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sterekficrec · 3 years

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Lost fic masterpost 2.0

This is the new masterpost list for lost fics we haven't found ourselves yet and we need some help with finding. This list contains all asks that are asked after May 31st, 2018. If you asked us something before that date and it hasn't been answered, please check out our Last Chance Asks post first, if it isn't on there feel free to send us the ask again.

If you know what one (or more) of these are then let me know through an ask and mention the number.

Thanks in advance for all your help :)

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Hii! I'm looking for this fic I read a while ago, it was on ao3 and kind of short I think.. Stiles catches Derek smoking weed naked, and it involves shotguning.. I remember it had embeded images of shirtless Derek(or some model who looks like Derek more likely) sitting on the floor by the bed.. Hope somebody knows this, I really want to find this :'(

Hi! I don’t know if you can help with this but I’ve been looking for a fic everywhere. Stiles is older than Derek and Talia brings him in to help Derek through his rut or heat. I can’t remember much else. I hope you can help!

Hey, I was wondering if you could help me find a fic where stiles thinks Derek doesn't find him attractive Derek doesn't get hard, and Derek thinks that stiles doesn't want him because of this and there's just hella miscommunication?

Hey I was hoping maybe you could help me find a fic? All I remember was that is was like a retelling of season one but Stiles was older and an FBI agent?

Hey there! I wanted to ask about a fic I read some time ago. It’s sort of au. Stiles doesn’t live in Beacon Hills anymore but helps out Deacon and him and Derek meet when he helps out Dereks pack with something. He’s a witch or something like that. I’m sorry for being so vague and in one of the cases Derek gets possessed by a demon, who kills people by dehydrating them. And Stiles gets the demon out of him. Have you guys recced anything like it? I really want to read it again. Thanks :)

Hey!!!! So I was wondering if you could help me find this sterek fic?? They are married and they have a few kids I think mpreg. It has a lot of chapters and in one of them their daughter I think her name may start with an l goes to a dance with a vampire, Derek isn’t so sure ab it. And one time stiles has to go on a trip for work or maybe a retreat with Scott and Derek has to console there few month old, as he hasn’t been away from stiles. Please please!!

I was wondering if you’d be able to help me find a fic? Derek and Stiles are on a date and they have Cora with them. When they’re buying tickets, the person at the ticket counter flirts with Derek and assumes he’s chaperoning a date between Cora and Stiles. I think Stiles yells oh hell no and then kisses Derek?? I wish I could remember more, but that’s all I recall..

I've been looking for a certain nsfw fic where someone "gives" Stiles to Derek as a birthday present, I'm pretty sure Stiles is tied up in a hotel bed or something like that. Thank you so much in advance 💖

10.

Hello! I read a fic once and I cannot find it again and I would really like to reread it. Of what I remember the sheriff is an alpha and dies and Stiles has to take over and the sheriff left a lot of debt. So Stiles starts to sell off chunks of land and works a ton of jobs to try to pay it back.

11.

Hey, I’m looking for a fic where Stiles is a spark, but he’s hella freaking powerful because when his mom died he kind of tried to bring her back, but it latched onto his baseball bat? I think Lydia is actually the alpha of the pack, and Laura and Cora are alive (I think the rest of the Hales are too?). Derek was like, literally married to Kate for a while and then they divorce and Stiles and him break into her house and totally trash it. Help????

12.

I was wondering i you could help me find a fic (i'm desperate), the only thing i can remember is that derek keeps a 20 dollar bill by his door in case any girl scouts come by, but they never come because the moms think he's some kind og bad guy. Stiles meets a girl scout mom and konda confront her about it (and by confront i mean like really yell at) i think it might have been a slowburn fic Thank you:)

13.

I've been looking desperately for this fic where Stiles gets Emissary/Druid training from Deaton but eventually Deaton refuses to teach Stiles anymore so Stiles leaves Beacon Hills in search of another teacher he leave sometime before the alpha pack he finds a teacher and travels a lot but eventually returns Beacon Hills after a few years very powerful helps them defeat somthing and eventually hooks up with Derek.

14.

Hi please if u could help me this sterek fic? Both derek and stiles were deputies . Derek was new there and parrish like stiles which made Der jealous . I dont remember much but help ..

15.

Hey I was hoping you could help me find a fic? It's been a while since I've read it, but I know it was based around the sacfricial killings, but they were being used to resurrect some people I think? It was magic!Stiles, and at the end he kinda changed the spell to resurrect the Hale family instead? Sorry I can't remember much else, but I know I really enjoyed it and I can't find it at all. It would mean a lot if you found it!

16.

Hello. Love this blog helping find fics for other people some of which I’ve read and loved. I’d love if you could help me find a fix where stiles, Jackson, Erika, issac and Boyd are selected to be seventh to the hale family. Mr. Harris is the servant and the living family is Cora Derek Laura Peter and the grandmother. Stiles of course is Derek’s servant and finds the truth out about his forgotten pass and what he is to Derek’s. Changing him Erika and issac into werewolf’s. Hope you can find!!

17.

Hello! I was wondering of you could help me find a fic. From what I remember, Derek comes home (from college I think) for the first time in years, and finds that his family loves Stiles, who he has never met. They hate each other in the beginning. Thank you for any help you can give, and thank you for all you do for this amazing fandom! :D

18.

hi!im looking for a sterek fic that has stiles staying in beacon hills as a supernatural doctor? and then he gets an email from derek that says that derek is hurt. stiles also has a bunch of journals full of information about the pack. and them stiles has a really bad leg injury. and the sheriff is dead. stiles listens to either mozart or bach to calm down, i can’t remember. please, help me. sorry if my descriptions are a little messy, im stressing over it bc i want to reread it. thanks.

19.

i’m trying to find a fic where the pack accidentally wishes on a shooting star about stiles, and they wake up in this alternate universe where stiles doesn’t know who they are and he’s being brought in by deputies, && they find out that stiles is a mage of some sort in another pack, i’ve been trying to find it forever. also thank you!

20.

For the prompt you asked: what about Stiles going crazy trying to plan the perfect Christmas party with the pack but everyone has a different religion or belief and Stiles is squishing a little of everything in there, the party wont even be on Christmas eve but in a different neutral date or smthng. And obviously since most of the pack is still busy with school(or college?)he ropes Derek into helping with preparations. Obviously they end up making a big mess out of everything. they also fight a lot untill Derek snaps and Stiles realizes that Derek's only problem with Christmas is he misses his family so much(and the only reason Stiles wants to party it's bc it makes him remember his mother)And the pack arrives at the new Hale house to find them like that, depressed and with a burnt out dinner in the kitchen, ligths popped and tree destroyed. And it magicaly snows in that moment(or maybe it's Stiles?)

21.

Hi, sorry for my bad english. I’m looking for sterek fic. I know I read it in AO3. I don’t remember much but almost in the end Stiles and Chris are arguing because all the stuff his family did. How bad Stiles was tortured by Gerard and I think Stiles was pemanently injured in one ear and one eye. And also Chris was yelling that he killed his father and Stiles said in the end it didn’t mather because He was damage forever. I really hope you can help me.

22.

hi, so i was hoping you could help me find a sterek fic where stiles and derek are childhood friends, and stiles is pining after him but derek and paige are dating, and stiles gets jealous when paige is sitting in his seat and almost has a mental breakdown? i think stiles starts ignoring him, and derek realizes that he no longer sees paige as his future mate but stiles. thank you!!

23.

Hi, Sterek fic I can't find. With Stiles drowning, bc of himself or feelings being too much, Derek notices and saves him, and the Derek warms him by turning into his alpha form? Stiles really like shifted Derek. Thank you guys! :)

24.

Hi I was wondering if you could help me find these 2 sterek fics where: 1. Derek and stiles are on a stakeout looking at a bank I think when someone approaches the car and Derek pulls stiles into his lap and stiles begins to question his sexuality and if Derek likes him. 2. God I can’t believe I didn’t save this one but I can only remember a scene in the fic where stiles and Derek were at a drive though movie theatre and they were kissing and it was all about Derek self healing. Pls help.

25.

Hey I'm trying to find this fic on archive that I read before but I can't seem to find it. If you don't do this sort of thing sorry in advance. But if you do all the teenagers are alive and Stiles is getting bullied by a group of douches so the pack challenge them to a series of games. Girls vs girls and boys vs boys. They win of course. Anyway if you know of this fic please let me know

26.

I need help finding a fic pls. Stiles meets Derek young (around 4ish) and they're soulmates (Derek knew when Claudia was still pregnant). There is def an age gap. Stiles grows up knowing Derek is his mate, and tries to mate with him, but because they spent so much time together while he was young, stiles's wolf develops quicker than it should and goes into heat, so they try to separate them. Mama S. and Hale family is still alive, and theres an alpha/alpha mate convention at some point. Thanks!

28.

hey! i'm looking for a fic where stiles is living on the east coast working for the government and then he saves somebody's life by recognizing that the agent was walking into a trap of a vampire coven so he starts working with this supernatural sector of the government (and people named jessica and jason i think) and gets sent to a national council thing and reconciles with derek and the pack after having left beacon hills and stuff

29.

Hi! ❤️ thank you so much for taking the time, I was just hoping someone could help find that sterek fic where it’s established relationship, and stiles works for a company because he came up with a famous slogan for some type of candy/food and the company rlly loves him, at one point goes on a business trip where someone tries to have an affair and stiles is like WHUt NO and goes back to Derek immediately feeling guilty even tho he was 100% loyal? Thank youuuu ❤️

30.

Hello! I love this blog a lot , keep up the good work. :) I was recently reading a fanfic where stiles is kidnapped by jennifer and she uses derek’s semen in a spell to make the “werewolf messiah”. Can you help me find it?

31.

I am looking for a fic. Derek is the alpha and he and stiles get together and cook meals. First Boyd is added to the group and then Isaac. Isaac becomes a foster of Boyd's parents. Then Erica is added. They give Erica the bite after discussing it with her parents. Please help

32.

Hi! Looking for a fic where Stiles is bitten by a fox at the zoo, changes into an actual fox, which means he’s terrified of the werewolves, including Scott and Derek. Derek has to lure him out with a trampoline (definitely inspired by that video of a fox on a trampoline). I looked everywhere I could think of but no luck :/ hopefully someone’s heard of it! Thank you!

34.

Hi! I’m scouting the internet for an old sterek fic I read once where stiles and Allison bond over the summer after s2 and in a drunken mistake Allison gets pregnant but it’s not romantic? I can’t find even a trace of it anywhere but I VIVIDLY remember it

35.

Not a fic Rex but could you help me find a fic? It’s been months apon months since I have read this fic but it’s a sterek fic and stiles was kinda of controlling and would never be a good bf to Derek so they never did anything derek wants to do only stiles. And I remember they talked about it and were getting better and Derek asked to go on a hike to show stiles this pond or something idk for sure and stiles almost says no and it’s angsty and amazing.

36.

Hi! I've been looking for a fic that I read a while ago, I don't know if it's been deleted or not and I don't remember it clearly. But from what I remember, at some point Derek stayed with Stiles and his dad in his wolf form because he was traumatized and felt like he was inconvenient to everybody? Sorry I'm not being very clear but if that rings any bell... Thank you!

37.

hi! There was this Sterek fic form Isaac's POV where he was Stiles' PA and he really shipped him with Derek, but all the other two do is fight-- and in the end, he finds out they've been married for around 5 years. Do you know it's linked, by any chance? :)

39.

Hey! I’ve been looking everywhere but I can’t find this Sterek fic and was wondering if you could help me? All I remember is that Stiles is pregnant, him and Jackson are really close friends, and something about ‘is Thursday a good day to tell your ex you’re pregnant?’. Thank you so much if you could help! ❤️

40.

Hello! Okay so I have my been here in a while, but I've ran out of fics to read. And I'm not sure if you guys are still active. But do you guys have some where Sterek start dating, but it's because one of them like the other and the other one thought, "why not?" But they end up falling for the other. Sorry I know this is too specific. :/ but thank you!!!

41.

I'm looking for a fic that Stiles was invited to Derek's wedding to Julia/Jennifer, but it turns out he was magically controlled to go along with everything so she'd have control of the pack???? Eventual sterek.

42.

Hiiii! I'm wondering if you can help me. I read this fic forever ago and it was a supernatural FBI type situation. Stiles was magic and sold potions on the side (I know to at least Ethan). Deucalion was selling drugs that were killing people. I remember that the drugs made you hover in the air before you died and Stiles got drugged (also pretty sure he was a suspect). Derek was an agent. Thanks in advance!

43.

Hey I'm really sorry to bother i am looking for a fic were stiles and derek are in a long term relationship but derek starts to neglect stiles so he decides to leave for a new apartment and derek realizes how much he has been missing. thank you i hope you can help me

44.

Hey! So I’m looking for 2 sterek fics that might have been deleted but I’m not sure. The first, someone is poisoning the wolves to makes them shift, and stiles and Derek get locked in a cage so that Derek would kill stiles. The second one, the pack goes to college, but Derek breaks up with stiles to keep him safe, and stiles starts taking pain killers. The Alpha pack shows up, but at the end Peter tries to kill Scott or Derek to become an alpha again. Any idea? Thank you!!!

45.

Hey I'm looking for a sterek fic and going out of my mind because I cant find it! All I remember is that they had at least one kid together and in the epilogue or sequel or something they were having a family dinner where their college age oldest daughter was bring home her boyfriend to meet the family. And I think the younger brother was non-binary of some sort and they were worried how the boyfriend was going to handle that. And werewolves existed but still a secret. Thank you in advance!!

50.

Im sorry i might be stupid but i cant find the askbox, im looking for a fic where stiles and derek are mates and there might be a abo dynamic, derek knows they are mates before stiles is born because he meet Claudia while she i pregnant, they start of young in the fic but get older as i goes. I must have been an explicit one. Sorry for any inconvinience

51.

Hi! Looking for a stereo college au where stiles is obsessed with Greek mythology and even got a tattoo of it. Some internal homophobia in there too. Thank you in advance!

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hi! i am looking for this sterek fic i read last year I think. Stiles and Derek are both in college and Stiles is crazy about greek mythology - has some of the stuff tattooed on him. Derek is kind of closeted and maybe a little internally homophobic but is crazy about Stiles. Stiles has some Dark Things that happened to him back in BH.....Eventually Derek gets him a ticket to go to Greece? Any ideas? Thank you in advance!

I think these two are asks for the same fic, if not I seperated them in a. and b. so let me know the latter if they are not the same.

53.

Hello, sorry I have another ask. I'm looking for a fic where werewolves are known and the hale family is alive. Stiles has to spend time with every member of the pack to determine compatibility I think? They all dislike him. Laura hates him because they had a previous encounter and she bruises him. It's a sterek fic I think. Thanks!

54.

there's a fic i read years ago about stiles and derek both being accountants and working together. i think stiles was a new employee? possibly a student/graduate? sorry i dont have much information, its been years since i read it and i just randomly thought about it but cant find it

55.

Hey! I swear I got this Fic from y’all but I cannot find it now for the life of me. It’s a college AU where stiles rushes fraternities on a whim and meets Boyd. Boyd is a legacy for Derek’s fraternity and joins them, Stiles ends up rushing and joining Scott’s fraternity. There’s a whole bunch of pranking that ensues including Stiles stealing Derek’s pledge paddle... it’s a fantastic fic but I can’t find it

56.

hi!!! i was wondering if you know the fic where the pack finds actual wolf cubs and decides to raise them??? i remember it being a WIP and the wolves names were sköll and haiti (?). btw: i love this blog so much 😭😭💝

57.

hi! I’ve been looking for a fic where stiles (for a reason that I forget) pretends to be gay and ends up dating Derek while still pretending to be gay and then actually falls for Derek in the end. I can’t seem to remember what it’s called and I really wanna reread it. Hope you can find it!

58.

Hi, I’m wondering if you could help me find a fic. One where Derek had to sacrifice his love for Stiles to keep his family alive (some sort of curse on him to make him fall out of love) and magic!Stiles does everything to break the curse? If you know it please help

59.

Hi! I’m looking for a Sterek fic on Ao3 where the day after Stiles and Derek finally go forward in their relationship this random ass guy shows up, claims he’s an old friend of Derek’s from New York and convinces the whole pack, minus Stiles, too. From what I remember he used their names to place a spell on them to control them. Derek attacks Stiles then kicks him out of the group, Lydia shows up and helps Stiles break the spell because she’s queen, and they get the guy arrested. Plz help?

60.

Hey guys no pressure but theres been a fic stuck in the back of my head for months and I can’t find it. What I remember is that the pack are in a bar when a siren does a siren thing and everyone in the bar is under his spell and it was something d&s could resist only because they were truely in love. Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, English is hard for a dyslexic

62.

Hey!! First of all...... thank u so much this is always so helpful..... Second of all, I can’t remember the name and hopefully you can help?? It’s Sterek, it’s not an AU. Derek leaves and moves to Montana? Colorado? Something like that and coincidentally Stiles ends up going there for college and slow build???? And knowing these boys, some Angst™️

63.

UGH!! Can you help? Stiles goes to stay with Derek in Brazil?

64.

HELP, goin crazy looking for fic I wanna reread, Remember tons specific odd details. Listing them w/ hopes someone knows what I'm taking about! ABO adjacent, Stiles heat is called a wetting, Stile's dad gives his hand away only cuz its good alpha Derek, marital/mate tradition w/ fancy ornate bathtubs, Stiles has skirt w/ embroidered list of his skills on it, Derek bad a verbalized emotions. Regency era. Stiles has a miscarriage w/ lot of self blame. Issac is Derek's ward since he's a kid. Aaah?!

70.

Hello I'm trying to find a fic where when Stiles was young (and with the help of Lydia or Scott) did a spell to never find his soulmate. Like it was: he will have blue eyes, no green and brown; he will be strong enough to lift a car; he will play cello. The point of the spell being to not find him. Later he meet Derek and freaks out because he is perfect (multicolored eyes, werewolf strength...). Please help me find it! Thanks

72.

I am looking for a fic that starts with Stiles and Derek researching but then Stiles gets turned on and him and Derek end up hooking up. It's a 5+1 fic

73.

Hi! Can you help me find the fic where Stiles, Sheriff and a few other people from town were held hostage by werewolves(?) but also some humans I think and they were planning to escape but stiles said they should stay put. And at the end or towards the end Derek bursts in as a full wolf and stiles has to talk him down so he’ll shift back and the people who held him hostage know him as one of the most dangerous in the Hale pack.

76.

Hi Mod(s)! I am currently looking for a fic about magic Stiles. I don't remember any of the pairings, but I vividly remember a conversation between Stiles, Allison, and Lydia. To prove that his magic is real, Stiles sets his lacrosse stick on fire. Allison is prejudiced toward magic and says that Stiles could probably light a house on fire, and Stiles responds that he could, but then he would die of organ failure. Thank you for your help! I appreciate the time and care you put into this blog!

77.

Hey, thanks for all you do. Do you perhaps know a fic that is basically a rewrite of season 1 but Stiles has a dog, and Derek gets jealous of the dog, honestly I've been searching everywhere for this

79.

