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jackalsinthekitchen · 8 months

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pop report #5: endless summer edition (9/16/23)

a sundazed glance at Billboard’s top 20 from two weeks ago – bitch, I said what I said

Summer’s over, the heat from the proverbial kitchen and literal sun still burning the other cheek I feebly turned to both. Per tradition, we’re bidding the season goodbye with a smattering of typical plaints that it wasn’t long enough, or felt like it didn’t happen. But here in Texas, it’s in full swing by early May, with not much mystery over what we’re in for beyond what degree (Fahrenheit) of punishing. So yeah – we’re pretty sure it happened. Yet again, we thought we were ready for it, and yet again, it went a little harder on us than it needed to. Whatever else went down, that lucky old sun made it cruel enough to justify a now-ancient Taylor chorus shooting up the pop charts. Like anything else that shoots up the pop charts these days, reasons why were imperfectly clear. One more testament to the inimitable inhabitability of the One True Pop Star’s catchy canon, perhaps? My summer wasn’t my fave; I can still feel it from here.

I’ve barely touched this new blog o’ mine, which I dreamt of putting up for years – the present you ogle at through the shop window for ages only to take it home and unwrap it, and see all that built-up desire instantly brown with oxidization. While Jackals! still doesn’t have a hook, for the first four weeks of 2023, at a rate of productivity that was ultimately to no one’s benefit, I looked at the pop charts and decided to think out loud about what they meant. But the thing is, in a year when people are thinking about it more out loud than usual, nobody seems to know exactly what they mean. There are analyses trenchant and muddled, and scattered rebuttals to both, strewn throughout comments sections we’ll never read. I’m too bored to even try to recap what I think I know about how these numbers are measured. Even my late best friend’s agitated analyses resisted my comprehension. Why dull the aesthetic with the statistical?

Suffice it to say, there are so many theories about “gaming the system” floating around, it feels a bit like last election year. Most of the people on my radar are in some way convinced that one Oliver Anthony Music’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” won its surprise Billboard victory through nefarious right-wing interference – comparable, you hear, to that Jim Caviezel movie about (fighting) child trafficking, where people bought out whole theatres just to stick it to Brandon. It’s not about the music, they say, it’s about waving a righteous-anger rag, and the rallying cry might as well be coming from any red-faced red-haired Bible-belt boy with a banjo who caught the Qanon virus at très-unmasked family get-togethers. A more neutral friend points out that “Rich Men North of Richmond” hung in at a basically ungameable top 3 place on Spotify for a bit. It was all great industry all around: for MAGAfolk, thinkpiecers, Billy Bragg.

Times change fast, though, so even if a few people are still reeling from them, the Billboard chart – much less Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, where Anthony has vanished – has moved on to its latest single-star infiltration. That star is Queen Zillennial Olivia Rodrigo, whose guts are is filled with readymade hits, and who may portend a long-awaited pendulum swing back to a more rockist zeitgeist. But because it still literally does not matter what I do here, I wanna warm up these lazy fingers some by casting an eye back to two weeks ago, a whole world away, when the charts looked a bit more like they did in the middle of swelter season. At the ground floor of that top 20 was the indefatigable fatigue-pop of “Anti-Hero”, my most favorite song, which does not seem to have engendered a self-reflection revolution here on earth. But hey, maybe people are just keeping quiet about it. Even Taylor is going through some shit.

#19 is “Thinkin’ Bout Me”, by Morgan Wallen, the, uh, hot-button country artist about whom many folks certainly have thoughts. I haven’t heard this song as of this point in this paragraph, and I suspect it’s not as good as Frank Ocean’s pillow-pop classic “Thinkin’ Bout You”, which is the next song you get when you type “thinkin bout” in the search bar. Mr. Wallen, a reformed butt-rocker, has a harder edge than many of his southern-pop peers, and an excellent article I linked to earlier in this piece, written by a (non-right-wing) writer who’s spent just a little more time with young Wallen’s proudly endless albums than I have, suggests his lyrics even bespeak hip-hop (gasp!) influences. Perhaps this explains some words he enjoys using. The beat of this one is ripped unaltered from hip-hop; the lyrics might pass too, if rapped, though not in what I perhaps unfairly call “truck nuts voice”. Wallen is feeling upset, and entitled, about a recent breakup in this enduring hit, not helping his case by singing the song like an asshole. (More on this later.)

Country really is in its butt-rock era, in a sense – the guitars are amped-up and grinding, the (male) vox are growly and real-ass proud about it. “Need a Favor”, by something called Jelly Roll that’s miles away from Morton, was cited recently in an AA meeting I attended by someone it caught unsuspecting on the radio. We’re a very talk-to-God crowd in AA, and contra Wallen, there’s a humility in this song that’s not matched at all by its sound, but which pushes its stridence into something resembling passion. I’ve just found out via Google/Wikipedia that Jelly Roll is apparently an “American rapper”. He looks like a heavier Post Malone – also an “American rapper” even though everything he puts out sounds just like a pop song – and has a narrative about being incarcerated many times, which also lends some poignant complexity to his hit’s hook. Verdict: annoying if you’re in the wrong mood, but not necessarily bad for your health.

Next in my discovery journey is finding out who the War & Treaty are – they’re a Black husband and wife who weave country and rock into more traditionally Black styles like soul and blues. It makes sense that they’d team up with Zach Bryan, one of the better and, dare I say it, more soulful heavy country hitters hanging out in the high end of these charts. “Hey Driver”, which doesn’t trouble you with electric guitars or even drums at the top, is really stirring. The juxtaposition of tW&T’s full-bodied harmonies against Bryan’s voice, which crumbles once it hits the air, is gorgeous, and the lyrics boast a complexity rarely troubled with on most of these hits. It’s all sincerity, but for the most part, I feel like it earns it. Though the Billboard charts continue to exhibit a kind of separate-but-equal mélange of genres, this sort of crossover still feels rare – even if so much pop, R&B and country takes production cues from hip-hop.

At #16 (we’re at #16 btw) is the ever-restless, currently-somewhat-exhausted Miley Cyrus, whose tired but empowered “Flowers” is already one of pop’s great breakup anthems and stands as one of the songs of last summer. I spent some time in Ms. Cyrus’ canon last spring for a piece I’m proud of, but it didn’t dispel the impression I’ve always had that behind that fabulous voice and insouciant demeanor is not a very clear artistic vision. Cyrus swings from new tack to new tack, and unless she’s put a truly fantastic single together – she does this every so often – there’s always a trace of “unconvincing” there for me. “Used to Be Young” is scarcely different. A piano ballad, something she seems to personally favor, it has an air of reflective weariness (cf. “Malibu”) and light penitence (perhaps for She is Coming?). The media was rarely kind to her, but the hurt only comes out in her songs. The hook is solid, if a little programmatic (“you say I used to be wild, I say I used to be young”), and the music narrowly avoids sappiness with an atmospheric, beaty arrangement. And the fact is, when she starts to belt, she thins out her competition.

“Religiously” by Bailey Zimmerman – I would’ve typed “Blake” based on his face and sound if I hadn’t looked twice – is another revved-up, growly country song about having been deserted, and unlike Mr. Wallen, Zimmy doesn’t wink at you that she was super wrong to leave. The chorus – “I ain’t got the only woman who was there for me/religiously” – skirts patriarchal discomfort, but the lucky among us have had a deeply patient, unwaveringly supportive partner, so the regret is broadly relatable. The religious content is also rather muted – not like this is worship music or anything, though I guess it could pass if it were cornier – weaving the spiritual and secular in a seemingly seamless way. But it’s not not corny. It’s not clear if BZ has a sense of humor, and while his voice has some nice gristle to it (a la ZB), like most of country’s current heavy hitters, the music sounds straight from the factory (a factory with mandolins).

