendly with is Drew. Which is partly because you don’t find him even remotely attractive, and partly because he’s so fucking persistent. And not in a creepy sense, because he’s definitely able to take ‘no’ for an answer, but just in the way he takes the time to look out for you, always check in and see how you’re doing.

You have to admit, as the months pass, that he’s started to interest you. Because you’re beginning to suspect that there’s far, far more to him than that superficial veneer of uptight nerdiness that he presents to the world. You’ve never seen him let that front slip, not around you, at least, but it’s your experience that no one’s that tightly-wound unless they’re working very, very hard to contain themselves, doing everything in their power to control something that is by its very nature uncontrollable.

And the thing is, you muse, is that you have seen that side of Drew. He’s always been a tough wrestler, of course he has, and back in the day you know he had quite the vicious streak, but even in the ring he’s now mostly pretty methodical in his actions, taking his opponents down beat by beat.

Except on those rare occasions when he really, truly lets go, and when he does, the way he fights is something else entirely, something terrifyingly beautiful.

You’re lying alone in your hotel bed, unable to sleep as you think, and so you grab your tablet, opening up the network app and going through the older 205 shows until you find the one you’re looking for. It’s back when Drew was feuding with Mustafa Ali, the night Mustafa was supposed to have a match with Tony. You watch as Drew attacks him out of nowhere, and the sheer violence of it is startling. He pulls Mustafa up by the back of his neck, smashing his head into the ring post, and there’s something almost sexual about the pleasure he seems to be taking in it, relishing Mustafa’s suffering in a way that makes you shiver.

You slide one hand under the covers and inside your underwear, stroking your clit, slowly at first, but then faster as Drew takes off his jacket, his face alight with sadistic appetite, setting Mustafa up for Tony’s knee strike.

And after you come, you begin to wonder to yourself, about what it might take to bring out that other side of Drew, and not just in the ring.

You drift off into sleep, picturing Drew standing over you, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and telling you you’ve been a bad, bad girl.

***

No one’s happy when Enzo joins 205 Live, but you can see Drew’s trying to make the best of it. You watch carefully as Enzo tries to force him into a role that doesn’t suit him, even getting him to participate in the beatdown on Tony, but you can see Drew’s heart’s not in it, that he’s only going through the motions.

Afterwards, you wait backstage, finishing up the social media posts for the evening. “I brought you some tea,” Drew says, appearing beside you, handing you a cup.

“You’re so sweet,” you say. He beams at you, and you sigh softly to yourself, wistful.

***

And then everything changes, with Enzo gone like he wasn’t ever even there, vanished as if by magic and strictly never to be mentioned again.

Drew cuts his hair. “You like it?” he asks, and you nod, reaching up to touch it, stroking your fingertips over the close-cropped sides, feeling the slight, soft prickle of it.

“I like it,” you say.

“Good,” he replies, and he’s looking at you, and while he’s obviously pleased by your reaction, he’s not smiling, not quite. There’s something different about him, and it’s not just the hair. His posture is different, you’re sure, the way he’s carrying himself, that stick-up-the-ass thing he usually has going on somehow transformed. He seems taller, you think.

And then he does smile, broad and bright, and as he walks away, you stare after him, curious.

***

Drake’s appointed as 205 GM, and Drew’s seemingly his normal self, busy trying to impress the new boss. But Drake isn’t as easy to fool as Enzo was.

You’re backstage, taking a few pictures for instagram, observing as the team films a segment with Drew and Tony and Drake. And Drake’s harsh on both of them, but what he says to Drew… you wince as you listen, aware of exactly how much it’s going to hurt him.

Later, you find him, sitting alone in catering with a cold-looking cup of coffee, gazing into empty space, still visibly glowering.

You stand beside him for a minute before you speak. “You know,” you finally say, casually, though every word is considered, calculated for maximum effect, “for what it’s worth, I think Drake has a point.”

“That I’m a goof?” Drew says, bitterly. “A joke?”

“You’ve never been a joke,” you tell him, and you mean it. For all his PowerPoints and protest signs, Drew’s an amazing wrestler, and anyone who knows anything has never doubted that. “But maybe…” you say, letting your voice trail off suggestively.

“Maybe what?”

You shrug. “Things are changing around here, and sometimes change can be a good thing.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he turns his head to look up at you. His new hair has fallen a little at the front, and you run your fingers through it, lifting it back up off his forehead. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” you say, concentrating on what you’re doing, frowning to yourself, “would it be okay if I rode with you next week after the show?”

As you step back, Drew’s hair is perfectly in place, and he gives you a strange, searching look. But he only says, “Sure. Of course you can.”

“Great,” you reply.

***

A week later, you watch the match from backstage, holding your breath, because Drew’s everything you knew he could be and yet still so much more; way beyond even your wildest, most dangerous dreams. The bell rings, and he’s announced as the winner, and you know exactly what you want.

***

He waits for you, like he said he would, helps you put your bags in the trunk of the car, holds the door for you. “Congratulations,” you say.

“Thanks,” he replies, almost absently, and you’ve only driven a few blocks before he pulls over into a dark, narrow side street and stops, turning off the engine.

He unfastens his seat belt, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at you, staring straight ahead into the night.

So you unfasten your own seat belt, leaning across the space that separates you. You lick his ear, biting gently at the lobe, and you can feel his jaw clench tight, hear him breathe. “Did it feel good?” you whisper. “When you were hitting him?” You slide your hand slowly down his body, between his legs, feeling the thick outline of his cock through his pants, and he’s already hard. He’s probably been hard since the match, you think, and that’s so fucking hot you can hardly bear it.

He swallows, as you touch him, and reaches to move his seat back, just enough. “Yeah,” you say, exhaling the word, “it looked like it felt good.”

“I was watching,” you tell him, kissing his neck, unzipping his pants, taking out his cock. It’s warm and smooth under your hand, your fingers curling around it, thumb rubbing through the precome leaking from the head. “At the end, when you put the sleeper on him and he went limp in your hold like that, I was watching and I was so wet.”

He inhales, and you stroke him, up and down. “And god,” you say, “when you were holding up the belt, like you owned the whole fucking world, I thought I was going to come right then, just from seeing it.”

He makes a noise that sounds like pure, desperate need, and then his hand is on the back of your head, and he’s shoving your face down into his lap with enough force that you have to moan in delight, barely getting your mouth on him before he starts to come. But you suck, and swallow as he pushes up into your throat, taking him in as deep as you can.

And when he’s done, you sit up, wiping off your lips with the back of your hand.

“Sorry…” he says, shaking his head. “That was… inappropriate.”

“No,” you tell him. “That was good.”

He looks at you, and he doesn’t seem surprised. “That’s how you like it?”

“Yeah,” you say, simply. “It is.”

He nods to himself, slowly, as if he’s at last understanding something, and then adjusts his seat back into place, starting up the car.

