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rays-of-fire-and-ice · 2 months

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The Music Goes On and On

Rating: K/General

Setting: in the decade before the main story.

Synopsis: Shinji is going about his daily life at his job in a music store, until he sees an old face from the past.

AN: the winner of my first poll! This was fun to write, so thank you to everyone who voted for it!

I hope I did Shinji justice here. He's a character I love, and I've always wanted to know what he and Visoreds did after escaping the the Living world and before they introduced themselves to Ichigo. I've broached the topic before in As Months Go By, As Season Change part II, but I wanted to write a specific instance of his life in the World of the Living. I had intended this to be more comedic, but well...it's me, and it ended up more angsty with one sappy moment.

In terms of research, I looked into Japanese 1990’s music and the workforce during the 1970’s. I'll briefly go over it here, but if you want to skip it and get to the fic, continue to the line break before the story begins.

For music, I mainly used information from this article about Japanese jazz bands, doing Youtube searches for 1990s Japanese music, and searching for what records stores in Japan typically look like.

The songs, albums, and bands mentioned in this fic are:

B'z: a Japanese rock duo who sold millions of albums during the 1990's. They're one of Japan's best-selling artists even to this day, having sold over 80 million albums. Sasori ni sasa reta by Kimidori Review by Glay: this was one of the best-selling albums in Japan for 1997, and sold over 2 million copies in it's first week. Casiopea: a Japanese jazz fusion band who have created over 40 albums as of the time of writing this fic. They've been active since the 1970's, and have gone through four phases with different band members; in this story, they're in their second phase. Light and Shadow by Casiopea Casiopea by Casiopea Yasuko Agawa: a Japanese jazz and blues singer. Before releasing her debut album, Love-Bird, in 1978, she starred in movies in the early 1970’s. This included the Bloodthirst Trilogy, a Japanese horror film trilogy that involves unconnected stories about vampires. Agawa starred in Chi o suu bara, which is the final film in the trilogy and it's title has been translated to Evil of Dracula in English. Love-Bird by Yasuko Agawa All Right by Me by Yasuko Agawa Scenery by Ryo Fuuki (also mentioned in As Months Go By, As Season Change part II)

In terms of the workforce research, I had to change the timeline in light of what I found. Rather than seeing a coworker Shinji knew from 30 years ago, it's now 21 years. This is because the store they worked at together, Yodobashi Camera, opened it's first store in 1975, and in this fic Shinji got a job with the company a year later. In it's early years, the stores primarily sold cameras and photography equipment, but eventually branched off into other technology and home electronics such as TVs and PCs. Nowadays it's online version is incredibly popular and one of Japan's most visited online shopping platforms. Why a camera store? I can't explain why, but I have this weird feeling that Shinji might've worked in a camera store at some point. Maybe because old camera's used to have inverted lenses, meaning they could be upside down (and we all know how Shinji feels about things that are inverted).

Finally, there's a slight joke with the name Shinji chooses to use here. From what I saw in my research, ‘Mako’ can use the same Kanji characters as ‘Shinji’, (which are ‘真子‘ and if I’m not mistaken have the same meanings of ‘truth’/’sincerity’ and ‘children’) but both names can also be spelled using other Kanji characters too (but it changes the meaning of the name). While ‘Mako’ tends to be primarily a girl's name, it seems it can also be a boy’s name too, and from what I can see, the spelling of it can be same for both boys and girls when using the same characters as ‘Shinji’. If I got any of this wrong, please let me know so I can change it. My sources for all of this were here and here.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this!

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The bell above the music store’s entrance rings as the latest customer leaves. Shinji doesn’t glance their way, taking and unfurling a poster of B’z from his cart. After pinning it to the wall, he lifts out a box of CDs to restock the ‘New Releases’ display rack at the front.

Karakura Beats Records Store is empty save for him and Kana, who resumes pricing the latest shipment of vinyls behind the cash register. The morning sunlight pours in through the many posters and notices stuck to the windows facing out on to the quiet street, casting blocks of shadow over the many vinyls and CDs.

From the speakers high up on the walls, a tune he’s never heard before begins to play quietly through the air. Shinji drums his fingers on the CD rack to the tune in between stacking in copies of ‘Review’ – which will no doubt be gone by the end of the week if the hype around the album and the sales figures from other music stores are to be believed.

Eventually, he’s swaying his body to the beat too. “Yo, Kana-san!”

She looks up, her bright, dyed hair falling over one shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Which track is this?” he asks, still swaying as he tops up the rack the. “It’s a good one, I might buy the album if the rest is any good.”

“ ‘Sasori ni sasa reta’ by Kimidori.” She grins. “I knew I could get you to like something I like.”

“Didn’t think you’d like hip hop.”

“Not much of it, but I heard this one when I was in my last year of high school.”

Done with the CDs, Shinji returns to his cart and rolls it behind the cash register. “Ya done with those?” he says, pointing at the vinyls.

Sticking a price on the top one, Kana picks up the pile and drops them into the cardboard box that just had 'Review' in it. “Done now.”

He goes to pick it up, but blinks down at the cover. There’s three shadows on a white surface, and above them with is a de-saturated sky, and running along the middle is a dark lake and the silhouettes of hills and houses. The album’s title is in English, as is the band name. Even so, he recognises the name without having to read the blue slip on the vinyl’s side with a translation. “Huh, when did this come out?”

“In September. The old drummer came back, apparently.”

“Ya mean Jimbo Akira?”

“Yeah, but it’s got a guest drummer too.” Kana cocks an eyebrow at him. “I’m surprised you don’t know. You like Casiopea, right?”

Shinji shrugs. “Some of their stuff, sure. I can take ‘em or leave them, just surprised I didn’t know about this one.”

“They release something every year, right?” Kana says, moving on to the next stacks of vinyls and CDs to price. “Shouldn’t be too surprising.”

No, it shouldn’t. He’d been listening to their music since their self-titled debut album in 1979, and even though he’d lost some interest in their music by the late 1980’s, he still kept tabs on them. But then, even after being in the world for as long as he has, the passage of time is so different it sometimes escapes him.

Resisting the urge to shake his head, Shinji puts two other boxes of CDs and vinyls Kana had prepared into his cart, and rolls it down the right-side aisle.

Hecomes to a stop at his favorite section. Written above the display racks and cupboards is ‘Jazz’. When he’d started here three months ago, while he'd been impressed the store's collection was better than others he'd come across, the section had been smaller and in desperate need to of a wider range of artists. After showing his extensive knowledge about jazz and blues music had been one of the reason’s he’d been hired by he and Kana’s manager.

Aside from the usual roles in customer services, he’d been tasked with refurbished the store a little, putting up posters for bands and music artists on the walls and redoing the titles over each genre section. While doing the latter task, he had to withhold the temptation to write every genre name upside down – he’d tried to argue it would make them stand out from other stores, but backed down when Kana protested against the idea, saying ti would confuse customers.

The jazz section was his unofficial space in the whole store, the one where he got to arrange it as he wanted. The entire row against the wall has a wide variety of artists, from the famous to the up and coming to local talent. He goes to the where the rest of Casiopea’s discography is and clears a space for the vinyls.

The bell rings again. Kana greets their new customer from the counter and offers assistance. Judging from the voice that thanks her, the person is elderly.

Shinji doesn’t listen to the rest, but as he makes his way down the middle aisle to stack some vinyls and CDs in the ‘Rock’ section, the older man remains in his peripheral. He takes out the box, balancing it on the rack with his arm over the top, and unloads the vinyls two at a time into an empty space with the others. He frowns at the sensation in the back of his mind; something nags in the back of his mind, begging him to look at the man.

The bell rings again. This time by the sounds of it, it’s one of their regulars, a young woman who’s name doesn’t remember. She and Kana chatter away, discussing the weather and family. It’s so ordinary, so far away from all of the worlds he’s ever known. He hasn’t been in the Soul Society for decades, and yet there are times like now when it feels like only yesterday he was a captain.

With all the vinyls stacked in, he begins to lift the almost empty box back into the cart. However, his arm bumps into someone, clattering the records inside. Shinji turns to apologize, but his throat closes up involuntarily when he sees it’s the older man from before.

“Oh, sorry, please excuse…” The old man trails off.

Shinji frowns, that nagging sensation getting stronger now that he has a closer look at the man. He’s not as old as he thought. His hair is greying, but there’s still some dark hair on the top of his head and in his thick eyebrows. Wrinkles ring around his eyes and the ends of his mouth, but they aren’t deep, only just beginning to show more prominently. Behind his glasses, the man’s eyes are dark brown, and widened with probably the same strange feeling of familiarity as Shinji is experiencing.

Then, when the man tries to speak again, and his brows furrow into a frown, it hits Shinji.

He nearly has to bite his tongue from saying the man’s name aloud. “No harm done,” he somehow manages to say without any of the spiking nerves thrumming through him.

He tries to remain calm as he continues stacking the vinyls in, but he can feel the man’s – Keiji Mimura’s -- lingering gaze on him, even as he turns and pretends to browse the albums in front of him.

He has to get out of this fast. He can hear the cash register going; Kana must be ringing up the regular, which means she’ll be free any second now. He hoists the box back into the cart, planning to head back to the counter, then offer to take over the register for Kana. She’d go out on to floor, probably keep Keiji distracted and try to sell him some obscure rock album she likes. If he ends up buying the album, Kana will likely keep the conversation going all the way to register, get Shinji to move aside so she can ring Keiji up, and then he’ll be gone from the store, and Shinji’s life again.

Shinji doesn’t even make it three steps when Keiji speaks up behind him. “…Hirako-san?”

Shinji has no choice but to stop and turn around. In the face of the man’s shocked expression, Shinji somehow manages a smile. “Excuse me? Did you say something.” It sounds lame even to his own ears.

The man shakes his head. “Forgive me, it’s just…you look and sound like someone I used to know.”

It takes everything in Shinji to not drop the smile, but even then, the corners of his mouth twitch. How to get out of this?

He and the other Visoreds had managed to keeps their identities a secret up until now, switching jobs every few years, never getting close to any coworkers and never revealing anything about their personal lives. They mostly find work outside of Karakura Town in the major cities, countryside towns, and to a smaller extent the towns that surrounded Karakura. The commutes were a pain, but they needed to make a living and not expose themselves as being ‘ageless’ to local residents. This was his first job in Karakura Town, and it had partly been out of desperation when he couldn’t get another anywhere else.

He can dismiss Keiji, just treat this as an awkward encounter with an elderly man who had a case of mistaken identity. It happens, more often than he realized before being forced into the World of the Living.

It’s what he should do.

Later, as he's walking back to the warehouse and then while being lectured by the other Visoreds after telling them about his day, he will reflect on this moment where he chose to do something far more troublesome for himself.

Shinji’s widens his eyes, pretending to come to a realisation. “Ah! Wait. I think I understand your confusion.” He chuckles and shakes his head to himself for effect, leaving the older man bewildered. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Shinji continues. “Did you used to work with Hirako Shinji?”

“Y-Yes!” Keiji stammers out.

“Ah, ya see, he’s my father. I’m his son.”

The older man blinks, briefly scanning Shinji from head to toe. “He never said anything about children,” he murmurs under his breath.

Shinji pretends he didn’t hear it, remaining rooted in place, grin plastered wide over his face and a fisted hand on his hip. Seeing the man’s unfaltering skepticism, he bows slightly and holds his hand out to him. “I’m Hirako…Mako.”

Of all the names! He purses his lips and continues to stare at the ground, hard, as he inwardly begs, Please don’t think too much on it, please don’t think to much on it, Keiji-san, don’t think --

After a beat, the older man bows and shakes Shinji’s hand. “I’m Mimura Keiji. Forgive me for before, it’s just that you look so much like Hirako Shinji – your father, I meant.”

“That’s fine. I’ve gotten that quite a bit, actually. Everyone’s always saying I look like my old man.”

That gets a huff of a chuckle out Keiji; Shinji can’t tell whether it’s due to the comment, how informally he’d spoken, or how the way he spoke was identical to his 'father'. It's probably the latter.

Keiji lets go of Shinji’s hand and they both straighten back up. The store bell rings, briefly drawing Shinji’s attention to Kana. To his chagrin she doesn’t look his way, instead continuing her chat with their regular as she makes her purchases.

“I worked with your father a long time ago.” Keiji explains. “We were coworkers”

Shinji keeps his grin small as he returns his focus back to his old coworker. “Where did you work with him? The old man’s had a lot of jobs across his life.”

Keiji smiles. “So he said. We used to work at Yodobashi Camera together.”

“Ah yeah! He was a sales clerk there. He barely knew a thing about camera’s when he started, huh?”

Another huff of a chuckle broadens the old man's smile. “He learned on the job. I was no expert at the time by any means, but he even had to learn which button to press to take a picture.”

Shinji chortles, both from the memory and the embarrassment of those years. He’d been the World of the Living for several decades by that point. He’d known about cameras but was so concerned with training to control his Visored abilities and stay afloat money-wise he hadn’t ever learned about some of the most basic things for humans.

“He was all right with the other technology of course,” Keiji continues. “We often had shifts together. Every now and then we went for drinks at ‘The Golden Cup’ with everyone else.”

Despite himself, Shinji can’t help but grin wider as nostalgia flutters in his chest. He and the other Visoreds tried to maintain a certain distance between themselves and the cowrokers in whatever job they worked in. Regardless, on rare occasions, he’d indulge himself and go drinking with his coworkers. He did it more often with the employees of Yodobashi Camera than in any other job, and he’d never had a bad night out with them. They were a good bunch of hard workers who knew how to party even harder afterwards -- or at least as much as they could given that they all needed to wake up and go to work the next day.

