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leverage-ot3 · 22 days

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okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to repare fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it

#before anyone says anything YES I KNOW HOW SPN LORE WORKS I WATCHED IT FOR MANY YEARS #I am just making this silly post for my own (and possibly your) amusement #I’m not digging too heavily into spn plot because I haven’t watched in forever and don’t trust my memory to make accurate commentary lol #also I know it’s probably layed but lied looked better somehow don’t worry about it #sorry this is so long I wasn’t sure where to break it to a read more bc all of it was too important to me 😭💀#tell me in the comments if you’d prefer a read more and where you think it should go #I haven’t been into spn for years HOW DOES THIS AU HAVE SUCH A CHOKEHOLD OVER ME #eliot spencer #parker #alec hardison #leverage ot3 #parker x hardison x eliot #(background)#nate ford #sophie devereaux #jim sterling #nate x sophie #nate x sophie x sterling #crossovers #leverage x spn #leverage x supernatural #supernatural #crowley spn #crowley supernatural #crowley #leverage #mine #not even queueing this I need it posted immediately. instant gratification #pls like rb comment etc I need the validation #I ended up putting a read more for the long goodbye job

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rroyalguarantee · 28 days

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a ramble about arthur's relationship with dutch and hosea

haven't used tumblr in a while (let alone made an actual original post in who knows how long) but i can't stop thinking about that one interaction between dutch and arthur in lakay. specifically: "you sound like hosea." it breaks my heart, because dutch is right in saying that. as chapter six unfolds into the tragedy it is, arthur becomes more and more like hosea, and just like hosea, arthur tries and tries and fails to get dutch, stubborn and single-minded, to see reason.

one of my favourite journal entries, is where arthur says, "i love dutch like a father, but in many ways i love hosea more." arthur loved hosea. hosea saw arthur for who he was. knew arthur wasn't near as dumb as he liked to pretend he was. one of my favourite interactions between arthur and hosea is early on in chapter 3, very shortly after they get to clemens point. arthur walks by hosea sitting at a table, who calls out to arthur and asks what he thinks about dutch's plans. arthur's response is "you know me, i never did much thinking." to which which hosea says one of my favourite lines in the game, and it's a line that gives far more insight into arthur, hosea and their dynamic than you might first think.

dutch was arthur's father in a more abstract way. whether it was dutch's intention or not (and i believe, at the very least, it was later on), i always found his "you're like a son to me" comments to arthur to be very manipulative in nature, meant to reel arthur back in when he's concerned he's "getting away," so to speak. i have personal experience with men trying to get me on their good side by saying i'm like a kid to them, and maybe i'm projecting a little because of that, but the way dutch says that to arthur triggers the same alarm bells in my brain.

again: "i love dutch like a father, but in many ways, i love hosea more." say what you want, but hosea was arthur's true dad. he was his dad in all the ways that mattered. hosea knew arthur so well, he knew arthur was putting on "an angry moron act." in the video i linked, he sounds genuinely frustrated when he continues saying "but it's a thin enough veneer." he knows arthur is capable of more. is capable of being better, and i think hosea knew that things were doomed in the end, whether or not he would admit it.

arthur spent a lot of time, both early in the story and at the end, reflecting on what was happening, on himself, on the other gang members. i like to think he was unconsciously channeling hosea in chapter 6. honestly, the parallels are kind of painful. maybe that's, in part, why dutch was so adamant on not listening to arthur; because he reminded him, painfully, of hosea, his oldest and dearest friend. of course, that's not the only reason, but it makes sense, doesn't it? arthur is so much like hosea, and we see that more and more as the story progresses.