About an hour later, he pulls over at a deserted rest stop and fucks you in the back seat, pinning your arms either side your head and thrusting into you so hard that you have to bite down on your lip to stop yourself from screaming when you come, because it’s just that good.

And another hour or so after that you arrive at your hotel and you’re barely even through the door before you’re both tearing off your clothes, kissing each other like you’re starving for it and Drew’s throwing you down on the bed, his face between your legs, eating you out with a enthusiasm that’s so vigorously urgent that you feel like you might just levitate right off the fucking mattress. And he doesn’t stop, not for a second, not until you’ve come twice and you’re not sure you remember how to breathe.

“Damn,” you finally say, pulling him up by his hair, kissing the taste of yourself off his mouth. “I could get used to this.”

“What?” Drew replies, settling himself down beside you. “The new me?”

“Yeah, no.” You shake your head. “I don’t think this is the new you, I think this is the real you.”

“And you like the real me?”

You grin at him. “I like him a lot,” you say, running your hand over his chest. “Maybe you should let him out more often.”

“Maybe,” he agrees, then goes on, thoughtful, “Maybe he could go to Wrestlemania, win the championship.”

“Now, that would be something.” You lean in, kissing him again, and you know that this is him, this is Drew, all of him.

And you don’t want anything but this, anyone but him.

#ohnojustwrites #drew gulak #drew gulak imagine #wwe imagine #sorry #but that match #with tony #was so good #STOP STARTING NEW THINGS #you fuckwit #honestly

[spamzineglasgow]

(HOT TAKE) Notes on a Conditional Form by The 1975, part 2

In the second instalment of a two part HOT TAKE (read part one here) on The 1975′s latest LP, Notes on a Conditional Form (Dirty Hit, 2020), Scott Morrison ponders the tricksterish art of writing about music, before riffing on the history of the album as form, questions around genre, nostalgia and a sense of the contemporary, not to mention that saxophone solo and why Stravinsky would love this album.

Dear Maria,

> How pleasant it feels to begin a review with a note to a friend.

> Shoutout/cc:/@FrankO’Hara – I always liked his idea to write a poem like it’s addressed to just one other person. It strikes me as interesting to begin a piece of criticism in the same way. So, this is the mode I will try to inhabit throughout.

> As I read your words, and pondered, and learned, I was caught in the twin state of delighting each time you hit upon something already identified in my own thoughts – some of which I will expand upon here - and equally delighted every time you wrote something I could or would not. Such is the joy of conversation.

> I suppose in this preamble between speakers, which keeps up the pretence of our characters conversing - which will, inevitably, lapse as the form of this review gives way to a longer, more oneiristic, probably, onanistic, possibly, enquiry into the album (an act impossible in real conversation, by the way, imagine, imagine someone actually speaking for this long, how boring and alienating that would be, and yet that is usually what criticism is). Anyway, before all that, to help set the scene, I should mention a few ‘real world’ details. All of which happened either online, of course, or in isolation, because that, as you mention, is the real world now, during the violent interlude of Covid-19.

> I was delighted – that word again, repetitions and patterns begin anew already – to be asked to write this review. Firstly, because, like you say, I am a fan of The 1975. But also, because I am a writer and I am a musician and I am trying just now to forge a new mode of writing about music, one that can be both analytical (technically, socially, historically) and expressive (personally, lyrically, emotionally). And, most of all because I have always been, at best, suspicious, and, at worst, dismissive, of album reviews.

> I wrote, in our Messenger chat, ‘I usually find music reviews unhelpful’, which makes me sound like a bit of a dick, really. But what I meant is, what I meant is.

> There’s a saying I think about a lot, as the aforementioned writer and musician who writes about music: ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’ (Martin Mull, Frank Zappa, or Elvis Costello, or any of the other people that sharp quote is blurrily misattributed to.)

> Incidentally, I would love to see a dance about architecture. But sometimes I think the sentiment of the statement is true. Will writing about music always be missing the point? Will it, through words, ever really be able to get to the essentially wordless essence of music? But I am a writer. And I am a musician. And I like writing about music. (Incidentally, I like making music about writing less). Yet I do feel there is some truth to the saying, I guess. Twists and turns. Try again. Here is another way of saying what I am trying to say.

> Music reviews make me hate adjectives. And I love adjectives. But often commercial reviews – for dozens of reasons, many of them valid, most of them related to that capital prefix – become attempts to describe a sound, invariably an artist’s ‘new sound’, again related to that capital prefix. Often, the goal is to generate press, to entice people to listen – or not – and so feed the music industry and the market. And to describe these new sounds, adjectives are piled-up like car crashes. Trying to describe a sound at any great length is, I think, ultimately fated to fail. Adjectives, up to a point, can provide greater and ever-more strident clarity. But, after a certain point – that appears very quickly in most pop reviews - saturation point is reached, and the clarity disappears, and we are left very far away from the music we were originally trying to pile word upon word to reach. ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied’, you might say, if you were into foreshadowing. Which I am (obviously).

> So, I suppose, to continue thinking out loud (in silence, at my keyboard) I am interested in writing around music. Not describing the sounds (‘Let sounds be themselves’, says John Cage, whispering in my memory’s ear), but I am interested in writing that can tease out some of the ideas in and around the music and extend them in new directions. That, I think, is a different and interesting kind of dance worth attempting.

> We understand a review, then, as this kind of dance: as a record of the reviewer’s experience of listening to a record, which will accept that it will largely take as its subject the listening, and not the record. Even better if it’s a dialogue between two. So, here’s what I think about the album.

*

> Ok, before I talk about the album, actually, I would like to talk about a book. I hope that’s alright. There is no objective correlation between the album and the book except the proximity in time in which I experienced them. Let’s get that out of the way at the very beginning. The book has nothing to do with the album. But it does have something to do with how I heard it.

> The book is called An Experiment with Time. I mentioned this to you once already over Zoom. It was written in 1927. My copy belonged to my grandfather, in fact, and his writing – and so his pen and then his hand and then his whole vanished being – appeared occasionally at marginal or pivotal points throughout the text. That was part of what I liked about it, I guess.

> The book – which I allowed Wikipedia to tell me only after I had pushed my way through it – is regarded as an imaginative curiosity, but one which science has never taken seriously. That’s fine for me, because I am far more familiar, fluid and fluent in the language and implications of the imagination that I am of science.

> The book, broadly in two halves, sets out in its first strange span experiences of premonitions in dreams. That will give you the idea of the kind of science book it is. The second half is an attempt at a logical, philosophical, and occasionally mathematical explanation of Time that can account for these premonitory fissures.

> It posits that, in addition to the three dimensions of space (height, breadth and depth, I suppose), that time is a fourth dimension in our universe. I’ve heard that said, but I never really got it before. I do now, and it is very beautiful, because it begins to make me imagine, how, like a sculptor, I can ply, fold and shape with this new dimension. You can imagine how this might be useful to a musician, music being an art that can only exist through time.

