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missmaywemeetagain · 1 year

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Pink Scarf - PART 18.1 (Elvis/Austin!Elvis x Reader)

Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)

Requested: kinda

(Read more here--Pink Scarf Series Masterlist!)

Prompt: You are part of Elvis Presley's coveted inner circle, and the currently-disgruntled wife of one of the members of Elvis' famous entourage, the Memphis Mafia. After Elvis' dynamite first performance in Vegas, you find yourself in deep water when his magnetism finally gets to you after all these years. [ Fem!Reader ]

TW: References to sexual situations. ANGST. Cussing. Infidelity. Historical inaccuracies in the Vegas timeline. Priscilla doesn't exist in this timeline.

Rating: Explicit/Mature (NSFW, 18+, so minors Do NOT Interact) || Word Count: 8.6k

A/N: OKAY Y'ALL, Part 18 is split into two parts (18.1 & 18.2), so be aware that there is a bit of a cliffhanger for this reason. This part as a whole is another monster, but in a completely different way than the action-packed Part 17, and I didn't want to torture y'all anymore by making you wait for a GIANT chapter, since I was at 13k+ with no end in sight! We're diving into uncharted territory here (which was a challenge, let me tell y'all!) and 18.1 is all in flashback because of this. The vibe is DIFFERENT for obvious reasons, which you'll understand shortly. I promise there’s a good reason for the pivot, which will become more apparent in 18.2. Thank you so much for your patience, and I really hope you enjoy this perspective change in the story!

I've set the mood with lyrics from Teresa Brewer's Till I Waltz Again With You which is the song Elvis really sang in the talent show in '53 (unfortunately there is no recording of him singing it *sob*), and I've added pictures of our boy in the different years referenced, just to really give you a mental picture and break your heart a little bit. Only because I love y'all!

If you so desire, you should now have the ability to tip my blog or different chapters in the story! Some of you have been asking about this, and of course, no one is obligated to do so! If you do choose to tip, thank you so much! I've never had anyone want to pay for my work before, so this is a big step towards my romance novelist dreams. 💜

As always, to all my babies, honeys, and lil' mamas supporting me out there, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL and your reactions, reblogs, messages, asks, and comments you've given me have been a blessing beyond expression. You all are the best community a writer could ask for! Thank you so much for your support. I am loving getting to know y'all better! I love every single reaction and comment and ask, and I'm sorry if I don't get back to them all as soon as I'd like but know that I love you all and am so excited to be making new friends! And a big "Hey, Y'all!" to our friends from Elvis Twitter, Elvis Discord, and Elvis Instagram--I see and appreciate you coming over to join us! 👀💋

If you feel so moved, please let me know what you think or how you're feeling (or send me asks)! I think I put everyone on the taglist who requested it, but please let me know if there are any issues or if I missed anyone. There seem to be some issues with tagging that I can't seem to fix, so please know I'm not leaving you out intentionally! Also, if you comment on a previous part that you want to be tagged, I might not always see it, so feel free to message me if I miss you!

I imagined this with Elvis in mind, but Austin!Elvis works here, too, whatever floats your boat!

Apologies in advance if there are any grammatical errors or TW that I didn't catch.

(I did start cross-posting Pink Scarf to my long-neglected AO3 account (which some of you already discovered!), so if you are so inclined, you can check it out over there!)

Elvis in 1951

You'll be waiting for my arms

September 1951

Elvis meanders down the hall through the crowds between classes, quiet, blue eyes sharp and watchful. He heads towards the lunchroom, his cheap and worn guitar slung over his shoulder. His dark blonde hair is too long for the popular style, greased and pushed back, a stray lock falling into his eyes. The style of his clothes is too bright and bold for a scrawny 16-year-old white boy, gaining him stares that range from curiosity to contempt, but he doesn’t care. He is wholly himself, a separate standout from the masses, but somehow unassuming through it all.

A few weeks into junior year, he already has his head down and tries to pay attention in his classes as best he can, even though sitting still is hard. He knows he must graduate and his mama and daddy will have his hide if he doesn’t, so he sits in the back row and listens and does his work as best he can. He makes decent grades. He’s respectful to his teachers, all “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, sir,” just like he was raised. All the while, his fingers drum out rhythms on his legs (the desk is too loud—he learned that the hard way a long time ago), his mind whirling and spinning with melodies and harmonies and dreams for the future.

But mostly he observes. He knows he’s different. He knows most kids don’t understand what he’s about. He’s a poor, church-going kid from the projects who is so quiet that he seems a little slow, except that those piercing blues see and hear everything, constantly cataloguing, constantly adapting, constantly thinking, constantly moving. Always searching for a way to get his family off the dole and into comfort. So, he waits and watches and learns. He doesn’t care if that earns him strange looks.

The halls start to thin as underclassmen hustle to their classes and upperclassmen run to lunch, loud and hungry and antsy. Elvis is not in a hurry, though, yet not without direction.

The little, fluttering thing that rounds the corner is, however, and plows straight into him, managing to knock herself and her books to the floor. He’s not quick enough to get out of the way, but he is fast enough to catch her as she goes flying backwards.

“Whoa!” he exclaims, his hand grasping your forearm as momentum carries you in the other direction. He somehow manages to swing his guitar down gently enough that it doesn’t splinter but the strings thrumb in a dissonant chord as it hits the ground.

The move to save both the guitar and the girl throws off his center of balance, so as you wheel back, you take him with you. In your panic to stay upright, you grab at him desperately, latching onto his wrist, which damns you both, but does serve to soften the blow as you land with a gasp on your backside.

His fancy shoes have no traction on the slippery tile, and he struggles and slips this way and that before gravity wins the battle, sending him ungracefully to his knees, pinning your skirt between your legs. He manages to catch himself with his free hand at the very last moment, avoiding completely crushing you under his weight. His breath huffs out with the exertion, and that’s how he ends up sprawled on top of you in the middle of the hallway, your books scattered around like shrapnel.

Time seems to slow for a second, and he really looks at you for the first time, his face in too intimate of a proximity for comfort as he looks into your big, wide eyes and sees a pink blush grace your cheeks. Your pretty hair surrounds you like a halo in disarray. And your lips, well, they are much to close because he can feel the warmth of your breath on his face. His chest heaves and then catches because you are quite beautiful, sprawled out there on the tile under him.

Then reality and propriety rushes at him like a freight train, realizing the compromising position you are both in, through no fault of your own, but compromising, nevertheless. He feels heat rush to his face at the inappropriateness of his thoughts.

“Aw, h-heck, s-sorry,” he blunders, pushing up and back off of you as fast as his lanky limbs will allow.

“No, I should be the one that’s sorry,” you bluster back, leaning on your forearms “I was too much in a hurry and wasn’t looking where I was going.” Your voice is light and as pretty as you are.

“Are ya o-okay?” he asks, truly concerned but also happy with the excuse to look you over as you sit upright, your hair cascading over your shoulders. Taking in your slightly disheveled state, he can’t help but feel like you’re the loveliest girl he’s ever laid eyes on. It’s not just because you’re pretty—of course you are—but more like the feeling he gets from you, like you’ve reached something inside of him that no one else ever has. He can’t explain it. It’s like he’s always known you somehow. Shaking off those strange thoughts, he kneels, gathering your scattered books off the black and white tiles.

“Aside from my bruised ego, I think I’m fine,” you sigh shakily, “and now I’m late for class, on my first day, no less.”

“O-Oh, y-you’re new?” he asks, stammering yet again. He doesn’t understand why he’s so tongue-tied. He talks to girls all the time. The boys may despise him for a multitude of reasons, but the girls…well, he likes them a lot, and they seem to like him right back, with all his sweet Southern politeness and his pretty eyes and how he strums on his guitar and warbles at night in the shadows at the Courts. He’s had girlfriends from the time he was twelve, and he seems to have some innate knowledge of what women of all ages like. It’s one of the things he’s good at—talking sweet to girls and kissing on them.

But this pretty little girl has him thrown for a loop.

You’re both kneeling now, gathering papers and books. “Yeah, we just moved here…oh, thank you,” you say as he picks up your books and stands, offering his hand to help you up. Your hand is soft and cool in his larger one, the touch of your skin on his shooting and crackling through him like lightning. Those eyes of yours catch his briefly, and he almost feels dizzy with the way they make him feel.

Lord have mercy, he thinks, what the hell’s wrong with me?

“Oh gosh, I hope I didn’t break your guitar!” you gasp, seeing it discarded on the floor, obviously mortified at the prospect. It’s the last thing on his mind, and he manages to tear his gaze from you for a second to look down at the instrument. Honestly, he’d break a hundred guitars if it meant running into you again, but by some miracle, it’s undamaged.

Elvis picks it up and strums it. “It’s fine, no harm done,” he drawls, lip curving up in a shy, boyish grin.

Relieved, you flash a little smile, and the sight nearly knocks him over. “Well, good,” you say breathlessly, taking your books back. “I really am sorry, again. I—uh—I gotta get to class.” You are obviously worried about being late, face still flushed with embarrassment. Before he can say another word, you are already rounding the corner, scurrying away, your hair bouncing in your wake.

He stands there, staring after you and blinking as if coming out of a trance. He realizes he didn’t even catch your name or get a chance to introduce himself. All he knows is that you’re a pretty little freshman that just moved here, and while this information is pertinent, it doesn’t really help him much.

Walking to lunch in a daze, all he can think about is how he can go about seeing you again.

Till I kiss you once again Keep my love locked in your heart Darling I'll return and then We will never have to part

Unfortunately, he doesn’t see you, not for a while anyway. The school isn’t that damn big, but he never seems to be able to catch you or your name. Which is a damn shame because his thoughts seem to drift towards you when he least expects it. You show up in his daydreams or when a song he’s singing strikes him a certain way. It’s disconcerting, to say the least.

By the next time he finds you, he’s just about put you out of his mind. But the minute he sees you that morning, out in front of the school, giggling with your new girlfriends, it’s like you’ve plowed into him all over again. His heart thuds a little harder in his chest as he passes you, trying not to stare, but he manages to catch your eye for a split second all the same.

At first, there’s no hint of recognition, which nearly breaks his heart, but then your eyes widen with realization and a hint of a shy smile plays on your lips. He returns it in kind, unable to stop himself from the bashful and relieved way it spreads over his face. For a moment, he considers stopping and asking all the questions he’s dying to know the answers to, but the flow of the crowd pushes him onwards and into the building.

He’s near giddy the rest of the day, wondering how and why the pretty girl he barely knows has captured him so completely.

Though it may break your heart and mine The minute when it's time to go Remember dear, each word divine That meant I love you so

Elvis in 1953

April 1953

Standing backstage in the high school auditorium, Elvis wonders why the hell he’s agreed to do this damn talent contest. His hands are shaking and clammy and he can feel the vomit rising in his throat. He’s scared shitless because he’s really only ever sung in the dark to his neighbors at the Courts, or in church with the congregation, but something inside him knows he needs to do this, even if it’s just to show himself that he can. It’s like a part of his soul drives him forward, even though his mind thinks he’s nuts.

It's not until he sees you backstage, ahead of him in the line, that his mind switches from crippling stage fright to a sense of excitement and curiosity. Your hair is done up real pretty and you’re wearing your Sunday best, he can tell. You don’t see him right away, and he knows he’s staring, but at least it’s keeping his mind off his churning stomach. You must feel his gaze because you turn and look back, your intelligent, wide eyes locking onto his.

It sends a thrill of a different kind through him when you tiptoe back towards him, and his heart races a little more than it already is.

You look him over carefully, and he might feel more self-conscious except your eyes are kind and concerned. “You okay?” you ask in a hushed whisper, not wanting to interrupt the current act on stage.

“I-I-I-I…yeah,” he stutters, unable to get the words out. His legs are wiggling, hands shaking, and he feels like he might puke all over your shiny shoes, but sure, he’s fine.

Lord, why is it in this moment of all moments that you come to talk to me?

You smile knowingly. “Yeah, I’m real nervous, too,” you breathe, seeing right through him. When he looks at you this time, he can see it, how you wring the sheet music in your hands and your eyes keep darting to the stage. It makes him feel a little better, somehow, knowing he’s not alone in this.

You stand there with him for a moment, and it should be awkward, except it isn’t at all. That strange familiar feeling of you makes this seem natural. He can’t seem to get any words out, so he just waits and jiggles.

“It’s gonna be fine. I think we’re just supposed to imagine everyone naked, right?” you whisper a little too seriously and that sets him off, a loud chuckle erupting from his mouth. Hearing the word “naked” come from your proper, pretty little lips just tickles him in a variety of ways, and he can’t help it. Other people in the line shoot him warning looks for being too loud, so he quells his laughter as best he can.

You look over, your eyes dancing more with amusement than nervousness, and you cover the giggle that starts to come out of your mouth. He’s reminded once again by the warmth that spreads through his chest that you are the prettiest girl he’s ever laid eyes on, and hell, you’re funny, too.

You have to stop looking at each other because you’re one small step away from setting each other off into more peals of nervous laughter, which would surely disrupt the show. He watches as you bite your pink bottom lip and thinks of how much he’d like to do the same to you, imagining how soft it would feel yielding to him. Then he tries to push that less than appropriate thought right out of his head as soon as it pops up because, damn, this isn’t the time or place for that kind of thinking.

As your laughter dies, you look down at your feet, obviously feeling a swell of fear as you play with the necklace around your neck. He can feel it coming off of you in waves, despite your attempts to comfort him.

Suddenly, he can’t stand the sight of your uncomfortableness. He has the deep urge to fix it and make you feel better. Without thinking, he nudges you with his elbow. When you look up at him in surprise, he crosses his eyes, making a googly-eyed silly face at you. It has the intended effect, sending you into a fit of giggles, earning a glare and shush from the teacher in the wings.

It’s the cutest thing, watching you laugh like this, and it sends a rush of calm and satisfaction over him to know he’s the cause. He almost forgets that he has to go out there and sing in a few minutes.

“I’ve got to go, we’re on next,” you whisper.

“You’ll be great,” he says. He doesn’t even know what you’re going to be doing but it doesn’t matter. Anything you do will have his attention.

You smile shyly, as if reading his mind somehow, and he feels heat rise to his cheeks that has nothing to do with his stage fright. You nod, then skip off to the front of the line.

He watches in awe from the wings as you accompany your singing friend on the piano. Your hands fly over the keys with practiced, concentrated ease, and if he didn’t know better, he wouldn’t ever have guessed that you were nervous.

He suddenly thinks he needs to take up the piano. Maybe you could teach him and then he’d have an excuse to see you.