Lil Durk (feat. J. Cole)’s “All My Life”, #14, is also corny, but not enough to drag it down. The slow unfurl of its polysyllabic ruminations (there’s an element of hip-hop the rest of pop would do well to absorb), the classic-Kanye style kids’-choir hook, the simple, gorgeous chord progression: this is a song that aims to make you cry, and more or less earns it. Cole’s climactic middle section about slain young rappers is the highlight, of course; never were more brilliant pop stars cut down too soon than in the modern rap era. But the whole thing has a humility and sense of dynamics that arrests you the whole way through, even the verses you’re not following perfectly between choruses. There is a problem here, though – the single’s sweet sugar was harvested and glazed over by none other than Dr. Luke, one of music’s accused whose charges seemed credible enough to strip him of his license to practice. Can’t Ke$ha count on us?

#13 is “Flowers”, and #12 one of three fantastic hits from the indisputable movie of the summer. Barbie was fainter for me than I wanted, though I’m not sure how much more subversive – it’s quite subversive! – it could’ve been while still nailing the something-for-everyone thing. And anyway, what do I know? I’m just a Ken (or perhaps an Allan). “Barbie World”, the #12 in question two weeks ago – remember, this is all two weeks ago, I make the rules here – is the weakest of the trio. It’s a trap-haze interpolation of the old Aqua hit, a great song which nevertheless felt so aggressively hyper back in the ‘90s, it could hit like a form of torture in the wrong mood. Nicki Minaj, my original 2010s hero, hasn’t helped herself personally for a bit, but her effortless, earth-scorching command, even at a low temperature, is a perfect vessel for the universal empowerment this theme and its film intend – “all of the Barbies is pretty” indeed. #6 on this chart is Dua Lipa’s mint-condition, made-to-order disco anthem “Dance the Night”, the sort of banger that feels like it’s been around forever. The last Barbie hit, Billie Eilish’s startlingly canny “What Was I Made For”, a ballad that astounds a little harder every time it languidly unfolds, hung in at #22.

Oliver Anthony Music had dropped just outside the top 10 at this time. Part of my picking an earlier chart is that I wanted to write about him; that said, I don’t know that a single song has had more written about it in the recent past, and all in one week. Much was made of Anthony(whose beard conceals his build)’s irritation with people who use taxpayer-funded welfare to buy cheap treats. In fact, his fatphobia is the clearest toxicity in the lyrics, though the reference to “minors on an island somewhere” – as if the U.S. government did a thing to keep Jeffrey Epstein from hurting people – codes conspiracy theorist. But all the carping about his fishy success belies the fact that the song sounds great. Mr. Music’s voice is searing and powerful, the stark banjo and the outdoor ambience a production coup, and if it wasn’t so clear he was coming at this from the wrong place (though to be fair, he’s abjured any party affiliation), it would speak to the great open secret of U.S. politics, which is that bullshit pay is everybody’s problem, and these wedge issues, however serious, are there to distract us from uniting against our oppressors. As Billy Bragg put it in his pitch-perfect rebuttal, “join a union”. We’ve just been reminded strikes still work.

Having already touched on #6, I’ll breeze through 10 to 7. 10 is Rema & Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down”, an Afrobeat-graced pop hit with a vibe much resemblant of Bad Bunny and other recent Latin pop. Gomez’s post-Waverly Place penchant for coming on like she’s absolutely done with everything and is too tired to be bothered anymore suits the single’s quiet storm perfectly. “Vampire” is Olivia’s current piano-kissoff coup, and you already know how much it doesn’t suck. Gunna’s “Fukumean” gets stuck in my head here and there – well, just the “Fukumean” part – and I always subsequently wonder what it sounds like on the radio, where you still can’t quite say exactly what the fukumean. The music feels generic if peppy; the lyrics are conventional hip-hop aggro-bravado. SZA’s “Snooze” is no snooze, but also no “Kill Bill”.

I went through a breakup this summer, right around the time Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” blew up. His music is insistently catchy and melodically brawny, so for a short time “no way it was our last night” was sort of a pet chorus in my head. But this deteriorated quickly, paying attention to the rest of the lyrics – said night was booze-fueled, not the most relatable or charming thing for a grateful recovering alcoholic, and once again, Wallen’s greasy cockiness is an automatic turn-off. There’s very little indication that his ex wants to stick around, much less that Wallen, whose cultural function is primarily as a “cancelled” superstar half of the country is propping up in retaliation, has done a lot of self-interrogation about it. The song really does sound great, and its hook is invincible, but once again, it isn’t exactly good for you.

The late-breaking triumph of Taylor’s “Cruel Summer” would also leave a bad taste if the song weren’t one of her best. I say this because of the recent scenario in which our new pop hero Olivia Rodrigo had to pay Swift, whose business acumen seems genuinely frightening, for a touch of inspiration from this song (a chanted section…?) that could be ungenerously interpreted as some sort of theft for which some sort of repayment is in order. Their lawyers worked it out, but bad blood feels inevitable; Swift famously supported Rodrigo in a deliberately maternal way when “Drivers License” (sorry, “drivers license”) hit, but it’s not impossible to imagine that zillionaire cipher feeling a twinge of jealousy from which a few petty things might result. Rodrigo’s evasive responses in interviews seem to give credit to this suspicion.

Into the top #3, and here sits one of my favorite curios, Luke Combs’ musically beefed-up but lyrically unaltered cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. Combs absolutely has truck nuts voice, and I’m still not clear what people who prefer that voice above all others do when he drops the line about his time as a checkout girl. It’s hard to pinpoint anything nefarious here; Combs has just sent an influx of money into the bank account of a more-or-less forgotten Black female singer-songwriter – though that song endures, and is now living in the high reaches of the charts, because it’s fucking fantastic. But then, I haven’t read any thinkpieces about it, and I’m getting about as tired of writing as you are of reading, so we’ll move on.

My boy Zach Bryan and our girl Kacey Musgraves are (well, were) at #2 with their gently broken collab “I Remember Everything”. With its soft bass-drum pound, quiet strumming, slowly sawn violins and swaths of echo, it sounds a bit like mists floating grimly over fields (antebellum, perhaps? Nah, not for Kacey). Here are two of our deftest, most openhearted country stars, and, finally, a country breakup hit with not a kernel of corn, setting its scene through pure suggestion instead of beating you over the head with a big new cliché in a sack full of old ones. Its magic dispels a little the closer you look, but it really works. So does the unflappable Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red”, noted by chartwatchers as the first rap hit atop the hot 100 in a hot minute. As with “Dance the Night”, once DC rolls in over the music, the song feels classic and eternal. Not unlike Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By”, the source of its sample – a 60-year-old hit of such intense and incongruous fragility, it’s astonishing how well they worked it in. In the Spotify age, all pop is eternal. To that end, any summer whose soundtrack is woven into your soul is endless.

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shiocreator · 10 months

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🍐🌺☂️🌚🖊️

🍐 if you could make one character real, who would it be

Scarlette just cuz it'd be kinda funny, or madhouse mike cryptid crush cuz its summer it's hot and i need a hug sometimes

🌺 what is the best gift someone has ever given you and why is it so important

Admittedly its not only one, it's a lotta games my dad bought for me, went to gamestop a lot back in the day when my granny was still alive, when visiting or headin to her place we'd stop by and I'd get to play the newest pokemon games, but if it had to be one item ungame related, i would infact say a beanie baby fox my granny gave me, i had to get rid of my other stuffies cuz bugs found em, but when my cat went missing i went upstairs to rummage just to get my mind off it and found it survived, my plushie collection recenty started growin again, up to three :] (cat is fsafe n home by now btw dw)

☂️ your favorite fanfic from another writer

I LOVE... Solar Lunacy(fnaf fic) by Bamsara on ao3, When will we crush the cryptids?(Cryptid Crush) By tsk_madhouse on ao3, AND The Playtester(Inscryption) by Attackdragon on ao3 :]

🌚 a show you’d tell people to stay away from

I dont watch shows........ i dont know........ i have failed you..........

🖊️ what character do you not enjoy writing for

Its been so long since i wrote em.. but mayBE like, Leshy inscryption, ONLY cuz like, i didnt understand his character well enough when i wrote him, same for magnificus inscryption too tbh h, so maybe them

#Ask game #Weirdbroski #tththathanthank :]#Why the fuck does tumblr fuck up my letters </3

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markrosewater · 2 years

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If two sets of players are playing ungames, and the pointy finger of doom points at a card in a neighbouring game's permenant, would it function?