I have a question

all I can remember is Alison is matriarch of the hunters, Stiles is sassy as fuck... I think he was magic. I believe there was a coffee shop showdown where Alison didn’t realize that Stiles was there... I can’t remember if it’s a recent fix or something I stumble across finding new docs to read.

Cheers

80.

Hello! I've been trying to comb my way through your blog and searching google but I haven't been able to find the fic I've been looking for so I hope you can help me (and I hope I'm not missing the post and making a duplicate)

The story is a sterek fic where Derek goes to stiles for help because hes developing a sexual problem and only trusts stiles to look up the answer. Stiles find out it's likely a mate thing and suggests derek figures out who hes been spending a lot of time with. Derek checks out and crosses off each of the pack before settling on Scott (because of his scent, thinking its what's triggering the response), turns out its stiles and that stiles has a very active libido and that's what's causing Derek's problem.

I swear I had it saved but I can't find it in any of my bookmarks. So, any help you can provide at finding the fic would be super helpful! Thank you!

81.

hi, hoping for some help finding a fic? from around 2015 - sterek (either established couple or they got together during +), there's a big bad that mind controls or possesses Derek and makes him stab stiles. then in the next part stiles trains with the argents and they're still trying to fight the big bad. there's an OC that stiles is jealous of bc she is able to bring Derek out of the mind control/possession when he wasn't able to. that's everything I remember. any help is appreciated! thanks!!

82.

There is this fic that I cannot remember the name of. It’s a very slow burn where stiles and Derek once they decide to be together, wait until 18 for kissing (before that they do Eskimo kisses) and then to like 21 or something for sex. It’s really sweet and cute and stiles is understanding of his trauma. It may have been a de-aged derek, cursed, bonded, or fake/pretend relationship? If you know, I will love you forever and ever +1.

83.

I'm looking for a long Teen Wolf fic. Here's what I remember.

Stiles left to join the FBI. Cut ties with Beacon Hill. Never looked back. Becomes an FBI wunderkind.

On behalf of the FBI he goes to some werewolf or Supernatural Council event with his unit. It's a complete surprise the Beacon Hill pack is there, they're all cold shouldering each other. Everyone has grown into their own, and the pack is beyond thriving. Derek is some high muckity muck.

Scrooby doo mystery plot stuff, ends in Sterek.

It's long and has some time stamp sequels.

Does this sound familiar? I've been looking for it to reread.

85.

I’ve been looking for this one sterek fic where stiles has a crush on Derek and Derek is like in high school while stiles is still a kid. And like stiles comes over to the Hale house to hang out with Derek and he catches Derek making out with a girl (maybe Kate) and it breaks his heart.

86.

Hi :) I’m looking for a fic where Stiles and Derek fake being in a relationship when Derek has to go to some werewolf retreat. Stiles learns magick and can see strings that run between…mates, maybe? I think there’s also a toddler named Luca running around. Idk I remember reading this YEARS ago and would really like to find it again🥺

87.

Hey. I was wandering if you knew of a fic that’s kinda oldish. But stiles and Derek meet and they’re like mates or soulmates or something. Anyway stiles pack which is like Scott, Allison, Lydia, Danny etc have been cursed by a witch and I thinks they’re getting their power drained or something? They’re lived are in danger and Derek helps coz Stiles is his mate. Possible chance they’re all at college

88.

hi! I am looking for a sterek fic. stiles works two jobs and is really tired driving home one day and accidentally rear ends derek (who is a cop?) who then comforts him when he freaks out. it is abo au and the pack are included. thanks in advance!

89.

Do you know a ao3 fanfic about sterek where stiles just presented as an omega and gets taken by the government to be the omega in dereks military group?

90.

Hey I was wondering if you could find this fic for me? I’ve been looking lol night and I can’t find it anywhere. I know it’s on AO3 if that helps at all.

So it’s a royalty au and pretty much Derek is a werewolf and he invades stiles kingdom under peters orders but when Derek gets to the palace stiles father isn’t there as stiles has hidden him and he ends up marrying stiles and stiles is like tricky and stuff and there’s one scene where they are in the garden and dereks soldiers end up in a field of wolvesbane and gets really sick and stiles goes in to save him and he gets really mad at his guards for letting the wolf just walk into it. And Peter is bad and intends on killing derek and stiles realises this and tells him and Derek ends up killing him. I think it would be classified as enemies to lovers? I hope that’s enough info to go off of

Thank you so much in advance I really appreciate it if you find it!

91.

Hi I have been looking for this fic for literally years, all I remember is that stiles and allison had a kid together years before when they were both on the outs from the pack in LA, but they come back and scott and allison end up together again, and derek left beacon hills for years but comes back and settles but keeps leaving and stiles is upset—eventual sterek of course—and there’s something big going on supernaturally? And stiles gets intense migraines? Honestly it’s been so long I could have imagined this haha but I will be so grateful if someone has heard of this! Thank you for all you do!

92.

Hi there! I read a fic a looong time ago and unfortunately, I can't find it. What I remember, is that Stiles and Derek move out of Beacon Hills and also get their own dog. I also think at first Stiles was on his own and he moved away for himself, not necessarily bc he was pushed out of the pack, but that may have been in a different fic and I'm just mixing them up. So sorry for being so vague! I hope you may be able to find it

93.

hi! i'm searching for a fix where the pack goes on vacation and derek and stiles have to share a room. basically stiles thinks that derek doesnt like his scent and leaves the windows open and they freeze their asses off lol. i think it was in a cabin or something in the woods.

94.

Hiya! Not sure if you’re still taking SOS Fic Searches. I cannot for the life of me remember anything more than a sterek fic with stubborn Derek / Stiles where Jackson asked Stiles out on a date on Valentines Day knowing Derek would be jealous, but when Derek doesn’t step in immediately, after the “date” Jackson texts Stiles “you’ll thank me for this” and then kisses him on the porch and Derek wolfs out and chases him — thus allowing for them to discuss their feelings and get together (but also keep it a secret from the pack for being assholes and making group chats without them)

95.

i’m looking for a fic that starts with stiles and derek getting into a fender bender. it’s in a universe where everyone registers as a dom, sub, or switch. stiles is a sub and derek is a dom. derek works with scott. after the accident stiles brings derek cookies and brownies at work. derek is some sort of officer or something that works with dom/sub rights or something?? there’s a protest which stiles goes to and it gets violent and at another point someone vandalizes where derek works. stiles and jackson are friends and jackson coaches lacrosse. i’m sorry if this is vague but i appreciate the help!

96.

I'm trying to find a fic and I'm hoping you can help- I've read it before but can't for the life of me find it on Ao3, and it's killing me! It's one where Stiles is magical, Scott pretty much goes insane- and there is a super amazing scene towards the end where Stiles winds up magically taking Scott's wolf away and giving it to Melissa, who lovingly embraces it. It was a great read that I could have sworn I bookmarked :(

97.

Hi! I’m not sure if you can help me find a lost fic. But I thought I’d give it a shot and ask. I read this Sterek fic within the last couple of months and i remember very little unfortunately. Basically I remember that stiles was allowed to sleep in dereks bed and Derek was acting like that was no big deal, but everyone else in the pack thought it was a massive deal because wolves and scent and stuff and I remember one of the women in the pack was pregnant but no idea who. This is so convoluted and I’m sorry. If you can’t find it no worries! Thanks!!

#lost fics #lost fic masterpost #sterek fic rec #sterek #derek hale #stiles stilinksi

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so-i-did-this-thing · 4 years

Note

hi i just ran across your blog! im also an oboist, hoping to make it professionally one day. im in college right now, do you have any tips or like how did you become a professional oboist?

Hi there! I have been a freelancer all my career, so I don't play the oboe full time. This is actually incredibly common - lots of us supplement our income with teaching or a secondary career. Some people are able to make that career related to music, but tons of us are lawyers, sales clerks, pharmacists, etc. I myself was a designer, then a programmer, and now I work in government.

I have these tips for oboe performance majors:

1) Talk honestly with your career advisor. There are a limited number of orchestras in the world and spots open rarely, yet colleges churn out new performance majors yearly. Where does everyone go? See what you need to learn to be a viable teacher, recording and/or contract musician (lots of touring productions hire locally), etc.

2) Join the local music union. Most gigs will come from word-of-mouth, so start playing with and meeting people. The union is also your source for health insurance.

3) Gain a reputation for being easy to work with and punctual. Both of these traits are more valuable than sheer skill and will get you hired over better players who are arrogant or flighty. (Of course you need to be able to play the part in front of you, no excuses.)

Be a good sight-reader and know the standards. It was a culture shock learning how few rehearsals you do IRL for a concert vs college. Hell, I once toured for 2 weeks with an opera company, no one else spoke English, and we played a different opera every day. You gotta learn to roll with barely any rehearsals.

Be a good leader and if principle, an advocate for the woodwind section. Don't be afraid of conductors, they are just another sclhub in the pit/on stage with you, so learn how to talk to them.

Since oboes are usually first in, last out, be helpful during setup and breakdown. People notice if you are kind.

4) Diversify musically. Most musical theatre pits only want woodwind generalists, so learn the other instruments. They will take a generalist over a specialist any day, it doesn't matter if you are a better oboist.

Also learn interesting instruments that make you useful in recording - soundtracks need things like recorders, penny whistles, etc.

5) Diversify professionally. COVID has taught us how precarious a performance career really is. You need to know how to do other stuff or be good working in retail/food service.

6) Do not turn your nose down at pops, wedding, theme park or church gigs. These pay well. Churches have consistently been my most reliable source of income - I was a church musician for many years and that consistent $250 a weekend for 5 hrs of easy work kept me fed.

7) Be prepared to make tough decisions on what you are worth. I refuse to play for free; I will not give in to sob stories from community orchestras. I refuse to play for orchestras who take 6 months to pay people. "Exposure" is bullshit.

Alas, sometimes you have to coddle bad people in positions of power -- this is where having a backup job helps.

Refusing shitty gigs will get easier as you gain a rep among good people. And it's even easier if you have a backup job -- I have a reputation as That Guy who will corner the contractor (often the conductor) and demand the orchestra get paid on time, because I'm not worried financially about getting fired. I have threatened to sue orchestras to get my people paid. If you are union, stick with your union pals on overtime rules. No bullshit "sound checks" that turn into unpaid rehearsals.

8) It is possible to make it without owning an English Horn, but if you have the means, get one -- it really helps if you want to play more, but you may not necessarily earn more money because of the additional costs.

9) Make friends with the caterers at the gig. Get good at cramming Green Room / backstage food into your pockets or gig bag. Return to the catering table before they dump the food. This is how you will eat some nights.

10) Being a performing musician is... remarkably blue-collar in a way. Be prepared for that kind of lifestyle. You will be hustling your entire life, even if you land an orchestra appointment.

Honestly, though, out of the entire list, #1 is critical for you right here and now. The math just doesn't add up for all of us to be symphonic musicians, so you need to figure out what a performance career looks like to you. Maybe you work at Disney in the parks. Maybe you record video game music from your home studio. But the world has changed and music school (albeit like 25 years ago) did not prepare me for anything other than auditioning for orchestras and grad school. I'm still pissed about it.

That said, even though I don't play full time, I have played some very meaty repertoire. I've played principle with major orchestras (I'm a damned good sub), I've toured, and have done everything on my bucket list except for Tchaik 4 and the Bartok (I have played 2nd here, tho, so good enough).

Also, I don't regret music school - it made me a better, more confident person. I just wish I knew going in what the job market REALLY was like.

I wish you the best!

#oboe stuff #oboe #serious talk #music career

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padfootagain · 4 years

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A Very Rose Mistake (IV)

Part 4: How You Became Lambkin

Here we go for a new chapter! This is cute, but also, an important chapter for many reasons! The plot is now starting to unfold!!

No warnings of any kind to apply here, really, it's just rather innocent and cute. I hope you like this new chapter! Tell me what you think about it!

Word Count: 3911

Holmes Chapel, 2007

Shakespeare was a pain.

Maybe it was still relevant if you went to the theatre and saw professionals actually perform the play, but from the point of view of two 13 years old who had to read the plays for school… it was a pain.

Besides the language being old, there was also the fact that tons of the words on the page had just been made up. Or at least, it sounded that way. Because Harry had most certainly never heard any of those being used before and he had better things to do with his time than try and guess the meaning of these words. Playing football was one of them. And there was no way his mother would let him out of the house before he would have finished his homework.

There was only one way he could get to the pitch on time to play tonight with his friends. He had to ask for the help of the brightest mind he knew.

He got up from his bed where he was lying down with his copy of Henry V covering his face. He let the book fall on his bed while he reached for the piece of red glass that rested on the side of his window. He aimed at the sun, until the reflection of the light on the glass would dance over your own window. The perks of having his best friend living in the house right next to his: it was easy to reach you.

And indeed, it took you less than a minute to appear before you would appear on the other side of your own window. He couldn't help but grin at the sight.

Harry grabbed a piece of cardboard from behind his desk, that he had already prepared. One of the messages that you often used and both had kept, ready, just in case you would need them.

Help with homework?

He saw you laughing and shaking your head, but you grabbed your own cardboard, large enough to hide you completely behind it.

My place?

He merely nodded with a big goofy grin on his face, before grabbing his bag, his book and heading to the living room.

"Mum!" he called, thumping through the hall.

"Yes, I am not deaf," Anne laughed at her son.

"Can I go over to Y/N's to do my homework with her?"

"To do your homework or play videogames?"

"I have a match tonight."

"Ha… so it's really for homework then! Sure, you can go. Bring some snacks if you want, I bought some cookies, the ones she likes."

"Thanks mum! I'll go directly to the field when I'm done…"

"No, you won't. You're going to come back here to drop off your stuff and to get changed and then you'll go to the field."

He heaved a sigh, but complied without arguing.

"Okay. Bye!"

"Love you!"

But Harry was already slamming the front door shut and sprinting towards your house. Your mother was waiting for him with her door open and an amused smile on her face.

"Hello, Harry! How are you today?"

"Great! Thank you, Mrs. Y/L/N!"

"Y/N's in her bedroom. Do you want to bring up some snacks?"

"I've brought some cookies my mum bought today."

"How nice! Well, go ahead then!"

"Thanks!"

He took off his shoes, placing them in the space that was saved for him in the hall, before sprinting up the stairs to your room.

He closed the door behind him.

"Hey! Thanks, I'm struggling with this bloody play!"

You merely chuckled, resting your back against your wall as you sat on your bed.

"It's alright, I haven't started that one yet."

"Have you done maths already?"

"Yep! Just finished."

"Me too. But that English stuff… ugh…"

He climbed on your bed by your side, dragging behind him his notebook, pencils and his Shakespearean play.

Harry gave you some time to catch up with him on the assignment, although he hadn't done much yet. You then spent some time trying to analyse the text and answer the questions on your assignment about the scene.

Harry was annoyed to say the least.

"What are these words, even…" he groaned.

"Come on… some are cute… 'lambkin', that's cute!"

"Lambkin?! You think calling your girlfriend lambkin is cute?"

"I do. It's sweet!"

Harry rolled his eyes.

"Alright, then, I'll call you that from now on. We'll see for how long you find it cute."

You exploded in laughter, the sound enough to erase his grumpy frown.

"That's not fair! I would be the only one with a ridiculous nickname like that!" you protested.

"You are not calling me lambkin. Ever."

"Alright," you shook your head at his silly remark. "After we're done with this, we'll look for a nickname for you."

"I'm going to the field after, I'm playing with the guys."

"That just means I'll choose whatever I want to laugh at you!"

"Wow… scary… lambkin."

You narrowed your eyes at each other, and you considered his banter as a challenge.

"You're gonna regret that, Styles."

"Oh, am I, lambkin?"

But you could only keep up the serious act for a few more seconds, before you both let go and were lost in a fit of laughter.

You did manage to finish your homework on time for Harry to go play football with the guys. You spent the rest of your allowed time before a screen looking for old and ridiculous nicknames to use against Harry on your computer.

You eventually found the perfect one.

His phone beeped after he was back home, about to go to bed. He had changed in his pyjamas and was about to turn off the lights for the night when the sound rang through the room.

"Harry! Go to bed, you have school tomorrow," Anne ordered, as she was passing by in the corridor right at that moment.

"I am going to bed! It's Y/N!"

"If you're not in bed in five minutes…"

"I am going!"

He checked your text all the same.

Y/N: I've found your nickname. You are chuckaboo.

He snorted, answering once he was buried under his blankets.

Harry: What does that even mean?

He put his phone on silence to avoid his mother hearing your response.

Y/N: It's a term of endearment to call a friend. Fits just right. Plus, I think it suits you, chuckaboo.

Harry: You'd better not call me like that at school.

Y/N: Oh, I will :)

He laughed, despite feigning anger in his next response. You merely replied with another smiley face, and wished him good night.

He went to sleep with an amused smile on his face.

It was just a joke, it would last for a few days before you would both grow tired of it. Stupid nicknames that would make you laugh for a while. Or so he thought, at least.

Lambkin and Chuckaboo.

What a ridiculous pair…

Loch Lomond, 2020

Harry kept on holding your hand as you settled around the large table that had been set for your family. The atmosphere was more relaxed as you waited for Amy and her family to join all of you over dinner. Your mom and you sat between your father and Harry, a protection of some sort against the nasty glances that your dad kept on throwing at your fake boyfriend. Dinner was merry, and Amy's family provided a nice distraction for your own family members to focus on. Harry spent most of the evening lost in a deep conversation with Amy's grandfather about 'the music back then', and he seemed to blend in just fine, not that you had ever had any doubt that he would.

One chair though had been left empty. In the large hall decorated with flickering lights, the view upon the loch growing darker and darker as the hours passed, until there was nothing left to see but the stary sky, there was one empty spot. It was for one of Amy's cousins, who had to work late at the hospital in Glasgow, where he worked as a nurse, apparently. Patrick, was his name, and he was set to sit right opposite you. It's only when you were waiting for dessert that he appeared.

And you struggled quite a bit to hide your reaction.

Because Patrick was handsome. Patrick was very handsome. Patrick was also 1000% your type.

And Patrick was set right across from you around the long, rectangular table.

He gave a kiss to his family, was introduced properly by an Amy that was on her way to getting from tipsy to drunk, and he seemed a little embarrassed by her antiques as she praised him for his work in medicine and called all who were single around the table to 'give him a ring'. And you found it cute.

You decided it was your duty, as you were the person sitting across from him, to make some small talk. Anyway, your parents were entertaining a conversation of their own that you weren't particularly interested in, and Harry and Amy's grandfather were lost in a vivid argument about Carole King's best song on Tapestry.

"I'm Y/N!" you introduced yourself with a welcoming smile. "Cassie's cousin."

"Oh, so we're the cousins then! Nice to meet you!" he greeted you with a warm smile as well.

And he had a nice smile. Very nice smile, indeed…

"So… you're a nurse then!"

He ran a hand in his hair, embarrassed.

"Yeah, I am. Sorry about her rant, I think she's had too much to drink."

"It's her wedding, I reckon she has the right to have a little fun."

"I guess. And what do you do for a living?"