“I -- He mentioned that too,” Shinji eventually says. “He always came home in a good mood after those nights, tripping over his feet."

Keiji gives a nervous snort. "I must admit, I did worry about how much he drank sometimes."

Shinji did too. He recalls the concerned pinch of Keiji's brows when he was about to leave, wobbling on his feet. He rarely got drunk, and he didn't always understand why he chose to get drunk with those guys.

"Nah, he was always sharp," Shinji says, "even when drunk. Heck, he could even play mahjong while drunk and still win." He let's Keiji's chuckle fill in the air for a pause. "He used to play that game with his coworkers too, right?”

“Ah, yes! I used to enjoy our games.” Keiji sighs. “It’s been a long time since then, and Yodobashi Camera has certainly grown bigger and bigger over the years.”

“Ya can’t escape them these days, huh? Feels like they’re at every railway station in the major cities.” Shinji leans back against the vinyls racks, trying to appear casual. “So, do you live in Karakura Town now?”

“Oh, no. My wife and I are visiting our daughter. I assume you live here?”

“Yeah, I moved here about a year ago.” A lie, so natural sounding from years of saying many more like it before.

He can sense the next question coming – something to effect of ‘Do your parents live here as well?’ – so he quickly continues, “It’s a small town, but there’s a few places I can recommend for visitors if your daughter hasn’t taken you to them already.”

“We only arrived two days ago. We visited one of the shrines with her yesterday. My wife and daughter are having breakfast at a cafe nearby. We’re planning to walk around the shopping district this afternoon.”

“All good ideas. There’s also Tsubakidai Park, it’s always nice to walk around there. There’s also a music performance happening there two days from now, local bands mostly.”

“Is there now?”

Shinji points to the most recent poster taped up next to the store’s entrance. He briefly glances at Kana, who had gone back to pricing the vinyls, but she’d stopped at some point, staring at their exchange. She eyes him with a raised brow. Her expression is asking him ‘Is everything okay?’

“See that there?” Shinji says, keeping Keiji distracted long enough to wink at Kana in reassurance. “It’s got the details for it if you’re interested.”

With a shrug and a good-natured roll of her eyes, she returns to her task.

Keiji nods. “I’ll be sure to look at it on my way out.” Turning back, he looks over Shinji shoulder. “Speaking of, I came here to get an album I was told would be here. I believe it will be under jazz.”

“Yeah? Which one?” Shinji asks as he leads Keiji to the ‘Jazz’ section.

“It’s often hard to find, but Umei -- oh, she's my daughter -- thought I should try my luck here. She said this store often sells music from older artists. ‘Retro’, she calls it.”

“She ain’t wrong.”

Keiji frowns thoughtfully when they stop in front of the rows of CDs and vinyls. He let’s out a sudden, ironic laugh. “Actually, now that I think about it, it’s from a singer your father introduced me to.”

Shinji already knew, and his heart squeezed for a moment. “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

“Agawa Yasuko.”

The memory comes to him. He’d gone drinking with Keiji and his coworkers, and they ended up discussing films they love. When the topic of The Bloodthirsty Trilogy came up, Shinji brought up how Yasuko Agawa had gone on to make music since then. Only Keiji was interested, and took up Shinji’s suggestion to go buy her debut album. He hadn’t seen someone as smitten with a jazz album as Keiji (and apparently his wife) was. They discussed her singing the next day during lulls at work, and for the first time in a while, Shinji felt relaxed, briefly forgetting the troubles that always weigh on his mind.

“Well, her albums are just here,” Shinji says, gesturing to the left-side display racks. “Were you after CD or vinyl?”

“CD,” Keiji says while steps around him. He bends over the CDs and thumbs through them. “You have most of her albums here.”

“It’s like your daughter said, we’re retro here.”

He takes out a copy of ‘All Right With Me’ with a grin. “This is the one! I listened to it last year, but haven’t been able to find a copy of it until today.”

“It’s a good one, she’s always had a great voice. I can recommend any of her albums, they're all good.”

“Ah, are you a fan of jazz music too? Just like your father?”

“Yeah, like my old man, jazz is one of my favourite genres. It never gets old.”

“He said the same thing.”

Then, because one of half of him is now stuck in the past, Shinji says, “My father mentioned you had a wife, a daughter, and a son. They doing okay?”

Keiji hums in ascent. “Yes, very well. I’m not sure if your father told you, but my wife, Kyoko, works in a bakery. She has worked in the same place for over twenty years now, and got promoted to manager five years in.”

“That’s incredible!”

Keiji nods firmly and returns to flicking through the albums. “She’s always been determined. Umei is a newspaper reporter for the local news here, and my son, Naoya, is an accountant in Tokyo.” He grins. “He’ll be having our first grandchild soon. My wife is eager to be there in the weeks before the baby is born, she already has gifts planned for him. He’s a lot like his mother, determined and hard-working. I have no doubt he’ll be a good father.”

Shinji has the sudden urge to reminisce with this man. To talk about their days in the store, where Shinji learned how to use a camera, and about their regular customers. To show he remembered the little details Keiji had told him about his life outside of work – how Kyoko would come to visit them with baked goods when she knew her husband hadn’t packed a lunch, or how happy he was about Umei’s first day of school, or when he was pleasantly surprised by Naoya’s sudden obsession with the new ‘Astro Boy’ anime. To talk about the music from that time, and see if he’d taken on other jazz and blues recommendations he’d made.

At Shinji’s silence, Keiji’s grin transforms into a bashful smile. “You’ll have to forgive me. I must seem like an old man rambling about my family and reminiscing about the past.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I get it. My old man worked at Yodobashi Camera over twenty years ago, and if I saw an old coworker, even if it was their kid, I’d want to talk about it.”

"Well, thank you then," Keiji says, “How is your father these days? I probably should've asked that first.”

Shinji knew it was coming, hovering over them from the moment Keiji recognised him without realising. Even so, the pit of his stomach plummets along with his grin. He’s at another crossroads.

He takes in the man’s features again. How the wrinkles gather deeper around his eyes and around his mouth as he speaks. The fact he wears glasses now, resting over the faint scar on his nose he got when he broke it during a high school baseball game – he’d tumbled after getting homebase and cracked it on the ground, Shinji recalls; it'd been a drunken confession made on one of the night he'd gone out with the coworkers.

He thought noticing age couldn’t affect him anymore. But seeing someone from his past, someone who he got along well with and truly wished the best for, it strikes something in him. He’d been a Shinigami for centuries, ferrying hundreds of Souls like him to the Soul Society. One day, Keiji will be met by a Shinigami when he passes on, and forget the life he’d lived by the time he gets to the Soul Society.

It’s then SHinji realises he's been living in this world for too long. That detachment, that knowledge that he was not like humans, has eroded over time, crumbling bit by bit, leaving only a thin slab behind. Hiyori was right; he should’ve left his job at Yodobashi Camera sooner. It's been one of the longer jobs he'd had, and he recalls trying to stuff down the bitterness of leaving it behind when he left on his last day.

It hadn't been right to drag Keiji along like this, for his own selfish whims of wanting to relieve the past. So he does the right thing this time.

Shinji looks off to the side. “He’s gone. So is my mother.”

In the pause, Keiji remains frozen in place, lost for words. “Oh, I…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up…I had no idea.”

“It was three years ago. He and my mother were involved in a car accident.” Like all his lies, it comes out smooth and natural, like he is the son reflecting on grief he's only just overcome. He hates it.

Keiji shakes his head in disbelief. “That's awful, truly. I really am sorry.”

“Thank you, but you don’t have to be. I’m sorry you found out this way.”

Keiji is silent again, staring at the ground for a long moment before raising his head. There’s a faint mist across his eyes. “Your father and I only knew each other at work, and on the occasions he came to drink with the rest of us. Even so, I could always tell he was a good man. He worked hard, but he always had time to help others around the store too. Not just his coworkers, but also the customers.” His smile faintly returns. “I always wondered what happened to him after he left the store. I always thought, though, that wherever he went, he’d do good work.”

Keiji always saw the good in others, and in a time where Shinji still hadn’t fully processed Aizen’s betrayal, he’d been wary of the man at first. He'd reminded him of his seated officer Genji Isawa: a hard worker who could bring a smile and laugh to anyone who met him. Maybe this is why he'd eventually came around to being a little less guarded with him.

In his last year with the store, it was only then he’d begun to take an interest in his personal life and the lives of his coworkers, whether it was the rowdy Takahiro, or the quiet but hard working Kaneshiro. In some ways, now that he thought about it, Keiji might’ve been the closest thing he’d had to a friend in many years. Still kept at a distance, still lied to, but still an echo of a friend, one he probably would've had in another life.

He can't tell him any of this, not without it sounding like he truly knew him rather than a son telling a father's old coworker what his old man thought of him.

He'd put what little detachment he still had between him and his past, but now it came bleeding through like a bruise. If only he knew he was speaking these words directly to him and not to the son he thought he was.

“Thank you,” Shinji says quietly, still unable to meet Keiji’s eyes completely. “He’d have appreciated your words a lot.”

A sombre awkwardness settles over them, only broken when the store bell rings. A young couple come in, with the woman goig straight to the ‘New Releases’ rack. Shinji looks to Kana, who now unabashedly just stared at the scene unfolding in the corner of the shop. She’s only distracted away when the man who just entered asks for assistance.

Keiji bows. “Thank you for your assistance and for listening to my ramblings today, Hirako-san. I’ll go purchase this now.” He rises, but doesn’t move to the counter. He hesitates to say something else, lips parting and closing. "And I'm truly sorry for your loss. You have my condolences."

Shinji can only nod. This will be the last time he ever sees Keiji. It’s just as well, given the emotions and reactions he’d undergone today. Who knew how he’d react to meeting some of his other old coworkers from his other jobs. If nothing, this has reiterated why he shouldn’t get close to any of the humans, not even asking them about or taking an interest in their personal lives.

But some part of him, a wistful part that he’d thought was buried under the cynicism and hurt of Aizen’s betrayal, urges him to do one last thing. His detachment tries to block it, but it shine through, clutching at his heart.

“Did my father ever tell you what his favorite record was?” Shinji asks.

Keiji frowns slightly and shakes his head. “He might have, but I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

“Well, to be more accurate, it’s one of his favorite records.” Shinji takes a step backwards and scans the lines of CDs until he finds the one he needs. He fishes it out of the rack and presents it to Keiji. A copy of ‘Scenery’. “He loved it from the moment he heard it. I still have his vinyl copy of it.”

Keiji is slow to take the CD. “I’ve always been more into pop music, really. Agawa Yasuko is the only jazz singer I liked.”

“It came out in 1976, the same year he started working for Yodobashi Camera. He said that while listening to it, it’d remind of his life at the time, including his work and his coworkers. He always associated it with good memories.”

Keiji nods, and his smile returns, albeit with a sadder edge to it. “I’m glad, then.” As Shinji holds his hand out, planning to take the album and put it back, Keiji raises his gaze back to him. “In that case, I’ll be buying this too.”

Shinji let out a chocked chuckle. “Whoa, hey, I wasn’t trying to make a sale –”

“I know, but I want to buy this now.”

Keiji had to be guided by his sentimentality right now, this isn’t fair. Did he feel the need to listen to this to honor him? “Hey, look, it’s really not –”

“If you recommend it, and if your father would’ve recommend it to me, then I have no doubt I will enjoy it. I’m sure my wife would too. She also likes Agawa-san’s music, and a few of the other recommendations your father made.”

Somehow, that lightens the load on his heart. He even manages a grin. “Then in that case, it’s on me.”

“What? Oh, no, please, there’s no need –”

Shinji holds up a hand to silence him. “It’s no trouble. Think of it as a gift.”

Even as they walked to the counter, Keiji fretted about the idea. Kana is ringing up the couple, but as the woman counts out the money, she eyes Shinji and Keiji as they approach.

After serving the couple, Keiji comes up the counter and Shinji digs his wallet out of his pants pocket.

“He’s buying the Agawa album, the Fuuki Ryo one is on me.”

“Really, you don’t have to do this,” Keiji insists.

Kana only shrugs as she takes Shinji’s money. “If you’re sure.” She turns to Keiji with a smile. “Good choices by the way.”

Keiji hands her the albums and his money. While waiting for Kana to count up his change, Keiji reads the poster for the upcoming music festival. “I’ll tell Kyoko and Umei about this. I have a feeling they’ll be interested.”

“It’s looking to be a good line up this year,” Kana says while handing him his change and bagging his purchases. “They have a lot more local acts. It’s always good to support them.”

“Yes, it is.” He bows to her after taking the bag from her. “Thank you very much.”

She bows in return. “Have a good day, sir.”

Keiji then bows to Shinji. “And thank you so much, Hirako-san. I’m glad I got to meet you. Please, pay my respects when you next see your father and mother.”

Shinji bows in return. “Likewise, Mimura-san. I’m sure my old man would’ve been happy to see you today.”

Both rising, Keiji smiles broadly, before turning and leaving the store. There’s a still silence after the bell above the door rings. A few heartbeats later, Kana finally speaks. “What was that about?”

“One of my dad’s old coworkers,” Shinji says, ungluing himself from his spot and going back to get his cart. From across the store, he says. “My old man and I look a lot alike, so he thought I was him.”

“Huh,” Kana huffs. “That sounds like it’s be awkward.”

“It was, but…I’m glad I got to see him.”

Kana’s brows frown slightly, but she doesn’t say anything about him ‘seeing’ rather than ‘meeting’ him. “So long as you’re feeling okay about it.”

“Yeah, I am.”