#of course i should mention that i wrote this with high honour arthur in mind as not only is that my preferred way of playing #i also perceive high honour arthur as the canon story #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #arthur morgan #hosea matthews #dutch van der linde #please feel free to add your own thoughts if you have any #i'd love to hear other people's opinions #this was just me wanting to get my thoughts out lol so apologies if it's not the most coherent

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wispscribbles · 3 months

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Out of curiosity

What is your opinion on poly 141

(also absolutely love your Soap Ghost art❤️

Thank you! And I have no strong opinions on most cod ships tbh (except for the obvious one) - poly 141 is cute! I just love all four of them and love to see them happy. They’re more ‘found family’+ghoap to me personally, but different strokes for different folks. I’ve read some good poly 141 fics when stumbling upon them

#ask #anon ask #I’m just here for the ghoap tbh #as long as they are sickeningly in love then I am happy 😌#I do have some personal preferences but I just try to chill in my own sandbox and ignore stuff I don’t care for/am disinterested in #poly 141 is neutral to me - I don’t seek it out but also don’t mind it #for cod ships I enjoy alerudy and nikprice and faralex too (faralexgaz also cute)#oh and kate/her wife lol #but I would only die in battle for ghostsoap

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sableeira · 4 months

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always wanted to arrange my artworks in a gradient and since I started drawing again over a year ago, I was finally able to put this together 🫶

#did an edit like that for an old fandom with official manga art and it’s kind of breathtaking that I actually managed to make a rainbow #edit with my own art?!? everything is 2023 art except the fall skk artwork but it matched yellowish green well enough lol #you can tell which kinds of color palettes I prefer but I really want to use more warm color palettes & maybe try more desaturated palettes #some other goals: drawing more women and environment focused artworks #(but who knows how much time I’ll have this year)#bsd #bsd fanart #my art #I did start a few non-bsd related artworks but didn’t have enough patience to finish them #that’s why it’s mainly skk too… the obsession hits different… I have other non-skk pieces I like too but the color palettes were hard to #fit into this edit…#my only non bsd related artworks where some concept pieces for uni #so strange to see the random mix of styles for this past year but also nice to see little consistencies #long post

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raccoonnutella13 · 1 month

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why are ppl always so mean about taz :(

#every time theres a new arc everyone who only liked balance is like 'oh if u dropped off after balance u have to listen to THIS arc bc its #JUST LIKE BALANCE'#every damn time.#it happened with ethersea a bit but especially w steeplechase and vs dracula #and u get ppl in the notes of these posts saying 'oh yeah i fucking hated everything after balance sooo glad theyre finally doing exactly #what i want them to!!'#like. its ok to have personal preference but dont be mean about it :(#and comparing every campaign to balance is rlly annoying sry #let them be their own thing #stop being so blinded by nostalgia ig #like not to be rude but. i think ppl think balance is the most Perfect Thing Ever but its rlly...not #all the campaigns have flaws but i aint canceling them for that #like what happened with grad #idk its like if balance came later ppl would probably be much more mean about it #bc they wouldnt be blinded by nostalgia as much or smthn #anyways #at the end of the day the mcelroys shouldnt be expected to make a replica of balance every campaign #and thats not what theyre trying to do. theyre doing what THEY personally want to do. like they clearly dont care abt what others think lol #theyre experimenting and having fun #its like. a free podcast with a bunch of silly dudes playing for funsies. they shouldnt have such high expectations or be demonized #in any way #my point being. if i see anyone being mean abt taz u get blocked #>:(#coon speaks #not tagging taz. i dont wanna see nasty ppl in my notifs ty

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greensaplinggrace · 5 months

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i've never been more bewildered than i was when i learned that there were hannigram antis. girl why

#nbc hannibal #hannigram #as i get older i find antis more and more ridiculous #like how immature do you have to be to think that somebody having fun smashing some random scrungly blorbos together is sick in the head #like i get not liking a ship for personal reasons or whatever #god knows i have my own preferences #but when it's presented as some sort of moral ground??#buddy you have no moral ground #it's fiction lol #anyways why are you watching the show about the gay cannibalistic serial killer if you don't like gay cannibalistic serial killing #has fandom always acted so immature?#discourse #fandomcourse

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maironsbigboobs · 7 months

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re: elf servants

I think generally there are servants in royal/noble households simply for practical reasons and they generally fall into 2 categories: specialised servants (think, stewards and messengers and scribes, masters of horses or kennels, that kind of thing) and servants who help with the upkeep of the household (cleaning, repairs, cooking and also the apprentices and assistants of specialised servants)

specialised servants are probably quite prestigious roles and fields of industry in their own right, and they are considered full members of a household, and probably are closely linked to the person they serve - it's as much a political and social statement to be Finwe's chief scribe as it is an economic one

but the second category are more associated with the house than the family living in it - for example, Finwe's palace in Tirion would function both as a home and a diplomatic and administrative centre, it would be impossible for him to rule and keep up with chores himself. But Fingolfin's personal home would probably not have any full-time servants - when there more people than usual to feed or house then professionals might be hired, but for the most part I imagine the day to day is done by the family (made possible by the fact elves sleep and eat less than humans)