That thought is fleeting though, as your performance is through in the blink of an eye, and you exit the stage with a relieved smile, meaning that he’s one step closer to having to get out there himself. Now that he knows you’re okay, his nerves come rushing back. His leg vibrates uncontrollably, but he still manages to give you a thumbs up.

You slow as you pass him, placing your hand lightly on his bicep. He stills and looks at you in surprise at the contact.

“Thinking of them naked works,” you whisper with a smile, “Break a leg out there.” Then, you give him a light squeeze before being ushered away. Sparks fly through him at the echoes of your hand on his arm.

Elvis thinks his heart might explode. It’s crazy, this way you make him feel like he’s flying. It carries him out onto the stage, where he sings a rendition of Teresa Brewer’s “Till I Waltz Again With You” that somehow brings the house down and wins the talent show. They even call him out for an encore.

Thinking of them naked works, indeed.

But when he closes his eyes to sing, it’s you he thinks of. It’s you that gets him through.

The feeling he has coming off that stage is a buzzing, electric high he thinks could get used to. A dangerous, tiny thought in the back of his mind tells him to chase it like there’s no tomorrow, but the relief at the whole thing being over is too strong and pushes the thought away.

But the feeling lingers in his body like lightning in the clouds, just like your touch.

Till I waltz again with you Just the way we are tonight I will keep my promise true For you are my guiding light

Elvis in 1955

Winter 1955

Jack somehow convinces him with a begging phone call, on this cold-ass winter night on one of his only nights back home in Memphis in so long he doesn’t even remember the last time he slept in his own bed, that he has to help Jack get some broad at some diner across town.

And because Jack’s his best friend and he hasn’t seen him in years due to Jack’s stint in the Army and his insane touring schedule, Elvis bags off his family and Dixie (poor, lovely Dixie) and jumps in the Caddy to head to this diner across town. He figures he’s gotta eat anyway, so might as well get some time in with an old friend, and it’ll be a bonus if he can help ole’ Jacky Boy get some tail.

Absolutely exhausted from gallivanting all over the South, playing sold-out shows, and doing other things he’ll never tell his mama about, he drags himself into the diner, hands stuffed in the pockets of his big wool coat. Good old Jacky sees him coming and leaps out of the booth to give him a big, manly hug.

Elvis can both see and feel the change in Jack. There’s a bravado to him now, an air of machismo that is new. He’s broader and more muscular than the boy who enlisted right after graduation instead of waiting for the draft to get him. And Elvis gets it—Jack didn’t have much to stay for, what with his father being such a mean drunk and him having no special skills to speak of. Jack figured, why not just get it over with?

Even though Jack’s only a little over four months older than Elvis, he was a grade ahead in school, but that discrepancy never mattered much to either of them.

“Look at ya, ya sonnofabitch! Finally got some meat on those bones!” Jack says gleefully, slapping him on the back.

“And you’re as ugly as ever,” Elvis shoots back with a smile, sliding into the red booth.

“Damn, man, I’m hearin’ your songs all over the radio. Couldn’t fuckin’ believe it when I got home and every station I turned on was your warbling ass,” Jack teases in a congratulatory tone.

“Honestly, I’m so damn tired I could sleep for a week, but we’re back out on the road tomorrow,” he replies.

“What happened to that scrawny, shy kid who’d only play in the dark, huh? I’d be scared shitless to get up in front of all those people! Now you’re playin’ all the time…I just can’t believe it, man,” Jack shakes his head.

Elvis shrugs, “Can’t really ‘splain it. It’s like the biggest rush ya could ever have and it just overpowers the fear. The crowds are wild though—never knew chicks could be so crazy.”

“Oh, I bet you are just drowning in it, ain’t ya?” Jack says, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Elvis shrugs nonchalantly but his lip curls up into a mischievous grin as he looks out the window. He was indeed taking advantage of his newfound popularity with the girls, almost to an insatiable extent. He’d done good resisting in those first few months, knowing he had Dixie waiting for him at home, wanting to be faithful to her, wanting to be a good Christian boy. But damn, the more he was on the road and the higher the highs of his performances, he just needed a way to wind down at the end of the night. And there were just so many pretty girls literally tearing themselves apart to get to him.

In the end, he hadn’t been strong enough to resist. He knew cheating on Dixie was wrong, and he felt terrible about it, having her waiting here at home for him like she was, but with every show he was learning that he wasn’t gonna be giving any of this up any time soon. No, he wanted to take this as far as he could go, and while a small part of him wanted to hang on to the idea of starting a family with Dixie, a bigger part knew that wasn’t in the cards, not anymore.

“Speakin’ of, what the hell am I doin’ here? You suddenly forget how to talk to girls while in the service?” Elvis ribs, yet truly wants to know.

Jack lowers his voice to a hush and leans in, his eyes darting up every so often to make sure he’s not overheard. “No, man, but this girl, she’s different, I’m tellin’ ya. This ain’t about gettin’ laid. I don’t know what to say, I walked in here right off the train my first day home and it was like the goddamned heavens opened. Every time I try an’ talk to her, I just get all tongue tied like an idiot. I figure, you were always good with talkin’ to girls in general, so I need your help buddy.”

“You’ve got it bad, man. She must be a real looker,” he says, shooting up an eyebrow.

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. She’s smart…oh, shit, here she comes! Be cool,” Jack hisses, leaning back too casually, a dumb grin spreading over his face. Elvis can’t help but chuckle at the sight of his friend being so head over heels for a girl he barely knows. He leans back, taking a much more relaxed and subtle stance than his friend, one that has been well practiced these past few months, as the waitress comes up from behind him to take their orders.

If nothing else, watching Jack be a dumb shit is entertaining, he thinks.

The waitress bounces over and Elvis rolls his eyes slowly up her body, taking in every lovely curve along the way.

“Oh, hi, Jack! I see you’ve got a friend with you today.”

Elvis freezes, his eyes reaching your face just as you start speaking and look over at him.

It’s you.

Holy shit, it’s you.

His brain short-circuits. He hasn’t seen you since he graduated a year and a half ago. And damn if you don’t look prettier than ever, all grown up and filled out in all the right places, your smile brightening the room.

His lips part as his mouth drops, he can’t help it.

“Um, yeah, y/n, this, uh, this is my friend Elvis,” Jack stumbles over the introduction, looking to Elvis for help. But in this moment, Elvis feels utterly useless, every ounce of confidence he’s gained in the past year draining out of him all at once.

His heart gallops in his chest, and he sits up straighter. He can see you looking over him expectantly, eyes narrowing as if trying to place him. He knows he shouldn’t care if you remember him, but by god, if you don’t, he thinks he might be crushed. But he’s also aware he’s different, too. He’s filled out and his hair’s darker, and why in the hell would you remember him from all those years ago anyway? You’d barely spoken to each other in four years.

“Elvis…” His name drags and plays on your tongue in a way that makes his toes tingle. “Like that singer?”

Of course, that’s how you recognize him, he thinks. But at least you know of him, even if it’s not in the way he wishes. He decides to lean into being “Elvis” because maybe that’ll make him feel less like an awkward high schooler and more like a cool cat. Regardless, the shyness he’d felt for being odd in high school is now mostly gone, and his unique style is part of the reason he was garnering so much attention these days. His confidence, especially with the ladies, is ever-growing. He knows he’s getting to be hot shit in the South and now has an image to live up to. There is no space for shy Elvis Presley here in this diner, for all the reasons. So, he manages to turn up the dial on his Southern charm, forcing himself to relax in your presence.

“Well, Miss y/n, seein’ as I never met another man with that name, I suppose, yes, like that singer,” he responds with a coy smile.

“Aw, don’t let him trick ya with that modesty. This here’s the one and only Elvis Presley,” Jack kicks him under the table, the message clear: Use your fame to help me out.

Your face lights up a little at that, which has a little flutter rolling in his empty stomach. “Now, Jack, you never told me you were friends with a celebrity,” she teases, her attention divided between the two men.

Elvis has to very consciously remind himself that he is here to help Jack, not steal you out from under him, but it is taking everything in him not to reach over and play with the hem of your skirt and tell you just how much he wants to take you home to his mama, Dixie be damned.

Jack smiles almost giddily, obviously pleased with your attention. “Well, I’m not one to go showin’ off or nothin’,” he says self-deprecatingly.

Elvis rolls his eyes at that.

“Well, my sister is gonna be beside herself when I tell her who came in tonight. She’s thirteen and might be your biggest fan, Elvis,” you say cheerily. He notices you aren’t completely beside your own self over him being here, which he has some mixed feelings about. On the one hand, he desperately wants your attention and admiration, but on the other hand, it’s kinda nice that you aren’t fawning all over him. It makes you even more appealing somehow.

“So, what can I get ya?” you ask, taking out your pen and paper, looking from man to man.

“I’ll have a hamburger, well done, please, and one of your vanilla milkshakes,” Elvis says, unable to take his eyes off you.

“I’ll have the same, except the burger medium rare, like a real man,” Jack jokes, poking fun at Elvis’ picky eating habits. Thankfully, you don’t react, and Elvis can’t help but kick the shit out of Jack’s shin.

Jack winces.

“Hmm, why do I get the feeling that you two are gonna be trouble?” you smile knowingly at them, pointing at each with the top of your pen. “I’ll be back with those in a jif. Try not to kill each other before I get back.” You bounce away and both men turn to watch.

“No promises, honey,” Elvis calls after you.

“Y’see what I mean, don’tcha? Ain’t she just special somehow?” Jack whispers excitedly, totally gone over you.

Oh, Elvis knows intimately how special you are, but he can’t say it, so he settles for a, “Yeah, man, she seems great,” and tries not to feel sullen about how he’s got to be Jack’s wingman for his own dream girl.

They shoot the shit, and he does his best to get Jack talking to you when you come by, even though it’s hard because he wants you for himself. It’s painful having to keep himself so in line, his heart cinching in his chest every time you come by to check on them. That’s when Elvis knows he’s in deep trouble. He reminds himself often that he is off the market anyway, at least when here at home in Memphis.

He promised to help Jack out, and so he will, even if it kills him.

“I gotta take a leak, man,” Jack says after the food is finished, scooting out of the booth.

You sashay over to clear the plates, and Elvis can’t help but stare as you lean over the table. Your eyes dart to his and he swears he sees a hint of pink on your cheeks. Warmth spreads across his chest and he tries not to avert his eyes. Any other girl he would confidently ogle, so he tries his best to stay the course.

“Y’ know, I’m not sure how you do it,” you say, breaking some of the tension as you stand over him, hands full of dishes.

“Do what, honey?” he drawls, raising only his eyes. Now that Jack’s gone, he’s laying it on thick and can’t bring himself to feel bad about it. Not when it’s you.

You shift your weight, but otherwise ignore his advance, much to his chagrin. You’re probably used to getting hit on by customers. “Getting up in front of those big crowds, all those people, and singing like that. I could never,” you shake your head.

A split second and he decides to play his hand, mostly because he has to know, just has to, so leaning back confidently, he drawls again, “Oh, well, a pretty girl once told me you just hafta picture ‘em all naked.” A slow grin spreads across his face.

Your eyes widen as it hits you. He watches you carefully, cataloguing your expression as you remember, your eyes travelling over him quickly, trying to reconcile your memory of him with the man in front of you. Your cheeks go rosy, and he relishes in the fact that he’s the reason.

“Well, damn, I guess I give really good advice,” you finally say, a little breathless, with a shake of your head.

Elvis can’t help the loud laughter that escapes him at that. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but you surprise him with your quip. You smile back at him, proud of yourself. The smile makes him feel special somehow, like he’s the only guy in the world.

“You’re really somethin’ else, y/n,” he says, his laughter dying down and being replaced too quickly by the awe he always seems to feel in your presence.

Something flashes over your face, something he can’t quite interpret. “Right back atcha, Elvis Presley,” you respond, and there’s something in the softness of your voice and in the way your big eyes stare straight into his that sends electricity zinging down his spine.

Then, as he watches as you walk away, he knows with absolute certainty that this won’t be the last time you see him.

Till I waltz again with you Keep my love locked in your heart Darling I'll return and then We will never have to part

And it isn’t. In fact, Elvis somehow manages to stop into the diner nearly every time he is home from then on out. Sure, Jack is his best excuse, but he also rounds up the band and Sam and even Dixie once or twice to go to this great diner he “just happened to find.”

Once he knows you are more often than not going to be there because it’s your family’s place, he wants to go frequently, and Jack is thrilled because the man might be more entranced with you than he is.

It’s not long that being friendly customers turns into being friends. Even when they find out you’ve got a serious boyfriend (because of course you do), neither him nor Jack is much dissuaded by the fact. Elvis would much rather have you in his life as a friend than not at all, and Jack is somewhat delusional in thinking you’ll drop your boy for him.

And while Elvis wants more than anything in the world to have you all to himself, he knows it’s likely not in the cards, at least not now, and maybe not ever. Not with the boy you want to marry you ever so close and Jack waiting in the wings like a puppy. And certainly not when he is running himself ragged with tours and recording, with his very real dreams of stardom so near he can taste them. But, as reality shows when he and Dixie finally part ways in late spring, it is no kind of life for a successful relationship.

So, he has to be content with watching you walk away with someone else, knowing he can’t have you, even though those electric shocks go through him every single damn time he sees you.

Though it may break your heart and mine The minute when it's time to go Remember dear, each word divine That meant I love you so

Elvis in early March 1956

March 1956

Elvis’ career takes off so dramatically that he barely has time to process his good fortune. In the moments when he’s not traveling, recording, touring, or appearing on television, he relishes the somewhat normalcy of hanging out with friends and family. It’s steadily getting harder for him to go out without being bombarded by fans, but he generally enjoys the attention. He’s grateful for his fans and for his budding success, though sometimes it feels so overwhelming he doesn’t know what to do with himself. There are moments when he desperately wants to be still and alone but when he finally has a moment to himself, it feels like the world is closing in on him.

It’s one of these moody, antsy nights that he finds himself at your doorstep, without anyone else in tow. The last time this happened was the night he signed his contract with RCA. You’d been the first person outside of family he wanted to share the news with and without a thought, he’d ditched everyone else and showed up at the diner in his fancy suit, uncharacteristically lifting you up in a hug and spinning you around in his exuberance.

But the mood tonight is decidedly less enthusiastic. He’s tired but hasn’t been able to sleep in what feels like days, pressure pushing in on him from all sides. Usually he didn’t mind, taking it all in stride as part of his new life, but tonight he was worn and restless, his body vibrating with energy that has no outlet.

When he feels like this, he gets needy. He’s already the sort of guy that thrives on physical touch, but in the state he’s in, it’s a necessity rather than a preference. Normally, he might go out with a girl and fool around a bit, but the idea of having to charm and swoon and put on airs right now feels impossible. But he knows he needs a woman’s touch to soothe him and that’s how he finds himself here, alone, knocking on your door.