The rest of the day continues as usual until closing time. The sky has turned to amber, with the last of the sun peaking out over the horizon, by the time Shinji and Kana steps out of the store.

After locking the front door, Kana spins to him and hitches her bag over her shoulder. She jerks a thumb in the direction of Karakura’s main shopping districts. “You want to go for a drink?”

She always offers, and just like every other time, Shinji shakes his head. “Nah, gotta get home.”

Kana shrugs. “Suit yourself.” Unlike other times, concern flickers across her expression. He’d tried to hide the sombreness that’d settled into him after Keiji left, but maybe he hadn't been convincing. Maybe he's losing his tough.

Kana bows. “Thanks for your hard work today. See you tomorrow.”

Shinji does the same in return. “See you tomorrow.”

They part ways, going in opposite directions.

Autumn is in the air, crispy in the wind that brushes against him as he walks the quiet streets of Karakura Town. The streetlight pop on, beaming down over him and the those either returning home or heading for a night on the town in the shopping district. He can blend in with everyone, dressed like them and walking like them, but never be one of them.

He never wanted to be, still doesn't, but like them, he'd let that small part of him, that sentimental part of him, get the better of him.

As he comes to the quieter part of town, getting closer to the warehouse, he contemplates quitting his current job. It's only a passing thought, one that he dismisses when he considers his and the Visoreds financial situation. Kisuke had been generous over the years for someone struggling almost just as much as them, but they can't rely on him.

They needed to make their own path back to the Soul Society. Back to Aizen, to take him down once and for all. The old fire returns in Shinji's, a determination he'd used to fuel his detachment form humans.

But he's been here for so long, more than a century now. He's been alive for too long, and been around humans for too long.

Their lives are so short; one moment they're here, and the next, they're meeting a Shinigami or another agent of death. Yet, he'd come to like some of the human's he'd interacted with over the decades. Keiji is clearly one of them, and for all of the grief today had caused him, he still can't deny he'd been glad to see him. But now he'd another person in his past, one he'll never see again.

And one day Kana will have to be one of those people too. He could still visit the store for next few years and get away with it, but there will come a time where he’ll have to stop visiting. And even then, he’ll have to watch himself more in public; Karakura is a big place, but there’s still a decent chance he’d run into her on the streets in the years to come.

When that time comes, she might wonder where he went, what he’s up to, or maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll unintentionally spare him and move away, going back further north to be closer to her family and finally confess to that one highschool friend she sometimes calls on her breaks and still lives in her hometown. Maybe she’ll use the money she’s saved over the year for singing and guitar lessons, then start that rock band she’s always dreamed of and leave Karakura to go touring.

And maybe none of that happens, and she stays here until the end.

It’ll be a shame when it happens. Despite how small the store’s original jazz section had been, he always loved the store’s collection. He hadn’t found another like it in all his time in the World of the Living.

#shinji hirako #sosuke aizen #mentioned only #Visoreds #genji isawa #yes he makes a cameo here!#bleach #fanfiction #angst #on a side note #I'd like to think this was Shinji's last job while he lived in the World of the Living #that he stays at this job for the longest of any of his jobs #maybe even up until the year before the start of BLEACH's main story #he tells his manager he has to leave #and then several months later BOOM he meets Ichigo #and yes #I think Kana would wonder about him long after either she or Shinji leave the store

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iwanthermidnightz · 10 months

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As Taylor Swift rolled into Los Angeles this week, the frenzy surrounding her record-breaking Eras Tour was already in high gear.

Headlines gushed that she had given $100,000 bonuses to her crew. Politicians asked her to postpone her concerts in solidarity with striking hotel workers. Scalped tickets were going for $3,000 and up. And there were way, way too many friendship bracelets to count.

These days, the center of an otherwise splintered music world can only be Taylor Swift.

The pop superstar’s tour, which is now finishing its initial North American leg with six nights at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, has been a both a business and a cultural juggernaut. Swift’s catalog of generation-defining hits and canny marketing sense have helped her achieve a level of white-hot demand and media saturation not seen since the 1980s heyday of Michael Jackson and Madonna — a dominance that the entertainment business had largely accepted as impossible to replicate in the fragmented 21st century.

“The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania,” said Billy Joel, who attended Swift’s show in Tampa, Fla., with his wife and young daughters.

In a summer of tours by stars like Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Morgan Wallen and Drake, Swift’s stands apart, in numbers and in media noise. Although Swift, 33, and her promoters do not publicly report box-office figures, the trade publication Pollstar estimated that she has been selling about $14 million in tickets each night. By the end of the full world tour, which is booked with 146 stadium dates well into 2024, Swift’s sales could reach $1.4 billion or more — exceeding Elton John’s $939 million for his multiyear farewell tour, the current record-holder.

Swift has now had more No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 over the course of her career than any other woman, surpassing Barbra Streisand. With the tour lifting Swift’s entire body of work, she has placed 10 albums on that chart this year and is the first living artist since the trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert in 1966 to have four titles in the Top 10 at the same time.

“It’s a pretty amazing feat,” Alpert, 88, said in a phone interview. “With the way radio is these days, and the way music is distributed, with streaming, I didn’t think anyone in this era could do it.”

But how did a concert tour become so much more: fodder for gossip columns, the subject of weather reports, a boon for friendship-bracelet beads — the unofficial currency of Swiftie fandom — and the reason nobody could get a hotel room in Cincinnati at the end of June?

“She is the best C.E.O., and best chief marketing officer, in the history of music,” said Nathan Hubbard, a longtime music and ticketing executive who co-hosts a Swift podcast. “She is following people like Bono, Jay-Z and Madonna, who were acutely aware of their brands. But of all of them, Taylor is the first one to be natively online.”

Before Eras, Swift hadn’t been on tour since 2018. And her catalog has grown by seven No. 1 albums since then, fueled in part by three rerecorded “Taylor’s Versions” of her first LPs — a project hailed by Swift’s fans as a crusade to regain control of her music, though it is also an act of revenge after the sale of Swift’s former record label, a move that, she said, “stripped me of my life’s work.”

“Folklore” and “Evermore” expanded her palate into fantastical indie-folk and brought new collaborators into the fold: Aaron Dessner from the band the National and Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver, rock-world figures who helped attract new listeners.

The other major tour this year that is enticing fans to book transcontinental flights, and to show up costumed and in rapture, is also by a woman: Beyoncé, 41, whose Renaissance tour is a fantasia of disco and retrofuturism. Like Swift, she is also a trailblazing artist-entrepreneur, maintaining tight control over her career and fostering a rich connection with fans online. Together with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” a critique of the patriarchy told in hot pink, they are signs of powerful women ruling the discourse of pop culture.

But in music, at least, the scale and success of Swift’s tour is without equal. Later this month, after completing 53 shows in the United States, she will kick off an international itinerary of at least 78 more before returning to North America next fall. Beyoncé’s full tour has 56 dates; Springsteen’s, 90. (Recently, Harry Styles wrapped a 173-date tour in arenas and stadiums, grossing about $590 million.)

Outside Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, fans posed for selfies and shared their ticketing ordeals. Esmeralda Tinoco and Sami Cytron, 24-year-old former sorority sisters, said they had paid $645 for two seats. A stone’s throw away, Karlee Patrick and Emily DeGruson, both 18 and dressed as a pair in angel/devil costumes after a line in Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” sat “Taylorgating” at the edge of the parking lot; they said they had paid $100 for parking but couldn’t afford tickets.

As Swift’s opening acts finished, the crowd rushed in. Glaser, the comedian, later said that of the eight shows she had been to, her favorites were the ones where she had brought her mother — and converted her to Swiftie fandom.

“Everyone is in love with her,” Glaser said her mom told her after one show in Texas. “Now I get it.”

#simply amazing #she deserves the world #taylor swift #the eras tour

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sataniquepanique · 2 years

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Chapter One: Welcome to Hellfire

Series Masterlist

A/N: I love a good retelling, so here's mine. It will be at least 8-9 chapters to correspond with each episode. Obviously deviates from canon, and Eddie will most definitely live at the end because I miss him dearly.

Summary: After moving to Hawkins with your mom to start a new life, you make friends with Robin and Steve, only to serendipitously stumble into Eddie Munson's world.

Characters: Eddie Munson x f/reader

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: 18+ only, minors DNI, smoking, cursing, mentions of DV, mentions of parental death, mentions of drugs

“Who schedules a pep-rally for 7:30 in the morning?” You groan, chugging the rest of your coffee as you strap into the back seat of Steve’s BMW. He graduated last year, but still took it upon himself to give you and Robin a lift to school almost every morning. He claims it’s out of the “goodness of his heart” and that he’s “just looking out for his two favorite ladies”, but you know the former King of Hawkins High would never pass up a chance to be swooned over by his former peers.

“This is the championship game, y/n. It’s a huge deal. We haven’t won a conference title in twenty-two years!” Steve glares at you in the rearview mirror.

The ride to school is filled with stories of Steve’s latest female conquests, countered by Robin grumbling about her lack of sleep while dotting concealer under her eyes. You’re half asleep in the backseat, head pressed against the window as the car bounces along the rural backroads of Hawkins.

“Hey wait up!” Robin yells, causing you to jolt awake. She was already out of the car, grabbing her marching band hat and running to meet up with the rest of her bandmates in front of the gym.

You groan again, very much not a morning person. Steve turns around and grins at you.

“Have a good day at school honey!” He sings loudly.

“Gee, thanks Dad!” You yell as you slam his car door, giving him a wink. He smiles and pulls away, but not before giving a flirty wave to a group of senior girls.

Robin was your only real friend at school. Sure, you had acquaintances from different classes, but no one that you really hung out with. Moving to Hawkins last year was rough, leaving your old friends behind in Ohio killed you, but deep down you knew it was for the best. Not just for you, but for your mom as well. The two of you needed a fresh start after the turmoil you had endured at the beginning of ’85. Once you were settled into the new house, you had secured a part time job at a record store in Starcourt Mall, determined to give yourself some reason to leave your bedroom.

During one of your mandated 30-minute breaks, you had ventured to the foodcourt to get something for lunch. Overwhelmed by the amount of choices, you were hypnotized by the numerous neon signs.

A loud voice broke you out your trance, “AHOY Miss!” Steve was leaning against the counter of Scoops Ahoy, giving you a ‘come-hither’ face while Robin stood behind rolling her eyes. Walking up to the counter, Steve proceeded to ramble out some cheesy pick-up line that you’d heard a million times before, running a hand through his offensively luscious hair. You responded by giving your condolences on having to wear those ridiculous sailor uniforms.

Robin snickered and pushed him out the way. “I told you she wasn’t interested, Cassanova.”

You spent the rest of your break bonding over your mutually-shitty retail jobs, making it a habit to hang out with them every lunch-break from then on, and eventually squeezing your way into Robin’s lunch table when school started. Now the three of you are almost inseparable. After Starcourt burned down, Robin and Steve had gotten new jobs at the local Family Video while your mom had been too freaked out by the disaster to let you get another job. “You should just focus on school right now.” So now you split your free time between homework and Family Video, keeping the two of them company during their shifts. You spend so much time there that they should actually be paying you to work.

Mrs. Kelly was standing by the entrance to the school, ushering people towards the gym for the pep rally. She gives you a sympathetic smile as you walk down the sloping pavement towards her.

“Good Morning, y/n! See you today at 1?”

Your bi-weekly counseling sessions were set up by your mom, having called the school shortly after starting senior year to let them know that you were having a hard time adjusting to your new normal. She wasn’t lying, you’d been having vivid nightmares almost every night, the lack of decent sleep causing headaches the next morning. You honestly can’t tell if Mrs. Kelly’s sessions are helping, but it gets you out of algebra for 40 minutes so you’re not complaining.

Filing into the gym with the other students, you quickly slip under the bleachers unnoticed. You sigh as you lean against the wall, pulling out your pack of cigarettes and your walkman. Hearing the band start playing their fight song, you put on your headphones, light your cigarette and press the play button.

—Sunlight, falling on your steel

Death in life is your ideal

Life is like a wheel—

Peering through the slots of the bleachers, you can make out Jason Carver standing at the microphone, making some sort of evangelical-esque speech. Thank god for your walkman. You can’t stand that kid, holy-than-thou and a total fucking dickhead. You watch as he blows a kiss to Chrissy Cunningham sitting on the hardwood in front of the bleachers. Her perfectly coifed ponytail bounces as she returns the gesture.

Gag.

You don’t hate Chrissy, she’s actually really sweet, but her friends are mean and cruel to anyone outside of their circle, so in your eyes she’s guilty by association.

You feel a presence beside you, and turn your head to see a tall, long haired boy duck under the bleachers. Your eyes meet, and you pull your headphones down, hiding the cigarette behind your back. Cursing yourself silently, you hold the smoke in your lungs until your eyes water, your brain running through a million different excuses you can use as to why you were down here in the first place.

He puts his hands up in surrender. “I’m not a narc.”

You exhale with a small cough and pull your hand from behind your back, putting the cigarette back in your mouth.

“This is my hiding spot. What do you want?” You relax back against the wall, picking at your nail polish.

The boy laughs, walking closer and leans next to you. “Au contraire, sweetheart. This was my spot lonnnnggggg before it was yours.”

You raise your eyebrows in mock surprise.

“One of the perks of doing senior year more than once is knowing all the good places to hide.” He winks at you, pulling out a cigarette and putting it between his lips.

Grabbing yours out of your mouth, he puts the smoldering tip against his unlit one and inhales, transferring the light.

He hands yours back as you glare at him.

The fucking audacity.

He leans his head in, making your heart stop as his face is within centimeters of your own. Pausing like this for a few moments, he looks at you with his deep brown eyes and smiles.