IRL domestic service (at least in the 18th century) often functioned as a kind of prep stage for adult life (for women in particular, but gender is probably not as big a factor for elves) and I could definitely see this in Valinor - domestic servants being 80% elves between 50-100 who haven't chosen an apprenticeship or similar in another field who are earning extra money to set up their own households, getting experience outside of the family, meeting others in their own ae cohort, learning independence etc. It's a job that comes with the offer of room and board + the wages a king/prince/lord can provide. Not glamorous, but not terrible.

The other 20% is made up of professional servants - experienced elves who are genuinely like the work and are contracted workers as much as a builder or gardener might be. Some of them might be independent and others part of businesses set up by other elves who are really into cooking/cleaning etc.

In Beleriand the situation (for the exiles at least) is probably very different, though I think there would be attempts to adapt the system - but there aren't as many households that need servants and there aren't as many young elves.

#i confess i very much enjoy making ocs who are bg characters and servants are perfect for this #made my own post because i could not fit this in the tags LMAO #also the amount of labour needed to run a pre industrial household is HUGE #but elves generally get around this by having a population that is 90% adult and having magic #and having the time for anyone to become vastly skilled in their field in a lifetime #so things like food and clothing production is almost always communal and in the hands of elves who are REALLY into that specific area #the magic being relevant here because elf magic preserves - elven clothes won't wear out elf food doesn't go off etc #(or at least not as easily as human food/clothes)#i prefer to write elf societies that only visually mirror human ones - to an outsider it looks like a hierarchy of lord and servants #but the dynamic is very different #but that is just my preference #silm meta #not really a meta i just need to be able to find this post on my blog lol #long post #this is one of my fave topics hence the rambling

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fortyfive-forty · 15 days

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grabbing fistfuls of my own hair rocking back and forth repeating to myself like some kind of fucked up wizardly enchantment you should care about womens sports because its literally the same fucking sport why do i have to bend over backwards to convince you to care about womens sports like at an abstract level it is the exact same fucking thing and yet you cannot bear to possibly watch it unless you think the women are hot or there is some sort of social gain why is it so hard for you to care about womens sports when they are literally doing all of it better than the men

#i stand by my belief that womens sports are more entertaining anyways but i know that is somewhat personal preferences so ok! fine!#but they are the same then!#obviously yes there are legit differences in ~style~ and such based on the way different sports have evolved #ex: female basketballers are statistically better shooters than male basketballers #but like the sport itself is practically identical so why is it so fucking impossible for some people #to get interested in a sport they claim they love #just because women are doing it #i'm not sitting here like 'mmm how do i convince people to watch women's sport' like a legit plot #i'm just baffled i really don't understand #i mean i do understand of course but i'm just tired of it being this way lol #i want to talk to more people who have the level of brainrot i have about women's sports and it feels like everyone i know well #is just not that interested in the women even though they're interested in the men #of course there are people online but i get self-conscious and i don't know anyone well enough to truly go to the depths of my own brainrot #this is just a combination of genuine frustration but also my own loneliness lol #< wayyy more dramatic than it actually is for the record i'm not like lonely lonely #i just want someone who actually understands why i go nuts over this and who i feel comfortable spamming about it 😭#blah blah blah words

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puppyeared · 3 months

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MAN your art, but especially the latest pieces of Walking Fire Friend and Sparkle Dog really have the vibes of like, sanrio?? I want stickers and half a dozen accessories with them plastered all over so bad

!!! thank u for the kind words!! im playing around with the halftone effect, i like how it makes it look like a newspaper comic ^_^