You were interrupted by the dessert arriving, and you waited for the waiters to have left to answer.

"I'm studying for a PhD in history."

"Oh, wow."

He seemed genuinely impressed, which was always nice to hear. You waited for the next question to strike what do you do with a PhD in history, but it didn't come. Instead he asked another question, seeming genuinely interested.

"What is your thesis about?"

"The influence and impact of the XIXth century international exchanges and relations on modern politics."

"Wow."

"It's a mouthful," you joked, nodding your head.

"No, no! It sounds very interesting! Where do you study."

"California. But before that I got my degree in Oxford."

"Dear God… I'm sitting in front of the next Nobel Prize."

You laughed, shying away.

"No, absolutely not. Besides, I don't even think there is one to congratulate historians."

"A shame. I would have bet on you."

You did notice the way he shot you a shy smile. And you did notice the way he didn't look away, and didn't look for another conversation to settle into. He was focused on you while you ate your dessert, and you did the same.

Your conversation went on when the coffees and teas were served. And you had to admit that you liked it that way. He was charming, with a cute Scottish accent, and eyes that glimmered in the yellowish light of the room.

It's only when your cup of coffee was empty that Harry took your hand in his again, planting your feet right back to Earth, and reminding you of what you were here for in the first place.

He gave you a smile, before guiding your hand up to his lips to place a kiss over your knuckles, surprising you with the tender gesture and making your heart rush a little more as he looked at you with the tenderest of gazes.

"Are you tired, babe? Or would you like to take a walk with me? I could use some fresh air."

Your heart stumbled a little at the pet name, and you didn't like it. You didn't like it one bit, so you forced the organ to stop its little dance.

"Sure."

You bid everyone a good night -and did notice the disappointed look Patrick gave you as you abruptly ended your conversation in order to leave with Harry - and some other people retreated to their rooms at the same time as you, while you followed Harry outside.

It was cold outside, a heavy wind sweeping skeleton leaves to gather at your feet. You could hear the shushed rumble of conversations on the other side of the windows and the wind caught in the branches and lifting the water of the loch in clapping waves. Harry offered you his arm, and as you noticed that you could still be seen from the table inside, you took it with a grateful smile.

You walked along the shore in silence for a few minutes, your gaze distracted from the dark path by the shining lights above your head, but you weren't worried about falling, not when you were holding Harry's arm. He would catch you before you could fall.

He finally heaved a sigh.

"Well, that wasn't a complete disaster. It went better later on, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I reckon that once the shock had passed, it was alright," you nodded.

"Except for you father, of course. Judging by the way he was eyeing me all night, he probably will try to cut off my balls before the end of the week."

You laughed at that, the sound clear and joyful, luminous over the dark scenery that surrounded you. But the reflexions of the stars over the water was lovely all the same. They seemed brighter to Harry as your laughter echoed a little longer around both of you.

"He's not so fond of the idea. Don't know why."

Harry shrugged.

"Must think I'm not good enough for you."

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head.

"Anyway… I think we're getting away with it."

"Getting the hang of it, babe?"

"Oh, shut up, chuckaboo."

"Ha, here you are again, back to your normal self. Will you start punching me next?"

"I've never punched you!"

"But you've threatened to do so dozens of times."

"I am very good at boxing."

His smile grew more tender, a little melancholic as well, but you attributed it to the quiet of the place that surrounded you. You were away from the lodge now, enough so for voices to have disappeared. It was only you, Harry, and the whisper of autumn leaves now.

"You're good at everything, Y/N."

There was a moment of silence, while you stared at him. But then, his expression grew a little mischievous, and he faked to be lost in thought.

"Except at cooking, and singing, and playing guitar, and most definitely climbing, and gymnastics, and…"

"Yeah, okay, I get it, you jerk!" you stopped him, punching his arm, although your gesture wasn't violent enough to hurt. Still, Harry dramatically held his arm as if you had thrown him your stronger uppercut.

"See, I knew it! Knew you would end up doing it for real, instead of only threatening me with your punches!"

"Well, you should shut up before I do it again."

"You're so cruel, lambkin," he tried to sound convincing, but the goofy smile upon his lips betrayed his thoughts.

You shook your head at him, wheezing.

You walked in silence for a little longer, before deciding to go back to the lodge. You were still holding Harry's arm, even if no one was around to see the two of you pretend. None of you acknowledge the fact, merely choosing to act as if you weren't. Maybe, a voice in your mind explained it by acting in case someone would bump into the two of you. You knew it wasn't the truth though, but you pretended that it was for the few minutes more that the gesture lasted while you walked on the edge of the water and under the tall trees.

"So… Patrick?" Harry asked after a long silence.

"He's nice!" you answered with a smile. "He's a nice chap!"

"Hmm," Harry nodded. "You did seem to have fun with him tonight. Even thought that maybe you didn't need my services anymore."

"Pfft! Don't be ridiculous! I've just talked with him for 5 minutes."

"Almost an hour, actually."

You narrowed your eyes at him.

"You counted?"

He rolled his eyes at you.

"I just noticed it was a long conversation."

"Hmm…"

"You know, we can still tell the truth to everyone, and you can take your shot with Patrick."

You didn't know how to describe the tone he used to say the man's name, but it wasn't oozing with fondness, that was for certain. You looked at him suspiciously, a smirk creeping its way to your lips.

"Are you… jealous?"

"Jealous? Me?"

"You're the jealous type, don't deny it."

"And don't flatter yourself. We're not really together, remember? Why would I be jealous."

"I don't know, but you sound like you are."

"I'm not jealous."

"Good."

"But do you like him?"

You shrugged.

"I don't know. I think he's attractive. I think he's nice. So…"

"You like him."

"He's alright so far. And he is my type."

Harry raised an eyebrow, before his features molded into a frown instead. His mind couldn't help but compare himself to Patrick, and point out everything that was different between them.

"Am I your type?" he asked after a long silence.

You laughed, taken aback.

"What kind of question is that?"

He shrugged.

"I don't know. Just wondering. I'm playing your boyfriend for a week, but… would I be your type? Had I not met you when we were five and crashed your ice-cream into your face… had you met me tonight instead of Patrick… would you have thought that I was your type?"

You looked away, finally letting go of his arm, and the lack of contact between your two bodies made Harry regret his question.

"I don't know," you lied, before finding back your composure, and shooting him a smile. "But you're my boyfriend for this week. So for the next seven days, you are most definitely my type, honey."

He laughed, shaking his head. You had walked back to the lodge, and he opened the door for you, dramatically bowing before you to let you through first.

"After you, my love."

Harry went first to take a shower, and then it was your turn. Some warm water was just what your tired muscles needed to relax after your busy day. When you walked out of the bathroom, a little bit of fog following you through the door, Harry was lying on the bed, atop the blankets, scrolling on his phone.

He had changed into a comfortable jumper and a pair or pyjama pants that seemed warmed and soft. His curls were still damped, wetting his pillow, but he didn't seem to mind it at all.

He looked up when you stepped out of the bathroom though, and you didn't fail to notice the way his eyes settled on your legs before hurrying to your face while his cheeks blushed.

Your pyjama shorts weren't that short at all, stopping right above your knees. Still, it seemed enough to make Harry's cheekbones and ears turn crimson. You wore an old Treat People With Kindness jumper too, matching his grey hoodie.

"You're alright, Harry?" you asked, rather puzzled by his reaction.

"Sure, why?"

"You're blushing."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"It's nothing. I'm just tired."

You weren't convinced, but chose to drop the subject, your own fatigue weighing on you. So you shrugged instead, finishing to get ready for bed.

You slipped under the covers and heaved a sigh as your head hit the pillow.

"Tired?" he asked, and you could only hum and nod in response.

He hesitated for a second, while you closed your eyes.

"There's an extra blanket. I can sleep on top of the covers, and you under them, if you want."

You opened your eyes again to look at him.

"Would that make you feel more comfortable?"

He considered your question, and shrugged.

"I don't know. Maybe?"

"I don't really care. But… maybe for tonight, you can do that. Won't you be cold though?"

"It's quite warm in here. And the blanket looks cosy."

"Alright, but don't hesitate to get under the covers if you're too cold. I don't mind if you do."

"Okay," he nodded, before getting up to get the blanket.

He lied down by your side again, getting comfortable, before he would turn off the lamp on his nightstand, and you did the same, letting darkness take over every inch of the room, looking darker than it really was as your eyes got used to the shadows.

"Goodnight Harry."

"Goodnight, Y/N."

You turned to your side, trying to get comfortable too, and your foot gently bumped into his through the layers of sheets and blankets as you moved.

"Sorry," you quipped, moving your foot away.

"'S okay," he replied, his voice lower than usual.

You let silence settle for a while, but it felt strange. Awkward. There was something unspoken hovering above the two of you, you could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

"Harry?"

"Hmm?"

"I feel weird."

"Weird? You mean sick?" he asked with worry in his tone now.

"No, I mean… it's a little weird sleeping next to you. Why though? We've done that since we were six."

He shrugged, but couldn't deny that he was feeling the same. His heart was beating so fast, he was worried you would hear it in the silent night.

"Maybe it's because we're not children anymore," he whispered.

You hummed in response.

"And we haven't done it in a long time too," you added, and he heard you nodding, your cheek brushing against your pillow.

He took a deep breath before speaking again, his tone hesitant.

"Do you… would you feel better if I took the couch?"

You considered his offer, but shook your head.

"No, I… I don't feel uncomfortable. It's just… strange."

It was his turn to hum.

"Would you feel better on the couch?" you asked him.

"No, it's… it's a nice weird."

"Yeah, it is."

"I'm just… it makes me a little nervous."

"Nervous?"

He made a face, that you couldn't see, but you would have found it adorable if you had.

"I'm afraid I'll wake you up with my snoring. Or speak some nonsense in my sleep. Or you wake up tomorrow morning and see me drooling, with saliva all over my face."

You laughed at him, reaching in the dark to touch his arm. You patted the muscles tenderly.

"Don't worry, chuckaboo. I've seen worse! Seen you throwing up a fair amount of time. Also, I'll just punch you again to wake you up if you start snoring too much."

He laughed, and both of your laughter mingling through the room made most of the tension in the room disappear.

"You're right. Besides, maybe you'll be the one waking me up because of your snoring!" Harry went on.

"I don't snore!" you snorted.

"You do. I've heard you before."

"Well, then, you can wake me up if I do."

You moved your fingers away from his arm, but they lingered on the mattress near him all the same, in the little space between the two of you.

"Sleep well, lambkin," Harry whispered, closing his eyes, and when you answered, you had the same smile on your lips as the one that he wore.

"You too, chuckaboo."

************************************

Taglist : @emcchi @fishstick-knows @eldahae @just-damn-bored @retrouvailessx @marvelstudies2020 @boxofteenageideas@ponycake27 @horsesreign @xinyourdreamsx @jbluevelvet@notkeppeki @daynigt-dreamer-stuff @fudgeflyss @stuckupstucky@snek-shit @suchatinyinfinity@i-padfootblack-things @buckybsarmy @heyohheyitsgabi@jigsawlover10 @emyyjemyy @addictedtofictionalcharacters @staringmoony@madamrogers @cronias13 @stylesfics-xx @mellamolayla @mariaenchanted

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #harry styles series #series #imagine #writing #event #4700 followers #fanfiction #fanfic

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multimetaverse · 4 years

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HSMTMTS 1x03 Review

The Wonderstudies was a very funny ep that set up a lot of drama to come. Let’s dig in!

I don’t want to take High School Musical: The Musical: The Series too seriously, but a case could be made for the Wonderstudies being a Greek tragedy with EJ Caswell as the protagonist. EJ has it all as the popular, talented, and handsome jock and theatre star but his hamartia (tragic flaw) is that he’s so insecure about his relationship with Nini that he’ll do anything to keep her, as EJ says he plays to win, but in doing so EJ will lose Nini. EJ had several chances to turn back before it was too late, to come clean, to apologize, to make things right, but he kept on violating Nini’s trust and privacy. EJ nearly got away with it but he couldn’t control his insecurity and had to take one last shot at Ricky which will bring about the breakup he was so desperate to avoid; thereby fulfilling his destiny as decreed by the Fates (the writers)

I loved the library conversation between Nini and EJ where she keeps building him up as this wonderful person while EJ knows that he’s not quite the good guy she thinks he is and is trying to keep Nini from stooping to his level. I think Matt Cornett did a good job of showing EJ realizing that maybe he’s not been the positive influence on Nini that she thinks he is. We also see EJ making Ashlyn #complicit though he seems unaware that he’s doing so

I chuckled all through A Billion Sorry’s; it was very funny with the goofy facial expressions, corny lyrics, and 90s boy band dance moves. I saw a lot of people complaining that the song wasn’t good but that’s the whole point of the song; it’s supposed to look and sound like something a teenage boy wrote in a couple hours. They’ve done a great job with the EJ and Ashlyn cousin relationship so far and I hope that continues. Seems like Ashlyn’s family isn’t as wealthy as EJ’s

Of course, EJ does have reason to be insecure, he’s not the lead of the musical or the romantic lead of this show, which means he’ll lose to Ricky no matter what he does. I am curious to see how the NJ breakup plays out

A gratuitous shirtless scene that could have come straight from Riverdale ( Wise of Disney to run ads for HSMTMTS during Riverdale, there must be a big overlap between those two audiences). It does show why they casted a 21 year old Matt Cornett to play EJ. On that note, I hope tonight is the last NJ kiss we have to see, the age gap between the actors is just too apparent to ignore.

Ashlyn refers to Nini’s vid for Ricky, which was posted on June 1st, as being four months ago which would mean we’re now in October in universe and Gina says in the 1x04 promo that there’s 6 weeks to opening night which would place it in mid to late November if true

The jokes were great this ep. Nini and Kourtney stealing all of Gina’s stuff and Nini returning it to her in a garbage bag, Nini’s list, Nini saying that she learned that people used to have watch TV shows at a specific time, Ricky’s I nailed that.

Special mention to Carlos’ dance training in the beginning, ‘’audience member has a heart attack? Keep dancing’’ is a hilarious line. I also loved Carlos getting Miss Jenn a matcha green tea with red bull. It reminds me of a guy I knew whose drink of choice was rum and green tea; he claimed the green tea made the rum healthy

Did not expect Benjamin Mazzara to be such a dick. That was a low blow against Carlos and I’m so glad that Miss Jenn defended Carlos and all her kids. I really liked that line that it’s not because most of these kids will end up on Broadway but because most of them won’t. She may be a fraud but she really does care about these kids and her friendship with Carlos is sweet

Ricky and Big Red was great as usual. We saw Ricky growing as a person and being more respectful of Nini’s boundaries (her voicemail message was cute). I liked that when he though she didn’t like his voicemail that he was just going to drop it before EJ made it sound like Nini had shared the voicemail with him

Sofia’s dancing continues to impress. I really liked how wily Gina was this ep; she could guess that Nini would likely be late so she came prepared and I like how all she told Nini was that she didn’t have her phone, which is true but leaves out that she’s the one who stole it and gave it to EJ.

I liked that they actually showed EJ bleeding after being hit with the basketball, a nice touch of realism

I really liked the status quo rehearsal and that dramatic cliffhanger ending

Looking Ahead:

Mrs. Bowen is back next week, that will be angsty. The fallout from the Bowens impending divorce and the NJ breakup is probably what the writers will use to keep Nicky from getting back together until 1x10

Does EJ rat out Gina when he goes down or is her breakdown to her mom triggered by something else?

Mr. Mazzara’s comment to Carlos about getting some friends under the age of 35 seems like it could be setting up an arc for Carlos the rest of the season, making more friends and starting up something with Seb. There’s a school dance in 1x05 and it seems like Mr. Mazzara is a chaperone and Carlos decides to do a big dance number so maybe that’s part of Carlos getting back at him. Hopefully Seblos starts soon, Frankie Rodriguez liked a tweet saying that there better be Seblos soon to make up for Carlos being sad this ep and with only 6 weeks to go until opening night if Seb needs help with his choreography then that should happen soon

From the promo pics and ep descriptions we also know that Miss Jenn will take Nini and Kourtney out for a girls night and she at least ends up at the bowling alley and has a run in with Mr. Bowen. I really hope they don’t put Miss Jenn and Mr. Bowen together. Dara said that 1x05 was a big ep for Kourtney so hopefully that pans out. It’s still very apparent in the writing that Kourtney was originally only supposed to be in just the first ep

In the back of my head I had wondered since the pilot if they were going to do an enemies to friends to lovers story for Miss Jenn and Mr. Mazzara but if they are then they’re going to have to do a ton of work since Mr. Mazzara trying to get Miss Jenn fired should be hard to move past. I also can’t seem him being a Sue Sylvester style enemy of the drama department for the entire series so we’ll see what happens

So Miss Jenn faces a tribunal in 1x06, has she been faking her credentials? We know they let her continue with the musical so presumably it’s not something super serious that would get her fired for sure

Larry Saperstein said that 1x07 was a big fun ep with the cast together most of the time so maybe that’s the cast party we saw in the promo

Until next week wildcats

#HSMTMTS #EJ Caswell #Nini Salazar-Roberts #Ricky Bowen #Ricky x Nini #Nicky #NJ #Rini #Miss Jenn #Carlos #Benjamin Mazzara #Ashlyn #HSM #HSMTMTS Reviews

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sunlitroom · 4 years

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Tag Game - lockdown edition!

I was tagged by @delicatelyserved Thank-you!

Are you staying home from work/school?

Yes. The UK went into full-scale lockdown on the 23rd (except for specific professions). My workplace started to make preparations a little earlier, so I’ve been working at home from the week before that - roughly mid-March

If staying home, who is there with you?

I live on my own

Are you a homebody?

Yes, to an extent, but this is a bit much.

What movies have you watched recently?

I’ve been watching MST3K on a loop, so Samson vs The Vampire Women :D. I watched Joker recently, which I enjoyed. Also Only Yesterday, which was gorgeous.

An event you were looking forward to that got cancelled?

I was supposed to be going to the theatre with friends. I was also travelling for work.

What music are you listening to?

Lots of different stuff. Classical during the day when I’m working. Weird random jazz recommendations from YouTube. Tracks from nowhere that get stuck in my head.

I’m also listening to My Dad Wrote a Porno - a podcast I recommend to everyone.

What are you reading?

I've got a few different books going right now. I’m making my way through a book of Greek plays (I hadn’t read any), which sounds super pretentious and boring - but they’re fresh and brilliant and easy to read. Some are quite short, too, if you’re finding it hard to concentrate.

I like Zola, and I’d also started The Human Beast - but it’s incredibly heavy and violent from the outset, so I’ve temporarily put it to one side.

Also reading off and on A Pickpocket’s Tale, a non-fiction book about a criminal in 19th century New York - which actually has a ton of fascinating details. It was bought primarily for Gotham fic reasons.

What are you doing for self care?

I’ve severely limited how much time I spend checking up on news. Trying to be generally nice to myself - so not beating myself up if there’s a day when I’m less productive, making sure I watch things I enjoy, taking time to read - stuff like that. Any tasks I take on are small, manageable, and enjoyable - I’ve stepped back from the weird ‘ you must be hyper-productive!’ stuff that seemed to be prevalent at the beginning of all this.