“…Maiden.” He smirks as you realize your music is still playing through the headphones hanging from your neck.. “Very metal.”

“I’m Eddie, Eddie Munson.” He holds out his hand.

“Y/n, y/l/n.” You don’t return the handshake, instead opting to look him up and down, not sure how to feel about this weird, denim clad metal head standing in front of you.

“Well y/n y/l/n,” he leans his face close to your ear, “it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He gives you a little bow, as he puts his cigarette back in his mouth and slips back out from under the bleachers.

———

Dustin and Mike are frantic. After breaking the news to Eddie that Lucas wouldn’t be able to make it to the culmination of a months long D&D campaign, they were tasked to find a substitute for their party. They weren’t necessarily ‘afraid’ of Eddie, but they were definitely intimidated. Between the two of them, they must have asked every student at Hawkins High to give Hellfire a try for the night. Each interaction ending with some form of “ew, no.”

Exhausted and defeated, the two boys slump over on the side of the building, staring out over the courtyard filled with students eating lunch and lounging around. Mike scans the lawn, mentally ticking off the groups he had already asked: the burnouts on the back patio, the science geeks huddled around a picnic table, the yearbook committee milling around snapping candid photos of everyone.

Then his eyes land on you. Laying on top of a picnic table, one leg casually crossed over the other bouncing it up and down while reading a book. Mike elbows Dustin in the ribs.

“Je-sus…what?” He asks, rubbing his side.

Mike motions over to you, “I don’t think I’ve asked her yet. Have you?”

Dustin squints in your direction, “No, I don’t think so? Is that…is she reading the Hobbit?”

He jumps up and makes his way over to the table, hovering above your head, casting a shadow over your face.

“You’re in my light, asshole.” You say, not looking up from the page.

“Greetings fair maiden!” Dustin smiles at you. You slowly turn your face to look at him, grimacing.

“What do you want?” You exhale. You recognize him through your mutual friends Robin and Steve, having seen him hanging around Family Video a few times before. You have never made any actual effort to talk to him though.

“Well, my name’s Dustin, this is Mike,” He gestures to the boy behind him, “and we are members of the Hellfire Club. We have our final game of a grueling campaign tonight, and are in desperate need of one more player. Seeing as how you’re clearly interested in fantasy…” he points at your book, “…I figured you might want to be involved.” He smiles widely, eyes squinting in the afternoon sun.

“What’s in it for me?” You sit up on your elbow, raising your eyebrows.

“Uh…well…our undying loyalty I guess? The chance to play one of the greatest games known to man? I don’t know, we just really need your help.” Mike pleads.

You lay back down and open your book to where you left off.

Dustin lets out an exasperated sigh.

You reach into your jeans front pocket and pull out 2 dollar bills, holding them between your index and middle finger towards the boys.

“…go get me a soda and you have deal.”

Dustin gives an excited squeal and grabs the money from between your fingers and thrusts a character sheet into your outstretched hand.

“Theater room! 3:30!” He yells as he pulls Mike away towards the cafeteria.

———

School let out at 2:30, hoards of students cascading out of the building, excited for Spring Break to officially begin. You still have an hour until you had to meet the boys for Hellfire, so you decide to spend it in your favorite place.

You trudge your way to the back of the school towards to the football field, cutting across the carefully manicured grass, and make your way into the thick woods behind the bleachers. A few meters into the trees there is a small clearing with a picnic table, a quiet refuge from the throngs of students filing out to their cars. You’ve been coming here for months, using it as your little sanctuary to smoke a joint and read in peace. You figure getting a little high would make tonight more bearable, so you light up and sit on the bench, leaning back against the table. Hearing a twig snap in the woods, you quickly stub the joint out on the bench and hide behind a large tree just outside of the clearing.

Fearing you’ve been caught, you peer around the trunk and see Chrissy Cunningham enter the clearing, wringing her hands and nervously looking around.

How does she know about this spot? Is she waiting for someone?

You watch as she continues to whip her head around at any small noise. Out of the corner of your eye you see a looming figure slowly making its way through the trees behind her. Your breathing quickens. He comes into view and she backs into him, yelping.

It’s Eddie fucking Munson.

You exhale, for a second you thought you were about to witness a homicide.

Wait. Eddie Munson? Why was he here, with Chrissy fucking Cunningham of all people?

They sit at the picnic table as you lean against the tree, crouching down to make sure they couldn’t see you while you listened. Chrissy seems nervous, almost terrified, barely making eye contact with Eddie across the table. They’re talking low so you have to strain to decipher what they’re saying.

“—Uh listen…we don’t have to do this. Just say the word and I’ll go.” You hear Eddie say suddenly, flipping his lunchbox shut.

“No, please…I don’t want you to go.” Chrissy whimpers, looking down at her hands.

Eddie rests his chin on his fist and looks at her.

“Do you…do you have anything stronger?” She asks him, looking up at him sheepishly.

Hold up. Is this a drug deal? Is Chrissy buying drugs?

You are completely dumbfounded. Not just at the fact that these two were even coexisting peacefully in the same space, but also that Chrissy Cunningham, the Queen of Hawkins High, was actually buying fucking drugs.

“Uh yeah, actually. I don’t have anything on me right now, but would you be able to meet me after the basketball game tonight? I can give you a ride back to my house to grab it.” Eddie says casually, standing up from the table. Chrissy nods, following behind Eddie as he exits the clearing.

For the first time in what seems like forever, you finally relax your posture, not realizing how tense your entire body was during the entire exchange. You wait a few minutes to ensure that the two of them were gone, and slowly make your way back towards the school.

———

You check the clock above the front office as you strode into the building, 3:41. Shit.

You internally groan when you turn a corner, seeing Dustin and Mike standing there with their arms crossed.

“Where have you been?” Dustin throws his hands out in frustration.

“We’ve been waiting here for you!” Mike hisses.

You grumble an apology, and trail behind them into the theater room.

“Absolutely not.” Eddie says through a fake smile, sitting on his throne flanked by Jeff and Gareth, both of whom you recognize from your English class.

“Oh come on!” Dustin cries, “You asked for a sub, and we delivered.”

“Does she even know how to play?” Eddie doesn’t even look at you.

“Am I allowed to speak? Or are you just going to keep referring to me like I’m not here…” you interject, tired of the back and forth.

Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up and he slowly rises from his throne, making his way over to you. Standing aggressively close like he did earlier under the bleachers, he looks down menacingly while you stare at him stone-faced.

“Do you even know how to play?” He asks in a lower tone, cocking his head slightly to the side.

“I’m a quick learner.” You counter, holding out your character sheet that you completed in study hall earlier.

He takes it and glances over your work, a sly smile pulling at the side of his mouth. He extends a ringed hand toward you.

“Welcome to Hellfire.”

You find yourself actually enjoying the night. The members of Hellfire are fun, and make you feel very comfortable, except for Eddie. He doesn’t necessarily make you uncomfortable, but his eyes occasionally meet yours from across the table and each time they do it gives you goosebumps. You sit next to Erica Sinclair, who you immediately bond with. You learn that she is the sister of Lucas, who you had replaced for the night. She makes a point to loudly announce that you’re a better party member than her brother, and she asks Eddie to remove him from the club permanently, to which he just laughs and shakes his head. Erica makes sure to whisper explanations for things or specific tips throughout the game to help you out. The game itself goes fantastic, with your fellow comrades slaughtering Vecna and his cultists, eliciting a loud cheer from the group at the outcome of the final roll by Erica. Even Eddie is impressed, bowing to the group and clapping his hands.

Still riding high from their victory, the boys and Erica slowly trickle out of the room at the end of the night, carrying their backpacks and high-fiving each other.

“You need help cleaning up?” You look at Eddie while picking up a half finished Mountain Dew can.

“Uh sure, yeah, that’d be great.” He clears some of the miniatures off the table and dumps them in his bag.

You both clean in silence, the sound of aluminum cans being crushed and papers rustling fill the darkened room. .

“So what’s your deal?” Eddie breaks the silence.

“I’m sorry?” You look up at him from the floor, where you were crouched down to pick up some trash.

“Like, who are you? Why haven’t I seen you around before today?”

“Oh. Well, I tend to keep to myself honestly. I moved here last year, and I’m not a very outgoing person so I haven’t made too many friends, except for Robin. I think you might know her? Robin Buckley, she’s in band. Oh, and Steve. Steve Harrington, he graduated last year.”

He doesn’t respond, and you notice his eyes haven’t left you since you started talking.

“Anyway, I was reading in the courtyard earlier during lunch and those two idiots—“ You motion towards the door where Mike and Dustin had left minutes ago, “—saw me and asked me to join your little cult for the night.”

Eddie snorts, “Well, we’re not a cult, but you are more than welcome to keep coming to these games. You definitely vibe with us.”

You smile as you grab your backpack, not realizing it was unzipped, spilling some of your textbooks onto the floor.

“—shit.” You whisper, bending down to grab them.

Eddie meets you there, scooping up your Tolkien book and flipping it over to read the cover.

“Is this the fucking Hobbit?” He looks at you through his lashes.

You snatch it from his hands, blushing.

“Yes. It’s my favorite comfort read. My dad read it to me when I was little.” You put it carefully back in your bag, avoiding Eddie’s gaze.

“Sounds like a cool guy. Does he wanna join Hellfire?” Eddie jokes, smiling at you.

“He’s dead.” You state. Looking at Eddie with a blank expression.

“Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry…I had no idea.” He apologizes, holding his hands up.

“It’s fine.” You swing your bag over your shoulder, not wanting to continue the conversation.

You head towards the door, eager to leave now that you were in a bad mood.

“Hey!” Eddie calls, sitting back down on his throne. “See you at the next game?”

You give him a half smile and nod, and turn around to quickly leave so he wouldn’t see the flush that erupted onto your cheeks.

Driving home you can’t get Eddie out of your head. You’re not sure what it was, but you feel some sort of weird connection to him. He was cute, you’ll give him that. With his wild hair and scratchy tattoos. But there was a deep sincerity, and genuine kindness about him that struck you. Your thoughts turn to his expression when you mentioned your dad’s death. The color had drained from his face, his eyes full of sorrow and affection. You think about your dad, and wipe at the tears that had begun to escape from the corner of your eyes. It’s been a little over a year at this point. A little over a year since the car accident that took him from you and your mom. You still blame yourself for his death, and no matter how many therapists your mom made you see, you would continue to wrestle with the belief that you killed him.

It was the end of February, and you had begged your parents to let you go to your boyfriend’s house for a movie marathon. “I’m not sure if I want you going anywhere today y/n, they’re forecasting a bad snow storm for this afternoon and tonight.” Your mom cautioned, shaking her head. “What if you get snowed in and stuck there?”

“Mom, it’ll be fine! I promise. If it snows really bad, his parents will let me stay over on the couch. I’ll call and let you know so you won’t worry.”

Shaking her head again, she finally agreed to let you go.

Jeremy didn’t live far from you, only about a mile or so, so you biked over with your backpack loaded up with candy. You both loved horror movies, and had planned on watching a few classics today while rotting your teeth with junk food. Your mom and the weatherman were right, the snow started around noon and did not stop coming. Quickly the flakes piled up and you could see that the roads outside Jeremy’s house were not drivable. You called your mom and let her know you were going to stay there and that you were safe.

After the third slasher movie, your memory becomes hazy. With no recollection of what caused it, you and Jeremy got into a fight. You had argued before, but not like this. You can’t remember the catalyst, but you remember the sting of your cheek after he hit you. He apologized profusely as you dialed your parents phone number, crying and pushing him away as he tried to console you. Your dad answered, and upon hearing your first sob he did not hesitate to let you know he was on his way to get you.

He never made it.

You pull into your driveway and quietly enter the house. Your mom is already asleep, so you tip-toe to your room and shut the door, dumping your backpack onto the floor and grabbing your copy of the Hobbit. Clutching it to your chest you sink onto your bed, not allowing yourself to cry anymore tonight.

#eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson edit #stranger things fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x female reader #Eddie Munson au #eddie munson series #eddie munson angst #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fluff

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months

Text

Rob Rogers, http://TinyView.com :: @Rob_Rogers

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 2, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

The trial of former president Trump, his oldest sons, two associates, and the Trump Organization began today in Manhattan. Jose Pagliery, political investigations reporter for The Daily Beast, noted that the presiding judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, started with a reference to Friday’s rainstorm that flooded New York City, saying: "Weeks ago, I said we would start today 'come hell or high water.’ Meteorologically speaking, we’ve had the high water."

New York Attorney General Letitia James launched the investigation in 2019 after Trump fixer Michael Cohen testified before Congress that Trump had been engaging in fraud by inflating the value of his property. Last week, Justice Engoron issued a partial decision establishing that the organization and its executives committed fraud. Engoron canceled the licenses under which the organization’s New York businesses operated, provided for those businesses to be dissolved, and provided for an independent monitor to oversee the company.

With that major point already established, the trial that began today will establish how much of the ill-gotten money must be given up, or “disgorged,” by the defendants and whether they falsified records or engaged in insurance fraud in the process of committing fraud. James has asked for a minimum of $250 million in disgorgement, along with a ruling permanently prohibiting Trump and his older sons from doing business in New York, and a five-year ban on commercial real estate transactions for Trump and the organization.

Trump is attending the trial in person, likely because, as Pagliery noted, he cited this trial as the reason he couldn’t show up for two days of depositions in his federal case against Michael Cohen. If he didn’t show up, he would be in contempt of court. So he is there, but his goal in all his legal cases seems to be to play to the public, where his displays of victimization and dominance have always served him.