#i also wanna design stickers so sososo bad.. id love to make some skip to loafer stickers with the main four <3 #i dont reallyknow much abt the process itself though.. and i dont have a paypal or any way to send or receive money in the first place orz #im sure ill do it once i figure it out but i appreciate the sentiment!!!#its been my dream to make my own custom motivational stickers with little dogs.. like the ones i used to get in grade school lol #im not sure if ill keep going in this direction with my art bc its all experimental but its been really fun playing around with it #its bothered me for the longest time that im just ass at rendering or putting detail in my art. but at the end of the day i just dont #care enough to go thru with it and i prefer to keep things simple anyway so that reflects my own tastes ig...#this is probably the closest ill get to a soft render that i like to see so if i could do more for that ill definitely try...!!!!#yapping #ask #answered #doodles #sona #puppysona

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hewantshisbrideback · 3 months

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Nobody can definitively say the means which lead to the tragic ends of two such beloved public figures. Nobody can name what it was that brought the last Targaryen heir to the throne and the only daughter of House Stark together in the first place. No one knows exactly what happened, not in truth, but people can speculate. And speculate, they do.

A SONG OF INTERVIEWS AND FAKE NEWS: Retrospectives on Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark

#rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #pureasoiaf #if they look more minimalist than the others. thats because the magazine covers theyre based on are extremely minimalist lol #thats just how Respected Publications handle the deaths of beloved public figures #prince rhaegar is based on a princess diana cover even tho elia is definitely more princess diana or even lyanna #lyanna is partly based on a few time magazine covers and partly on the same diana cover lmao #its meant to look more true crime ish and less picture perfect nostalgia memorial #originally i was going to make article samples like i did for the arya ones and then i was like. lmao no #i could do a jon centric spread and i have a couple ideas #but i would rather he have his own set of 4 like arya #so. thus. as a result. tosses this at your feet #that being said i prefer rhaelya divorce!verse over a more book timeline modern au #bc its funny to ME #and i have written a little bit of fic for it feat stealth jonrya #but mehhh idk. id have to edit to post #this is not smart or pretty enough to throw into every single possible canon tag. i just want it out of my drafts #hewantshisedits #hewantshisposts #hewantshisaus #hewantshiscontemporaryaus

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svtskneecaps · 1 year

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my biological peer reviewer (sibling) called this theory “fun” and said i should send it, so here goes

my personal theory is the feds ((”federation”)) created the eggs because they decided the best way to enforce “you can never leave” was to give the people something they couldn’t lose, like in the post by tumblr user alexaloraetheris (no relation to the smp) where their friend who might be a deity had said,

"When you die you descend to the underworld with nothing to lose. To keep you, they give you something to lose. When you want to return, they will demand it back. That's why nobody ever leaves. The only way out is to never enter."

i’m thinkin that on egg D-Day, at the end of the countdown, the feds weren’t gonna give the eggs back. they were just gonna hide them forever, or do something else, anything else, just keep them away from their surrogate parents, because then the people would just be STUCK, because people could theoretically take their eggs and leave, but if the eggs are missing, gone without a trace, then the residents CAN’T LEAVE, because presumably the eggs are STILL THERE, SOMEWHERE, IN NEED OF HELP AND RESCUE, if only the residents could find them ON THE ISLAND. if they leave the island while the eggs are missing, they are abandoning these things that have become their children.

but then in came the brazilians. and shit went south. because see, the spenglish (spanish / english) streamers were INVITED, but the brazilians CRASHED; the feds didn’t INVITE THEM, they weren’t EXPECTING THEM, but they can’t let these guys leave either, so they PANIC, and they scramble to give the brazilians the same thing--something to lose. the new egg had a brazilian jersey, homie was TAILOR MADE for them to pack bond with. the feds didn’t have time to send out multiple eggs, it was all or nothing, so they picked something they could reasonably assume all five of them would find endearing because they don’t know shit about these guys--they had a week to observe the OG batch, but all they know about these newbies is the brazilian flag on their boat--and so they sent the little egg out to become THEIR THING, the thing they couldn’t afford to lose.

it leaves open why the eggs are cracked too, bc idk what’s going on there lol, either 1: the eggs cracked because they’re hatching and the feds picked that date bc they wanted to yoink the eggs before they got Too Powerful, or 2: the feds were the ones to crack the eggs as an excuse for why they vanished--returning the eggs untouched would open too many questions the feds don’t want them asking; this way, instead of being concerned specifically with “why were the eggs missing”, the residents presume they know the answer--the cracks.

but yea i’m just gonna add as an aside that personally i think cucurucho / osito bimbo / the white fucker is way more active again because the feds are still scrambling to keep up with the brazilians (which, again, the feds weren’t expecting), and the binary fuckwad came in to put the fear of god into the newbies--maybe so they didn’t get too focused on the morse code transmissions; iirc max was theorizing that both osito and binary were part of the federation ? and if so it does make sense that the binary entity went to fuck with cellbit immediately after cellbit was introduced to the conspiracies of the island, yknow, a warning shot. i think they want them to be focused on the eggs.