> Anyway, the book then goes on to posit that a fourth dimension in which something can be observed to travel (our consciousness), must necessarily imply an observer in a fifth dimension to observe that travel, and then one in a sixth dimension, and so on, ad inifitum, infinite regress, serial time.

> I confess this somewhat surpassed the boundaries of my metaphysics (and/or silently slipped over my head), but the image of the infinite regress has stayed with me, the clickanddrag of old Windows windows ossified and pulled to leave twisting, spiralling trails; the gold-tipped rhythm of tenement window embrasures, repeating, far off, clickanddragged up a hill (hints and twists of Escher), on my daily walks.

> Wikipedia later told me that an infinite regress is a shaky ground on which to base a philosophical proof. Again, this is fine for me: I am a bad philosopher, because I am not competitive, and so this does not bother me very much.

> The infinite regress is a beautiful image, with lots of possibility in it for further imaginings, and it entrances me. So, keep this idea of serial observers and the limitless extension it implies close, please (foreshadowing again, you’re welcome).

*

> I will switch now, briefly, too briefly, from critic to fanboy (I contain multitudes, etc.).  

> Notes on a Conditional Form as an album title made me smile a smile that was very close to a wince or wink. Classic Matty, was probably the thought that came next. You have already summarised dastardly, dear, endearing, calamitous Matty, so I will move on assuming that, Matty Healy, yeah, I know.

> Back to the critic. The conditional form, in this review has already been (drumroll, eyeroll) music reviews themselves. See part one.

> Now I would like to take the album as the form in question – not this album, but albums generally, as this album is an exploration of the album form. The Album, capitalised.

> Albums have become normalised. But let’s play dumb for a moment – one of the cleverest things we can do - and we’ll see that albums are anything but inevitable, especially in the boundless age of streaming.

> Before this, albums used to be defined as collections with physical bounds. The capacity of a CD; before that, a length of magnetic tape; before that, the edge of a vinyl, a shellac, a wax cylinder. That about takes us back to the start of recorded audio media, I think.

> After Edison’s initial, waxy curiosities, albums began - like most things we love and hate - as a product. The form of the album was a circle. The music was a line. The edge of the line was the end of time. Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs, as a fun aside. And, as another, did you know that there’s a funny B-plot in all of this to do with Beethoven. (It’s always to do with fucking Beethoven.) Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became the arbitrary marker for the desired length of the CD. It had never before been possible to fit the symphony onto a single, uninterrupted piece of media. And so, the B-plot goes, this is why the standard CD holds the amount of time that it does.

> Anyway, regardless of who shaped them, physical recorded media have, since their staggered births, profoundly shaped culture. Pop songs, especially singles, are still 3 and a half minutes long because that was the maximum amount of time that could be squeezed onto a 78, in the shellac days. Time was short and simple then, seemingly.

> Notes on a Conditional Form is 81 minutes long. It had 8 singles leading up to it, released over a span of ten months. Clearly, physical boundaries and marketing timelines, are not being treated in the usual way. You could just release singles forever now. But the fact this ended up as an album shows some belief in the concept beyond the physical and, yes, the commercial. Let’s press on, look elsewhere.

> Since we’ve started talking about classical music – ok, since I started talking about classical music – I’d like to dwell there for a moment, because there are foreshadows of The Album, conceptually speaking (and this album specifically) several layers up, several parenthesis ago, criticism as serial digression, in classical music.

> Collecting songs as albums was a favourite pastime of the Romantics, early emos. @FranzSchubert, @ClaraSchumann, @JohannesBrahms – there’s another B-plot in that trio if you want to look it up, by the way. Also, Clara Schumann is overlooked, like all female composers, because the classical music world is deeply patriarchal. It’s important to say that whenever we can.

> Anyway, the Romantics did not develop the album as a physical form – the only available recording medium at that time was sheet music, which they did sell in a big way, actually. But really, they helped develop the album as a conceptual form. They collected a group of shorter songs to make a larger statement – Schubert especially. In the 19th century, this was known as a song cycle, a lovely phrase, that makes me think of cycling through meadows, which I have done more than usual recently, as part of my state-sanctioned exercises, though the meadow was in fact an overgrown golf course, and no less lovely for it.

> Schubert’s Die Winterreise is a classic example of the song cycle – and another example of the emo-Romantic - a cycle of poems set to music that take the listener on a journey over time. Sound familiar? Albums. Song cycles. Song spokes. Meadows. Grasses and wildflowers. Meandering journeys.

> Anyway, here we finally return to Notes on a Conditional Form. Collecting songs together allows for an exploration of ideas that can evolve or expand over time – a Brief Inquiry, you might say. Art as a tool of investigation. Process. And this album certainly does that. You already touched on some of the ideas in the album: the climate crisis, the Anthropocene, digital communication, social unrest, calls to action, my favourite lyric on that theme, while we’re here:

Wake up, wake up, wake up, we are appalling

And we need to stop just watching shit in bed

And I know it sounds boring and we like things that are funny

But we need to get this in our fucking heads-

> You explore these ideas well so I will not pursue them more for now. Thank you!

> The other effect of collecting songs – or anything together – is that it gives birth to form. (Gasp, he said the title of the movie!)

> Yes, collecting things together as an album is what creates the form in all senses of the word – physical, commercial, conceptual. Form, pure form, is not the things, or the arrangement of the things, but the relationship between the arranged things. Glimpsing this is like getting a delicious glimpse of time as a fourth dimension. As I may have already let slip, I am very interested in time. And so, I am naturally interested in musical forms, which can only be apprehended through time, with time, thanks to time – thank you, time. We don’t often say that.

*

> This is where I will, at last - god, imagine I had been speaking at you this whole time - this is where I will at last get into the main topic of this review. The remarkable form of this album.

> Wait, sorry, one more thing before I do. A really quick one. As well as time, musical form also needs contrast. For sections to appear as distinct, and thus for us to clearly apprehend the difference between them, and thus get a glimpse of Form, they must contrast with one another, for how else would we apprehend change, notice borders, know we are somewhere else. (An interesting digression here is process music, which I love dearly, and which has an entirely different relationship with form. Look it up, if you like.)

> Anyway, for our purposes now, musical form requires contrast. This could be achieved in many ways: traditionally, it was done with different melodies or harmonies; but it could be done with volume, instrumentation, tempo, texture etc. etc.

> The main way that this album delineates its striking – and, to my mind, for what it’s worth, unique and new – form, how it creates its contrast, is using all of the above tricks, but, even more so, by contrasting styles/genres. This was immediately what struck me and thrilled me about this album, and it’s kind of funny – for me as the annoying writer, perhaps less so for you, the reader, I mean listener – that it’s taken me 2,534 words to mention it. This I think is the brilliance of this record. This is why we can call it not just contemporary, but new.