Thank-you. I tag, if they wish to play: @oswalddcobblepot, @rhavewellyarnbag, @lalaurelia, @the-house-of-abrasax, @honestmrdual, @marcceh, @pamdizzle, @countessrivers, @ncfan-1, @shadow-waterglow, @peritwotone, @fandomfourever, @inappropriatefangirlneeds, @cannibalgh0st, @millicentcordelia, @themasterplanner - and anyone else who feels like playing.

#tag thing

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davewakeman · 4 years

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Talking Tickets: 17 April 2020--Refunds! Restarts! Support! And, More!

Hey!

Thanks for being here again this week. If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

How is everyone holding up out there?

If you need someone to chat with, let me know. I’m here for you if you need a proper chat as my friend, Cat, would say.

I made a typing error about the strategy webinar. It is going on this coming Tuesday.

Have a few minutes and want to grab a drink? We may not be able to have a drink in person just yet, but we can have a virtual happy hour. Join me and Ken Troupe for what is becoming a Friday tradition for happy hour with sports business folks at 5 PM EDT.

If you are interested, we’ve got a nice Slack community with folks from around the world and all areas of the industry, exchanging ideas, connecting, and thinking about the future of their businesses.

I’ll share a bunch of links to resources and other places to connect in the newsletter.

Hopefully, I’m able to strike a proper balance for all of you…between, “Wow! This is nuts!” and “We will get through this.”

To the tickets!

————————————————————————————————————

1. When will events return? No one knows but we are learning more:

Dr. Zeke Emmamuel says he doesn’t see large scale events coming back until the fall of 2021.

Shane Harmon, CEO of Sky Stadium in New Zealand shared some interesting information from his government on when restrictions might start to be loosened and things can begin to normalize a little. Patron Base also put together a nice resource guide for their customers that y’all may find useful.

In Europe, the UK is preparing for 3 additional weeks of stay-at-home orders, pushing the opening of events back a bit further.

In the US, we still have no clear strategy for what reopening will look like, what we should expect, and how we will start to regain any sense of normalcy.

We do have a reopening panel and we do have a desire to reopen events, but, again, unfortunately, no clear direction.

I think we all have to try and take a balanced approach to our expectations here. First, we have the economic factor and that’s impacting all of us here immensely. Second, we have to deal with the safety concerns of the population and recognize that liability will drive a lot of the decision making process. Finally, never lose sight of the impact of fear and emotionally driven decision making on mass society. As quickly as people are gung ho to get back to ballparks, if an outbreak happens that was accelerated by a ballgame and that link is made, that could do more long-term damage than anything that has happened to this point.

Because, unfortunately, none of us really know the right answer here.

But I am hopeful after seeing the PGA Tour aim for June and the Australian Football League talking about July.

2. The economic impact of these shutdowns becomes more and more apparent:

Baseball America wrote up a piece on why fan free games aren’t going to make sense for MiLB and what not playing in 2020 would mean for minor league baseball going forward.

The economic challenges are going to be felt all over. Colleges are likely going to be put in a position to cut sports like the University of Cincinnati did with soccer this week.

As a holistic thing, Research and Markets put together a report this week that tries and cover everything about the entertainment industry and the impact of the virus on folks.

Like a lot of stuff, the analysis and the information coming out from reputable sources needs to be parsed with for context and when you see anyone tell you something is all or nothing…take that with a grain of salt.

Bill Sutton tweeted out a call for teams to get on the virtual season tickets now and over the years I’ve been calling for folks to think more seriously about their membership model, their email lists, and how they are developing their global fan bases.

Harry DeMott from Ticket Evolution wrote up a good piece on restoring liquidity to the ticketing ecosystem as I was finishing this up that is worth a read.

Whatever position you find yourself in right now, your strategy going forward is going to be more important than ever. And, if doing things the way we’ve always done things is a bad idea in the best of times, right now it is a really bad idea to settle for that answer.

3. StubHub, refunds, cancellations, and more continue to make the news:

The regulators in the UK continue to look into the merger between Viagogo and StubHub. And, as was mentioned in the press this week, “worst timed acquisition ever“?

Vivid Seats did announce their refund and exchange policy this week and it looks a lot different than Ticketmaster’s or StubHub’s.

AEG is offering a 30-day window for fans to get refunds and once a new date is announced, fans will get another 30 days.

While many of us have focused a lot of our attention on the platforms and technology companies, the same uncertainty is trickling into other areas with college football programs feeling the pinch because of the compromised place they find themselves.

Let’s be real here, college programs are only feeling the pinch now because most of them had the earliest deadlines…at a certain point, this is going to be a refrain that all of us are going to hear. Again, it goes back to the point above…we need clarity, information, and guidance on what the next several months look like before folks are really going to feel comfortable doing much of the stuff that we consider normal.

Leadership 101 stuff.

4. How are you connecting with your fans and customers during the pandemic?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve highlighted some really cool examples of using assets, content, and ideas to connect with folks.

The link above is from my friend, Blair Hughes, down in Brisbane. He’s been focusing on fan engagement since 2013 and he updated his resource guides this week to include a few new ideas that will work even when you are socially distanced from your fans.

The Indianapolis Indians were lauded by the governor. The Red Sox dropped coloring sheets. There are tons of free videos and performances from organizations all over the world.

I’ve struggled with this a little bit because what do you offer folks when there is so much uncertainty. My path has been to continue to figure out how to add value and share ideas with folks. (To be fair, it is selfish as well because focusing on others helps me overcome the gaping void of being an entirely inadequate 4th-grade teacher and helps keep some of those negative thought processes at bay.)

But what are you doing to connect with folks now? Let me know and I can try and highlight some of these ideas as well.

5. The ticketing industry is doing a lot of stuff to help everyone weather this crisis together:

This week INTIX announced a relief fund, the INTIX Member Covid-19 Relief Fund. 100% of funds will go to member assistance to help members of the ticket community bridge the economic gap while we wait out the pandemic.

Any gift matters, even $1.

As Maureen says that all folks want to do is help and I agree. So if you can, support this effort.

On top of the relief fund, Maureen and her team are hosting a weekly Zoom call on Wednesdays at 12 PM EDT. Anyone can join, no matter if you are a member or not. This week’s had over 200 folks.

The ALSD has a list of resources and ways for folks to learn and connect during the pandemic.

Global Citizen has put together the Live Aid of the Covid-19 crisis for tomorrow, 18 April.

Crew Nation is Live Nation’s effort to help the crews that make the shows happen. The Arts Council in the UK is also working to help freelancers and other folks impacted by the shutdowns. Theatre Support as well. Indie venues band together to form a group to lobby congress for support of the industry.

While it isn’t about giving any money to support folks, MLS put up a training site so folks can keep their soccer skills fresh during the social distancing. And, if you have a young kid, this is likely enough to make you weep.

This is on top of all the other things I’ve highlighted over the last few weeks. If you or your organization are doing something to help folks, let me know and I will highlight it and share it here and with my community as well.

As I finish this up, I love when folks run and do challenges in their local communities…so I saw this one from Rob Sibbitts in Atlanta and he has completed his challenge…but maybe we can convince him to run another race for a local nonprofit.

My buddy, Greg Turner, who lives outside of Hong Kong just translated a report for anyone that is interested in learning more about the Chinese market for arts and entertainment. It doesn’t fit into the weathering the crisis theme, but it does give you something new to explore and since China is slowly starting to return to normal activities could give you some food for thought about what to think about in all of your home markets.

—————————————————————————————————————-

What am I up to this week?

Guess what? I’m still at home! I am doing the webinar that is listed at the top and I’m starting to drop new content on the podcast feed.

Want to chat? Let me know. Between my duties as an awful elementary school teacher, I’ve got plenty of time and will to chat. And, I’m happy to be here if someone needs someone to talk with.

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets: 17 April 2020–Refunds! Restarts! Support! And, More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

#arts #marketing #performing arts #sales #sports business #tickets

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thattaekwondoblog · 4 years

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Green Stripe: blanking out & stuff

so this is the first belt that i really didn’t feel ready for. I had gone to practice every day in the month of January (except sundays & the last two days bc I fell sick), but in February a bunch of stuff kept me away from practice (mostly grad school apps & work). this is also the time stuff happened in my personal life which may or may not have involved some dojang members (not so much beef as communication issues in a few friendships) so i was feeling extra insecure. So much happened since this so I kinda forget but essentially the test was at the end of February and i felt #severely unprepared, despite my instructors encouraging me to test. honestly my test day was so traumatic i blocked out most of my training from that period sadly.

Things that happened:

dear reverse inner forearm block: you little shit. you absolute mess. coordination was never really my thing so that sht messed me up really bad. it is a really beautiful block though.

원효 wonyo was a cool form, even though confusing; first time that a ‘common stance’ isn’t used always. also we’re not going in straight lines anymore??? what????

i don’t remember struggling too much with the one steps except for like the order of them.

sparring! i like!! sparring!! so much more than i thought i would. the only thing i dislike about it is the Eventual Lower Belt Man who is ‘afraid to go too hard’ or ‘can’t control his strength’ and talks all the fcking time. bro shut up, stop being a dck and humble yourself will ya. your masculinity issues have no place in fighting. we all are learning so stfu and try.

I’m still very much in ‘defense mode’ while sparring; i like to observe more than attack. this is bc i feel like the ppl i spar against generally have more experience or strength and so i overcalculate everything bc i think im gonna make mistakes. this has brought particular joy to one red belt friend who Will Not Attack Me on purpose so I attack first. i love you bro but i also know as soon as i attack you’ll see all my openings and murder me. it’s def something im working on.

Advice/what helped:

some days you’re gonna feel awfullll and it will transpire in your practice even if you try to hide it. there was one day i was Not feeling it and of course my master wanted to tease me and make me laugh as he usually does. it was really hard to not say Sir Please Leave Me Alone I Need To Be Left Alone, but i also knew I would never have wanted to take my sht out on anyone. pushing myself to practice that day was good, but also know that if you’re feeling too bad one day skipping practice is okay.

i got to know some dojang members better, which was fun! plz talk to your older/younger/higher level/other members and get to know them. even when some seem intimidating, it’s so interesting to hear everyone’s tkd stories

on the flip side, training with ppl you love and ppl you not longer vibe with so much can be complicated. im still figuring it out. i guess ive mostly opted for respect and have fun during training, not letting issues transfer to the mats. i love my instructors and tkd wayy too much to let personal issues interfere with class (even though it’s not always easy to do).

the belt test:

nothing prepared me for how this test went. i was stressed about it bc i was feeling unprepared but the week before I went to practice very often to try to catch up and in the end was feeling a little more confident. the test day arrives and my body feels ok until im called up. i was the only one testing in my category. My mind felt fine, I stayed focused, but my body... started shaking while i do my techniques. and it was only the first part of the test. i was like wtf bc id never experienced anything like this before. then came the form. I began and after the fifth move... i got tunnel vision and my mind went blank. even the grand master was trying to help me and my master asked me to relax. i started again and finished, albeit not greatly. the one steps are a blur bc i just wanted to get back to my seat and disappear. I saw stars when i sat back down. pretty sure i was about to faint up there. my master came to check on me after the test saying my face became white through the test. why? how? i dont fcking know. again this had never happened to me before. ive done tons of presentations, theatre performances ect... even though i felt ok mentally my body was like Nope Absolutely Not and launched in a panic attack (i used to have an anxiety disorder where i would get anxiety attacks, but i hadn’t had a panic attack in like.. years). i think it’s the combination of stresses in all the parts of my life (social, school, work, somewhat tkd) that culminated and i freaked out. i took the day off of work the next day bc stuff like this Never happens to me and you gotta listen to your body when it’s screaming this loud.

main lesson: you’ll never be fully ready for things. but also listen to yourself. it’s a veryy fine balance. it was really not a big deal that my moves weren’t as perfect as I wanted to since my master thought i was good to go I should have been more confident. at this time though, my life felt like i was going at 343242 miles/hour and i absolutely should have taken a full day of time alone to lay out my thoughts and feel more secure. bc what happens in your mind directly influence your tkd, and that’s why you need to take care and listen to yourself even when everyone else is so loud.

#budoblr #tkd #taekwondo #martial arts #mine #belts #green belt #anxiety #panic attack

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acrobaticcatfeline · 5 years

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Prom is for Chumps (vent fic)

Word Count: 1203

TW: alcohol mention, loneliness, homophobia mention let me know if i missed anything!

Notes: I’m lonely and sad and prom is tomorrow so I was projecting and getting it out of my system. I could make a second part of this but I probably won’t.

Pairings: platonic royality, mentioned romantic moxiety

Summary: “is it really already? God, I thought we had another week” Roman was going to be alone at home on prom night and he felt horrible. Is there any way to pick his mood back up off the ground?

“is it really already? God, I thought we had another week”

Roman was a romantic, popular, 17-year-old. He was also really gay who lived in the middle of nowhere pretty much. A couple years ago he was in a happy relationship and out to the whole school pretty much, but then his parents had to move. The place they moved? Um, let’s just say he didn’t feel quite safe in his identity there. Heck, the third week of school, the GSA program had to come up with a scheduled itinerary because there were boycotts saying they couldn’t have a club for just fun, that you had to learn from it, that GSA was harmful, and if Roman wasn’t already uncomfortable, he would have been scraping his skin off with a spoon. Of course, not everything sucked, but it was pretty bad.

The last class of the day was almost finished and after that he would have to go to theatre and honestly, he was half ready to skip it after the day he had. Nothing in particular happened that was bad, but nothing in particular happened at all. He had done work in math and was currently finishing a chapter of the book he was reading for English but in all his other classes they did nothing, maybe a 10-minute activity and free time for the rest of the hour. He had tried to convince his choir teacher to practice so he felt some sort of accomplishment, but everyone else in class was tired and in some sort of pain and so they sat and talked. Unlike in his other classes with desks, he couldn’t just pass out. Usually he would go and belt showtunes or Disney songs, but he wasn’t in a place for that, now was he?

He was standing the second the bell sounded off. He took a look at the little theatre room and shook his head. No, no he wasn’t up for that at the moment. He was too tired to deliver his lines properly and he wasn’t about to do less than his best. He turned away and walked over towards the parking lot, thinking back to what his teacher had mentioned at the end of class.

“I'm not giving you any homework; you're all going to prom so there's no real point”

Gosh he loved his English teacher, but that struck him a bit too much for his liking. Yup, he didn’t have a date to prom. Honestly, he had completely forgotten it was this weekend. He was still considering going solo, but he had missed his last chance. He cursed himself internally, he shouldn’t be so upset, it’s a school dance, he could host a better party himself, a better dance. But it still tore at him no matter the rationalizations he made up. He was going to be alone on a night that was supposed to be magic and special and romantic. He would probably end up crying in his parents’ liquor cellar. Not because he would dare touch any of the gross stuff, but maybe he could stage it like he had and maybe his parents would think he was just drunk instead of lonely. Instead of vulnerable. Maybe he would get grounded, he’d be able to have an excuse as to why he wasn’t there, instead of just getting looks of pity from everyone. He wouldn’t be able to ha-

“oh, hey Roman!!! Roman are you free this weekend?”

Oh, its Patton!

“uh, I can be? What's up padre?”

Patton was a bubbly kid, approximately 3 months older than him, and he was in his science class. The absolute only kid he could stand in it in fact. They had gotten pretty close and Roman knew he was ace, what with him shamelessly flaunting around his flag whether around his shoulders or with his dozens of pins on his bag. He was quite an inspiration if he was being honest. He wished he could be that care free, that proud of his identity.

“well uh, I dunno if you know them, but my friend Logan and my boyfriend Virgil were planning on having a party. I know prom is a thing, but I dunno, its all bad music and kids who can’t dance in a sweaty gym and I was like, I can host a better party than that! And I wanted to invite you!!! I'm sure you're probably going to prom with that girl you’ve been hanging out with, but it’s the thought that counts!”

“huh? Sarah? Oh no, we aren’t going together, I wasn’t even planning on going to be honest. I know Logan I think, nerd with big square glasses and cute freckles? Also, I would have to be blind to not know your boyf Hun, you two are practically attached at the hips. Who else is coming?”

Patton's face lit up even brighter and Roman could feel his own face lift a bit at the kid’s pure joy. Patton started bouncing on his toes.

“yeah that’s Logan!!! There's also gonna be Remy, and Zeke, and Emile, and Thomas, and uhhh I think that’s it. I dunno where I'm gonna have it though, my house is pretty small, and my parents are gonna be there all weekend and I wanted it to like end in a sleepover because they're fun!!! Do you have any ideas?”

“I mean my parents are gonna be gone until Tuesday for a conference and my place is pretty enormous. We could have it there?”

He flinched slightly at the deafening squeal Patton let loose. He also flinched slightly when Patton launched into him with a hug. He was not prepared.

“ohmygosh ROMAN!!! YOU'RE A LIFE SAVER!!! I’ll let them all know!!! When would it be ok to start coming over?”

“uhh, I need to do a major clean and then I need to find my parents giant speakers and I should probably stock up on snacks and food and drinks. I can probably be done with all of that by like noon tomorrow? That sound good?”

“yeah!!! Oh, thank you thank you thank you!!! Also, I'm making the foodenings, and vee was gonna be getting snacks and drinks. If you wanna get disposable plates and things that would probably be a good idea, so we don’t leave you with tons of dirty dishes. Also, I think Remy made a playlist for us that he can Bluetooth to your speakers. Oh, this is gonna be so cool Ro!!!”

“yeah! I’ll text you my address in a minute. But I gotta get going. Lots to do now!”

Patton nods fervently and hugs him again. He speaks softer, calmer this time.

“really Roman thank you. We weren’t able to afford prom tickets even if we wanted to go, and I was scared that we would have to just waste our night alone. It means a lot.”

Roman smiles and wraps his arms around the short man. He was grateful for this too. After they let go Patton waved goodbye and Roman stepped into his car. He shot his parents a text and took a deep breath. Turning on the radio, he sang along to the music as he drove home.

#roman sanders #patton sanders #high school au #platonic royality #moxiety #tw alcohol mention #tw homophobia mention #my writing #my fanfiction

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brenli · 5 years

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[28]

Tagged by: @goddamnitkastle (YAYAYAY ANOTHER ONE!)

1. how tall are you? 5′3″

2. what color and style is your hair? Dark brown. A couple of stray silver strands. When the light hits it right you can see natural auburn-y red highlights/tones in it, especially near the ends. I wear it long, down to my lower back, usually parted in the middle (sometimes on the left) and with bangs. Usually blunt-cut across my brows, but I'm not as good about trimming them as I ought to be so they usually end up growing out long enough that I need to brush them off to the right.

3. what color are your eyes? Brown

4. do you wear glasses? My cat-eye specs are basically part of my identity at this point.

5. do you wear braces? Nope

6. what is your fashion style? I have contempt for this question that likes of which you cannot believe. XD I guess in the most general sense it's rock-chic. Rock/metal girl elements mixed with glamorous or feminine elements/silhouettes. But this is MASSIVELY boiling down my massive wardrobe and I've certainly had moments of departure from the rock-chic umbrella depending on how I'm feeling. I dislike strictly adhering to specific style labels; I find it stifling.