BUT THAT’S JUST A THEOr

#i'm spitballing into the void bc i'm losing my mind lol if you read this send me some luck thank you #qsmp #someone send me to a nice farm with plenty of space to run i have lived too long #can't wait until someone smarter than me cracks the code #data and network security tried to teach me cryptography but HOO BOY it didn't do shit to help me here #i popped some of the words into a brute force caesar cipher #and also a tool that could roughly check for substitution ciphers #and yeah didn't find shit so uh #im gonna leave it to the one who's an ARG master yknow i think he's got it handled #(i thought about using an online tool to translate this but then realized i Do Not trust translators i can't verify)#(like i've definitely used google translate on my french assignments but the thing is i speak enough french to verify that)#(duolingo spanish + english/french cognates doesn't leave me confident and im not asking my unconnected spanish speaking friend to check it)#((i refuse to admit to her face that i've sunk so deeply into this hell-))#(like spanish is such a common language for english speakers to learn that i'm sure they've honed the eng/span trans pretty well BUT)#(i don't trust it lol and id just prefer not to put something on my blog that i can't verify)#(so apologies and uh translate at your own risk k love you byeee)#shut up vic

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sodalitefully · 1 year

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Duff & Slash vs. The World – a selection of quotes:

"One night Slash and I went out to the Rainbow, a restaurant next to the Roxy on Sunset that was famous as a rock-and-roll hangout. They gave us a booth. This was a new level of deference. A booth! At the Rainbow! As we proceeded to get blasted, a really big, drunk guy wandered over to our table. Though he looked like an overgrown hick, he was in fact the guitar player from a band considered quite big just then — much bigger than Guns. He addressed himself to Slash:

'N*****s shouldn’t wear tattoos,' he said.

What? Was this his idea of a joke or something?

He wasn’t laughing.

I stood up.

'What the fuck did you say to my friend?'

'You heard me. N*****s shouldn’t wear tattoos.'

I slugged the guy. Then I slugged him again. And again. He reminded me of the bullies back in Seattle, the meatheads who beat up punks in packs, who called everyone f*****s. I’m not sure how many times I hit him—I just completely lost it—but he went down. I found out later that three of his ribs had broken."

It's So Easy: And Other Lies, by Duff McKagan (2011)

"D: [Goes into a long incoherent rant about a fight he got into at a club on New Year’s Eve] … and the guy was bigger than I was, but I just went CAH-BOOOM! And… his eyes crossed, like you see in the cartoons, like that? And he went down. And then everybody dragged him back and dragged me back, but they were dragging him past me and I fucking biffed him three more times in the head! They said I broke his jaw…

S: Nasty [Suicide – former Hanoi Rocks guitarist] stuck his arm in through the crowd and got one in there too!

D: So we go through this shit all the time, people trying to fuck with us. I was telling you earlier, if anybody fucks with my homeboy here, Slash, – and it’s happened before, like if a big guy was gonna hit him – I’ve stepped right in front of him.

S: Sure, and I can hide in the crook of his knee…

D: I beat up a guy for him once. And he’d do that for me.

S: But not to sound stupid, because we’re starting to sound stupid…"

Last of the Giants: The True Story of Guns N' Roses, by Mick Wall (2016)

"Slash: [Sam Kinison and I] got into a really big fight. It was real violent, and Duff punched him out, the cops were involved, too, and it was a big deal.

Stern: Who won the fight though? Who could beat up who? I bet you could take Sam in two seconds.

Slash: Well, no. He actually – I don’t want to... Duff punched him out. He gave him a black eye. But, before that, he was sitting on me. And I had no way of getting out, because he had my elbows pinned down. I couldn’t get my arms up, you know?

Stern: How did he get you down on the floor?