No, Pointy Finger of Doom only affects permanents in your game. Cards that affect other Un-games say so on the card.

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ratherembarrassing · 3 years

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What's wrong with creators wanting to get paid? I don't think most things are behind paywalls?

see, i think the way you phrase this is one of the many things that is wrong here. let’s unpack it a little.

“creators” is the word of the moment used to capture anyone who puts original work on the internet. it’s super easy to employ some faulty generalizations here and say well content creators should be paid for their content, fic writers are content creators, therefore fic writers should be paid for their content.

1. there is the legal issue. i’m not going to get into that here because it’s just a fact. i’m a lawyer, i’ve done my homework, and i’m in agreement with pretty much anyone with a legal mind that has been turned to this issue: fan fiction is a transformative work permitted (in the united states) under the fair use doctrine only to the extent that is not a commercial endeavour. ie, if it’s shared for free, it’s fine, otherwise it’s not.

2. even if you don’t agree with the legal issue, the whole concept of what fandom is, at least up until i want to say about 5 years ago, is antithical to people showing up and selling the same things the rest of us have been sharing for free since the 1960s. this is shit people do for fun. i don’t write fic anymore, but when i did it was because i wanted to think about characters i loved out loud in a way that others could engage with it. fandom is not marketbase to be exploited for profit, it’s a group of my friends, and if you show up at a potluck and ask to be reimbursed you’re an asshole.

so it’s not about ability to access material, if you’re talking about paywalls, it’s about the relationship these “creators” are trying to cultivate. if the only reason you’re writing fic is to make money, tbh you should just stop writing fic. circling back to the beginning of the topic with engagement decline coinciding with the rise of monetization, now that i’ve noticed that coincidence i cannot unsee the connection between the fostering of a commercial relationship and the rise of disengagement. there are, of course, other factors at play, like the anti-feedback culture and even just tumblr’s ungamable algorythm, but yeah, i’d put money on it (pun intended) that these two things are deeply connected even if people aren’t consciously aware of how their behaviour has been influenced.

#yesandmusicals

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ghastmaskzombie · 3 years

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the world god only knows is just like fuck it *unsimulates your dating*

or, in the original japanese fuck it *ungames your gals*

#anime #dating sims #the world god only knows

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uschi-the-listener · 5 years

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After all

I hope that some day when I die when the knackers come and divvy up my organs . that I have enough friends that they get together cry talk remember and maybe . play cards and a board game and all different kinds of music . and squabble about where to eat and what games to play next what I would have wanted . Moroccan of course but maybe also Japanese and Chinese and big sandwiches with pie after and tacos but only from Tito's and In 'N' Out burgers . let the cats and dogs and birds and fish and lizards and snakes and a few cows come and have snacks under the table . no need for flowers just come play a game and talk about me . monopoly liars' dice rummy go fish cribbage Uncle Wiggily Story Cubes Mad Libs the Ungame . and loud Anoushka Shankar and The Prodigy and Tom Waits in all his incarnations . and The Chemical Brothers and Boz Scaggs and Bessie Smith . and Smetana and Beethoven and The Chad Mitchell Trio and the Beatles . Chamillionaire Queen Pink Floyd Nine Inch Nails Nina Simone

Shostakovich

Mahler . shout out poetry and drown each other out with better and better words and sexy couplets and sonnets and free verse haiku on the spot . Write me an Ode a collaboration of ridiculous overblown praise and laugh and cry . please argue and find consensus and hug each other and remind yourselves what it was like when I was there . I hope I was worth the price of admission .

#death #funeral #celebrate a life #enough friends some day

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peaky-yamyam · 6 years

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Stress Relief - Alfie Solomons

This isn’t on the prompt list but maybe “your dog ate my cat and i hate you” with alfie Solomon’s.

Alfie’s neighbour is becoming increasingly irate, not only with her own life but with the gangster that has moved across the street and when her cat returns a little worse for wear she takes it upon herself to confront him.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four |

When Ashes walks in bedraggled with half his tail missing, it takes little stretch of the imagination to figure out what’s responsible.

“Lawrence look!” I call out, storming down the hallway, the disgruntled cat cradled in my arms to where my husband is sat reading the paper.

“It’s the cat,” he replies, his tone laced with sickening sarcasm.

“I know it’s the cat, look,” I repeat, spinning Ashes round to display his now stumpy tail.

Lawrence nods, although he makes no attempt to appear even vaguely interested.

“You know what’s done it? Solomons’ dog, I guarantee it.”

“Leave it,” Lawrence warns, taking an exaggerated sip of his tea.

“Leave it? Alright Detective Inspector I’ll just leave the criminal that’s moved in across the street to whatever he damn well pleases-“

“Language,” Lawrence warns, although his eyes are still focussed on the paper in front of him.

I take a deep breath and bury my fingers in the cats long fur to stop myself launching for the detestable man in front of me. The man who I’ve had the misfortune to call my husband for the past two years.

“His dog has attacked our cat. If you care nothing for the poor mites well being, at least be a little annoyed that he’s damaged some of our property!”

“Leave it,” he repeats. “The police station is aware of Solomons, we’re keeping an eye on-“

“Keeping an eye! Christ, you saw him, with your own two eyes, clobber a man almost to death outside his house. How much more of an eye do you need to keep on him!”

“You’d be wise to keep your nose out of the business of the men at my police station. Do you understand?”

I want to scream that I hate him, that this sham of a marriage has run its course. But I know I’d lose everything, go back to being nothing more than a pretty face whose father had some money back in the day. My nice house, clothes, car, everything would be taken from me. To keep it all is worth putting up with plain, misogynistic, Detective Inspector Chapman. Although right now, it does nothing to abate my fury.

“Darling, remember we have that dinner reservation with Brendon and Louise this evening,” he adds as I march from the room, still unable to break his attention from the article he’s reading.

I don’t answer, rather I shove on the closest pair of shoes and coat to the door and head across the street, Ashes still clutched in my arms. When I reach Solomons’ house I pound hard on the door, my anger releasing itself, in part, through my fist on the wood. Solomons pulls open the door, rather bedraggled himself; his shirt open at the collar and hair messy as if he��s been pushing back with his fingers.

“Ahh Mrs Detective Inspector, what can I do for you?” he says, dragging his eyes slowly over me in a way that sends an excited shiver down my back.

“First of all that’s not how you should address me and-“

“What would you prefer? Mrs Chapman? Love? Sweetheart? Darling?” he lists, the latter rolling off his tongue in a way it never has from Lawrence.

“My name perhaps.”

“Right, well, what can I do for you love?”

His blatant ignoring of my request stirs my anger and I hold Ashes towards him. “Your dog attacked my cat.”

Solomons shakes his head. “You can’t prove that it was my dog though can you? You, yeah, you are just assuming that.”

“You’re the only one on this street with a dog big enough to rip his tail off!”

“Cats wander pretty far.”

“Oh stop it, this was your dog and you should pay the bills to get -“ I’m cut off by a loud bark from inside the house and Ashes bolts from my arms and tears down the street. “Now look what you’ve done! I think that’s proof enough don’t you Mr Solomons?” I shout, anger and frustration building in a pressure behind my eyes.

“Alfie.”

“What?”

“You should call me by my name. Alfie.”

I scoff. “Alright, love.”

I know I shouldn’t be trying to wind one of the most violent men in London up, but the way he smiles - not quite that he finds me funny, more that this conversation is a pleasant enough way to pass the time - stirs something inside me.

“You’re a very angry woman aren’t you?” he says, leaning against the door frame so that we’re at eye level.

“Your dog attacked my cat!”

“Hmm you’re yet to prove that, but yeah, carry on.”

“What do you mean, carry on?”

Alfie clasps his hands on front of him and I’m drawn to the tattoos that decorate his skin, the rings that catch the light and the chain the dangles around his wrist. All so rough, a nod towards his life and personality, the danger that entangles itself within it.