Your eyes widen with surprise when you open the door and then soften with concern at the state of him, near pitiful with the dark circles rimming his eyes, his body slumped against the door frame, and his pallor a sickly pale.

God, he just wants to weep at the welcome sight of you.

You quickly and quietly usher him inside. By some merciful twist of fate, you are alone. Your mother and sister are out of town visiting relatives and your father is working late at the diner.

This visit should be awkward but isn’t—it’s as though he has been dropping by your house alone and unannounced your whole lives with the way you receive him, and for this he is thankful. And perhaps this is why everything seems to hit him at once, a wave of anxiety rolling over him so strongly that he can barely speak as you lead him to the couch.

It’s suddenly all too much, this feeling of responsibility towards his family and friends and fans. He’s overworked and overtired and the panic of his rising success has him shaking before you, his heart beating too fast and his breathing too shallow, making him dizzy and lightheaded. As he hyperventilates, you hum at him softly, prompting him to put his head between his knees while rubbing circles on his back. Tears leak from his eyes, staining his cheeks and where he leans his head against his forearms on his knees. He too worked up to even be embarrassed by how completely raw and vulnerable he is before you.

With very few words, you just seem to know what’s happening. You don’t ask him to explain or to defend his feelings, you just accept them for what they are and accept him for all that he is. There are no expectations. He feels incredibly relieved by that.

As he eventually starts to calm, he falls over, exhausted, laying his head in your lap. He feels your slight hesitation, but only for a second, before your fingers begin to cart through his hair. He cannot help the small whimpering moan that escapes his lips at the tenderness of the gesture, one he so desperately needs in this moment.

You are exactly what he needs, and he doesn’t have the wherewithal to deny that right now.

Perhaps that is why, once his breathing slows and he feels himself start to fade away into drowsiness that he turns in your lap and asks what he does.

“Can I stay?” he breathes, begging, looking up into your beautiful eyes. The plea is not full of lust, yet there is an open-endedness to it that he doesn’t hide, as his need for your comfort in any way you will give it to him is his prerogative. He cares for you far more that he dares to admit and cannot resist the pull of your soul to his, not tonight.

He watches your face carefully, seeing your brow furrow in the slightest and how you worry your bottom lip with your teeth. Propriety says you shouldn’t dare go there—you both know this—but at this point he’s not beyond batting his long lashes at you hopefully and a little mournfully.

“Oh, alright,” you finally concede, “but you need to be quiet as a mouse. I don’t know when Daddy will be home. And no funny business, Presley.” You point at him playfully, but there is a seriousness to your tone that makes him nod to give you reassurance. Exhaustion and moodiness cloud the way his heart wants to soar at this development of trust between you two, but he is too worn out to even muster a joke about the situation. That and he admires you too much to do anything that might jeopardize your blossoming friendship.

And with that settled, he raises from his all too comforting position in your lap. Much to his dismay, he’s unsteady on his feet, his attack having drained him of what little remaining energy he had, but you are quick to come to his side and walk him through the house to your room.

This doesn’t stop an unintentional tension from building, however, as you enter your room with him held close. He waits for you, wanting to follow your lead, wanting you to be comfortable, though he would just as soon collapse on your single bed without another thought.

You turn to him as though not exactly sure what to do next, your mouth opening then closing quickly, and he suddenly wants to kiss you so damn badly it’s painful. But it’s not the first time he’s felt that way in your presence, and probably won’t be the last, but then again, it never has been just the two of you alone in your bedroom before.

“I…I’ll be right back, I’m just going to…to go change,” you stammer, grabbing what is likely a nightgown out of your dresser. “Um, make yourself comfortable.” Then you escape into the hallway beyond, and he can’t help the little smile that plays at his lips in your wake.

He takes the moment alone to remove his coat and jacket and slip off his shoes and socks, folding them neatly at the end of the bed. He hesitates for a moment with his shirt and pants, but as emotionally wrought as he is, all he can think of is the calm feeling of being near you and ends up stripping down to his boxers and undershirt. Figuring he can always put them back on if it eases your mind, he then sits on the edge of the bed and waits.

It's not long before you come back, clad in a pretty white nightgown with little blue flowers all over it, your hair all brushed out and face washed pink. His heart actually skips at the sight. You look gorgeous and he has to remind himself that’s not what he’s here for. He’s here for you, yes, but not in that way. Luckily, his exhaustion overrides that sort of thinking rather quickly—he’s not sure he could do much in this state, even if you wanted to. You shut the door quietly behind you, even though there is no one else home to hear.

The air in the room feels heavy with potential and he can sense your trepidation as you turn back towards him and sit near him on the edge of the bed. His body begins to drag with sleep, the comfort of your arms and your bed beckoning to him. Finally, he chooses to break the silence.

“I’m not going to hurt you...I would never do that. I promise I won’t touch you like that. I just want to—” he says softly.

“I know, Elvis,” you interrupt quietly, “It’s okay. I know.” And your eyes are so big and sweet and open to him that it nearly makes him want to start crying all over again. Part of him wishes he didn’t need you like this, that you didn’t have to see him in this moment of weakness, but part of him is glad it is you. It could only be you, really, that he would give this part of himself to, he realizes, though he’s not entirely sure why. It’s that strange, unspoken bond between you two that has lingered under the surface from the beginning. This almost unreasonable need to take care of each other even when it doesn’t always make sense.

Once you climb under the covers and invite him to join you, he falls in next to you faster than you can blink. The bed is small which doesn’t matter much since he instantly curls close into your side as you lay on your back, notching his head into your shoulder. He can smell the soap and cold cream on your skin, and he drapes his arm over your midsection as though he’s done it a million times before. You stiffen at the contact at first, but then he feels you relax, your head leaning onto his, eventually running your fingers soothingly over his arm.

Yes, this is what he needs, he thinks dreamily, feeling like he can finally breathe again. And it’s not long before he drifts off into a deep slumber, surrounded by your comforting scent and warmth.

It’s the gray early morning light peeking through your white curtains that has him stirring awake, and it takes him a good minute to figure out where he is and who he is with, a feeling he is all too used to considering how much he’s on the road. But waking in some seedy motel in the middle of Texarkana in the arms of some random chick from the night before is not anything like waking in your cozy little bed, your warm body pressed back into his.

There is a care here with you that he yearns for, positively aches for, but did not realize he wanted or needed until this very moment. He is surrounded by the sweet smell of your silky hair, the warm softness of your bare legs against his convincing him that everything about this situation is just right. In his sleepy, unthinking haze, he pulls you closer, spooning you tightly into him, thinking he could just stay here forever, blissfully unaware yet of why he shouldn’t do so.

Until his virile, 21-year-old body reminds him, that is.

Perhaps it is the drowsy little sigh that escapes your lips in the same moment you unconsciously wiggle back against him that does it. Suddenly, he is very much awake, in more ways than one.

A stupid, instinctually carnal part of him very much wants to lift the hem of your nightgown up higher than it is already bunched and slide himself right between your inviting, bare thighs and into your heat, and dear god, that thought has him unraveling himself from you quicker than lightning.

Aw, hell.

He rolls over and sits up too fast, forcing himself to think of anything and everything but how you are lying in that bed so invitingly near. He closes his eyes against the brightness of day and breathes a few deep breaths before reaching for his clothes at the end of the bed.

A lesser man might allow himself to slide back into that bed, but by god, he swore he wouldn’t touch you like that and he refuses to take advantage when you’ve been so good to him. This thought, more than anything, sobers him as he puts his clothes on.

“El…Elvis? Are you okay?”

Oh, the way your sweet little voice sounds all clouded with sleep has him biting his lip so hard he nearly draws blood.

“Yeah, baby, it’s all good. Go back to sleep, honey,” he whispers, finishing the buttons on his shirt as quick as he can.

The domesticity of this little scene coupled with the ache in his groin has every damn cell in his body wanting to get back in that bed, and maybe if it wasn’t you, he would. But it is you. And as desperately as he wants this, he respects you too much to let his hormones get the best of him.

So, before he can change his mind, he kisses the top of your head for a little too long, breathing in the scent of you one last time, then puts on his shoes, grabs his coat, and climbs out the window, escaping into the dawn.

Till I waltz again with you Just the way we are tonight I will keep my promise true For you are my guiding light

His thoughts drift to you all day. He doesn’t even want to change or shower because the smell of you still lingers on his clothes, on his skin. The unfamiliar feeling of being so well rested and content has him singing and smiling all day, prompting his mama to ask him, with a knowing eye, exactly where he was last night.

And this gets him thinking about how much he would love to wake up beside you every damn day if he could, how amazing that would feel, and about how maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that he can.

Ted is out of the picture, and it’s been long enough now that you’ve moved on through the heartbreak. You’ve even casually dated a little bit, though no one has seriously caught your eye.

But then there is Jack, who is still pining hopelessly over you, refusing to make a move. And Jack is one of his best friends. It wouldn’t be right to sweep you off your feet right out from under his nose. He knows he could do it, too, and not just because he’s cocky in his growing fame. After last night, he just knows somewhere deep in his soul that if he asked, you’d be his.

And he wouldn’t even consider it except now he’s had a taste of you, of your sweetness and your comfort and your care and goddamn it, your smell is still all over him.

Well, shit or get off the pot, Jack, he thinks, because I ain’t waitin’.

He works himself up into it, trying not to think about all the obstacles in the way, namely his career and how it’ll take him far away from you, but in this endorphin-fueled moment, none of that matters. Only you matter, that and how you make him feel like he’s on cloud nine and how now that he knows what it’s like to wake up next to you, he knows he wants that again and again for as long as possible.

In truth, if he’d stop long enough to really think on it, he’s known it for a long time.

He’ll catch you at the end of your shift tonight. He buys a bouquet of flowers and everything. Energy pulses through him all day, sending his fingers tapping and his legs bouncing so much that his mama tells him to go run it off. Junior and Gene and Red think maybe he’s lost his mind because he’s even more restless than usual.

Finally, after a full day of working himself up into a near frenzy, he jumps in the Caddy and heads to the diner, ready to make you his.

But when Elvis parks in front and looks through the window of the car and into the diner, he sees Jack has gotten there ahead of him. He sees Jack holding your hand and then kissing it, pulling you into the booth next to him. He sees the lovely way you blush and smile in response.

And then he watches as Jack pulls you into him for a long, lingering kiss on the cheek. The way your eyes flutter closed tells him all he needs to know.

Fuck.

He’s too damn late.

Jealousy roars through him as he sees his best friend touching you, touching you when it should be him, not Jack, doing so. He can’t help but feel the memory of your body pressed so perfectly against his just mere hours ago. At that, at the thought of never having that part of you ever again, Elvis’ heart breaks into little pieces. He rests his forehead against the top of the steering wheel, unable to look at the romantic little scene before him.

This is how it was always supposed to be, he tries to convince himself. It was always Jack who was pursuing you, not him. And the worst fucking part is that he knows that Jack can give you something he can’t: Jack can be there for you, stable and sure, with you in the same damn city every damn day.

He cares for you, but he knows that his career is taking him places you cannot follow. And it wouldn’t be fair of him to ask you to put your life on permanent pause for him, no matter how desperately he wants you, no matter how deeply he believes that there is something powerful drawing you two towards each other with every breath.

He cares enough for you that he realizes, at least for now, that he has to let you go.

Friendship it is, then.

My light, my light I will keep my promise true Till I waltz again with you

Elvis in 1956

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xhudgenssistersconfessions · 7 months

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i don't think it's shady i don't think it's trying to rub it in people face

i believe that ashley ~constantly~ posts austin like that because something happened, not related to vanessa, but with herself and friendships, if you people notice he's the only friend she highlights ~that~ much, i think ashley drift apart with friends constantly (i'm not saying anyone is to blame, maybe no one is) i think austin is the one who is always there for her, and her birthday texts to him say a ~lot~. i do understand people asking "is she still friends with vanessa?" because as said here before, not everyone is so updated about it as we are so i started to understand more.

and i didn't want her to answer anything about vanessa because the last time she answered was about not knowing that tick tick boom was having a premiere and it was the same day that she reposted an elvis teaser, so, we would have the same drama situation now, and it would be a little worse with his fandom bigger (it was not in 2021 yet) i can't even imagine what question she would ask about vanessa and not to be awk

Why? you guys would trash her if she ask something

Why would Ashley (or Vanessa for that matter) bring attention to the fact that they aren’t close anymore? I’m sure neither of them want that all over social media or used as a headline. Ashley won’t ever answer that question as to why they are not BFFS anymore since it’s not our business in the first place.

my opinion, i think some of you (you i say, our fandom) are bitter that austin and ashley have a genuinely pure beautiful friendship that didn't end when a 'bad' thing happened (expressing myself from the things i read on twitter) idk your guys opinion about them but not everything is about attention, not everything is shady, it's not just vanessa who can have true friendships. i get it don't like them i don't like a lot of celebs but you guys care a lot about two people that you guys say "thank god they are not in vanessa's life anymore" deep down i believe you guys wanted that she and ashley were still friends and austin would be the one """left out""" in this trio for your narrative to work more. he is not that monster lol

#answered

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aliengoth3 · 1 year

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Elvis was no saint but frankly most male entertainers back then weren’t (and still aren’t let’s be real). I think it’s possible to be a fan of someone while not agreeing all of their behavior, but a lot of people on Twitter especially don’t seem to understand this. I’m also tired of these people making Elvis out to be a total monster when he wasn’t. There are just as many positive stories about him but they just want don’t go hear it. It’s sad. No one is obligated to a fan of Elvis but the intense hatred some Austin fans have for him while stanning Austin who loves Elvis flaws and all is weird like you said. Like they’re tweeting 24/7 about how they like Austin and despise Elvis, they need to chill. And I say this as an Austin fan!

No one is a Saint, tbh. We're all humand and we all have so many flaws

I find the cancel culture to be extremely ridiculous and damaging, no one has a higher moral ground, we all did, do and will do shit that might get us cancelled daily because someone might not like them.

It's so annoying seeing Austin fans hating on Elvis that is by far one of the stupidest things I've ever witnessed tbh. The hate Elvis gets from some people is seriously twisted and they pretend to be better than him or than his fans. They're fucking disgusting, rotten souls and brains with no good to give to the world because they're all so busy hating everything and everyone that doesn't line up with their personal (but not so personal because they're influenced by people around them) beliefs and morals.

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argumentl · 3 years

Text

The Freedom of Expression Ep 51 - Amazing technology - 'Human with modified skull'

K: Hi this is Dir en grey's Kaoru with this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe, Tasai, welcome.