Slash: He jumped me from the blue and just landed on my chest. I was gonna be dead. He was choking me. I was history. I was, like, sitting there going, 'I’m going out this way? I can't believe I’m gonna go out this way.'

He just showed up at my hotel room one night. I didn’t even – you know, a knock on the door and, like, it’s Sam, and I’m like, 'Okay.'

And so he got on my case about all this stuff, and he called me a dickhead. And I got pissed off and I jumped off the bed, and I didn’t expect him to react the way he did. And I turned my back – you know, I turned around for a second – and he just jumped on me.

He got me by the throat and my arms were underneath his knees. And I was like, 'Oh, this is it. I’m going out.'

Robin: And then Duff came to the rescue.

Slash: Then Duff woke up in the other room.

Stern: Hey, you owe Duff, man. I’ll tell you, that’s kind of funny, too. And leave it to Sam to jump Slash from behind. I mean, that is a low blow. That’s not right.

Slash: I was just this little guy with no clothes on. I mean, cuz I was in bed when he came."

The Howard Stern Show (April 30, 1992) (edited)

Additional details, related quotes, & discussion:

The first quote is from Duff's autobiography, obviously. The "big, drunk guy" in question was Chris Holmes of the band W.A.S.P. Slash's autobio (2007) recounts the incident somewhat differently:

"One time at the Rainbow I got into a fight with Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. Duff overheard Chris saying that n*****s shouldn’t play guitar. He didn’t say it to me, but it was obviously about me. As I remember, Duff told me about it later and the next time I saw Chris I went up to confront him and he took off running. Aside from insulting me, it’s one of the more ridiculous and untrue things a musician, of all people, could ever possibly say."

Aside from the obvious discrepancies in their versions of events (pretty much par the course for rocker autobios... Chris Holmes has shared his own take as well and rest assured it's very different), it's interesting to compare how they described their responses. Slash glosses over the fight entirely, he almost makes it sound like he was going to "confront" Holmes by giving him a lecture on the history of rock music – the last sentence is by far the most emotionally charged.

Duff's account is just shy of a brag, his sense of righteousness is evident. Fighting is a significant theme in his book, Duff chronicles his journey from scrapping with school bullies, to drunkenly picking fights, to discovering martial arts in sobriety:

"Those beatings were also probably a factor in why later I would see red every time I perceived a wrong done to me or someone close to me and would fight at the drop of a dime. Justifiably or not, I saw myself as the protector, and the street-fighting skills I was forced to learn while getting my ass kicked as a teenager meant that I was not reluctant to perform that role with my fists."

"From then on, I wanted to kill anyone who crossed me at any club or concert. In my mind I was still fighting for righteous reasons—not just to hurt people but to protect, to make bullies stop doing bad things. But it’s pretty clear in retrospect that I was taking out aggression about the situation with the band. I would find offense in the stupidest little things and then I’d just flip and go street."

Slurs aren't a trivial offense, but we can see how Duff's protectiveness has been both a strength and weakness at times. In this scenario, Slash is "someone close," and Duff is eager to assume the role of his protector.

The second passage is in excerpt from an unaired interview (1990) transcribed in Mick Wall's biography of GNR, a secondary source. (That is, the more recent biography he wrote about GNR, not the one that supposedly earned him a scathing mention in UYI II's Get In The Ring.)

Anyway, Duff was a little less eloquent in 1990, but the pride he takes in standing up for himself and his friends is consistent. He mentions a time he defended Slash against an aggressor, and I wonder if the incident with Chris Holmes is the one he's referring to. Whether it was the same event or a different one, Duff's statements in this interview are certainly in line with the behavior he described in his book.

Slash's sarcastic comment made me laugh – I couldn't say for certain if he meant it in good (or self-deprecating) humor, or if he was getting a little miffed by the way Duff was characterizing him as someone who needs defending. I also included his last line because it seemed to me like he was trying to change the subject – while Duff could have happily gone on, perhaps Slash was conscious of playing into the dumb drunk rocker stereotype, something both of them have a history of struggling against. He’s also conspicuously not jumping at the chance to chime in and tell the world what he’ll do if anyone tries to mess with them.