“What else is making you angry? Are you not getting enough pleasure at home?” He waves his hand across the street to my house, where I imagine Lawrence is sat, still with his paper and tea in hand barely registering my disappearance. “Is the Detective Inspector not quite so accomplished in that department? Or maybe it’s you. Is it love? Has your fridigness pushed him into the arms of another woman?”

His teasing snaps what little restraint I have left. Anger at my life and everything in it, the fact that Alfie could so easily insinuate that I was the boring one destroys the, albeit flimsy, walls I’d packed two years of frustration behind.

“Your dog ate my cat and I hate you! I hate that you’ve moved in across the street, I hate that you make my husband more of a pathetic drip than before, I hate that bring the scum of London to my door and I hate that you flounce your life in my face and show me just how boring mine is!”

I scream the last point, lucky more than observant that there’s no one on the street, and, as ungamely as bellowing in Alfie’s face is, I feel better once I’ve confessed. Sharing my thoughts with another person has released the pressure like lancing a wound.

“There we are,” he says, glancing at his hands to hide his satisfied smile. “See I fucking knew didn’t I, could tell as soon as I first clapped eyes on you. I said, there’s a woman with too much anger, too much frustration, built up inside her. You need to let it out more darling.”

The pet name seems to leave his mouth almost indecently, and I’m unsure whether my rapid breathing is from my outburst or the sordid thoughts my mind has quickly taken.

“Hmm and how do you suppose I do that then Mr Solomons?”

He steps towards me and before I can put any space back between us he takes my face in his hand and presses his lips to mine. I know I should step away, smack him silly for making a move, but at the mere thought my fingers grip themselves into his shirt and I pull his hips flush with mine. It feels as if we stand, tangled in a heated kiss for an eternity before Alfie pulls back, but at the same time he leaves all too soon.

“Off you go,” he orders, as if he’s telling off a child.

“Excuse me?”

“Home, off you go. Wouldn’t want your lovely husband to see you copping off with a gangster would you now.”

I shake my head, wrapping my coat around myself and wiping at my lips as if I’ll be able to clean away what just happened. “I hate you,” I mumble.

“You ever need some more help, you know, with your uncontrollable anger, you know where to find me.”

“My anger is not uncontrollable,” I spit, taking a deep breath to stop me from swinging for his throat.

“If you say so, I’m simply offering my help if you so decide you require it,” he replies closing the gap between us again so his breath tickles my face.

I know it’s wrong, this scruffy, violent man in front of me should not be making me so excited, not when it could destroy my life as I know it. But despite my head, my heart pounds and it takes every ounce of restraint to turn on my heel and storm back across the road.

“You still owe me for desecrating my cat!” I shout over my shoulder but I don’t wait for a reply before I slam my own front door behind me.

#peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders fanfiction #alfie solomons fanfiction #alfie solomons imagine #alfie solomons fanfic

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maeaneke · 6 years

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[FIC] kudzu (help, i’m alive)

Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho

Pairing: Kurama/Hiei

Word Count: 6,358

Summary: The older the crowns, the deeper they tend to be found in the ground. Nodes and crowns are the source of all kudzu vines, and roots cannot produce vines. If any portion of a root crown remains after attempted removal, the kudzu plant may grow back.

Notes: Thank you eternally to @blujayonthewing @sugarplum-scary and @libtastic for supporting me as this ironically sprawled out of my control as I got more excited about it

[AO3]

Hiei kisses just the way you imagined he would: a bruising crash of teeth and force and power. Like a headbutt that took a wrong turn, a millimeter trajectory correction from kill to wound.

The first time you kiss, you taste blood, and only some of it is yours.

It makes your senses sing, pricks the inside of your mouth, your lips, your tongue, something-something so caustic and evil against the soft-soft tissues of your too-human flesh.

You dig your nails, clipped and trimmed and acceptable, into the skin of his arms, into the bareness of his shoulders, and if he thinks it’s retaliation it’s all the better, all the easier. You want to provoke him, you want to make him bleed,too, because you know he’ll take it as a challenge, even if he doesn’t know what you’re challenging him to, exactly.

He hooks his forearm around your back and uses his weight from where he rests above you to push your head and shoulders down, bending your form over his strength and exposing your neck, your hair pooling heavy and rough across the sheets on your bed.

You feel that spark that jumped when you first carried him back to your room finally catch deep inside, a desperation you haven’t felt since your death, and you want him to break you open, snap your sternum into pieces and you want to crawl your way out of this shell like you’d intended six years ago, when you still remembered what it meant to want to live. You drop your head and savor the soft agony of your body stretched unnaturally, willing silver and wrath to pull themselves out of your mess of organs, reformed in the center of your stomach where the want is eating you alive.

His teeth are sharp where he rakes them down your chest, but yours are long, and you know how this ends.

Bruises you can see, and ones you can’t. An ache in your breast and an ache in your thighs, and a fear and a longing between your lips.

You want to apologize.

You want him confident, more. He’ll never question you that way, headstrong and proud. You’re in lock step now, three years in, his aura nearly your own, as much as an extension of you as your whip. You’ve abandoned that before, you know you can, and your regret at the ease settles heavy in your eyes where you carry all of that these days.

He’s wild and brash, indignant in a way that reminds you of Yomi too much by half, and you know from experience that controlled burns only work as much they are contained, and you know you could not contain him, and you know better than to try.

You want to apologize to her, too.

He’s right there, and the world could be in your hands just as you’re in his. He pries you apart like your body means nothing and you remember for a moment that it never was supposed to be something. His claws are deep in the soft skin of your belly and you feel it travel in fire to the nerves in your spine, where you store the memory of what it meant to stand for anything at all.

You want to stay like this forever, but you’ve consigned her to the slow and creep of sick, your rebirth the catalyst for the growing death in her, and you know you owe her more.

The price for life has always been life, and you’ve always known that.

---

There’s something wild in Koenma’s new boy.

There’s something in the trust he extends to you, the way he fights with you with the earnesty only the young can ignite. It makes you feel something you think could be affection, if you thought you were capable of that.

His heart is sweet, you can smell it from here, and in another life you see yourself selling him this story in exchange for all he was worth, but fate is funny, and here is the truth, and here’s where you stand, and there’s something abhorrent in your ribs to think of truly having to remove the boy from your way.

You don’t think Koenma’s in the business of sacrificing children, at least, in a departure from his father.

Besides, you think, this boy brought you the death of Gouki, and you really can’t let that go unappreciated, even if he doesn’t know what it meant to you. You realize you can match this gift, with something trilling in your lungs that reminds you of sunshowers and alarms blurring into the distance. You can give him a job, even if he doesn’t know what it is.

He listens to you well and you remember that truly, your story is remarkable, you were remarkable, you were something that could never be emulated, and it’s such a tragedy you might die like this, unknown and another face in another crowd in a city in a country that could never reach the heights of legend you once took for granted. He hangs on to each word and you feel the power roiling behind it, under it, the potential boiling in the future retelling as this boy-detective holds your epigraph in preparation to deliver it to his god-king.

This almost makes the dying worth it.

To imagine Koenma’s face when your name tumbles from his mouth, when he realizes that you tore free through his house, one last time when he thought he had finally been rid of you, that you had escaped him, not once, not twice, but thrice, right from under his hands.

Missing forever, soul forfeit to an artifact he could never have comprehended, judgement free and paper free and sentence free once and forever more.

You hope it haunts him forever in the way you wish you could.

When the mirror shines to life and you declare your wish before you can stop yourself, you wonder if her true son will wake up when it’s over, and if that would be the fulfillment of the life you stole, and the one you so nearly did.

When you wake up and Yuusuke is still there and the moon is full you think it failed and your body carries you with a fear you haven’t felt since the hunt, since the run, since you fell. Her smile is brilliant and you cry in a way you think you never have before, in a way you never knew you could, into her hair where you whisper your apologies and your promises.

When you wake up curled in a visitor’s chair to the sound of gunfire in your ears and it bleeds into the alarm of a misplaced sensor, you fix it and around the ache in your chest you think might be memory and might be regret.

You think of payment, of revenge and a hatred only the abandoned can fathom.