T: And thank you too.

J: Ta-da! We are wearing it.

K: Hahaha

J: We are wearing it. This is naturally cool, isn't it?

T: Yes.

K: Um, if we don't say anything the viewers won't understand.

J: Uh, Tasai, could you explain?

T: Um, so this is another Tokyo Sports T-shirt collaboration. We are putting one out.

K: It was a hoodie before, right?

T: Yes, that was a collaboration with Don Quijote. This time we've collaborated with the store Hardcore Chocolate in Higashinakano, to create this really cool tshirt.

K: I'm wearing it too.

T: Oh, thank you. Its a Core-choco × Tokyo Sports collaboration.

*clapping/cheering*

K: The back is nice too.

J: Yeah, I mean, I can't see it myself though. What is written on it?

T: Its past Tokyo Sports headlines. The black is pro-wrestling headlines, like 'Inoki's grand KO defeat'.....'Hansen...near murder' etc.

J: Wow.

T: These shocking headlines are...

J: All over?

T: Yes, all over it. And as for the front, Joe, could you turn around?

J: Yes.

T: Those are copies of Tokyo Sports tied up with string, just on the verge of being thrown away, giving a kind if melancholic feel.

J: Ahh, this is cool too.

T: Its very Tokyo Sportsy.

K: Are the white and back versions different?

T: Yes, they are different.

J: Ah! They are different?

K: The white one has 'Matsui' written on it.

T: Matsui's wedding.

J: Oh yeah.

K: This black one says, 'Brody'.

J: Pro-wrestling?

T: Yes, its mainly pro-wrestling. And the white is showbiz...

J: Sports and showbiz? Oh, so it is.

T: 'Elvis lives' and so on.

J: This is great...ah..'The Monster with 21 faces'!

K: Its nostalgic, isn't it?

T: Yeah, this type of thing.

J: Ahh..of course...Ah, shocking photos.

K: 'Discovery of Kappa'....'Madonna had hemorrhoids' haha.

K, J, T: Hahaha.

J: Does it really matter? haha.

T: Haha, that was about one time a long time ago when Madonna came to do a show in Japan. She requested a bidet toilet, so we reckoned maybe its because she had hemorrhoids.

J: Just from that? You put this headline with it?

K: Your info is thin!

T: Haha.

J: Right?! Zero fact checking! Guess after guess!

K: Incredible. So, there are two of these.

J: What should we do with them?

T: Well, I thought we could make them presents for the people who always watch The Freedom of Expression.

J: Ohhh! *claps*

K: There is black and white.

J: One of each?

T: Yes.

K: The size is S.

J: S?

K: Joe is wearing M, I'm wearing XL. Anyone who wants a big one..

J: Please but it.

K: Yes. For people who want S...um, what should we do...you could leave a comment on my Twitter..

T: With your thoughts on this show.

J: Of course.

T: Yes.

K: Yeah.

T: And we could choose one from those.

J: Leave a decent comment..

T: Like which was your favourite episode or something?

J: Ahh, you know how to do this!

K: Joe, its just that you're always drunk.

J: I'm always drunk, haha. When I see Tasai, Im learning how to conduct myself.

T: Excuse me brother, thank you very much.

J: Your stocks will rise with this tshirt. Yours and Tokyo Sports' stocks.

T: I hope so.

K: Everyone will be cool wearing this.

J: They really will be cool.

K: Please buy it, really.

J: If someone wanted to buy this, where do they get it from?

T: Probably online. You can buy it on Corechoco's site.

J: I see.

K: Ok, so today's story is a Tokyo Sports selection.

J: Its a Tokyo Sports day today.

T: A Tokyo Sports produced story...

The headline is 'Will we rise up in 2021? - Amazing technology, human with modified skull'. As for the content of the story, it asks what new technology will appear in the year 2021, and its by our science writer Hisano, who wrote about some of the things he'd heard.

J: Oh, so he's done it properly?

T: Yes. So firstly, well, we hear a lot about this A.I. deepfake problem at the moment, don't we? Like changing faces without permission, and making these made-up sexy images which cause harm, for example. *1

J: Yeah, its the basis of fake news, right?

T: We are hearing about that more and more, thats the first thing. Secondly, there is apparently this idea called, 'Trans-human' where people power up their own body with technology, and Hisano wondered whether Trans-human technology with develop a lot during this year. Specifically, well, there is actually someone doing this in Spain, Manel de Aguas. He peeled back the skin on his head and attatched self-mafe fin shaped devices to his skull. The fins contain a bone conducting oscillator and temperature sensor, so he can tell if the weather is hot or cold through vibrations in his head. So, this is a way to catch very small atmospheric changes that regular people wouldn't normally be able to sense.

J: I see.

T: And there are pictures of him, so please take a look.

J: If you go to the Tokyo Sports website?

T: Yes, you can see it there. Furthermore, well, there are quite a lot of other examples, like a 'trans-human' using prosthetics, or having an IC chip implanted into your hand to use for the train etc. On top of that, France has plans to make a conscription army like this. The name of the project is 'The Bionic Soldier Project', which is a really cool name. They would be like super strong soldiers who never got tired and didn't need sleep, and who could heighten their sight and hearing with medication, and would have communication equipment embedded in their brains to connect directly to wireless netwoks. Bionic soldiers..scary, right?

J: Yeah. Its like the end to the era of traditional fighting.

T: Research has been going on even longer America, in their Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where paralyzed patients have had chips embedded in their brain, and have successfully been able to control drones with their thoughts. They've already done that. Even bedridden people can control drones. Technology his also being developed to go without sleep for 48 hours by running electric currents through the brain. This is not the talk of dreams, we are closing in on these things. There is also a plan by Nasa, a mission to redirect asteroids, where a robot spaceship would grab an asteroid, carry it over to the moon's orbit, and dig up minerals from it. Its like the world of Gundam. What do you think of this for 2021?

J: So, like these might become a reality within this year?

T: Yeah, some of them, as far as the technology goes.

K: It'll be like Robocop.

T: Yeah.

K: Its incredible, its like the world of 'Terminator'.

J: Yeah, it is.

T: In reality, controling a drone with the brain is aleady being used in China with toys.

J: With the brain..?

T: Like, controlling it with your thoughts by just imagining it rising. And in Japan..

J: You have to operate it.

T: In Japan they can be controlled with radio waves *2, but in China they can already move drones around using brain waves. Like, its technologically possible to attatch a bomb to a drone and make it fly somewhere and explode...its scary.

J: If technology advances this far, people won't need to study for exams and stuff, will they?

T: Thats right.

J: With a chip embedded...we talk about preventing cheating these days, but you would have all that data within you, or you could just go outside and remotely update.

K: Or you could send questions with just your eyes and get answers back.

J: Yeah, its like already at the point where you don't have to bother with tests or exams.

K: And it would mean no more back entrance admissions.

T, J: Yeah.

J: Yeah, like whoever has the money.

T: They might starts scanning people with metal detectors when they do exams to see if they have chips or something in them. Like, have you got a chip in your brain?? If it beeps, you'll know they have a chip.

K: They could put the people who have chips inside like anti-vibration shields..

J: Yeah, like to stop the transmissions.

T: Oh, yeah.

J: We're already getting to this point in time.

T: Do we even need to study anymore?

J: Yeah, like the era of people using their brains is ending.

K: We don't even really need universities and stuff anymore

J: We don't! Cause you have have access to all the information in the world in your head, whenever you like.

K:Yeah, if you have it ???*3

J: Well, there's also the issue of whether this kind of thing will be permitted by law. Like how far..

K: Yeah, it wouldn't be allowed immediately.

J: Yeah, like how far can human ability be harnessed in this way. I mean, there is the problem of genetic engineering too, but..thats where we are at now.

K: Well, there might already be people like this out there.

J: Well, yeah, the technology is there already.

K: You don't know whats going on in other peoples' heads.

J: Well, yeah. Eh, what if Kami is one of them?

K: No, I don't think he is. Absolutely not.

J: Haha

Kami: No, gods are different. But the bionic soldiers who don't need sleep, never get tired, and use medication to improve their sight and hearing...they've been around in Nishinari for a long time.

K: In Nishinari?

J: Haha

Kami: People who look like zombies, there have always been tonnes of them. There is also an article about a 'robot girlfriend to go for a walk with you', which Gifu University made, I'm interested in that. I'd like to support Gifu University with that.

T: I see. Yeah, its a robot girlfriend who holds your hand and goes for walks with you, made by Gifu University.

K: What did Kami say earlier about women, doesn't he have woman trouble?

J: Oh yeah. Kami, don't women like you, being a god?

Kani: Thats a whole different story. Um, this is just a hand holding robot, but I'd like them to try harder with more in-depth research on this.

K: In-depth research? Haha

J: I don't know what he means by that. Kami!!

K: I mean, if they've been able to make the robot to this level, Im pretty sure they can also manage 'in-depth' research. haha.

J: They just won't announce it as university research, they stopped at holding hands.

Kami: Ah, I see. I wanna support deepfake technology too.

K: Ha, you wanna support it.

T: Well, this type of technology was originally invented for mens' pleasure. New technology can even start from such places. Like videos...

K: Ah, yeh, popular people from videos turned up a lot in this erotic stuff (*Sorry if I got this wrong*)

J: Ahh, yes, necessity is the mother of invention. Technology increases due human desires.

T: Yeah, thats it.

J: Well, this could be used for evil ways, or for more interesting ways. There are various ways to use it. Kaoru is there any kind of technology that you ever wanted to invent?

K: That I wanted to invent?

J: Like a specific type of robot or anything like that?

T: If you had a chip in your brain though, and you didn't have to study, what would you do?

K: But if all this stuff becomes normal, I think on the contrary, will might start to want to do things in more detail again. When you can get anything effortlessly, you will start to want to do those things that don't come effortlessly.

J: Ahh, hand made things will become nostalgic.

K: Our sense of value would change. People will want to go out and do things...if you can get everything you need without ever going out. And with food, it will be all there, ready as soon as you open the cupboard, right?

J: Yeah

K: Like, wouldn't you feel like going out instead?

T: Yeah, you'd want to go out and see live performances and stuff too.

K: People were told not to go out on New Years eve, but so many people still went out. haha

T: Oh, yeah.

J: Yep, human mentality just goes like that.

K: People will still go out. So, I think thats the direction it will head.

T: A.I. is pretty popular in human competions at the moment, for example with Shōgi, but in the end, what people really want to see is a human competing with another human.

J: Yes, I think thats true.

K: Yeah, its those natural variations

J: Thats it, we need those. Its that type of thing that is impossible to calculate.

K: A computer couldn't come up with this type of thing. (*holds up Tokyo Sports tshirt*)

T: Haha

K: Its a product of wild fantasies.

T: Hahaha

J: Yeah, that would be impossible.

T: If we let A.I. do this kind of thing we would have lost. Tokyo Sports would be finished.

K: A.I. couldn't make this.

J: Its incredible.

K: 'Human gives birth to frog'.

J: Haha, A.I. could never write this.

K: It probably couldn't, right?

J: Only some bombed out person could do it otherwise.

K: It was worth making, naturally Tokyo Sports.

T: Oh, thank you.

K: So, everyone, please buy one of these tshirts. We have a black and white in size S here, so please send a tweet. Ok, we'll finish here this week. Please subscribe, thank you very much.

*1, 2 Not sure its exactly right.

*3 Couldn't figure out

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #kaoru #薫 #translation

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do-you-have-a-flag · 3 years

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Destiel shippers come get ya’ll juice!

SO @deadwright and I were inspired by Some Tumblr Posts and the twitter Roadhouse Wedding stuff and keep writing headcanons about Thee Destiel 2021 Married Ever After S16 SPN Romantic Event Of The Season, so here’s that.

Arranged in order of marital chronology and cutting out us keysmashing too much:

oh man imagine all the burgers they get catered for the reception dean got it done himself he would’ve been so particular about the catering bridezilla cas would probably be THEE bitchiest bridezilla

it's also definitely that trope where all the other hunters ect KNOW that that many of them and the wedding party are essentially a target for trouble so everyone spends the 24 hours leading up to the vows taking out every beastie who shows up on a revenge kick out of sight because they'll be damned if they let ANYTHING stop this wedding and Dean and cas are both having their marital jitters oh god im not good enough what if something goes wrong about mundane things while monsters are getting their ass kicked outside AWWWWWWWW for sure for sure, they’re hunter royalty this wedding is a big deal like half the attendees are nursing injuries but grinning widely

they don't do the can't see eachother before the wedding thing because you KNOW dean would be fixing cas' tie last minute

dean wears a blue pocket square to match cas' tie cas wears a FLANNEL SQUARE

I’m obsessed w the idea of cas giving dean a little bit of his grace in a small bottle on a chain for him to wear or like a wing feather or some part of him god the grace in a bottle breaks me every time in fic dean probably builds cas something but every time i try to think of something specific i choke up

i was thinking like what if trading grace is as close to a romantic gesture as angels have and he's like..... technically i left some grace behind in your mark when i dragged you from the pit and dean is like ARE YOU SAYING WE'VE BEEN MARRIED THIS WHOLE TIME?

they are so sweet i’m on the verge of tears the ability to do anything by halves in their relationship was burnt out by like the second return from the dead moment they are too insane to be anything less than All In And Then Some

at one point someone was like hey cas do you want to run your vows by someone as practice? and he started reading what he'd prepared and it devolved into Biblically Grand Statements Of The Power Of Love And The Redemption Of - ect ect ect and it's because unlike the confession scene he's had TOO much preparation and overshot into uncanny angelic vibes he makes some edits because he know the expressions he gets when he reads it aren't what he intended

dean writes page after page after page of unused drafts, none of them are particularly floral

he does the cliche of ripping up his vows and improvising at the altar, something he gets mercilessly teased for because he swore he wouldn't but it classifies as a chick flick moment

THAT’S SO PEAK HIM OH MY GOD and you knoooooow you just KNOW it’s beautiful and emotional and everyone is crying

god the NOVELTY of dean being emotionally honest in front of people......im gonna faint YEA yeah... ONE TIME ONLY DEAL he thinks loudly at Sam's smug expression

anyway, at the wedding dean is the one who spends the whole ceremony with like crying cat meme eyes after the confession scene i’m pretty sure the minute the vows start cas is in the same boat USELESS HUSBANDS dean gets passed a handkerchief for his tears and immediately goes to use it on cas' face and they both laugh sob love the idea that everyone individually thought they were too tough to cry but they all broke at various stages yeah sam definitely starts to choke up just standing up there with his brother sam chokes up before the ceremony even started, like probably when he was pinning on dean’s corsage

anyway, Jack dancing with his two dads at the reception CAS’ BEST MAN / FLOWER BOY FLOWER MAN let him heelie down the aisle with the flowers LITTLE MAN GO NYOOM who makes him a little flower crown he wears with a proud lil smile? claire ofc, with those hair braiding skills? she makes it BEAUTIFUL flower crown: on nails: painted dads: MARRIED!!!!