He has already said it is “unfair” that he isn’t getting a jury trial in New York, but his lawyers explicitly said they did not want one, possibly because a bench trial gives Trump a single judge to attack rather than a jury. Today, his lawyer Alina Habba, who along with her law firm and Trump has been fined close to $1 million by a federal judge for filing a frivolous lawsuit, gave a fiery opening statement aimed at “the American people” rather than the judge. When the court broke for lunch, Trump went straight to reporters to rail at the prosecutors holding him to account.

Historian Lawrence Glickman noted that the press is emphasizing Trump’s anger at the proceedings as if a defendant’s anger matters, but it is starting to feel as if bullying and bluster to get away with breaking the rules is not as effective as it used to be. Legal analyst Lisa Rubin notes that this case is a form of “corporate death penalty” that strikes at his wealth and image, both of which are central to his identity and to his political power.

And it is not just Trump; another case announced on Friday suggests the era of real estate crime is ending. The Department of Justice announced that a California real estate executive had pleaded guilty the previous day to a multi-year scheme that looked a lot like the one Trump’s organization is charged with: fraudulently inflating the value of real estate holdings of a Michigan company in order to defraud lenders.

“My office will not hesitate to prosecute those who lie in order to engage in financial crimes, regardless of the titles they may have,” said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Dawn N. Ison.

The drive for the impartial application of the rule of law is showing up among the Democrats, as they seek to illustrate the difference between them and the Republicans. New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez is insisting that the federal indictment against him and his wife for bribery, fraud, and extortion in exchange for helping Egypt is a political smear campaign, but more than half of Democratic senators have called on him to resign.

Trump is increasingly being held to account by former staff, as well. In the wake of his attacks on former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Trump’s former chief of staff Marine Corps General John Kelly went on the record today with Jake Tapper of CNN, confirming a number of the damning stories that emerged during Trump’s presidency about his denigration of wounded, captured, or killed military personnel as “suckers” and “losers,” with whom he didn’t want to be seen.

Kelly called Trump: “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason—in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law…. There is nothing more that can be said,” he added. “God help us.”

The confirmation of Trump’s attacks on wounded or killed military personnel will not help his political support. After reading Kelly’s remarks, retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, a key advocate for veteran voting, released a video he recorded more than two years ago when he first heard the stories about Trump’s attack on the military. “Who could vote for this traitor Trump?” he asked on social media. In the video, Eaton urges veterans to “vote Democratic,” because “our country’s honor depends on it.”

That Trump is concerned about his ebbing popularity showed tonight when his campaign released a statement demanding that the Republican National Committee cancel all future debates and focus on Trump’s evidence-free allegations that the Democrats are going to steal the 2024 election. If it refuses, the statement says, it will just show that national Republicans are “more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”

Popular pressure against the extremism of the Republican Party showed up today when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recused himself from participating in a case related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was a staunch supporter of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and in the past, Thomas had voted on related cases nonetheless. Today’s case involved John Eastman, formerly one of Thomas’s law clerks.

There were interesting signs today that the tide seems to be turning against the MAGA Republicans elsewhere, too. In an op-ed in the New York Times, former South Carolina representative Bob Inglis told his “Fellow Republicans: It’s Time to Grow Up.” He expressed regret for his votes in 1995 to shut down the government and in 1998 to impeach President Bill Clinton, and for his opposition to addressing climate change on the grounds that if Al Gore was for it, Republicans should be against it.

But he had come to realize that “the fight wasn’t against Al Gore; it was against climate change. Just as the challenge of funding the government isn’t a referendum on Speaker McCarthy; it’s a challenge of making one out of many—E pluribus unum—and of bringing the country together to do basic things.” He called on Republicans to remember that we must face the huge challenges in our future together: language that echoes President Joe Biden, who has been making that pitch since he took office.

The fight over funding the government has contributed to growing pressure on the extremists. The chaos in the Republican Party as the factions fought each other with no plan to fund the government until McCarthy finally had to rely on the Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution was a sign that the extremists’ power is at risk.

Today, there was much chafing over the threats of Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to challenge Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, and he actually did it this evening, although it is not clear that he has the votes either to remove McCarthy or to prevent his reelection as speaker. What is clear is that Gaetz is forcing a showdown between the extremists and the rest of the party, and while such a showdown is sure to garner media attention, it is unlikely to leave the extremists in a stronger position.

Indeed, when he left the floor after making the motion to vacate the chair, some Democrats laughed.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #TFG on trial #Trump trials #fraud #McCarthy #House Republicans #Republican Party chaos #Marine Corps General John Kelly

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aita-blorbos · 8 months

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(these are my OCs) (suicide, kidnapping tw)

AITA for being emotionally distant from my wife (for her own good)?

I know the title sounds bad but I promise I have a reason! I am a former prince and now king (23M) and my beautiful, wonderful wife is 22F, and will be called C. My wife’s situation in life is complicated. She’s explained to me that all the women in her family have natural magic and not any magic from the gods (natural magic is very unnatural in our world). Because their family line goes against all rules in our world, the gods have cursed them: the world will never remember any of her line for long. This caused a lot of problems growing up, from government documents of hers having to be renewed a million times because the info was gradually scrubbed out by the universe, to having a lot of issues with people not recognizing her or her mother every time they didn’t go out of their house for a few days. This has lead to a lot of abandonment issues, especially after C’s mother committed suicide after C’s dad got kidnapped for a good while and came back in love with another woman, not recognizing her.

C had a classic Cinderella story after that with the evil stepfamily and the balls and such. After we got married, she told me all this. I was adamant that I would never allow her to suffer again, and I promised to her that I would never let her suffer like she did before.

Everything was fine. Up until the gods visited me in my sleep and told me that, for the “crime” of loving “a woman forsaken by the gods”, C will be cursed again: that any love I’ll give to C will kill her, and that if I ever tried to tell her about this curse, that we’ll both die and be tortured in hell. I thought it was just a dream, and dismissed it. But then I gave some flowers to C with a smile and the next day, she was so sick that she was on the verge of death. I was terrified. She survived. I thought it was just a coincidence, so I kept on being kind as always after the near death experience, but her health kept on getting worse and worse. So, just to see what would happen, I became a bit distant for a few days. She immediately recovered. I believed the gods now.

I immediately did my best to try and stay away from my wife for her own health, and tried my best to see if there was any way I could break the curse. However, as months passed, I only kept getting scraps of information, and nowhere near enough to try to save my wife (who, for the record, I didn’t forget about even once in those months). My wife had enough however. With her fire magic, she burned down the entire palace with her rage and sadness, killing everyone inside and myself because she had been abandoned by me and because I broke my promise to love her forever. Now, in purgatory, I wonder, AITA? Could I have handled this better? I know that I couldn’t really have done anything about the gods, but was there any way out of this where it could have ended well?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality #suicide mention #kidnapping mention

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chorusfm · 18 days

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Dua Lipa – Radical Optimism

The world around us is quite brutal and ugly currently, so who couldn’t use a little optimism that things can and will get better? Dua Lipa has returned to the music world with a shimmering album titled Radical Optimism. With songwriting and producer credits from Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, plus other seasoned veterans like Danny Harle, Ian Kirkpatrick, and Andrew Wyatt, Dua Lipa comes well-armed for success. The album plays out quickly over the 11-song, 37-minute play time that is filled with thrilling moments, great vocal performances from Dua Lipa, as well as plenty new tricks to her arsenal. Radical Optimism is a heat-seeking missile to the eardrums and is bound to make even the most negative person feel a little bit better about their day after spending some time with it. While the current pop scene seems to lean towards darker elements (much like the brooding pop Billie Eilish), Dua Lipa cuts through the negativity with a surgeon-like precision on this instant pop classic. ”End Of An Era” picks right up where Future Nostalgia left off, and offers a disco-infused anthem as Dua Lipa ponders, “What’s it about a kiss / That makes me feel like this? / Makes me an optimist, I guess.” By honing in on her quest for love, Dua Lipa pens a heartfelt anthem about falling head over heels in a relationship. Lead single, “Houdini” is well-placed in the sequencing, and the rattling beat provides the right landscape for this talented artist to lend her vocals to. It has everything you’d want to see in a standout lead single from a pop artist, and provides a solid transition from the sound she nearly perfected on her sophomore effort. “Training Season” lends itself well to Parker’s guitar picking/playing as it has a Latin-infused vibe to it that explodes out of the gate with a passion behind each lyric. The chorus of, “Need someone to hold me close / Deeper than I’ve ever known / Whose love feels like a rodeo / Knows just how to take control / When I’m vulnerable / He’s straight talking to my soul / Conversation overload / Got me feeling vertigo,” has a steady vocal cadence to it that Dua Lipa excels at and feels right at home with. A more vulnerable side comes from Dua Lipa on “These Walls” as she focuses on an outsider’s perspective of a relationship. Pointed lyrics in the chorus of, “But if these walls could talk (They’d say) / “Enough!” / (They’d say) “Give up” / If these walls could talk / (They’d say) “You know…” / (They’d say) “…you’re fucked” / It’s not supposed to hurt this much / Oh, if these walls could talk / They’d tell us to break up,” showcase the conflict in Dua Lipa’s quest for a lifelong partner. It’s a powerful anthem that provides some musical contrast to the early trio of songs. “Whatcha Doing” rocks with a great bass line that has a pop sheen that is rarely seen this vibrantly. The production reminds me of Michael Jackson albums, with an improved emphasis on Dua Lipa’s vocal performance. The middle section of the record never decelerates its momentum, even with mid-tempo rockers like “French Exit.” Instead, Dua Lipa picks up the pace to her comfortable, breakneck setting on the current single, “Illusion,” that has a piano-laced emphasis on her lyrics on the chorus to make for a club-ready jam. Dua Lipa delivers an all-time vocal performance on the pick-me-up trotting beat on “Falling Forever,” as she cements herself as one of the marquee pop singers of this generation. She sounds like a million bucks here as she commands the song from the opening notes all the way to the finish line. The only song that feels a little out of place is the piano-based ballad of “Anything For Love,” that begins with playful conversation/chatter before Dua Lipa sings like she’s at a jazz bar singing for the most intimate of audiences. The disco beat eventually kicks in at the midway point, but quickly exits before the song can really get its footing. “Maria” is a better example of where Dua Lipa experiments with different sounds from her contemporary take on disco… https://chorus.fm/reviews/dua-lipa-radical-optimism/

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reddancer1 · 8 months

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Heather Cox Richardson

October 2, 2023 (Monday)

Indeed, when he left the floor after making the motion to vacate the chair, some Democrats laughed.

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newsaljazeera · 8 months

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donnabroadway · 8 months

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The Other Black Girl TV Series review

First, let me preference this by saying that I loved this series. I binged watched in two days and can't stop thinking about it. Great series but major plot holes. I understand wanting to keep the people guessing in hopes of a season 2 but all major questions should be answered by the second to last episode with the finale being a wrap up of the season and set up for the next season. Viewers should want more but, if the show gets cancelled, they should be content with what they got. The story should be complete but open ended enough for a sequel. That being said, this thriller series does a bad job of thrilling us. I don't see the problem with a hair grease that neutralizes you and gets you to the front of the line. If you're black in corporate America, you're already partly neutralized, may as well get a big title, the accolades, paycheck and lifestyle that comes with it. Many of us smile at bosses and coworkers we'd love to curse out because we have bills and obligations and need our jobs. If I'm going to deal with the macro, or, microaggressions, at least make it worth my while. This is one of the only instances, I'd rather cry in a Bentley than a Honda.

I, like a few other black women who have settled comfortably into corporate America, who are still young enough to break records for being in high positions but old enough to have the required experience with at least 20 years to go before retirement, don't see this as a horror or thriller. This is reality. Corporate America wants your black skin, even better if you have black hair, but not your black thoughts or black ways. Corporate America is full of B.S and if a tub of hair grease gets me to the front of the line, I don't see the problem. Do the OBG's kill radical black people? Does the hair grease fry your brain after a certain amount of time? Is it like The Supreme on AHS where one has to die for another to rise? What is so bad about this organization that there is an underground resistance? The author, nor show, never explained. Like I said, I don't see the problem. I'd grease my hair in a New York minute. It also doesn't seem like the OBG's were looking for Kendra, even though she was looking for them, so why the resistance?

what happened to Kendra Rae to make her feel like a life off the grid was better than what she had? The show never answered this and this should be in season 2.

what is the OBGs? They never explained. All I see is secret meetings with the ladies stating what they want and getting their hair greased? I missed the bad part.

Did Nella grease her hair? The show implies that she didn't but for an organization that has spies all over, it would come out that she didn't.

what do they plan to do with the podcast host? Surely the disappearance of a podcast host with millions of followers who generates millions of dollars for big corporations, would be of great national interest. Do they plan to wash the grease out of their hair?

Also, a hair product that has to constantly be reapplied doesn't seem like a good brainwashing mechanism. Unless it is a miracle worker that can thicken your hair and grow it to your ankles, it wouldn't be a staple. Black women change hair products like underwear.

Who is Richard Wagner and how did he get pulled into this? Did the OBGs already exist and it was a family business he inherited or did he and Diana start it from scratch?

How did Diana get pulled into this? Like I asked in the previous question, how did this organization start? Is it like a sorority or like skull and bones? Can people know you're a member with discretion to sorority business or is it so secret that you can't even confirm your membership, even 50 years after graduating?

I won't give this show a rating because I think it's a great show, great concept, just full of holes and not explained well.