7. full name? Brenda Lee Larson. My maiden name is cooler to be honest; I only changed it because I was more interested in sharing a surname with the Honey and I know I can still use my maiden name for other things.

8. when were you born? July 24, 1987

9. where are you from and where do you live now? Technically born in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, WA, USA and spent the first 4 years of my life bouncing around different naval stations because my family was about that Navy Life, but the majority of my formative years Spokane, WA, USA so my assumption is that would be more accurately where I'm "from." (Hawaii is where my heart wants to say I'm from though as that's where my earliest memories take place~) After some years spent CA (first in the Bay and then in LA), I'm currently living just south of Seattle, WA. So. Basically I've been wiggling around the West Coast my whole life, including going so far west I ditched the mainland for a spell.

10. what school do you go to? I WORK at a school currently, Cornish. Freelancing as a house manager for 3 of their 4 venues. The 4th one never seems to put on any events that require one of us from the house management roster, otherwise I'd work gigs at that one, too. XD

11. what kind of student are you? Some of you who make these questionnaires clearly cannot think beyond life-after-schooling and it shows. XD I was an above-average student for the vast majority of my years in schooling but I started falling off a little toward the end, largely because I was very keenly aware of what areas of study pertained to me and my interests/goals, and I had no patience for areas of study that did not. I left before it got too bad.

12. do you like school? I liked the parts of school that spoke to me~

13. what are your favorite school subjects? Literature/English was always the major go-to throughout all of my years of schooling. I was in Choir up until highschool; this was when Theatre became available to me and I wasn't able to participate in both, so I parted ways with Choir and focused on Theatre all the way up through my last years of schooling. Other subjects of interest, in highschool: Photography, Psychology, Forensic Science, World History. In college: Creative Writing, Journalism, Japanese.

14. favorite TV shows? The major ones have been racy period dramas The Tudors and The Borgias. I grew up on Star Trek TOS and as such it has a very dear place in my heart despite it not being a racy period drama. XD I also am quite invested in the Netflix MCU with Daredevil and The Punisher being my two favorite shows (Frank is my everything!). More currently I've been expanding my Sanada-san filmography-binge thanks in large part to @anagraves; I recently finished the 1993 Koukou Kyoushi and am through episode 10 of Konna Koi no Hanashi. What I've been learning from this - Hiroyuki Sanada knows how to break hearts whether he's being soft and vulnerable to cold and cruel and anything in between, but that's exactly why I love him.

INB4 "you post Snow White everything so why isn't OUAT on here" I do enjoy OUAT a lot, but I don't know if I would consider it a favorite show overall. I'm more fond of the earlier seasons than the later seasons and it's that ambivalent feeling I have for the later seasons that make the show not a favorite - but still very good overall.

It's also at this point that I should probably explain what my blog description does not - my blog started running a Snow White-themed queue LARGELY as part of an inspiration-drive for a Snow White AU project that I haven't actually touched in a long time. I REALLY should do something about that; I just keep getting pulled in other directions and now it's years on and here I am with what's basically a Snow White queueblog. XD If I can ever get my dumb head in gear and FINISH what I've started, that would honestly result in the queue being mass-posted and then probably altered to suit whatever the next project would be. That's always been the intention, anyway.

15. favorite movies? While I'm still feeling the chilly gaze of my Snow White queue, my favorite Snow White movie thus far is Mirror Mirror. I think it's massively underrated and that makes me sad.

As far as Disney is concerned, while I have a HUGE amount of respect for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, my favorite film growing up was Beauty and the Beast (and my Rococo-loving ass does adore the live action remake). Surprise??? XD More recently, Moana is the film of my heart; it's the closest Disney has gotten to making a Princess culturally-relevant to me as a half-Filipina so my tropical islander ass is just utterly enamoured with Moana. ((Listen Disney if you ever decide to make a super fun colorful precolonial Philippine film THE PERFECT PRINCESS EXISTS FOR THAT, I submit for your consideration - Urduja!)

Because of my rather open-door childhood with regard to media, my earliest favorite movies are actually Nightmare on Elm Street and Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors. Freddy is my Nightmare King Murder Boyfriend and I'm prepared to face judgement for that. XD

Fondness for Star Trek TOS has resulted in an affection for the AOS movies~

But a movie that speaks to me very much is What Dreams May Come.

Currently I've gotten re-ensnared into The Last Samurai, in correlation with the most recent AU project. Because I am hopeless, Grumpy Samurai is Best Samurai, and I've been spending time manically fretting and pretending that because Ujio drops before the gatling guns are brought out, maybe he SOMEHOW managed to survive in SOME way and he can have tons of cool battle scars. Right? ... RIGHT???

16. favorite books? If manga counts then it's Angel Sanctuary. Hands down. No contest. It's easily woven itself into my life in the form of fanfic that is/was well-received within the fandom, and a weirdly HUGE list of AUs that somehow burst out of nowhere. (Currently all of it, AU work included, can be read via my FF.Net account under brenli. I have a placeholder page on AO3 that's currently empty but may end up holding all my content there as well, in time. If I can ever make the time.)

I was and am really into Sue Harrison's Ivory Carver series, particularly My Sister the Moon.

It was part of my middle school/junior high reading curriculum but I honestly DID really like The Diving Bell by Todd Strasser. Even if the cover art of Culca coming up out of the ocean looked A LOT like me and resulted in my class calling me Culca for the entirety of our unit on that book. It's fine. Culca is a badass queen of pearls and seawater so I'm happy to be associated with her~!

Every now and then I remember a book that clearly really resonated with my as a child if I still remember it, but the problem is that I don't remember the title or the author, or even any of the characters' names. It was about a Roma girl who lived in the American south - I wanna say Tennesee? - who was discovered for her talent playing guitar and singing country music. The book essentially details her struggle between her traditional roots as a Roma person, including the arrangement for her to be married young, and her interest in pursuing music as a career but feeling alienated by an industry and a society at large that is wealthier than her and has a different culture from her own. The book ends with her running away but it isn't made clear what her ultimate fate is. To this DAY it bothers me that I don't remember the title or the author because I honestly go through periods where I want to reread it. And yes, this was the kind of stuff I was reading as a child. XD I also read My Sister the Moon for the first time when I was like. 11 years old. If you're familiar with the content of that book then you're aware that certain scenes are really not 11-year-old friendly, but. If I can watch gratuitous 80's slasher horror at age 4 then I can read about a young woman surviving sexual abuse at age 11.

17. favorite pastime? Writing at this rate, honestly. Which probably speaks more to my inner tortured artist than anything else. XD

18. do you have any regrets? I feel like everybody has at least one regret and anyone who says otherwise is either very very young, or lying. XD It's not about whether you have regrets, it's about not letting them hold you in the past.

19. dream job? Telling stories, in any and every way attainable to me.

20. would you like to get married someday? I already am~

21. would you like to have kids someday? Absolutely not. I don't feel like my life is conducive to childrearing, and INB4 "you're never truly ready" and "you make it work" the key factor here is I'm not WILLING to become ready and I'm not WILLING to make it work. That's how I know my life is not conducive to childrearing. XD (I'm at that age where tons of people are asking me this and feeding me words meant to encourage me to consider and it's honestly EXHAUSTING by this point. I can't wait for when I'm menopausal maybe people will finally shut up about it because I'll be past my prime~)

23. do you like shopping? I mean, yes, but I usually avoid it because I'm aware of how impulsive I am.

24. what countries have you visited? I'm tempted to say that Hawaii should count because it's so far away from the mainland. XD But honestly I've never been outside of US territory. It's in the plans to try for Japan during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. I'm not sure if we'll make that goal but if not, I figure it won't hurt to continue saving up anyway and making a Tokyo trip post-Olympics. Prices will be cheaper post-Olympics, anyway, so~

25. what’s the scariest nightmare you’ve ever had? At the risk of raising weird red flags I've gone through periods where I'll have reoccurring nightmares about being actively pursued by someone who very obviously intends to do harm. It happens often enough that the Honey wonders if I'm mentally suppressing something. XD I did have a standalone dream though, where me and the Honey were asleep in bed and then I become aware that someone's broken into the house and is approaching our bed. I'm walking through every possible option in my head with my eyes shut; if the Honey and I both lunged at the attacker we could possibly overpower them just because it would be two against one. But I know that I can't possibly wake up the Honey and make him aware of the situation without the attacker immediately acting and resulting in at least one of us being injured or killed. I realize that I have no choice but to try and take the attacker by surprise by myself and hope that is enough. I make peace with that. I can feel the attacker leaning over me. I suddenly lunge at them in full primal adrenaline-filled rage.

I wake up.

26. do you have any enemies? I guess that I have a few, yes, but honestly at this point I've gotten probably a little too used to being vilified. Barring physical assault or turning the animosity on innocent third parties in my life, I am prepared to weather the metaphorical lashes.

27. do you have an s/o? I have my Honey~

28. do you believe in miracles? I believe in miracles that aren't the overt surface-level wish-fulfillment-from-above which I think most people expect a miracle to be. I think that sometimes luck plays out via a slim-to-none chance and that can be a miracle. I think that sometimes a person works very hard at something or for something and when they achieve it, that can be a miracle. I think that the butterfly effect is a double-edged sword, but sometimes that little flutter of a butterfly's wings is a miracle.

Tagging: @yacky-jackie @halorecoil @anagraves @benevolentqueenofstars @lesbomancy @candybunnieholic @lemonedscream @tinathefish

#questionaire

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sightsoundrhythm · 5 years

Text

DALE CROVER

Dale Crover is a Los Angeles based musician best known for being the drummer in The Melvins. Since joining the band in 1984, The Melvins have released 21 albums to date, as well as numerous E.P.s, compilations and live recordings. Their most recent album, Pinkus Abortion Technician, is available now via Ipecac Recordings.

Dale's readily identifiable, bombastic, and creatively boundless style has remained an integral part of the band's sound throughout their 35 years together, helping to shape their unique output as well as influencing countless musicians and bands along the way.

In Addition to his work with The Melvins, Dale was also an early member of Nirvana, performing on their first demo as a band and appearing on three album releases, including their debut album Bleach on Sub Pop Records. He has also recorded and performed music with a multitude of different bands over the years including: Crystal Fairy, Hank Williams III and Shrinebuilder, to name a few, and he currently plays in Redd Kross, Altamont and leads the Dale Crover Band on vocals and guitar.

Pinkus Abortion Technician by Melvins

SIGHT/SOUND/RHYTHM spoke to Dale a few hours before a Melvins show at Leeds University, UK, to discuss his musical background, the past and present of The Melvins, and a few of the many musical projects that he's been involved in.

How's the tour been going so far?

Good, thanks. We have three shows left for this run after tonight.

You played here at Leeds University before, didn't you?

Yeah, we last played here about ten years ago.

Have you been next door to see where The Who's Live at Leeds was recorded?

Yeah, I just went over there to check it out. I'd seen it before when we were here last time but I had to go and take a picture of it. Buzz (Osbourne, Melvins frontman) was saying that he remembered seeing photos from Live at Leeds and that the stage was really shallow.

The Stones, Zeppelin, and tons of other bands played there, which is pretty impressive. I remember the last time we were here they had pictures up of The Who when they played there again in the mid '00s.

Whenever I'd listen to that record I always imagined that it was recorded in some really nice, pristine theatre, then I saw it and was like, this is where they recorded it? A crappy lunch room?! [laughs] It kind of makes sense I guess.

I was listening to Live at Leeds recently and I can hear some of that vocabulary in your playing – the way he played fills around the kit. Was Keith Moon a big influence on you?

Yeah, pretty big. I didn't really know The Who until I joined The Melvins. I heard them through Buzz, and he's a huge Who fan. They were, and probably still are, his favourite band. He always talked about how you can tell that Pete Townshend was writing with his drumming in mind on a lot of their material.

I met Jim Fox who drums in The James Gang not too long ago. Somebody had made him aware that we'd covered the song Stop on our new record, which they had done a cover of, too, so he came down to one of our shows.

They had done a bunch of shows with The Who in the U.S. during the seventies. Townsend really liked Joe Walsh's playing, so they invited them to come over here to the U.K. and tour. He said that the way that those guys toured was that they each had their own car and driver, so they got paired up together. So it'd be Joe Walsh with Pete Townshend, and Jim Fox got paired up with Keith Moon. Sometimes they'd ride with Roger (Daltrey) but they didn't like it because he drove his own car and they said that his driving was really crappy. [laughs]

I knew Jim would have a million Keith Moon stories, and he was like, 'Yeah... but he'd just pretty much pass out in the car for the whole day and then wake up at around 5pm'. Keith would be there asking, 'How was the show last night?' It was probably amazing, judging by how good Live at Leeds is.

What were you like as a kid?

I was kind of a goofy kid, glasses, but pretty normal. I heard music early on though. I had Beatles and Monkees records from when I was about six years old. I liked baseball, and still do. I didn't like it for a long time but now I like it again.

I grew up in a very small town with not a lot going on...

That's Aberdeen, Washington?

Yeah. I actually had parents that weren't divorced, unlike all of my other friends.

[Dale's phone vibrates]

Sorry, that's my friend Bob (Hannam). He's the guy who made our documentary. He's actually from Bradford.

[Laughs] Ah, ok. You and I actually met in Bradford in 1996 when you guys were touring Stag.

Oh, wow! Really?

Yeah, you'd just finished playing at a club called Rios. We hung out for a while afterwards and you, Buzz and Mark Deutrom were teaching me and my friend how to play Craps in the car park with some dice that you'd recently picked up in Las Vegas.

[Laughs] That's crazy!

I remember that tour. The Seattle thing was kind of over by that point and I remember our booking agent trying to talk us out of doing the whole tour in the U.K. He was saying, 'Look, it's going to be bad. London will be fine, but you just shouldn't do it'. We really wanted to do it though... but, on the whole, it was really under-attended.

Yeah, I think there were probably around 50 people there and you guys were doing three sets.

That's right, we did!

I remember you ending one of the sets with Cottonmouth...

Right! We were just talking about that the other day, about how I used to play guitar from behind the kit and sing that.

I gotta ask my friend really quick about this show. [Dale sends a text to Bob Hannam]

Melvins were playing three sets a night on that tour. How did you prepare yourself for that?

Practicing a lot, plus when you get on tour you get used to playing pretty quickly. I think by that point we had been on tour for a while. Prior to that we had already played shows before where we had done two or three sets. Once you get past the second set you're already warmed up and can do it without any problems.

I did it last year when we were playing over here in England with Melvins and Redd Kross, so I'd be doing a set with both bands, and by the Melvins set I'd be fully warmed up.

How old were you when you first started playing?

I guess officially I would've probably been about eleven or twelve.

I found out that my neighbour had a drum set in their basement that they didn't really play and I somehow talked him into letting me take it home, just to bang around on it. I also played guitar from when I was around eight years old, and I always liked both.

I remember being in a talent show in fifth or sixth grade and playing guitar. I taught my friend that lived across the alley from me how to play the drums for it.

Around that same time I had this older friend who lived a block away, who eventually went on to play in the band Metal Church, and he befriended me. By that point I was already into Kiss, who I had seen play when I was in sixth grade, but he turned me on to Zeppelin and stuff like that. He was even showing me how to play rock songs on the guitar, like Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent, but then at some point he said, 'You know, you should get a drum set so we can jam!' So that's kind of how I started.

Did you have an immediate connection with the instrument?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I was already really into it, even before that... especially with Kiss. That was the band that made me want to play music.

I don't even know if schools have much of a music program anymore, but starting in fourth grade back then you could play a stringed instrument, so I started playing cello. Then in fifth grade you could play a brass instrument, so I wanted to play the tuba [laughs], but then rock and roll basically took over and I switched in the following year and got a snare drum. I had a paper route and I delivered papers to buy my first drum set, and I had it by the seventh grade.

That first drum set was from the 60's and it got pretty thrashed. I used it when I was in The Melvins, too.

What was it like growing up somewhere that didn't have a music scene?

It was weird. Even then a lot of the music that I liked wasn't being played on the local radio, so I found out about stuff through my older friends. One of my friends got into a cover band and I used to go and watch them practice all the time.

I actually met a drummer who was pretty good from the neighbouring town, whose brother actually ended up marrying my sister. He had a Ludwig Octaplus drum set with double bass drums and eight toms. After a while I wasn't into Kiss anymore and I got into Rush, so I was really into Neil Peart.

You're going to need those toms!

[laughs] Exactly! I never got there though.

At one point, the drum set I had in The Melvins was a red sparkle kit which had two mismatched bass drums from different kits. They were the same colour but they didn't quite match.

So I had two bass drums, two rack toms, a floor tom, and then another big floor tom in the centre, so it was this kind of weird pyramid/diamond shape. It was held up by gravity and shitty stands and I couldn't afford cymbals. When I eventually could, I remember buying one and bringing it to practice and those guys taking it from me and hiding it. I could only use it when we played shows because I just used to break them, you know.

Did the geographical isolation of Aberdeen help you guys as a band?

Definitely. I mean, all we did was practice when we started, but really we made most of our music away from there. It inspired us to play because there was really nothing else to do, besides smoke weed and drink.

Do you still have family there?

No, not anymore. Both of my parents have passed away. My mom had actually already moved out of there when she retired and so she went to Olympia. There was a lot more going on there, and when The Melvins first started out that's where we would go and play. I mean, there was no place to play in Aberdeen at all, and nobody would've liked it anyway.

How supportive were they when you first started playing?

They were really supportive. I remember the day that Buzz and Matt came over to talk to me about playing in The Melvins. My mom had just been saying to me, 'You know, you've got to find a band that's really going to do something', because the stuff I was doing at the time really wasn't going anywhere.

I already knew who they were from seeing them open for Metal Church in Aberdeen, and nobody liked them. That was the one gig that happened there ever, besides some school dances.

I'd actually seen them already because this cover band that I played in had done a benefit for a live radio show which was happening at Christmas time at Elk's Lodge, which The Melvins were also playing. They were the only band around who were playing original material, which I thought was kind of cool. I didn't know anything about punk rock then besides what I'd read, and I'd never heard it because you couldn't find any of those records. I'd seen the film Rock & Roll High School, and the only thing I could relate it to was that they kind of sounded like The Ramones and also like Motorhead, so I liked it. My other band mates thought it sucked, probably because it was competition for them.

Before all of that my bands were practicing at our house. We had a little four bedroom house and my older brothers had already moved out and gone to college, so I had command of three bedrooms. The one at the back of the house was where we would practice. When I first joined the Melvins we practiced for about a month before our first show.

Where was that first show?

In Olympia.

Do you remember much about it?

It was us opening for D.O.A., and I think it went well.

There was another one a week later that was with Green River and a band called The He-Sluts at the Tropicana in Olympia. The U-Men were supposed to play, who were a pretty popular Seattle band, but for whatever reason they didn't show up. There is a recording of that show available.

youtube

[Dale receives a text from Bob Hannam]

Bob said about that Bradford show: “Yeah, you did three sets. My friend left half way through because he couldn't stand it.” [laughs]

What were the things that were important to you when you first started playing and how have they changed over time?