> The 1975 have always been shifting, but never like this. This album contains, sometimes literally right next to each other: punk, orchestral music, UK garage, Americana, shoegaze, folk, dancehall, 80s power ballads – and, of course, pop, whatever that means. Stravinsky became famous for sharp juxtapositions of distinct musical blocks. He would fucking love this.

> I messaged you, after my first listen, to say that the album reminded me of one of Sophia Coppola’s soundtracks. That was an instinctive, emotional response, but, having thought about it, I can now demonstrate the reason for the similarity. The stylistically varied end products are similar to one another because the methodology is similar: soundtracks select music practically to achieve emotional affects. Soundtrack albums use music as a tool to heighten ideas that lie elsewhere, in their case, in the filmed scenes they accompany. If you believe Matty Healy, this is also what The 1975 do. They use beauty, in whatever style or genre they find it:

‘Beauty is the sharpest tool that we have - if you want someone to pay attention, make it beautiful’.

> What do you make of that, @Keats? No, really, I would love to know.

> I think this is a remarkable musical strategy, that requires flexibility, knowledge and skill. That there is such a high level of all these things in the band is what allows it the strategy to be successful.

> I would like to pause here and consider the implications of this strategy on a personal, social and cultural level.

*

> Musical genre and personal identity have been as fused for as long as pop music has existed. This could be a trick of the market, or it could be a need of the individual psyche, or both. I think there is some truth in theory that in the increasingly widespread absence of God – by which I mean organised religion – people need to find both a guide for their metaphysics and morals, and a structure for their community, as these are some of the most effective tools we have discovered for constructing our Selves, making sense of our lives and the world. Art can provide the guide for many people. It also provides community. These communities, collections – albums? - of political, moral and aesthetic views, then become subcultures.

> Until very recently, subcultures were fixed. ‘Hardcore till I die’, ageing ravers, old punks. Interestingly one never really sees ageing emos. But that’s a subject for another essay.

> This, I think, is perhaps what is so striking here: musical genres are normally culminations (or roots, depending on how you look at it) of lived sub or counter cultures. These usually result from a fixed viewpoint about life and society, shared by the individuals that comprise them. The individuals identify with what the music says, how it is presented and how it looks as much – or perhaps even more - than how it sounds.

> Before now, it would have been shocking to imagine a band switching effortlessly from one style to another – this occasionally happens over the course of a career, between albums, but almost never in the same album itself - because it would feel like a betrayal, if we accept that bands and styles represent fixed ways of life and viewpoints and that neither lives nor viewpoints can change. Which, obviously they can. And which, obviously, they do, nowadays, with increasing speed, @Coronavirus.

> Matty’s appearance is a perfect demonstration of this. Minging Matty, Hearthrob Matty, Matty in vintage jeans, in a skirt, in a pinstripe suit. If we accept the old association of musical style/subculture and the clothing/uniform each produces, what would the ideal garb of a The 1975 listener be? A screen. A real, working search engine, fused with their body.

> Previously, the model was that bands had ‘influences’ which they ‘blended’ to create a ‘new’ sound. Here, The 1975 don’t really focus on blending sounds at the level of individual songs: the blend, boldly, happens at the level of the album. If the album is like a soundtrack, it is the soundtrack to the algorithmic age of effortless consumption of media.

> And I would like an examination of that idea to be the final track on this album. I mean, review. I mean conversation.

*

> The 1975 are inseparable from recorded media. Not just their own, but recorded media from the past. They are not able to invoke and inhabit this startling panoply of styles, to my knowledge, because they have studied in individual places or with masters of each craft or tradition – they are able to do it because they, like us, are able to consume recordings of these styles, and they, like us, have done so all their lives.

> When The 1975 invoke these styles, they are not evoking a tradition, or a way of doing things, or even seeing things. They are invoking personal memories of experiencing recordings, encountering media. We can take a look at a few examples of this.

> Let’s start with the classical stuff. The orchestral interludes do not sound like they are written by classical composers, or even composers of film soundtracks - the use of orchestration is different. It sounds, to my ear, like acoustic instruments playing what were originally MIDI parts. Which, I imagine, is what happened. That would usually be called bad orchestration. I am not interested in saying that. I am slightly interested in the effect of getting classical musicians, with their classical training, to play music written by people without classical training on a computer. What are the implications of writing for the flute as a soundfont, rather than a person, instrument or tradition?

> And what is the significance of placing an orchestra, playing instrumental compositions, on a pop record. These are not backing arrangements in an existing pop song, as we commonly encounter; nor are they classical arrangements of a pop song (see Hacienda Classical et al).

> These are standalone orchestral compositions on a record that also includes shoegaze, UK garage, two-step, Americana, punk. What, then, is the significance of this? The instruments, I believe, are being chosen less for their own sonic timbres, and more for their social or cultural timbres. I will try to explain this thought.

> Matty has often spoken about ‘Disneyfication’; he said he wanted ‘The Man Who Married a Robot / Love Theme’ on A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships to sound like a Disney movie. What does that mean? It means, I think, he wants it to sound like old movies, childhood, nostalgia. The orchestra is a sinecure for the ‘symphonic’, the cinematic, the dramatic; the orchestra is used like a banjo, which is, elsewhere on the album, used to conjure the exoticism of Americana as heard by someone listening to it in the UK, to paraphrase Matty’s words.  

> The stylistic references in the album are as much references to media as much as they are to music. Disney: orchestral sounds, likely filtered and wobbled through VHS cassettes. The orchestra, already made symbolic by its association with movies, made a double symbol, a reflection of a shadow, being invoked through the original sound not really for this sound but for our associations with it. The banjo invoked as both an instrument of yesteryear and over there. The music constructs frames of otherness to facilitate wistfulness, longing, memory.

> The chart success of ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’ is that it’s a modern bop that sounds like 80s bangers. Its artistic success is that it contrasts the feeling of halcyon safety created by its imitation of 80s bangers (experienced for millennials usually as triumphant climaxes in movies, jubilant moments on oldies stations), and rubs this up against some of the disturbing parts of the present: the angst of online relationships, nudity with people you don’t know and have not and may never meet. This is a simple but highly effective juxtaposition.

> ‘Bagsy Not In Net’ does this too: a quotidian, painful experience of childhood (not wanting to play in goal in a football game), expressed as a yearning and grand orchestral statement. This is true, too, of ‘Streaming’. This is pop music Pop Art: the contemporary quotidian expressed in the language of an old tradition and invested with the significance of an Art it simultaneously questions the power and validity of.

> And, to linger on ‘If You’re Too Shy’ for just a little longer, what is the meaning of a saxophone solo in pop music in 2020? It is symbolic: a shortcut, practically a meme. Saxophone solos exist in a present in contemporary jazz - they are a living history making new futures. But saxophone solos almost always only exist in pop music as ghosts (careless whispers) of the past. This particular sax solo is so euphoric to us less because of its musical content and more because of the emotions we have learned to associate with sax solos through other media.