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cinephilechronicals · 9 months

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evil dead rise was one of the most overwhelming and disgusting blur of a film i have ever seen. i remember the first time i watched evil dead rise. i went with my older brother and mom for a late night viewing (which probably wasn’t the best idea). fun fact: i left that cinema crying. not crying because i was that scared, but overwhelmed. now to be fair, i have seen it 4 times, 3 of which in cinema.

and before you ask, no it never got easier.

lee cronin’s 2023 horror flick EVIL DEAD RISE has truly horrified audiences to their core. with an unhealthy mix of brutality, death, family, and demonic skin books, evil dead rise truly accomplishes what it set out to do — disgust. personally, i did not like this evil dead rendition on my first viewing. we had absolutely no idea what was going to happen in next hour and a half, and was very surprised. evil dead rise made $23 million in it’s opening weekend, which is decent for a budget of $15-$19 million. it was on my second watch that i actually began to enjoy and understand the film. so, what’s so scary about this film?

tl;dr: boy steals scary book, gets mom possessed, mom wreacks havoc, sister kills possessed mom, unhappy ending! okay so that’s not everything, but that’s pretty much it. the film actually begins in a lake-side cabin, where a “sick” girl is actually possessed, and kills her two cabin mates by the lake. after a beautiful title card, we cut to our family home. here we have our mom ellie, her kids danny, bridget, and kassie, and her road-tech sister beth. ellie sends her kids for pizza, but get stuck in an earthquake on their way back. a crack opens up an entrance to an underground bank, where danny investigates against his sisters’ wishes an finds a book covered in skin. being the teenager he is, he smuggles it back to the house. he opens it and finds 2 records. he plays them as his mother goes out to do the laundry downstairs. all hell breaks loose in the elevator, as the cords begin to wrap around her and attack her. we return to the apartment, where the now possessed ellie begins to let loose. she attacks beth and the kids. this takes up most of the film, ending up with bridget turning into a deadite “killed” by danny, who then gets turned into a deadite by bridget. kassie and beth escape, and are met with the final boss, an amalgamation of ellie and her kids. they tussle, and the film ends with the mass getting chewed up in a wood chipper, and ellie’s head being destroyed by a chainsaw. but it doesn’t end, because we see the possessed girl from the very beginning discovering the mess, and getting possessed. how creative!

now, there are some things about this film that i really like, and some i really hate. after watching the film so many times, my opinion has actually gotten worse. so, i originally really enjoyed the film (despite crying when i left). but once i kept watching i began to find myself enjoying it less and less.

so, the thing i really hated about this film is a lack of pacing. it seems that they had a vague idea with the story but put all their energy and time into the gore rather than an interesting story for the audience to follow. the pacing was lackluster, like, there was literally no time to think or react. though it could have worked somehow, it just didn’t. you can get a brief idea of the story, like the mom gets posessed and stuff, but there’s a lot of story points that the film basically introduces and ditches. like isn’t there that entire character point that beth is pregnant? i’m pretty sure that it’s meant to be a pretty important character feature, but it’s just brushed over. and then the kid’s dad leaving, that’s never really explored in relation to the characters being vulnerable. and even why the necronomicon is there in the first place. like, the character relationships are minimal and rushed. like i said, their dad leaving should have made their relationships strong or at least have some kind of emotion, but we literally didn’t realise that beth and ellie were siblings. that’s the main thing about evil dead rise that i really didn’t like. however, the good does outweigh the bad (maybe).

onto the good! i think what makes the film so jarring is not only the gore, but just how realistic the characters are. though my brother thought that some of the characters were cringe, and to be fair, sure, but the characters seemed like normal people nowadays. ellie feels like a mom you’d find in that kind of area, a little rough around the edges, but she has such a strong heart. her character as a mother fits so well. bridget is someone who i’ve definitely seen somewhere. i think that her character is really interesting. though politics is something i don’t really life in films, i think that her protesting and her sign on her door builds her character really well. it shapes her as a person of the times, and her character is actually pretty realistic for the time and area in which the movie is set. danny as well, he just seemslike an older brother. though his character isn’t really fleshed out, his role as an older brother is really nice to see. you can tell that all the characters really care for one another, and their family dynamic is really nice.

and then there’s the gore. wow. the gore in this film is ridiculous, like my god. though it is extreme, it’s done really well. i think everyone remembers the cheese grater scene, and though it is nasty, literally all of the gore in bridget’s death is so gross. the elevator scene was really uncomfortable to watch, i mean, that was an insane amount of blood. though i can’t imagine it was much better filming that. though it's excessive, the gore is really well done. props to the physical effects team, truly. it fits really well to the story, like, the gore seems realistic to the situation.

evil dead rise definitely has it's flaws, as all films do, but it was such a good film. i really do think that the movie will stick with audiences for years to come. maybe not for the right reasons though. i know a lot of people weren't really a fan of this evil dead rendition, and to be honest, that's fair, but i do still think that it stands strong!

#evil dead #the evil dead #evil dead franchise #evil dead rise #horror #horror movies #horror film #film review #movie review #horror review

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anitabyars · 11 months

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Time Out by Stacey Lynn is now live!

A one-night stand with a sexy stranger has me in over my head and calling time out…

Most of my team celebrated our Monday Night Football win with family and a few drinks. I celebrated mine with a smoking hot brunette.

One wild night of passion, with chemistry off the charts, we had our fun. In the morning, just when I was thinking of asking her for one more night—she bolted faster than I can score a touchdown.

It’s my rookie year. I’m breaking records and our team is gearing up to head to the playoffs. A Championship win is the only thing I’m focused on. Until my one-night stand shows up at my doorstep on Christmas Eve and drops a present in my lap that turns my whole word upside down.

Maggie’s pregnant. And the baby is mine. My teammate’s think she’s after my multi-million-dollar contract, but I believe her. Either way, I’m not the kind of guy who walks away from his responsibilities.

Now Maggie’s living under my roof and getting under my skin. I want her close so I can take care of her and our future child.

If only I could keep my hands off her, my life would be a hell of a lot less complicated.

Download today on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and Kobo!

Amazon: https://bit.ly/42p815T

Apple Books: https://bit.ly/3XrqhbL

Nook: http://bit.ly/3CC4WnI

Kobo: http://bit.ly/3ZuyMEM

Google Play: http://bit.ly/3Zu3JZO

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/3GvQ2kk

Meet Stacey

Stacey Lynn likes her coffee with a dash of sugar, her heroes with a side of bossy, and her wine a deep shade of red.

The author of over thirty romance novels, many of which have been best-selling titles on Amazon, AppleBooks, and Barnes & Noble, she loves being able to turn her vivid imagination into a career that brings entertainment and joy to her readers. Focused on sports romance and emotional, small-town romance, she also loves stretching herself in different genres.

Born in Texas and raised in the Midwest, she now makes her home in North Carolina and loves all things Southern. Together with her ultimate tall, dark, and handsome hero, she has four children. Her life is a chaotic mess that fights with her Type-A, list-making, neurotically organized preferences and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Connect with Stacey

Website: www.staceylynnbooks.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6995826.Stacey_Lynn

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Stacey-Lynn/e/B00CD6VVQG/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/staceylynnbooks

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/staceyssultryreaders/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/staceylynn.author

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/staceylynnbooks

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@staceylynnbooks

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/stacey-lynn

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/staceylynnbooks/_created/

My Review

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oh My! Once I started reading this, I couldn’t put it down and read this in one sitting!

This sports romance-one night stand was everything you want in a story and so much more. “Time Out” is entertaining, charming, fun, and a heartwarming story of two opposites who are so right for each other. I loved their instantaneous, chemistry. I fell hard and fast for Davis and his good guy, sex appeal. And Maggie is such a strong, and wonderful character that just couldn’t catch a break. Until fate stepped in!

Davis Hall should have been happy with how well he was playing, but instead he felt lonely. Ironic, since he had just bowed out of a night with the teammates. Hall was a running back in his rookie season for the Nashville Steel Football team, and had just helped his team win his first Monday night football matchup. So instead of going home to his penthouse he stopped by Lou’s Bar to get a bite to eat. And then he saw her!

Maggie had just been fired again for letting her temper get the best of her. She has been on her own the last couple of years, after leaving a terrible family situation. She ended up at Lou’s to relax before going home and meets Davis Hall. These two have an instant connection and end up spending the night together, but Maggie sneaks out without saying goodbye. Davis is devastated that she left before he could ask for more nights with “Snickers” his fun sized girl. But as he continues to live his rookie dream life, scoring touchdowns and setting new records, he often wonders about Maggie and their sizzling one night together.

Eight weeks later on Christmas Eve she returns to Davis’ penthouse to give him the news, she’s pregnant and he is going to be a father!

These two are just so good together. This is a beautiful, heartwarming, romance and a love that will make you swoon! And Belle her BFF, absolutely adored her! I am anxiously awaiting the next book in this series! Every romance reader needs this book in their life!!!!!

Received an early copy and this is my honest review.

#newrelease #StaceyLynn #time out #valentine pr #sportsromance #one night stand #guy falls first #accidental pregnancy

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lesliemcqueen2 · 2 years

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hermes mini kelly 22

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princehrry-writings · 3 years

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Legal Guardian

ugh this took way too long lol, but here it is!!! i forget exactly that sparked this but i thought it was a cute idea.

warnings: injuries (nothing major), hospitals, cursing, harry being a protective dad 🥺, talks about adoption and legal guardians, crying

wordcount: 2481

harry styles x reader, stepdad!harry x reader, stepdadharry x oc!stella

masterlist

Stella gets hurt and Harry is the only one there- but he has no legal jurisdiction…

It all happened really fast. Harry can’t even recall how it started, but he knew very well how it ended. A sobbing Stella strapped into her car seat as he raced to the emergency room, frantically calling Y/n who was in a different state on a work trip.

The 5 year old didn’t understand what was going on, she just knew she was hurting… really bad. And that she wanted her mommy and daddy.

The traffic seemed to be working against him, getting in his way at the most inconvenient times, all the while he was trying to console his weeping daughter, crying out “Daddy it hurts so bad!” effectively shattering his heart into a million little pieces.

Stella had been playing happily in the backyard at home, showing off her wonderful dance moves to Harry who watched with an adoring smile on his face, taking little videos to send to his fiance, when suddenly she was laying on the ground, clutching her ankle, and crying for him to come get her. He rushed into action, not having seen her take the fateful step into what must have been a hole in the ground or something.

Screeching into the hospital car park, he stops somewhere he obviously wasn’t supposed to but he couldn't care less. His mind was racing. What if she broke her ankle? Or tore a ligament? What if she has to get surgery? All of this is what he worries about as he flings the back door of his car open, trying his best to appear calm for his daughter (but it’s not really working), and scoops her carefully into his hold, bringing her inside and shouting for someone to please help him.

A few nurses rush to his side, asking him different questions and asking for someone to “Page Dr. Robbins, tell her we need a peds consult.”

Stella is whisked away from him and before he can start to follow after her, a hand is placed on his chest, stopping him in his place.

“Sir, we can’t have you in the room with her. You’re not on her file as a legal guardian!” A doctor tells him. In that moment, he sees nothing but red, steam pouring out of his ears.

“The hell I can’t, I’m her father! I’m not going to let her sit in there all alone while strangers poke and prod at her!” He all but yells at the man. Harry is not violent. He really isn't. But he’s not afraid to lay somebody on their ass when it comes to his girls. With kindness or course. And maybe a black eye.

From the room she was taken into he can hear her crying for him.

“Wan’ my daddy! Daddy!” Harry didn’t think his heart could break any further than it already had but he was proven wrong by the ache in his chest that only grew stronger the longer he was kept away from his lovebug.

“Doctor, respectfully- if you don’t move the hell out of my way, I will move you myself. That is my daughter, and my fiance is in a different state right now on a business trip so I am the only parent she has right now. If you try to keep me from my child I will take legal action against the hospital and sue for everything you’re worth. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Harry is seething, trying to move past the man in the white lab coat and light blue scrubs. Again, he is stopped.

“I will call security, sir!”

“DADDY!” Stella is now screeching, her little voice hoarse from all the yelling and crying.

“Don’t you fucking hear that? She needs me, and you’re telling me I can’t go be with her! What the hell kind of doctor are you?” Harry is in the man's face, pointing at him vehemently. He doesn’t care that people are starting to watch the scene. Doesn’t care that some people have recognized him and are recording the ordeal. Let the people see him fighting for his family. He doesn’t give a rat's ass if his “image” takes a hit. His daughter is on the line and he won’t back down.

“She’ll be fine-”

“No she won’t! Go ahead and call security. My daughter needs me and you’re not going to stop me from being in that room with her.” With that he pushes past the doctor (who must be an intern or something with how he’s handling this situation) and rushes into the room where his baby is screaming for him. He’s at her side in a matter of seconds, wiping the tears from her face, peppering kisses onto her head, petting her wild hair back from her face, just consoling her in any way that he can.

How fucking dare they try to keep him from her, especially when she’s in a state like this.

“It’s ok baby girl, daddy’s here now. I’ve got you. You’re ok, you’re ok!” He mumbles into her hair, doing his best to stay out of the way of the people examining her but still close enough so she knows he’s right there with her.

Little tears still streamed down her face but she was much calmer now, her breathing more even and body less tense.

“Mr. Styles we’re bringing in the portable x-ray to take a look at her ankle, so you’re going to need to wear this.” He nods and takes the vest given to him, putting it over his shoulders like he sees the others do. A similar article is placed over Stella, who is clinging to Harry’s hand, fearing that she’s going to have to be without him again. But he promises he isn’t going anywhere.

As they’re taking the x-ray his phone starts ringing in his pocket and he checks to see that it’s Y/n calling him back.