Good question. Well, it's not so important for me to play fast anymore. [laughs]

Things have changed and grown so much that it's really hard to say. Even from our first recordings to now, they're far different, but I guess that comes with experience. We still practice a lot, so some things haven't changed. We have our own studio now and we're able to record whenever we want to. I think that's helped us musically.

When we did our first record, we'd rehearse those songs so much before we ever got to record them, and we probably beat some of them into the ground and ruined what the original feeling was.

Did you record the first album with a label in mind to release it?

No, not with the first record. There are probably a chunk of songs that never got recorded because we didn't have the means to do it. We'd play them live a few times and then get sick of them and write new songs that we liked more, so there were probably at least a full album's worth of songs that we never even recorded, which we've probably since forgotten about, too.

They might be on some cassette tape somewhere. When we can't play anymore we'll dig up all the stuff from the archives, kind of like the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series.

Similar to The Mangled Demos?

Yeah. That stuff was all with Mike Dillard who was the original drummer.

How long was Mike playing in The Melvins before you joined?

Probably for about a year. The band started in 1983 and I think that once Buzz started to write songs that were a little more complicated, Mike wasn't quite comprehending it. We're all still good friends and we did the Melvins 1983 record with him on drums.

It's cool because he still feels like a part of the band, and whenever we hang out with him it's like we're back in eighth grade again. [laughs] He and Buzz used to cause a lot of trouble when they were teenagers.

It's nice that you still have that connection. Were there any things in particular that you remember trying to master when you first started?

Oh, gosh. Well, I remember playing to Kiss records.

I'm sure that there were triplet fills which incorporated the bass drum and stuff like that, or just trying to figure how drummers did certain things.

I remember even before I started taking lessons that the Bay City Rollers had a Saturday morning variety show in the States and they were huge. I wasn't really a fan of those guys but I could watch the drummer on the show and I could see how he played certain things.

I mean, I had a pretty good time figuring stuff out, and it wasn't too difficult.

How long were you taking lessons for?

Probably about three or four years, and that started because there was a school band when I was in Junior High School, which had a lot of drummers, probably more than most school bands would have. Most schools would have one or two and we had up to eight.

There was a professor at the junior college who was a jazz drummer and he offered lessons for 50 cents per kid if we'd go in on Saturdays. So there were drummers there who were older than me who had seniority and they were first chair, but none of them showed up. So it was me and one other kid, who couldn't play very well.

The next week came and only I showed up and the drum teacher said, 'I was hoping that this was going to go a little better and that more people would show up, but I can't really give you lessons for just fifty cents [laughs], but if you want to take private lessons with me I can do it for six bucks an hour'. So that's where I started learning rudiments as well as working on proper technique, which I still practice now.

A lot of players who hit as hard as you do aren't always that aware of their own technique but this seems to be something that you're definitely aware of.

Yeah, these days there's less movement in my drumming. I realised this recently that I use my fingers when I'm playing a lot more now. When I was younger I didn't really sit around and practice all of that stuff too much – I just wanted to play rock songs, but now I do a lot more of that stuff. Also, I still feel like I'm still learning. I'll go on Youtube and figure stuff out and look at how other people play, which is great.

It's a process that never ends.

Yeah!

Have you had any physical problems from playing at all?

I pinched a nerve in my shoulder when we were playing with Jello Biafra. We were practicing a lot and I moved my arm in a weird way and that was it. It took a long time to heal. It was... it was fucked, [laughs] but I still had to play and get through it.

How are your ears holding up?

I'm hard of hearing and they're going for sure. I've actually got hearing aids but I don't wear them all of the time. When I'm around my kids I have a hard time hearing them, so it was something that I'd thought about for a long time and I finally got them.

You've always struck me as a very ego-less player in a lot of ways. I can't imagine many drummers being completely willing to include a second drummer into a band, or switching to bass for an entire record and letting another drummer take over.

Likewise with your playing itself. I remember first hearing the intro to the song 'Queen' from Stoner Witch and being impressed at how simple the opening part was, which I found to be equally as impressive as some of your more complex playing. I feel that a lot of drummers wouldn't dare to play something so simplistic like that.

Do you have a particular philosophy towards drumming that informs how you play?

No, not necessarily. It all depends on the song.

With regards to being ego-less, there are a lot of drummers who wouldn't like it if a guitar player said, 'I want you to play it like this'. But, for me, it's like: well, he wrote the song!

Sometimes I might not know what exactly to play and Buzz might have an idea for what he's already hearing. This gets back to how someone like Pete Townshend wrote for Keith Moon, and a lot of the time Buzz writes with me in mind. That isn't always the case. Sometimes he might not know what needs to be played and then I'll come up with something.

How does Buzz dictate some of those ideas to you?

A lot of it is just him telling me where he hears certain ideas, and sometimes some of that is hard to learn in order to get it right, but he's got great ideas.

The band has gone through many line up changes over the course of 35 years. Most bands wouldn't have lasted as long under the same circumstances. Do you think that this has worked to your advantage as a band?

Yeah, it's certainly kept it fresh. We never wanted to part ways with anybody in particular, it just always came down to personal problems. After we had Kevin Rutmanis playing bass – that was a really hard break up because we really liked him but he had troubles that were affecting the band.

After that we went back into it not wanting to have anyone that we would consider permanent anymore. We want to have an open relationship basically [laughs], and that's worked great!

This current line up of The Melvins features two bass players (Jeff Pinkus and Steve McDonald). Has playing in this configuration forced you to alter your approach at all?

I don't think so.

Does it help to create more musical opportunities?

Yeah. I try to play with them both, so I'm not really following one or the other. They've both come up with their own parts for the whole thing.

What were the musical challenges for you when including Cody Willis from Big Business into the band as a second drummer? I know that you had talked in the past about including Dave Grohl as a second drummer in the mid nineties so I'm guessing that this was something you'd been interested in doing for a while.

Yeah, after Nirvana broke up we actually asked him if he'd like to come and join us. It was an open invitation to come and do whatever, whether that would have been recording or playing a show. We heard that he was into it, and we saw his old band mates in Scream who said that Dave had even drawn up some plans for building one large drum set that we would both play, but it never went any further. Soon after he formed Foo Fighters and that was that.

So, yeah, it was something that we had been thinking about for a while, and we kind of did it with the Melvins/Fantomas Big Band with Dave Lombardo, so we knew that it would work. There was another guy that we asked who was in a band called Hovercraft but he didn't want to do it. We had toured with them and he would keep his drum set out and then come out and play the song 'Amazon' with us, so we knew that it was an idea that would work.

After Kevin left the band my wife actually suggested that we ask Jared, who plays bass in Big Business alongside Cody, to join the band, because she'd been friends with him, and we'd played shows with them before. So I mentioned that to Buzz and he said, 'Why don't we just ask both of them to do it?'

I thought it'd be cool. Cody plays left handed so we were able to put the two sets together and share certain parts of the kit.

We just asked them to come down and play, not to try out for the band, just to see what they thought, and it happened right away. We worked really hard on everything. Funnily enough, they were already thinking about moving down to L.A. to begin with.

You played on some really early Nirvana recordings, including tracks that ended up on the album Bleach. What are some of the standout memories you have from recording those sessions with Jack Endino at Reciprocal?

They wanted to do a demo so that they could get a permanent drummer, basically, and I worked it all out with those guys. We drove over to Reciprocal Recording and did ten songs, which were done really quickly. Whenever I listen to some of those songs now I'm reminded that we were drinking coffee and eating chocolate covered espresso beans, so you can hear some of those songs speed up, but we weren't really too worried about because it was just a demo. They ended up going back later to remix and use some of those songs. That night after recording we went and played our first show, then the next day we shot a video at Radio Shack in Aberdeen.

We had a friend who was the manager there and the video is just us miming along to one of the songs [laughs]. We were sort of messing around. It was fun!

youtube

Among the many projects that you've been involved with, you and Buzz played with Omar and Teri in Crystal Fairy not so long ago. What was it like doing that project? Will you be doing anything more with it?

Unfortunately I don't know that any more will happen with it but we really liked writing songs with Teri. We just got in a room to figure out what kind of songs we wanted to write, and both Buzz and Teri had a few ideas. Within the first day of getting together we had written and recorded three songs that were damn near done. She's really quick at writing and comes up with amazing lyrics. I'd never played with a singer who could just come up with melody and good lyrics right off the top of their head like that. It's crazy.

Yeah, it was cool hearing her in a different context to what I had heard her in before. It's a great record.

Yeah! I'm involved in it of course but I think she was doing things that she'd never done before with that record. It was one of my favourite things that I've been involved in at that point, so I was really bummed that it fell apart and that we didn't get to play any shows.

Buzz and I were really committed to it. We were going to put The Melvins on hold because we thought that it was something that was really special. So that was a tough loss.

Your musical relationship with Buzz is now into its third decade. What is it that makes the relationship between the two of you work so well?

I don't know. We were in a working relationship before we were really friends, which is probably different from most bands.

I think just keeping our heads together and being realistic about everything, and really wanting it to work. Bands usually break up for stupid reasons but, for whatever reason, we never wanted to quit. I'm really happy about it. We've never really gotten into fights or anything like that. We get along well.

When we're at home we sometimes hang out and go to a baseball game together, or maybe the movies or go play golf. We don't live in the same neighbourhood, so we aren't over at each other's houses much, maybe once or twice a year, but we see each other all of the time elsewhere anyway.

How does being a dad fit in with being a touring musician at this point? What do your kids make of what you do?

I think they like it. Sometimes kids at their school even know who the band is. They've come to see us play and have pretty much grown up with it but it is hard for them, especially when I first leave. It's hard for me, too.

Before we even had kids, me and my wife would have long talks about how it would work. I mean, I have to keep doing this because this is how I make money, so it's going to be hard but we just have to deal with it the best we can. It's a strange life. Not everybody has that. The one thing I could maybe relate it to would be like someone being in the military, but then those people are sometimes gone for longer.

I relate things to baseball a lot, too, [laughs] but baseball players will play a hundred and sixty two games a year and half of those are away. The only thing that's probably easier for them is that they aren't in one place for a single night, so they'll play at a place for three or four nights. I wish we could do that. That'd be great! [laughs]

What are the things you spend the most amount of time thinking about these days?

You mean besides baseball? [laughs] I honestly don't know. I try to live in the moment.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you?

Trying to schedule everything in my life, because there's so much going on.

Melvins is always a solid schedule, but when I get home I also have a solo band now and I also play with Redd Kross, then there will be more Melvins shows. So just trying to get everything to fit in and still have time for family.

I'm trying to do all of these things and not feel like I've got too much on my plate and still be able to get everything done.

It's a hard balance.

Yeah, it is.

Well, thanks for taking the time to do this, Dale. It's massively appreciated.

Thank you!

Interview by Dave Jones.

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unwoundvisions · 4 years

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Cayla (1974)

- What is your Full name? Include any maiden names, aliases, or nicknames.

Macayla Faye Ridley, but I’m usually called Cayla. Because 1, it’s easier and 2, my dad’s called me that since I was kid.

- When is your birthday? Do you know where you were born and at what time?

February 23, 1949. I was actually born late in the morning and it was at a hospital in Leicestershire.

- What is your star sign? Do you know your Chinese Zodiac too?

Pisces and I believe it’s the Ox.

- What is your earliest memory that you can remember?

Oh lord. I can’t recall a ton from my early childhood. I’ve got flashes of things like riding around with my parents. However, some of the stuff I can clearly recall is the times I was singing and dancing. I sang in front of my family all the time and I can clearly remember being excited for my first dance class when I was very young. I remember being obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Going back even futher, I can kind of remember my first day of school. I was very shy and started crying when a group game started because it was just so overwhelming. That’s a pattern in my life apparently, crying whenever slightly overwhelmed.

- Where was your childhood home? Was it more urban or rural?

I would call it more rural than anything. Just ask Deacy. We both grew up in very small town called Oadby in Leicester. Great place but I was desperate to get out and see more.

- How was your childhood in general? Did your parents treat you well? Did you have a lot of friends?

Overall, my childhood was pretty good. My parents never tried to rush me to grow up too fast. I’ve had a handful of friends in my life. Haven’t really kept in touch with anyone from secondary school other than Deacy. He’s my oldest friend and we met a very long time ago. So long ago that I don’t recall the exact moment we first met. We’ve literally known each other since we were small and I’m glad he’s still in my life after all this time.

- How was/is school? What is your favorite and least favorite subjects? What were your grades on average?

I was always somewhat okay when it came to school. Always did well if was about anything other than math. I never liked the strict requirements for school but I have always loved learning (again as long as it wasn’t math). I did strive for good grades but that is only because I am perfectionist and underperforming literally made me anxious. I still have a problem with being perfectionist and failure to this day. But hey, it made me get decent grades. I’m proud to say mostly A’s and B’s amongst the sea of C’s or D’s I got in math.

- Did you have a best friend growing up? What was their name? Are you still in touch?

Hell yes. John fucking Decon. He’s been my best friend since we were kids. We’ve just always gotten along. Balanced each other out in a nice way. We weren’t always together because I’m a couple of years older than him. But, we spent every spare seconds together we could. We always ate lunch together. Always played together or went to parties together. We weren’t super in touch when I started university. I just got busy and then he quickly did too. But we clicked back together again once Queen started up.

- Were you in any cliques?

Not really. I really hung out with all sorts of people. I mainly hung out with the creative types. Drama kids, music kids, art kids. But I usually hung out with all sorts of people.

- Best childhood memory you can recall?

One of my favorite memories is when Elvis was on television once. This was when I was super young, the days where everyone hated him simply for dancing to his own music. My parents had left Deacy and I alone with the television and I was convinced that was the most gifted singer on the planet. Of course, my mother turned it off once she realized but that didn’t stop me and Deacy from going outside to preform exactly what we watched.

- Worst childhood memory you can recall?

When I was teenager, right before my parents got divorced. Not the greatest time. They did nothing but arugue and cause me stress so I often spent a great deal of my time out of the house, staying with whoever would let me. Just to get away from it all. I was miserable and I think their entire relationship is why I’ve never really had this huge urge to get married.

- Name an event in your childhood that has shaped you into the person you are today.

Doing theatre for the first time changed my life. Helped me come out of my shell and helped me realize what I’m passionate about which is entertainment. At the end of my first play, I’ll never forget thinking I had found my calling.

- What is the dumbest thing you have ever done to impress someone? Were they impressed or was it all for naught?

Okay, I had this guy in school who used to wear this ridiculous hat. Somehow, he made it look attractive even though he wore it everyday. So, my ass went and bought one very similar too it; hoping he’d say something and he never said a word. I don’t blame him, I looked ridiculous.

- Did you ever have any sweethearts or lovers? Do you have a boy/girlfriend?

Oh lord. Well, me and a Deacy went out for like a week when we were young. We quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. After that, I really dated until I was in my late teens. Not, by choice, I think it’s because people more saw me as a funny/outgoing type so they never really thought about me THAT way. So, when dickhead of the century, Conrad, came along, showing me all the attention of the world, looking like a lost puppy who just needed to be fixed, I fell for it. He led me along for about almost a year and half before I finally made a move and asked him out. It was all downhill from there. We went on a handful of dates and he was the first guy I ever slept with. Promptly after we did that, he never wanted anything to do with me. Stopped talking me. Wouldn’t even explain why until I cornered him: “I just don’t like you that way.” Asshole used me as a shoulder to cry on for a year, acted like we were best friends, acted like he cared for me and “changed” his mind after we slept together. So yeah, that gave me a huge amount of trust issues. So much so, I never really seriously dated anyone after that. I’ve dated casually, slept around, but I’ve never tried to have anything serious again because one asshole ruined it for me,

- Are you a virgin?

Nope. Not at all. I probably wouldn’t be even if I hadn’t met Conrad. Still hate that he was the first person I slept with though. Should have waited around for someone better as person and in bed.

- Do you ever plan on getting married in your life? Do you want kids?

I mean, I wouldn’t say no to it. It’d have to be the perfect person though and I’ve been told by my mother my standards are too high to ever find a man so I suppose it may never happen. But even if I never did get married, I’d probably adopt some kids.

- Would you rather have your own kids or adopt? How many kids would you want?

Adopting is my preferred method because I’m terrified of giving birth. However, if I did find the right person, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. They’ll just need to be prepared for how worried I’ll be. But as for how many, I say two or three.

- Do you think you’d be a protective parent or a relaxed parent?

I think it’d be a little bit of both. I want my kids to always trust me and know they can come to me about anything, which calls for a lot relaxed type parenting. However, I’d also be the type of parent always checking in on them because I’m terrified of them getting hurt.

- How would you prefer to pass away? Surrounded by loved ones and at peace, or while doing something heroic?

I’d prefer not to for a very long time. If I get to choose though, quick and painless. If it can’t be painless, in the name of something good like justice or family.

- Generally, how healthy are you? Do you get sick or injured easily or are you fit?

I get mild injuries because I do trip sometimes. But, I’ve never broken anything. I’ve got some scars from a couple of nasty falls. I’ve even got a tiny one near my mouth from when a dog attacked me as a baby. My immune system is shit if I’m not taking vitamins. Seriously, if I go to crowded places, I will come back with some type of cold. Hell, even with vitamins I can still get sick.

- Have you ever been badly injured before? What was the worst time and how did it happen?

Well, I can only think of two times. Once, wag before I can remember, my mother’s dog attacked my face. It was small but still did a lot damage at the time. I think my dad said it even look like my eye was going to fall out. Thankfully, though, I walked away with a mild scar and maybe some uneven eyes. I think I was also in the hospital once for a dislocated shoulder. Again, before I can remember but it happened because my dad was playing with me by swinging me around by my shoulders. Other than those two times, I’ve been lucky.

- How many times have you been to the hospital/doctor’s?

A handful of times at the hospital. Mostly for the things I mentioned before but I can also remember going for stomach issues. Other than that, I hate going to the doctor so I don’t go as often as I should.

- Have you ever had a concussion or brain injury? Have you ever had amnesia?

Thankfuy, no.

- What was the worst illness you ever contacted? Do you know what it was? How long were you sick?

Again, thankfully, I’ve never been seriously sick.

- Ever had any extended hospital stays? What for?

I think I may have been in the hospital for a few days with a nasty stomach bug but thankfully nothing serious.

- Are you employed? Where do you work and who do you work for? What do you do?

I’m a manager for Queen. I consider myself to be more so their stage manager but I’ve really been around far too much for that too be the case. I help them where I can, make sure their not getting screwed over and try to make sure they play nice. There’s also paper work sometimes which is boring.

- Are you happy with your current job?

It’s been a dream honestly. Makes way more money than I ever dreamed of having. The music is amazing, I get to be around the people I love all the time and it’s been really rewarding. Maybe I’ll dable with film making in the future. I really do think we should be filming way more tour stuff and that might be cool to put out there.

- Did you have any previous jobs? What were they and what did you do?