> The final, most perfect example of this, of everything I have been getting at, really, is the UK garage references. These are themselves references to artists like The Streets, and Burial, who, themselves, were referencing the primary records of UK garage which they (The Streets and Burial) never experienced in clubs, but as recordings. And The 1975 experienced these recordings of recordings. Layers and layers of reference. And here, abruptly, we find ourselves back at the opening image of the infinite regress.

> At times, this album wants to express the present moment back at itself, and so prompt reflection and action. The fright of the zeitgeist. In this we can include Greta Thunberg, ‘People’, and the overtly socio-political statements on the album. I hope these tracks will be successful. In the future, they will take on the significance of historic artefacts: preserved truths from a vanished time, fixed and rich, like amber.

> But there are long swathes of the album, that do not have this intent, and which will, I believe, have a different longevity. These are the (often wordless) lyrical sections: the abstract, the vague, the instrumental sections – in all senses of the word. Records of the individual imagination listening to another individual imagination listening to another individual imagination. What will these tracks become in time, in Time?

> There is something ethereally delicious about the thought of people in the future coming across people in the past’s nostalgia of another past, now three links distant to their present, compoundly insubstantial, glittering, compelling. Fifth, sixth, seventh dimensions - serial nostalgias.

Notes on a Conditional Form is out now and available to order.

~

Text: Scott Morrison

Published: 26/6/20

#review #reviews #album review #music criticism #music review #Scott Morrison #The 1975 #Maria Sledmere #Matty Healy

[bisongrass]

Mar 28, 2020

I have been meaning to write more, but it feels hard to find the time. Even though -- judging by social media, anyway -- it looks like people have nothing BUT time, I’m still working, and in the hours when I’m not working, I’m usually cooking, eating, exercising or talking on the phone. 

My need to be connected -- I think I can go so far as to say our need to be connected -- was acute following the lockdown. I had a keen urgency to see people, to talk to people, a feeling I thought of as “missing” (as in “I miss them!”), but “missing” seems to carry some connotation of a length of time passing. This was a sudden missing. We were thrown into a world devoid of familiar, known systems, rhythms, and routines, a disorienting happenstance at any time, but then, on top of that, we no longer had our usual of matrix of social connections. We sought out phone calls and videoconferencing, but the phone calls were intimate -- voices from the dark; ear to mouth, mouth to ear -- and the video group chats were beset by minor technological infelicities (people’s video freezing or suddenly becoming inaudible, dropped connections, the impossibility of any group splintering into organic subconversations, the peculiar awkwardness of having nothing else to look at than other people’s faces, even during the normally occurring conversational pauses). I was thrown instantly into a kind of mourning. 

Before this pandemic, I was already someone who was needy for any physical touch -- I loved having my hair cut just for the way that my stylist would ruffle and tweak my hair while she worked. I loved the quick press of a hello hug, the small arm grab accompanying a good piece of gossip, hands-on yoga adjustments, etc. You could say I was an aficinado. Even to sit with someone and not touch them, that was a kind of contact, less tangible, but something like a sixth sense constituted of proximity and close watching, a kind of immersion in the person’s essence. To have this, all this, removed, to say nothing of the possibility of other kinds of touch, was a severe deprivation. I was reminded of a conversation with my therapist about Harlow’s Monkeys -- those newborn monkeys who, having to choose between a wire mother which provided milk, and a fuzzy, warm inanimate mother, chose the fuzzy mother. Such is the importance of touch. What we have now with Skype and Zoom and so on is the wire mother of socialization. I eat the food I cook -- I have never cooked more in my life -- but also alone. My refrigerator is another wire mother.

It’s been cloudy for days and days. On some days, when I am working from home and I’m staring out the window, I feel like I am living in my own lung, dim and grey and filled with an atmosphere that is entirely mine. Sometimes the low constant pulse of anxiety and the loneliness cause me to feel lightheaded. I think, what if I have an anxiety attack? If I have an anxiety attack, I will pass out in my house, and I will come to in my house. No one will be the wiser. That makes me think I will not have an anxiety attack. Although I do come close one day. I am helped by leaving the house and going for a long walk.

At times, I feel a kind of psychological drifting or unmooring. Imagine a clod of something amorphous, like wet clay. Normally, every social transaction I have pushes up against me, giving me contours, letting me know the shape of my Self. Now, I am this shapeless form that is drifting through space. I feel vaporous, lightly fizzy. I write in order to give myself some shape.

It’s not just transactions with friends that shape me. The value of what one Medium writer called “microfriendships” was suddenly laid bare. On the phone this week with a pet store, trying to get a delivery, I ask a woman to describe all the smoked bones she sells so I can choose. “Well, the big knuckle is really big.” “How many fists big?” “I would say three fists big?” “That seems awfully big.” Etc. We laugh together at this spontaneous poetry. 

Sometimes I talk to people who know me well and they say “I worry about you.” The first time I heard it, it made me feel even worse. Should I worry more about myself, I wondered? What did they see, what did they fear? I like wearing a suit of competence even just for myself.                                                                                                                                                                                                        I check on other people who are worth worrying about. One friend, B., a co-worker, is stuck in the basement of his house for two weeks while his wife self-isolates upstairs on a trip back from the States. We both work all day on news stories about the unfolding, ongoing, unfathomable way life has changed and how it may change further. I read headlines about how much the arts industry brings into the economy and has lost this year, I read about clashes in China as people from the same province as Wuhan try to leave its borders, i read about the uptick in domestic violence there, I read about Prince Charles’s health. I’ve incorporated a daily check-in with B., for me as much as for him, usually by text, though we have a long and distracting conversation on the phone one day that I think it good for me, and I hope for him. The next day, as I pass his house on a walk, I see a shock of hair emerging from his alleyway and I cannot believe my extreme good fortune when he appears, exiting by complete coincidence at the same time as I am passing by. I halt and point at him and cross the street to sit on the low wall bordering his front garden, while he stands two metres away, on the path to the house, and we talk for fifteen minutes. How are you, he asks me. Most times when I answer this question, I don’t even find words; I start crying immediately, and what I’m crying at, somehow, is also at how I must seem to the person asking. I am a tragic figure, Woman Living Alone Under Lockdown. 

I say I’m not good, and I feel myself about to cry but I don’t because I’m not sure if it would alarm him. He says, “I’m okay now but I wanted to open a vein this morning.” He’s laughing but I get it. He recommends that I try “FaceWine” with friends but I can’t drink. It is a perfect time to be a drinker, these days. He says, pot? I say, Are you out of your fucking mind? We laugh.

As B. and I are speaking, we notice the people passing by as we talk -- the couple where the man is dressed in sunglasses and surgical mask, the younger woman with an exuberant head of hair chatting loudly and obliviously on her cellphone. Our mutual acknowledgment of these sights -- even my knowing that he is seeing what I am seeing, and that he is possibly wondering if I am thinking what he is thinking -- is a balm to the soul. We laugh together at the cellphone conversation and I say “You see? This is it, this is the stuff! You saw that! You saw it too!” 