The third excerpt might call for a little more context: Sam Kinison was a comedian and a friend of Slash's who passed away shortly before this interview. Earlier in the interview, Slash described how he was supposed to make a guest appearance in one of his shows, and Kinison didn't take it well when he had to cancel.

This incident was never talked about much — as far as I know Duff never publicly shared his version of events — but another guest (comedian Andrew Dice Clay) on the Stern show recounted a phone call with Duff about the incident prior to Slash's interview:

"So, he's choking him to death, and the girl that Duff is with wakes Duff up, and she goes, 'I'm not sure, but I think somebody's killing Slash.'"

I wonder if the girl was the same one who was with him in Duff's chat with Howard Stern from around the same time. Slash said it happened in San Francisco, Clay said it happened at the Chateau Marmont in L.A., and Duff didn't specify, but I wouldn't put money on the accuracy of that detail in any of their accounts.

Anyway, this excerpt is a little different than the other two. It has less to do with Duff's protector complex — instead we can examine the way that Slash talks about a fight, where in the previous examples he tended to dodge the subject.

I edited the excerpt for readability (and I made pretty significant cuts, so click the link above if you want the full picture), but this was an interesting conversation all around. It's a bit awkward, because while Slash and Stern are ostensibly sharing memories of their mutual friend, Kinison is clearly the antagonist in Slash's story. Slash didn't really react much to Howard Stern's enthusiastic assertions that Slash could take Kinison in a fair fight, and while he made a point of explaining that he was caught off guard, he seems pretty content to tell the story as it was: he got his ass kicked.

The way Slash talks about himself ("just a little guy with no clothes on"!) leads me to believe that his comment about "[hiding] in the crook of [Duff's] knee" in the Wall interview was meant as a self-deprecating joke. He seems comfortable characterizing himself as harmless and nonaggressive, perhaps even uncomfortable with the idea of playing up his prowess.

Slash doesn't mention too many altercations in his book, but he does describe one friendly brawl with Nikki Sixx:

“[...] but I do remember doing what I always liked to do when I was drunk—wrestle some guy who was much bigger than me. In this case it was Nikki, whom I tackled, bar stool and all, out of nowhere. Nikki is pretty tall, and at that time he was pretty heavy, too, so he ended up turning it around: he slammed me on my back and sat on me.”

He goes on to explain how he passed out and woke up to find that he'd "dislocated four vertebrae in his back" and, to add insult to injury, he got teabagged by Tommy Lee.

Obviously we're working with a small sample size here, but like with Duff, we're starting to get a consistent picture. Slash's tales of getting into fights are distinctly lacking a certain rock-n-roll bravado. His accounts aren't very serous, he comes across as terrible in a physical fight and he doesn't seem to care.

All of this isn't necessarily to say that Slash didn't get in fights – just because he doesn't like talking about it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. But he's also made it pretty clear that he doesn't consider himself a violent person.

“I hate violence. At our shows, people hit each other and throw things, and I don’t know why. I love the energy of it, but everyone needs to be considerate of those around them, and that usually doesn’t happen.”

I don't have a source for that quote, so take it with a grain of salt if you choose. Either way, you get the picture. Slash is an image-conscious guy, yes, but he's not overly into fighting (or arguing, or yelling... but that's another set of quotes) and he doesn't try to pretend to be. It's not an image he's actively trying to project (perhaps one he's trying to avoid?) — but in some ways it's one he was labeled with anyway, thanks to GNR's reputation.

Clearly I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I'm going to put a pin in it here because honestly, I think it would be pretty presumptuous to try to make too strong of a claim about the personalities of two real people that I don’t know based on just a handful of quotes (from questionably reliable narrators...). All I’m trying to do here is show a pattern, and to point out the contrast between the respective ways that Slash and Duff view/talk about physical conflict.

When Duff talks about fighting, it's important to him: he fought to deal with his emotions, he fought to protect the people he cares about, and he fought to get sober. When Slash talks about fighting, he laughs, makes a self-deprecating comment, and brushes it off. Duff wants to project that he’s more than capable of defending himself and others, Slash prefers to distance himself from the topic. It's interesting to see this juxtaposition in their relationship, and the way it translates into Duff acting protective of Slash.

Alright, thanks to those of you who stuck with me this far, lol. Feel free to let me know your thoughts, and of course keep in mind that this is just my take on the subject!

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