You were a name on a list, tucked in a drawer, ephemeral and abstract. He has a name, and Yuusuke’s face, and Koenma will not allow him to slip away the way you managed once before.

It’s four in the morning and you are nothing if not an opportunist, and if Yuusuke presents a cover for Hiei he can provide one for you, too, and prison is less hell than actual Hell. You can conquer a prison, for one.

You think you owe him that much.

Trading your freedom for his still feels like a victory in Koenma’s wailing, like a jewel ungamely got and a secret tucked behind your teeth against your cheek that there was no future version of this that you did not leave together, not so long as you were alive to keep him.

You wonder if this is the version of life you bartered instead.

It’s on the ship when he speaks to you and you feel it pierce under your skin, in the softness under your elbows and the pads of your fingers and the nape of your neck.

You don’t know what it is is but you know whatever it is anchors in place and shapes into weight under his words.

“Why did you betray me?”

He knows the story you told him in the quiet dark of your empty house the night you agreed to take the heist. You know from the bruises on your wrists and the blood in your bangs from the night you spent together before you ran, joyous, brilliant and effortless that he never believed you, not fully.

You thought then that he didn’t care, but you think now that his teeth seat together so tightly in his mouth you can see the joints of his jaw under his cheekbones where they clench and the weight over your frame tightens in a wire of instinct, something small and cornered.

His eyes sharpen on you from his perch on the rail like shutter lenses, bringing you into focus. He sees you, you think, he knows who you are and what you are and you’ve taught him so well, watching that potential bloom into something poison and deadly right there in real time before you.

Your fingers ache to touch his skin and your chest aches to shove him into the ocean, this clever little wyrm that thinks he can outpace you.

You think of how he trembled under your gifts of graciousness before and how much life he has to catch up to you and how much ground he’s gained even since you’ve met.

You want to laugh, because he almost caught you, almost-just-barely. You feel it on your tongue, a heaviness like wanting, something else caught in your throat, so you press it to the roof of your mouth and let it bubble in your chest.

“You’re not asking me that,” you sigh. “You’re not asking that, so what are you asking? What I think it is? You know better than to think it’s about Yuusuke.”

He doesn’t appreciate the loft in your voice, but you can’t help it, and you won’t, the lilt you invited him to bed with. This is not that but you can’t untangle the overlap, because if you do you’ll be left with something that tastes too much like anger, and you’d rather enjoy him.

You wish you’d met him a thousand years older, established and wicked, unstoppable and quicksilver.

You wish for an immutable meeting in a warehouse with him, young and wicked, unstoppable and evolving.

You wish for a lot of things about him.

The instinct to freeze is what got you here, and yet it remains, leaving you locked in front of the bed you’ve slept in for the last few days. There is a current of air from somewhere in the room you can’t place over the memory weight of fingers and promise.

You slide your mouth open, feel the weight of your tongue and the stick of your cheeks over your teeth. You remember that the body can experience electrical impulse through the muscles for several minutes after severed from the brain.

You snap your jaws shut and grind your teeth.

Open.

Close.

Open.

Close.

Over and over until your lips split and your mouth grows too tacky.

You feel Yuusuke at the door, indecisive and overwhelmed. You feel him falter, think better, and duck into his own room next door. You think you should regret, but you wipe your mouth and try to ignore the phantom pains of tails and ears you don’t have as you wait for the shadow of a predator to pass.

When one comes in anyway, you know you’d have been just as defenseless as you’d feared.

Hiei never breaks stride, stepping into your shared suite without so much as a glance in your direction as he strips his arm of bandages and begins the process of redressing his newly reforming skin. He tilts his head and hums in his throat before coming to your side, hands in his pockets, watching you out of his periphery.

For an entire second you want to choke him.

You want to wrap your hands around his neck until he gives, take his breath and inhale it into you and take him back into your body the only way you can have him again. You think it might be the only way you can stand to watch him die, if it’s by your hands, here in the quiet, away from suffering and away from prying eyes that might destroy his growing reputation.

You look at his face and you think a lot of things.

“I’m fine,” you say instead, and he snarls at you and grabs your shoulders to turn you and shove you to the bed, kicks your legs out from under you in a way that nearly dislocates your knee, but his weight is so lovely on your hips and you welcome the heat of his hands against your face.

The kiss he presses to your lips tastes like blood, and all of it is yours.

You dig your nails into the dip of his spine and if he thinks you mean to drown him, you’ll let him be right and be a step ahead of you this last time. You slip your hands under his shirt and drag it off of him, find with your hands the place that all bodies are built to protect. Your thumbs press into the dips in-between his bones and you think for a moment you could pull him apart, crawl inside, and make your home there in the space a human heart would sit, listen to his core until you decayed in it. You breathe deep into your belly instead, take in the scent of ash and blood into your mouth and swallow, as if you could keep it, as if it didn’t escape on your exhale, as if it mattered.

He lifts himself off your body to slide out of his pants but you can’t allow him even that much distance and you push yourself up and your hands slip inside to push the belts down, move him by his thighs over you to press your face against his chest, right where his sternum ends, open mouth and teeth just pricking into his skin.

You think how easy it could be to burrow into him, gather all the veins that make him him and complete this circuit between the two of you.

You wonder if his soul is there, and if you could steal that, too.

His skin is sweat-slicked under your mouth where you drop his name, caught in the humid heat that rolls off him like road haze and settles against your tongue like monsoon air. His hands are steel and char and when you direct them to your throat and your hair you sigh at the comfort it brings, righteous flame over the oil stains that clung to your skin in a film you could never have washed away.

You gasp, the words peeling away in your throat to beg him deeper into your sinew, into your bones, let him burn his mark into the marrow of your bones where no one could take it from you, where it would leach into your blood for eternity, where every fracture would ignite a stain that would carry long after you could no longer stand.

You think of milkweed, and how you would drink him into you if it made you poison without a thought.

You twist under him to bury your face into your elbow, because the tragedy is that he missed and you carry it in your new human heart, marked so thoroughly that it’s all you can do to keep it trapped inside instead of bleeding from your eyes and your mouth the way it intends to.

You are not patient, and you are not kind, and you know better than to feed it, because it will all end tomorrow, and for the first time you understand why he chose to never fight you, and kept you close instead.

His claws dig into your upper thighs where he holds you against his body and you think that deep down he knows that winning would be the end of this, because you would push him to the edge, to the final blow. You would never grant him the same, and his loss would mean failure, and failure would mean he hates you, down to the core of him that remembers why he knew your name before he ever knew his own.

So this is his victory, to mount you and bend you to his attention, indulge his hunger on your flesh and leave you begging him for mercy, the kindness he knows you would never cede on the field.

This is your victory, too, whispering your sins and desires into the deep dark of his hair in a language that died before his ancestors took their first breaths, listening to him laugh at the senselessness of it all and taking it into your skin.

Savoring it, this thing so freely given, only here.

You think you could have him forever if you took it, but to break him would mean the end of this and what would you do with a shell?

You wonder if it feels heavy, this burden of mourning you breathe into his mouth, the grief you paint with your blood against his palms, or if he even notices, too focused in to this, where he overwhelms you and you let him, where he can take and take and you feed your fury into him where you can’t hold it and you hope it keeps him alive where it made you foolish.

He feels like freedom and this feels like release.

The thing, dark and ancient and kicked into suspension in your blood since the box and the potion screeches feral in your heart and your mouth waters to clean Kaito from his bones the second his hand moves any closer to what is yours, frozen stand-still on the table.

Your human heart pounds in your skull and your vision pulses with each beat, your knuckles white where you fold your hands in your lap and you smile with entirely too much teeth. A child, you remind yourself. A child, a child and you cannot spill blood here, not with Genkai’s prints all over this trap and her eyes sure to be nearby.

Kaito might feel comfortable threatening Minamino but you’re feeling further and further from Minamino these days, even if he doesn’t know that.

You feel it in Hiei, too, a restless agitation, and if you weren’t staring at his soul separated from his body and tethered to your form by the dig of your nails into the space between your knuckles, you might be more understanding, but for now you appease yourself by beating Kaito at his own game, and abandoning the boy frozen and trapped in the house forever as the demon world inches closer sounds just fine to you.