Then he has to go back in his basement and interview an economist about the future.

*

Last weekend, I met a friend in High Park. She is furious at the way people have been clustering there, passing each other too close on the paths. She already had an acute sensitivity to people being in her space even before this. Now it’s in overdrive. The day is very cold and I had to bike 30 minutes to be there; she is in running shoes and wishes she had dressed more warmly. We find a baseball diamond that is penned in by a fence and run in. We both charge around, feeling the freedom of knowing no one will come within six feet, no matter how erratically we move. We do cartwheels. A man is walking around the park making an urgent unformed sound.”Uhhhhh,” he says, a kind of loose keening. “Uhhh!” I feel like he is saying something true.

*

Another friend, J., lives nearby. She has had lung cancer and has an autoimmune disease, so the virus is an especial threat to her, but she still walks her dog twice a day. Initially I stopped by her house to see if she needed anything, but she says her neighbours have been looking after her, buying her groceries, etc. I keep checking in with her anyway on the phone, and today she tells me that she thinks this is not much different than her regular life; she says, I think I was already living in self-isolation! She’s not disturbed much at all. I realize I am calling her now for me, for my own sanity. We have a funny kind of chemistry, verging on flirtatious. She takes joy in her own whimsy, laughing at herself in a way I find endearing. She’s been watching these pots of buried begonia stalks in her basement. Every time I call, I get an update on whether she has seen any pink shoots. Not so far.

*

On one of my walks, I remember how, as a teenager, I used to go up to the train tracks behind Dupont Street, and this week, I find a spot where I can sneak up there once again. It’s just as I remember it, that feeling you get when you see the tracks glinting pale in the darkness, leading to some distant vanishing point, the gravel underfoot, the smell of creosote -- a kind of wonderful private expansiveness. I am amazed at how relaxing it feels, immediately, to be away from people. I have a powerful impulse to lie down in the wretched dry weeds at the edge of the gravel, staring up at the sky, listening to the silence. I keep walking for as long as I can before diverting myself back onto Christie Street, next to a Loblaws. The supermarket an instant locus of stress. I think: these tracks will always be there for me. But two days later, I visit again and there is a lot of foot traffic, people alone walking, jogging, couples both socially distancing and not. Last night, I had a nightmare that I was walking by the tracks by myself and a man approached me head on, and I soon understood from his body language that he meant to try something with me, he was a threat in some way to the sanctity of my body. I suppose he is the virus.

*

Last night, my friend T. and D. come visit me, because I am crying all the time, because I can’t bear living alone much more. I want to move in with them, but T. is allergic to dogs and D. has a sister who they also have been seeing. Too many potential vectors. They arrive just after dark and we start walking with the dog, who is overjoyed to see them. The dog is also used to seeing more people, more friends, in her day to day as well. At the corner of Harbord and Manning, we run into S. & R., which is a coincidence that bowls me over. The five of us, in normal times, vacation together, take walks together, and it’s as if some underlying physics has taken over, drawing like together with like. We would never have planned such a socially risky move -- being in a group feels like it invites public shaming -- but we decide to continue, spacing ourselves out widely, moving up and down alleyways. A person on a balcony, seeing us, yells “Good formation,” and I give her my mittened thumbs-up. 

We pass the house of other friends, C. & P. We text to see if they will come to the back door and in moments, C. appears. We stand in a ridiculously large circle and visit. C. and P. have three children and two of them are still too young to know how to entertain themselves. C. is fried but laughing about it. We talk about grocery shopping because we share the same supermarket, which now has a “bouncer” who asks if you’ve been out of the country in the last 14 days or if you have a fever. The line-ups creep up Christie Street and every conscientious Annex shopper arriving with reusable bags now has to leave them outside the store while they shop -- health hazard. C. tells how her husband, P., is so hard-core about no plastic that he carried the items out of the grocery store in his arms in multiple trips, placing them in his children’s wagon to take them home. 

We talk about C. applying for emergency funds because she is a freelance photographer. She’s already got a mortgage deferral. She says they’re in a relatively lucky position, though. C. is Croatian and talk turns to Zagreb, where there was an earthquake in the middle of the lockdown. C. tells about a family she knows with a newborn whose house cracked in half. They had to go collect what they could from the house between tremors. 

We watch a baby raccoon washing itself on the roof of the house and a guy on a bike with his dog rides down the middle of the alleyway. Perhaps annoyed by this sudden gauntlet of humans he needs to pass, he says “What’s all this?” We say, we are watching a raccoon, and he says, oh, cool. Stay safe. Stay safe.

D. says that in Italy, people have been throwing eggs at people walking in groups. Several of us are confused about why you would waste eggs like that. 

Though we stick to alleyways, I still feel guilty on the walk -- guilty when we make each other laugh, guilty for our voices ringing out, guilty for the way that we present an intimidating presence for people who want to avoid human contact. The joy we usually share feels like a sin of some kind, or, at best, a mismatch with the prevailing mood of sternness and judgment. A guy passed us talking on his phone. “I think I just saw a group on a social distancing walk... I think they can hear me saying this... that’s okay.” 

* 

In the middle of the night, I check my phone. K. has posted from India, where she got stuck visiting family while with her parents. She should have been home two weeks ago but now there are no flights out of India. The president, Modi, declared a lockdown that was enforced four hours after it was announced. Cops are harassing people on the streets who are trying to get things like diapers and medications. (K’s mother needs it for her thyroid.) It seems unspeakably sad. I send a message to K. “I am breathing with you.” She writes back, saying “I don’t mean to make anyone feel worse.” She has her own meds she’s going to run out of soon. I can’t let this be my problem, but I don’t know how to responsibly ignore it. A co-worker checked in on me a few days ago by asking “How are you, my empathic friend?” Empathy in this situation feels like an evolutionary disadvantage. I could worry myself to death. K. and both practice tonglen and death meditation. I think she’s got a better handle on it than me. 

*

Today I got my period. I had somehow imagined that that, too, would hit pause. Here it is, though. It ushers in a new phase of exhaustion. I try to co-watch American Gigolo with a friend, over the phone. It’s an amazing artifact, deep 80s, Penthouse aesthetic, palm trees and high-waisted suits, severely unironic dialogue. Forty minutes into the movie, she says, “Are you still there? You’ve been quiet for a while.” I had fallen into a deep, blissful dreamless sleep, while Richard Gere’s toned and hairless chest moved across the screen, dramatically striped with shadows from a Venetian blind. 

[noctis-s-fashion-sense]

Can you do a part 3 for noctis and gladio breakup scenario?

Ah, thank you for the ask. Honestly, I kind of thought people forgot about the breakup scenarios, haha. 