when they say i do and kiss and everyone is cheering you can't convince me that someone doesn't let off what is either a gun or a dubiously legal firework in celebration jack pops a few lightbulbs in his uncontrollable joy

Dean and Cas can't let go of each other, it's at LEAST one point of physical contact for the rest of the reception PERIODT

CAN YOU IMAGINE THEM DANCING TO AIR SUPPLY

they definitely didn't do the wedding gifts thing but a few mysteriously show up anyway; discuss waffle iron from sam bc he remembers the becky incident meanwhile claire gets them flavoured lube because she’s an insane little mean girl she gets them a sampler package with like novelty flavours, gotta spring extra for a wedding PIE FLAVOURED LUBE

it’s gonna be the party of the century omfg you KNOW it! that dancefloor going OFF the BAR is FLOWING

dean gets dragged up onto the bar to make a speech and there's a moment at the end where he drags cas up there too and they're being playfully yelled at not to scuff it and there's hooting and catcalls as dean and cas kiss and dean gestures rudely before almost falling backwards off the bar before cas grabs him and climbing down is less romantic or dignified but he couldn't care if he wanted to

meanwhile sam and claire are outside defacing the impala with silly string and lewd graffiti and tin cans tied to the bumper for the going-away oh it is one hundo percent a just married atrocity there's enough condoms hidden in the car that they're still finding them months later

anyway wanna hear my disgustingly soppy honeymoon roadtrip concept? YOU KNOW I DO OKAY SO

you know at some point dean must have said some sad thing like for the longest time he never thought he'd live long enough to get married and the only circumstances he could imagine was hooking up drunkenly with a stranger at some vegas wedding scenario like that's the best he would ever get and he thinks it's mostly forgotten but then during their cross country honeymoon roadtrip castiel does in fact navigate them to las vegas and quietly mutters that the legal veracity of the little chapel on the city limits is dubious at best and they're already married so it couldn't do any harm and they get officiated by an elvis impersonator and a woman wearing more sequins than fabric throws cheap confetti over them

and after that they stop into every venue they can find that would be friendly to them to pretend they're eloping and at one point dean even pulls out the fbi id badges and the officiant is under the impression he's facilitating some sort of covert workplace romance

one place is a kitchy little house that's clearly just the couple who run it opening their strange home to anyone who needs it and have been since the 70s and Castiel thinks for a moment when they're asked to pin something to the collection of stuff on the walls and ceiling before pulling the receipt for the pie they'd shared earlier in a dinner out and scrawling his and dean's name on it to be added to the clutter

and at one point they stand ankle deep in a pond while some old hippie lady wraps their clasped hands together with soft fabric and chants something that dean knows isn't real magic but hey he's not going to tell her that and after the ceremony they sit on the grass and feed each other sweet bread to complete the binding or whatever and it's nice but it doesn't compare to the ranch where they both tossed their cowboy hats in the air and were given a horse to ride to their camp site

i thought about riverboat gambling for point one seconds and now i know in my bones that one of their many weddings was on a riverboat, they made the captain officiate after cornering him on deck in like five minutes, the crew sent them complimentary champagne and they threw fries at the birds following the boat while sharing it straight out of the bottle

if destiel can go canon multiple times they can get married multiple times CHANGE MY MIND THEY GET MARRIED SO MUCH the MOST married i just want them to get gay cowboy married

eventually i want them to end up at the beach bc dean has canonically never been to the coast their road trip is to get to the other coast

they send just married postcards back to sam from every stop sam stops feeling hurt he was left out of their vegas elopement wedding by the third wedding postcard he recieves sam saves them ofc bc GOD can you imagine them looking at the postcards on their 30th anniversary or s/t 🥺 showing their grandkids and recounting the story of each wedding there's a seashell taped to the last one

cas gets a terrible sunglasses tan and dean gets burnt on the tips of his ears and there's sand on sand on sand in all their clothes and at one point dean is blinking away salt water and cas is gripping his arm and saying something about the coral by them in the water and dean thinks that he likes floating beside cas a lot better than flying

dean has cas pick ice cream for them from a truck and hustles at carnival games enough to win them both big novelty foam hats and they both go back to their room and pass out immediately post shower sprawled across the bed and still smelling like sunscreen and salt water

dean tucks a little cocktail umbrella behind cas’ ear

cas spends most of the next day in dean's zepplin shirt and a pair of shorts they only picked up once they got there because neither of them thought to bring beach clothes, they sit on the balcony and dean sips his beer and idly plays with the ring on cas' finger and they play a game of what fictional monsters could they beat in a fight

cas’ true form is the size of the chrysler building he can fight king kong easy that's what he says and dean's like okay but what about mothra and castiel is like how would YOU defeat mothra and dean just goes "bugspray." GDJSGSHSGSHDSJ DEAN WOULD

in honour of misha putting his whole pussy into the role, cas wears a dress in at least one of their weddings

it's at one of those theme parks that's just historical re-enactments and people get their vows renewed there and there's costumes for the photobooth and the staff are like how long have you been married? castiel says two weeks, three days, eighteen hours, and twenty five minutes................ approximately. and the photo is cas in a classical wedding gown and dean is wearing the veil with his old timey suit and there's a moose head on the wall behind them wearing the top hat he was given and they send that print with an arrow pointing at the moose with sam written next to it

i keep thinking bitch!!!! you KNOW WHAT!! you KNOW that dean is the type a guy who's heart races every time he feels his wedding ring/is always fiddling with it in the weeks after the wedding, like an anchor to remind him they really got married this is real he would NEED that physical reminder that he can have good things

he’s never ever going to take it off, the tan line will be permanent

how funny it would be if dean gets injured on a hunt and the monster guy is about to kill him and then the lights blow out and the monsters are like what was that and dean is just like "[spits blood] that's my husband." and nek minnit cas has just ripped through them thanks to teleporting in angel style and is just like Cas: [heals dean] "you're late for movie night" Dean: "Well if you'd gotten here earlier i would have been on time." Cas: >:| [kisses him]

cas is like i didn’t burn the popcorn this time you BETTER be alive to see it

#destiel #supernatural #long post #supernatural season 16 #twitter roadhouse wedding about to pop OFF #destiel wedding #deancas

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monkeypretzel · 5 years

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NYT Article about Joel Hodgson’s Riffing Class, 2012

Don’t Like the Movie? Let’s Talk About It

Joel Hodgson on ‘Mystery Science Theater’ and Riffs

By Paul Brownfield June 1, 2012

IT takes a certain kind of fan to recognize Joel Hodgson, creator of the cult 1990s Comedy Central series “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” and Shawn Queeney is that kind of fan. In his media and society class at Bucks County Community College north of Philadelphia, Mr. Queeney, an associate professor of communications, discusses the place of the “Mystery Science Theater” in the underbelly of cinema, and he and his wife spent a December evening watching Mr. Hodgson and friends perform their idiosyncratic comedy as part of the live B-movie heckling tour “Cinematic Titanic.”

So when Mr. Queeney spotted Mr. Hodgson at a restaurant not long after, he asked Mr. Hodgson to speak at his college. Mr. Hodgson agreed but later came back with a suggestion more befitting his sensibilities. And so was hatched one of the odder master classes ever offered in formal higher education: a workshop on the art and science of “movie riffing.”

On “Mystery Science Theater,” which began in 1988 and was integral to the early growth of Comedy Central, Mr. Hodgson played a janitor at a byzantine research lab who is sent into space, where he is forced to watch B and C genre movies with two robot companions named Tom Servo and Crow. But that setup, laid out in the theme song, was only the bones of the show. The meat each week was in the riffing, as Joel and his bot-pals, silhouetted at the bottom of the screen, commented on everything from killer lizard films like The Giant Gila Monster to cheesy instructional shorts like “Hired!”

“Hey, isn’t that the John Belushi biography?” Mr. Hodgson’s character says when the title appears. (Riff spoiler alert: It’s a reference to the book “Wired.”)

If “Mystery Science Theater” was part insult comedy aimed at movies, there was also something congenial in the show’s tone. (Perhaps it was the puppet robots, or that it was all being produced in Minneapolis.)

Six writers had to deliver a 90-minute episode every week, Mr. Hodgson said, with 600 to 800 riffs per movie, “when all the pistons were firing.” In devising the lines, no reference (Bella Abzug, Roy Lichtenstein) was too outré or rejected initially, Mr. Hodgson said. As he tried to convey to the students at Bucks, it’s best to brainstorm nonjudgmentally first and figure out what’s funny later.

Mr. Hodgson, now 52, left “Mystery Science Theater” in 1993 after, he said, a dispute with the executive producer Jim Mallon over the direction of a feature film based on the series.

Moving to Los Angeles, Mr. Hodgson landed a series of movie and TV deals while also keeping creative in more inimical ways. One of them was an event called the Super Ball, an annual “one-night World’s Fair” that Mr. Hodgson dreamed up with his brother, Jim, combining their interest in comedy, science and art happenings.

Mr. Hodgson, in this way, has long approached comedy as a chemist in a lab does, noodling with a drug protocol to make it more effective. In Minneapolis in the late 1980s he briefly taught a workshop called Creative Stand-Up and Smartology that was based on communication paradigms he’d read about in college. This was after he had earned appearances on “Late Night With David Letterman” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Years later he tried to rejigger the sketch comedy series format at HBO, where he made a pilot called “The TV Wheel.” Mr. Hodgson’s idea was to shoot the show live, with a camera that was locked down in the middle of a set that rotated like a record on a turntable. “Your TV doesn’t move, so why should the camera?” Mr. Hodgson said, explaining the philosophy.

Finally, in 2007, Mr. Hodgson, still regretful about leaving “Mystery Science Theater,” returned to movie riffing, forming the tour “Cinematic Titanic” with the writer-performers Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl.

In class Mr. Hodgson kept things loose but wasn’t just fooling around either. In his travels with “Cinematic Titanic,” Mr. Hodgson said, he often meets people movie riffing à la “Mystery Science Theater” but live. “I was always curious what it would be like to participate with these people who wanted to get into it.”

The class was made up mostly of theater, film and video majors, and a number of them were involved in improv comedy, including Kyle Reichert, 21. “Every class he would talk about something new,” Mr. Reichert recalled, “what he would go through on a daily basis making the show.”

Mr. Hodgson’s first lesson was simple: When riffing don’t be a jerk. (He used a different word.) The 25 students in Riff Camp 2012 were divided into groups. They had two and a half months to complete a film’s worth of riffs before performing at the college’s spring arts festival. They also had to dream up a back story and set it to a theme song. One group, the all-female New Valkyries of Valhalla are Valkyries by day, collecting Viking souls, and students in a women’s studies course at Valhalla Community College by night.

That explains why they would be watching “Consuming Women,” an oddly spooky short billed as a portrait of the female consumer circa 1967. The other films Mr. Hodgson assigned for other groups — from the public domain Web site archive.org, which houses the Prelinger Archives— included “Pennsylvania Fish Commission,” a riveting 1950s tour of trout farming narrated by the commission’s decidedly un-emotive executive director, and the delicious University of California romp “Health: Your Posture,” about a girl ostracized by her peers because of bad posture.

“It had nothing to do with posture,” said Stephanie Drejerwski, 20, one of the riffers.

Mr. Hodgson instructed students not to riff more than once every three seconds, so that the audience could absorb each joke. As on “Mystery Science Theater,” scripts were time- and color-coded to indicate when the film’s narrator was speaking (“You need a thorough checkup by your family doctor to discover the cause of your posture defects”) and when the riff was interjected (“Sir? We don’t have insurance?”).

Though the practical application of a course on movie riffing seems negligible, Mr. Hodgson has perhaps hit upon something in the age of social media. Facebook and Twitter, among others, are portals not dissimilar to the sad, empty cinema where Joel, Servo and Crow watched bad movies, their riffs providing a sense of community.

Maybe that’s why “Mystery Science Theater” keeps enjoying afterlives. Michael J. Nelson, who replaced Mr. Hodgson on the TV series until it ended in 1999, offers RiffTrax, audio riffs to play alongside DVD releases of current and older films. The comedian Doug Benson, host of the popular podcast “Doug Loves Movies,” organized a live screening series in Los Angeles, “The Doug Benson Movie Interruption,” in which he and friends (like Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman and Ed Helms) riff on a movie for the audience. And Kevin Smith, the filmmaker and inveterate podcaster, is starting a show on Hulu this week called “Spoilers.”

Mr. Smith was quick to note that this was riffing not like “Mystery Science Theater” but in the tradition of his first film, “Clerks,” in which the characters spitball about a movie everyone’s already seen, “Star Wars.” In “Spoilers” Mr. Smith plans to screen a current release at Universal City Walk in Los Angeles then take the audience to a nearby studio for what he sees as a live version of a movie chat room.

“I don’t think a movie discussion ever dies anymore,” he said.

Meanwhile, as alumni from Riff Camp 2012 prepared to perform this weekend at the Colonial Theater in nearby Phoenixville (the same theater where scenes from the original “ Blob” were filmed), Mr. Hodgson and his fellow “Mystery Science Theater” alums were busy putting together a “Cinematic Titanic” show set for July in Ann Arbor, Mich. They will be riffing on two 1970s films — “Rattlers” (rattlesnakes and nerve gas!) and “The Doll Squad,” which, Mr. Hodgson said, is about “a seven-woman army that was supposedly the prototype for ‘Charlie’s Angels.’” Set riffing engines to full throttle.

#joel hodgson #mst3k #cinematic titanic #riffing

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arcticmonkeysaf · 6 years

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Translation of Alex Turner’s interview in ICON magazine

Alex Turner, leader of Arctic Monkeys, the biggest rock band of the 21st century, and perhaps its last hope

"What the hell is this?"

We've just arrived at the location of our interview with Alex Turner, leader of Arctic Monkeys, who is absolutely awestruck. It's the first floor of the Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel in London, an ancient Edwardian building with touches of art deco, converted, of course, into a hotel. In a room of the first floor, a photoshoot has just taken place.

"Well, I don't know, I think the people are getting married," says the press agent, attempting to explain some of the excitement it's provoked in Alex being in the space, without getting too carried away: we still have a job to do. Alex begins to run through the hall, the site of council meetings of the Bethnal Green since 1910, when the building was constructed. Nearly all civic government buildings in Spain are smaller, and certainly not as lovely as this place.

The writer of Fake Tales of San Francisco has already seated himself in the chair we suspect belongs to the mayor.