He survives, and part of you is relieved, but the part of you that stalks in your spine, the part answering the yawning call of the widening corridor and pooling in your mouth like stale saliva feels thefted.

Hiei announces his intention to slip through the door while it’s open and it takes all of your control not to grab him by his ears. You remind yourself that just because you couldn’t leave him to rot in a cell under Koenma doesn’t mean he owes you the same, and the emotion that courses through you in watching him turn his back rises like bile in the back of your mouth and burns the soft tissue of your throat raw just as surely as if he’d struck you.

The next time you kiss him, you taste blood and all of it is his.

Your knuckles throb where you fist his cloak and scarf and drag him from where your punch knocked his weight off balance on your windowsill to the wall. You clench every muscle in your body against the desire to crack your skull against his, against snapping his neck in your hands, hooking your hands into his mouth, his eyes, and pulling him apart like a pomegranate. You want to stop him from speaking, take the part of him that is the most true into your hands and devour it.

You want to kiss him, lock the window behind him and let him suffer his own choices.

“You want me to stay,” he says as your hands still on his chest, once upon a time familiar. Here, though, it feels foreign and new, not exciting, but like you never knew him, even though you think he was probably the only thing you ever truly knew.

You kiss him instead of answering, because you don’t want to hear it, not know, and you slip your tongue into his mouth to distract him from his own thoughts before he can voice them.

Your eyes burn as you wind your hands in his hair and you have to pull away to gasp where you feel like suffocating.

“I thought I should at least tell --”

You stop him again, because you can’t hear this, because you can’t care, because that’s how you got here in the first place.

Beholden to him and beholden to her and stagnating in the rut of anticipating their exits.

He leans back onto his elbows and turns his head to break the kiss. When your hands shake on his belts and you have to wind yourself around him to hide it, he doesn’t comment but drags his lips white-hot down the length of your arm until he sucks a bruise on your wrist and you can’t help but think he was only as much yours as this body had been.

“Kurama.”

“I won’t keep you here,” you say, and even you don’t know if that’s true, if the choice was ever truly presented to you.

He watches you, watches you for how long you don’t know and you want to ask him where this well of patience came from, when exercising it six hours ago would have spared you so much grief.

“Kurama,” he says again, pressing his hand to the back of your skull, where you press back.

You cough and your eyes water and your mouth bleeds where you’ve bitten the side of your tongue and your heart heaves itself empty through them and you struggle to keep it swallowed inside.

He pulls you forward until you’ve crawled over his body and he kisses you again as he spreads his legs to make room for you and you hate him for it, press your face into his neck and shake with it.

He tilts his head back to bare his throat to you and you snap, digging your teeth into his skin and licking open the wound, shoving him over to his stomach in your arms to plant your canines into his shoulder as you undress him.

He sighs so beautifully when you take him, open on his knees under you, clinging to you as you hold him off balance with one arm keeping him pressed to your chest. He’s never been loud before, and you wish you’d changed that, but there’s power in the way he growls your name as he comes into your hand, his fingers around your wrist so tight you think he might break it, or sear the flesh away, and you don’t think you care.

He sits back on his calves and rests his weight on his hands on his knees as both of you catch your breath and he watches you with something that looks like satisfaction. You take the excuse to grab something to clean up with from the bathroom and when you return you feel your muscles slip away from their adrenaline-fueled tension, replaced with exhaustion at the sight of him relaxed and content on your bed, where you think he belongs.

You kiss your way over the already-healed bite wounds you’ve left and pull him back into your arms, and if he finds this strange he doesn’t comment as he settles in. If he finds it strange how tightly you hold him as you pillow your cheek to his chest where you can feel him breathe, he doesn’t stop you.

You wonder if a goodbye as he slipped from Kaito’s hands would have been better or worse than letting him from slip yours but it melts under the furnace that is his skin.

His arm is locked around your shoulders and you feel his breath ruffling your hair when you wake in the morning, and you wish you could convince him to stay.

You wish a lot of things, and you release him.

He finds you sitting at your desk, motionless, later, and you can’t see him for the loss of peripheral vision as your body shuts down under the demands of its new host. The shadow he casts over your face aches deep behind your eyes and into the hollows of your orbital sockets and the muscles in your brow twitch but you can’t tell if you blink or not. He’s the sound of footsteps on wood and the shift of cloth and you know it’s for your benefit, and the rumble of something far away and dark in the whorls of your ears but it flows through you like time has, transient and impermanent.

Something warm-white covers your vision entirely and the world goes soft against your back, and a spark passes through the middle of your brain.

You recognize your bed when you wake up but the scent is wrong, blood and smoke and something rotten and sweet. The room is dark but your lashes brush against something pressed to your eyes and you can’t get your mind to engage until you feel fingers push it away.

“Can you see?”

You can, as you blink and the world comes into flat-focus, like a matte set, then his hand, and you follow his wrist to his arm over your body where he’s stretched out next to you on the bed, propped up on a pile of pillows. He looks too comfortable for the expression on his face, where you see the cracks in his affectation that he’s hold so carefully over his skin. His eyes focus on you and you inhale slow and hold, body lock still and muscles screaming under the cloak he’s covered you with.

He sighs and wraps the Jagan again with the ward he’d wrapped around your eyes.

“Imagine my surprise, waking up at the old bat’s temple with feathers stuck to me,” he says evenly, and you hear the creak of a glacier behind it, the ground giving way beneath you in the crater of a new and barren lakebed.

“We had to make a decision,” you say, but it doesn’t sound like you, broken shards of your voice barely held together. “You were unconscious. We weren’t going to leave you there to die.”

“So Yuusuke said.” He snorts, leans over you to stare in direct, unblinking eye contact.

You’ve never felt small, not when you were fox and not when you were new and not when this body was infant, but something infinite and long in his glare makes you feel that way now, and you purse your lips to avoid baring your teeth in defense.

“I won’t apologize.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” he says, unblinking, and now you follow suite because you can’t back down when you don’t know the stakes, but it feels more like staring into the sun than you ever remember sunlight ever burning, and it pierces your eyes into the depths of your extremities. “I almost half-expected you to join me there, though, for a minute. It was good to feel you at full power again.”

Everything eclipses and your lungs collapse and something roars behind your heart where your core should be but is no longer, replaced with a human necessity that seems to be failing you.

In so many ways.

You open your mouth to speak, breath, argue, anything, but nothing happens when you do and your eyes stay wide though his narrow. You feel the intensity of them sear into you and you wonder if he’s stripped you down to your base parts, if the green curled away like cheap gilding to reveal damaged and melting gold to pour into your softest parts and eat them away like a molding cast.

“When was the last time you slept?”

It catches you off-guard just enough you exhale a noise of questioning, ill-formed and slow and crawling. You sit up for necessity as he does for comfort, the cloak falling off your shoulders in a way that you think takes the layers of skin with it for how raw it feels, and you wonder when the last time you’ve had anything to drink was, either.

Time overlaps and segments in your head and you stand in a cave and a boy is dead at your feet and he had no chance against you.

He should never have threatened you, and neither of you had a choice.

“Your hands have blood on them.”

You turn them before you and you do, lines from middle to heel, and you don’t know whose it is. The demon in you says taste and the human in your revolts and for the first time in sixteen years you don’t know who is who and which is you.

You think you left Shuuichi on the corridor stone, lost in the dark in front of the arcade box where Sensui forced your hand past the point of no return, the child lost to something unfathomably powerful and cruel. You look at your nails, blunt, human, and you think that isn’t right, because this is your body, and your body has always been his, until it wasn’t and you were you again.

You lift your gaze to meet Hiei’s and you see him in duplicate, a bad projection half-overlaid.

Hiei, subtle human-adjacent features, staring at you and waiting, comfortable in your bed like he’s always been there, unremarkable.

Hiei, made of steeldust and hellfire, an amalgamated beast of undefinable conquests and something more valuable than even the stone he carries around his neck.

“Kurama?” He frowns, reaches out to tap your forehead with his knuckles.