Nothing too serious. I helped around in shops in my spare time. Did makeup for a couple of weddings and parties. I had a lot more fun doing the latter.

- Most dangerous thing you have ever done?

Well, I’m really not a risk taking type person so I’ve avoided a lot of dangerous situations. However, one time I was around some people at a party who really wanted me to get high with them, that’s never really been something I’m into so I said no. She didn’t pressure me much more but her boyfriend was really keen on trying to get me to do it. I think this was because she told him I was bi and was hoping he could relax everyone enough into a threesome. Yeah, fucking hated that guy and I’ve avoided people who pressure me ever since.

- Do you consider yourself a more active person or a more relaxed person?

Both. I’m pretty relaxed in most situations but if I’m excited about something, I get very vocal and obvious about it. But for the most part, I’m pretty relaxed.

- What is your dream come true? How about your worst nightmare?

My dream come true isn’t too far off from what I have now. I’m around the people I love, I have a good job and I’m happy. Maybe I can do some more acting and filming making in the future but for the post part I’m really happy. As for my worst nightmare, not doing enough. I worry about not trying hard enough for what I want and dying without feeling completely accomplished. Plus, it would suck if I never find anyone I connect with.

- What is the biggest and most important goal you have set for yourself?

Being a manager wasn’t a goal of mine but ever since I did start helping the boys I’ve been determined not to let any man think they can belittle me. I usually outwork them and I usually known more than them so I refuse to be treated as less because this usually a man’s position.

- How persistent would you say you are? How much does it take to get you to give up on a task?

I’m very persistent when it counts. I’ll do whatever needs to be done as best as I can. However, if there is a bit of time for me to do that, I’ll probably waste a tiny bit of that time. If there’s no time, it’ll have my full attention until it’s done and I’m stressed.

- Would you surrender yourself to your enemies or fight to the very end?

If someone I loved was in danger, probably surrender. But other than that, hell no. I’ll fight until it kills me. I’d rather die fighting then simply give up.

- When do you usually do your shopping? What is currently on your shopping list?

Whenever I can. I like shopping but it gets exhausting if it happens too much. We’re on tour at the moment so the only real thing on shopping list is cute souvenirs like buttons or pins.

- Currently, what is something you want but do not need?

I want to get a tattoo. I never have because they always said tattos were a death sentence for an actress and now I can not find a single reason I shouldn’t get a tattoo.

- Do you like shopping? What is your favorite thing to shop for?

I do just not all the time. I usually prefer to make it an all day event and then do it again a month later. I really enjoy shopping for makeup, clothes and unconventional things like comic books or stuffed animals. I swear, I don’t buy all of them. Just really, really cute ones. I have standards.

- What is the most expensive thing you have purchased? Was it worth it?

Okay, first thing I properly bought myself was one of Elvis’s guitars. I shouldn’t have. Way too much fucking money but Brian told me about an auction where they were selling the guitar Elvis played during the 1968 comeback special. I bought it. It pained me but I bought it. I don’t even play guitar. It’s just in my apartment. Hanging up like artwork but to me it is.

- What would you do if you were suddenly given one billion dollars out of the blue?

I’m making a good bit of money these days. Way more than I ever expected. I give what I can away to charities and that’s exactly what I’d do with a billion dollars to. Give it to charities. Or create my own where we create housing for homeless people.

- What would you describe your style of clothing as?

Casual and relaxed. I live in t-shirts and jeans for the most part. But if it’s important, I’ll wear some cute dressss or skirts. I like looking cute. I think I give off a “fuck cute things” vibe but I do like being cute. For parties I’ll usually wear something sexy because I love doing that when I can.

- Do you have any hobbies? Name all of them if you can.

Writing, makeup, painting, traveling, photography and reading.

- Do you like and appreciate art? What is your favorite piece of artwork?

I do appreciate art but I don’t know nearly as much as I want to. I know what I do know from Freddie and Elton. They collect art. I suppose I am a fan of Vincent Van Gogh but I think everyone is.

- Do you like music? What is your favorite style of music?

I do. I love music. I admit, I think I’m more passionate about film but music has always been a huge part of my life. I think my favorite style is Rock and Roll. I grew up listening to Elvis but as I got older, I found more cool stuff. I adore Queen’s stuff and they’ve introduced me to a lot of music I didn’t know before.

- Have you ever seen any musicals? What is your favorite?

I have seen them and been apart of them. I have to say, I think I like Phantom of The Opera the most but Les Misérables is good too.

- What are your top three favorite animals? What would you say your “Patronus” or “Spirit Animal” is?

Dogs, Tigers, Ducks. I suppose my spirt animal would probably be a tiger.

- What are your top three favorite colors?

Red, Black and green. I really do love all sorts of colors though.

- What is your favorite season? Do you prefer hotter or colder weather? Do you like snow at all?

Fuck the hot weather. I love the colder seasons and I love snow. I can’t stay out in it for too long because I’m a baby but I love looking at it.

- What kind of flavors do you prefer: Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Spicy, Dry, or Umami (savory meat taste)?

I would say I usually prefer sweet and salty tastes. Sour I’m okay with. Spicy is okay sometimes but again, I’m a baby and I’ll start to sweat if it’s too hot for me. I’m also one of those weirdos who likes Fish. I feel like everyone hates fish but I don’t.

- Can you cook at all?

I can cook enough to survive.

- What is your favorite dish? Can you prepare it? Do you have the recipe handy?

I think my favorite dish is anything pasta related so thankfully, yes, I can easily make that.

- What is your favorite fruit and vegetable?

I really like Pears, Blueberries, Peaches, pineapples. I like others too but that’s what came to my mind. For vegetables I’m a fan of broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, celery, onions, peas, corn and carrots.

- What is your favorite dessert? What is your favorite type of candy/treat?

Ice Cream or Cake. I’m really not hard to please at all. My favorite type of candy though is probably any of those gummy candies.

- What is the best thing you have ever had the opportunity to eat? What is the worst?

I think Sushi was probably one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to eat. I legit cannot eat anything with mushrooms. I hate them with a passion and they ruin food.

- Do you like to drink tea or coffee? Any favorite flavors?

I’m more of a coffee person. Flavored coffees like Carmel or anything like that are usually my favorite. I don’t mind tea either but I don’t reach for it often.

- Describe your sense of humor.

I think it’s sarcastic and dirty. I’ll really laugh at just about anything except cruel type of humor or slapstick. Slapstick isn’t always bad but it just doesn’t appeal to me most of the time. I think I like humor that just seems genuine.

- What is one thing you are justly proud of?

My makeup skills.

- Do you have any religious beliefs? If not, have you ever been to a church service?

I do. I’m Christian but I like to say I’m very relaxed and private Christian. To the point where I never really talk about it with people unless they absolutely express some type of desire to. It’s just not something I naturally want to talk about because it’s a personal thing to me. Plus, I really do respect all religions so I’ve never understood the point of trying to force it down people’s throats. I don’t attend church because I just hate that atmosphere. Feels way too hive-mind and judgmental to me. Plus, I think a lot of religious structures likes churches have caused so much damage in society that it’s made me want to keep to my self.

- What would you say is the worst thing someone has done to you? What is the meanest thing someone has ever said to you?

See the Conrad story above. He’s the worst. As for the meaning thing someone has said, I think it has to be all the times grown ups called me “spastic” simply because I was eager to talk about something.

- What is the worst thing you have done to someone? What is the meanest thing you have said to anyone?

The worst thing I have ever done to someone was tell a secret of theirs because I was with someone who figured it out on their own. It’s the only time I’ve ever done it and I regret it to this day. I think I’ve said quite a couple of mean things to Roger. I’m usually joking for the most part though. I hope he knows that.

- Share the latest entry in your diary/journal.

“Dear Diary, I got a journal today. I can’t wait to start keeping a book about my life so I don’t forget this amazing time. Starting tomorrow, I’ll write in you daily. “

I’ve gotten multiple diaries and usually every entry looks like that and I never pick it up again.

- What is the most precious thing you own? Is it valuable at all?

Prescious makes me think of personal value more than anything. I think it has to be my Pooh Bear. Plus, all the photo albums I have.

- Talk about someone you know. It can be someone you either like or dislike.

I suppose it’s fitting to talk about Tony because I haven’t mentioned him once. I probably shouldn’t bring him up at all but it’s hard not to. He’s a very confusing man and he drives me crazy. Also, don’t tell him but he’s so good looking that it’s not fair. Really. He should be arrested.

#(( i finally did another of these ))#(( i really made the conrad story a bit more conplex ))#(( because in real life it’s a very boring story ))#(( i thought this felt a bit more real ))#(( and i think les mis came out in 1980 but lets pretend it didn’t ))#(( i also hope i got john’s home town right ))#╰ curvy cayla ╮#♫ play the game (queen fic)#✧ modest musings ✧

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glookie · 7 years

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Looking back

Yesterday we celebrated my clubs 10th anniversary. It was nice to watch old pictures of my team members and to see how they fenced back in the days. You could really see the development In HEMA during the last decade just by looking at pictures and old videos. It happened a lot during the years I’ve been a member, and that is not particularly long at all – in November I’ve been doing hema for 3 years. Before going to the anniversary party I was thinking about holding a speech, but I didn’t. I wasn’t prepared, the thought crossed my mind a bit too late. That is the reason why I wanted to write this text. So many thoughts came to me, and I feel that it’s important for me to share this thoughts with you.

The first thought that came to my mind was: Where was I ten years ago? I was 19 years old. Had just finished school. I didn’t know what I wanted at all, I had a very hard time seeing the future in front of me. If someone had told med then: Ten years from now, you will be doing martial arts with swords. And! You will be pretty good at it also. Oh my god. I would have laughed them straight in the face. Me? Doing martial arts? No fucking way! With swords? You gotta be kidding me! I am no one, not good at anything. Especially not at martial arts, I can barely take instructions on choreography doing theatre! That what was I was doing at the time, theatre. It took all of my time, rehearsing, rehearsing. That year, 2007, I played a role in Shakespeare’s “A midsummer night’s dream” in the summer.

I’m the one in the back, wearing that multicolored vest

That was also the year my theatre group started to rent a local that we could have as our own, that was a big step for us. I think I was in three or four plays that year. The years went on, still was into this theatre making. I loved every minute of it. It was my own bubble, my escape from reality. I had a hard time being a part of the society, I had a hard time finding myself and fitting in. Theatre was the perfect world for me to be in, it was almost like a drug. I never stopped, just wanting more. People still talks about a particular scene I’ve made during 2009, I played a five-year old. Today I have a hard time understanding that I really made all those things. Who would have thought that the shy girl from school could be able to stand on a stage like that? Not me, not anyone. But I did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mJ3G7BSluU&t=3s Me playing the five-year old. It’s on Swedish ;)

The thing is, I never had an interest in playing theatre before I started doing it. I came into theatre because of my sister. She had a role in a play 2004, the year after they wanted her in another role. She didn’t want it, they asked me instead since we were related. I thought, sure. Why not? I did it, I got a role as a maiden named Lotta who had a little brother named August. We sang together at the stage. Looking at that video today is loads of fun, I am so tense! I’m saying my lines, but that is also it. What a difference just a few years later, it’s almost like I turned into someone else.

Me in my first play 2005.

I did a lot of stuff, sure. But I felt lost in an everyday manner. I had friends, was productive and tons of energy. At least it looked that way. I still had days and periods I didn’t feel at home at all. That feeling of not fitting in was always hanging over me, I felt like I was in the way at my parents. Almost like they didn’t want me there at all. I worked at my dad’s friend’s place, washing chicken stables and also helping them picking all the chickens up when it was time for them to go to slaughter. Those days when I got home from washing the stables I was filled with birds spilling all over me. It got stuck in my hair and my clothes. I did this a couple of times in every month. We also helped other farmers sending their chickens to slaughter working night shifts. Not a glamorous job at all. Coming home all tired and covered in dust every time. I worked hard, like I always have. One day I got a phone call from another farmer who needed someone who could wash their stables, they had a pig farm. I went there, washed some of their stables and then I got stuck there for 2 years or so. Swords nowhere to be seen. If you don’t count a pitchfork for a sword ;). Somewhere in between those years my mum kicked me out from home. Leading me to making stupid decisions. I leant my sister’s apartment for a while, I was 21 at this time, felt like shit. I was unaccepted, unwanted and in my own eyes not worth the shoes I was walking in. I didn’t care anymore, I just wanted to get away from everything. I started to chat with a guy over the internet. We decided to meet on a date. And so we did. I’ve met him in the city, Örebro, and I remember I thought: No, not my type. But what the hell, I don’t care. I just want to get out of my situation. We started to see each other more. My lack of self-respect made me start a relationship with this guy, even though I didn’t even like him. I couldn’t get anything better anyhow, I thought to myself. I was way out of line, I had shut myself down. I decided to move to him in Eskilstuna on a very short notice. That wasn’t especially smart of me, but I was in a crisis. So much going on inside of me. Thinking: “Things can’t be worse than they already are”. Never think that way. Things can always be worse. They did. When I moved in I started to notice strange things. For example, I was there and put some clothes there one weekend. The next time I showed up (this was before I actually moved in but still) the TV and the lamp in the bedroom was missing. And some other things to. I asked him: Where are these things? - They are, gone. Me: But, how? A TV can’t just disappear. - It did! I had to push him, he told me after a while that it was his ex who came by to pick her things up. We talked through it, I accepted it. But still thought it was a bit weird.. My guts told me that this was bad shit going on but I held it to my senses. I pushed that feeling away trying to not think about it. A month later he received this message from her, saying that we had to move out. Then I realized that the apartment was hers, not his. God. What a mess. It was me paying the rent and all the bills from my savings. He didn’t do a shit. We moved out. Lived at his friend for a while. I managed to get another apartment. We moved in there. Lived there for a month or so, then he started to act really badly. I’ve seen tendencies to this before, him having this anger issues smashing things into walls, hitting his hand in tables and stuffs for what seemed to be no reason at all. I was always afraid for something to happen. My money started to run out. I was going home for a week to work, just some days before that he became so mad at me for hanging the laundry in the wrong manner. His eyes were all black. I ran into the bedroom when he became aggressive. I closed the door, and I could see the laundry basket that were made out of plastic, coming at the door through the air. I shut the door and heard a bang. I went down behind the bed. Scared as hell, was this the last minutes of my life? He came in. Screaming. Throwing something at me. Went out. I was shaking. I could hear him watching TV. I told myself I had to do something, just anything. I went out in the hall and into the kitchen. I started to make the dishes. I cried. He heard me. Still angry. He yelled: SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! I couldn’t handle it anymore. I sat down at the floor, managed to crawl in beneath the dishing bench. I sat there in this hole mad for a dishwasher. I never felt so lonely and scared in my entire life. He came out after a while. Calm. He told me in a calm manner: I realized something, we don’t need a laundry basket. I was out of my mind. What the fuck was he saying?! I told him he was a lunatic, he just nod against me. “Yes I know, but we don’t need a laundry basket” Oh my god. This human being was a special kind of human in the bad way. I got home, worked for a week. Hell break loose, he making weird stuff that he couldn’t afford. Being out with his gang, buying them drinks for money he didn’t have. I was pissed. When I finally got home after some troubles along the way (long story). I come into my apartment together with a friend. He is stoned. Starts to yell at us. Getting pissed. He getting those dark eyes again. I can’t really say what happened after that. I know he got out and hit both me and my friend, and that we managed to get him back in the apartment and run away to call the police. I told him to never get back. Never. I moved back to my mum and dad. Lived there for a year or so. Got my own apartment In Hallsberg. After a while I managed to get both a full time job as a personal assistant, I moved to Kristinehamn where I also had a boyfriend. I worked too much, slept too little. I hit that famous wall. Quit my job, started to study in Örebro. Told my boyfriend to get lost since we didn’t worked out so well together. After the first term on the university I got lost, I broke down so much I had a memory loss and started to hallucinate. I only existed one moment at a time, only remember who I was and what connection I had to people. I couldn’t remember things I’ve went through, things that happened were completely gone. I panicked, I freaked out. The time was running away from me, I couldn’t catch it at all. This made me see all the people around me getting old and die in front of me. I saw it, like it was for real. I couldn’t hold myself together. I screamed being so afraid of myself and what was happening to me. Somehow I managed to get through this, without help. I found the source to what was happening to me and dealt with it. I had to accept the fact that we are mortal. I was afraid of dying, and it stressed me out that I couldn’t handle time anymore. That it was running away from me. I found my own way through it and became my own therapist. I got back to school, never had to take a break from it. Then I started to suffer from insomnia. Slept like 2-3 hours per night. I still managed to study though, don’t ask me how but I did. I contacted a friend who helped me with a sleeping program, which helped but it was a hell to get through. I started to sleep normal again. Life became a bit easier. For a while. Through a friend I met this girl who needed somewhere to stay. She had a baby and a dog. I lived in a big apartment that I couldn’t really afford by myself, I let her move in. Of course, with my luck, it was a person with problems. She couldn’t handle her child, calling her 9 months baby an idiot. Yelling at her. Lifting her up and screaming at her when she just wanted food. You name it. I did everything I could to protect this child, I got up and gave her the bottle as soon as I could so the mother wouldn’t be angry at the morning. I took the baby up and walked around with her. She was a very calm child. Didn’t want so much attention. Slept during the nights (when her mother was away atleast) ate, and only wanted attention when she needed food, love or a diaper change. I almost adopted her as my own, when she was with me she was calm. Everytime her mother went away the baby slept early. As soon as the mother got her hand at the door, the child started to scream in panic. It was like this for some months. She lied a lot, it came to me that she had told others that it was her apartment and not mine. And other things. I decided to kick her out. My mum told me that this was the girl who had threatened to kill my bigger sister ten years ago. What the fuck life. What have I done against you? I thought. It felt like I was living in a bad movie. This couldn’t be real. Anyhow, I kicked her out. She was pissed. I didn’t care. I started to live alone. Had a friend that came over every other week, since he worked in the city. Things were starting to get back to normal, again. My dad had been feeling badly for a while. Having a hard time working as normal. One day my mum calls. I got this bad feeling. She tells me dad wants to talk with me. Dad never talked to me in the phone. Never. She hands over the phone. Dad tells me he got diagnosed with ALS. ALS is a disease that cut the nerve signals from your body out. Making you more and more paralyzed. I sat down. Didn’t know how to handle the situation. This big black hole started to fill up my body. Sadness. Frustration. Anger. During this time a friend of mine who I met through larping, tried to pursue me into this fencing shit. At least, I thought it was shit. I thought he talked about sport fencing, and believe me. He had to talk about it for 1,5 years before I actually tried it out. His finals word that made me go there was: We need more tough girls. My mind: Tough girls? I AM ONE! I came by in the middle of a term. Being a bit nervous. What was I getting my ass into? This was in the middle of November 2014. I had to meet a whole bunch of new people who already started in the beginner’s course that term. I felt insecure, had to stand in a corner by myself and a trainer. Feeling dumb and silly. I couldn’t even stand correctly in a stanse. Making a fool of my self. But I got stuck in it.