“H, what’s wrong, is she ok?” Her panicked voice rushes out as soon as the call connects.

“We’re in the ER right now and she’s getting an x-ray to see what’s going on with her ankle-”

“You’re in the room with her right? She’s not alone?”

The little shards of his heart keep breaking into smaller and smaller pieces as her voice breaks.

“Yeah, I’m right next to her. Don’t worry m’love, she’s not alone!” He glared at the doctor that tried to keep him out as he said that, letting him know he hadn’t forgotten.

“I’m gonna facetime you so I can see her.” She said and he nodded, waiting for it to come through. When it did he quickly accepted it, seeing the love of his life’s face on the screen, with her puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks as she wiped away the remaining tears so she didn’t freak out her baby.

“Stell, mumma’s on the phone, she wants to talk to you.”

“Hi baby girl!” Y/n said as soon as Harry held the phone so Stella could see her mom. The little girl's tear stained cheeks looked exactly like her moms, and her heart broke for her baby.

“Hi mumma,” Stella pouted into the camera, clutching onto her daddy as tight as her little hand could. Harry was a little uncomfortable but he would take this over not being in here at all.

“How do you feel, baby? You ok?” She asked.

“My foot hurts and they wouldn’t let daddy in here and I was scared, but he’s here now so I’m ok.” The little girl rambled off. Y/n almost missed how she said they wouldn’t let Harry in the room but when it finally registered, she was fuming. Absolutely, royally pissed.

“What do you mean they wouldn’t daddy in there?” Stella shrugged and looked up at Harry for an answer. He brought the phone back so he could see her after looking around at the doctors in the room, all doing their job and pretending they weren’t listening to this conversation, but a few of them winced when Y/n asked her question.

“Some bloke tried to keep me out of the room while Stella was being examined but she was on the verge of a whole breakdown. It was like Disneyland in Paris all over again.” He said, referencing the time Harry took his girls to Disneyland while they were in Paris and Stella got separated from her mom and dad. She had never not been able to see at least 1 of her parents before. Needless to say… she didn’t handle it very well. Screaming, crying, and hyperventilating (which freaked her out even more- causing her to scream louder and cry harder) ensued very shortly, disturbing every person around her. But it made it easy for them to find her and she spent a very very long time clutching her tiny arms around her daddy’s neck, not letting him set her down for anything. That was an interesting trip to the bathroom …

“Why would they try to keep you out of the room? You’re her father!” Y/n was on the verge of popping a blood vessel. Of course the one time her baby really needs her, she’s hours away.

“Uh, Mr. Styles, I’m so sorry to interrupt! But the x-ray is complete. There’s no break, it looks like a sprain at worst. Also, about why my intern was saying you weren’t allowed in the room, not that I was listening to your conversation, with ped’s cases we typically only allow legal parents or guardians in the room and your name isn’t anywhere on her file or on her records so he was just trying to follow safety protocols. He didn’t go about the situation as well as he should have because we always want to make sure our patient has what they need and that was obviously you- but that is the reason why you initially weren’t let into the room. You’re not a legal parent or guardian. Based on your situation- you’re legally considered a step-parent and that title doesn’t come along with any legal jurisdiction.” Dr. Robins explained, in quite a few words Harry thinks, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Just sits and realizes that while for the better part of a year and a half, he’s been calling himself Stella’s dad but the whole he’s not been anything… not legally anyway.

Y/n realizes this too and makes a mental note to call their lawyers to do something about that.

“That makes sense… Thank you, Dr. Robbins! I have her mum on the phone, but you knew that, so if there’s anything else I legally can’t do, she’ll have to take care of it like thi-”

“Mr. Styles, we won’t tell if you don’t! Anything else that needs to be signed, we’ll just go ahead and have you do it. Save the hassle for everyone.” Dr. Robbins interrupts him and he smiles, silently thanking her.

“Daddy, what's a legal guardian?” Stella asks after a quiet moment.

“A legal guardian is someone who takes care of you because the law says they can. So because I didn’t help mumma make you and I came into your life a little later, I’m not a legal guardian of you. Not yet anyway.” He mumbles the last part but Y/n catches it.

“Does everyone have a legal guardian?” She hiccuped, rubbing at her eyes with the hand that wasn’t clutching Harry’s.

“At one point yeah, but once you get older you don’t need one anymore because you can take care of yourself.”

The girl pauses, thinking about her daddy’s words before muttering “Don’t wanna take care of myself. Wanna stay with you and mumma forever.”

All the little shards of his heart slowly start to piece back together.

“I want you to stay with me and mumma forever too lovebug.” He cooes. Y/n’s eyes light up, her gaze filled with adoration for her little family.

. * .

“The documents are all drawn up Mrs. Styles, everything is ready for your husband to sign.”

“Thank you so much Ben!”

. * .

“Baby, c’mere. Wanna talk to you about something.”

“Yeah mommy?”

Y/n took a deep breath, trying to quell the tears she could already feel threatening to fall. Her newly wed husband sat beside her on the couch, running his hand along her back and squeezing her shoulder and letting her know he was there if she needed him.

“Do you remember when you and Daddy had that conversation about legal guardians?” The woman asked, pulling her baby into her lap, brushing her hand over the girl's hair affectionately.

“Uhhh, kinda.” She murmured, curling into her mom.

“Do you remember what a legal guardian is?” Y/n rephrased, hoping to jog the girl's memory. Stella nodded and when prompted by her mother explained that “It’s someone who takes care of you until you're old enough to take care of yourself.”

“That’s right baby, very good!”

“And do you remember when we were at the hospital and that doctor was being mean, not letting Daddy into the room with you?” Harry chimes in, scooting closer to his girls. She nodded with a roll of her eyes and a huff of breath, causing a little giggle to erupt from her parents. She really is her mothers daughter.

“Didn’t like him.” She mumbles.

“Do you remember why they didn’t let him into the room?” Y/n asks, knowing she should probably get to the point before her little one checks out and gets bored.

“Cause daddy’s not my legal guardian.” Stella huffs again, rubbing her eyes and nuzzling further into her mom.

“Do you want him to be?”

Stella’s quiet for a moment, tapping her little finger on her chin like she’s thinking hard. “Yeah.”

“Yeah? You want that baby?” Harry asks, pulling her into his lap. The girl wraps her arms around his neck and lays her head on his shoulder, nodding.

“Yeah, Daddy. Want you to be able to come to the doctors with me.” She mumbles sleepily.

The tears Y/n had been fighting off finally broke through, despite her efforts. It’s official. Harry is going to adopt Stella and they would be a family in every sense of the word. No one would be able to take Harry's little girl away from him. All he had to do was sign the paper. Harry felt tears spring to his eyes as well, smoothing his hand along his baby’s back.

“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear that…” He says, squeezing her a little tighter. Y/n snaps a quick picture before she snuggles into them.

“Love you Mommy, love you Daddy.” She murmurs before falling asleep in Harry's arms. Something that isn’t new, but feels different now for some reason. Things felt a little more official and he hadn’t even signed the papers yet.

#daddy? series #stepdad!harry #stepdad!harry x reader #dad!harry #harry styles x reader #stepdad!harry styles #harry styles #harry x reader #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles imagine #harry styles x singlemom!reader #harry x singlemom!reader #singlemom!reader #one direction

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damonalbarn · 3 years

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Hey I was wondering if you knew the article that Justine spoke about suzi in?!

It was in The Guardian in 2000. Here you go:

Sweet revenge

In the mid 90s, Justine Frischmann and Damon Albarn were the First Couple of Britpop. Then he used a Blur album to rake over their break-up, while she languished in obscurity amid rumours of heroin addiction. Now she's back with a new album, and it's her turn to exorcise her demons.

Caroline Sullivan

Friday March 24, 2000

As Alison Moyet once said, it's hard to write a decent song when you're happy. Rock bands thrive on romantic turmoil in their private lives, without which they would be reduced to padding out lyrics with football scores and the weather.

Thus it was for Blur's Damon Albarn in mid-1998 when he sat down to write what would become the 13 album. His eight-year relationship with Justine Frischmann of the chart-topping Elastica, whom he once described as **"the only person who's ever been completely necessary to me" **had just ended, at her instigation. Pained and humiliated, he decided to exact revenge by exposing their most intimate details to public scrutiny.

The outcome? Embarrassment for Frischmann, a number one album for Blur and a bit of a result for Albarn.

Break-up albums are by definition both embittered and yearning - in the case of Marvin Gaye's vindictive Here, My Dear, they're just plain nasty - but 13 got more up-close and personal than could be considered gentlemanly. Albarn portrayed his former partner as neurotic, even slipping apparent drug references into the single Tender: "Tender is the ghost, the ghost I love the most/Hiding from the sun, waiting for the night to come". Frischmann was the ghost, supposedly, who was on the verge of being consumed by what one music paper euphemistically called "the darkness at the heart of Elastica".

Frischmann's response can be found on a song called The Way I Like It, which appears on Elastica's first album in five years, The Menace (out next month): "Well, I'm living all right and I'm doing okay/Had a lover who was made of sand, and the wind blew him away".

This is unlikely to be her last word on the subject. As she ambivalently begins her first round of interviews since 1996, she's finding that everyone has the same three questions. Why did Elastica nearly sabotage a promising career by taking so long to follow up their million-selling debut? Had Frischmann taken leave of her senses when she walked out on Mr Britpop? And what about the drug rumours?

"One journalist said to me, 'Dahling, I heard you were on heroin - Mahvelous!' " she says with some amusement. "Drugs are around, but I'm not that interested and never have been, although there have been elements of party animal in my band. The rumours are a lot to do with rock'n'roll mythology, where people want to believe you're having a more exciting time than you are."

The only drugs on her person today, as she perches on the edge of an armchair in her publicist's north London living room, are Marlboro Lights. Her other indulgences are two cups of herbal tea and a Cadbury's Flake cupcake, which she nibbles with well-bred pleasure. Her dark eyes are clear, and her long, tanned body is a testament to the virtues of a daily swim in a pool near her Notting Hill home. Only Elastica know whether they really succumbed to heroin and hedonism after their self-titled debut made them more famous than they'd ever expected to be, but if they did, Frischmann, 30, seems little the worse for it.

Given the current predominance of damnable boy bands, the Britpop mid-90s are beginning to seem like a halcyon period for English music. It was a time when the underground went overground, and a self-described "little punk band" like Elastica could sell 80,000 albums in a week.

More than a few loser guitar groups saw Britpop as a licence to print money, but Elastica, led with cool elan by the androgynous Frischmann, were one of its gems. The Blur connection was a marketing godsend (Frischmann and Albarn met on the London indie circuit, she as guitarist in an early line-up of Suede and girlfriend of frontman Brett Anderson, he as a cherubic baggy hopeful), yet the spiky-haired Elastica LP embodied that euphoric time like nothing else.

Frischmann, guitarist Donna Matthews, drummer Justin Welch and bassist Annie Holland were unprepared for the album soaring to number one in its first week. When they signed their record deal, Frischmann, whose great-grandfather was a conductor of the Tsar's orchestra at the Summer Palace in Byelorussia, was five years into an architecture degree at London University. A liberal north London Jewish upbringing - her engineer father built the Oxford Street landmark Centrepoint - had instilled expectations of success, but the reality of being photographed in the supermarket and having her rubbish stolen was a shock. Fiercely independent, she also resented her unsought role as half of Britpop's First Couple.

There was more. Two of Frischmann's musical heroes, The Stranglers and Wire, decided that two Elastica songs were suspiciously similar to two of their own tracks, and won royalties. Meanwhile, there were malicious rumours that Albarn had done much of the work on the record. He hadn't, but he did find Justine's success in America, where she was substantially out-selling Blur, hard to endure.

"It was very hard for him to deal with and he's very confrontational," she says, with the flattering openness of someone who prefers interviews to be more like conversations. She admits she often says too much, but in an era of image control and spin, her honesty makes her a one-off. Not that she's likely to land herself in it too badly - she possesses the intellectual ammunition to look after herself, which must have been instrumental in attracting two of rock's more articulate stars, Albarn and Anderson.

She's been accused of being a professional rock girlfriend, though it was probably they who were lucky to get her. She spent the cab ride over reading the Sylvia Plath letters in Monday's Guardian, and muses on the irony of the poet's subjugating herself to Ted Hughes when she was the more gifted. (Her new boyfriend, by the way, is an unknown photographer, "though that'll probably change, because men seem to get famous when I go out with them".)

"I reacted the way a lot of women do, by being passive," she continues. "He put a lot of pressure on me to give up Elastica. He said, 'You don't want to be in a band, you want to settle down and have kids.' " In so many words? "In so many words. He kept putting on pressure till I started to believe him." She adds bemusedly: "I've met his new girlfriend, and one of the first things she said was that he wanted her to give up travelling with her work to stay home with the baby [Missy, born last autumn]. I'm surprised he's got away with being thought of as a nice person for so long."

After 18 months, during which they did seven American and three Japanese tours, Elastica came off the road to record company demands for an immediate second album. Annie Holland's response was to quit the group, while Donna Matthews became renowned for hard partying on the nocturnal west London scene. They lethargically recorded some demos, but their heart wasn't in it. By 1997, when a second album should have been ready to go, Frischmann and Matthews were barely speaking, and there was nothing useable down on tape.

Holland's replacement, Sheila Chipperfield (of the circus Chipperfields), was deemed not good enough and left by mutual consent. By 1998, their continued lack of productivity was being likened to the Stone Roses' lengthy and ultimately self-destructive holiday between their first and second LPs.