“I don’t know,” you answer, and you don’t, and it scoops you hollow to say, until there’s nothing left and all the things you could have been pool in your lap.

You remember slicing Gourmet to pieces and only serving to expose the elder Toguro, toxic, parasitic and unkillable, hiding inside; a monster wearing someone else’s face for protection.

You scoot back to lean against the headboard and feel coated in dregs of things you can’t name for miles. The world slips frames around you and Yuusuke is standing in front of you, confused, and Hiei is at your side, and the both of you are laughing, because he’s back, and you’re in the demon world and you’re going to die fighting, but by their side it would be the beautiful end you could never have dreamt of before.

Hiei, watching you closer, the little monster you brought home with you from an abandoned warehouse, with his bright eyes and razor sharp mind who named you for the first time in over a decade and how you felt reborn for the second time when he gave it form, death suddenly eons behind you.

“I’m fine,” you say, and you pull your mouth into the shape of a smile, and he growls at you, pulling his lips back enough to bare his fangs at you.

The slipped overlay snaps back into place over him and you see him, all of him, in clear relief again.

“Get your head out of your ass. You made your choice.”

“And what choice was that?”

“To stay you,” he snaps, like it’s obvious, like you’re oblivious. “To come back home.”

“Home,” you snort, and it rolls like spoiled meat off your tongue. “Home.”

“Home,” he says again, looking bored, and he rolls his eyes at you, raising an eyebrow when you glare at him. “To Yuusuke and your mother.” He pauses. “And the idiot.”

“And you,” you say, but it’s so light you think maybe you’ve only thought it, but his eye twitches just a little, in the corner.

“You brought me back against my will, you should at least have the fucking decency to face me in one piece, Kurama.”

He clicks his tongue dismissively, and the world suddenly rights itself as you let yourself slide down the headboard to the pillow-less bed again, covering your face to hide your laughter.

“Oh,” you say, gasping for breath.

“Oh,” he says, and he sounds far less entertained.

“Oh,” you say again, and you lower your hands to look at him, and you smile, and while he doesn’t smile back, he stops glaring at you and you think that’s close enough.

He looks you over and you know he sees you, because he’s always seen the creature he named, nothing else but you, for years.

The youko would have never mourned the death of a child, and the human would never had fought to the death for a different one, and yet Kurama had shattered, unmade by both.

You cough around a few more giggles and rub your eyes, beaming.

“Are you done?”

“I’m fine,” you say, and this time, you think you mean it.

You’re disappointed but not surprised when Yomi calls for you.

You’re even more disappointed when you actually answer.

You remember it hasn’t been so long since you thought Hiei reminded you of him, headstrong and reckless, but that was millenia ago. The world went dark for him under your command and in the dark you turned him into you, and sometimes the farce amuses you, and sometimes the success disgusts you.

You see his youth, still green at the edges to think a thousand years would make you soft, that a decade and a half would make you weak, and when you stage your coup you burn inside like a wild animal at your success. When you take the head of Shen, you carry it with you to his chambers and present it like a gift.

King or no, Yomi will remember why he had worked for you, once, and why you don’t care what happens to Gandara.

Still, a thousand years isn’t nothing, not even to you, who has seen several, and Yomi’s momentum should have shaken you up at least a little. That it hasn’t disappoints you to no end, and makes you miss Hiei all the more.

The question of his loyalty is far more interesting, politically and personally.

The question of yours even moreso.

You certainly have no desire to fight Mukuro, not after her ascension, not after what she did to poison her blood. You may be itching for a satisfying fight, but you’re almost sure you’ve never been less suicidal than you are lately, and that’s not a match you’re thrilled over.

Would Hiei accept a surrender?

Would you surrender to him?

What kind of person has he become in the last year, you wonder, because the mystery is endlessly fascinating. You only know of Mukuro in whispers and stories, her determination and her rage, and you know where you’ve held that to your body what Hiei’s has been. You puzzle it in your mind behind your hands, where Yomi watches you conspire against him plain sight, because he thinks he can outwit you, like the child he is.

As always, Yuusuke blows the entire game to smithereens, and you feel an ache of pride in your chest where your human heart used to be, and you love him like the friend you never deserved.

The thrill of the beginning of something new stirs like spring in your blood, and you miss them dearly.

The fight between Yomi and Yuusuke rages on, even as the others have fallen away, and you’ve lost count of the hours but it feels like it’s been over an entire day.

“I thought I loved the fight,” he mutters, “but this is insane. I couldn’t deal with anything this long. He needs to end it.”

“Oh, but don’t you love me?” you ask, even though you know the answer, even though you’re joking, even though the fight with Shigure took enough out of you that it’s mostly a murmur, your eyes closed where you sit between his knees on the floor of the medical tent with your cheek against his thigh.

“Sure,” he says with a snort, and reaches down to thread his fingers in your hair, body curling over you from the cot he’s sitting on in a little cove of warmth and dark. “I could learn to, maybe. If you made it worth it.”

You’ve never felt older than you do in this moment, falling asleep against Hiei’s body and the movement of his fingers through your hair, frowning when he stops as he pulls an injury he’s too stubborn to see treated properly, and you lift your head, intending on looking up to him, but the pique takes hold of you and you press your face to the inside of his knee instead, though it’s fully clothed.

“Does it even matter?” he asks, and you hum. “Do you really think that’s the most important part of this?”

You smile and chase after his hands with your own and bring them down to press your teeth to the sword calluses, the tip of your tongue to the edge of his prints.

“No,” you say. “Not at all.”

You think of the roots you’ve laid and the blooms that follow your feet, and how none are as breathtaking as the ones that bind you together.

Node to node, and crown to crown, a sprawling tangle for miles and years.

#yyh #yu yu hakusho #kurama #hiei #kurahi #kurama x hiei #guys we need a cohesive tag #wc: 5000+#fic

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hiphopandtheirishquestion · 4 years

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Year Zero

The first rap album I really got into was Public Enemy’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Till then, it had mostly been one off singles and compilations. Public Enemy also conformed more to the traditional format of a band. Nothing as clichéd as guitars and a drummer of course, but they far were more than a DJ and a rapper. Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, the S1Ws and Terminator X... PE! And in June 1988 they were coming to Dublin.

PE dressed all in black, bar Flav who liked red tracksuits. The S1W’s (Security of the 1st World) were their military wing, and it was said they carried Uzi Sub-machine guns on stage. Chuck D was the front-man and was angry. He wanted revolution yesterday. He was asked if he was playing a game. No, he said, ”We’re not playing any game. Everything else is a game. This is the un-game".

I liked that. The Ungame

They were playing in McGonigles off Grafton Street, so the Def Road Massive (all two of us) made our way to the big smoke. But we made sure to get into character first. TV programmes like Rapido suggested whistles were an essential accessory for any self-respecting b-boy. And being PE, we thought plastic Uzis would be a nice touch, something that didn’t help our 17-year old chances getting served in a pub.

Going to Dublin to see your first out-of-town concert is a rite of passage for us culchies. The fact that mine was a rap band from New York, one that most of my schoolmates would not even have heard of, gave it added weight, at least in my book. I had seen Dublin punks Paranoid Visions and The Human League in Waterford - both great experiences in their own way. But this was different.

Public Enemy, hip hop, was mine. I could leave the other meatheads back in Tramore CBS to headbang to Quo or Van Halen or whoever they fucking liked. To the extent that any of them even knew who PE were it would have been to dismiss it as not being music. Good. Keep it that way. I’ll have my “music” you have yours, you dopey shower of cloth eared, black-shoes-and-white-socks wearing, In the naaaaaaammme of luuuuvvvvvvv singing along with, shit-for-brained bastards.

There - that told 'em.

The day began with a hip hop hors d'ouevre. PE were performing on the grounds of Trinity College that afternoon. I turned up at college green radiating as many rebellious vibes as I could, because I, of course, was a kindred spirit, coming from the crime and poverty riddled slums of Tramore.