Meanwhile my dad got so bad I dropped out of university to work for him as a personal assistant. I helped my dad with stuff that is normal for other people. I had to help him eat, help him to the toilet and so on. In the end he got moved to a home for old people who can’t take care of themselves. I did my best at training. I got new friends there, and bruises. A lot of them. I started to compete just 6-7 months after I started, getting my head into it. My dad got more and more ill. I couldn’t handle it. I got sick from seeing it. The last three months of his life I wasn’t there. I couldn’t anymore, it hurt me so bad seeing my dad becoming a wreck. Not being able to do anything at all, he was shutting down more and more. By that time I was ill myself. Couldn’t go out the door. Most of the days I laid in bed doing nothing at all. Tried to go out, got a panic attack from it. At the worst I had 5-6 panic attacks every day. I was a mess. I didn’t give in though. Every day I went to training. Refusing to give in for anxiety and depression. Some days that was the only thing I managed to do. I got up and got out. How hard it felt, I didn’t care. I got there. That was the only thing that mattered to me. Training, with swords. If it wasn’t for my trainer, Carl, I wouldn’t have continued at all. But somehow he made me got my ass up and go there. Every. Single. Time. Not like he forced me to, but he made me want to go there. No matter how bad I felt. My team members have seen me cry during practice. They have also seen me getting panic attacks both on trainings and on events we’ve been on together. I sometimes wanted to give up, I still feel the same way today. How much can you handle? But I never did. They never gave up on me, especially not Carl. I ain’t going to either, that is the easy way out. But shortcuts making it all much harder in the end. You miss a lot if you take them. Ten years ago I couldn’t imagine myself being where I am today. I even had a hard time imagined myself being 29 years old, life didn’t seem to be for people like me. But here I am. Having a job which I’m good at. Having a lot of experience in acting. Being one of the greatest women in Swedish HEMA fighting (hard to believe, I know. But the facts says so). Last, but the most important; having a big bunch of friends who been following me through those years, they are my family and I love every single one of them. Now I am actually looking forward to the next ten years in life, I didn’t back then. Never give up. xoxo Lotta

#mental illness #mental ill health #theatre #acting #martialarts #historical fencing #farming #emotional abuse #friends #training #never give up

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lxvxjxnkie · 7 years

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Facing up

In January I broke up with the guy I was seeing, because it was going to take a ton of energy to bring him up to speed on my emotional history, and it was energy I needed for dealing with that history.

It was a seven month wait to see a psychologist who had the skillset I needed. I knew I was in trouble by June last year. A couple of things stand out: there’s an aboutness to my experience of depression; I can trace it back to a trigger event, and there’s often a specific theme to my ruminations. Secondly, it doesn’t respond to medication. My mood, confidence, day-to-day experience of life is improved on medication, but I’m still stuck, avoiding a major decision and not getting any writing done.

I’ve seen a psychiatrist who said I’m not bipolar.

Finally, about four weeks ago, I had my first appointment with the psychologist. It went well, but we barely scratched the surface. He said, straight up, that he thinks there’s complex trauma playing out.

I knew that already. I have always avoided writing that I have primary trauma. I’ve talked about intergenerational trauma, paying deference to my primary parent’s experience of domestic violence in her childhood.

But now it’s time to face up to the primary trauma: a two year period, from year eleven at high school to first year at uni.

My brother left home after about three months of screaming.

My mum visited the daughter she gave up for adoption, about three years after they’d had a reunion, and the daughter had more or less blanked her. Mum came home and spent about a week catatonic with grief, and required a massive amount of emotional support after she finally started talking again.

I came out and that didn’t go well.

Growing up I was lucky to have a dad who paid child support, but every few years the agreement would be reviewed, and mum would come home from court spitting venomous rage about how he’d screwed her in court. When I turned 18, the agreement was up for renewal (it’s payable until 21), but I was now legally an adult and the case was brought in my name. Dad had offered to reach an informal agreement but Mum called me a fool for considering it and made me sue him. So in the middle of year twelve I was suing my father for child support. On our day in court, it turned out to be a negotiation process, not a contested hearing and not an opportunity for a court to hear and adjudicate all mum’s grievances. So she unloaded those on the Legal Aid lawyer, and when I asked her to stop that, she turned her rage on me. To this day, I still break into a cold sweat in small rooms with meeting tables.

After that, it was weeks and weeks of cold, silent, grit-toothed rage. In the end I decided to move out and started looking for places, and -that- got through to mum; she said to wait until I’d finished year twelve, and the cold thawed a little.

I did something stupid, deleting a file I’d created to layout a newsletter for Women and the Australian Church. Not sure how many kids in year 11-12 were laying out 4-5 editions per year of a 12-16 page newsletter for their mum’s church group. More of the cold silent treatment lasting for weeks.

I was also debating for my school and the state team, moot courting, public speaking, and editing the school newspaper. I honestly don’t know how I got through that year. I remember my teachers being pretty concerned for me, but I absolutely couldn’t talk to them about it; at the tiniest gesture of sympathy, I felt like I would start crying and never stop — just not done in an all-boys’ school. At the end of the year I had one conversation with the guidance counsellor, who faked a bunch of absence notes in my diary, because I’d missed too many days to graduate, otherwise. Then I graduated as Dux of the School, won a Premier’s Prize for English, school prizes for Literature and Debating, and an Australian Psychological Society Prize. Straight As and perfect marks in three subjects.

And I’ve written before about how it all fell apart in undergrad at Unimelb. More than any other university, Unimelb frames pastoral care for students as a service. Even if you’re failing all your subjects, nobody there will ever e-mail to ask ‘are you alright?’ You are required to model good help-seeking behaviour, framing yourself as a responsible service user, before you’ll get help. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong; I knew I was very, very unhappy, but I understood it as moral failure and laziness, and I really resented needing to identify as sick to get help. And still do. And if you have social anxiety, and you’re paralysed, well, good luck managing to ask for help. I enrolled there in 2000 and it was not until 2008 that I was dating someone and he said, you’re acting weird, what the fuck is going on? And he pushed and pushed until finally I said, ‘mum won’t stop calling me.’

My uncle Peter had died. I’d asked her to leave me out of the inevitable court battle over his estate. But one day I visited her and she was incredibly distressed over her other brother taking money out of the estate that should have been equally divided. So I wrote a letter laying out the legal duties of executors and threatening action for her to send in her name. But she forwarded it to him saying ‘this is what I would send you if I was really nasty.’ And it turned out that he was reimbursing the money he’d paid upfront to the lawyers, having mortgaged his house, to defend the estate against my uncle’s ex-partner. ‘What difference does that make?’ said mum. I was so angry with myself for letting myself get suckered into that game: mum presenting herself as the victim to get someone else to step in as rescuer. And seeing myself the way mum saw me — like the pitbull you let off the leash to intimidate someone — I felt stupid, and used, and ashamed. I didn’t talk to mum for a year, but she kept calling my phone, and until my partner picked up on it, I had no idea how much that ‘jack-hammering’ was winding me up.

All through my teenage years and once I’d moved out of home, it was normal to go to bed and have a flashback. I have an incredibly detailed memory and the flashbacks were vivid; they would leave me frozen and sweaty and exhausted. One every night before sleep, sometimes more. I would have them as well in lecture theatres, when something in the lecture cued the memory of a family experience.

Back to the present moment: late last year, I got that e-mail from my mum, ‘correspondence must cease’. But coming up to my birthday on Monday, I knew that she would get in contact. It’s just the most characteristic thing for her to feel like she’s got the upper hand so everything in the relationship is fine. There are people she has grievously wronged and she is still surprised and hurt when they don’t accept her overtures of ‘forgiveness’. Sure enough, 10AM, there’s the e-mail, happy birthday, thinking of you, love mum. And I smacked it back over the net so hard. I reiterated the line I’ve been saying, over and over: I am not trying to relitigate the past, but I am going to tell the story of it, and you need to acknowledge that your experience does not determine the truth and validity of my story and my relationships.

The hardest thing post-trauma is to tell a coherent story of self-survival, and anyone who deliberately tries to disrupt that process is morally akin to the Catholic lawyers demanding time and date specificity of people abused as children.

I knew when I wrote that post in August 2015 to expect a call; I stopped in at a supermarket to pick up a bag of glucose in preparation. Sure enough, it came, and it was the usual arctic blast of self-righteousness and the purpose of the call was fact-checking. ‘That’s not how I experienced that.’ No shit; you have every self-serving reason to remember it differently, because you were not the one getting hurt by it.

It was my birthday on Monday. I hid the date on FB and only my step-mother remembered it. I hid the date because I knew this e-mail was coming and I knew it would dig up a ton of baggage that I would have to deal with, and I knew that I was going to really struggle to field and enjoy and respond to birthday greetings. So I had a day of self-care instead, after replying to the e-mail. And when I went to bed that night, I woke up around 3AM straight into an intrusive episode, a flashback to that tiny room in the Mag Ct, reliving it for about 45 minutes until I was finally able to get up, stagger down the hall to the kitchen and get some water.

I haven’t done that for years. I had forgotten how exhausting it is; afterwards, even though I eventually got back to sleep, I woke up feeling like I’d run a marathon overnight. And that nauseous feeling in my gut, the interferon-y feeling in my muscles, the lactic acid build-up in my diaphragm. The tightness of breath all day until my boss suggested we go walk up a mountain and that unlocked me. Today, the day after — it feels like weeks later — I’m still tired. The next appointment is on Tuesday, so that will be a chance to debrief, but it’ll no doubt dig up new stuff to process. I need to make a decision really soon about whether to continue with my PhD or put it on hold while I deal with this stuff.

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blschaos3000-blog · 4 years

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Its 10:08 am

Welcome to “8 Questions with…..”

It was the last week of January and someone mentioned that it was almost time for “Women In Horror Month” which happens in February. Feel a bit inspired I quickly tossed out a “interviews wanted” in my faithful casting group and got a very nice group of talented actresses who have worked in horror films who agreed to answer some questions. Its time to meet our next guest,the very spirited young actress Chelsea Jurkiewicz who is based in Salt Lake City,Utah. Chelsea has been performing for almost half of her life and she is just getting started. I got a chance to watch her work in the short film “Angie Bleeds” and I can assure you,she has some serious skills for someone so young. It takes a mature actor to handle sensitive issues in a film,most younger actors tend to go big but I was very impressed with mature Chelsea handled herself. Now she is having a bit of fun by starring in a new indie horror film,which is my cue to shut up and get out of the way of Chelsea answering her 8 Questions…..

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your latest project.

Hi! I’m Chelsea Jurkiewicz. I’m 21 years old, and I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. One of my latest projects is a horror movie called Abigail Haunting, where I play the lead role of Katie. We filmed it in Las Vegas. I got to work with an amazing team of multi-Emmy award winning filmmakers. It’s coming out this Summer, and I can’t wait for everyone to see it!

What was growing up in your house like? Is your family naturally artistic?

My family is artistic, but not in the entertainment industry. My mom and grandparents are all great painters. That’s cool, but I was never really interested in that sort of thing. I kind of broke the chain of visual artists when I started acting, singing, and dancing.

While being only 21 years old,you have been acting for 10 years,how did you get your start?

Acting is something I’ve always loved doing, even before I knew what it was. As a kid, I was always acting out stories and making up movie titles. When I was 11, I heard about auditions for a live musical. I ended up getting cast in that, and really fell in love with every aspect of performing. I continued doing theatre for a few years. When I was 15, I decided to try film acting. I guess that was always my dream, but I didn’t feel like I was ready to jump into it until then. It was hard to get an agent and all that at first, so I started by doing a lot of background extra work. That worked out really well, because it got me used to being on a film set. Within a year or two, I was able to land an agent and start getting lead roles in short films and small speaking parts in features. In 2018, I got my first leading role in a feature film, playing Renee in The 13th Cross. (That’s coming out soon, folks.) The next year, I landed the role of Victoria Crumb in the movie, The Crumbs, out in California (that’s also coming out soon, folks), and Katie Fredrick in Abigail Haunting (that’s also also coming out soon, folks). Since then, I’ve acted in a few amazing shorts and things. One of my upcoming shorts that really stands out to me is a fantasy drama called Lumeria. For the past several months I’ve been taking a break from acting, which I think has been really good for me. It kind of feels like taking a gap year from college to find yourself. (Not that I would know what that feels like. I’m not very school-y. Hence my use of the term “school-y”.) But anyway, it’s been a wild journey, and I’m excited to get back on set fairly soon. Wow, that answer was way longer than you bargained for. And I’m glad of it. I’m not ashamed of being a long-winded person, guys.

What three things about horror films appeal to you the most?

I love being dramatic. And name one time you can be more dramatic than when you’re starring in a horror movie. Also, I think fear is the most intense emotion, and I like to see what I can do with it. My third reason is that I have fun knowing that I can keep the audience on their seat when I’m performing. I feel like I’ve got them in the palm of my hand. When I began my acting career as a child, I just wanted to act – I didn’t like all the power and attention that came with it. But that power and attention has grown on me as my confidence has grown. I love the power I have over the audience when I’m doing horror. Boo. Just kidding. I guess I’m a little hammy. Which makes sense, because ham is pretty much the only meat that I think is yummy.

What three films have scared you the most and what scared you about them?

I think I’m kind of desensitized to horror films because I’m around the genre so much. I see it from a behind-the-scenes perspective, you know? But I think one of the greatest horror films ever made is The Conjuring. It’s so well-shot and well-acted, and shows that you don’t need a ton of blood and profanity to scare people. Fun fact: I actually auditioned for The Conjuring 2, and had never seen the first one. I watched it before I auditioned for pre-text, and was like, “Oh my gosh!” Totally amazed. Still amazed. Anyway, we aren’t here to promote that movie. (but it had Ocean Master in it! -Editor) Another one of my favorite horror movies is Crimson Peak, because I love period pieces. And that cast is super dang good. I also love The Witch. One of my big wishes is to work with A24. I can’t give you an answer for what scared me about them. I’m just not easily freaked out by the obviously scary stuff. I’m literally more afraid of broken dolls or something. There’s a drawer in the house I grew up in that me and my mom call the “Scary Drawer” that has broken dolls from my childhood in it. I don’t throw them away because randomly I have an urge to scare myself. Is that weird? I don’t care.

Do you have a different approach in your preperations depending on the script? What has been the three best pieces of advice given to you acting wise?

Yes, I do prepare differently based on each particular production. That being said, though, I don’t have any conscious strategy to prepare for a role. If there’s any research I need to do, I do it. I write notes in the script sometimes. I rehearse. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have to try. It just comes. Trying too hard can corrupt that. I sound like a granola, but it’s true. That’s why I don’t take acting classes. I’m not sure if I believe in strategy. As for the second part of your question, here are 3 great pieces of advice given to me (in no particular order). One is from a great friend of mine who told me that it’s not about the dialog, but what happens underneath. I am definitely a dialog person, so I don’t even 100% agree with that, but I still consider it one of the best pieces of advice because it reminds me to pay attention to my facial expressions. Facial expressions can get you cast. Seriously. Another piece of advice is from my mom. It wasn’t meant to be advice for acting, but I use it in my career as much as I do in my personal life. And it is simply to be confident in yourself and don’t care what others think of you. My third piece of advice was from a very established director that I was doing a callback for once. Because of my extensive horror background, I kind of got to the point where I thought every scene needed the intensity that a scary scene does. This movie I had been called back for wasn’t a horror film, but I did the scene with so much intensity and drama. It was literally so dramatic. The director told me to do the scene again, and he had one note for me. “Less.” That one word made me realize that I can save my energy for the scenes that need it. I didn’t book that role, but I auditioned for The 13th Cross like 2 days later, used that advice, and landed my first lead in a feature.

Which do you perfer,film or live theater and why?

I think I’ll always appreciate both…I did start in theatre after all…but I’m going to have to say film. I’m a very subtle actor, and film is the medium that lets me use that talent. Also, I’ve gotten to play much more dramatic and juicy roles in movies than I ever did in plays. And probably most important of all, I just feel like film peeps are more my species of peep.

Which three people inspire you the most and why?

That’s a tough one – so many people inspire me! If we’re talking celebrity-wise, I’d say Kate Winslet. She’s kind of the reason I got into film acting. I always wanted to be like her. You should read my 15-year-old self’s journal entries. I talk about Kate Winslet so much, it’s not even funny. Another one is Emily Blunt because she is so freaking versatile. That’s how I want to be. Oh and Toni Collette. I’m not even going to give you a reason for that other than she’s just super cool and talented and dramatic as heck. If we’re talking someone I personally know, I’d say my friend Dennis. He is just beyond amazing and interesting. And as mysterious as a treasure chest. He has so much love for literally everybody.

What do you like to do for fun when you’re not working?

Ice-skating, making jewelry, walking/hiking, anything involving a tape recorder, photography, and most of all, any type of adventure with my friends or family.

What are three things people would be surprised to know about you?

I love this question! Can I tell you more than 3? Well, I’m gonna.

-1. I’m also a singer and dancer.

-2. I am related to Scottish royalty.

-3. I have a severe mental disorder called Psychasthenia.

-4. I have been onstage with David Copperfield.

-5. I am ambidextrous.

-6. I have never been swimming, and I used to think that was a deep dark secret.

-7. I am related to Elizabeth Montgomery.

-8. My favorite food is cheese.

Okay, I’ll stop boring you. Not that it’s boring, hee hee.

The cheetah and I are flying over to watch your latest film but we are a day early and now you are playing tour guide,what are we doing?

Hmmm…well you really SHOULD visit Salt Lake sometime, it’s a beautiful city. One of my favorite attractions in Utah is an amusement park called Lagoon. I can’t ride all the rides because I get motion sick really easily, but I still love that place. Besides fun rides, they have little shops, and an arcade, and an old-fashioned museum thingy-jingy. Another one of my favorite places near my hometown is the Grand America Hotel. It’s kind of like a mall in there, and it’s the fanciest place I’ve ever seen. I also might take you to a cute little place called Gardner Village.

I like to thank Chelsea for doing such an fun and interesting interview. Of course the cheetah and I looking at each and going “A24????” knowing full well a certain film buff we know will be getting a HUGE kick out of that…..yeah,Danny,we are talking about you! The thing is,I believe Chelsea will indeed work on a A24 film in the near future,she has the drive and the skills to make it happen for herself. Hopefully soon we’ll be reviewing “Angie Bleeds” here on the blog and you’ll see why we are excited to see where Chelsea goes next. For now,you can click on any of her social media platforms below and follow Chelsea’s rising star…..

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chelseajurkiewiczactress/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelseaamberjurkiewicz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChelseaJActress

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6922643/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRKkRcWhcZOuqv36lV_oPcA

Abigail Haunting page & trailer

Thank you for supporting my interview series and if you like to catch up with who we have chatted with….click here. Feel free to leave a comment as well…..

8 Questions with………actress Chelsea Jurkiewicz Its 10:08 am Welcome to “8 Questions with…..” It was the last week of January and someone mentioned that it was almost time for “Women In Horror Month” which happens in February.

#8 Questions With #A24 Films #acting #indie horror #interview #maturity #Salt Lake City #scream queen #Utah #WIHM #Women In Horror

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