"What do you want? A fine or a wedding?" he jokes.

The press agent leaves, but the leader of the band formed in the era when teenagers no longer wanted to form rock bands can't keep still. He runs between the benches until he's standing in the spot meant for the speaker.

"A hundred pounds! Look here's £100!" He procures two rosy £50 notes. I suggest to him that we should keep them. He laughs. I decide not to insist. I say instead we should start the interview, after all we are here to talk about Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the sixth album by the band, not to get married or chat. He stops laughing. It's a shame that Alex Turner becomes such a timid person, careful and cautious, when the tape recorder starts. Before he assumes the role of frontman of the group that launched AM four years ago and made it the best selling vinyl record of the 21st century, he permits himself one last question.

"Would you get married here?" We look around - myself still thinking about those £100 - while we get cozy in two benches in the last row. I answer no, that's it's all very interesting, but not at all romantic.

"I agree. Motion denied," he decides.

Rising to fame in the middle of the last decade, Arctic Monkeys have become a phenomenon thanks to a handful of songs a friend converted into mp3 - they say that they, despite being part of the digital age, had problems even turning on a computer - which soon began to spread on the Internet. It was the raucous, intelligent, and British response to The Strokes. Seeing them on the stage in those early days, before the premiere of their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not, which would see the light of day in 2006 and would become the fastest selling debut album ever in Britain within in its first week of release, was a tremendously peculiar experience. Four kids at 3 a.m. making a spectacular noise in the Sala Razzmatazz in Barcelona, but who could barely reach the bar counter to order a drink.

More than a decade has passed and they've recorded four albums more. A brilliant sequel (Favourite Worst Nightmare), another risky, rapturous and rocking (Humbug, recorded en the California desert with Josh Homme), a delicate and underrated return to pop (Suck It and See) and a million-dollar beast, a sex-soundtrack record called AM. And then, they stopped.

"When we stopped touring in 2014, nearly everyone in the band was about to get married, or having kids, or another kid. The end of those concerts was much like the end of another chapter. We were all 28 or 29 and it felt like everything was about to change. During this neverending tour I thought that record would be with me forever. It was the longest tour we had ever done. Now I think we extended it because we knew that when it ended it would be the end of something bigger than just a series of concerts. I expected everything to change, well, I felt that even though the numbers said the opposite, in the end we had less than we started with," remembers Turner, about the final days we would see the band together in public.

Now all living in the U.S., each of the band members went on his own path. Alex returned to The Last Shadow Puppets, a band loved by Arctic Monkeys devotees. There Turner splits responsibilities with his friend Miles Kane, a guy with impeccable taste but with terrible ideas. In 2016 the pair played the mainstage at Primavera Sound, where they were the headliners. That performance was grotesque. The image of Turner, who looked like a mix between an actor in Rebeldes and a finalist in an Elvis impersonators competition, had only a semblance of Arctic Monkeys of AM. In that context he made a bit of a joke of himself. Compared to the boy who, as an adolescent, was rejected by a second-hand clothing shop in Sheffield because he was too shy, it had gotten out of hand.

"That was..." His words are halting, he speaks very slowly, he leaves sentences unfinished and even stops a joke short if he finds the punchline isn't as funny as he'd thought. "I think what I wanted to say with that image and that attitude have been said. It's over."

Now Turner sports long hair and a beard which has been the object of controversy among his fans, who even launched a Change.org campaign for him to shave it.

"There's a lot of scrutiny around our next step, I know. We've always tried to be discreet with what we do, where and with whom. It's normal, but I don't think we do it on purpose. In this age, it's hard to keep secrets. With this record we tried and even just getting to the studio, the sound engineer goes and posts a picture of us. Everyone is so crazy these days, they act like they're Columbo. 'I saw this, I spotted that guy...'" explains Turner when asked how it's possible that a band as big as his, who will be the headliners at Primavera Sound and at MadCool, has managed to make sure that, even with only a month left until the record's launch, no one knows absolutely anything about it.

"I don't know if not getting involved in social media is something we do on purpose to protect the band, but it helps," says Turner, introducing the topic of being offline. "Maybe it's not in our DNA to expose ourselves. I've put so much into the music that I don't know what more I can do with that. I can't open a Twitter account because I think everything's there, in the songs. I'd make a fool of myself if I started tweeting. See, social media doesn't bother me, truthfully, but when you become the version of yourself you've created in the virtual world there's something there that allows people to do their worst against you. And you can also do your worst against them. The consequences of that I can't even imagine, but I don't want them."

We've had to listen to Tranquility Base in a version that downloads and is scheduled for automatic deletion the next week. The band have asked us not to ask anything personal, days after an encounter Alex had with a journalist from The Times. There is no single before the release, but there is a new logo for the band's image. The only photograph of Turner is the one taken by a guard in an airport days before this meeting and which has reactivated the fierce debate with respect to the Sheffielder's beard. It's a record release like the ones before, but Turner hardly seems like a global superstar. I tell him that one time I interviewed Beyoncé and they sat me at one end of a massive table and told me that I shouldn't even think about touching her, and that, on another occasion interviewing Chris Cornell, I had to go into a hotel room that was completely dark and had to confirm that the voice answering my questions was actually the grunge singer's.

"Would you like some water?" Turner interrupts, and, before I can respond, fills my glass.

During the hours after our meeting, the first new photo of the band is made public (they look as though they're dressed for a wedding in December of 1972 in Iceland) and they publish the details and tracklisting of their latest record, which was recorded in Paris, London, and Los Angeles, where the band members now reside. But what most strikes me is the first line. "I just wanted to be one of The Strokes, now look at the mess you've made me make," sings Turner on “Star Treatment”, a gem of a song that marks the tone of an album destined to confound all those who expected something bombastic, expansive, and hormonal. The LP has songs with titles as fabulous as The Ultracheese, Batphone, or The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip. Imagine Richard Hawley going on tour with comedian Andy Kaufman and performing only in Sheraton hotels located in state capitals, or Scott Walker in the pub, singing after a Sheffield United match. It's deliciously decadent and promises to polarize the opinions of millions of their fans. Is [Turner] nervous? And, more importantly, is he confident?

"Let's see, I think I remember feeling a bit like that with this last record. I wasn't sure if it was the right album. Are we going down the wrong path? It always happens. When I showed the first songs to my manager, to the people from the record label and my colleagues, a lot of the reactions were 'It's very unique.' I thought it was unique, but not that much. I doubted whether it was the right record for the Monkeys. So, Jamie came to my house and stayed with me for two weeks while we recorded. His enthusiasm for the songs confirmed to me that it was the right choice. If this is what comes out of me, that's what it is. I think we can do what we want to do, it's our band. So there's no reason to worry about whether it's a hit or not," he says about a record that, from time to time, evokes loneliness.

"Yes, a little bit," concedes Turner. "There's always been something in me that has made me isolated in life. But until now, I don't know why, I've avoided touching upon that on a creative level. The words passed through a very long process of refinement. It's been complicated getting here. For example, that first line about The Strokes. I fought hard against it, I wanted it but I didn't want it. I thought, "Hell, I'll leave it, because I know I'll change it because it's impossible that I'll end up saying this nonsense." And it got to a point that I thought, "If I feel like this, why not say it? I should be honest."

#alex turner #arctic monkeys #tbhc #tbh&c #tbhc spoilers #i know it's been traslated but have another #lmao #i nearly threw my computer against a wall while typing this up so #mine

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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REVIEW: Digimon: Cyber Sleuth Is A Fantastic Way To Become A Digi-Destined

I love Digimon. I love it. It's the anime series that I've stuck with the most consistently, predating my ride-or-die One Piece by about eight years. And I think, at it's best, it tells great stories about loss, growing up, and monsters that are covered in cannons. That's why it pains me to find that, sometimes, the world of Digimon video games is a mixed bag, ranging from addictive (Digimon World Dawn) to fun and mindless (Digimon Rumble Arena) to clunky and inept (Digimon World 4.) So when I find a Digimon game that satisfies me, one that truly lives up to the franchise's potential, I tend to latch onto it. And y'all, I have latched onto Digimon: Cyber Sleuth.

The recent re-release for the Nintendo Switch doesn't overhaul the Digimon game formula. You're still a plucky protagonist leading around an army of laser dragons against an unending army of other laser dragons, and you still have to navigate through the "Digivolution trees" in which achieving different stat objectives will allow you to transform your beast into different forms. This isn't a diss on the franchise's staples, by the way. It's inevitable that the team of magical computer demons would be more entertaining than the goggles-wearing dude that tells them what to do. And "Digivolution" is such a fun element to play with, as it often requires a certain level of obsession to obtain the Ultimate and Mega Level destroyers of worlds that you want.

I'm just saying that if you're the kind of person who wants a Digimon game that flips the series on its head, you won't find it here. Instead, you'll discover that Cyber Sleuth (and its sister game Hacker's Memory, which is also available in this set) is the most accessible Digimon game to date. In it, you play an "assistant" detective, charged with solving cyber crimes and delving into hacking cases. In a world where EDEN, a cyberspace network, is, like everyone's favorite thing, these crimes are constant and so your boss, the coffee-loving Kyoko Kuremi tasks you to run around in the real world and the digital one and save 'em both.

Along the way, you'll dive into multiple plotlines, like dealing with your pal Nokia and the Digimon that she's befriended, trying to figure out how to help the comatose victims of the EDEN Syndrome, and many others. Overall while dealing with hackers, cracking codes, and jumping between worlds can get a tad monotonous due to the level design (as former United State Senator Ted Stevens once said "The internet is a series of tubes that are filled to the brim with Koromon,") it does a lot to differentiate the experience from Pokémon, in which you usually just kinda leave your house and go explorin'. And that's just Cyber Sleuth, as Hacker's Memory tells a different story, but is set in many of the same locations.

But, to be perfectly honest, the reason you're probably playing this is to assemble a team of Digimon based on your favorites from the anime. I know that it's that way with me (Who cares about type effectiveness? I gotta get those Dark Masters like Machinedramon, Puppetmon and MetalSeadramon all in one place,) and luckily, Digimon: Cyber Sleuth doesn't make it hard to compile a team of fan favorites, Digimon deep cuts, or just a random selection of critters.

In fact, I'd say that it's easier here than in any other game, thanks to both the ease of the game (the difficulty ramps up later, but you'll find many of the early chapters to probably be a breeze), and by the game making it super easy to go back and forth from your Digimon Lab (where you convert and evolve the Digimon) to the world you have to run around in. For example, one of my favorite Digimon is Etemon, who you may remember as the Elvis-sounding monkey villain from Digimon Adventure. I know. I know. He's great. Well, I wanted one here, and within about a day of playing, I got one. Same goes for the MetalGreymon I adored and Myotismon. But don't worry. I'll start grabbing monsters from later seasons of the anime, too. Just lemme run through the classics really quick.

Battling with them is pretty simple, as it basically comes down to a paper-rock-scissors type scenario where Vaccine beats Virus, Virus beats Data, and Data beats Vaccine. And your team usually comes with a mix of offensive skills and support skills. So if you've got a Data and a Vaccine Digimon and you're facing a Virus type, Data isn't gonna be much help. So you use the support skills of the Data 'mon to super charge your Vaccine creature as it blasts the Virus type to smithereens. It never becomes anything too radically intricate, but seeing each Digimon perform their attacks (in the best looking Digimon game to display those attacks yet) is a treat. I had a Numemon on my team for a bit (in my quest to get Etemon,) and it was a joy to use the Poop Toss attack each and every time.

For Digimon fans, it's a must-have, but what about new fans or people that think "Digi-destined" is some kind of dating app? Well, I'd say that if you're curious about what Digimon are like with you behind the wheel (the metaphorical one, not the one found in Digimon Racing for the Game Boy Advance which I swear is a real game), I think this is the best way yet. And with two different games in the same package, you get dozens and dozens of hours of Digimon content for a pretty solid price.

youtube

Overall, Digimon Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory are the smoothest Digimon games around, shaving off some of the series' more obtuse elements and creating a fairly involved system that even the uninitiated can enjoy. And for older fans like me, those who have "latched" onto the series, it provides a rewarding way to collect all of the Digimon that we've loved in the anime for years. These games are the champions, y'all.

Review Round-Up:

+ Huge number of Digimon to raise and evolve (over 300 in Hacker's Memory)

+ Battle system is easy to master and the battle animations look great

+ Difficulty curve is good for beginners and veterans alike

+ Soundtrack, while not too varied, is solid

+/- Characters are a mixed bag between fun and forgettable

- Level design is fairly uninspired

Digimon: Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory are available from Bandai Namco Entertainment.

Are you a Digimon fan? Are you planning to get Cyber Sleuth? Which Digimon do you want to raise? Let us know in the comments!

-----------------------------

Daniel Dockery is a writer and editor for Crunchyroll. You should follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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djrelentless · 7 years

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“The 57th Grammy Awards...Hit Or Miss?”

February 10, 2015 at 7:33pm

The music industry is all a buzz because of last Sunday's Grammys ceremony. From performances that reminded us why we love Annie Lennox to history repeating itself withKanye West storming the stage to disagree with an outcome at the awards…..people are definitely talking. There were a few surprises. Katy Perry really impressed me with her song "By The Grace Of God" and Rihanna was in great voice for her performance of her new single "FourFiveSeconds" with Kanye and Paul McCarthy. And of course everyone was waiting with baited breath to see Madonna's performance of "Living For Love".

I was not surprised by all the trophies handed to Sam Smith. "Stay With Me" was probably the most unescapable song of 2014. It was disappointing to hear that the song has elements of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down". But as I have said many times….there are only so many notes and keys. Without even thinking about it there are plenty of songs that are simple rewrites of other songs. A perfect example was when another Blue-Eyed Soul singer, Michael Bolton claimed he had never heard the 1966 version of "Love Is A Wonderful Thing". The court immediately awarded the Isley Brothers 5.4 million dollars (the largest plagiarism case settlement in music history). Sam Smith a been crowned the new face of Soul Music. I'm not sure about that in my opinion. I actually believe Boy George did it better in the 80s, but didn't get the same proclamation because of the dress. With all this talk of appropriation that might upset some folks, I still applaud Sam for being so young and his last acceptance speech where he thanked the guy who broke his heart. He got four Grammys for that break up.