Noctis: (this kind of fucks up the end of chap. 13, but whatever. Also endgame spoilers, just warning)

After meeting up with Iris at the Leville, Noctis couldn’t stop himself from asking her if she knew if you made it out of the Crown City. To his disappointment, she didn’t know the answer. He spent the rest of the day sullen, sulking around half assing just about everything.  After the first few hours, even Ignis ceased his scolding and nagging. They all knew what the Prince abruptly turned King (the Pringle) was thinking about. The way you died, the cracking of bones, sounds of gunfire, screaming…what you were thinking about before you… His mind simply defaulted to the worst and he could do nothing but think up increasingly horrible scenarios as the day progressed. Still, he did not mourn you. Mourning meant that he would have accepted that you had died. He did not accept that.

Iris and whoever was with her couldn’t have been the only ones who made it out of the city, they just couldn’t. (is having Kingsglaive flashbacks, wants to hug Nyx because Nyx Ulric) Still, nothing would calm his mind. Although, without seeing you in person, alive and well, without being able to confirm your existence himself, Noctis didn’t want to know if you had truly made it out. But, Six, there was always a but, he couldn’t stand not knowing. It was bad enough that he had lost his father that night, but you, too? It was like he lost you, would have lost you, twice. All in such a short span of time. It was impossible, he wouldn’t let himself believe it.

Noctis did it. He had finally found the crystal. He could save his friends, the country…y/n, wherever they were. All he had to do…was touch the crystal. It had an almost commanding aura to it, the light radiating off of its surface was like a lure. He could only hold in a scream when the crystal began slowly, painfully pulling him in. Behind him, in the middle of the long bridge Noct had arrived by, stood Ardyn. He sauntered toward Noct, enjoying each and every pained and panicked sound he made.

“A prince of the people. Sacrificing himself for the greater good, isn’t that right? Well,” Ardyn looked Noctis in the eyes, challenging him. “At least you’ll be able to join them.”

“W-what the…hell are you…talking about!?” Noct’s eyebrows knitted together as the chancellor complacently walked toward at him.

“Why, your precious y/n, of course. They seem to be lacking a bit of, hm, how should I put it? Life, at the moment.” Satisfied with the widening in Noctis’s eyes at the realization of what he was being told, Ardyn continued. He went on to reveal his true identity to Noctis but Noct had stopped listening. He still heard what was being said, but his mind, besides the pain, was on y/n. He wanted to scream for more answers but the crystal had absorbed him almost completely as Ardyn watched in beguiled amusement. His last thought before the Crystal took over was of a memory of y/n.

Sparkling moonlight peaked through the curtains at the two curled into one another. They had slept far longer than either had planned, but there was nothing they could now. Noct just held y/n in his arms and chuckled as they opened their eyes to tell him good morning.

Ten long years later the four were finally reunited.  The way to the Crown City was soft, in conversation at least. Not much was spent on the past decade, it was not something any of them truly wanted to remember. Instead they spent the time, which passed much too quickly, reminiscing on joyful past events. Once they had finally made it inside the palace, Noctis looked upon the throne, his throne, and was met with Ardyn’s face and five corpses hanging from the ceiling. Immediately, Noctis could recognize, with disgust, his father’s body alongside Luna’s. Then the ripped coat of Luna’s brother, Ravus. The other two simply resembled people and Noct couldn’t te-

No.

No.

It couldn’t be. That couldn’t be…you…

Noctis nearly collapsed at the sight of you slowly turning to meet him. Your eyes had been hollowed out and blood dripped from the sockets. Three dark holes drilled into your forehead was sticky with dry blood. Rage swelled inside Noctis but he kept himself at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for what Ardyn had to say. None of it was worth waiting for. Ardyn incapacitated Gladio Ignis, and Prompto, leaving only Noct to go after him. Ardyn just couldn’t help himself as the two battled for dominance, he had to taunt Noct.

“You know, those five were just a fraction of the people who died because of your incompetence. You were just too late.”

“Shut up! Just shut up already!”

Memories of his comrades, his father, Luna, you. They all fueled him as he showered blow upon blow on Ardyn, eventually knocking him down. Ardyn looked up at him, not smug but certainly not contempt. “Do it then, end it,” he sneered. Noctis did just that.

As Noct finally sat in his throne, letting the past kings of Lucis enter his body, giving him the power he needed to finally finish, thoughts of you flooded into his mind. It seemed like the sun had followed you everywhere, your eyes containing small galaxies swirling with blissful joviality. Laughing, kissing, you pulling Noctis along to short notice plans. It was all a blur, thoughts muddled with the pain and years with the crystal. Still, his last thought as his body fell against his sword with the last king was

“At least you’ll be able to join them.”

Gladio:

 Years later, Gladio had been in so many short, meaningless relationships that neither Ignis nor Prompto knew how many it had really been. Life seemed to have grown dull and Gladio’s warm, amber eyes that were once filled with such pride and charm were now a mundane brown. No one could quite understand why Gladio was in such a pitiful state, except Prompto and Ignis. Those select two comrades of his only understood, because they knew the whole story. How Gladio lost his king, how his honor vanished, and how he lost the love of his life.

Not one thing made sense in Gladio’s life anymore and nothing could fill the void in his heart that continued to remain barren. Sometimes Gladio wondered what his purpose in life even was anymore. The fuck buddy that caused you two to split up had cheated on him with a large range of other people. He finally understood your feelings when he screwed around behind your back. After all, karma’s a bitch.

He often tried to flood his thoughts with constant hunting missions, drinking, and even mindless sex. Maybe this would help the once dependable shield back to his feet? No. It simply just dug his grave deeper. There was nothing he could do to escape his thoughts and regrets. The only thing Gladio could do was accept them. And he knows damn right he’s too stubborn to accept any of it.

Gladio would never admit it, but when he saw you in downtown, in a flower shop you assumingly helped run, he broke a little. You looked so…happy. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw you like that while you two were in a relationship. Involuntarily, his pace slowed as he walked by and and tried his best to hide his burly form in the crowd. Your smile never broke as you carefully handed customers their orders. Some guy, good looking even by Gladio’s standards, came up to you and leaned against a counter. By this time, he had grabbed a table by a window at a cafe opposite of your shop. He knew it was weird and probably illegal to be watching you like this, but who the fuck cared? Certainly not him.

The man continued to talk to you, both of you laughing at something he had said. At the same time, something started boiling up inside of Gladio. Jealousy. He told himself that  it was no surprise that you had found someone better, someone smart enough to love you and you only. He couldn’t believe it though, he didn’t want to. He knew that he deserved this, to see you happy with another man, but it didn’t mean that it hurt him any less.

Weeks later, Gladio couldn’t stand himself as the thoughts inside his head banged like an endless drum. His social media feed had to be playing tricks on him. The man, whom Gladio saw you earlier with, injured his knee in front of you. The ring was just a cheap joke. The tears in your eyes were fake. It was all fake. But, that smile of yours could make heads spin, those tears that used to make even Gladio fall to his knees, and that shining diamond that must have costed thousands…was all full of true happiness.