"I didn't think Elastica were going to continue at that point, and we did kinda split up," she says, absently stroking her publicist's cat. Frischmann is a cat person; she's owned a tabby called Benjamin since she was 10. "Unconditional love," she coos. The pet's place in her life is so assured that prospective boyfriends are subjected to his feline scrutiny before she'll go out with them.

On top of everything else, in early 1998 her relationship with Albarn was in trouble. Frischmann retains enough of the indie ethic to detest the phenomenon of celebrity couples, and was dismayed when they became one. "I really hated the tabloid interest, and I went out of my way not to be photographed with him. Only about three pictures of us together exist, I think. In many ways, I think the media interest broke us up, because it made me feel the relationship was quite ugly, and I had to get away from it. There were other factors, too, obviously, because we were together for eight years, and I finally felt it was better the devil you didn't know, really."

Albarn's ego seems to have been severely undermined by having a girlfriend who was nearly as successful as he was, and something of a sex symbol to boot. Despite adopting a resolutely boyish T-shirt-and-jeans uniform, she's thoroughly feminine, a mix that got her voted fifth most fanciable woman in a lesbian magazine.

"I'm completely heterosexual, so I didn't know how to take that. It scares the shit out of me, the idea of being with a girl. I'm glad I've narrowed it down to half the people in the world."

She seems to view Albarn with indulgent exasperation these days, simultaneously praising his intelligence ("The Gallaghers just couldn't compete") and ticking off his flaws. "Damon adores being in the press, and sees all press as good press. He orchestrated that rivalry thing with Oasis. He really wanted kids, and I didn't feel our relationship was stable enough. He was a naughty boy, and he wasn't the right person to have kids with. I had this cathartic moment..."

At which point they split up. Albarn wrote 13 and then met Suzi Winstanley, an artist. "She was pregnant within three months," Justine observes wickedly.

Of the acclaimed 13, she's tactful, describing several songs as "really lovely". She studies her cigarette for a while before adding, "but I'm cynical about selling a record on the back of our relationship". But you're doing the same now. "It's true, but at the time I had no right of reply."

Elastica finally pulled themselves together last year, just as the music industry was about to write them off (their American label had already "very kindly let us go", as she puts it). Holland rejoined, Matthews went to Wales to sort out her life and the band banged out an EP and played the Reading Festival. Things came together quickly after that. They spent the last £10,000 of the recording budget on re-recording a dozen tracks, finishing the album, after years of procrastinating, in six weeks. They've called it The Menace "because that's what it was like to make".

It's dark and resolutely uncommercial - all wrong for 2000's pop-oriented climate. It's unlikely to match the success of the first one, which is fine with them. Call it (though Justine doesn't) their White Album. Its 70s punk aesthetic brings to mind angry girls such as the Slits and the Au Pairs, although the defining mood isn't anger so much as catharsis. None of the songs is specifically about Albarn, she claims. "The dark feeling is due to the sense of isolation, tasting success and getting frightened by it. I was questioning whether I wanted to be in a band any more, and there was no one I could ask for advice. Getting success and everything you ever dreamed about is hard to handle, and makes you question everything."

She's better prepared for success, if it comes again, this time. Already the privacy-preserving barriers are in place. The next interview of the day is with Time Out magazine, which wants a list of her favourite restaurants. "I'm not telling them where I eat," she says reflexively. "I'm gonna lie."

#questions #damon albarn #justine frischmann #blur #elastica

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uelden · 3 years

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Vanity Fair interview translated

Just a side note before the actual translation; I don't know why, but instead of reporting the full questions and answers in full as she should, the journalist decided to report only summarized fragments of what Måneskin said and patch these fragments up into messy clusters. She also worded a couple phrases in a very confusing way (and yes, she's fully Italian). In short, she did quite a poor job, so the final shape of the interview is not that good. I didn't expect top-tier journalism from Vanity Fair but ffs. You'll see what I mean.

I translated it as it is, adding just a couple footnotes to give you insight on Italian pop culture references.

Translation under the cut

Måneskin: "Different from whom?"

by Lavinia Farnese, 09 June 2021

"True justice is being judged for what you do and not for what you are." The ones who are convinced of this are Damiano, Victoria, Ethan and Thomas who, by being the emblem of a generation that is finally free, refuse labels and conformism. In life, in love and on the stage. Where, maybe precisely because of this, they're winning everything

With the still unexpected (first place at Sanremo Festival) and the incredible (triumph at Eurovision) in their eyes, Måneskin are on the sofa of the house-studio they rented - to resume writing songs and rehearsing them - like you are after a won battle: lying in a calm and unreal silence, alert and a bit irreverent, happy.

In the garden there's the tennis table and the pool, the light of summer when it's starting and calming the country all around, and it filters inside from the large windows, and it goes onto the shining black of Ethan's hair, which blends with Thomas' eye shadow and the butterfly he has tattooed oh his naked forearm, which completes the picture of Victoria's golden crucifix hanging between neck and tank top and ends on the black nail polish of Damiano's stretched hands.

It's a human fresco, a Theatre of wrath [translator's note: "Teatro d'ira"] - to call it with the title of their latest album, a platinum record already - where their flaunted 20 years of age, their irregular femininity and virility are grown into proud and challenging custom, a pop glam rock generational manifesto of hard-earned liberties in a finally-unconditional expression of the self.

To watch them from any angle and from another age is to think that a great love will be born in those who'll understand: this new way of being in the world, the true and sovereign realm they hold where "diversity=exceptionality", the power of the artistic and cultural revolution of which they are healthy carriers in establishing in all lyrics and gestures the right to live according to one's own nature past the "people (who) talk, the people (who) unfortunately talk, and don't know what the fuck they're talking about." [tn: "Zitti e buoni" lyrics]

We go where we're afloat, where the air isn't gone. [tn: journalist's own variation on "Zitti e buoni" lyrics]

Miley Cyrus says hi – The numbers of a phenomenon

"The streams of Zitti e buoni are growing by the second, and they bring us above Muse, at the top of English charts, twelfth in the Spotify Global Chart. Followers almost tripled, in the post-Rotterdam period (from 1,4 to 3,3 millions, ed.) Contagious and universal folly: t-shirts and merchandising sold out in 10 minutes. Like the records, the tickets for a tour that keeps adding dates and expanding over geographic maps. They're contacting us even from some festivals were The Rolling Stones went." Thomas

"After the pretextual controversy over cocaine that France built against us, later disproven by my drug test, some graffiti popped up in Spain depicting me as a “No drugs” poster guy. Some tweets made us laugh: "Congratulations, Italy! I've never been more certain that four people have had sex with each other." Miley Cyrus started following us -You're great. -You guys are greater." Damiano

From the garage to the stars – Story of a flight

"It was only 2016, and we played in restaurants, in the streets, in via del Corso. Damiano without even a microphone, Thomas' guitar with wonky strings, Ethan was drumming on a cajón. During Rome highschools' sit-ins (Kennedy, Virgilio, Mamiani) we had our first confirmations and half-hours of celebrity, playing among those who criticized us and those who went "wow they're really cool." One of the rare times when they would have paid us – 50 euros each – we gave the money to the next band in the lineup so that they would make us play in their spot, later in the day, when there would have been more people. We had already realized how things worked. Visibility mattered more than money. And we still think that." Victoria

The intimacy of rock – Choice of a genre

"Music allows us the miracle of extending to others some very personal and private topics, sometimes even difficult and thorny ones. They are and they remain deeply your own, but at the same time they become a confession that reaches a wider audience, and in this passage that is alike a delivery, they find a place in you as well, a processing of them. You overcome them, you accept them. One second it's something aggressive, the next it's a ballad. Cathartic». Damiano

Against panic – The stage as therapy

"I've suffered a lot from anxiety and panic attacks, it's an issue I've worked on thanks to a psychotherapy course, my friends and my family. Playing helped me in not letting myself be paralyzed by my fears, not making myself limited in my private and professional life. I've learned to accept, to live with this side of myself. I don't hide it. I don't feel ashamed of it." Victoria

Analysis as necessity – Relying on someone saves you

"This belief that only madmen go to the psychologist is a widespread ignorance. No-one's born learned. [tn: common Italian saying] And it's often hard to understand the very reason why we're here, let alone the origin and direction of our desires. It's a long and legitimate journey towards lucidity, a kind of backing to become transparent." Damiano

Being out of our minds – But different from them [tn: "Zitti e buoni" lyrics]

"When you feel a strong passion towards something that is not a canonical job but an artistic language, that already puts you on a level of anomaly, which is not superior or inferior to other people, but it puts you in the position of the one who breaks the mold and also works at a loss, the one who sustains great risks while trying to do something that who knows if it will take you anywhere. "Why do it if it doesn't pay?". You want to give this dream of yours an aesthetic, but it becomes "You're dressing so weird! You must be gay!" - now that I'm 22 I laugh about it, but when I was 17 it had an effect on me, too." Damiano

The beauty of uniqueness – Of believing in it and defending it

"And I mean, at the end of the day if we're all different it's not because we want be alternative but because, really, no-one is the same. Justice is being judged on what you do and not what you are. Justice is equality, respect, beauty." Ethan

Fluid sexuality – Pride is freedom

"Heels for men that like themselves in them, kisses among ourselves, we have an open, extended mind, and we're proud of it. The horizons become vast, past the oppression of conservative families. With the information on the web knowledge becomes greater and with it the possibility that minorities will be less and less minorities, because the majority will be less of a majority. This way we'll make insults and bullying grow quieter. If social media get to a village of 50 souls and reveal to a girl who's afraid of the dark that someone has felt her same fear, then there's no reason to give a name to that fear, to mark it with labels which also limit and restrict. Definitions always had this effect on me. You shouldn't even consider the gender when judging someone, let alone their orientation." Victoria

Sexism – A culture to be dismantled

"Emma [tn: Emma Marrone, Italian singer] drops the bomb: “At Eurovision when I was there they massacred me for a pair of shorts, while they said nothing to Damiano – bare-chested and in heels.” The easy judgment against women is more fierce, constant, debasing (if I have a lot of sex I'm cool while Vic is a whore, where I show myself strong I'm a leader while Vic is despotic and a pain in the ass who reached success because she's hot.) As a male I'm privileged, the abuse I get is not comparable to those a woman has to live through, the comments over my aesthetic are centered only on my aesthetic and don't insinuate anything about my professionalism and my competence, while women are victims of this kind of thought in a systematic way. It happened though to find myself standing with a woman who while pulling me to herself to take a selfie, started licking my face out of the blue... I mean, what the hell do you want? Who asked you? Consent exists, and it's due." Damiano

Grow yourself – The only commandment

"To me conformism is the opposite of education [tn: could also mean "politeness"] and is the asphyxia of expression. I fortunately never endured heavy bullying, heavy enough for the the judgement of others to change me. But the mold of the small crumbs of bullying I got and of the kind of aggression that scars is the same. If I'm a kid who dances and likes dolls you have to let me do what I like. I was a kid who wanted to keep his hair long and played with Barbie. As a teen, my friends looked at my hair: " You have to find a girl with short hair to be at your side." My grandparents took away my dolls: "Stop it, they're not for you." Ethan

"When I was six I was already sick of them, the distinctions between masculine and feminine. I've always had strong ideas about how I wanted to be. I refused things that were typically defined as girly, and all around me they mocked me because I went skateboarding, I played soccer, I didn't wear skirts, I was giving myself the chance to be as I wished. I endured it a little, I suffered a little, but I had courage, and now thanks to that courage I know that I could have gotten even much more hurt, otherwise I would have left to others the most important choice: the one about myself." Victoria

Love in progress – Music, girlfriends

"I've been married to music for the last 20 years. I can't wait to celebrate our golden wedding anniversary." Ethan

"Everyone makes their own experiences, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes wrong, but it's always not anybody's business." Thomas

"When I first felt feelings and attraction towards a girl it was a bit disorienting because I had never had the courage of going beyond the limitations I had put for myself. For society being heterosexual is the norm and so you often define yourself in that way automatically, depriving yourself of the freedom to live many shades and faces of love. Once I overcame the initial insecurity of having to call into question my certainties I've lived my sexuality in a very natural and free way, as it should be for everyone." Victoria

"I had paparazzi at my door every day and night. So, after four years of relationship, I revealed her name. I still have paparazzi at my door every day and nigh, but at least I don't have to hide anything anymore." Damiano

The worth of the group – Phenomenology of protection

"The true engagement though, the true family is among ourselves, our band. We've believed in it since day zero, even before we called ourselves Måneskin (Moonlight in Danish), even before Ethan drew a giant moon on the flier for the first concert we ever did. We share everything, even the pain for the tragedy of Seid Visin, who committed suicide at 20 because of racism. [tn: I think the journalist asked them their opinion about Seid Visin's death, which was a current events topic in Italy, and then pasted it syntaxically in the middle of Thomas' answer, which was not a great move] A group is what we all should be: stay united and not back down an inch in the face of oppression that is generated by a distorted view of diversity." Thomas

I'm not of the right age – Like Gigliola [tn: Gigliola Cinquetti won Eurovision with her song "Non ho l'età", which means "I'm not of the right age"]

"Before you the only one who won both Sanremo and Eurovision on the same year was Cinquetti (1964). If there's anything I feel I'm not of the right age for? No, honestly no. Maybe having children. Regarding children I'll be honest: I'm not of the right age." Damiano

Having touched the sky – The fears that remain

"We're more than inside the dream, we're in the conquered dream. When you fly high there's the risk of plummeting and hurting yourself, but we'll work hard not to end up like Icarus, who burns his wings with the sun. Everything is in our hands. And this - a bit pretentiously - reassures us rather than scaring us." Damiano

#maneskin #måneskin #vanity fair #italian #translation

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