There has been a controversy over Beyonce at the Grammys (and no I am not talking about Kanye's wish that she had gotten "Album Of The Year"). R&B singer. Ledisi had requested to sing Mahalia Jackson's "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" but was denied and Beyonce was asked to do it. Many are saying that Ledisi was robbed of her Grammy moment and are upset that Beyonce accepted the invitation. Ledisi later was quoted as saying she understood why they chose Beyonce, but was very disappointed. The classy thing for Beyonce to do would be to invite Ledisi to perform with her on stage at a big event. I watched her performance and was not impressed. It was a Beyonce performance instead of a down home girl praising the Lord (and I know Ledisi would have brought it). Between Beyonce's see-through choir robe and stiff movements to capture her back lighting, I didn't feel the song like I should have. But Beyonce has bored me in the past with other performances like when she did "Ave Maria".

And speaking of Kanye West's words after the Grammys about Beck winning over Beyonce for "Album Of The Year"……I am afraid that he like Azealia Banks keep sabotaging their image and careers by opening their mouths. Has he not learned from the Taylor Swiftincident at the MTV Awards? Does he not realize that with all the racial tensions in the US right now, that his outbursts are not helping the situation. And Miss Banks needs to be banned from twitter with all her bullshit over being angry that her career has not gone as planned. Stop blaming Iggy Azalea for your shortcomings. Think before you react and you might appear more sane and level headed. As a Club DJ who watched the charts and singles, Beyonce had that award hands down out of the other nominees. But the Grammys are their own community and judge on musical merit. Beck is one of those artists who plays multiple instruments and writes his own songs. Beyonce is an entertainer who travels the world and excites audiences with her stage show but apparently needs four people to write one song. Yes….she is an amazing performer and I would prefer watching her anyway over Beck in concert. He lost me shortly after "Loser" back in the 90s. But a good example was back in 1981 when Christopher Cross' "Sailing" won "Song Of The Year" and "Record Of The Year" for a song that came out in 1979 I couldn't understand. And being a teenager I really couldn't comprehend why this song won anything. I was loving all the Pop dance songs on the radio back then. "Sailing" seemed boring. But after becoming a recording artist myself and working as a DJ in radio, bars and clubs I have learned to listen and appreciate music differently. I actually appreciate the simplicity of "Sailing" now. In a time period when New Wave Pop was coming in and Disco was dying, Christopher Cross sounded like a breath of fresh air.

And as I watch the twittersphere rumble over with the young ones calling acts likeMadonna, ELO, AC/DC and Annie Lennox old and tired, it amazes me to think that there was a time when Madonna and AC/DC would not have even been invited to the Grammys. These are the artists who have paid their dues and paved the way for all the ones who you adore and worship for a month and then move on to the next new thing. Many of her "Little Monsters" probably fell over when Lady GaGa announced that she was recording an an album with Tony Bennett. I understood it perfectly. In the old days, the new artists had to work with the legends in order to be taken seriously. It showed that you learned from the best. That the torch was being past. And even though GaGa has been accused of stealing from the greats like Bette Midler and Grace Jones, I believe she is a really talented artist and without all the gimmicks she can sing. Her voice is unique and distinctive. That's what you need to be a legend. Interesting enough…..Madonna doesn't have that range, but her talent is being an entertainer. I don't think anyone has macked the game like she has. I don't even think that anyone could ever do what she did again. Mainly because that time period has passed. Great voices like Annie Lennox will always rattle our souls. I was looking at her on the red carpet and I thought to myself…."she's cool because she's is her age". And when she hit the stage and went into "I Put A Spell On You" the fire and passion was still there because that's who she is. She has never been any of the gimmicks or costumes she wore in the 80s. I loved it! All of these acts were amazing on the Grammys because they have earned their place there.

I think all the young ones out there would be surprised to learn that the woman who is behind "Chandelier" and the hook for Flo-Rida's "Wild One" is not in her 20s. Besides Beyonce's non-church performance Sia's performance at the Grammys really made me upset. In my opinion….probably the worst performance of the evening. When you are on the Grammys it is the opportunity to show you can sing. Sia, darling….turning your back to the audience and facing a wall of a set while two dancers pranced around like in your music video did not prove you were a great vocalist. Her range is amazing but this hiding your face behind big wigs and production just does not do it for me. At least Katy Perry's performance had a cool effect with the shadow dancers.

Question: When did Country Music start using Hip Hop lingo? Miranda Lambert's performance of "Little Red Wagon" was more of a Rock song and the lyrics included the word "swagger" several times. I actually thought I had slipped back in time and was watching some late 70s special with Tanya Tucker. Back when Tammy Wynette recorded with The KLF I said that one day we would here some Country Rap Music. But I guess we had already heard that when The Charlie Daniels Band did "The Devil Went Down To Georgia".

Pharrell's Goth-like version of "Happy" was interesting. I saw some article discussing the deeper meaning of this performance. It was cool to hear the lyrics spoken in other languages but other than that it was just okay for me. Considering the song is almost two years old and was overplayed and even parodied by Weird "Al" Yankovich, I was kinda over it and the bell-hop outfit was cute but went no where.

Stevie Wonder's quick harmonica solo at the end of Usher's performance shows the genius and artistry of his musical legend. Can't wait to see his upcoming TV special for his album "Songs In The Key Of Life". And I was happy that John Legend and Common closed the ceremony. I looked at it as a nod to the "Black Lives Matters" movement. It seems funny to me that the industry will take stands on some issues and show support for some and then quietly back out on others. I noticed that Iggy Azalea didn't win any awards. I figured she would have been the new female Elvis at the end of the show. But the Grammys backed away from the new "Great White Hope". Why? I think to send a message that the drama surrounding appropriation is something that the Grammys doesn't want any part of. And after the nastiness of the Macklemore win last year in the rap category I think the Grammys decided to not get involved. And even though Eminem won "Best Rap Album", I am sure he got it because he is considered industry. He has earned his place with more than a decade of work. Iggy…..you are a clever girl and have a distinctive voice. That's what legends are made of, but I hope you can stay out of the online crap and just concentrate on your craft. Be The Teena Marie of rap and earn your place. And as Macklemore advised….."remember your place."

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 6 years

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Does Anyone Hate Donald Trump More Than Donald Trump? An Interview With David Shields

Cataloged in Psychology

Does Anyone Hate Donald Trump More Than Donald Trump? An Interview With David Shields

David Shields Updated September 22, 2018

In his new book, New York Times bestselling author David Shields deconstructs the idiot-savant-autocrat at 1600 Pennsylvania, his fan-fiction base, and the emotional needs/moral failures of the city, country, and world that created him.

is at once a psychological investigation of Trump, a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, a satirical compilation of the collected wit and wisdom of Donald Trump, and above all a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse—a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump. The book is organized into six chapters and 60 subsections and gets increasingly harrowing in its focus, moving from childhood to sex to media to virtue-signaling to chaos theory to “apocalypse always.” The book’s central thesis is that we have met the enemy and he is us.

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A conversation with David Shields

David sits down with Leah Paulos to discuss his new book, , a psychological inquiry into Trump’s brokenness, a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, and a satirical compilation of the wit and wisdom of Donald Trump. Above all, it functions as a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse—a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and that now sustains Trump.

Leah: There are a lot of Americans, including this interviewer, who despise Trump with every cell in their bodies. Why is the book called NOBODY HATES TRUMP MORE THAN TRUMP: AN INTERVENTION, and do you think it’s true?

David: Yes, of course Trump loathes himself. No human being on the planet is less capable of joy or even fulfillment. This is a key connection between himself and his voters. He’s as unhappy as they are, or he’s very good at pretending he is—it’s very difficult to tell, which gives his hyper-performativity its immense frisson.

Leah: But close to 90% of Republicans voted for Trump. Trump voters were Bush and Reagan voters, and they were Goldwater voters. Are you saying they are all deeply unhappy people and always have been?

David: The key people are the five million people who voted for Obama and who voted for Trump. They are who matter. They are low-income, low-information, disenfranchised, blue-collar voters. They are furious at the varieties of ways in which the world has left them behind. Obama offered them hope. Trump offered them rage. HRC offered them precisely nothing.

Leah: Books about Trump are a dime a dozen these days, and everyone is drowning in tweets and hot takes. What is different about this book?

David: It’s not everybody else’s Trump-bashing book. It offers a tragic take on human nature—Trump’s destructiveness and self-destructiveness echoing with an existentially lost populace. It has leaked off-air Fox News conversations. It’s about a very scary American strain of death wish. It offers a new reading of his psychology and childhood to suggest origins of his anhedonia.It shows the many subcultures which gave rise to him and which now sustain him. It raises the real question whether he’s a genius quasi-punk anti-hero or a near-Asperger’s idiot or neither or both. It’s about the emotional weather of living under Cloud Trump. It’s a manual for beating bullies.

Leah: There’s always been loads of money, charismatic celebrities, and bigoted flamethrowers in American politics, but a person like Trump becoming President never seemed possible until it happened. Or did it?

David: Oh, please. Sonny Bono. Ronald Reagan. Shirley Temple. Jesse Ventura. Jerry Springer. George Murphy. Fred Thompson. Cynthia Nixon. Clint Eastwood. Clay Aiken. Al Franken. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Caligula.

Leah: When did you realize America was screwed up enough to elect Trump?

David: When, at age 7, I realized being bad was more fun than being good (a more perfect foil than HRC would be impossible to imagine).

Leah: How many of the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump did so because he’s a big, sick joke?

David: A huge number of things we love are big, sick jokes (from WWE to horror movies to the NFL). The method to Trump’s madness is that, in a shame culture, he’s shameless; this gives him enormous appeal and leverage to people who are resentful (as Louis Theroux has pointed out).

Leah: Trump is a needy, unloved, extraordinarily damaged, outer-borough millionaire with a genius for low-brow marketing. In a culture steeped in celebrity worship and with a mass media allergic to serious issues, was the marriage between Trump and his scared, aging, white base inevitable?

David: “Outer-borough” is a tell that you hold yourself above Trump, but the key to iconic celebs (e.g, Jesus, Napoleon, Elvis, Madonna) is that they embody the culture’s contradictions. Trump is a “winner” who acts like a “loser.” He’s a millionaire “schlub.” This allows him to play both ends against the middle. This is mad brilliance or luck or both. Trump is karmic payback for an America lost to simulacra for at least twenty years; as Andrew O’Hehir says, “Our culture is obsessed with ‘real’ events because we experience hardly any.” Trump pretends to be “real.” It’s black magic.

Leah: What particular talents does Trump have that tap into the American psyche?

David: What such talents does he not have? He has swallowed America whole.

Leah: In this entire disgraceful, scary, embarrassing saga, who is the person you hate the most?

David: Exactly the wrong question. G.K. Chesterton, asked what’s wrong with the world, said, “I am.” If you can’t find in yourself what’s scary about Trump, you have zero chance of figuring him out and/or counteracting him.

Leah: I fully understand that within myself I can find what is scary about Trump. The spectacle is impossible to turn away from; we’ve all been rubbernecking for 3 years now. In the debates, I laughed at “low-energy Jeb” and “Lil’ Marco,” while simultaneously knowing the whole thing was gross. But I think your answer absolves Trump and his administration of their cruelty. They took babies from their mothers at the border. They won’t stop until poor people don’t have health care. It’s not just PT Barnum giving people a good show. So, let me ask again: whom do you hate the most?

David: The book is the book and my life is my life. In my actual life, I work to bring an end to the oligarchy. Along with everyone else, I yell at the TV and radio and web. In the book, though, I strive to understand the phenomenon. And to understand all is most definitely not to pardon all. That being said, whom do I hate the most? To my surprise, the person who comes to mind is Comey.

Leah: In the book, you mention Will Blythe’s TO HATE LIKE THIS IS TO BE HAPPY FOREVER, a book about the Duke / UNC basketball rivalry. Does Trump vs. liberals feel like a sports event to you? On some level, is checking Twitter every morning and getting outraged fun? If it is, is that white privilege?

David: Love the title but have never read the book. To not view Trump as both deadly serious and a “funny” game-player is to miss the entire point. Of course it’s sport; that’s a huge part of the shtick. “Bread and circuses” means there are circuses. Overreliance on the term “white privilege”: another reason Trump will be re-elected.

Leah: Is Trump your perfect foil? What about him as subject matter makes him so conducive to your writing style and thought process?

David: ADD. OCD. Logorrhea. Graphomania. Ressentiment. Weariness/wariness re virtue-signaling. Originary woundedness. Vanity. Narcissism. Avariciousness. Lust. All the usual human vices and sins.

Leah: Should America still be a country? How can you stay in a marriage with 63 million people that voted for a monster?

David: These are the very questions that got Trump elected and that threaten to get him re-elected. The moment you call Trump a monster, you’ve stopped trying to understand him and the conditions that gave rise to him and why he resonates with so many people. There’s nothing remotely useful about this sort of moral self-congratulation.

Leah: How do you hope this ends?

David: I’m not in the hope business. I’m in the tragic-news-about-the-human-condition-business. We are a fallen, doomed species. People want apocalypse always. Trump promises to deliver the end or a glimmer of the end.

About David Shields

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-two books, including (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), Bestseller, (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), ( Editors’ Choice). The film adaptation of was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017. is forthcoming in 2019. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in the , , , , , , , and . His work has been translated into two dozen languages.

You can follow David Shields on Instagram and Twitter and buy his latest book here.

See Trump like you've never seen Trump before...

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cameronwjones · 7 years

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Event Marketing Wisdom from 12 Social Media Experts

If you’re not marketing your event on social media, you’re missing out. According to Content Marketing Institute, Hubspot, Social Media Examiner, and Regalix—social media is one of the most important marketing tactics out there for both B2C and B2B companies. Nowhere is there more opportunity to build online communities into offline communities than with in-person events. But with so many different channels—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest—where is an event marketer to start?

We recently asked 11 social media experts for their advice on making noise for live events on social media. The result is an extremely comprehensive guide on how to market your event on social media.

Given that this piece is about “making noise,” we also asked them the timeless question: If you had to be stuck on a desert island for a month with the music of one artist or band, whose music would it be? Get ready to rock!🎸

Courtney Smith Kramer

Executive Creative Director & Co-founder, Pure Matter

I think like anything else on social media, promoting an event will be as successful as the story you paint about the experience someone will have if they attend. After all, events are brands in and of themselves, and if there's no context around the brand, the compelling reasons to believe won't be there.

After all, you're competing against life itself for their attention and attendance; getting work done, or pajamas on the couch can be much more compelling than the thought of focusing on a webinar or Tweetchat for an hour – or even worse – putting on fancier clothes, arranging for a sitter and driving somewhere for the event.

Here is some advice for making the experience a positive one:

Know what your attendees expect out of attending, and paint them a picture about why they'll get it. If you're running a webinar series about your product, clearly outline the benefits the audience will take away from watching. Will it be new actions they can use to do something better? If it's a conference, don't forget to include the fun after hours activities with the balance of the business insights they'll learn. If you've ever attended a conference before, you know most of the good relationship building happens in the bar after a long day of sessions. In any case, the story you tell should never be about you; it's always about creating the conditions to attend.