Gladio flung the bottle of beer in his hand against the wall, glass and alcohol exploding onto the floor. He took his head in both hands, trying to settle himself from the thoughts that roared like thunder inside his skull. Jealousy. Anger. Deploring heartache. Simple but powerful words that can only be defined by pure emotion. Why couldn’t he be the one to take your hand in marriage? How come he couldn’t make you smile so radiantly? Why the hell were you so happy without him in your life?  These questions burned through Gladio’s head like wildfire, because deep down, he knew the answers. Why couldn’t he be happy without you in his life?

Gladio released his head from his grasp and took a deep, long breath to settle his nerves. Picking up the broken pieces of glass, he continued to think about only you. He knew how happy you were and if he tried to fuck it up, you’d have his head. Although he still loved you, he knew that you had a right to be happy. Losing you was in no way easy for him, but it’s best for the both of you. Taking one last look at your smiling face before he shut down his phone, he straightened his shoulders and rose out from his grave. Finally escaping the hole he had dug for himself. Because he finally accepted that he screwed up and it was ready to let you go.

#ffxv #final fantasy xv #gladiolus amicitia #noctis lucis caelum #prince noctis #ask #anon #break ups #happy ending?

[yo-yodono]

TAKEDA

I have never shared personal stories on here before, nor social media in general, but I feel that maybe this messy word wall can output some help or something. I’m terribly sorry for my grammar.

—

An old classmate/ childhood friend of mine had fallen into a coma from an attempted suicide and shortly passed away not too long ago. Compared to my other friends that I’ve kept in contact with since I moved from my hometown, this person (I’ll refer to him by his surname), Takeda, has always been a cheerful guy who was an absolute imbecile when it came to technology, so daily texting, skyping, any of that nonsense was out of the question, but the distance and sometimes painful silence in our friendship vanished in an instant in the yearly chances where I’d come back to our town and meet face-to-face with him.

It was always Takeda who would first fill in the details of what happened in the time I wasn’t here. He’d explain things so vividly and enthusiastically that I could almost envision myself in these memories and call it my own. We’d usually hang out together in a group, but the last time I was with him, saw him, the last time we joked, mocked, laughed with and at each other was a year ago, just the two of us. We were on an errand to buy grapes for his lazy older brother who just suddenly had a craving for it. My aunt, who I was staying with for a bit, lived in the same neighborhood, so he asked if wanted to tag along for the hell of it. It was his summer break and a little late in the afternoon, so there was that cliche “cool summer breeze” easing us into the night, wrapping up the last memory I could share with him.

This is terrible to say. And I hate myself for it, since it’s such a precious moment now, but I can barely remember what we talked about. Can you believe it? It’s the last time of us together, I barely see him in the first place now that I moved, and I still took everything for granted. What’s also worse is that, even if Takeda sucked at communicating over the phone, that didn’t mean I shouldn’t send a text here and there, no matter how short the message may be. I assumed everything would be fine and fixed when I came back to see everyone, but I was the imbecile who didn’t realize the superficiality of the “welcome back” and smiles when it came to Takeda. Our mutual close friend had told me before that there were moments where Takeda seemed closed off and in his old world. God, if I was there, I know I would’ve bothered him to death over what’s bothering him. But me, a girl wasting away her day in her room hundreds, thousands of miles away from that beloved circle of mine, neglected the opportunity to ever confront him about his problems because I ignorantly assumed it was probably “one of those days” where we all feel down in the dumps.

I ponder that now: How long had he been feeling that way? How deeply did he fall into that abyss to the point where reaching out to us seemed so meaningless?

I was close to the Takeda family and familiar with his personal environment as well. I never recognized any problems that would drive him to such a bitter fate. I hate to reference the “behind closed doors” phrase because I thought I was past that point. I was proven wrong, obviously.

On my side of taking in his passing, I was in shock. I still am, honestly. I hate to confide into other people for comfort or whatever. I don’t see a point in that. There is an unimaginable pain sitting in my chest like a cancer, eating away, rotting. Talking it out can’t liberate this anguish. In the perspective of an outsider of my situation, they’re blank. They’re at a loss of words because they know there’s little they can say to even fill in a minuscule of the emptiness. They take in this woeful tale like a sponge, shit it out as another topic for gossip, pat or rub my back in “comforting” circles while giving me empty reassurances with “it’s going to be okay”s and “I’m so sorry”s. Give me a fucking break. My dog could shit on my bed and give me those typical guilty puppy eyes, and I’d still think that doe eyed apology is much more sincere.

I’m so angry at myself. At Takeda. At my friends in my hometown. I should’ve been a better friend. I should’ve treasure him more. I should’ve stopped favoring one friend over the other. I should’ve used the time I wasted for something that could’ve helped him. I should’ve taken a further step to be more open about him talking to me even if we can’t see each other everyday.

He was such a unique person. A spectrum of his own. He wanted to go to this university that scouted him for their Kyudo club because he was fucking Michael Phelps with a bow and arrow. And if Kyudo didn’t work out, he’d study business like his brother so he could smooch off help when needed in their studies. Takeda laid out his future and it was brimming with potential. Meanwhile, I can barely see myself graduating high school. I’m so lost in my lack of self worth that Takeda seemed blinding.

A relative of his posted on their sns about his death and added: It is a shame something so tragic happened to my nephew. He had so much going for him, but to think he put all that effort into such calamity than for the benefit of his family, friends, the world, or himself.

I remember reading that post, seething with anger. The ignorance. The audacity. Fuck all of that. Fuck the family, friends, world if such a back handed comment is all that can be said for the death of someone who took his own life that could’ve been caused by any of those things. Everything is so disgusting now. Did Takeda ever put off his sadness because he thought it’d be a burden? Did he try to ignore his feelings for the sake of others? Or did he give in to them and let it consume him because he was helpless?

I am so devastated. I am absolutely heartbroken that the next time I come back to my home town, I can no longer have someone like him treat me as if I never left.

This post doesn’t end with your stupid, hopeless romantic expectation of unsaid love, nor should it give thrill to those cringy weeaboo freaks who flaunt over anything Japanese related because we’re Japanese. I am sharing this story because I feel it’s appropriate that as much as we hate being called out on some things, people do take things for granted. We neglect and we let our selfishness and ignorance blind us from the other perspective.

Please use your time. Breathe. Take in the beauty of the people and environment around you. And understand that not everything can stay in its prime state. We easily wither, but there will always be a hand to pull us out of our darkest moments. Although you can’t see it yet, it will come. It is in the form of even the smallest of things.

Takeda, I miss you so much. I am so, so, so fucking sorry you had suffered by yourself. I love you and know everyone back home does too. I hope you are able to receive our genuine feelings. Thank you for being a part of my home.

#journal #personal #friends