The Golden Horde came on first. They played fast, thrashy punk music, and were great. PE - less so. They began by asking everyone to do the peace sign. We half-heartedly followed suit. The whole ‘throw your hands up in the air’, crowd participatory thing is one of the more questionable aspects of the live rap experience. Particularly in the middle of the afternoon, to a crowd of mostly curious onlookers as opposed to actual fans. The punks who had been enthusiastically stage diving ten minutes previously began drifting away, muttering ‘what the fuck is this shit? or words to that effect. And they had a point.

When PE eventually got round to playing some music, they played one song, a tuneless Bring the Noise. It didn’t bode well for main event. Bring The Noise is a banger. If that sounds shit, what hope for the rest of the gig? Perhaps the setting was wrong but I hoped it wasn’t a sign of things to come. I didn’t want to spend the whole night being bequeathed to 'say yeah, throw up the peace sign, say yeah, say hell yeah', do anything really except jump around, pump my fist a bit and, in the words of Mantronix, get stupid.

In was all worth it though. Brief set over, PE left the stage and happily mingled with the handful of fans there, belying their reputation as serious, humourless militants. I came away with the inside of my jacket signed Tx (Terminator X), Flavor Flav, PE #1 (Chuck D) and S1Ws (Professor Griff). Was this the musical wing of Louis Farrakhan, the black racists who believed white people to be devils, the angriest group in the world? Lovely chaps to a man - but I looked forward to furious anger later that night.

And so to McGonigles. The music pre-gig was a revelation. I knew a track called The Terminator from a mixtape I had secured somewhere. It sampled Arnie and The Darleks ‘ex-ter-min-ate’ mantra. Here, it made sense. The Terminator would not rest till he had taken out all ‘wack MC’s’. Chuck D had once said that rap was meant to be played loudly, not on your headphones. I now knew what he meant.

In truth, I had no idea what went on at a rap gig. Another song I loved was The Manipulator by Mixmaster Gee and the Turntable Orchestra. ‘Turntable Orchestra cut it up!’ went the refrain, before a wordless chorus of scratching. PE consisted of a quite a lot of people. Only Chuck, Flav and Terminator X had clearly defined roles. Was everyone else on stage scratching up records like a turntable orchestra? I held out some hope that this would be the case (it wasn’t).

Between the pre-gig tunes and a roomful of hip hop starved fans, McGonigles was hopping by the time the band came onstage. And despite being a bit short, involving quite a lot of between-song preaching and a dodgy sound system, it was utterly brilliant. Life-changing, even.

Nothing could diminish the impact of seeing a rap band, and my undisputed favourites at that, up front and personal for the first time. The S1Ws stood on either side looking menacing. Flav did a dance with a bunch of clocks around his neck. Terminator X stood behind the decks, huge PE logo at the front, looking cool as only a hip hop DJ can.

The quality of the sound, the fact that it took me about two minutes to even recognise Rebel Without A Pause, was irrelevant. It was a hip hop love in, and PE could do no wrong. Perhaps the Irish crowd associated with the underdog, or with the sense of standing up to a perceived oppressor. At one point, someone handed a tricolour on stage. This kind of mawkish, come-on-foreign-rock-star-say-how-much-you-love-Oireland nonsense usually makes me want to puke. But here, it was powerful.

Chuck took the flag and told us how lucky we were to have it. We’d kicked the Brits out and were independent (the words may have been different but that was the sentiment). They, on the other hand, as black Americans had nothing. No flag, no homeland, nothing. As a speech for oppressed minorities it was up there with Pearse’s graveside oration.

If there’s a defining moment in 80s Irish hip hop culture then this gig was surely it. Schoolly D and London Posse had played in Dublin, but it was PE at McGonigles that marked year zero for the new generation of B-boys and girls. Eamon Carr saw historical parallels.

‘The Clash in the exam hall in Trinity and Public Enemy in McGonigles, it’s a bit like 1916 in the GPO. We were there! There are so many others who wish they were or think they were there’.

Eric Moore, or DJ Laz-e, old skool hip hop head and DJ at RTE Gold, was another of the lucky ones. “I remember you couldn’t breathe. It was so packed. I was only just sixteen and it was the first concert I’d ever gone to. I’d lied and said I was staying at a friend’s house. And it wasn’t like I was drinking or smoking or anything. Hip hop was my only vice.”

Unsurprisingly, considering his pedigree as a Breakdancer and soon to be champion DJ, he was never going to rock up with a mere whistle and plastic machine gun in the line of accessories.

"I had a pink feather going through a rope gold chain – I thought this is really Zulu Nation. And all my friends were in character too. We wanted to be different. We were like punk rockers. We were obsessed with this shit".

Eric’s Clondalkin crew went on to do great things in the Irish hip hop world, the likes of Sherlock, Tron, Mek and Cutmaster Jay, all of whom were in McGonigles that night, cleaning up at national DMC DJing championships over the ensuing years. The Def Road Massive, alas, remained steadfastly underground. Deep, deep underground.

As did hip hop generally, at least in Waterford in 1988. But that didn't mean we weren't right - a conviction my grandfather and the other 1916 rebels also held 82 years previously. And there would be no need for MC James Connolly to call on his followers to 'raise the roof' – the guns of the British army would see to that.

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firstumcschenectady · 4 years

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Two years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas: Harry Potter, Hogwarts Battle. We usually spend New Years together, and it is a great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with our niece and her mother. It is now fair to say that this is our favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative game. The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the end either everyone wins or everyone loses. Which also means that no one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost. Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play have winners and losers, and I'm generally OK with that, but there is something really great about a collaborative game. It is especially engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each person's strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of their strengths.

The game is hard, and we lose sometimes. Really, we lose about half of the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing just because the starting conditions are too difficult. But the collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn't THAT bad. (Most of the time.)

I find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun. When I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive, and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was the least fun game imaginable. Yet, there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and competing against each other – and I'm really, really glad that there are now super fun games that don't buy into that model.

Collaborative games seem more like the model of working for the common good. Maybe it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word “commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening for me. I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways of speaking about the kindom.

Over the past 3+ years we've talked about Intersectional Justice and Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy for you, here is MFSA's definition of its “intersectional organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is tied to concepts of power and privilege. Intersectional organizing recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels. Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and relationship building.

To bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as possible so you can make some gains really doesn't help that much. For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women. That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing. There have been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically about power. That is, we all know what traits are most associated with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness, educated, tall... etc, right? In each case, there is an opposite to the description that is disempowered. I'm expecting you are following thus far. Well, because the people who have the traits connected to power control the resources, they use most of them! And then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful are willing to share. There are two REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.

That is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves, and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and needed. And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while working for good. It is really, really hard.

It is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week. The passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." The way I heard that was, don't just work for the benefit of a few, even if they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of ALL. And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better. Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was organizing around poverty. As several of the past year's Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and impoverished people of color wouldn't start working together against their common oppressor. Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign was designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly for every's good. As King once said, “In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself.” Because, truly, oppressing anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today, other's have picked up Dr. King's mantle, and there is an active Poor People's Campaign underway. While their “Fundamental Principals” are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I couldn't edit them down. I want you hear, and be filled with hope, and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they are:

We are rooted in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.

We are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of division.

We believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that exploit poor communities and communities of color and the transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy” that values all humanity.

We believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.

We believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.

We recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.

We aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.

We will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to transform the political, economic and moral structures of our society.

We recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level, and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.

We will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or Republican but about right and wrong.

We uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that are affecting us all.

The Campaign and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This campaign is DEEPLY good news. I encourage you to look them up, their demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read. There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the Poor People's Campaign, and I'd be happy to connect to to those who are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.

Working towards justice for all is really, really hard work. It can even be overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of the whole world. Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is called to do all the work. In fact, we're called to trust each other and each other's work, and to carefully discern what our work is to do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good people are at work. We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations, and with God at our backs, we can and we will. And it is possible because of collaboration. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 19, 2019

#FUMCSchenectady #UMC #Schenectady #Sorry about the UMC #Thinking Church #Progressive Christianity #MLK #Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr #Poor Peoples Campaign #Nonviolent Organizing #MFSAVoices #Rev Sara E Baron #Intersectionality #collaborate #Harry Potter

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