Include the hashtags of others who will be part of the experience. The best way to encourage others to share your promotions is to include them as part of the bigger story. We help run the influencer program for DVD Netflix, and host a monthly Twitter chat about different genres of movies to give our Influencers a chance to partner with DVD.com. At the end of January, we promoted our Awards season-themed chat by appealing to fans of the individual movies nominated for an Oscar. We sent out tweets like "You think #StarWars #RogueOne will take home the statue? Join us 1/31 5pm PST/8pm EST for#@dvdnetflix #DVDme #Awards #tweetchat if you do!" Using the popular #StarWars and #RogueOne hashtags was in context of our event, and attracted fans of that franchise to come and join in on the fun. More Tweets were generated specific to the other films nominated in our event promotion online. The ripple effect of reaching new audiences on Twitter resulted in us earning 70% of our entire monthly Twitter impressions in just 4 hours on event day.

Make it easy for your influencers to help promote. Even if you're not running a formal influencer program for your brand, you likely have a handful of existing "superfans" who organically share your content. Tapping into these people who already love what you're doing can really help event attendance – but you have to make it easy for them to share. In our DVD.com example from above, we created social tiles graphics for our influencers with their own quotes and wrote Tweets for them so all they had to do to help promote the event was copy and paste. This way it's a win/win – your brand gets some extra hands to promote your event, while your superfans earn credibility by being publicly affiliated with your brand.

Desert Island Music:

Justin Timberlake

Neal Schaffer

CEO & Principal Social Media Strategy Consultant, Maximize Your Social

I have blogged about this in various posts,

Have a very clear hashtag. That hashtag should permeate anything and everything you do. Obviously that’s going to be huge because the day of the event you want people to post about it. Letting people know about your event hashtag in advance is an amazing promotional tool. When people start seeing tweets and retweets and posts that have a certain hashtag—even if they don’t know what it’s about—that hashtag will make people interested in it and go to the event. More than promote the event, it can also be used to promote the content of those participating in the event. When those participants start sharing their content—which you’ve promoted for your event—you can see how that turns into a natural way of promoting the event.

Activate your speakers as advocates. Instead of just publishing—if you have an event page or even if you are publishing information about your event from your website—instead of just promoting and promoting and promoting, you also have something of value to share that is a great lead-in to your event. It also makes your speaker really happy that you are promoting them in advance of the event.

Utilize the content of your speakers for content curation. The flipside is that if your speakers become advocates, you help prepare landing pages for them, special discount codes, you interview them, help them create content that they can share with their networks. These networks are often vastly underutilized by most events that I see out there.

Make a better use of paid social. Retargeting is a standard practice these days, but not every event marketer is retargeting. Use paid social. Build community. Get people to the website. Retarget. Not rocket science. Don’t know if everyone’s doing that right now. It bears reminding as a best practice. And really, there is only so much that you can do on social organically. You have to have a component of paid social if you want to be successful on social in 2017.

Celebrate your fans. If you’ve done this event in the past, find out who your top tweeters are. Give them free admission in hopes that they will be doing as much tweeting to spread the word about your event. Celebrate those people that go out of their way to spread the word about your event, and bring them in for free—or a significant discount. Get them to help you spread the word. That’s one of the inexpensive ways and from a customer experience marketing perspective, one of the best things you can do, as well.

Influencer marketing. Give them free admission. If there are compelling influencers that you can invite as speakers, as moderators or as part of a panel, then do it. Have these at your event. It will pay off for you—from a social media promotion pre-event, during event, and post-event, as well.

Desert Island Music:

I guess Elvis Costello would be one of the people I think of. I’ve been a long-time fan and have seen several of his concerts. He has a lot of stuff from his early punk or new wave days to even country music ballads and other interesting experiments so that whatever mood I was in, I’d have music for.

Andrew Pickering and Peter Garland

Co-founders, Andrew & Pete

It's no good just saying 'come to this event, it's going to be great for X, Y, Z reasons' - you should SHOW it.

If it's an event that has happened previously - then get sharing videos and photos of previous successful events, maybe even video testimonials from those who attended. If it's something brand new there's still things you can do too.

One of the best ways to do this is via live video. How about showing people around the venue via live video? How about doing little guest interviews with speakers via live video leading up to the event? Or if the event is for a good cause, how about showing (not just talking) how the event is going to help those people and the impact it will have? Or if it's a music event - how about getting one of your band to play a live show via Facebook live? Whatever content you decide to create for the event it should give people an idea of what the event is going to be like - give them FOMO - so they need to buy a ticket!!

Desert Island Music:

Andrew: Lady Gaga. I am unashamedly a little monster. Pokerface and Bad Romance remind me of fun times at university, and I think she's eclectic enough to not get too bored after a month!

Pete: David Guetta would help turn the beach into a BEACH PARTY!

Wahiba Chair

Senior Social Media Strategist, Instructor, and Speaker, Wahiba Chair Consulting

The biggest advice I would give someone / an organization is to have a strategy and tactical plan that outlines who will do what when re: event promotion. I see so many events with great potential missing out on exposure and buzz simply because there is no well thought of integrated campaign. Or, because of lack of oversight on details; a common one being that different parties are not tagged properly on social. And speaking of, let me give you a real world example.

Last year I started #YVRSocial, a community of social media enthusiasts and professionals in Vancouver, BC. Our first event sold out with 100+ attendees, and trended on Twitter. But that was no accident. It was a well thought of and executed integrated campaign that involved all of our stakeholders (i.e. speakers, sponsors, venue etc.). When that happens, and it happens well, everyone wins.

Here are the high level steps we took to make it happen:

Identify event objectives: Our primary objective was to drive event registrations. Secondarily, it was to drive engagement.

Develop an event digital promotional plan around our objectives inclusive of various tactics including email, social engagement (mostly organic), media sponsorship, and cross-promotions. We allocated different tasks to team members based on strengths and availability.

Execute the plan and make it easy for people to participate. For instance, we had a media kit with promotional images (seized correctly for each social channel) and sample tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn posts that speakers, sponsors, and volunteers could easily share. We also ensured to tag the right parties in relevant messaging in order to help us amplify our voice to their respective communities. I find Twitter is one of the best channels to do so. Another small tactics we used is to find people who registered on Twitter and then share an “excited to see you soon” message/GIF which they generally would amplify to their respective communities. This helped us build advocacy into the event promotion.

Example of a “pre-event” tweet to attendees by #YVRSocial volunteer

Desert Island Music:

I would probably pick Bob Marley. Though I’m not a huge music buff, I’ve become a bigger fan of his after visiting Jamaica last year.

Joel Comm

CEO, Author, and Speaker, Joel Comm Inc.

Social media is a great place to promote your events. If you are going to be doing repeat events, having a Facebook group for members is a great place to start. Think of like a meetup group of sorts. And then, you'll want to set up a specific event page on Facebook for each event you conduct.

I find it helpful to create banners and graphics specific to the event. These can be shared across all the social platforms. Be sure to include a url on the image and in your posts that points to where people can register for the event or purchase tickets. (If you are in the Denver area, you are invited to our big event on June 30th at comm.us/smsdenver.)

Desert Island Music:

This question is always so unfair because I think no matter what I pick I'll eventually get sick of it! For now, I'm going to go with my #1 album of all time, Dark Side of the Moon.

Sunny Lenarduzzi

Social Media Strategist and Consultant

I always say break it into pre, during and post.In the pre-promotion, you want to use a lot of quick hit video teasers across social platforms and have them highly stylized to create hype around the event. If possible, you also want to highlight testimonials from past events to build buzz. During, you want to create FOMO by sharing as much live content as possible and Also you’ll want to share event recaps and ask influential attendees to share their thoughts on the event through social/blogging platforms.

Desert Island Music:

Al Green. I know that sounds weird, but I'm on a major soul kick right now and his voice makes my heart happy.

Daniel Hill

Social Media Consultant, Daniel Hill Media

Show the fun that people had. Show the real-world results that came from two people meeting. Show the conversations, and how the introductions became relationships. Show how 90% of life is just showing up, and this is their chance to do exactly that.

A picture is worth 1,000 words - so I would recommend using Instagram for some of the great pictures from prior events. Show people smiling, shaking hands, making connections, and building relationships. Show well-known speakers talking in a small group of engaged listeners, indicating their accessibility before and after sessions.

Knowing that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, how much more is a video? I went to a conference last year that built anticipation by releasing a video trailer as a preview of the content. This worked extremely well because it could be shared with others and get them interested in attending the conference as a guest. Video on Instagram can be up to 60 seconds, and that same video can be posted on YouTube, Facebook, and other sites. The goal is to make the video content so engaging that the immediate reaction is to share it and tag others in the post to draw their attention to it. It takes time and effort to make a great video, but the people watching will know exactly what to look forward to.

Desert Island Music:

Red Hot Chili Peppers but only from the Californication album onward. Nothing before 1998 except for "Soul to Squeeze". Their music has the underlying funk groove that you need to really get into the state of flow when you're trying to work, or when you're flying down the highway on the way to the beach. On the plus side, if I'm stuck on a desert island, I'll already be at the beach.

Luria Petrucci

Co-founder, Live Streaming Pros

One of the best ways to promote your event is to get your audience INVOLVED in the process so they’re totally invested in it and they feel like it’s as much THEIR event as it is yours.

How do you do that? With a Buzz Campaign. Go LIVE on social channels (Facebook LIVE, Periscope, YouTube LIVE or Instagram LIVE) early and often in the event planning process and bring them along for the journey.

Talk to them about what you’re doing. Involve them in the decision making process (you don’t have to give up control, but ASK them what they think). Share your experiences, your stress, the things that go wrong and the things that go right.

The bottom line is… the more they feel a part of the creation of the event, the more likely they are to HAVE TO be there at the event!

Desert Island Band:

Hmm… that’s a hard one! LIGHTS or Brandi Carlile (I cheated and picked two because I just can’t decide!)

Dorien Morin-van Dam

Social Media Marketing Consultant, More In Media

Step 1 - Create a written plan for promotion. Write down goals, objectives, target audience, budget, social media channels to be used, etc.

Step 2 - Create content to be used for the campaign(s). This includes images in all sizes for your chosen platforms and videos.

Step 3 - Implement any and all ideas for promotion on as many social media channels as possible. This includes outreach to bloggers, podcasters and vloggers to be on their show/blog as a guest, paid advertising, email marketing campaigns and a brand ambassador program.

Step 4 - Measure results daily/weekly and do more of what yields best results. Adjust as you go!

Desert Island Music:

It would have to be Adelle! I could scream with her, croon with her, sing with her, dance with her and cry with her.

Alon Alroy

Co-founder & CMO, Bizzabo

Unleash the Power of Your Audience: Part 1

Find a way to turn your attendees into promoters on social media because your voice is never objective when you promote your event. Think about reaching out to sponsors and vendors, but speakers, as well.

It’s not just enough to create a speaker card and be done with it. It’s a matter of iterating and optimizing to reach maximum engagement.

One useful tactic is to create speaker cards. People like to retweet things that make them look good. Simply find a photo, tag your promoter, and post it. Make sure to include any other relevant hashtags or handles.

Take for example this simple speaker card that Liz King recently created for her event TechsyTalk.

I saw this image on Facebook and thought, I want to share this! Notice the position of the text in the lower right-hand corner. One thing that King does that is great is that she constantly experiments with where the text is placed in her speaker cards. It’s not just enough to create a speaker card and be done with it. It’s a matter of iterating and optimizing to reach maximum engagement.

Unleash the Power of Your Audience: Part 2

Another great way to turn your attendees into promoters is with technology that incentivizes them to promote their event. For instance, Ticket Boost allows attendees to recoup a percentage of their registration price for every other person they get to attend using a special trackable link in social media. It can also be setup to reduce the ticket price of those who buy from your attendees for a double-sided incentive. Because these links are trackable, event organizers can see who their top promoters are and engage them appropriately.

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Partner Up with Other Conferences

As long as you are not overlapping in dates and topics, partnering up with other conferences is a great way to amplify your event marketing efforts. This lends itself to cross promotion on-site, in newsletters, and on social media. For instance you can feature something like “Check out our sister conference” on your event’s Facebook Page. To get the most out of these partnerships, make sure that the conferences that you partner up with have a big social media follower base.

Desert Island Music:

Barbara Streissand [I actually asked Eran, our other co-founder about to answer on behalf of Alon. I think this one is a joke.]

Nick Borelli

President & Strategist, Borelli Strategies

The three top tips I have for promoting your event through social media:

Know Your Audience. Before you promote your event, do as much research as you can on the types of attendees you are trying to sell to. Find out the answers to what excites them (what gets the most retweets), who is the most influential (check Klout scores), and what problems they have (join Linkedin and Facebook groups around your event’s topics). To be effectively social within a community, you have to become a native. If you just start selling at them you will become part of the noise they already don’t pay attention to.

Build A Team. Don’t promote your event by yourself, give tools to the people who are in the best position to help raise awareness and convert. All of your event’s formal stakeholders (sponsors, presenters, and vendor partners) should be given graphics, suggested social media copy, and links to help ensure this endeavor they are contributing to is successful. Determine who is the most influential to your potential attendees and incentivize them to promote for you as well.

Be Social. In order to sell tickets, you can’t always post about selling tickets. Focus on the mission of your event. If your event is educational, host Twitter Q&A sessions with experts. If you are planning an event to celebrate achievements, your posts shine a light on those who are contributing to the area you focus on. Your posts are just as much an extension of your mission as your event is.

Desert Island Music:

I’d have to go with something that is a bit cheerier than what I usually listen to (Bon Iver, Iron and Wine & Sufjan Stevens). I listen to different music depending on my mood, season and environment and Vampire Weekend would probably be exactly what I needed for that scenario.

Wrapping Up: The Power of the People

There's no shortage of great event marketing advice from these social media pros, but several tips have come up again and again:

Plan Ahead: As you begin preparing for your event, make sure that you have a social media strategy outlined. Before, during, and after your event, there will be ample opportunities to market it on social media.

Record Your Event: In both photos and videos, make sure you are recording your event. Interview attendees and speakers, put together a sizzler reel, show the world that your event is awesome. Facebook Live and other live video mediums will be helpful.

Utilize the Power of the People: Whether you use an influence marketing, brand advocacy marketing, speaker cards and content, or a social media tool like Ticket Boost, make sure you tap into the power of the people surrounding your event.

For more great event marketing resources, click the button below. Your brain will thank you!

from Cameron Jones Updates http://blog.bizzabo.com/event-marketing-wisdom-from-12-social-media-experts

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